The teakettle came to a boil. I’ll make it strong. A simple piece for the kitchen xylophone: lid, lid, spoon, lid, rag, lid, rag, rag, spoon, handle, handle. It’s a long way back down the long corridor with two teakettles in your hands. Twenty-three neighbors behind white doors listen closely: will she spill her crummy tea on our clean floor? I didn’t spill, don’t worry. I push open the gothic doors with my foot. I’ve been gone an eternity, but Alexandra Ernestovna still remembers me.
She got out cracked raspberry-colored cups, decorated the table with doilies, puttered around in the dark coffin of a cupboard, stirring up bread and cracker smells that come out of its wooden cheeks. Don’t come out, smell! Catch it and squeeze it back with the cut-glass doors: there, stay under lock and key.
Alexandra Ernestovna gets out wonderful jam, it was a gift, just try it, no, no, you try it, ah, ah, ah, yes, you’re speechless, it’s truly amazing, exquisite, isn’t it? Really, in all my long life, I’ve never… well, I’m so pleased, I knew you’d like it, have some more, please, take it, have some, I beg you. (Damn it, I’ll have another toothache!)
I like you, Alexandra Ernestovna, I like you very much, especially in that photograph there with that marvelous oval to your face, and in that one, where your head is back and you laugh with those perfect teeth, and in that one, where you pretend to be pouting, and your arm is behind your head so the lacy festoons will fall back from your elbow. I like your life, interesting to no one else, passed in the distance, your youth that rushed off, your decayed admirers and husbands proceeding in triumphant parade, everyone who ever called your name or was called by you, everyone who passed and went over the high hill. I’ll come to you and bring you cream, and carrots, so good for your eyes, and you’ll please open up the long-closed brown velvet albums—let the Gymnasium girls breathe some fresh air, let the mustachioed gentlemen flex their muscles, let brave Ivan Nikolayevich smile. Don’t worry, don’t worry, Alexandra Ernestovna, he can’t see you, really…. You should have done it then. You should have. She’s made up her mind. Here he is— right next to you—just reach out! Here, take him in your hands, hold him, here he is, flat cold shiny with a gold border, slightly yellowed: Ivan Nikolayevich. Hey, do you hear, she’s decided, yes, she’s coming, meet her, she’s stopped hesitating, she’s made up her mind, hey, where are you, yoo-hoo!
Thousands of years, thousands of days, thousands of translucent impenetrable curtains fell from the heavens, thickened, turned into solid walls, blocked roads, and kept Alexandra Ernestovna from going to her beloved, lost in time. He remained there on the other side of the years, alone at the dusty southern station, wandering along the sunflower seed-spattered platform; he looks at his watch, kicks aside dusty corn cobs with his toe, impatiently tears off blue-gray cypress cones, waiting, waiting, waiting for the steam engine to come from the hot morning distance. She did not come. She will not come. She had deceived him. But no, no, she had wanted to go. She was ready, and the bags had been packed. The white semitranspar-ent dresses had tucked up their knees in the cramped darkness of the trunk, the vanity case’s leather sides creaked and its silver corners shone, the shameless bathing costumes barely covering the knees—baring the arms to the shoulder—awaited their hour, squinting, anticipating… In the hat box—impossible, enticing, insubstantial… ah, there are no words to describe it —white zephyr, a miracle! On the very bottom, belly-up and paws in the air, slept the sewing box—pins, combs, silk laces, emery boards of diamond sand for delicate nails; trifles. A jasmine genie sealed in a crystal flask—ah, how it would shine with a billion rainbows in the blinding seaside sun! She was ready—but what interfered? What always interferes? Well hurry, time’s passing—Time’s passing, and the invisible layers of years get thicker, and the rails get rusty, and the roads get overgrown, and weeds grow taller in the ravines. Time flows and makes sweet Shura’s boat bob on its back and splashes wrinkles into her incomparable face.
…More tea?
After the war she returned—with her third husband—here, to these rooms. The third husband kept whining, whining.… The corridor was too long. The light too dim. The windows faced the back. Everything was behind them. The festive guests died out. The flowers faded. Rain hammered at the windows. He whined and whined and died, but when and of what, Alexandra Ernestovna did not notice.
She got Ivan Nikolayevich out of the album, and looked at him a long time. How he had begged her! She had even bought a ticket—and here it was, the ticket. Hard cardboard—black numbers. If you want, look at it this way, if you want, turn it upside down. It doesn’t matter: forgotten signs of an unknown alphabet, a coded pass to that shore.
Maybe if you learn the magic word… if you guess it; if you sit down and think hard, or look for it… there has to be a door, a crack, an unnoticed crooked way back there to that day; they shut up everything but they must have missed a crack somewhere: maybe in some old house, maybe if you pull back the floorboards in the attic—or in a dead end, or in a brick wall, there’s a passage carelessly filled with bricks, hurriedly painted, haphazardly nailed shut with crisscrossed boards…. Maybe not here but in another city… Maybe somewhere in the tangle of rails on a siding there stands a railroad car, old and rusted, its ceiling collapsed: the one sweet Shura didn’t get into?
“There’s my compartment… Excuse me, I’ll get by. Wait, here’s my ticket—it says so right here.” There, down in that end—rusted shock absorbers, reddish buckled wall girders, blue sky in the ceiling, grass underfoot—that’s her place, right here! No one ever took it, no one had a right.
…More tea? A blizzard.
…More tea? Apple trees in bloom. Dandelions. Lilacs. Oof, it’s hot. Leave Moscow—to the seaside. Until our next meeting, Alexandra Ernestovna. I’ll tell you all about that part of the world. Whether the sea has dried up, whether the Crimea floated away like a dry leaf, whether the blue sky has faded. Whether your tormented, excited beloved has deserted his volunteer post at the railroad station.
In Moscow’s stony hell Alexandra Ernestovna waits for me. No, no, it’s all true! There, in the Crimea, the invisible but agitated Ivan Nikolayevich—in white uniform—paces up and down the dusty platform, digs his watch out of his pocket, wipes his shaved neck; up and down along the lattice work fence rubbing off white dust, oblivious and agitated; past him, without noticing, go beautiful, large-faced young women in trousers; hippie boys with their sleeves rolled up, enveloped in transistorized badoobadooms; farm women in white scarves with buckets of plums; southern ladies with plastic earrings; old men in unyielding synthetic hats; smashing right through Ivan Nikolayevich, but he doesn’t know, doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, he’s waiting, time has been derailed, stuck midway somewhere outside of Kursk, tripped on nightingale rivers, lost, blind in fields of sunflowers.
Ivan Nikolayevich, wait! I’ll tell her, I’ll give her the message; don’t leave, she’ll come, she’ll come, honest; she’s made up her mind, she’s willing, just stand there, don’t worry, she’ll be here soon, she’s packed, she just has to pick it up; she’s even got a ticket: I swear, I’ve seen it—in the velvet album tucked behind a photograph; it’s a bit worn of course, but don’t worry, I think they’ll let her on. There’s a problem back there, something’s in the way, I don’t remember what; but she’ll manage, she’ll think of something—she’s got the ticket, doesn’t she?—that’s important, the ticket, and you know the main thing is she’s made up her mind, it’s certain, I’m telling you.