The time allotted to Vassily Mikhailovich was running out. The ocean was behind him, but the unexplored continent had not blocked his path, new lands had not floated out of the mist, and with depression he could make out the dreary palms and familiar minarets of India, which the miscalculating Columbus had thirsted for and which meant the end of the road for Vassily Mikhailovich. The trip around the world was coming to an end: his caravel, having circled life, was sailing up from the other side and was entering familiar territory. The familiar social security office, where the pensions fluttered on flag poles, hove into view, then the opera house, where Svetlana’s son, wearing stage eyebrows, sang about the ephemerality of life to the loud applause of Yevgeniya Ivanovna.
“If I run into Isolde,” Vassily Mikhailovich made a bet with fate, “my path is over.” But he was cheating: Isolde had passed away a long time ago.
Sometimes he still got signals: you are not alone. There are clear meadows in the groves of people, where in hermits’ cabins live the ascetics, the chosen who reject the bustle, who seek the secret loophole out of prison.
News arrived: strange objects were appearing, at first glance insignificant, useless, but imbued with a secret meaning; indicators leading to nowhere. One was Cheburashka, a daring challenge to school Darwinism, an old shaggy evolutionary link that fell out of the measured chain of natural selection. Another was Rubik’s cube, a breakable, changeable, but always whole hexahedron. Having stood four hours in the cold along with thousands of grim fellow sect members, Vassily Mikhailovich became the owner of the marvelous cube and spent weeks twisting and twisting its creaking movable facets, until his eyes grew red, waiting in vain for the light to another universe to shine at last from the window. But sensing one night that of the two of them, the real master was the cube, which was doing whatever it wanted to with helpless Vassily Mikhailovich, he got up, went to the kitchen, and chopped up the monster with a cleaver.
In anticipation of revelation he leafed through typewritten pages that taught you to breathe a green square in through one nostril at dawn and to chase it with mental power up and down your intestines. He spent hours standing on his head with his legs crossed in someone’s apartment near the railroad station, between two unshaven, also upside-down engineers, and the rumble of the trains outside the house speeding into the distance shook their upraised striped socks. And it was all in vain.
Ahead was the market, spattered with booths. Twilight, twilight. Illuminated from inside were the icy windows of the booth where winter sells a snowy pulp covered with chocolate on a splintery stick and the colorful gingerbread house where you can buy various kinds of poisonous smoke and a folding spoon and chains of special very cheap gold; and the desired window where a group of black figures huddled, hearts warmed by happiness, and where a beery dawn glowed translucently with wandering flames in the thick glass of mugs. Vassily Mikhailovich got in line and looked around the snowy square.
There was Isolde, legs spread apart. She was blowing beer foam onto her cloth boots, horrible-looking, with a cracked drunken skull and red wrinkled face. Lights were coming on and the first stars were rising: white, blue, green. The icy wind came from the stars to the earth, stirring her uncovered hair, and after circling around her head, moved on to the dark doorways.
“Lyalya,” said Vassily Mikhailovich.
But she was laughing with new friends, stumbling, holding up her mug: a big man was opening a bottle, another man struck the edge of the counter with a dried fish, they were having a good time.
“My heart sings with joy,” Isolde sang. “Oh, if I could feel this way forever.”
Vassily Mikhailovich stood and listened to her sing without understanding the words and when he came to, a struggling Isolde was being led away by the militiamen. But that couldn’t be Isolde: she had passed away a long time ago.
And he, it seemed, was still alive. But now there was no point to it. Darkness pressed against his heart. The hour of departure had struck. He looked back one last time and saw only a long cold tunnel with icy walls, and himself, crawling with a hand extended, grimly smothering all the sparks that flashed on the way. The queue shoved him and hurried him, and he took a step forward, no longer feeling his legs, and he gratefully accepted from gentle hands his well-earned cup of hemlock.
A CLEAN SHEET
HIS WIFE fell asleep the minute she lay down on the couch in the nursery: nothing wears you out as much as a sick child. Good, let her sleep there. Ignatiev covered her with a light blanket, stood around, looked at her open mouth, exhausted face, the black roots of her hair—she had stopped pretending to be a blonde a long time ago—felt sorry for her, for the wan, white, and sweaty Valerik, for himself, left, went to bed, and lay without sleep, staring at the ceiling.
Depression came to Ignatiev every night. Heavy, confusing, with lowered head, it sat on the edge of the bed and took his hand—a sad sitter for a hopeless patient. And they spent hours in silence, holding hands.
The house rustled at night, shuddered, lived. There were peaks in the vague din—a dog’s bark, a snatch of music, the thud of the elevator going up and down on a thread—the night boat. Hand in hand with depression Ignatiev said nothing: locked in his heart, gardens, seas, and cities tumbled; Ignatiev was their master, they were born with him, and with him they were doomed to dissolve into nonbeing. My poor world, your master has been conquered by depression. Inhabitants, color the sky in twilight, sit on the stone thresholds of abandoned houses, drop your hands, lower your heads: your good king is ill. Lepers, walk the deserted streets, ring your brass bells, carry the bad tidings: brothers, depression is coming to the cities. The hearths are abandoned and the ashes are cold and grass is growing between the slabs where the bazaar once was boisterous. Soon the low red moon will rise in the inky sky, and the first wolf will come out of the ruins, raise its head, and howl, sending a lone call on high, into the icy expanses, to the distant blue wolves sitting on branches in the black groves of alien universes.