CHAPTER FOUR

Of the time that he lived at Rosa’s, Sidelnikov remembered remarkably few days in the same detail as this one, during which the intimate subcurrent of life showed itself with uninvited bluntness.

He learnt to distinguish the private from the formal quite early, before he even knew those words. The world was distinctly divided into two parts, the permitted and the concealed, outlawed, of which one could tell no one. Sometimes, both realms began to converge alarmingly and would even touch each other, and that caused him either dismay or strange rapture. He also happened to make mistakes that completely muddled his already overworked head, closely shorn apart from a short fringe.

For example, he knew exactly that the private word “bogeys” meant snot in the nose, and did not mean anything else. Therefore, if Rosa quietly suggested to him to go get the bogeys out, that meant that it was time to blow his nose properly because his stuffed nostrils would not let him breathe and his handkerchief had disappeared somewhere yet again.

Whereas the ABC that Rosa brought him in order to teach him to read was obviously of official provenance, judging by the soporific pictures which showed a banal mama, washing a window frame, and the inevitable Kremlin towers. That was why Sidelnikov’s astonishment caused by the first word he had ever read defied description. It was the word “bogeys”. He read it twice syllable by syllable and then raised his eyes to Rosa who was sitting next to him, and asked in embarrassment, ‘How come they know?’

But that was long ago, long before Sidelnikov became an avid reader of everything he happened to come across. He and Rosa even established a new game whereby, come evening, Rosa would say, as if by the way, ‘Looks like Nikita Sergeyevich hasn’t spoken to us for some while...’ At once, Sidelnikov would spring to his feet, drag a chair into a free space and set it with its back to the audience. He put on the seat a newspaper taken from the window-sill and placed a glass of water nearby, and then in a heavy slow voice borrowed from radio newsreaders announced the heading of the editorial: ‘The Speech of Comrade N. S. Khrushchev!’ Nearly knocking the glass down onto the floor, he darted off again in order to unearth, in the whatnot drawer, somebody’s ancient glasses without lenses and without any sidepieces but with an elastic that really made one’s ears stick out. Thus equipped, in the round spectacles and lop-eared, he could now walk to the rostrum slowly, taking his time, and start the delivery of his address.

‘Dear comrades!’

From the front row, Rosa was looking at him with solemnity and respect.

‘At the present time, our Party is carrying out an extensive programme for the production of fertilisers, development of irrigation is under way, and the level of mechanisation is rising.’

‘Is that right? Imagine that!’ Rosa did not hide her enthusiasm. It is true, however, that from time to time her face looked aloof and a little embarrassed.

‘...It can be said with certainty that agricultural workers will guarantee the level...’ Sometimes the speaker stumbled and lost the line he was reading. ‘The level... Yes, the level of production that has been set out by the Programme of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.’

At this moment, one had to sip decorously some water from the glass, the way it was done by all the lecturers who used to speak in the yard agitprop centre before free film shows.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Don’t interfere! Engaged in the great creative labour for the construction of the communist society, at the same time we shall not forget for one moment the necessity to fight in order to (there was a pause for the brief picking of the nose) prevent the global nuclear war. And in this, our Party follows the path indicated by V. I. Lenin.’

‘Oh my, that’s spiffing. Maybe you’d like a pancake?’

The speech lasted very long, for about ten minutes. Whereupon Sidelnikov, somewhat weary, would grow cold towards his undertaking, content with the effect produced. The effect consisted, first of all, in his obtaining a golden foolproof master key that fitted anything at all, as much the intimate primeval bogeys, as the global nuclear war.

This pervasive ability was appreciated for what it was worth even by such an authority as Lisa Baronkin who once convened about six local hoods by the storage sheds and brought Sidelnikov there in order to ask him to read the four-letter word that was inscribed in chalk on the boards. He did what was asked of him with unfeigned modesty but irked by the meagreness of the task and incomprehensibility of the inscription. He waited a little in case there would be any further requests, then departed with dignity and not in the least flattered by the mirth of the congregation. On his way back, the unsatisfied reader’s hunger made him for the umpteenth time automatically read the word, which denoted the utter hopelessness of things, on the yellow stucco of their block of flats.

And on the day in question, the same Lisa, taking out of her mouth her forefinger, whose nail had not yet been completely chewed off, offered Sidelnikov prospects of revealing a terrible secret on condition that he would not tell anyone, or else he’d be scum. He swore twice, but she was still dragging him in tow from the corridor and into the kitchen, then to the yard and the back of the storage shed darkly reminding, ‘Mind, you’ll be scum!’ He hesitated, but then had to admit reluctantly that okay, he’d be scum. And then she imparted to him uttering every word with gleeful gusto that some people! Men and women! Go to bed! Naked!

‘So what?’ asked Sidelnikov. ‘I…know it too. What, do you sleep in your dress?’

Almost insulted, Lisa inquired whether he were an idiot. Sidelnikov more and more reminded her of her own twin sister Olga, who was just as stupid and a thorough mongol into the bargain.

‘Are you an idiot? They sleep with each other!’

‘A-ha!’ Sidelnikov conceded politely. In actual fact, he remained just as much disappointed and was itching to go back to Rosa’s room to the unfinished Thomas Mayne Reid novel.

Now Lisa was trying to catch up with him in order to ascertain her dubious triumph. She was jabbering something about bras but he was not listening, and besides it started to rain. But all of a sudden, one phrase caught him like a poisoned arrow. He even stumbled on the porch and badly knocked his knee. ‘You don’t know how ashamed they feel!’ said Lisa Baronkin, and the words hit him with the cold breeze of true-life mystery. The commonplace necessity of sleeping at night became overshadowed by some particular vague procedure, in which certain people, women and men, had to participate by overcoming their shame.

It was quiet and somehow sad in the room. Rosa made tea for Innokenty. He had of late become a fairly frequent visitor but would still get wildly embarrassed every time when he took out of his briefcase edible offerings in the form of sweetened cakes of cottage cheese or when he was hiding from view his feet in hideous socks under the chair. Rosa and Innokenty were talking in a low voice about someone by the name of Nadezhda Konstantinovna.

Sidelnikov perched on the windowsill with his back to them and opened the thick orange volume on a bookmarked page.

“Roblado gave preferment to the belles of Havannah, and descanted upon the plump, material beauty which is characteristic of the Quadroons.”

‘Did you really know her?’ Innokenty was curious.

‘What if I did,’ Rosa consented coldly.

“…while the lieutenant expressed his penchant for the small-footed Guadalajxareñas...”

‘How come you never told me about it? Do you remember anything special? What was she like?’

Sidelnikov immediately imagined the unknown Nadezhda Konstantinovna as a plump, material beauty, but with small feet.

‘She was ill and old and could barely walk.’

‘And what was she like as a human being, as a person?’

‘Do you really want to know what I think? She was a rare idiot, that’s what she was.’

The rain was now lashing the windowpane. Innokenty fell silent, obviously shocked by Rosa’s words.

Sidelnikov imagined how Lisa Baronkin as a middle-aged sophisticated lady immersed in memories and queried by her slightly bald admirer, ‘Did you know Sidelnikov? What was he like?’ would answer with confidence, ‘He was a rare idiot, that’s what he was.’

‘We were allowed to look after her.’ It sounded as if Rosa was trying to justify herself. ‘I was twenty-something, a student at the Bauman University. In those days, I understood nothing at all. But very soon afterwards, I started to. One should avoid such people like the plague.’

‘But she was the wife of...’

‘The widow. So much the worse for her.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ Innokenty said heatedly but in lowered voice nonetheless. ‘I’ll never believe that Vladimir Ilyich could be with such, eh, what you called her.’

Sidelnikov froze because it dawned on him who they were talking about.

‘Listen,’ Rosa said, very sternly. ‘Go talk about your Vladimir Ilyich to somebody else. Do you understand?’

The silence that ensued after these words lasted so long that Sidelnikov wanted to turn his head but restrained himself.

‘Half my life, I’ve been not living but hiding in my own country. When before the war they took Mikhail away, I was chasing all those officials and writing letters. And then one day a friend of mine, who was married to a security officer, dragged me into the loo. She locked the door and whispered to me, so quietly I could hardly hear her, that they were going to take me away any day now and that I was on their list and must flee at once, anywhere as far as possible from Moscow. I still had a chance to look her husband in the eye though he wouldn’t look straight in mine. On the next day, I told my neighbours some tall story, rushed to the station with Fedya in my arms and got into a second-class carriage. The rest isn’t interesting at all. And I don’t feel like recalling it.’

‘Anything that concerns you is of interest to me.’

‘...When they took Mikhail away, he said goodbye to me as if he were going away on business for a week. We had already been separated at the time, you see. I was the one who made that decision. But he would come to see Fedya and me every day. You know what he said to me by way of farewell? His last words were, ‘Rosa, please don’t wear these gum boots all the time, your legs will be aching...’ Well, I didn’t have anything else to wear on my feet apart from those boots.’

The rain was abating like a child tired of crying, to whom nobody had paid attention. But at the same time, behind the wall, at their neighbours’, Lisa’s furious sobbing started after some distinct slaps bestowed on bare flesh.

‘He must have been tall and handsome,’ said Innokenty in what did not sound like his normal voice.

Rosa replied that no, Mikhail was of average height and quite ordinary, even plain-looking. Besides, she could hardly remember his face. She had no photos left. She only remembered his eyes, the colour of overripe grapes. She put it exactly that way, “overripe grapes”. And suddenly, she added, ‘Same as this one’s over here.’

Unwillingly, Sidelnikov turned his head and met her eyes. She was looking straight at him and what she said a couple of seconds later was for some reason addressed to him, Sidelnikov. She said quietly and firmly that her only man was still alive and she knew it for sure, even though she had not received any letters and of course now it was too late for letters anyway.

‘But I can hear him every day, every single day,’ Rosa repeated. ‘And if he were dead, I would have felt it.’

She took the kettle that had gone cold and made for the door but at that moment Vassily Baronkin, drunk as a lord, materialised in the doorway. He uttered his usual greetings that consisted of: ‘Hail, workers of labour!’ He treated Rosa with respect and therefore every time he addressed her he would start with the words: ‘I sure am sorry’. But at the sight of Innokenty, Vassily always had a face of someone suffering from heartburn and would defiantly shoot at him just one, always the same, brief phrase: ‘Gimme a fag!’ Whereupon Innokenty would every time report dutifully: ‘Sorry, I do not smoke.’ Obviously, this could drive anyone mad. Sidelnikov felt awkward for Innokenty and was amazed at the tolerance shown by Vassily, whom he had given the title of “Fire Hydrent”. (Now, it is worth explaining that Sidelnikov had a habit of giving those around him new monikers of an absolutely obscure but expressive kind that he picked from Lord knows where. The notice “Fire Hydrent” was lettered in red oil paint on a wall by the kindergarten toilets. Such a name could only belong to Vassily, and to no one else. Another unclear inscription that read “Blak Proon” was noticed by him on a market stall of an Oriental vendor of dry fruit and soon became a second name of the cleaning girl, Galia Sharipovna, who had black hair and large eyes.)

Sidelnikov’s kindly feelings towards Vassily had a very solid foundation. There was an occasion when, with the whole yard looking on, The Hydrent single-handedly hacked a pig to death. The pig was brought there in the sidecar of his motorcycle. He singed it with something resembling a gas-welding device and the next half of the day he spent chopping the meat and frying it in the communal kitchen. The smell that filled the flat was driving the five-year old Sidelnikov to distraction. Rosa had tried to distract him and even shamed him but he continued to wander along the empty corridor like a hungry puppy, while the festive droning of Baronkin’s kith and kin was coming through from behind the kitchen door. This went on and on until suddenly, a fire-breathing Vassily tumbled out of the kitchen with a huge meaty bone in his hand. He was carrying it in front of him like a shaggy flower - and he was moving towards Rosa’s room. Stumbling across the slightly dazed Sidelnikov in the corridor, he handled the souvenir to the boy saying, ‘Five minutes gone - the flight’s normal!’ What followed needs no description. Happy beyond measure, Sidelnikov did not want to part with the bone even after he had polished it clean. He took it to bed with him, but already before the daybreak the precious gift perished in the rubbish bin.

...

Having heard Innokenty’s usual declaration on the subject of “sorry, I do not smoke”, Vassily finally could not contain his righteous fury and posed some new questions, ‘Why is it that you, scum, still don’t smoke? You sick or what? Or maybe you ain’t no bloke, ay?’ Innokenty did not have the time to answer anything because Rosa interfered and, without letting go of her kettle, said to Vassily a lot of unpleasant words, mostly along the lines of “it is you who are not a real man” and “get out of here, now!”

(It’s possible that Sidelnikov would have simply forgotten this insignificant squabble, had it not become firmly tied up in his memory with what happened two months later. A grey wintry day would be drawing to a close when Tatyana Baronkin, her eyes white and staring, would walk unsteadily into Rosa’s room and take a crumpled piece of paper out of her sleeve. Rosa would be silent for a long while, peering at the merciless scribble, and then, in half-whisper, would say the almost inconceivable words: “Asphyxiation from gastric content entering the respiratory tract”. The Hydrent would die instantly at his work place - the cab of his lorry.)

Rosa closed the door behind Vassily and coming up to the totally wretched Innokenty asked gently:

‘Are you all right? Why so sad? Shall we go? I’ll see you home…’

And he, looking up to her with his crazy desolate eyes, decided to complain:

‘Rosa, there’s so little kindness… Why is there so little kindness?’