This spectacle was so strange that it soon became unbearable. You wanted to move on; it was just too unearthly.
Every time Medea found herself in this spot, she was reminded of the late artist Bogaevsky, whom she had known from her days in the grammar school, one of Theodosia’s many artists and perhaps, after Aivazovsky, the best known. His strange pictures were inspired by these rock caprices, the black and green precipices and pink fractures of Karadag. She did not like the pictures for their falsity and improbableness, yet each time she came back here, she would say to herself, this too was all impossible, completely improbable, and yet here it was, existing in the world, changing shape, dropping large light-colored grains of sand, and down there a small sandy beach had already been formed out of them quite unlike anything else in the neighborhood.
After another thirty meters or so the path gingerly broke away from the cliff and split up into several little winding paths running down to the sea. Here the small children were let down from shoulders, the hands of those who were older were let go of, and through the clefts and past the great uneven boulders they descended and received their reward: in this inaccessible spot the sea was at its purest and most precious, and each time they felt as if they had conquered it anew.
There were two little twin coves, with a thin rocky bridge dividing them. They cut back quite deeply into the coastline, and a number of large rocks jutted out of the sea directly opposite them. Both these coves and the rocks in the sea had had their names changed on many occasions, but in recent decades it had become increasingly common to refer to them as “Medea’s.” At first they had been given the name by Medea’s young relatives. From them the new name was adopted by the postwar settlers, and subsequently also by other people they didn’t know, who, if they had heard of a Medea, knew only the other, mythical one.
Getting down to the water was awkward, over uneven boulders sprinkled with coarse shingle. The rocks were scattered around at random as if this had once been a playground for troll children. Here there were none of the pretty gemstones, chalcedonies, carnelians, the different-colored Crimean jaspers which you found in the Bay of Koktebel; but to make up for it there were any number of light-colored figure-of-eight pebbles with a dark, drawn-in waistband, and quantities of exotic flotsam and jetsam thrown up by storms. And then, right down by the water’s edge, there was the shining white sand with never a tinge of yellow.
They all went down to the sea, abandoning their belongings, and all as one fell silent. There was always this moment of respectful silence in the presence of the relative eternity lapping softly at their feet.
Katya was the first to take off her slippers and proceed with her affected ballerina’s walk down to the water. Now that she was walking with her back turned to Artyom, he could at last look at her without fear of catching her hostile, mocking glance. But even looking at her back, it was obvious she had no need of anyone or anyone’s friendship.
Artyom was suffering, looking at her erect back and her little head with its sleek bun on the very top, à la Mary Poppins. She bent her body as she picked her way over the stones, turning her feet so that the toes pointed outward, and her firm calves, convex on the inside, gave a little wobble at every step. She walked along the water, and she too was suffering even as she indulged herself. She knew that she was walking well, but the only person looking was that utter drip Artyom, while Uncle Georgii, if he was looking at all, would be looking disapprovingly, and that new neighbor didn’t even know she was there. She walked on, the spirit of ballet incarnate, but the most dreadful thing that could happen had already happened: she had been expelled from ballet school because her jeté was hopeless. She could turn out her feet splendidly, her allongé was fine, but her jeté was a flop. More specifically, she could walk weightlessly, as if she were flying, but on stage her ballon was leaden and her teachers knew it would never improve. She stepped into the water by the shore, which was gently stirring pink seaweed brought from far away; she ran her ballerina’s foot over it, and it was cold to touch but with a pleasant velvety feel.
“Is it very cold?” Nike called to her daughter.
“Eleven degrees,” Katya replied unsmilingly.
“Terrible!” Nike exclaimed.
“When it’s thirteen it’s all right for swimming,” Masha remarked, heading for the water.
The littlest ones, all three of them, followed after her. Alik was leading Liza with one hand and trying to take Tanya’s hand with the other.
“We’ve got a lady’s man in the making,” Nike murmured.
“What do you mean! He’s just very kindhearted,” Georgii protested.
Nike was about to make a further reply, but suddenly Medea’s voice was heard. “I like this latest generation of children. These two, and Tom’s little Revaz, and Brigita, and Vaska.”
“But aren’t they all the same?” Nike asked in surprise. “Are these really any different from Katya and Artyom, or from us when we were little?”
“There was a time when generations were counted thirty years apart, but now I think they change every decade. Katya, Artyom, Shusha’s twins, and Sofiko—they are very purposeful. They will be businesspeople. But these little ones are so tender, so full of love, for them relationships are everything, emotions . . .”
Medea had no time to finish speaking before a shriek came from Liza down at the water’s edge: “Let go, let go of his hand! Make her let go of him!”
Liza was trying to pull Alik’s hand out of Tanya’s, and Tanya, with her head lowered, was pulling it toward herself.
Everybody laughed. “Women!”
Nora rushed to Tanya, caught her up in her arms, and started whispering something to her. Only a few days had passed since she had met these people, and she liked them all; she felt drawn to them, but she couldn’t understand them, and somehow they treated their children differently from the way she treated her daughter.
“They are too strict with the children,” she thought in the morning.
“They give them too much freedom,” she concluded in the afternoon.
“They spoil them terribly,” it struck her in the evening.
Admiring them, envying them, and disapproving of them all at the same time, she had not yet worked out that they apportioned part of their lives to their children but not all of it.
“Collect some firewood, Artyom,” Georgii quietly ordered his son.
The boy blushed. His father had noticed him staring at Katya. He bent down and picked up a splintered plank which a storm had brought in.
“Collect it higher up, there’s a lot of dry stuff there,” Georgii advised, and Artyom went back up the shore, relieved.
Georgii himself picked up two water churns.
“I’ll come and get the water with you,” Butonov offered.
Georgii would have preferred to go on his own to this ancient place which Medea had pointed out to him when he was a boy but, out of politeness, did not object.
It had the makings of a warm, even hot day. In this hidden spot, as Medea had long known, the natural world lived more intensely: in the winter it was colder here, and in warm weather hotter; in this seemingly sheltered spot the winds whirled with furious force. And the sea cast up onto the shore unheard of rarities: fish which no one had seen on this coast for a hundred years; shellfish, cockles, and mussels which inhabited the depths of the sea, and little starfish the size of a child’s hand.
Medea put on her bathing costume. It had been a daring novelty of Parisian fashion in 1924, and had been brought to Medea by a certain literary celebrity of those years. The whole outfit had completely lost its color and had short little sleeves and something resembling a skirt. It had all been skilfully restored by Nike with the aid of scraps of navy blue and maroon knitted material, and on Medea it did not look ridiculous. Although during the August party, which was always held at the house to celebrate Medea’s birthday and the end of the season for the children, when Medea had an endless queue of people wanting to wear it, the costume looked totally clownish on anybody other than herself.