The Big Green Tent (3 page)

The skates are the finest thing

That ever I have seen in life,

Finer than sun and water,

Finer than fire.

Fine is the man

who is on those skates.

On the table, bedecked as at a ball,

Countless were the dishes,

And one can only wish

One's kin great victories in years to come.

At first he had “victuals” instead of “dishes,” but thought better of it—it sounded a bit crude.

All week Mikha got up when it was still dark outside and went down to the courtyard, to the improvised skating rink. He skated by himself until the first kids appeared, after sleeping their fill, since they were on school break. He still wasn't very sure on his feet when he was wearing the skates, and he was afraid he wouldn't be able to fend off the other kids if they tried to jump him.

The skates were, of course, the most important event of that vacation. The second most important was Anna Alexandrovna, Sanya's grandmother. She took the boys to museums.

Mikha had a dual nature: he had a thirst for knowledge, a natural curiosity and excitement that was both scientific and unscientific; but he was also possessed of an inchoate creative fire. He was captivated by Anna Alexandrovna. He was not the only one to fall under her spell, however. The museum outings made a strong impression even on Ilya, who seemed to have more of a technological bent than an artistic one. Sanya, the proud owner of this remarkable grandmother, sauntered casually from room to room, occasionally sharing his thoughts—not with his friends, but with his grandmother. It was clear that in museums, no less than in music school, he was in his element.

Mikha fell in love with Anna Alexandrovna. He would never stop loving her until the day she died. She saw in him a budding man of that stamp she had always preferred. The youth was a redhead, a poet, and during that particular week he even limped a bit, having overtaxed himself on his new skates—exactly like the nearly great poet whom Anna Alexandrovna had secretly loved as a thirteen-year-old girl. This paragon of a man, already full-grown in that distant era, who had the aura of a freedom fighter and would-be martyr, and enjoyed adulation at the beginning of the twentieth century, didn't deign to notice the lovestruck young lady, but left a lasting impression on some Freudian underside of her psyche. All her life she would love these intense, emotional redheads.

She smiled when she looked at Mikha—a boy of the same breed, but separated by time … and it was pleasant for her to catch his rapturous gaze.

Thus, without being aware of it himself, Mikha's love was requited. That winter he became a frequent guest at the Steklovs' home. Countless books, even books in foreign languages, nestled in every nook and cranny of the living room, with its three windows and another half window bisected by a partition wall, under lofty ceilings with ornate plaster moldings, also bisected. An upright piano, ever battle-ready, guarded its music in its depths. From time to time, unusual but intoxicating smells wafted through the room—real coffee, floor polish, perfume.

This must have been what it was like in my parents' home
, Mikha thought. He didn't remember his parents. His mother had perished during the bombardment of the last train headed east from Kiev on September 18, 1941, when the Germans were already approaching the Podol district. His father died at the front, never knowing that his wife was dead and his son had survived.

In reality, the home of Mikha's parents hadn't been anything like Sanya Steklov's. He was already twenty years old when he saw photographs of his parents for the first time. By some miracle, the photographs had been preserved after the war. He was very disappointed to see that his parents were poor, unattractive people—his mother, with a forced smile on her small dark lips and an extravagant, brazen bust; and his father, squat and corpulent, with an air of exaggerated self-importance. The photographs afforded glimpses of dull, everyday life, a setting that was not at all like the diminutive portion of the smaller reception hall of the former Apraksin-Trubetskoy mansion occupied by Sanya's family.

On January 9, as the winter break was drawing to a close, they celebrated Sanya's birthday. Before that it was Christmas, but only grown-ups had been invited to that event. It would be several years before the younger generation would be allowed to take part in the January 7
*
festivities. Still, there were always sweets left over from Christmas on Sanya's birthday—candied apples, cherries, even orange rinds that Anna Alexandrovna prepared like no one else in the world. But that wasn't all: they would fold up the room divider, move the dining table closer to the door, and, between the two large windows, set up a towering Christmas tree decorated with ornaments from a box that had been stashed away all year in a storage loft.

Sanya's birthday party was always a thrilling event. Even girls came. This time there were two of Sanya's friends from music school, Liza and Sonya. There was also Tamara, the granddaughter of his grandmother's friend, with her friend Olga; but they were still small, little first-graders, and they didn't inspire any interest in the boys. His grandmother's friend was somewhat lackluster, too. Liza's grandfather, Vasily Innokentievich, though, was marvelous, with his military uniform and mustache. An enigmatic cloud of odors clung to him: cologne water, medicine, and war. Half-joking, he addressed his granddaughter with the formal “you,” while casually calling Anna Alexandrovna “Nuta” and addressing her with “thou.” Vasily Innokentievich was Anna Alexandrovna's cousin, and Liza was thus some sort of distant cousin to Sanya. They even used those pre-Revolutionary terms, the French
cousin
and
cousine
, which also seemed to have been pulled out of the box in the storage loft.

Anna Alexandrovna called the girls “young ladies” and the boys “young men,” and Mikha, discomfited by all these high-society forms of address, was completely at a loss until Ilya winked at him, as if to say, Take it easy, they won't bite!

Anna Alexandrovna had planned an extraordinary evening. First there was a puppet show, on a real puppet stage, starring Petrushka, Vanka, and fat Rosa. They tussled and fought and exchanged insults, all in a foreign language.

Then they played word games. The little girls, Tamara and Olga, refusing to be outdone by the grown-ups, showed a quickness of mind beyond their years. Anna Alexandrovna invited the children to take pride of place at the large oval table, while the grown-ups retreated to a corner to drink tea. Vasily Innokentievich sat in an armchair and smoked shag tobacco cigarettes. After the puppet show, Anna Alexandrovna picked out a fat hand-rolled cigarette from the silver case on the side table in front of Vasily Innokentievich and tried to smoke it, but immediately broke into a fit of coughing.

“Vasily, these are awfully strong!”

“That's why I don't offer them to anyone, Nuta.”

“Ugh!” Anna Alexandrovna expelled the reeking smoke. “Where do you get them?”

“I buy the tobacco, and Liza rolls them for me.”

But that wasn't the end of the evening. After the puppet show an array of desserts was spread out for them, a presentation Mikha would remember to the end of his days—everything from the homemade punch to the pale yellow napkin rings, carved from bone, cinching the folds of starched linen.

Ilya and Mikha exchanged glances. This was a moment when Sanya appeared aloof and inaccessible to them. The two of them felt set apart, like lowly interlopers. A three-way friendship, like all triangles, is a complex matter. Obstacles and temptations arise—jealousy, envy, sometimes even treachery, albeit trivial or pardonable. Can treachery be justified by unendurable, boundless love? The three of them would be granted an epoch quintessentially suited to posing this question, and a whole lifetime—shorter for one, longer for the others—in which to find out.

That evening, not only the rather inhibited Mikha, but also the expansive Ilya, felt somewhat abashed by the grandeur of the surroundings. Sanya, preoccupied by Liza, with her long, narrow face, and her hair set free from its blue ribbon, nevertheless sensed this. He called Mikha over and the two of them whispered together for a long time, then summoned Anna Alexandrovna. A little later, it was announced that there would be a game of charades. Then Sanya turned an ungainly little chair upside down, and it suddenly became a stepladder. He climbed up to the top step so that he was even taller than Mikha, who stood one step lower, and together they raucously declaimed the following lines, all the while pushing and shoving each other, tugging at each other's ears, snorting and mooing and making a general racket.

Two names that start the same—

A talk between two lords of the meadow.

The second part of one's like foul disgust: “Yuck!”

The other's like the vulgar sound

Released after a meal of slops: “Ugh!”

The two names end the same—

A German preposition.

Add them together, you have two creatures

Misnamed, perhaps,
Homo sapiens.

The guests laughed heartily, but no one could guess the answer. There was only one person among them who was capable of solving this linguistic riddle: Ilya. And he didn't let them down. Waiting until the guests admitted defeat, he answered, not without pride, “I know! The beasts are called Mutyukin and Murygin!”

In all honesty they should have chosen another charade, because no one had ever heard of any Murygin or Mutyukin; but no one took them to task for it. Everyone had had a good time, and that was what mattered.

But something in the boys' relationship to one another had shifted: Mikha, who had taken part in the charade, was raised to Sanya's level, and Ilya surpassed them both—he was, after all, the one to solve the riddle, and thus support the integrity of the game. It would have fallen through if no one at all had known the answer. Good show, Ilya!

The boys slung their arms around each other's shoulders in triumph, and Vasily Innokentievich photographed the three of them together. This was their first group portrait.

Vasily Innokentievich's camera was a war trophy—a fine one, Ilya noticed. He also noticed that his epaulets were those of a colonel, and decorated with serpents. He had been an army doctor.

On January 10, Anna Alexandrovna took the boys to a piano concert at Tchaikovsky Hall, to listen to Mozart. Ilya was fairly bored, and even took a little snooze, but Mikha felt a sense of elation. The music was so thrilling, and he was so deeply moved, that he wasn't even able to write a poem about it afterward. Sanya was upset, and nearly broke down in tears. Anna Alexandrovna knew why: Sanya wanted to be able to play Mozart that way, too.

On the eleventh they went back to school. That very first day, the three of them, along with another boy, Igor Chetverikov, got into a school-yard brawl with the other boys. It all began with an innocent snowball fight, and it ended in a rout: Mikha had been punched in the face and his glasses were broken; Ilya had a busted lip. It was humiliating that the fight had been two against four. Sanya, as usual, had hung back—not so much out of cowardice as from fastidiousness and tact. Murygin and Mutyukin aroused as much disgust in him as the infamous rag they had wiped his face with. This time, the bullies ignored Sanya completely. Red-haired Mikha, who had aimed a rock-hard snowball at the bull's eye of Murygin's nose and was right on the mark, was far more interesting to them. Ilya was over by the fence, spitting blood, Chetverikov was wondering whether it was time to hightail it, and Mikha was leaning with his back against a wall, fists at the ready. Mikha's fists were massive, almost like a grown-up's.

Then Mutyukin took out a jackknife resembling a penknife, only for very large pens, by the looks of it. The long, thin blade flipped open, and Mutyukin charged, aiming for Mikha's blunt fists. Suddenly, Sanya let out a shriek, leapt up, and in two short bounds was grabbing the blade with his bare hand. Blood spurted everywhere. Sanya waved his hand around and the red stream sprayed Mutyukin's face. Mutyukin bellowed like he was the one who had been slashed, and took off running, Murygin at his heels. But no one considered this a victory. Mikha couldn't see what was happening very well without his glasses. Chetverikov ran after Murygin, but there was no point in chasing him. It was too late. Ilya wrapped a scarf around Sanya's hand, but the blood continued to gush out like water from a faucet.

“Run and get Anna Alexandrovna, quick!” Ilya screamed to Mikha. “And you, go get the school nurse!”

Sanya had passed out, either from shock or from the loss of blood. Twenty-five minutes later he was at the Sklifosovsky Emergency Clinic, where they quickly stopped the bleeding and stitched up the wound. A week later, it was clear that his fourth and fifth fingers would no longer straighten out. A professor of medicine came in, took off the bandages from Sanya's little hand, and said he was very happy with how the patient's wound was healing. Then he told them that the cut was deep, going through the transverse metacarpal ligament, and he was amazed that only two of his fingers now seemed permanently curled toward the palm, rather than all four.

“Are there any exercises he can do? Massage? Electrophoresis? Some experimental procedure?” Anna Alexandrovna implored the professor, who treated her with respect.

“Of course. After he heals completely, we can partially restore mobility. But tendons aren't muscles, you understand.”

“What about playing a musical instrument?”

The professor smiled at her sympathetically. “It's unlikely, I'm afraid.”

He didn't know he had just signed a death warrant. Anna Alexandrovna said nothing to Sanya, and for six months after he was released from the hospital she continued taking him to physical therapy.

Larisa Stepanovna, the school principal, rushed to the hospital to see Sanya after his operation. Rumors about the knife had reached her, and she was alarmed. Sanya was firm and tight-lipped during the interrogation with the principal. Five times he told her that he had found the knife in the school yard, pressed a button, and the blade shot out, slicing his hand. Who had the knife belonged to? No idea. The evidence was found the next day. Just like in a movie, the knife lay on a mound of bloody snow. It was handed over to the principal, who locked it in the top drawer of her desk.