I am jealous of you. Jealous of your former life, of all the things you touch, especially your instrument, but also the towel you wipe your face dry with, the teacup you touch with your fingers. Of all the women you caressed before.
Since you appeared, the world has changed so awfully much. Because I used to look at everything from one point of view, but now I look at things from two: I ask myself what would you think? I kiss you wherever I want. This time in the little indentation under your neck and on the scar on the left. Our little girl says hello. I don’t have any milk, but they say it might still come. Bring kefir and a big towel. It hurt, but went quickly.
Tanya
SERGEI READ THE LETTER, NEATLY REFOLDED THE SHEET of paper along the crease, and placed it in the inner pocket of his jacket. He had just delivered to the mustached receptionist behind the little window a bouquet of tea roses, some food, and a note. He had asked where the windows in Tanya’s ward looked out, and it took him a long time to figure out how to find them. He had known since evening that Tanya had given birth, and he had spent the whole night drinking with friends on that occasion, but now he suddenly wanted terribly to see Tanya, not through the window, but in person. He walked away from the information desk and headed for the staff entrance. A door guard was sitting there.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m here to fix medical equipment,” he improvised. “Someone in the second section called me to come in and fix the proton synchrotron. Where can I leave my coat?”
The proton synchrotron that had for some reason rolled off Sergei’s tongue thoroughly satisfied the door guard.
“The coatroom attendant’s out sick; take off your coat and hang it up yourself. No one will steal it. We all know each other here.” The door guard let him pass. Removing his jacket, he took the absent cloakroom attendant’s blue work coat off its communal nail and rushed up the stairs. The door to the section was closed, so he rang the bell. A while later a nurse opened the door.
“What do you want?”
“They called me about fixing some equipment,” Sergei answered, trying not to breathe wine fumes at the nurse.
“You have to talk to the head nurse, in room seven,” the nurse barked and disappeared.
Sergei immediately spotted the door he needed, ward four. Tanya was standing alongside the window, her back to him, in a blue hospital gown—very tall and very thin.
“Tanya,” he called to her. She turned around. He had never seen her not pregnant, and she seemed like a stranger and terribly young.
The bouquet lay on her bed stand, not yet put in water. It was obvious that having received his parcel she had immediately run to the window to look for him.
“How did you get in here?” Tanya asked, somewhat embarrassed and freeing herself from his embrace. The women in the beds stared at them, their eyes popping out of their heads.
“I got called in. To fix the proton synchrotron,” he continued the game, and not in vain, because one of the women, almost elderly, who had just given birth to her fourth, was already planning to complain, because visitations were not allowed . . .
“They just took the children away. Too bad. If you had shown up about twenty minutes earlier, you could have taken a look at her.” Tanya smiled the silliest of smiles.
At that moment Sergei seemed to her to be dazzlingly handsome and unbearably her own. She had long ago and permanently forgotten that the child had no relation to him, and she passionately wanted to brag. After Pavel Alekseevich had praised her daughter yesterday evening, she had started to like her a lot more.
“Let’s go out somewhere before they throw me out . . .”
The section at that hour was quiet. They pulled at one door, then a second, and found an empty linen room, and Tanya pushed him inside. Here they buried themselves in each other, whispering passionate silliness in each other’s ears, locking themselves to each other with lips and teeth, and, between kisses, informing each other of various important things. Tanya told him that after they let her out she was taking the child to Moscow for a bit. He told her that he had been to see Poluektova and told her that he had a daughter, and that Poluektova had been invited to conduct ballet classes at the Perm Choreographic School and she had offered them her apartment to live in . . .
“In your wife’s apartment?” Tanya was taken aback.
“What’s the big deal? It’s normal. We’ll keep an eye on her place, walk her dogs, and feed her old cats . . .”
Tanya pressed his wrists.
“All right. We’ll decide that later. But on the whole it’s pretty cool that she’s so . . . magnanimous, is it?”
“No, you don’t understand. It’s just easier for her that way. She has two borzois, and they’re not easy to deal with . . . But they listen to me . . .”
They buried themselves in each other once again, and with her tongue Tanya traced the hard spot inside his lip—from the saxophone mouthpiece . . . For a whole hour no one bothered them in the linen room as they checked to make sure that nothing had changed now that Tanya did not have a belly anymore . . . But everything was just as it should be: the hot places were hot; the damp places—damp; and the dry—dry . . . And their love, as it turned out, had not diminished one single bit . . .
18
THREE DAYS AFTER GIVING BIRTH TANYA FELT AS IF SHE had been born again, as if the birth of her daughter had infused her with a certain quality of newness as well. Essentially, that was what had happened: she was a newborn mother and, although she still knew nothing about the lifelong burden of motherhood, about the immutable link between a woman and her child that alters a woman’s psyche—often to a painful degree—a thought had already awakened inside her that she wanted to share with her daughter before anyone else. She lowered her brown beanlike nipple into the child’s delicately opened mouth and tried to imbue the tightly swaddled bundle with the idea that they loved each other, mother and daughter, and would take joy in each other, and belong to each other, but not solely . . . that she, Tanya, would have her own separate life, but, in exchange, when she grew up, Tanya would give her freedom and the right to live the way she wanted, and that she would be the older daughter, and then there would be a little boy, and another little boy, and a little girl . . . And our family will not be like those others where the daddies yell at the mommies and fight over money and the children scream and take each other’s toys . . . And we will have a house in Crimea, and a garden, and music . . . Tanya fell asleep without finishing her picture of the happy future, while the little girl continued to suck. She had an amazing little girl who emanated sleep like a campfire emanates warmth . . . Tanya had never known such strong and powerful sleep . . . The practical nurse collected the fed infant and carried it away, while Tanya, though she noticed some movement around her, had not the will to wake up . . .
A week later Tanya was released, and Pavel Alekseevich delivered her and the baby to a large cold room in an expensive hotel. The little girl was set down perpendicularly on the immensely wide bed made of Karelian birch and covered with a woolen blanket and then a cotton-stuffed one. Soon after, Sergei showed up with a bouquet of frozen roses, champagne, and his saxophone. He pulled off his jacket filled with damp cold and rushed to the child. He sat down on the bed to look at the new face in its multilayered packaging.
“Oh my gosh, she’s so small. And how she makes you want to sleep!”
“She’s a terribly soporific girl, that’s for certain,” Tanya agreed. “As soon as they brought her into the ward, I would conk out.”