The Matiushin Case (3 page)

On the day of the young couple's departure, no one saw them off
–
no one could violate the family custom. In their family people were only seen off as far as the doorway. But a long time was spent solemnly packing things for them to take with
them.

All day long the mother piled up the hallway with boxes of jam, compote and pickles. With a soldier's help, they just about managed to load them into the car sent by the father to round everything off. The same soldier
–
the father's driver
–
had already been ordered to help them load up at the station, but Yakov suddenly announced that his brother would help them. It didn't make any sense to the mother that they all had to squeeze into one car and bump along, squashed up by boxes, if there was a soldier. Without even arguing with her, Yakov nodded to his brother, and Matiushin clambered into the dark bowels of the familiar car, feeling as if he was falling somewhere. They reached the little station at breakneck speed and unloaded everything onto the empty, deserted platform. The station in Yelsk consisted of two asphalt platforms steamrolled straight into the ground. Liudmila went off to one side and started waiting for the train on her own. Yakov searched the little station with his eyes, strode off and walked into some place without saying a word. Setting off after his brother, Matiushin found himself in a dimly lit station bar with a hollow echo. Yakov asked at the counter for cigarettes and vodka, taking a glass of it, so colourless that it seemed empty, and stopping at the first table he came
to.

‘How about you, don't smoke yet?' he said drearily.

‘Yes, I do,' Matiushin confessed rather than answered.

‘Let's have a smoke … Come on, it's all right with me … Maybe I can get you a beer, or you'd like something stronger, maybe vodka?'

‘Yes!' Matiushin blurted out. ‘Vodka.'

‘Mind now, you decide for yourself, I'm not your father.'

Matiushin didn't say anything, and Yakov went for the vodka. He took a bit of salad on a little plate. And a bottle.

‘If we don't finish it, there'll be some left, I'm not greedy. Right then, here's to the parting. Good health!'

Stunned by the ironic sneer he could sense in his older brother's words, by the fact that Yakov seemed to be saying: you and I are strangers to each other and you'll never be family to me, you little kid, Matiushin began pouring his heart out to his older brother in syrupy phrases, feeling as if he had divided up in the air of that bar and could see himself, like a reflection in a whole series of mirrors.

Yakov didn't say anything, just poured himself another glass. He cringed when his brother recalled their childhood, but Matiushin had to recall it, so that Yakov would know how Matiushin remembered him and himself to this day
–
as if he loved and cherished him. Yakov didn't want to understand that, or perhaps he couldn't: he didn't believe in that kind of retentive memory.

‘You fool, don't you dare talk about all that, you're not old enough yet,' Yakov said intolerantly. ‘It's all their fault! People like that shouldn't be allowed to have children, they maimed my life. And I can't make out who you think you are either. You say you remember me and you love me, but how can you love me, if I've hated you all my life? I started hating you as soon as you were born. I even remember the night when our mother and father fucked so they could have you. You don't know what I know, what I've seen … Our mother made our father the way he is. And what about the way he beat her? Stood her against the wall and beat her, because he didn't love her, because they've hated each other all their lives!'

‘Yasha, they love you!' Matiushin whined drunkenly.

‘They love themselves. Maybe they loved you too, you're a little mummy's boy, the way she raised you for herself.'

‘I … I was never … It's you who's their pride and
joy!'

Matiushin overcame his loathing for vodka and emptied his glass in gulps, right to the bottom, not knowing how to simply swallow it, flinging himself after his brother into the bleak, colourless abyss. At some unknown time he had convinced himself that his brother was unhappy, but maybe that was what he, Matiushin, had needed
–
not to see his brother as a strong being, but to see his pain and unhappiness through the strength and to pity him as he pitied himself. He even understood,
now
he suddenly understood, that he couldn't love his brother, but he forced himself to love him and to listen.

Without any kind of pain, only growing angrier and angrier, Yakov had his say
…

‘Our mother's just plain ugly, as if she wasn't a woman at all. She's like a grey mouse
–
not good enough for our father. All his life he's had women as easy as shit, any kind you like. But he never loved them. She knew that, so she wasn't concerned, she wasn't afraid, she let him stray. He beat her, he wanted to drive her to divorce him. He knocked her teeth out for that. But it was like they had a pact! When they had you, it wasn't children, it was ten-ton weights they needed to go on living with each other … And is that a life anyway, the way we lived, the way they live now? What have they got in their life? The kids? Why, I hate them, you, myself, everybody … The things I've seen! What can I think about them? What am I? A son, or maybe a son of a bitch, some kind of foundling? I know if I'm dying none of you will come: that's our custom
–
snuff it on your own. So I won't come to you either, you can all snuff it here! I'll live my life without them, without you: I don't need anyone. And that's the truth. There's no other truth, there isn't any truth.'

At that moment the earth staggered and a fine-splintered, jingling sound set the bar spinning. The glasses trembled and so did the huge-seeming, appallingly empty bottle. An inanimate rumbling was approaching out of nowhere, blow by blow. The air was already booming. Yakov grabbed his brother and dragged him
out.

The Moscow train was trickling thickly into the little station. The ponderous carriages rolled along the sharp line of the rails, windows flickered, a greenish, dusty ground floated by. The train stretched itself out and stopped. Yakov swore and drove his brother and Liudmila over to the boxes that had been left on the platform. They all grabbed boxes, suddenly becoming misshapenly similar, and ran
–
only Yakov got away from them, running forward, on and on, along the sheer wall of carriages. But there were no conductors to be seen at any of the blindly battened doors.

His brother shouted and hammered. It was as if they were all dying, as if they wouldn't let them in to breathe, to live! Suddenly a door opened in one carriage and the step was lowered with a clatter … A tipsy, condescending conductor looked down on them. Yakov tossed a box into the vestibule and jumped into its black opening, crowding the conductor. He yelled for them to hand up the rest of the stuff. Only his arms stuck out of the opening, as if they'd been cut off. Trying to keep up, not to fall behind, Matiushin jostled at the foot of the carriage, burned out from the vodka, breathing into Liudmila's snow-white linen back
–
she was grabbing the boxes out of his hands and handing them up to her husband. But the train shuddered and slowly set off on its way as if it was plodding along. Liudmila dashed in fright to a travelling bag that was still on the platform. The carriage was rolling away faster and faster. Yakov sprang out of the darkness, shouting, hung out from the step, grabbed the bag, then grabbed up his wife who was running after the carriage and hoisted her off the ground.

For a few moments Matiushin's eyes still clung to their carriage and he could see his brother, but Yakov vanished blankly into the opening, and the carriage disappeared in the smooth, even movement of others like it. He was still trying to run forward with the last box left in his hands, tramping loudly along the suddenly quiet platform, but he stumbled, went flying and collapsed three metres further on. When he came to himself, he could barely make out the train's little semi-circular, cast-iron icon in the distance. Reddish-brown compote was pouring out of the box underneath him. He guiltily unglued himself from the asphalt and dragged himself away, not knowing where to, thinking only of getting home as soon as possible. The dangling belly of his shirt had turned reddish brown from the compote's clammy wetness. Where the platform and the little world of the deserted station ended, all the paths and pointed-topped thickets of fences flickered in his eyes and the warm beehives of buildings glowed brightly
–
that was the suburbs of Yelsk, squat and broad, like the whole of the district. Two sober men who were striding along the street suddenly roared and started heroically chasing after him. Matiushin shied away from the men, alarming people walking towards him, and darted off into the courtyards and side streets, running until he got lost and then came to his senses in the middle of nowhere, in the twilight, on an empty lot overgrown with burdock.

He was carried home from the outskirts by a bus that laboured away until it was dark, wandering around for a long time, already half-empty, a bright spot in the hazy little town, as if it was meandering over the vault of heaven. Matiushin's soul was just as bright and as empty. He didn't sit, but stood in the corner by the doors, as if he'd been punished. People in the bus kept looking at him, some angrily, some pityingly, seeing a worthless, drunk young man with his clothes soaked in vomit.

The door was opened by his mother
–
in her nightshirt, with her hair dangling. She looked like a little kid like that, and her loose hair covered her head sparsely, as if it wasn't growing but lying on
her.

‘Have you lost your mind, gadding about until midnight!' she asked, her voice soaring to a wail. ‘Did you get there? Did you see them off? Did they get on the train?' With her weak sight she hadn't got a good look at him
yet.

Not knowing what to answer, he hovered outside the
door.

‘What d'you think you're doing?' She dragged him into the house and then gave a shriek, immediately frantic. ‘Son, son, what's wrong with you? Oh, Vasenka … What … What … Ah, you villain … been drinking, haven't you? You've been drinking! And your shirt, your trousers, what's that, what have you gone and done?'

Matiushin couldn't utter a single word, but he didn't want to stay silent any longer
–
he cringed as if he had been struck and started breathing hoarsely.

‘Yashka, the villain, Yashka, it was him! He poured the drink, come on now, tell
me!'

‘Ya–a … sh-ka … ' Matiushin forced out, groaning feebly.

‘Did he hit you? Answer me, what did he do to
you?'

‘Nn-o-o … No
…'

‘And the blood, where's the blood from?'

‘It's from the box … It got broke … Compote
…'

‘Did they get on the train? And you? Have you been lying around drunk?'

But he didn't answer any more questions, he just gazed at her stupidly. His mother fell silent too, she'd run out of steam. Already thinking of something else, she shepherded him
out.

‘Go and wash, take everything off there. Quick now, or your father will come. It's just your luck, you villain, that your father's not in. Have a sleep, and then I'll give you a good talking-to, I'll give you what for, knock this nonsense out of you. You'll remember Yashka, oh you will.' And in her anger she lashed the shirt across his bare back. ‘You'll remember him all your life!'

His father showed up: he clattered about in the hallway while he gave the mother instructions, then walked through into the kitchen, where she set the table. Matiushin was afraid to make a single sound as he lay there because his head was spinning as if he was being tortured on the wheel, and the bleary vodka haze was stifling him. But he endured this torture, managing to breathe and make himself fall asleep, he managed to do everything, even though he was poisoned with vodka. In the morning, when his mother interrogated him about Yashka, he lied to her, answering in fabrications, saying that he'd only asked Yashka for a sip in the bar, and kept mum about everything else. And so his mother cursed that train, and cursed his father for getting them tickets without places for a third-class sleeper, when he should have taken them to Gradov in the car and put them in a compartment carriage: there was another train that went to Moscow from there. And she kept mournfully recalling the particular box that had got broken
–
she'd only set aside one like that for them, with the jars of cherry compote.

Six months later the couple got in touch. They wrote to say that Liudmila was expecting a baby … Matiushin's father wasn't exactly delighted, but he trembled over that letter and made the mother read it out again, exulting that the line had been continued and joking that his little dacha had come in useful. Yakov was serving in a little town on the Polish border. He had set himself up, ignoring his father's advice, and he hadn't asked for any help. But as soon as the time drew close, the father seconded the mother to them with money, so that she could make sure they had all they needed for the baby and also stand guard over Liudmila and maintain order. The mother lived with the couple a long time. She stayed until the birth of a little girl, the granddaughter about whom Grigorii Ilich, strangely enough, had been dreaming. Knowing that this little Alyona was in this world, he loved her, not rationally, and not in an emotional sort of way, but with his blood. He went to see his granddaughter that very year, in person, after his wife. He considered this his duty also because Yakov hadn't obtained any accommodation in the little town and the young family was stuck in a dreary hostel. He used his visit to do everything for them: he got friendly with some people, bent over backwards where he needed to, gave some people a fright and some people presents
–
and managed to arrange a separate apartment for Yakov.