I found out you’d arrived, my kind Alexei Pavlovich, and rushed off to the vivarium like a woman possessed. I made my way there as if sleepwalking, not myself, which was why I knew I was just about to see you, and suddenly a degenerate old cesspit of a woman approached me at a streetcar stop. She had blue prison tattoos on her arms and even her forehead. She wanted me to buy withered roses from her—lifted, obviously, from the statue of Gogol on the boulevard. “Buy them, girlie,” she wheedled, “for good luck. You’ll see, they’ll come back to life.” What did I do? I gave her a ruble, which the crone doubtless spent on drink, and immediately I felt that the witch, who stank of prison, had not in fact misled me and I was perfectly happy. Fool that I am, at that minute, at that stop, I would have happily died before the streetcar came. I stood and smiled, not in my right mind, and kept bringing the wilted fragrance to my nostrils and sniffing. When I arrived, some people were there. You were angry, excited, not yourself. You were shouting that they were all idlers and thieves, that you couldn’t leave for a minute, that you knew everything: they were feeding the dogs dog meat, and you knew where the meat allotted for them was going. For a long time you couldn’t calm down, you kept snatching walnuts from the bag left over from the monkeys, squeezing three at a time, and the walnuts cracked, shooting off rotten dust. You started in again about how the nuts were dog shit, not nuts. Then someone came to see you and I slipped out because I didn’t want to see you like that. They were drowning puppies there. Having nothing to do to keep me busy, I started helping. I’d pour water into the bucket, toss in the pups, and insert a second bucket into the first, also filled with water. I walked past the croaking jugs again for the umpteenth time, between the stands of trays where the white, sharp-clawed blobs bred faster than they could be done in. The dogs would quiet down and then the howling would start up from all the cages. Finally we were alone. I said, “Thanks for the postcard.” You pretended you didn’t know what I was talking about. “What postcard?” You held me in your arms and started kissing me. I asked whether you believed that we’d have to answer for all our actions on Judgment Day, and you said, “Let’s go before someone else shows up.” You pulled me by the arm, and we crawled into the farthest dog cage, where we put down straw. From directly above us came the barking of crazed canines trying to poke their snouts through the bars and sputtering spit. The sight of bloody cotton wool bothered you. You mumbled, “Zhenya, this can’t be good.” I objected, “It’s fine.” I reached under your shirt and ran my hands over your back and shoulders, feeling the tiny moles. You startled a few times—you kept thinking someone was coming. When they did come from the department to pick up frogs, you had a pleased look on your face, that you’d had time. I said in parting, “I’m going to go to your house to pay Vera Lvovna a visit. Say hello for me.” You mumbled, frightened, “Zhenya, I beg of you, don’t. Don’t come! I can’t take it when you’re together. It’s awful for me.” At home, at dinner, I upset the sauceboat by accident and it all spilled in Mika’s lap. She jumped up, waved her arms around, wailed about how I’d ruined her suit on purpose because I always did everything to be mean, because God created me bad and ugly, with a face to stop a clock, and now here I was having my revenge for being an unattractive nobody. I said that Mika was trash because she wanted to marry my father and I was in the way. My father jumped up and slapped my cheek. I said, “I hate you all!” and ran out. I wanted ice cream but I had to make do with snow. Braille isn’t nearly as clever as it seems at first glance. Here, this is about me and you:
Zhenya, is that you? Alexei Pavlovich isn’t here. How good you’ve come! I’ve missed you. This is just how it is, Zhenya. Healthy and pretty, everyone needed me, but I’ve grown fat and old, and now that I’ve got this horrible-looking face and missing parts as well, no one gives me the time of day. Don’t think I’m hurt. What for? You weren’t the one who thought this up and neither was I. We’re not the first and we won’t be the last. As if I haven’t known for five years that one day they’d bury my body. In Yalta people kept asking me, “Why are you so cheerful?” I said, “Just look at that!” A magician there kept pulling a ribbon from his nose. I laughed till I dropped. They looked at me as if I were nuts. But I pitied them all for not laughing. They didn’t think it was funny because they didn’t understand something important. But I did.
Verochka Lvovna, tell me about my mama.
Your mama loved candy. Mitya brought her over to meet us, and I put a box of Viennese pralines on the table, a huge one, tub-size—and she ate half the box. But that’s not the point, Zhenya. The point is that your father loved one woman very much. But she didn’t. It happens. She liked it that way. She—how can I put this—toyed with him. It flattered her that he suffered so over her. She didn’t even marry just anyone but his friend. And then when Mitya married the first girl to come along, he came to his senses. That happens, too, Zhenya. You’ll see for yourself.