The southerly wind blew the refuse of blossoming lindens into the old entryway, warmed the shabby walls. Little Lucy descended the stairs sideways, hugging the mountain of things she’d chosen, almost crying—once again she’d gotten herself into terrible debt. Big Lucy kept a hostile silence. Rimma walked with her teeth clenched: the summer day had darkened, destiny had teased her and had a laugh. And she already knew that the blouse she’d bought at the last minute in a fit of desperation was junk, last year’s leaves, Satan’s gold, fated to turn into rotten scraps in the morning, a husk sucked and spit out by the blue-eyed Bahrain houri.
She rode in the saddened, silent taxi and said to herself, Still, I do have Fedya and the children. But the comfort was false, feeble, it was all over, life had shown its empty face, its matted hair and sunken eye sockets. And she imagined the long-desired South, where she’d been dying to go for so many years, as yellowed and dusty, with bunches of prickly dry plants, with spittle and scraps of paper rocking on brackish waves. And at home there was the grimy old communal apartment and the immortal old man, Ashkenazi, and Fedya, whom she knew so well she could scream, and the whole viscous stream of years to come, not yet lived but already known, through which she would have to drag herself as through dust covering a road to the knees, the chest, the neck. And the siren’s song, deceitfully whispering sweet words to the stupid swimmer about what wouldn’t come to pass, fell silent forever.
No, there were some other events—Kira’s hand withered, Petyunya came back for visits and talked at length about the price of oil, Elya and Alyosha buried their dog and got a new one, old man Ashkenazi finally washed his windows with the help of the Dawn Company, but Pipka never showed up again. Some people knew for a fact that she’d married a blind storyteller and had taken off for Australia—to shine with her new white teeth amid the eucalyptus trees and duck-billed platypuses above the coral reefs, but others crossed their hearts and swore that shed been in a crash and burned up in a taxi on the Yaroslavl highway one rainy, slippery night, and that the flames could be seen from afar rising in a column to the sky. They also said that the fire couldn’t be brought under control, and that when everything had burned out, nothing was found at the site of the accident. Only cinders.
DATE WITH A BIRD
“BOYS! Dinner time!”
The boys, up to their elbows in sand, looked up and came back to the real world: their mother was on the wooden porch, waving; this way, come on, come on! From the door came the smells of warmth, light, an evening at home.
Really, it was already dark. The damp sand was cold on their knees. Sand castles, ditches, tunnels—everything had blurred into impenetrability, indistinguishability, formlessness. You couldn’t tell where the path was, where the damp growths of nettles were, where the rain barrel was… But in the west, there was still dim light. And low over the garden, rustling the crowns of the dark wooded hills, rushed a convulsive, sorrowful sigh: that was the day, dying.
Petya quickly felt around for the heavy metal cars—cranes, trucks; Mother was tapping her foot impatiently, holding the doorknob, and little Lenechka had already made a scene, but they swooped him up, dragged him in, washed him, and wiped his struggling face with a sturdy terry towel.
Peace and quiet in the circle of light on the white tablecloth. On saucers, fans of cheese, of sausage, wheels of lemon as if a small yellow bicycle had been broken; ruby lights twinkled in the jam.
Petya was given a large bowl of rice porridge; a melting island of butter floated in the sticky Sargasso Sea. Go under, buttery Atlantis. No one is saved. White palaces with emerald scaly roofs, stepped temples with tall doorways covered with streaming curtains of peacock feathers, enormous golden statues, marble staircases going deep into the sea, sharp silver obelisks with inscriptions in an unknown tongue—everything, everything vanished under water. The transparent green ocean waves were licking the projections of the temples; tanned, crazed people scurried to and fro, children wept…. Looters hauled precious trunks made of aromatic wood and dropped them; a whirlwind of flying clothing spread… Nothing will be of use, nothing will help, no one will be saved, everything will slip, list, into the warm, transparent waves…. The gold eight-story statue of the main god, with a third eye in his forehead, sways, and looks sadly to the east….
“Stop playing with your food!”
Petya shuddered and stirred in the butter. Uncle Borya, Mother’s brother—we don’t like him—looks unhappy; he has a black beard and a cigarette in his white teeth; he smokes, having moved his chair closer to the door, open a crack into the corridor. He keeps bugging, nagging, mocking—what does he want?
“Hurry up kids, straight to bed. Leonid is falling asleep.”
And really, Lenechka’s nose is in his porridge, and he’s dragging his spoon slowly through the viscous mush. But Petya has no intention of going to bed. If Uncle Borya wants to smoke freely, let him go outside. And stop interrogating him.
Petya ate doomed Atlantis and scraped the ocean clean with his spoon, and then stuck his lips into his cup of tea—buttery slicks floated on the surface. Mother took away sleeping Le-nechka, Uncle Borya got more comfortable and smoked openly. The smoke from him was disgusting, heavy. Tamila always smoked something aromatic. Uncle Borya read Petya’s thoughts and started probing.
“You’ve been visiting your dubious friend again?”
Yes, again. Tamila wasn’t dubious, she was an enchanted beauty with a magical name, she lived on a light blue glass mountain with impenetrable walls, so high up you could see the whole world, as far as the four posts with the signs: South, East, North, West. But she was stolen by a red dragon who flew all over the world with her and brought her here, to this colony of summer dachas. And now she lived in the farthest house, in an enormous room with a veranda filled with tubs of climbing Chinese roses and piled with old books, boxes, chests, and candlesticks; smoked thin cigarettes in a long cigarette holder with jangling copper rings, drank something from small shot glasses, locked in her chair, and laughed as if she were crying. And in memory of the dragon, Tamila wore a black shiny robe with wide sleeves and a mean red dragon on the back. And her long tangled hair reached down to the armrests of the chair. When Petya grew up he would marry Tamila and lock Uncle Borya in a high tower. But later—maybe—he would have mercy, and let him out.