Marusya just shrugged. Which Vera was she talking about? Who was Annechka? What was she so thrilled about?
“I mean that I’m happy because my colleague Vera discovered some old lady in a village near Moscow, an herbalist or some such person. And she gave Annechka, her daughter, some kind of poultice. It stank to high heaven—black stuff, God knows what’s in it—but it helped. It worked wonders! Two weeks later, she didn’t have a single spot. It was just recently. If you want, I can find out about it, and get some of it for Jacob.”
Marusya promptly forgot about this herbalist and her miracle cure, but a week later Asya called her on the phone. Brimming with excitement, Asya informed her that she had managed to get hold of the potion, that the old woman was simply remarkable, that she lived in the village of Firsanovka, that her whole house was covered with icons. The woman was a fervent believer, but not slow-witted—very sensible and wise, and even rather well read. She had books on botany … A genuine herbalist, and her own grandmother had been an herbalist, too. So folk medicine really was better than any newfangled treatments; Marusya should make sure to get this potion to Jacob, and right away! Otherwise, within two weeks it would go bad and lose its healing properties.
Marusya asked her to send the remedy by mail. Asya was at a loss for words. When she recovered her composure, she said yes, she could send it by mail, but by the time it got there it wouldn’t work anymore. Besides, would they even allow her to send a bottle through the mail?
Politely, without any spite, Marusya told Asya that she had no plans to go to Biysk in the near future, and that if Asya considered it necessary she was free to go herself—today, if need be.
Asya, thrown off guard, and living up to her reputation, said, “But I don’t even know where Jacob lives.”
“The town of Biysk, 27 Kvartalnaya Street. Please excuse me, Asya, I can’t talk right now.” And Marusya hung up the phone. My goodness, what an idiot, she thought to herself.
Asya went to the train station and bought a ticket for the city of Novosibirsk. They told her that she could only reach Biysk by a local commuter train. By the evening of the next day, she was sitting on a train to Siberia, traveling to a place that Marusya would never make it to.
In her suitcase, encased in a canvas covering, Asya was carrying a carefully wrapped half-liter bottle of a viscous dark-amber liquid, and, just as carefully wrapped, foodstuffs—two bottles of homemade jam, two kilograms of flour, and two kilograms of millet. She looked out the window, and enjoyed watching the fields and forests slip past; she hadn’t gone on vacation in three years, and everything she saw delighted her.
Since her youth, she had spent the greater part of her time in hospitals and clinics, among doctors and the sick, and twice she had been called upon to assist famous surgeons. One of them was killed in a field hospital during the war, by a random shell. The second, an old country doctor, died of a heart attack while he was operating. Admiration was a requirement for her rapturous nature, and the surgeons she worked with now did not inspire respect. One of them accepted gifts from the patients—bribes, in other words. Another had a reputation as a ladies’ man, and surrounded himself with a flock of pretty nurses, with whom he amused himself in convenient nooks and corners of the clinic. For shame, for shame …
Asya was unable to find her ideal in her immediate surroundings, but Jacob, to whom in her youth she had assigned the role of ideal man and human being, still existed in some far-off place. The dark-amber liquid in the bottle that she had brought from the back of beyond was intended to allay his suffering. This was her mission—it was not the ordinary journey of a distant relative to an exile banished to a remote realm, somewhere deep in Siberia. What a pity that it was she and not Marusya on that train—a visit from his wife would have brought Jacob far greater joy!
While the crazy Asya was journeying toward the Altai Mountains with the miracle potion in her suitcase, Marusya was also thinking about Jacob. The reason for this was Ivan Belousov, with whom (not simply out of the blue) she had renewed her relations. The history of the Party was the main topic of discussion, and Marusya tenderly recalled the time when the curly-haired, clumsy Ivan had tried to take her by the arm.
Ivan walked her home now after classes. He took her by the arm without any hesitation, was friendly but reserved, and did not transgress any boundaries. But their conversation, starting with the main topic, Party history, somehow flowed smoothly into the memories of their youth, and at one point he squeezed her arm above her elbow—not very firmly, but not too weakly, either; with just the right degree of pressure. At that moment, Marusya felt that she was betraying Jacob. Yes, she wanted to betray him … After she got home, she weighed every word that Ivan had said that evening and realized that she agreed with him. Jacob would not have agreed with him: he would have said something sharp and critical! And she experienced a surge of irritation toward her husband.
She had to admit that Belousov, ridiculous and awkward in his youth, had now become a kindred spirit. He was educated, but in another way from Jacob; and, like Jacob, he was also a writer, but in a different vein. How easily his dyed-in-the-wool proletarian origins won out over Jacob’s bourgeois complexities!
Their walks after classes lasted longer and longer, and Jacob was a constant presence, somewhere in the background. Marusya felt she was carrying on a conversation with two people: with Ivan out loud, and with Jacob in her head.
Asya had to wait for the train to Biysk for three hours, and she managed to send a telegram to Jacob to let him know she was coming. He didn’t meet her at the station. Late in the evening, with a suitcase and a handbag, in boots with little heels that sank into a deep layer of freshly fallen snow, as soft and light as feathers, she wandered around for a long time in search of Jacob’s house, though he lived only ten minutes by foot from the station.
The telegram was delivered while Asya was groping through the darkness next to the house where Jacob rented a room. She couldn’t imagine the intense surge of happiness Jacob felt when he took the telegram and read the words “Meet me.” For years now, these words had been connected with the dream of a visit from his wife. Nor could she have imagined how deep was his surprise and dismay when he saw that the signature on the telegram read “Asya.” He didn’t immediately understand who this Asya was that was coming to see him. It occurred to him it might have been some sort of mistake. He put on his overcoat and went out onto the porch, and a moment later was greeting his visitor. He pressed the frozen hand that she worked out of her sleeve, grabbed the suitcase, half buried in the snow, and led her into the house, nearly weeping from sad disappointment.
After helping Asya take off her coat, her headscarf, her boots, he put the kettle on for tea. Asya smiled and began rubbing her red hands together—intelligent, skillful hands with fingernails clipped nearly to the quick, and with a permanent outline of iodine around the rims.
Jacob didn’t even think to wonder why she had come. He assumed that she had affairs of her own to attend to, that she was on some sort of business trip, or whatever it was called in her line of work. While she tried to get warm, he placed a mug and a glass on the desk (he had no other table in the tiny room) and poured out the tea. They ate black bread and butter and drank bitter tea. Asya regretted that she had not thought to buy good tea (and would not have had time, anyway) at Eliseyevsky’s delicacy store. At first their conversation revolved around the family, but Asya had no information to convey about the daily affairs of Marusya and Genrikh. She saw them seldom, and couldn’t add anything to what Jacob already knew. He began to question Asya about her work, and she eagerly, even fervently, informed him about the hospital where she had been working for ten years. She told him about how she had gotten the job, and which prominent surgeons she had assisted, on which occasions.