Let’s say we make it official. But wouldn’t that be amoral? Since morality will not tolerate any pressure…
Morality must flow out of our nature organically. How does it go in Shakespeare: “Thou, nature, art my goddess.”*
Then again, who said it? Edmund! A rare kind of scoundrel…
So everything is getting terribly confused.
Nonetheless, a question remains: who would dare accuse a hawk or wolf of being amoral? Who would call amoral a marsh, a blizzard or the desert heat?
An imposed morality is a challenge to the forces of nature. In short, if I do marry out of a sense of duty, then it will be amoral…
Once Tanya called me herself. Of her own volition. For someone like her, that was almost subversive.
“Are you free?”
“Unfortunately not,” I said. “I’ve got a teletype.”
For about three years, I’d been turning down all unexpected invitations. The mysterious word “teletype” was supposed to sound convincing.
“My cousin is here. I’ve always wanted you two to meet.”
And why shouldn’t I meet a fellow drinker?
In the evening, I went over to Tanya’s. I had a little for courage. Then a little more. At seven I rang her doorbell. And a minute later, after an awkward crush in the corridor, I saw her cousin.
He had taken a seat in the way police officers, provocateurs and midnight guests do, with his side to the table.
The lad looked strong.
A brick-brown face towered over a wall of shoulders. Its dome was crowned with a brittle and dusty patch of last year’s grass. The stucco arches of his ears were swallowed up by the semi-darkness. The bastion of his wide solid forehead was missing embrasures. The gaping lips gloomed like a ravine. The flickering small swamps of his eyes, veiled by an icy cloud, questioned. The bottomless, cavernous mouth nurtured a threat.
The cousin got up and extended his left hand like a battleship. I barely suppressed a cry when his steel vice gripped my hand.
And then he collapsed onto a screeching chair. The granite millstones quivered. A short but crushing earthquake had turned the man’s face into ruins for a moment. Among which bloomed, only to die shortly thereafter, a pale-red blossom of a smile.
The man introduced himself with importance:
“Erich-Maria.”
“Boris.” I smiled listlessly.
“And now you have met,” said Tanya.
Then she went to fuss about in the kitchen.
I stayed silent, as if crushed by a heavy load. And felt his eyes on me, cold and hard, like the barrel of a rifle.
An iron hand came down on my shoulders. My flimsy jacket suddenly felt tight.
I remember I burst out with something ridiculous. Something terribly polite.
“You are forgetting yourself, maestro!”
“Silence!” uttered the man sitting opposite me, menacingly.
And then:
“Why haven’t you married her, you son of a bitch? What are you waiting for, scumbag?”
“If this is my conscience,” a thought flashed through my mind, “then it is rather unattractive.”
I began to lose my sense of reality. The contours of the world blurred hopelessly. The cousin-structure reached for the wine with interest.
I heard the tram rattle outside. I pulled at my elbows to straighten my jacket.
Then I said, as authoritatively as I could:
“Hey, cousin, please keep your hands to yourself! I’ve been planning to have a constructive discussion about marriage for some time. I have champagne in my briefcase. Give me a minute.”
And with resolve I set the bottle on the smooth, polished table.
This is how we got married.
The cousin’s name was Edik Malinin, as I later found out, and he was a martial-arts instructor at a centre for deaf mutes.
But that day I evidently drank too much. Even before I showed up at Tatyana’s. And must have imagined God knows what…
We got married officially in June, just before setting off for the Riga seaside. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to stay in a hotel there.
The years passed. I couldn’t get published. I was drinking more and more. And found more and more justifications for it.
For long stretches of time, we lived on Tanya’s salary alone.
Our marriage combined elements of extravagance and privation. Between us, we had two separate dwellings within five tram stops of each other. Tanya had about twenty-five square metres and I – two tiny cubbyholes, six and eight metres. Putting it grandly – a bedroom and a study.
Some three years later we exchanged all that for a decent two-room apartment.
Tanya was a mysterious woman. I knew so little about her that I never ceased being amazed. Any fact about her life was to me a sensation.
Once I was astonished by an unexpectedly political outburst. Until then, I had no idea about her views. Seeing Comrade Grishin* in a newsreel, I remember my wife saying:
“He should be tried for his facial expression alone…”
So an understanding – that of partial dissidents – had been established between us.
And yet we fought often. I became more and more irritable. I was, at the same time, an unrecognized genius and a terrible hack. My desk drawers stored impressionistic novels while for money I created literary compositions about the army and navy.
I knew it displeased Tanya.
Bernovich kept insisting:
“By the time a man reaches thirty he must have resolved all his problems except literary ones…”
I couldn’t do it. The amount of money I owed had long crossed that line where you stop caring. Literary officials had put my name on some sort of blacklist a while ago. I did not want to nor could I actualize myself fully in my role as a family man.
My wife brought up the subject of emigration more often. I became completely disoriented and left for Pushkin Hills.
Officially I was single, able-bodied and a standing member of the Journalists’ Union. I also belonged to an appealing ethnic minority. Even Granin and Rytkheu acknowledged my literary abilities.*
Officially, I was a full-fledged creative personality.
In reality, I was on the edge of a mental breakdown.
And here she was. It was so unexpected, I found myself at a loss. She just stood there, smiling, as if everything was fine.
I heard:
“You’ve got some colour…”
And then, if I’m not mistaken:
“My darling…”
I asked:
“How is Masha?”
“She scratched her cheek the other day, she’s so headstrong… I brought some tinned food.”
“How long are you staying?”
“I have to be at work on Monday.”
“You could get sick.”
“Get sick with what?” Tanya was surprised.
And added:
“Actually, I’m not feeling all that well anyway.”
That’s some logic, I thought.
“Plus I’d feel uncomfortable,” continued Tatyana. “Sima is on vacation. Roshchin is getting ready to leave for Israel. Did you know that Roshchin turned out to be Shtakelberg? And now his name isn’t Dima, it’s Mordechai. I’m not kidding…”
“I believe you.”
“The Surises wrote; they said Leva got a good job in Boston.”
“Why don’t I see if I can take the day off?”
“What for? I’d like to hear the tour. I’d like to see you at work.”
“This isn’t real work. This is a job… I, by the way, have been writing stories for the last twenty years and you’ve never shown any interest…”
“You used to say fifteen. And now it’s twenty. Even though it hasn’t even been a year.”
She had a fantastic way of making me lose my temper. But it would have been stupid to fight. People fight due to an abundance of life.
“We here are something like entertainers. We help workers have a culturally stimulating vacation.”