Despite the progress of modern science these days in analyzing inscrutable things like love, psychics are still able to make decent livings — searching for missing people (or their remains), predicting the future, and generally encouraging people to see day-to-day life as a many-tiered warren of sinister signs and symbols. For example, a psychic recently directed the police to a certain canal, and, sure enough, they pulled a girl’s body — a suicide (or murder victim?) — out of the water: two years after she (the girl) had disappeared. The girl’s purse looked like a black jellyfish, but was more recognizable than its owner. It’s no less peculiar to me that writers too can manage to make a living from writing, these days, though their worldviews are considerably less intricate and interesting than those proposed by the psychics. That’s why the reviews you see for so many books (for example, There’s a Curve — Don’t Drive Off) can just as well apply to so many others (for example, A Woman Like That is a Treasure).
Another sign of the changing times is that in the morning, people on the trolleybus chat on their cell phones with several passengers following along with their conversations involuntarily, including the driver: “Hello, Valera. No, I can’t hear you either. I’m on my way now. I’m-on-my-way, jomajo, I said. Though after last night I don’t really want to go anywhere. Jele jele dusha v tele. Unlock it. Carry the cement upstairs. Take everything upstairs, every last bit of that shit. Lock the place up. Don’t let anyone out. I mean, don’t let anyone drink. What …? Unlock it. What …? I’ve got the key?”
Sometimes our largest and most important newspaper runs pictures of people who have donated their bone marrow to the sick. After the procedure, these donors have red bracelets tied on their arms. But, years ago, when goodness didn’t call attention to itself, I knew a man and a woman, each of whom had donated a kidney to a loved one: The man gave his kidney to his wife, and the woman to her son. All four are still alive. The only things they wear on their arms are their watches. Speaking of kidneys, nowadays people are given to using the term “the kidney trade,” referring to the practice of removing someone’s organs by force. But to me, it brings to mind the red, white, and blue plastic boxes full of kidneys and livers at the Hal
Market — same as it always has. When I go to work early in the morning, men in overalls are carrying those boxes out of vans, holding them in both hands, with a frozen carcass thrown over one shoulder … just as they did twenty years ago. Back then, there was always a diagram of a cow, divided into numbered sections, hanging in the larger meat stores, and their walls used to be covered in white tile. Always the same in every store. And at dawn, after it had rained, Bazilijon
Street — by the gates to the market — always ran with slightly pink water, traveling from the meat stalls to the gutters. Unless I simply imagined that. Or, more likely, I transposed it. Henry Miller wrote about a street where a veterinarian who castrated horses lived. And the bloody water I mentioned ran down that street, perhaps, in a city on another continent. I also see in the news that the threat of avian flu is considerably worse than anyone had anticipated. By the autumn, 250 swans had already died in the Volga Federal District, and before falling asleep I would imagine the locals wearing masks and rubber boots, plodding through a tulle of swans’ wings, dragging the birds off by their necks, leaving wide trails in the tall dead bent grass.
On Sunday, the bells of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn woke me the first time; the second time it was a reporter from that radio show, The Second Program. She asked me for a statement on gay men. I made my statement without getting out of bed. As I was talking, my daughter brought me some coffee. (At nine o’clock that morning, she’d put on my lipstick.) I didn’t quite know what to say. That I enjoy their company? That they frequently have excellent taste? That they don’t tend to humiliate or insult women the way “real” men do? I read recently that Elton John had married his long-time partner, and that the lapels of his tuxedo were rainbow colored. But you know, I went on, a friend’s daughter (not gay) recently won tickets for herself and eight school friends to a well-known gay nightclub. Now, that might be a little much; a nightclub isn’t an appropriate place for young girls. Why couldn’t they win tickets to help with the restoration of the Ruler’s Palace? Or a coupon entitling them to a free pizza? Or a gift certificate for the Vero Nova clothing store, which the young people seem to like so much? The reporter said, “Congratulations. For doing this interview, you’ve just won a ticket to that excellent film, A History of Violence!” And then she took a moment to reassure me about my friend’s daughter. It turns out that on the first floor of that nightclub there’s just a coffee bar and performance space. It’s a hangout for a lot of young people, swingers, for example. Nothing sinister about it. My daughter immediately asked where the club was, then corrected me about that “cool” clothing store — it’s actually called Terranova.
That so many of the changes occurring in the world have started to seem strange and inexplicable to me, that they’ve become a bit frightening, even shocking, I chalk up to one simple thing — that I’m growing hopelessly old. The mirror in the bathroom reflects this every morning. After coloring my hair, I don’t even get two weeks of peace — the gray at my temples, banished who-knows-where, always return in force. And then, the bones in my feet have become a little deformed. In the evening I used to rub my legs down to the tarsi with a solution made according to an old folk recipe — razors dissolved in vinegar. There were still some straight-razor blades left over from Michailas. He was old fashioned all around, or at least as far as shaving and sex went. But he didn’t shave every morning. For years I slept with wax balls — kneaded until warm — stuck between my toes, so my feet wouldn’t warp too badly. To no avail. And before going to sleep I used to put Nyka-Nili
nas’s two-volume diary on my stomach … but the muscles dwindled anyway. This is particularly noticeable when I bend over. My breasts look normal only when I hold them up from below. As soon as I pull away my hands, my chest would start looking as if it were on life support. Like one of Max Frisch’s heroines, like hundreds, thousands of contemporary women, I couldn’t bring myself to look the way the mirror showed me. I’m really scared of surgeons, but yes, I’ve thought about it. The implants come in various sizes, shapes, and widths. If I remember correctly, from 100- to 800-cubic-centimeter implants increase the circumference of your breasts by 2.7 to 6 centimeters. (But wait a minute, is that right? Can volume turn into circumference? Breasts into a bra?) But, then, Botox for example — it’s quick, it’s easy; the toxin apparently gets absorbed in no time at all; you see results in ten days or less. You could get it all over with over your June vacation. Smooth out the wrinkles by your lip. Your nose. That big crease on your forehead — the one that makes you look twice your age. (You get one of those thanks to the death of someone close to you, or else staring at the sun too long without sunglasses.) And what about raising the corners of your lips? (When I was still a teenager, my aunt, the German language teacher, always told me, “You’d be a really pretty girl if you only smiled more often.” With her sixth sense she’d already foreseen that in thirty years smiling would replace intellect in civilized countries.) And why not stretch your eyelids too, so, as they say in the ads, “the face acquires a naive look of wonder.” Make all your skin smooth, matte. In fairy tales they say, “like alabaster.” At the moment, the only times my skin is up to that standard is when there’s a fog coming in, when I’m in the damp by a river, when I’m lit only by candlelight, or when I happen to be looking at an infant … Of course, you can bleach any old-age spots on your hands and face — no need for the scalpel. A colleague of mine once told me I’d gotten freckled in the sun over the summer — we were eating in a bright café with a glass roof. Only a person wholly oblivious to the passing years (or maybe I should say millennia …) could possibly mistake my spots for freckles. And the stretch marks on my stomach, I already know, are here to stay. When I gave birth, back in the twentieth century, three people hovered over me, talking over the events of the previous night, which seemed to interest them far more than me: the doctor, I mean, and the midwife, and the nurse — the latter holding a tin of instant coffee in her hand. During the night, you see, the border guards in Medininkai had been shot. On that hot July day, flies as heavy as military helicopters buzzed around the birthing center’s used diaper pail. To me, it seemed both tactless and inappropriate for the doctor to be telling bloody stories full of the “will to win” and the “instinct to survive” when this certainly wasn’t a Hollywood sort of scenario.