The once dark fringe of hair was grey and shaved close. His rotund form had withered; he’d become a whisket of limbs and torso such that he appeared taller than before. She lifted her arms in an expectant embrace. Bulgakov marveled at her fearlessness of this specter.
Mandelstam raised an arm; a bony thing emerging from what seemed to be the cavernous opening in his short-sleeved shirt. The other leaned heavily on a cane. As she hugged him, he leaned forward, to steady himself against her. Bulgakov and Nadya watched this, yet made no move to acknowledge each other. Bulgakov then clasped him about the shoulders; the circle of his arms that closed in around the poet was pitifully small.
“This is wonderful,” said Bulgakov, trying to manufacture enthusiasm.
Mandelstam turned to his wife, proposing that she and Bulgakov might enjoy a short walk, with a smile that suggested the plan had been previously discussed and at least tacitly agreed upon. Bulgakov offered his arm to her. Margarita was already seated; she held the poet’s hands, or rather, maintained hers like small tents pitched over his that rested loosely on the table. Nadya pointed out the pond where two swans passed serenely. They followed the walk that circled the water.
“I saw Tatiana last week,” she said. “She asked after you. She looks good.” She didn’t say what she’d told his ex-wife. “She cut her hair. It’s quite stylish.”
“She’s a pretty girl,” he said.
“She said something about some dishes of hers.”
He knew the ones of which she spoke. A wedding gift from friends of hers. They’d had a special place. She’d left them behind and because of them, for a time, he was certain she’d return. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. He couldn’t recall when he’d last seen them. It was possible they’d been broken in the search.
Nadya seemed to assume something else had happened. “She said it didn’t really matter. I said I would ask, but she said not to bother. She said they weren’t particularly important to her.” This last bit seemed more of a pronouncement. As though nothing from his wife’s time with him could have held any lasting importance.
He’d never thought of the two women as friends. Both had married writers. Both had been hurt by them, though in different ways. Yet it seemed one was willing to wound for the other, on the other’s behalf.
“I told her,” she went on. “I said, ‘How does one lose dishes? He must still have them somewhere.’ ‘Oh, you know Bulgakov,’ she said. ‘He’d have used them for an ashtray if I’d let him. Or to wedge under a table leg. You know Bulgakov.’” Nadya laughed at this. It wasn’t clear if the laughter was recreated for him, like the conversation, or simply her own.
“I know the ones,” he said. “She’d want them.” He felt self-conscious in correcting her, in defending his relevance in his ex-wife’s memory.
One of the swans lifted up from the water briefly; its tremendous wingspan extended over its mate; the sound of its wings against the air was like distant thunder; others walking nearby turned. Nadya studied the fowl as though it carried a message that was particular to her.
“She said it wasn’t important.” This time the bite was gone. She sounded only tired. They were dishes after all; not lives broken and swept aside. The swan settled again.
“We leave tonight,” she went on. “We can bring our clothes. No books.” A list of suggested items had been provided. Like a children’s camp, she mused.
“I’ve heard Cherdyn can be pleasant in the summer,” he said.
They were over halfway around the pond. She removed her arm from his and crossed them over her chest.
“I’m not entirely sorry to be leaving this place,” she said. He could see she was watching Osip and Margarita on the other side. “I won’t miss this.”
“Will he be able to write?” he asked.
She didn’t know. He hadn’t slept since his release.
That wasn’t what he’d meant but he let it alone.
“Has he talked about what they did to him?”
She said nothing for a moment, only hugged her arms around her torso. “No—perhaps we can hope that he will forget. We should hope for something.” As though it was the act of hoping—not the thing itself, not the granting of it—which made it possible to continue.
He sensed her manner change with this. Impart a new sympathy. But perhaps in larger dimension there was a growing acknowledgment of endings. Their walk would soon be through. The time of bitterness and reproach was over. It was a time for amends. She took his arm again.
“I remember when he first brought you to our apartment. You couldn’t have been in Moscow very long. Do you remember? You were so reserved. And shy. Every time I stood, you leapt to your feet as well and Osip laughed at you. I thought—here is this physician. What must he think of our bohemian life? Emptying our pockets to their very lint just to gather enough to buy a couple of eggs or a bottle to share. Who would want this, I thought? Why would he want this? Osip said—I think he can write—and I thought, ‘So what. Why would he want to?’”
“You were kind to befriend me,” he said.
Nadya smiled a little. “That was Osip,” she said.
“No, that was you as well, Nadyusha.” She didn’t argue with him.
“His poems aren’t lost, you know,” she said. She touched a finger against her temple. “I memorized them all. You needn’t have worried.”
With this, they both looked toward Mandelstam and Margarita.
Margarita sat erect, her hands in her lap. Mandelstam drew his hands along the sides of his scalp; it seemed he’d forgotten how little remained there. Bulgakov recognized this gesture. He wondered what she’d asked that he could not fulfill.
“Osip is lucky to have you,” he told her. He said this absently, still thinking about Margarita. Nadya seemed grateful and he smiled to reinforce his words. He thought them both supremely unlucky. He thought it was possible that she was the least lucky of all.
Both Margarita and Mandelstam looked up at their approach as though their time allotted had been overestimated. Margarita had been crying. She got up and moved away from the table. She stared at the water. She seemed not to notice the swans.
Mandelstam nodded to his wife; again this appeared to be expected and Nadya went to sit on a bench a short distance away. She took a cigarette from her purse and lit it. Bulgakov took off his suit jacket and sat in the seat Margarita had vacated. It was warm; he pushed up his sleeves. Mandelstam watched his wife for a moment.
“You look well,” said Bulgakov. “All things considered.” He stopped, feeling clumsy.
Mandelstam turned back; he appeared not to have heard him. “Do you remember when we first met?” he said.
Bulgakov remembered. It had been after a coffeehouse reading, one of Bulgakov’s first, not long after he’d moved to Moscow. There’d been many amateur writers that night, reading from their work. He remembered the soft flesh of the poet’s handshake. Somehow it’d made him less fearful of him, his ability to crush all hope, until the other man smiled, his lips parting to speak, then all fear rushed back.
“Do you remember what I said to you?”
Mandelstam had said that someday he would come back to this same coffeehouse to listen to this same man, only the line would go around the building, perhaps even the block, for they would stand for hours, happily, to hear the voice of a great writer. Of course Bulgakov remembered. He’d gone home that night and written it down.
“You were very generous to me,” said Bulgakov.
“Was I? I couldn’t remember. Did it matter?”
“Of course.” A small twinge of that fear returned.