But all this was later. At that moment Uncle Zhenya was still alive and happy. His wife was just what was called for—the daughter of a military man—and the tile in the john was lettuce green, Czechoslovakian, and on the wall hung a balalaika, a sign of loyalty. So his screaming was completely natural and justified.
He screamed at Lyonechka’s father—the right of a younger, but successful brother—for giving who the hell knows what kind of upbringing to his children: Lyonechka, who had failed miserably in the corridors of the press—the pup could have grown into a strong, international sports journalist if he’d only listened to his uncle; Svetlana, Lyonechka’s sister, an undisciplined girl prone to hanging around cafes and riding in cars with God knows whom; Vasilyok, the youngest, a fifth-grade pupil, also got his share, though he was definitely not guilty of anything and had even just taken second place in the municipal skating Olympics. He screamed at his wife, Aunt Zina, accusing her of permissiveness, absentmindedness, self-indulgence, and of the fact that the husband of her second cousin once considered working for the Planning Department, and for that matter the grandfather of one of the former employees of this Planning Department lived next to a peasant who had owned two cows in 1909, and this could be regarded as wittingly dangerous proximity to kulak circles; he screamed at the cat, who with the approach of March looked ever more frequently out the window; he screamed at the custodian, at the radish seller in the courtyard entrance, at the elevator lady, at the cooperative parking lot guard, at the head of the housing office, and even at the hamster living in a cage in the kitchen—and as a matter of fact, the hamster, having listened to Uncle Zhenya, up and died.
Anyway, Uncle Zhenya’s screams were horrible, as horrible, no doubt, as the scream of a falling man slipping into the abyss, who tries to hold on by clumps of grass: the pliant dry soil raises dust and crumbles, and the roots swell, leaving their earthy nest; close, close to the eyes a startled spider or ant has already run out of his little house. He’ll remain, but you’ll fly off, blossoming for a short while like a bird, like a towel, like a still-warm, living bundle swaddled in its own cry; the feet are already scratching the empty air, and the world is ready, spinning and turning, to offer you its fluffy, green, rough bowl.
And I felt sorry for him, as one always feels sorry for those who’ve been beaten to a bloody pulp, as one pities the eyeless people you see in dreams.
Meanwhile, Lyonechka, having ordered Vasilyok to take up the jigsaw and make the shelves on which he planned to place the future Pushkin’s works, applied himself in earnest to Judy’s education, to her initiation into his poetic faith. He couldn’t bring her home, nor to his uncle’s, needless to say, and my communal kitchen, enlivened by the invalid Spiridonov, resounded with Lyonechka’s crazed texts, protests, and toasts.
“Well, what do you want? Tell me! I’ll take care of everything,” said Lyonechka, strewing the standard lovers’ promises, drinking his fill of tea and crunching the invalid’s cookies.
Judy was embarrassed. She wanted to become a veterinarian as soon as possible…. She wanted to be useful and nurse little animals…. Cows, horses…
“Sweetheart, those aren’t little animals, those are large, horned livestock!”
“Horses don’t have horns….”
“That’s fallacious thinking. That’s a fallacy!” seethed Lyonechka. “Horses used to have horns, but they fell off in the process of evolution when the horse came down from the trees in obedience to social demands and went to work for man in the fields, where horns only got in the way. Do you have cows and horses in Africa? And do they hibernate in the winter?” the poet amused himself. And he explained to Judy that the cow, having taken care of her business and seen to the calf, goes off into the forest, digs a hole, and, settling in cozily, curling up like a bun, sleeps until the spring, swept by snow, with a gentle smile, her lovely eyes closed, eyes whose praises have been sung in epics ours and not ours, and she dreams of swift streams, lo, and green meadows scattered with daisies; meanwhile, forming a chain, hunters are already out on the winter hunt with flashlights and red flags; and they poke the snowdrifts with rakes and lift the sleeping cow with oven forks—that’s why we only have frozen meat here. These aren’t any of your plain old zebu.
When the snows melt, Judy dear, we’ll go to the country, to the thick forests and wide fields—the fir trees are dark, their stumps are huge—and you’ll see our northern fauna: curly-headed silky nightingales with blue eyes, white-fleeced sheep with silver hooves who sing wonderful refrains above the fleet waters; and what cats we have, dressed in caftans of ribbed velvet with copper buttons, and what goats—if only you knew— politically literate, tidy, with uncompromising civic attitudes, in steel-framed glasses. And our spiders, our flies—jolly creatures in red boots with gingerbread cookies under their arms—tell her, Spiridonov! Chin up, Spiridonov, let’s drink to the spider.
I can’t say that I liked this evening Sabbath very much, this daily commotion and tea drinking on my tiny territory—I had my own plans for life, and a few dreams: to marry, to move Mama to my place from the suburb of Friazino or exchange my communal rooms for a one-room apartment. Frankly although barely defined, these plans were somehow getting all confused and falling apart; it wasn’t that there weren’t any husbands or opportunities to exchange apartments—everything was there, but it was all somewhat shopworn, squalid, fifth-rate, with cavities and defects, abscesses and flaws.
It was impossible, for instance, to take my suitor Valéry seriously: strong and tall, and ardently admiring himself for these qualities, with the face of a policeman or an executive, Valéry ate a lot of meat, kept weights, springs, a bicycle, skis, and other unnecessary sports thingamajigs at home; his dream was to buy a blue jacket with metallic buttons, but none could be found for love or money. Without the jacket Valéry felt himself to be out of life’s mainstream. Once we took a walk in the autumn along the windy embankment of the Yauza: it was a cold, orange evening, the last leaves were flying about, a clear star shone in the sky, and there was a feeling of winter’s closeness in the air, a feeling of melancholy, of the meaningless, ineluctably nearing New Year; the wind rose and tossed freezing urban dust at us. Valéry stopped and burst into tears. I stood there, waiting through it, looking at the sky and the star in the emptiness. I understood that words meant nothing, that no comfort was needed, I understood that this was grief, failure, ruin: the blue jacket had gone out of fashion, floating by Valéry; like a rosy morning cloud, an ephemeral vision, cranes flying overhead, or an angel in the lunar heights, the jacket sailed off—it had beckoned, agitated, clouded his soul, entered his dreams, and passed, just as the luxurious, colorful, spicy empires of the East had passed, resounding and shining. Having cried his fill, Valéry wiped his rigid Komsomol face with a red hand, and we went on, hushed and sad, and parted at the vegetable store on the corner, never to meet again.