MONDAY
A person is sitting at a table. He is visible through a crack in the door: slumping, cutting sausage into even rounds, placing one after another in his mouth. A sorrowful repast. He sighs and pours some vodka into a mug, swigs it back in one motion, and smacks his lips. Looks out the window from time to time. There, leaves swoop downwards along the diagonal, as if leaden. They would descend smoothly but for the wind, which draws them. And I am observing all this from the corridor, where it is dark. I am observing but I am not right at the door, I have stepped back, hence I am not visible. I am interested in what a person does when he doesn’t know he is being watched. But he’s not doing anything, only cutting round after round of sausage and sadly washing it down with vodka. He wipes his fingers on news paper before taking the mug. This is nothing special but – what do you know? – it is engraved in my memory. When and where was that?
My temperature has not exceeded 37.5 for several days now. And I feel better; the weakness is passing little by little. Sometimes I sit on the bed until I tire, and I do still tire quickly. There was this torture: they sat a person on a horizontal beam or on a narrow bench so his feet would not reach the ground. And there was no sleeping; not even slumping, either. Hands on knees. They were forced to sit day and night until their feet swelled. And this was called being sent to the beams. What a mess I have in my head…
This is better: there we are in Ligovo, in Polezhayevsky Park. The month of June. There’s the Ligovka Brook, not large at all, but in the park it’s as wide as a lake. There are carriages by the entrance, landaus in large numbers, and I ask my father if the whole city has assembled here. My father deliberates for several moments about what is behind my question: simple-mindedness or irony. He answers cautiously: no, not the whole city. In actuality, my question shines with joy: I love a large assemblage of people. At that time I still love it.
On the grass are picnic blankets, samovars, and gramophones. We don’t have a gramophone, and I watch as those sitting near us turn the handle. I don’t remember who was sitting there, but I still see the handle rotating. An instant later, music rings out: hoarse and stuttering, but music all the same. Singing. A box filled with small singers ridden with head colds – how I wanted to possess that box! Care for it, cherish it, and place it near the stove in the winter, but the important thing is to wind it up with royal offhandedness, like a person doing something they’re long accustomed to. Rotating the handle seemed to me like the simple but (at the same time) unobvious reason for those flowing sounds, like a master key to what is beautiful. There was something Mozartian in the circular motion of the hand, something of a conductor’s wave of the baton that enlivens mute instruments and is also not fully explained by earthly laws. I would sometimes conduct when I was by myself, humming melodies I had heard, and that came out fairly well. If not for my dream of becoming a fire captain, of course I would have wanted to be a conductor.
We saw a conductor on that July day, too. He moved away from the shore slowly, along with an orchestra that obeyed his baton. This was not the park orchestra and not a wind orchestra, but a symphony orchestra. They were on a raft – it was unclear how they fit – and their music spilled along the water. Boats and ducks floated around the raft, and both the cracking and creak of oarlocks were audible, but that all merged easily into the music – on the whole, the conductor accepted it favorably. The conductor was surrounded by musicians but was solitary at the same time: there is an unfathomable tragicness in that profession. Perhaps that tragicness is not as vividly expressed as for the fire captain: it is not tied to either fire or outside circumstances at all, though its inner nature burns hearts all the stronger.
TUESDAY
Four categories of people received ration cards: the first was workers. A pound of bread per day. Entirely sufficient.
The second was Soviet office staff, a quarter pound of bread per day.
The third was nonworking intelligentsia, just an eighth.
The fourth was the bourgeoisie. Also an eighth, but every other day. Go ahead, indulge yourself…
I asked Geiger if ration cards are used now. He answered that they’ve already been discontinued. Well, thank God. Redeeming cards is a small pleasure, especially for soap and kerosene.
I found out a new distribution center had opened on Vasilevsky Island, at the corner of 8th Line. I had trudged over there from the Petrograd Side – not everybody knows about new places, so the queues were usually shorter. Wind from the gulf and light snow; it stung my ears. I’d been given my grandmother’s shawl to take with me (my grandmother was no longer with us), to wear over my service cap but I, a fool, was ashamed. I had already nearly been blown from Tuchkov Bridge. I took the shawl from my book bag and wound it around my head. And what, one might ask, was I ashamed of? It was such a snowstorm that you could not see anything an arm’s length away. And even if you could see, who would recognize me in that shawl? I took it off anyway as I approached 8th Line.
I take my place in the queue. Pelageya Vasilyevna says to me:
‘I’m Pelageya Vasilyevna and I’m in front of you but I want to stand in the alcove for a while where there’s less wind.’
‘Of course,’ I answer, ‘you go stand in the alcove, Pelageya Vasilyevna, what else can I say?’
‘But you won’t leave the queue? If you leave, come over to me there in the alcove – she points at it – and warn me.’
I nod but she stays where she is.
‘I would stand in the queue,’ she says, ‘but I have a fever. I don’t know what will be left of me after standing like this. But I have nothing to cook on without kerosene.’
Nikolai Kuzmich comes over:
‘Go, Pelageya, I’ll stand in your place for you, for God’s sake, don’t you worry.’
She lets him have her place.
‘I’m not worried: this is Nikolai Kuzmich.’
Everyone standing in the queue is strewn with snow: hats, shoulders, eyelashes. Some knock one foot against the other. Pelageya peers out of the alcove, glancing distrustfully at Nikolai Kuzmich. He notices Pelageya and shakes his head in reproach.
‘Thank you, Nikolai,’ she says and vanishes in the alcove.
For the first hour, everybody jokes and talks about how difficult it is to live without kerosene. Kerosene and firewood. As the third hour nears its end, Skvortsov, whom I somehow know, approaches. Contributing to the general topic of conversation, Skvortsov says 1919 is the worst year of his life.
And how old is your life,’ asks someone from the queue, ‘only nineteen years in all? Or twenty? What have you seen in that lifetime?’
‘Well, in the first place…’
As he answers, Skvortsov pretends he’s a full-fledged member of the queue and is standing along with me. His voice is steady but the queuers don’t believe him.
‘Now he,’ says Nikolai Kuzmich, pointing at me, ‘has been standing here from the very beginning, we remember him. We remember Pelageya Vasilyevna; I’m standing here in her place.’ Pelageya emerges from the alcove for a moment. ‘Forgive me, but we don’t remember you.’
Skvortsov shrugs his shoulders and fallen snow drops from them. Skvortsov merges with the snowstorm a moment later. He leaves readily, without an argument. He leaves my life forever because it seems I never saw him again.