The Big Green Tent (58 page)

Then Ilya realized that his neighbor was dead.

Edwin Yakovlevich Vinberg's emigration was over.

 

DEAF-MUTE DEMONS

There is a year, or perhaps a season, in almost every person's life, when the buds of possibility burst open, when fateful meetings take place, when paths cross, when courses and levels shift, when life rises from the depths and ascends to the heights. When Mikha was twenty-one, he met Alyona and fell in love with her so profoundly and so hopelessly that his entire former life, full of sweet girls, lighthearted and noncommittal rendezvous, and earnest, energetic nights in the dormitory, shattered like glass. Only meaningless shards and slivers of his former enthusiasms remained.

The second event that shook the foundations of his life, one no less significant, occurred a bit earlier. It involved his professional interests. At the beginning of his fourth year, Mikha didn't exactly renounce his love of Russian literature, but he did discover one more strong attraction. Every day he rushed off to the department of defectology, where he audited classes on pedagogy of the deaf-mute taught by the renowned specialist Yakov Petrovich Rink. Rink represented a whole dynasty of specialists who had been developing speech therapies for the deaf, deaf-mute, and hard of hearing over the past century.

A friend of Mikha's took him to Rink's first lecture, and after several weeks Mikha was determined to devote himself to studying the pedagogy of the deaf-mute without having to abandon the department of philology. With Rink's permission and encouragement, he took several preparatory exams and declared a double major in deaf education and philology.

At first he rushed from one department to the other, but with time he gravitated more and more toward defectology.

Perhaps an astute psychoanalyst could have ascertained the true motivation behind Mikha's new interest, but this did not happen. The shade of the inarticulate Minna did not trouble him, and the universal sense of guilt that plagued him did not enter into it. Alyona's arrival in his life swept away all thought of his minor amorous triumphs of the past three years, as well as his memories of this adolescent trauma. And what was there to remember, anyway?

A slow-witted, barely articulate creature, Minna had lived her twenty-seven years almost unnoticed. She never burdened anyone with her presence, and she died just as inconspicuously as she had lived. Aunt Genya viewed the death of her daughter almost as though she had been a household pet. Other people didn't even notice that the timid, gentle creature with the weak smile, who never caused anyone any harm, had died. And Mikha recalled Catullus's sparrow, how—what was her name?—Lesbia had wept for it.

Soon after Minna's trestle bed and the child's chair she always laid her clothes on before going to sleep were removed from the house, Aunt Genya was liberated from heavy cares, and with deep satisfaction and a shadow of pathological pride, she would lament from time to time, like a litany: “How much misfortune! How much misfortune has fallen on me to bear! I have been the butt of misfortune!”

Mikha had been a boon for her. From the time he moved in with her at the age of twelve, he had been tasked with going to the store, tidying the room, cleaning the communal facilities and the kitchen, as well as—and this was the most unpleasant task for him—carrying out random trivial errands for Aunt Genya, such as rushing off to the drugstore for medicine, taking half a pie to her sister Fanya and picking up a saucer of meat jelly from her other sister, Rayechka.

For almost ten years he had carried out his familial duties, uncomplaining and with a light heart. His aunt, insofar as she was able, loved her charge, and did not intend to part with him if she could help it. But, obeying her Jewish instinct for matchmaking—joining up two free valences so they wouldn't end up in the wrong place—she occasionally introduced him to nice Jewish girls from her wide circle of family members. Her greatest misfire had occurred on this front: her own son Marlen had slipped out of her fingers and married a Russian girl. She had never been able to reconcile herself to this fact, though she admitted that “this Lida girl” was “quite suitable and decent.”

*   *   *

At the beginning of October, Aunt Genya invited her distant niece Ella to visit. Quiet, as curvaceous as a bottle, with bottle legs, Ella brought with her a large oval box of chocolates. Aunt Genya wouldn't touch them, for fear of diabetes. Among her other firmly held beliefs was this one—that diabetes is caused by indulging in chocolate. She placed the box adorned with a running elk on the buffet and served bouillon.

Mikha sat submissively through all three courses of the meal, praising each of them, while the downcast Ella pushed her food around with her spoon silently. It was evident that she, too, suffered through the forced spontaneity of these meals with eligible distant male relatives, none of which culminated in the engagement that was sought. After dinner, Genya raised an eyebrow signaling that it was time for Mikha to take Ella to the metro. When he returned, his aunt, crossly shaking her doll-like head with its narrow part down the middle, said:

“You should have paid more attention to Ella. She has a good education, and she's an only child. They have an apartment in Maryina Roshcha that you wouldn't believe! Yes, she's a bit older than you are, I won't deny it. But she's one of ours!”

Still, the last thing she wanted was to be left alone in the communal apartment with the neighbors, who used to be decent, but who had all been replaced by anti-Semites and thieves, as if they had been handpicked exclusively for her.

But at that moment Mikha was thinking only about the box of chocolates. A beautiful girl named Alyona, a first-year student from the department of graphic arts, had invited him to her birthday party. As soon as she had arrived at the institute, she began to attract attention, not so much for her beauty—her face was like those Botticelli had loved, full of bright silence and youthful androgyny—as for her remoteness and haughtiness. Everyone wanted to be friends with her, but she was like water: she slipped out of one's grasp. Yet the previous evening, she had approached Mikha herself and invited him to her birthday party!

Mikha was not the most eligible young man in the department, since there were also several singer-songwriters, whose fame as wildly popular youthful bards was just beginning. Mikha couldn't compete with them. He wrote poems, too; but he certainly couldn't sing and accompany himself on the guitar. Still, he was a striking redhead, exceptionally conciliatory, who enjoyed great success among the girls, in particular those from out of town. His presence was indispensable at every student gathering or party.

Oh, he would have jumped at the chance to go to Alyona's birthday party; but he didn't even have the money to buy her the most modest gift. So, out of a sense of pride, he decided not to go. He had no one to borrow it from. Ilya was out of town, and he still owed Anna Alexandrovna fifteen rubles from the month before. He hadn't taken any money from Aunt Genya since he had started receiving a student stipend. This month, he had run through his funds early.

This fancy box on the buffet was just the thing, though! A dull-enough present, of course, but one couldn't arrive empty-handed …

He listened to his aunt's exhortations about marrying a Jewish girl. Then he asked whether he could take the box of chocolates to someone as a gift. His aunt had other plans for the chocolates, but Mikha turned on the charm and reminded her, as if by chance:

“The day after tomorrow I'm taking you to the cemetery; I haven't forgotten!”

The trip to Vostryakovo Cemetery took precedence over all other forms of entertainment for her, including the theater, movies, and visits to living relatives. She had never traveled to the distant cemetery alone, however.

His aunt understood the trade-off. Mikha got the box of chocolates and ran off with the elk under his arm to Pravda Street, where Alyona lived. He arrived—and it transpired! He was in love. Helplessly and inextricably, as had happened to him once before in his childhood, when he went to Sanya's for the first time. This time he fell in love with the household: with the head of the household, Sergei Borisovich Chernopyatov, Alyona's father; with his wife, Valentina; with the cabbage pies, the beet salad, and the “music on the bones”—records pressed on old X-ray film. Imagine, a rousing Gershwin number resounding from a hipbone! But, most important, of course—he fell in love with Alyona, who was not at all haughty or arrogant at home, but, on the contrary, quiet and sweet, embodying all the feminine charm the world had to offer.

They lost themselves in kisses on the balcony, and a mad tenderness held in check the mad passion that flared up in Mikha at his first touch of her fragile collarbone, her delicate wrists, her limp, childlike fingers.

Some people have talents as straightforward as apples, as obvious as eggs—for mathematics, for music, for drawing, even for mushroom-picking or table tennis. Mikha's talents were more subtle. In fact, at first glance, he seemed to have none. Rather, he had abilities: poetry, music, drawing.

His true talent was not visible to the naked eye. He was endowed with such emotional sympathy, such an unbridled, absolute capacity for empathy, that all his other qualities were subordinated to this “universal compassion.”

He fulfilled the requirements of his studies in the philological department with pleasure and ease, but his interest in defectology arose from the very depths of his personality, from his gift of empathy. From the beginning he had set his hopes on teaching literature. He hungered to continue the tradition established long ago by Victor Yulievich, and he already saw himself entering the classroom and declaiming the greatest lines of Russian poetry … into the air, into the world, into the cosmos. And the boys and girls sitting around him—some of them! some of them, at least!—would be receptive to these sounds, and the kernels of meaning they contained.

Before getting his work assignment, Mikha went to see Rink, to ask his help in finding an appointment in a school for the deaf. For who else would bestow the treasures of poetry and prose on them?

Yakov Petrovich studied Mikha through his glasses, and asked him more questions about his life than about his profession. He concluded that this was the first time in his experience that a philology student had wished to work in the area of defectology.

“There is a very good boarding school for deaf-mutes where you could be of use, and where you could broaden your skills. It's a wonderful corrective learning institution, just outside of Moscow; but you would have to live there yourself. They need a good Russian literature and language teacher. Go there and have a look around. If you like what you see, come back and we'll continue our discussion,” Yakov Petrovich suggested.

It took Mikha three hours to reach the school—he traveled first by commuter train to Zagorsk, then by bus, which he had to wait for, and then a half hour by foot along a forest road. It was early spring, and a light rain was falling, through which the woods showed a pale green. The rain whispered in last year's grasses, and the new growth was already pushing up through the dead foliage. It seemed that the rustling was the delicate sound of its growing. A bird screeched at regular intervals. Perhaps it wasn't even a bird, but a wild animal. It occurred to Mikha that the residents of this place couldn't hear these living sounds. On the other hand, city dwellers didn't hear them either, since the urban noise drowned them out. And a poem began to take shape in him already:

Out of silence, rain, and growing

grasses, sounds are born midst tender

da-da. Music, da-da, da-da

da-da, da-da harks the sender …

No, it wasn't coming together.

Out of silence, rain, and growing

grasses, hark!—from embryos spring

symphonies so wild and tender,

da-da music floods surrender …

Well, it had promise. He liked exact rhymes and regretted that all of them had been used many times before. This is what he said about the well-worn railroad ties of poetry that had been laid down long ago. He enjoyed the process of seeking them, but realized that one couldn't get very far on them. Brodsky had not yet begun his triumphal conquest of the world, compelling, through his long lines and his absolute contempt for this “tic-toc” and “da-da,” the impoverished but inspired doggerel to cease.

Now the forest ended, and the grounds of the school began. A two-story wooden house stood on a small rise surrounded by dozens of small, cottage-like structures. There wasn't much left of the ancient fence—squat columns crowned with spheres eaten away by time were interspersed with worn gray palisades. The gate had long since vanished. Fat linden trees grew at uneven intervals—the remnants of a tree-lined avenue. It was already past lunchtime, and there was no one to be seen. He walked along the soggy, still bare earth toward the porch and knocked on the door. No one opened. He waited a bit, then the door flew open. A woman with a bucket of water and a dirty rag floating on top was standing in front of him.

He laughed and introduced himself to her. Aunt Genya, a slave to superstitions, signs, and portents, would have deemed this an auspicious beginning: the bucket was full of water, albeit dirty.

And, truly, it would have been hard to imagine a better beginning. In the director's office three women and an older man with a small mustache were drinking tea with jam. Mikha knew the director was a woman, and he concluded that she must be the Armenian woman, who also had a small mustache.

“Hello. I'd like to talk to Margarita Avetisovna. I'm here on the recommendation of Yakov Petrovich…” Before he managed to say the last name, they all broke out in smiles, and hurried to pour him tea and serve him jam in a little dish.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and a boy of about twelve came in. He reported something, speaking only in a language of gestures.