“You’re right, Sasha, but keep your eyes on the road. It’s just life. Life is always that way.” “Well what I say is…” The sirens fall away in the darkness and we calm down. I snuggle between the rucksacks again.
“No way am I going to drive into town, Sergey,” I hear the Yesaul whisper conspiratorially. “There’s a police post there where every last dog knows me. They’re bound to stop me and I don’t need that. I can do without losing my licence. When I get closer I’ll stop and have a good sleep.” “But for now we need to keep driving, Sasha.” “Right, right…”
Oh, my gods, this night will never end.
I’m half asleep, half waking. I see my own, dear Yakimanka, a big old house where the history and the people come and go and will come and go. Only the house will stay the same, and who now remembers who lived in it and when, or who might have lived in it if things had been different. This vast old house is our Yakimanka with its archways, its high ceilings and its cavernous stairwells. The house is alive. We ourselves do not know just how alive.
Half asleep in someone else’s car, I see the house, or perhaps not the house. I drive through its gates in my motor car, step down, run quickly up the porch and throw open the door.
No, in the dream I’m not Titch. I’m the last descendant of an illustrious family. I see shining floors covered with thick runners, a broad staircase. Behind glass doors is the old-fashioned lift whose gates you have to push back. That’s unmistakeably it, only now it’s gleaming with varnish and bright light-bulbs. The hall porter is sitting at a large brown desk reading a newspaper, pushing it in under the green lampshade. He is wearing a dark blue jacket and has a peaked cap on his bald head. He greets me.
“Hello, Artemiy. Is Papa home?” “He’s upstairs in his office, milady.” The hallways are wide, the furniture massive, huge windows are draped with heavy curtains. I advance to the large, shiny double doors behind which I know I shall find my father. When I throw them open he’ll be there in his blue dress uniform with gleaming epaulettes. But I’m called back.
“What is it, Artemiy?” “An officer has arrived.” I go down. A traffic cop is standing there in a dazzlingly white uniform like the street wardens wear in old Soviet films, with a strap across his chest and holster at his hip. Saluting, he says, “You have parked your car in the wrong place. I am fining you.”
“How can that be?” I ask in consternation. “I left it in my courtyard.” “No, you have not left it in your courtyard.” “Let us go and see how that can be,” I say, following the cop. He opens the front doors and dissolves like a white cloud in the darkness, because it’s already night outside. I take a step forward and a glossy raven flies up from under my feet.
“Car-ra! Car-ra! Car-ra!” she caws three times. I survey the courtyard. There are cars parked in it now, children’s climbing frames and a sandpit. I turn back and see behind me the tattered entrance to Yakimanka, in the depths of which Roma’s commune lives.
“Car-ra! It’s me, a lonely fragment of a Time of Troubles.”
“Don’t you believe it, Sergey, don’t you believe it. It’s all going to change.” “Of course. It’s changing already. Even now everything is changing.” “Well, what did I say? Of course, Sergey. Look, that girl of yours has woken up.” Yesaul Ulanov gives my crumpled reflection an amicable smile in the mirror. “What is it with her that she never says anything and keeps staring at the roof? What’s your name? What is it you’ve spotted up there?”
“I’m not looking at the roof. I’m looking at the sky.” “And what’s up there?” “A star. It’s so big and red. Look, there, to the left. It’s been visible all night.” “A star? Oh, right, that’s Mars. It’s August, so Mars is visible. Go back to sleep now. When we arrive we’ll wake you up. You have the word of Yesaul Ulanov. With me you’re as safe as houses. Go back to sleep. Well, what do you think, Sergey, shall we sing some more? Can we really have run out of songs to sing?”
I lie back in the seat and something clicks. I see everything at once and from above: the steppe, the night, wormwood, blood-red Mars, and us in a red car. The car rushes along, the road rushes by, and all our immense, immense country is asleep…
“Volga, Volga, loving mother,” a voice thunders above the road. “Mighty talisman of Rus,” it soars higher and higher. “Let my bride drown in your waters, that our men fight fast and loose.”
May all the gods of light forfend!
The Woodchuck
Our commune is like the Flying Dutchman. Like an old, empty, creaking ship on the boundless black waves it is sailing headlong into the unknown, full of ghosts and memories. Roma and I are together in the single lit room. We two are the only living souls in an apartment full of ghosts and memories, old smells and unexpected sounds from the corridor. Everybody else has run away but we remain.
“It’s fine, Titch,” Roma Jah says, smoking. “Sooner or later everybody gets out of substandard accommodation like this. When they get a few bucks together and find work they want to live like human beings. Some leave and others come in their place. Everything changes. It’s fine. It always happens.”
He’s sitting by the windowsill, his back pressed against the ribbed radiator, huddled from top to toe in his very long, ginger scarf. It’s a cold autumn and we’re feeling the chill.
“What are you going to do now, Roma?” “Wait for new people. They’ll come.” He knocks his defunct pipe out in his hand. Everybody ran away when Roma Jah and I were on the road. We heard that Tolya did eventually find a girl with a Moscow residence permit and went off to live with her. All that Lenka left behind were strange books, cheap jewelry, make-up and a lot of small items of uncertain purpose. She herself was scooped up and carried off by her unbridled femininity. Sasha Sorokin made it back from the road, that I know for a fact, and he can still sometimes be found in the vicinity of that same entrance hallway where he used to be a courier. He answers his mobile but has not come back to live on Yakimanka. Even old Artemiy has disappeared, and I’ve been afraid to ask Roma where he has gone.
When I got back, of all our old neighbours only Sergey the Violinist was still here, in a room parallel with my gallery, and Sonya Muginshteyn had her new brown upright piano in the room next door. But even they, even they, you sensed, were thinking of leaving Yakimanka. Sonya came back to spend the night here less and less often, and Sergey gave Roma notice he was intending to move, only there was something holding him.
Now even they have gone. I still sleep in the gallery although there is no need to, but I can’t imagine sleeping anywhere else. And for all that, Yakimanka, my kind Moscow cradle, you gave me one last gift. You arranged my last adventure here in the shape of Sergey the Violinist who, as soon as I came back, started visiting our room, sitting near the gallery, and saying nothing.