I laughed half the way home. When Vera Lvovna had just gone to the hospital, my father and I went to see her. After a thaw, there was sun, the way was impassable, and we could barely get through the mud. My father was hot, he was sweating, striding, his coat open. We bought oranges. I couldn’t wait and ate one on the way and afterward my fingers were sticky. It was hot in the hospital, too. The heat was on, all the windows were sealed shut, and no one was airing the rooms out because they were afraid of drafts. On the ward, there was one withered old lady on one cot, and she was on the other, lying facing the wall. We sat down, my father on a chair, me on the edge of the bed. Without turning around, Vera Lvovna said, “This is it, Mitya,[11] this is it, this is it.” My father cut her off. “Stop it! Those know-it-alls say all kinds of things.” She turned around. Her face was tear-stained and swollen. “Vera, let me look at you.” My father turned down the blanket, pulled her shift to her chin, and started palpating her breasts and feeling under her arms. Vera Lvovna lay with her eyes shut. “This doesn’t mean a thing yet,” my father said. “You’ll see, everything will turn out fine.” Then we ate the oranges. My father slit the peel with his Swiss knife and stripped it off, turning his nails yellow. The peel sprayed. I held one section at a time out to Vera Lvovna. When we left, the janitor on the corner was breaking up the melting ice. The splashes flew straight at us. My father shouted, “Have you gone blind or something?” The man waved his hand, as if to say, Get lost, removed his mitten and blew his nose. My father went up and kneed him in the groin. The janitor deflated and crumbled. I shouted and ran to my father, trying to pull him away, but he shook me off and punched at the man’s cap from above so that the lout fell to the pavement. The ice, his face—it was all covered in blood. My father came to his senses and I led him away. His hands were shaking all the way home, and he kept begging my forgiveness. The day they did the operation, I arrived a little earlier, and there you were, waiting in a nook near the ER. We sat on a small wooden bench by a potted palm and watched the nurse move something from one cupboard to another. She must have been new; I recognized all the old ones. Then the nurse went away and the corridor was deserted. I took your hand and we embraced. That’s how we sat, pressed close. Then the door opened and the nurse came in again. We should have moved apart, drawn back, let go, but that was utterly impossible, and we kept sitting with our arms around each other. The nurse said, “Young lady, let’s go, you can help your mama. Don’t worry so much. Everything’s going to be fine.” Then I stood up and went in.
P.S. In the room where Mika and Roman sleep, the door is opposite the windows. On a sunny day, beams stream through, jostling, and twisting around at the keyhole, and forcing their way into the dark hallway already twisted, draw on the opposite wall a miniature window hung upside down where, if you squat, you can see past the window frame and billowing curtain to the overturned roof of the next building over and the rusty top of a September birch lowered into the blue sky, like the fox tail from the story. Catch it, Zhenya, big and small. Now I was coming back from the bathroom without turning on the light, and I heard movement behind their bedroom door. I squatted and looked into that same keyhole, and Mika was there helping him beat off.
If you dream of your mother and she’s alive, that means trouble; deceased, a change for the better.
I knew a woman I wanted to strangle, Evgenia Dmitrievna. I’d only just been taken home from the school for the blind. “Oh, you’re blind! What a disaster! For long? Have you tried treatment? And there’s nothing to be done?” And so on in that vein. “That’s terrible, never to see the light! I’d rather die than be blind!” Or, “It’s a pity you can’t see. If you could, you’d understand.” Her pity for me was quite sincere. I regret not killing her then because I don’t think they put blind people in prison. But you don’t pity me, so it’s relaxing being with you. Evgenia Dmitrievna, you can’t even imagine how grateful I am to you for that. Then, after I got home, for the first time in my life I truly felt like a cripple. You won’t believe it, but among people just like me I was happy. The legless need to live with the legless, the blind with the blind. I had friends there and it was fun. Though you won’t understand me anyway. Let alone our childish games. They tried to keep us as far away from the girls as possible, but you can’t watch everyone. Nature takes its course, so to speak. What plays a bigger role for us than seeing people are smells. Now you smell like apple soap. I won’t hide it. While you were gone I went around your room and sniffed your clothing, your dress, your underwear. So you see, at school I wanted to go home, but when I finally got home, I was suddenly unhappy. Just imagine. One day my mother was out and I ran away and got clear across town to the school myself. I don’t know what I was thinking or hoping. It was an escape plain and simple. I ran away because it was nice there—no light and no dark, no blind and no seeing. Why I’m telling you all this I don’t know. I love you, Evgenia Dmitrievna. Actually, that’s meaningless. Goodnight.
Papa, tell me something about Mama.
Zhenya, I’m tired.
Tell me.
Tell you what?
Something.
What something?
I don’t care.
Fine, tomorrow, I’m very tired.
Now.
What should I tell you about?
I don’t know. Tell me about how when you were a student you climbed through the dacha window to see mama and her father clicked his nippers.
I already did.
Tell me again.
Zhenya, let me be.
No.
Fine, then. Your mama and her parents were staying at their dacha in Udelnaya. Zhenya, what’s the point of this?
Keep going.
Her father had long nails. He called them nippers and was always clicking them. He was convinced, and tried to convince everyone, that the only help for mosquito bites was if you pressed a cross into the bite with your nail. He treated everyone. He was always trying to sink his nippers into my arm, too. After evening tea I said goodbye and headed for the station because the next day I was leaving for three months to do my stint as a medic at army training camp. Of course, I didn’t go to the station, I went for a swim past the dam. The moment it grew dark, unbeknownst to anyone, I returned. The window was open. Her father was already asleep and her mother was spending the night in town. And that was the first time. The funniest thing was we didn’t know what to do with the sheet. There wasn’t much blood, but still. And the mosquitos were relentless. We lay there slapping each other. I said, “You can say you crushed a bloodsucking mosquito.” She laughed. We never did think of anything. The dawn came, I dressed, and I was about to jump from the windowsill. She whispered, “Wait a sec!” And she held out the crumpled sheet. On the windowsill was a glass jar of water with some kind of flowers. As I was jumping, my elbow knocked it over and it exploded like a bomb. At four in the morning. I leapt over the fence and ran for the station. Not ran, flew. And it was windy, too. I unfolded the sheet, held it over my head by the corners, and hollered for the whole neighborhood to hear, like a lunatic. “Hurrah! Follow me on the attack! Hurrah!” And the sheet flew overhead.