“Perhaps there’s a way to send them all packing?” I said timidly to Vera Ilnarskaya, who was nursing me.
“Oh no, dear, you mustn’t do that—they’d be offended. It would be awkward. Just put up with it all for a while. You can have some rest when you get better.”
I remember one evening in particular. My guests had all gone out to have dinner. Only Vera was still left, along with someone unknown to me, who was saying, in what seemed an endless drone:
“I have an estate outside Warsaw, just a small one of course….”
“I have an income from this estate, just a small one of course….”
Was I, or was I not, dreaming all this?
“I have meadows on this estate, just small ones of course….”
“I have an aunt in Warsaw….”
“Just a small one, of course,” I interrupted, surprising even myself. “But how about, if only for the sake of variety, going and calling a doctor? Yes, I can see you’re someone most kind and obliging, go and fetch me a doctor, just a small one of course…”
Were those last words his or mine? I wasn’t sure. I hope they were his.
The doctor came. He marveled for a while at the state of my room.
“What’s been going on in here? Have you been holding a ball?”
“No, it’s just… visits from well-wishers.”
“Out! Out with the lot of them! And the flowers too—get rid of them! You have pneumonia.”
I was triumphant.
“Why so cheerful all of a sudden?” he asked, scared.
“Yes, it’s what I said! Just what I said was going to happen!”
He must have thought I was delirious, and he most certainly was not going to share in my joy.
After I’d recovered, when I went outside for the first time, Kiev was all ice. Black ice and wind. The few pedestrians I saw were barely able to make their way along the streets. They were falling like ninepins, knocking their companions off their feet too.
I remember an editorial office I used to visit from time to time. It was halfway up an icy hill. Trying to get to it from below was hopeless—I’d manage ten steps, then slide back down again. Approaching it from above was no better; I would gain too much momentum and slide straight past. Never in my life had I encountered such ice.
The mood in the city had changed; it was no longer celebratory. Something had been extinguished. Everyone was on the alert, ears pricked, eyes darting about. Many people had quietly disappeared, to destinations unknown. There was more and more talk of Odessa.
“Things are looking up in Odessa, I’ve heard. Whereas round here… Peasants, armed bands… They’re closing in on us… Petlyura or something…”
Kiev Thought did not fear Petlyura. Petlyura was a former employee. He would, of course, remember this.
He did indeed. His very first decree was to close down Kiev Thought. Long before he entered the city, he sent his minions ahead with instructions.
Kiev Thought was perplexed, even a little embarrassed.
But close it did.
11
THEN TRUE winter set in, with snow and severe frosts.
My doctor said that living in an unheated room with broken windows after a bout of pneumonia, however amusing it might seem, was not conducive to good health.
And so my friends found me a room in a pension for high-school girls run by a very respectable lady. They promptly gathered up my belongings and moved both them and me to this new room. They worked selflessly. I remember how Vera Ilnarskaya, who had made herself responsible for the small accoutrements of my everyday life, threw into a single cardboard box a lace dress, my silk underwear, and an uncorked bottle of ink. Verochka Charova (from the Korsh Theatre in Moscow) took charge of twelve withered bouquets that she considered of sentimental value. Tamara Oksinskaya (from the Saburov Theatre) collected together all the visiting cards heaped on the windowsills. Meskhieva carefully packed the remaining sweets and empty bottles. All in all, my move was arranged briskly and efficiently. The only things they forgot were my trunk and all my dresses in the wardrobe. But the little things were all there and that’s what really matters, because it’s little things that are most often forgotten.
My new room was astonishing. The kind lady who rented it out to me had evidently furnished it with all the objects that had embellished her journey through life. There were antlers and horns of all kinds, canes, woolen pom-poms, and nine or ten small tables, their stout, heavy marble tops supported by frail, splayed, stick-like little legs. It was impossible to put anything down on these tables. You could only marvel from a distance at human ingenuity: Who would have thought it possible to rest such a weight on something so insubstantial? Sometimes one of the tables would collapse of its own accord. You’d be sitting there quite peacefully and then you’d hear a sigh from the other end of the room—a table swaying for a moment before crashing down to the floor.
There was also a grand piano which—amid all this clutter—we did not immediately notice. It was awkwardly located. First you had to squeeze past some horns and an étagère—only then, hemmed in by three small tables, could you sit down at it.
We decided to make everything a bit nicer and more comfortable: to drape a shawl over the unused door, to move the piano to the opposite wall, and to hang the portraits of various aunties behind the wardrobe.
No sooner said than done. There was a rumble of tables, a glassy tinkle—and one of the aunties broke free from the wall all by herself.
“Good God! What was that? If the landlady hears, I’ll be straight out on the street.”
Blonde curly-haired Lilya, who had come to welcome me on behalf of the high-school girls, also offered her help. She immediately broke a vase full of pom-poms and collapsed in horror onto the divan, right on top of the second aunty, who had been taken down and carefully placed there out of harm’s way.
A crunch and a snap. Howls. Squeals.
“Somebody sing something to drown all this racket!”
At this point everyone got down to the really important task—moving the piano.
“Wait!” I cried. “There’s a little bronze dog on top of the piano, on a malachite stand. I’m sure the landlady really treasures it. Let me take it out of the way. Yes, leave this to me—you good people just smash things.”
I took hold of the little dog and carefully began to lift. What a weight! And then—what was that terrible crash? And why did this dog suddenly feel so light? There it was, still in my hands. The malachite stand, however, now lay at my feet, smashed to bits. Who would have thought that the dog hadn’t been glued to the stand!
“That’ll fetch the landlady all right,” Lilya whispered in horror.
“Whose fault is that? Why didn’t you sing like I asked you to? You saw me picking up that little dog—that was your cue to start something choral. Well, you’d better get on and move the piano or we’ll be here all night.”
We pushed the piano out into the room, rolled it along on its casters, tucked in its long tail, and finally got it into position.
“Wonderful. Over here will be just right. Meskhieva, I’ll compose a new song for you.”
I fetched the stool, sat down, and tried to play a chord…. What on earth? The piano refused to play. We rolled it along a little bit further and banged a few times on the lid. It remained silent as silent can be.
A knock on the door.
“Sh!”
“Somebody sing something!”
But we couldn’t not answer the door.
It wasn’t her. It was an engineer I knew. He’d come to wish me well in my new lodgings.