Autumn came into Uncle Pasha’s house and struck him on the face. Autumn, what do you want? Wait; are you kidding?… The leaves fell, the days grew dark, Margarita grew scooped. The white chickens died, the turkey flew off to warmer climes, the yellow dog climbed out of the trunk and, embracing Uncle Pasha, listened to the north wind howl at night. Girls, someone, bring Uncle Pasha some India tea. How you’ve grown. How old you’ve gotten, Uncle Pasha. Your hands are spotted, your knees bent. Why do you wheeze like that? I know, I can guess: in the daytime, vaguely, and at night, clearly, you hear the clang of metal locks. The chain is wearing out.
What are you bustling about for? You want to show me your treasures? Well, all right, I have five minutes for you. It’s so long since I was here! I’m getting old. So that’s it, that’s what enchanted us? All this secondhand rubbish, these chipped painted night tables, these tacky oilcloth paintings, these brocade curtains, the worn plush velvet, the darned lace, the clumsy fakes from the peasant market, the cheap beads? This sang and glittered, burned and beckoned? What mean jokes you play, life! Dust, ashes, rot. Surfacing from the magical bottom of childhood, from the warm, radiant depths, we open our chilled fist in the cold wind—and what have we brought up with us besides sand? But just a quarter century ago Uncle Pasha wound the golden clock with trembling hands. Above the face, in the glass room, the little inhabitants huddle—the Lady and the Chevalier, masters of Time. The Lady strikes the table with her goblet, and the thin ringing sound tries to break through the shell of decades. Eight, nine, ten. No. Excuse me, Uncle Pasha. I have to go.
…Uncle Pasha froze to death on the porch. He could not reach the metal ring of the door and fell face down in the snow. White snow daisies grew between his stiff fingers. The yellow dog gently closed his eyes and left through the snowflakes up the starry ladder to the black heights, carrying away the trembling living flame.
The new owner—Margaritas elderly daughter—poured Uncle Pashas ashes into a metal can and set it on a shelf in the empty chicken house; it was too much trouble to bury him.
Bent in half by the years, her face turned to the ground, Margarita wanders through the chilled, drafty garden, as if seeking lost footsteps on the silent paths.
“You’re cruel! Bury him!”
But her daughter smokes indifferently on the porch. The nights are cold. Let’s turn on the lights early. And the golden Lady of Time, drinking bottoms up from the goblet of life, will strike a final midnight on the table for Uncle Pasha.
HUNTING THE WOOLY MAMMOTH
ZOYA’S a beautiful name, isn’t it? Like bees buzzing by. And she’s beautiful, too: a good height and all that. Details? All right, here are the details: good legs, good figure, good skin, the nose, eyes, all good. Brunette. Why not a blonde? Because you can’t have everything.
When Zoya met Vladimir, he was stunned. Or well, at least pleasantly surprised.
“Oh!” said Vladimir.
That’s just what he said. And wanted to see Zoya very often. But not constantly. And that saddened her.
In her one-room apartment he kept only his toothbrush—a thing that is certainly intimate, but not so much that it would firmly tie a man to the family hearth. Zoya wanted Vladimir’s shirts, underwear, and socks to settle in, how shall we put it, to make themselves at home in the underwear drawer, even lie around on a chair. To be able to grab a sweater or something and soak it, into the Lotos soap with it, and then dry it neatly spread out.
But no, he didn’t leave a trace; he kept everything in his communal flat. Even his razor. Though what did he have to shave, with that beard? He had two beards: one thick and dark, and in the middle of it, another, smaller and reddish, growing in a narrow tuft on his chin. A phenomenon! When he ate or laughed, that second beard jumped. Vladimir wasn’t tall, half a head shorter than Zoya, and looked a bit wild and hairy. And he moved very quickly.
Vladimir was an engineer.
“You’re an engineer?” Zoya asked tenderly and distractedly on their first date, when they sat in a restaurant and she opened her lips only a millimeter to taste the profiteroles in chocolate sauce, pretending for some intellectual reason that it wasn’t very tasty.
“Exac-tic-ally,” he said, staring at her chin.
“Are you at a research institute?…”
“Exactically.”
“…or in industry?”
“Exactically.”
Go figure him out when he was staring at her like that. And had a bit to drink.
An engineer wasn’t bad. Of course, a surgeon would have been better. Zoya worked in a hospital, in the information bureau, and she wore a white coat and thereby belonged a bit to that amazing medical world, white and starched, with syringes and test tubes, rolling carts and autoclaves, and piles of rough, clean black-stamped laundry, and roses and tears and chocolates, and a blue corpse rolled swiftly down endless corridors followed by a hurrying sorrowing little angel clutching to its pigeon chest a long-suffering, released soul, diapered like a doll.
And king of this world is the surgeon, who cannot be regarded without trembling as, dressed with the aid of gentlemen of the chamber in a loose-fitting mantle and green crown with laces, majestically holding his precious hands aloft, he is prepared for his holy kingly mission: to perform the highest judgment, to come down and chop off, to punish and to save, and with his glowing sword give life… What else, if not a king? And Zoya very much wanted to fall into a surgeon’s bloody embrace. But an engineer wasn’t bad.
They spent a very nice time at the restaurant, getting to know each other, and Vladimir, not realizing yet what he could count on from Zoya, was generous. It was afterward that he began to economize, looking through the menu briskly, ordering only an inexpensive main course for himself, and not lingering in restaurants. There was no need for Zoya to sit languorously with a casual expression on her face, slightly mocking, slightly dreamy—her face was supposed to reflect the fleeting nuances of her complex spiritual life, like exquisite sadness or some refined reminiscence; she ate, staring off into space, her elbows delicately resting on the table, her lower lip pouting, sending lovely smoke rings up to the painted vaulted ceiling. She was playing fairy. But Vladimir didn’t play along: he ate with gusto, without a trace of sadness, gulped down his vodka, smoked without languor: quickly, greedily smelling up the table and squashing the butt in the ashtray with his yellowed finger. He brought the check close to his eyes, was horribly astounded, and always found a mistake. And he never ordered caviar: that was for princesses and thieves, he claimed. Zoya was hurt: wasn’t she a princess, albeit unrecognized? And then they stopped going out completely, and stayed home. Or she stayed home alone. It was boring.
In the summer she wanted to go south to the Caucasus. There would be noise and wine and midnight swims with squeals of laughter, and masses of handsome men who would look at Zoya and say, “Oh!” and flash their teeth.