And later, when Lina became seriously ill at all of thirty-seven, this Vasya appeared more often, bringing consolation. He visited after the first operation, walked right into the intensive care unit-it was very touching-when Lina was about to reunite with her Maker, lying with an IV and staring at her scrawny, disappearing arm. He came clad in white, like a doctor (actually, he always adored white things); the only problem was he walked barefoot. But no one noticed him. He wanted to take Lina away immediately when he saw the state she was in, and her stitches. Just then the nurse came running in, out of breath, shooed Vasya away, and gave Lina another shot, then called for the doctor, and Vasya disappeared for a long time.
The next time, though, he came straight to the hospital, told her that everything had been arranged, that her mother had said yes, that she and the boy could be brought over later, and that he’d leave them everything they needed.
But Lina had to be taken there right away-there was no time to lose. In his country they knew how to cure Lina’s illness. They had discovered a vaccine, and so on. By then Lina didn’t care either way. She was so tired this second time, she couldn’t resist anything-the sickness, death. They had her on very strong narcotics, and she was floating as through a fog.
She wasn’t even tormented this time by thoughts of her boy, her little Seryozha.
“And if I die in this hospital?” Lina had thought. “Would that be any better? This way I’ll live, and then I’ll bring him over to me.”
So Vasya arranged everything, although the doctors insisted on an operation, saying that without it the patient wouldn’t make it through another day. Vasya waited for them to finish the operation, meanwhile took care of all the formalities, and came to pick up Lina and take her again directly from intensive care. They drove her carefully, changed her attire-for some reason, because of her new outfit, she could no longer see or hear anything-and when she awoke she was already flying through the blue sky and the endless, deserted, fluffy field of clouds. Lina was surprised to find herself sitting next to Vasya, and, what is more, drinking some light sparkling wine from a glass. Later she even got up-Vasya was asleep, exhausted from all the preparations-and walked around the plane with a surprisingly light step. Nothing hurt-they must have given her some painkillers.
The plane passed very low over a magnificent city that unfolded underneath them like an architectural model, with a glistening river, bridges, and an enormous toy cathedral. It looked so much like Paris!
And then right away came the roar of the plane landing, and the plane, with its flat nose as wide as a hotel window, rattling and shaking like a wheelbarrrow, literally parked itself in a quiet garden. Lina’s big window had a door in it, and in the distance the river sparkled with its bridges and also some kind of triumphal arch.
“Place de Pigalle!” Lina said for some reason and pointed. “Look!”
Vasya went to open the door, which led out to the terrace, and a fairy tale life began.
Lina wasn’t allowed to go across the river just yet, though her treatment had started and was going well. Vasya would leave and then be gone all day. He never forbade Lina anything, but it was clear that the river and the cathedral were still very far off. In the meantime she began to go out little by little, wandering down the same tiny street, since she still wasn’t very strong.
Everyone here, she noticed, looked just like Vasya, like the hippies she’d seen in foreign films. Long hair, lovely thin arms, white clothes, beards for the men, even little wreaths. The stores, it was true, had everything you could imagine, but, first of all, Vasya never left Lina any money-it must have all gone to pay for her treatment, which was probably very expensive.
And second, it was impossible to send packages from here, or even letters. People in this country just didn’t write! There wasn’t a single sheet of paper anywhere, not a single pen. There was no connection-perhaps Lina had found herself in a kind of quarantine, a transitional place.
Across the river she saw the bubbling, real life of a foreign city.
They had everything here, too-restaurants, stores. But there was no connection. For now Lina moved by holding onto the wall with both hands, like an infant who has just learned to walk. When she complained to Vasya that she wanted to go shopping, he immediately brought her a pile of clothing, including some that had been worn-men’s, women’s, children’s, and what’s more of different sizes. He also brought a suitcase full of shoes, the way friends from abroad used to bring them to Russia. Among the clothing was a pair of gray men’s army-issue long underwear, which Lina found a little embarrassing. Who knew what those were, or whose! And what was she supposed to do with all this clothing? She had quickly begun to wear only Vasya’s things-a white chemise, and over that a thin white linen dress. She and Vasya were the same height, and Vasya’s build, though he was healthy, turned out to be the same as that of the emaciated Lina. She cried over the mountain of clothes, and in the evening told Vasya that she really wanted to send a package to her mother and little Seryozha, and pointed at the two small piles. Vasya frowned and didn’t say anything; the next morning all the clothes were gone.
Vasya worked, it turned out, on this side of the river, in this zone, and he didn’t have any desire to go across the river to the arches and cathedrals. Lina was forced to get used to his quiet, measured existence. She knew, of course, from her old life, that anything could happen: the youthful Vasya could fall in love with another woman and leave her. He didn’t really love her, this Vasya with his beard, though he protected her from all cares. Their food appeared all by itself, their clothes sparkled.
When did he find the time? Their room, which Lina in her feverish state still imagined to be part of a plane or a spacecraft, looked out on a white-columned terrace, but there was no joy there. Lina was brave, enduring her separation from little Seryozha, her mother, her girlfriends, and her college friend Lev. She understood now that her condition was incurable, and the best she could hope for was to keep to her current state-without pain, but also without strength. What talk could there be of bringing her loud little Seryozha here, with his wild tears and eyes all red from crying! And then her mother especially, with her insinuating hellos, and also tearful. There was no grief here and no tears. It was another country.
Annoyed, Lina watched the people who lived here hovering in their circle dance over the river to the monotonous music of the harps (a silly activity, by the way). She observed their silent sessions at the long common tables in the restaurant, before glasses of the lovely local wine.
Lina very much wanted to tell her girlfriends back home and her mom what she thought of all this, to at least drop them a line to say that everything was all right, that her treatment was going well, that the stores have everything but you can’t buy it-first of all because it’s very expensive, and second because no one dresses that way here-that the food is strange but she can’t eat too much yet anyway. And so on. That she wants to send Seryozha a package but so far no one is going back there, and there seems to be no postal service between their two countries. Lina dragged herself down the streets, holding onto whatever she could, and wrote letters home in her head.
Eventually, though, Lina began to see that there would be no letters. Vasya definitively promised that her mom and Seryozha would visit eventually, especially her mom. But her mom without Seryozha? Or Seryozha without his grandmother? “In time,” said the bearded Vasya. “In time.”
Lina wanted to start buying things in preparation for her mother’s visit, but Vasya made it clear that by then everything would be taken care of.
In fact, no one here worried about the future-everyone was too busy-but nonetheless things were organized perfectly, comfortably, cleanly. Vasya worked at a bookstore that he’d inherited from an aunt, but never brought home any books since Lina could not read the language, and the store had nothing in Russian. It turned out Vasya could not even write in Russian.