The Matiushin Case (4 page)

For a year, and then another, contact was maintained with postcards and letters, which Yakov wrote stingily, less and less often. But, having once made the effort to travel to such distant foreign parts, the father couldn't manage that kind of exertion again. His concern for himself, his desire for habitual comforts and
–
most importantly
–
for peace, were stronger. Looking out at him from the china cabinet, Alyonushka's photograph, with Grigorii Ilich in his dress uniform and medals, holding his granddaughter in his arms while Liudmila and Yakov stood at the sides like sentries, lulled him and put him off his guard. Many times he felt the impulse to go, but he didn't, and he wouldn't let the mother go either. They kept expecting Yakov and his family to visit them in the summer. Grigorii Ilich dreamed of how he would take leave and they would live at the dacha, how his granddaughter would eat raspberries and strawberries and he would take her fishing. The mother sometimes used to buy a toy, if she liked the look of it, or a beautiful child's blouse, or little woolly leggings or, if the price was good, a skirt or little shoes, storing them away to be grown into. But no one came. Then the postcards and letters suspiciously dried up. They thought: if there's no bad news, then at least they're alive and
well.

Yashka showed up in Yelsk in April, 1982. On that day Matiushin was late, he'd had a couple of drinks, and he arrived in time to feel the air of invisible devastation in the home, the desolation, as if someone had just died. His father was in a bad way and his mother was fluttering around him, giving him something to drink to make him feel better. Grigorii Ilich was lying in an armchair with his head thrown back, looking up at the ceiling. And the first thing he said, in a pitiless, even boastful voice, was
this:

‘That's it. You don't have any brother. If he shows his face here, don't open the door, let me know immediately and I'll come
–
I'll fling that lousy dog out so hard, he'll forget the way back here and never show his face again!' The mother shed a few tears, and the father flew into a fury and shouted: ‘Shut up, I've spoken! Who are you weeping for? Who's thrown away everything that was ever done for him in this life? A drunkard, a degenerate, a deserter, a bastard … Let him rot, the lousy dog, he'll never set foot in my house again!'

‘But how can you, Grigorii… ' the mother sobbed quietly. ‘Have pi-ity, forgi-i-ive him … Our little son
…'

‘It's over. He's finished. I'll give the order to the commandant's office, to the militia, let them catch him and put him in jail, the deserter. He's no son of mine.'

However, he couldn't bring such shame on himself. He waited, realising that Yakov might come back, preparing himself for the meeting. Matiushin also waited, in torment, although he couldn't understand what was happening. But Yakov didn't come. The father stayed at home and wouldn't let anyone leave, as if he were afraid. Yakov didn't come the next day either, or the day after that, when the father stayed to stand guard over the home again.

‘Yashenka's run away from the army … His Liudka left him for someone else. She took Alyonushka away from us, took away my only granddaughter … Yashenka took to drinking … And your father drove Yashenka away … ' the mother wailed. But she kept silent when the father was there.

In a flash the two photographs on display in the china cabinet disappeared. Matiushin kept looking at his father, amazed at how calm he was. The only thing that mattered to the father now was to banish Yakov from his sight, to erase Yakov from his memory. And Matiushin had to forget everything too. On the third day, the father recovered. He felt even better than before, had a good sleep and ate his fill. He was so certain that Yashka was no longer in his life, or in Yelsk, that there was no more talk about
him.

The doorbell rang, the mother went to answer it and there was Yakov. Maybe catching the smell of food from the kitchen, he lumbered in as if he owned the place and sat down at the table, dressed just as he was. Matiushin fell silent with his plate in front of him. His brother reeked of drink and the stubble on his face made it look dirty, even repulsive, as if Yakov had sprouted fur. He was wearing civilian clothes. But the hat, coat and shoes aged him and made him look pitiful. He didn't take the coat off, just sat there like that. His shirt collar stuck out like a dislocated wing. His tie dangled from his neck like a boa constrictor, orange and thick
–
a style that had been out of fashion for years.

‘I see you're still stuffing your face … ' Yakov said tersely to his brother, and stared dismally into Matiushin's half-emptied plate.

Then the mother recovered her wits and said timidly:

‘Why don't I give you some, Yashenka? Will you have some borshch?'

‘Serve it up, mother! I love your borshch: no one in the world makes borshch like our borshch, the real article! Where's father, why isn't he at home?'

‘Why, he hasn't come back
yet.'

‘Well, well, the old man's still serving, he just can't settle down. Give me the thick stuff now, good and thick. Don't be mean: there'll be enough for everyone. It's three days since I ate last!'

The mother didn't say anything, and he went into a daze
–
and then he attacked the soup, gulping it down like a navvy digging, and after he'd dug a great hole in the plateful, he
said:

‘Come on, mother, serve me some more! Seconds!'

She answered him without moving from her
seat.

‘I haven't got any seconds, Yashenka. There's only enough left for your father. Go away, or he'll be here any minute now. Don't get him roused. You know your father: he doesn't want to see
you.'

‘What does that mean, he doesn't want to? Aren't I at home then? Am I sitting in some strangers' house, eating strangers' borshch?'

‘You go back to your home, that's all. You've eaten for the journey, so go on. Afterwards, who knows: your father might forgive you and calm down.'

‘So that's it then. You're telling me to fuck off, your own son?' he screeched, and started weeping shrilly, then suddenly hammering on the empty table, trying to crush it and smash it with his fist. ‘Take that! Take that! Get out! Get out! Go and rot! Go and
rot!'

Blood spurted. He held his hand up, stretching it out, showing it the way a child shows a little cut, and intoning in a meek, quiet voice:

‘What have I done? Who have I killed, to be condemned like this, to have everything taken away from me? I love them, I love my father, I love them all! So why are they all killing me? She wanted to study, but I wouldn't let her, but this other one will let her, he's smarter, the child's not his, he doesn't mind … He's got fine manners and I haven't. He's got the right approach, he read her poems, the snake, but I didn't! Why, ma, why? Why did you have me? Why didn't you and father get divorced
–
then I'd have a different life, I'd be different, everything would be different!'

‘Yashka, listen, don't you get started, do you hear me? You've done enough shouting. Stop it, or I'll forget you're my son,' the mother said harshly. ‘Your wife left and now look at you, sitting there bellowing, drunk. You've done what you've done, you've got to understand that. And there's no point bellowing, you can't undo it. You have to live as things are, the way they've turned out. And why, why do you want to go chasing after her
–
have you lost your mind? You got your fingers burned once: do you want to get burned up completely? Live, there's no one stopping you. Just
live
. If you want to croak, then you will. You know you don't need a father or mother to do that. Get out of my sight, stop tormenting
me.'

Yakov wept, quiet now, almost radiant. The mother found a bandage and silently bound up his swollen hand. He asked her pitifully:

‘Ma. What should I do? They'll court-martial me, now. I had no right to abandon my post
…'

‘Well, now, we're all equal before the law, and you left your unit voluntarily, you have to understand that,' the mother reasoned seriously. ‘You go back, confess everything, tell them it was like this and that, admit your guilt, say it won't happen again. Only don't disgrace your father: don't let the whole town know about it. And if you don't go away, he'll hand you in himself. But if it's voluntary, with a confession, they'll forgive you, and no one will even notice. You're not some private after all: you're an officer, they won't want to disgrace themselves. You haven't spent all your money on drink, have you? Have you enough left for a ticket? Well, look here, I'll give you some for the train, but if you spend it on drink, don't you come back, I won't open the door
…'

The sight of this hunted man who was called his brother roused a scornful disbelief in Matiushin, as if he knew this man was only pretending and wasn't in pain at all. He couldn't forgive his brother for the words he had blurted out so thoughtlessly
–
and he sat there waiting for this unwelcome, drooling man to be gone from the table and the house.

Yakov vanished from their turbid period of hard times. Three years later, a zinc coffin arrived for burial in Yelsk from a foreign war too far away to be heard: that was how they found out that all that time Yakov had existed, lived and fought. Liudmila disappeared without trace: the family heard nothing more about her and Alyonushka after Yakov came to Yelsk and was cursed by his father. When they got the death notice, Grigorii Ilich was shocked to think that his son had turned out to be a hero. But the coffin arrived without any military decorations and the accompanying letter said he died in the course of performing his international
duty.

The mother's grief was breaking her heart, but she couldn't sense the body of her son through the zinc: she didn't know, and so she couldn't believe that he was lying in that zinc container. It seemed as if at any moment Alexandra Yakovlevna would fall silent, stop crying, come to her senses and move away from the coffin. Matiushin understood that a terrible calamity had occurred, that his brother had been killed, but nothing stirred in his soul, and that made him fearful: his soul was living its own life, and it felt bleak and cold inside him. People kept doing things around him, as if Yakov had been dear to them. Matiushin stood there, feeling nothing but weariness
–
how hard and dreary it was for him to stand. His father kept a strict, stern face, standing near the coffin, but even now he couldn't bear to be closer than two steps to his
son.

He was buried in the ‘Soviet' cemetery, as the people called it, where they buried Party people and those who had served in the armed forces. The military commissariat was supposed to pay for the funeral, but the father wouldn't demean himself and refused.

From then on Grigorii Ilich cut himself off from his family. While previously they used at least to see him at the table, a new order was suddenly adopted in the house, under which the father ate alone. First the mother laid the table for him, then, when he went away, they finished up after him. And everything was like that. Matiushin had the feeling that he wasn't living but had sunk down underwater, where everything was murky and green, as if he were seeing it through bottle glass. Now the despondency could stifle him for months at a time, making anything he did or any thoughts he had dreary and meaningless. And he lived without doing anything, not even knowing where the time went. From somewhere he remembered the ineffable light of life, its joy and the clarity, but when he tried to remember where the light came from, a bleary haze drifted up in front of his eyes, and what he knew wasn't that, but something different, and in that life of theirs, battened tightly shut, there wasn't even a chink through which to glimpse the light, and there was nowhere he could run away to from these four walls: he just lived inside
them.

That spring, when Matiushin turned twenty-three, he suddenly received a notice summoning him to the military commissariat for a medical. When the two elderly medical-commission doctors rejected him again, all he understood was that he had been declared finally and completely useless. He walked out of the commissariat but he couldn't go home. His wanderings led him to the station, and there he found himself in the same buffet where he had once said goodbye to his brother. He recognised the buffet and ordered a bottle of vodka, as his brother had done then, drank as much as he could, then set off back to the commissariat.

In the doorway he started yelling that he wanted to serve in the army
–
but they wouldn't let him in, drunk as he was, so he rushed about, smashing and shattering everything in sight. Everyone on duty came running to grab him, even the commanding officer got involved. He calmed Matiushin down and led him into his office. The commander knew whose son he was, he knew his brother had been killed carrying out his international duty
–
but if only he could tell which decision would suit Grigorii Ilich and which wouldn't … He would probably have to guess.

‘Is it really true a strapping hero like this can't be any use? We'll send him to the artillery: who needs keen hearing there?' he said, trying to sound cheerful. ‘It's a family of heroes, a guardsman's dynasty, you might say, and we're blocking the lad's way. I'll settle it, I'll settle it … You stay at home and wait for the papers.'

Thinking that his father wouldn't find out, Matiushin decided to keep quiet about everything at home. He lived those days lightheaded with impatience, even haste, waiting for the call-up papers, but hiding from his father. One day Grigorii Ilich came home, weary and taciturn, and without even taking his coat off, just removing his shoes, called for Matiushin.