“Would you have preferred him to die?
I thought for a second.
“Yes, that might have been better.”
Sulfia didn’t ask any more questions.
I was a role model
The departure of my husband had, as I mentioned, its advantages. One of them was that Sulfia began to like me. It seemed as if it occurred to her for the first time what an amiable person I actually was.
She began to speak to me. She called me every morning to ask me the same question. It seemed she was worried I might have hanged myself overnight. I responded to her feelings attentively, giving her a not altogether happy portrayal of my current situation.
Then one day she called me and said, “I know who she is — papa’s new woman.”
I was polishing my nails. I’d bought the polish at a bazaar. It was supposedly from Germany. It was cherry red. I held my left hand in the air with my fingers spread. I held the phone with my right. The nails on the right hand were already polished. I made sure not to smear them. The polish dried quickly; it was much too old. I noticed as I applied it that it was too thick. I had paid four rubles for the bottle and I’d been taken. This wasn’t German, it was rubbish.
“So?” I asked angrily.
Sulfia’s voice quivered over the phone. She didn’t know about my nail polish disappointment. She thought her news had upset me.
“Please calm down,” she pleaded. “There’s no way to undo things.”
Perhaps some things, I thought. But I could take back the dried-out nail polish, throw it in the vendor’s face, and demand my money back.
I could also put a few drops of acetone into the bottle, which would make the polish fluid again.
“Ach, you don’t give a damn,” I said and hung up.
An hour later she was standing at my front door. Aminat hopped around her in a circle. The peephole distorted my daughter’s face in a particularly ugly way. Her nose was huge and her eyes abnormally small. “Hello, hello,” sang Aminat. She threw off one of her boots and hopped around our foyer in one sock.
“Hello, my dear grandma, hello, my dear grandma, Anja is here, Anja is here.”
She disappeared into her old room. A moment later the second boot flew out the door and bounced off the wall. All the work I had put into this child, and still she was so ill behaved. It was time that I got close to Aminat again before it was too late. I had room in the apartment now, and time, too.
Sulfia picked up the boot and put it on the shoe rack. Then she came over and hugged me.
I froze.
My God, was she short. She was scrawny, always had been. I had given her food nonstop, I made her clean her plate. When she was still at school I set out a sumptuous breakfast for her every morning — meat with a side dish or else a nutritious soup. She was never allowed to leave the house with an empty stomach. But she never got taller or heavier
I did everything possible to make her stronger. I painstakingly tried to teach her to swim, even though I myself didn’t know how. But the cold river water got to her. She shivered, her lips turned blue, and soon after, presto, she came down with a bladder infection that lasted for several weeks. God knows how much effort I put into her, and it was always for naught.
I pushed her away and went into the kitchen.
Sulfia served me in my own home now. Naturally she couldn’t make a decent cup of tea. The water wasn’t boiling, she used too few tea leaves. The brew had no aroma and looked unappetizing. I drank what she put in front of me anyway, as I didn’t want to discourage her.
Then she sat down opposite me, folded her hands, and said, “Mother, the woman is your age. Actually. . she’s a little older than you.”
I looked at her silently. She was uncomfortable.
“Mother,” she said, “I met the woman. Turns out she’s sick. Her heart. Papa called me and asked me to introduce her to a doctor from our clinic. She’s very sick.”
She looked away, embarrassed.
“I feel so bad,” she said. “I saw her. She’s really not doing well. And I. . I’m supposed to help her. And I. . I don’t have any sympathy for her. Because it’s her fault that things are going so poorly for you.”
I thought of my God. I knew he would allow me the right to wish every ill in the world on this woman that Sulfia was talking about so oddly. But I didn’t wish her ill. I didn’t want her to die, though I also didn’t care whether she lived.
I was just a tiny bit curious.
“Keep talking,” I said.
The woman, Sulfia explained, was named Anna, and worked as a teacher of Russian and literature. She dressed in gray clothes, wore her hair in a bun, had red veins in her cheeks, needed glasses, and had a sweet smile. She was divorced and had no children. She had met Kalganow in a park as he was sitting on a bench thinking about death.
“He initiated the conversation with her?” I said suspiciously.
“Apparently, yes.” Sulfia looked unhappily into her teacup.
What do you know, I thought.
Sulfia had her address and phone number, and to prove it she said them both aloud. I asked myself what she expected from me now. Was I to call the number straight away and demand the release of my spouse? Or go knock on the teacher’s door with a half liter of hydrochloric acid? What did Sulfia think I should do now? Everything I did was significant: I was a role model after all.
One day I opened the bedroom window to let in some spring air. It was still sealed for winter. I ripped off the paper strips I had used to seal it shut in the fall and pulled out the wadding I’d stuffed into the cracks. I destroyed the results of hours of labor: it was miserable work to prepare the window in the fall so there wasn’t a draft that chilled the room. Klavdia left the insulation in and kept her window closed over the summer just to spare herself the work. But I wanted fresh air.
The room filled with the sound of motors, voices, and the jingle of the trolley bell. I stood at the window and took a deep breath. Yes, this was really spring. There were stands selling flowers and ice cream. The thick winter jackets and brown fur coats had disappeared. People were wearing light jackets and bold colors. Their steps had bounce. Many had left their hats at home. I saw hair again.
On the sidewalk, beneath a streetlamp, stood a man who also wasn’t wearing a hat. From above I could see the sun gleaming on his bald head.
It was Kalganow, my husband.
He stood at the foot of the streetlamp and looked right up at me. I hid behind the curtain. I felt caught off guard.
His light, round face remained tilted up toward me. I could see it through the cloth of the curtain. What did he want? Why wasn’t he with his teacher of Russian and literature? Had he lost the key to his new apartment? Gotten lost? He wasn’t thinking about coming back to me now, was he? I panicked. A little.
Kalganow was always good at that: ruining my mood. His presence could cast a shadow over any otherwise splendid moment. The spring day was beginning to fade. The wind no longer felt caressing, but rather treacherous. I closed the window and drew the curtain.
I sat down in my armchair and picked up my knitting needles. I was knitting a scarf for Aminat. Obviously not just an ordinary one. I was making a kitten pattern. To take such a basic thing as a scarf and make it as unique as possible — I had a knack for that kind of thing. I concentrated on counting stitches.
Perfect spouse
That night I dreamed of Kalganow for the first time. It was strange. In the dream my husband was still young. He looked the way he had when we first met. I was sixteen, and he was a friend of my brother. Five years older, a grown man. Three years later my brother jumped from the twelfth floor of a high rise. He was always a peculiar person.