After all, couldn’t Mother still climb over the fence in the dead of night, kill the dog, crawl over the glass, her stomach shredded by barbed wire and bleeding, and with weakening hands steal a runner from the rare variety of strawberries in order to graft it onto her puny ones? After all, couldn’t she still run to the fence with her booty and with her last ounce of strength, groaning and gasping, toss the strawberry runner to Father hiding in the bushes, his round eyeglasses glinting in the moonlight?
From May to September, Veronika Vikentievna, who suffered from insomnia, came out into the garden at night, stood in her long white nightgown holding a pitchfork like Neptune, listening to the nocturnal birds, breathing jasmine. Of late her hearing had grown more acute: Veronika Vikentievna could hear Mother and Father three hundred yards away in our dacha, with the camel’s hair blanket over their heads, plotting in a whisper to get Veronika Vikentievna: they would dig a tunnel to the greenhouse with her early parsley.
The night moved on, and the house loomed black behind her. Somewhere in the dark warmth, deep in the house, lost in the bowels on their connubial bed, little Uncle Pasha lay still as a mouse. High above his head swam the oak ceiling, and even higher swam the garrets, trunks of expensive black coats sleeping in mothballs, even higher the attic with pitchforks, clumps of hay, and old magazines, and even higher the roof, the chimney, the weather vane, the moon—across the garden, through dreams, they swam, swaying, carrying Uncle Pasha into the land of lost youth, the land of hopes come true, and the chilled Veronika Vikentievna, white and heavy, would return, stepping on his small warm feet.
Hey, wake up, Uncle Pasha! Veronika is going to die soon.
You will wander around the empty house, not a thought in your head, and then you will straighten, blossom, look around, remember, push away memories and desire, and bring—to help with the housekeeping—Veronika’s younger sister, Margarita, just as pale, large, and beautiful. And in June she’ll be laughing in the bright window, bending over the rain barrel, passing among the maples on the sunny lake.
Oh, in our declining years….
But we didn’t even notice, we forgot Veronika, we had spent a winter, a whole winter, a winter of mumps and measles, flooding and warts and a Christmas tree blazing with tangerines, and they made a fur coat for me, and a lady in the yard touched it and said: “Mouton.”
In the winter the yardmen glued golden stars onto the black sky, sprinkled ground diamonds into the connecting courtyards of the Petrograd side of town, and, clambering up the frosty air ladders to our windows, prepared morning surprises: with fine brushes they painted the silver tails of firebirds.
And when everyone got sick of winter, they took it out of town in trucks, shoving the skinny snowbanks into underground passages protected by gratings, and smeared perfumed mush with yellow seedlings around the parks. And for several days the city was pink, stone, and noisy.
And from over there, beyond the distant horizon, laughing and rumbling, waving a motley flag, the green summer came running with ants and daisies.
Uncle Pasha got rid of the yellow dog—he put it in a trunk and sprinkled it with mothballs; he let summer renters onto the second floor—a strange, dark woman and her fat granddaughter; and he invited kids into the house and fed them jam.
We hung on the fence and watched the strange grandmother fling open the second-story windows every hour and, illuminated by the harlequin rhomboids of the ancient panes, call out:
“Want milkandcookies?”
“No.”
“Want potty?”
“No.”
We hopped on one leg, healed scrapes with spit, buried treasures, cut worms in half with scissors, watched the old woman wash pink underpants in the lake, and found a photograph under the owner’s buffet: a surprised, big-eared family with the caption, “Don’t forget us. 1908.”
Let’s go to Uncle Pasha’s. You go first. No, you. Careful, watch the sill. I can’t see in the dark. Hold on to me. Will he show us the room. He will, but first we have to have tea.
Ornate spoons, ornate crystal holders. Cherry jam. Silly Margarita laughs in the orange light of the lamp shade. Hurry up and drink! Uncle Pasha knows, he’s waiting, holding open the sacred door to Aladdin’s cave. O room! O children’s dreams! O Uncle Pasha, you are King Solomon! You hold the Horn of Plenty in your mighty arms. A caravan of camels passed with spectral tread through your house and dropped its Baghdad wares in the summer twilight. A waterfall of velvet, ostrich feathers of lace, a shower of porcelain, golden columns of frames, precious tables on bent legs, locked glass cases of mounds where fragile yellow glasses are entwined by black grapes, where Negroes in golden skirts hide in the deep darkness, where something bends, transparent, silvery… Look, a precious clock with foreign numbers and snakelike hands. And this one, with forget-me-nots. Ah, but look, look at that one! There’s a glass room over the face and in it a golden Chevalier seated at a golden table, a golden sandwich in his hand. And next to him, a Lady with a goblet: and when the clock strikes, she strikes the goblet on the table—six, seven, eight…. The lilacs are jealous, they peek through the window, and Uncle Pasha sits down at the piano and plays the Moonlight Sonata. Who are you, Uncle Pasha?
There it is, the bed on glass legs. Semitransparent in the twilight, invisible and powerful, they raise on high the tangle of lace, the Babylon towers of pillows, the moonlit, lilac scent of the divine music. Uncle Pasha’s noble white head is thrown back, a Mona Lisa smile on Margarita’s golden face as she appears silently in the doorway, the lace curtains sway, the lilacs sway, the waves of dahlias sway on the slope right to the horizon, to the evening lake, to the beam of moonlight.
Play, play, Uncle Pasha! Caliph for an hour, enchanted prince, starry youth, who gave you this power over us, to enchant us, who gave you those white winds on your back, who carried your silvery head to the evening skies, crowned you with roses, illuminated you with mountain light, surrounded you with lunar wind?
… Well, enough. Time to go home. It doesn’t seem right to use the ordinary word “Thanks” with Uncle Pasha. Have to be more ornamentaclass="underline" “I am grateful.” “It’s not worthy of gratitude.”
“Did you notice they have only one bed in the house?”
“Where does Margarita sleep, then? In the attic?”
“Maybe. But that’s where the renters are.”
“Well, then she must sleep on the porch, on a bench.”
“What if they sleep in the same bed, head to foot?”
“Stupid. They’re strangers.”
“You’re stupid. What if they’re lovers?”
“But they only have lovers in France.”
She’s right, of course. I forgot.
…Life changed the slides ever faster in the magic lantern. With Mother’s help we penetrated into the mirrored corners of the grownups’ atelier, where the bald tubby tailor took our embarrassing measurements, muttering excuse me’s; we envied girls in nylon stockings, with pierced ears, we drew in our textbooks: glasses on Pushkin, a mustache on Mayakovsky, a large white chest on Chekhov, who was otherwise normally endowed. And we were recognized immediately and welcomed joyfully by the patient and defective nude model from the anatomy course generously offering his numbered innards; but the poor fellow no longer excited anyone. And, looking back once, with unbelieving fingers we felt the smoked glass behind which our garden waved a hankie before going down for the last time. But we didn’t feel the loss yet.