They started putting on concerts. Money came in. If they had had love everything would have been sorted long ago, but everything remained as it was and in late April Producer said, “Let’s go to the lake for the May Day holiday.”
He made it sound like a challenge to a duel. You go to the woods when you are strong and free and most urgently desire to be with the one you want. How they would get on in the woods not even old Artemiy could foretell. The timer clicked and the seconds started ticking away in the time-bomb. I saw their agitation and wanted only to immure myself in my gallery in order to survive the explosion.
We wander on for as long as our legs hold out. We come to a glade where the sun has warmed the moss, and lie down without a word and feel good.
“Sasha, what do you make of Julia?” “She’s cool.” “And Lenka?” “Little furry animal.” “Producer?” “Don’t give a toss.”
“No, but what do you make of him?” “I haven’t looked.” “What about the two of them.” “God only knows what’s going on.” “Do you know when I saw her as she really, really is?” “Who?” “Julia. When she stayed overnight with us one time. I looked at everyone then to see what they were like asleep. Her face was so child-like and vulnerable. I wanted to stroke her hair. That’s what she’s like, Sasha.”
I quickly try once again to take in everything at once, looking down from above. I see us, the woods, the lake. But where are the people we are looking for? And who are we looking for anyway? They… for some reason I have a sense that we are too late. I wonder what for, but we are already dozing off in the heat. The sun is setting, warm, glowing. The birds are singing and Sasha begins to snore.
I dream about a dog with a ginger coat. Someone has killed it.
Would I ever have come down from my gallery? What was there for me to do down there if these kids were so keen to play and beat up and torment each other. But May arrived. It was cold. Roma Jah swathed himself in his long ginger scarf, knocked at the door of my gallery and said, “Hey Titch you really ought to go with them.” “Why don’t you go? I’m not one of their crowd.” “I’ve got ‘flu.” “So what?” “You go, Titch. Otherwise…”
We agreed to meet up at Savyolovsky train station and go to the lake, but the only people who met up were me and Sasha. We arrived at the spot we’d agreed and ran to the platform only to see the train waving its stumpy tail at us as it disappeared. Sasha looked after it like an abandoned dog. I could swear he was thinking Lenka had done it deliberately. “We know where they’re headed,” he said. “Let’s go after them.”
We wake up when it’s already dusk, pitch the tent, light a fire and warm ourselves at it. “Lenka asked me immediately whether I would allow her to love him,” Sasha tells me. “I said, go for it!” “Who?” “Producer, of course. I told her, go for it. The type he is, it makes no difference whether you love him or not.” Sasha takes out his pipe and lights up. “It’s good here,” he says. “What more could anyone need?” The fire is reduced to a pitiful heap of ash. We climb into the tent. Shelter.
“Sasha, why don’t we just sleep all day tomorrow and not go anywhere. “You’ll croak, Titch.” “Go on, Sasha. I know everything that’s going to happen tomorrow anyway. Want me to tell you?” “Go on, then.” “Tomorrow’s Victory Day. We’ll meet up with some people, and the very first man we meet will pour you a vodka to drink to the Victory of 1945. He won’t pour me one, only you. You’ll get drunk and we’ll hitch back to Moscow. On the way we’ll spend our thirty roubles on food.” “Fine by me. Let’s do it all the same.”
I sigh. We cling together for warmth. “Sasha, let’s pretend we’re soldiers killed in the war, here in the swamps, and nobody will ever find us.” “You’re nuts, Titch. Go to sleep.” We hug each other tight and sleep all night, freezing cold.
In the morning we come upon a narrow gauge rail-track and wonder who extended it on to the island. We follow it and reach a village. Everything happens as I said it would. The first man we meet has a bottle and pours Sasha a vodka, but his empty stomach means he’s immediately unsteady on his feet. No, friend, with you in that state I’m not going to play any games.
We come to the store and I send Sasha in. I sit on my pack, shut my eyes, and see red spots jumping in the darkness of my eyelids. The fever will be purged from our commune by the spring, the cold, hunger and swamp water. I should have told Roma to ventilate the place thoroughly while we were away.
I open my eyes and out of the dancing sunlight two figures walking down the road materialise like a mirage. I blink and see it is Julia and Producer. Julia’s red setter is running ahead of them. I sit there smiling. They go into the store, and the dog runs over to me wagging its whole body.
Producer comes out, sees me, nods and sits down on Sasha’s pack. I smile but we don’t speak. He is very suntanned, Julia’s Producer. He is stripped to the waist and the colour of oatmeal cookies. He sits beside me and I try to get a look at him to see, smell, sense whether anything has changed during his two days and two nights with Julia. It turns out Lenka wasn’t with them, and that just strengthens my feeling that I have somehow missed the boat.
Well then, friend, where’s your child? The one we all carry within ourselves from childhood? Sasha comes out. He gives me a biscuit and eats one himself but he’s woozy. Julia has a half-smile on her lips, she’s lolling about with a man’s T-shirt over her bare breasts. She looks at Sasha with her invariable hint of mockery. She tells us where they were, where they waited, but we know very well what happened and how. You go to the woods when you want to be with the one you want to be with. Julia laughs. She knows now how much Sasha will put up with for her sake. Hunger, cold, vodka, brackish swamp water…
“What’s your name?” I ask Producer. “Ivan,” he says, and winks twice.
Farewell, Revolution!
“Any time you leave you are leaving forever. It can’t be otherwise, because it is impossible to return forever.”
Such was Grand’s first rule. He gave it to us the morning we met, an early morning as freshly washed Sretensky Boulevard was waking. We saw it was a good rule and decided to leave Yakimanka that same day. By then the air was stale there and we could see it was time to get out. We ran away without a word to anyone, because Grand’s second rule was, “Cover your tracks”. We did, without a word to anyone and leaving the same day we met him, both of us, I, Titch, and Sasha Sorokin.
It was our flight together to the East. That is what Grand said: “Go East”, and Sasha and I acted on it. We knew immediately that we would leave, although at first we mumbled something about needing to think it over. What was there, though, to think over when the light of summer dawns was failing. Yakimanka was sound asleep and all night Sasha and I had been up walking our iron, tracing circles on the boulevard ring road and seeing Cara off.
Cara, Cara the Black, Cara the yawning night. On the road I will dream when I’m wide awake that your gleaming eye, in which nothing reflects, is fixed on me. You watch me and draw nearer, your fearsome beak touching my open hand, you nod three times and loudly call out your name. Cara, Cara the Black, the raven which put out the light of Yakimanka.
If there is happiness or unhappiness on earth, you alone, Cara, know their ins and outs. If there is joy, anger, hatred, or sorrow, to you alone they are of no account. You came to show us the path and in all probability we shall see you no more, so more power to your wing, Cara, heiress of the ravens of the Tower.