Interesting. “Well, it’s daring,” Vladimir said. “Quite daring—
What’s the concept?” “Concept?” the artist gleefully demanded. “You’re insulting me. Am I a Peredvizhnik or something? Concept! You have to run from concepts, brother, and don’t look back!” “No, but still, but still…” They argued, waving their arms, the artist set out lopsided ceramic mugs on the low table, clearing not very clean space with his elbow. They drank something that didn’t taste good and followed it with rock-hard pieces of the day-before-yesterday’s leftovers. The host’s radiant but unseeing gaze slid professionally over Zoya’s surface. The gaze did not connect with Zoya’s soul, as if she weren’t even there. Vladimir grew red, his beards were unkempt, both men were shouting, using words like “absurd” and others that sounded like it; one referred to Giotto, the other to Moisenko, and they forgot about Zoya. She had a headache and there was a pounding in her ears: dum, dum, dum. Outside the window in the dark rain was gathering, the dusty lamp on the ceiling floated in layers of bluish smoke, and the crude white shelves were crowded with pitchers holding Crimean brambles, long broken and covered with cobwebs. Zoya wasn’t here or anywhere else, she simply did not exist. The rest of the world did not exist either. Only smoke and the noise: dum, dum, dum.
On the way home, Vladimir put his arm around Zoya’s shoulders.
“A most interesting man, even if he is nuts. Did you hear his arguments? Charming, eh?”
Zoya was silent and angry. It was raining.
“You’re a trooper!” Vladimir went on. “Let’s go home and have some strong tea, all right?”
What a louse Vladimir was. Using dishonest, cheating methods. There are rules of the hunt: the mammoth steps back a certain distance, I aim… let loose the arrow: whrrrrrrrr! and he’s a goner. And I drag the carcass home: here’s meat for the long winter. But this one comes on his own, gets up close, grazes, plucking at the grass, rubbing his side against the wall, napping in the sun, pretending to be tame. Allows himself to be milked! While the pen is open on all four sides. My God, I don’t even have a pen. He’ll get away, he will, oh Lord. I need a fence, a picket, ropes, hawsers.
Dum, dum, dum. The sun set. The sun rose. A pigeon with a banded leg landed on the window and looked severely into Zoya’s eyes. There, there you are! Even a pigeon, a lousy, dirty bird gets banded. Scientists in white coats, with honest, educated faces, PhDs, pick him up, the little bird, by the sides— sorry to disturb you, fellow—and the pigeon understands, doesn’t argue, and without further ado offers them his red leather foot—my pleasure, comrades. You’re in the right. Click! And he flies off a different creature, he doesn’t get underfoot and cry, doesn’t recoil heavy-jawed out of the path of trucks, no—now he flies scientifically from cornice to balcony, intellectually consumes the prescribed grains, and remembers firmly that even the gray splotches of his droppings are illuminated henceforth with the unbribable rays of science: the Academy knows, is in control, and—if necessary—will ask.
She stopped talking to Vladimir, sat and stared out the window, thinking for hours about the scientific pigeon. Feeling the engineer’s sorrowful eye upon her, she would concentrate: well? Where are the long-awaited words? Say it! Give up?
“Zoya dear, what’s the matter. I treat you with love, and you treat me like a…” mumbled Mr. Two-Beards.
Her features hardened and sharpened, and no one has said Oh!” in a long time upon meeting her, and she didn’t need that anymore: the blue flame of endless sorrow, burning in her soul, put out all the fires of the world. She didn’t feel like doing anything, and Vladimir vacuumed, beat the rugs, canned eggplant “caviar” for the winter.
Dum, dum, dum beat in Zoya’s head, and the pigeon with the fiery wedding ring rose from the dark, his eyes stern and reproachful. Zoya lay down on the couch straight and flat, covered her head with the blanket, and put her arms along her sides. Unbounded Grief, that’s what the medieval masters from the album on the shelf on the left would have called her wooden sculpture. Unbounded Grief; so there. Oh, they would have sculpted her soul, her pain, all the folds of her blanket the right way, they would have sculpted her and then fixed it up on tippy top of a dizzying, lacy cathedral, at the very top, and the photo would be in close up: “Zoya. Detail. Early Gothic.” The blue flame heated the woolen cave, there was no air. The engineer was tiptoeing out of the room. “Where are you going?” Zoya shouted like a crane, and the married pigeon grinned. “I was… just going to… wash up…. You rest,” the monster whispered fearfully.
“First he goes to wash up, then to the kitchen, and the front door is right there,” the pigeon whispered in her ear. “And then he’s gone.”
He was right. She tossed a noose around the two-beards’ neck, lay down, jerked, and listened. At that end there was rustling, sighing, shuffling. She had never particularly liked this man. No, let’s be honest, he had always repulsed her. A small, powerful, heavy, quick, hairy, insensitive animal.
It puttered around for a while—whimpering, fussing—until it quieted down in the blissful thick silence of the great ice age.
THE CIRCLE
The world is ended, the world is distorted, the world is closed, and it is closed around Vassily Mikhailovich.
At sixty, fur coats get heavy, stairs grow steep, and your heart is with you day and night. You’ve walked and walked, from hill to hill, past shimmering lakes, past radiant islands, white birds overhead, speckled snakes underfoot, and you’ve arrived here, and this is where you’ve ended up; it’s dark and lonely here, and your collar chokes you and your blood creaks in your veins. This is sixty.