Over many years Masha had got used to sharing even her most insignificant experiences with her husband, but she could not talk to Alik about this, so she dumped everything on Nike, including the poetry which she was constantly writing. “Pushkin’s Boldino Autumn, my Rastorguevo Autumn!” Masha joked.
If before she had been no stranger to insomnia, in these months Masha slept a ragged and fitful sleep full of sounds, lines of verse, and disturbing images. Unreal animals came to her in her dreams, animals with many legs, many eyes, half-birds, half-cats, with symbolic allusions. One, fearfully familiar, rubbed up against her, and its name was also familiar to her. It consisted of a series of numbers and letters. When she woke, she remembered its strange name: Zh4836. She burst out laughing. It was the number printed in thick black ink on the linen ribbon she sewed to the bed sheets before sending them to the laundry.
All this nonsense was imbued with significance. One time she dreamt a completely finished poem which she wrote down while half-asleep. She was amazed when she read it the following morning. “It isn’t mine, it isn’t mine. I could never have written this myself.”
Through lust to love and into the abyss
of destinations reached past our contriving:
I give the words that tell of you and this,
I serve as target too of all your striving;
and in the brooding darkness of our blood
the instant blazes like a blunderbuss,
and all is swept away as in a flood
and leaves no brim between the one of us.
“It’s exactly as if I had written it under dictation. Look, not a single correction,” she crowed, showing Nike the record of her nighttime inspiration.
Nike did not like these poems. They frightened her. On the other hand, she found it hilarious that, with Masha informing her about every word Butonov uttered, about his every movement, she knew minute by minute how he had spent the previous day.
“Any fried potatoes left?” she would innocently ask, because Masha had told her she had been peeling potatoes for him the day before and had cut her finger.
Butonov did not speak to Nike about Masha and she never said a word about her rival, but Butonov had the impression they both knew perfectly well how things stood and were even sharing out the days of the week between them, with Masha coming on weekends and Nike on weekdays. There was no such deal, of course. It was just that during the week Nike went to the dachas to visit the children: either Liza, who was staying with Alexandra, or Katya, who was living with her other grandmother. Little Alik was staying with Alexandra too.
Big Alik was trying to arrange his duty roster so that emergency calls fell on the weekends, so that he would not lose laboratory time; and Masha, preferring not to lie but to keep a more honorable silence, left home when Alik wasn’t there. Although of late he had had very little time to spend at home.
Alik was steady and good-humored, and didn’t ask awkward questions. Their conversation centered on emigrating. They had already arranged for an invitation from Israel, but although Masha contributed to these conversations, their emigration seemed unreal to her.
When Nike went off to Tbilisi in September, Masha was devastated by her absence. She tried ringing through but found it impossible to catch her at the hotel. She wasn’t able to contact her through Nina either.
In September, Butonov finished his renovating and went to stay with his wife in Khamovniki, but the redecorated house in Rastorguevo drew him back and he would sleep there two or three times a week. Sometimes he came to collect Masha, and they drove there together. One time they even went to gather mushrooms in Rastorguevo, found nothing, got soaked to the skin, then dried their belongings by the stove and one of Masha’s stockings caught fire; and this too was a little event in their life, like the cut finger, or a scratch or a bruise Masha suffered in the course of their amorous endeavors. Whether Butonov’s house was inimical to her or whether she brought out a tendency to sexual horseplay in Butonov himself, she had not a few of these little injuries, and was even rather proud of her souvenirs of passion spent.
When Nike finally came back from Tbilisi, Masha related all these trivia to her at great length, and finally mentioned in passing that their invitation from Israel had arrived. Nike was amazed at how Masha’s head had been turned, when she couldn’t see that receiving the invitation was what really mattered.
Emigrating meant parting from your family, perhaps forever, yet here was Masha showing off her bruises and reading her poems. This time Nike too had something to relate. She was getting very deeply involved in her new affair and had decided this would be a good moment to dot Butonov’s i .
She waited a whole week, like Penelope, for her Vakhtang to come from Tbilisi to Mosfilm for his auditions, but his arrival kept being postponed, and in order not to get out of condition Nike took herself around to see Butonov. As Masha constantly reported on her own movements, there was no problem in finding a suitable moment.
Butonov was very pleased to see Nike. He wanted to show her the newly redecorated half of the house. Nike was, after all, his personal interior designer. He now loved the idea of the exposed beams, but Nike was horrified to see that the logs had been drenched with varnish. She comically berated him at length and ordered him to clean the varnish off with solvent. She moved the furniture around and pointed out to him what needed repairing and what was best left alone. She had lived many years with a stepfather who was a cabinetmaker and with her talents had rapidly understood the ins and outs of his profession. She promised to bring Butonov some colored glass to replace what was missing in the buffet and to sew curtains for him in the theater workshop.
At some point in the proceedings Nike’s head scarf slipped off and insinuated itself snakelike between the sheet and the mattress. Nike couldn’t find it, although she looked for it for a long time in the morning. The scarf was one she had made herself when she was learning batik at college.
When Masha, barely through the door, crumpling the scarf in her hands, fired the question straight at her as to whether it was true, Nike sternly cut her short: “Well, what did Butonov say?”
“That you and he have . . . for ages, since the Crimea. It can’t be true, it can’t. I told him it was impossible.”
“And what did he say?” Nike asked, keeping up.
“He said, ‘Accept it as fact.’ ” Masha was still screwing up Nike’s scarf, the embodiment of the fact.
Nike drew the scarf out of her hands and threw it under the mirror. “Well, accept it!”
“I can’t, I can’t!” Masha wailed.
“Masha,” Nike suddenly softened. “It’s just how things turned out. What do you want me to do, hang myself? Don’t let’s make a tragedy out of it. God knows, it’s Les Liaisons dangereuses all over again.”
“But, Nike, my sunshine, what am I to do? You want me to just get used to it? I don’t understand myself why it hurts so. When I pulled this scarf out, I almost died.” She became flustered again. “No, no. It’s impossible.”
“What do you mean? Why is it impossible?”
“I can’t explain. It’s as if anyone can do anything with anyone. Nothing matters. It doesn’t matter who you choose. One person is just the same as another. But here, I just know, there is something unique and special, against which nothing else has any meaning. Unique.”