I used to often write to Irina that I don’t lack for anything. Or almost anything. She could send me seeds from her region so I could get to know something new. But she doesn’t need to feed me from Germany. Then I realized that she needs the packages more than I do. Ever since, I just say thank you and every once in a while mention things I might want. Like for example gummi bears and a new potato peeler.
What I await anxiously are the letters. A letter is always a party. I don’t even need to buy a newspaper, but I buy one anyway when I go to Malyschi, just to see a bit of what’s going on in the world. I read the newest letter every night before I go to bed, until the next one arrives.
Petrow says that these days nobody writes letters anymore and that messages are sent from computer to computer and telephone to telephone. And some even from computer to telephone. In Tschernowo there are no telephones, that is, the devices themselves are here but there aren’t any functioning lines. A few people have little handheld phones but they only have reception when you get closer to the city. Petrow has one, he showed it to me. He plays stacking games on it like a little kid.
When he was new in town he trudged around town holding his phone up. “No reception, no reception,” he yammered and suggested we collect signatures to petition for a transmitter tower. Nothing came of it.
The Gavrilows said that anyone who wanted to make phone calls didn’t belong in Tschernowo. Marja said the things gave off radiation. Old Sidorow, who is at least a hundred years old because he was already old when I was still young, Sidorow said his landline functioned perfectly and that Petrow could use it anytime he wanted, the way it should be among neighbors.
He showed us his old phone, it consisted of a plastic housing that must have been orange at some point, with a handset and rotary dial. It was sitting on Sidorow’s table between some gigantic yellow squashes he had just harvested.
Petrow picked up the handset and held it to his ear. Then he passed it around.
“Kaput,” said Marja, handing the phone on to me. I hung up.
“The line is dead, Opa,” said Petrow. “All the lines here are dead, do you understand? All of them.”
Sidorow insisted that he regularly — not every week, but almost — spoke to his girlfriend in the city.
“Natascha,” Sidorow clarified, seeing my skeptical look, then he pointed to Marja. “A little younger than her.”
Later Petrow tried to convince me that old Sidorow wasn’t all there. I just shrugged my shoulders. If there was one person who shouldn’t have been casting stones, it was Petrow.
I sit on the bench in front of my house as Sidorow shuffles by, propped up with a cane. He doesn’t look too well, either. After a few steps he turns around and walks wearily back. He straightens himself up in front of me, everything on him is trembling. If he had more teeth they would be chattering.
Then he asks me why I don’t invite him in.
So I invite him in. Except for the spiderwebs, my sitting room is clean and tidy, and guests can stop in anytime. I’m prepared. Although I hadn’t expected Sidorow. He lowers himself onto a chair, places his cane between his knees and his hands on the tabletop. I set the teakettle to boil.
He’s wearing an old gray suit that is worn but clean. His legs are bony and his beard is scraggly and wiry.
“Dunja,” he says. “I’m serious.”
“What are you serious about?” I ask.
“I’m about to tell you.”
I give him time. The kettle whistles, I put broken peppermint sprigs into two teacups and pour hot water over them. I let my cup sit so it will cool off a little. Sidorow sips his tea immediately and asks for sugar.
I get a packet out of the cabinet. It’s old and the cubes of sugar are crumbly. I don’t put any in my tea because pure sugar makes one anxious and greedy.
Sidorow drops two cubes into his cup and tries to stir it. The sprigs of mint get in his way.
“I want to tell you something,” he warns me.
“I’m all ears.”
“You are a woman.”
“True.”
“And I am a man.”
“If you say so.”
“Let’s get married, Dunja.”
I choke on the mint tea and cough until my eyes start to water. Sidorow watches my coughing fit with sympathy. As I pull out my handkerchief to wipe my face, he seems to attribute the tears to my emotions.
He clears his throat. “Don’t get the wrong idea. I like you.”
“I like you, too,” I answer automatically. “But—”
“So it’s settled,” he says, standing up and getting ready to leave.
I’m speechless for a moment. Then I collect myself and catch him at the door. “Where are you off to so quickly?”
“To get my things.”
“But I didn’t say yes.”
He turns and looks at me, his eyes pale blue like the summer sky above the village. “What did you say then?”
I guide him back to the chair and put the teacup in his hand.
“I don’t want to get married, Sidorow. Not to anyone. Never again.” On the back of my hand, there where the thumb meets the hand, is a small faded tattoo that I did myself with a needle and ink when I was fifteen. And now, of all moments, it starts to itch. These days it looks more like a flyspeck than a letter of the alphabet.
“Why not?” A childlike wonder shines in his eyes.
“I didn’t come here to get married.”
He sniffs huffily. Then he stands up again with an effort. “Think it over. I could repair your fence.”
“Why now?”
“Because we’re not getting any younger.”
“I thought you had a girlfriend in the city?”
He sniffs again and waves his hand dismissively. His departure cannot be hindered any longer. I take him to the door and watch as he walks down the street and the cane raises little clouds of dust. A puff of wind makes the back of his shirt billow.
I’ve known him my whole life. Other than me, Sidorow is the only one who lived in Tschernowo before the reactor. When I was still a little girl he was a grown man with a family, and a head taller than I was. I lost track of him after the reactor. When I moved back to Tschernowo he apparently read about me in the newspaper. In any event he was the next to come, and I never asked him what had become of his boisterous wife and their two sons.
I can pretty well imagine what put thoughts of marriage in his head. He is a man and when his things become caked with dirt he washes them with household soap in a wash pan only to hang them to dry in the garden without rinsing them. For food he wets a bowl of oats twice a day with watered-down milk if he has it and with springwater when the milk is gone. On holidays he adds frosted corn flakes or colorful fruity loops from a big box with a foreign logo on it. His vegetables spoil because he has a green thumb but can’t cook.
Me on the other hand, I cook fresh every day and my garden thrives.
I haven’t been to Malyschi in more than a month. If it was up to me I wouldn’t be in any rush to go back. But my provisions are depleted, the butter and oil, the semolina and the alphabet noodles. The evening before, I get my rolling basket out of the shed and clean off the spiderwebs. The spiders work quickly, we should follow their example. It makes me think of the biologist and the fact that he had collected the webs so cautiously, with tweezers, and deposited them in a canister.
I can’t see anything special about the webs. They’re silvery and sticky.