Everything Happens as It Does (4 page)

14.
Boris

 

One evening Margarita tripped over two enormous suitcases lying in the dark hallway. She knew immediately why they were there. She knew that what had happened to her father, and later to Valentin, was now happening to Boris.

It was his turn to leave. Nothing could be done to prevent it. Maria had made up her mind.

Margarita could vaguely sense that she was the only one with any influence over her mother. But she had no idea what she could do.

Boris was not in the house. The suitcases were there, but he was gone. Her mother had also gone somewhere. Margarita decided to open the suitcases. She reached for one of them.

The metal locks were lovely; they were cold and made a clicking sound. She lifted the lid and, pushing it back, propped it against the wall and blocked the entire hallway. There were no clothes in the suitcase, only books, folders, floppy disks and various little devices with a mysterious purpose. They were so small and shiny; she liked them very much. She was not sure what one was supposed to do with them. Just look. Then what? Margarita pressed a button and heard a voice. Boris's voice saying things she couldn't understand. She kept listening to the recording and played the whole thing. Boris barely ever spoke, yet here, in the dark hallway, his voice seemed to have a life of its own. Boris and the voice of Boris were separate. Margarita was not surprised, it seemed natural to her. She found a box full of tapes and began to play them one by one. When she started to feel cold, she got into the suitcase, where the hard objects made room for her. She nestled cozily, listening to the fairy tales of the voice from the little machine. Boris was good at telling stories. Margarita could see that right away. This Boris from the machine was a different Boris that no one had heard speak before and no one had ever met. These stories were meant for nobody, or maybe nobody and Margarita. It didn't occur to her to ask why Boris was telling them. She just followed his voice in this exciting adventure, and there was suspense and something important was about to happen; things were becoming more and more interesting, and she fell asleep just before what seemed to be some kind of beginning. The lid of the suitcase closed itself gently, so as not to wake her, and in the darkness inside, Boris's voice went on speaking.

 

15.
Revelations

 

The sweaters Maria knitted for her men never left the house for good.

They would leave for a while on someone's back, then they would return to be washed or mended, and they would leave again, not necessarily on the same shoulders.

Margarita remembered what had happened with her father. In the beginning, like a guest in a boarding house, Philip would have only dinner with them. Maria would retire to bed early and he would stay alone with the twins for hours. He would come and go with bags full of clothes. He would always change, never leaving with the same clothes in which he arrived.

They would sit at the table and Philip would talk about his work. Valentin would try to appear interested, but Margarita would simply stare absently, as usual. Her father was here and that was enough. At some point Philip and Valentin would grow bored. But not Margarita, because she never took part in any of the conversation. Valentin would excuse himself, saying he had to wake up early, and Philip would feel confused. Had he left them already? He wasn't sure. He couldn't explain why he no longer slept at home. The many glasses of wine he drank made him talkative at first, but then he became withdrawn, as if descending into something, some place to which Margarita often tried to find entry. They would sit with this nothingness between them, so dense and heavy that it forced them to turn inward and search for something inside, each searching alone.

Philip would walk with Margarita to her room, then go about doing whatever he was doing. They let him wander around the house like a ghost. And he probably did wander like a ghost. By morning he was always gone.

He would leave behind clothes strewn here and there around the rooms. Maria would carefully pick them up, and wash and iron them. That was all. Their father was a pile of clothes Maria took care of. He would happen to appear inside these clothes for a brief moment during his increasingly rare visits, and that was it. The twins began to perceive his presence as fortuitous, feeling that they knew him less and less. Then their father started wearing unfamiliar clothes, which he no longer left in the house, until, finally, the thread connecting all of these things became so thin that when she saw Maria knitting another sweater, Margarita asked her who it was for.

Her mother looked at her without saying anything, as she always did, and looked at her for so long that Margarita realized the answer was irrelevant. Anyone could wear this sweater, even her father—who was wearing it, who had worn it before, who would wear it after, for how long—none of these made any difference to the sweater itself.

 

16.
Spiders and Their Webs

 

There is marvel in the world. Nobody has taught us how to marvel, and that is why no one knows what marvel is.

To look from the inside out and from the outside in are two different things.

Margarita bumped into walls all the time. It hurt. But Margarita knew how to stare at a thing long enough to obliterate the difference between inside and out.

She would often hide, for example, in the spider's web in the corner of her room.

Her favorite spider. From here the filaments and threads looked like a thicket. A thicket full of glimmer.

Valentin would be raging down there, furiously shaking what he believed to be Margarita, and she would be swinging on the filaments up here, laughing.

 

17.
Margarita

 

Margarita was unable to concentrate on anything. She was proverbially absentminded—these were the words people used to describe her. The moment she managed to focus on something, she was frightened by what she saw. She preferred to float around things rather than see them. Besides, she rarely felt she was in any danger.

Margarita's brain clicked like a camera shutter. She would close her eyes and when she opened them again, the world would be different. People lived in this world, and she lived with them. She was like an amiable, myopic insect.

However, she was now old enough to know a few things. There were rules for dealing with people. Rules meant to make sure she didn't scare anyone. Simple rules.

She had realized long ago that she frightened her father. She did her best to avoid causing him worry. She tried hard to behave the way he expected her to. But that was as far as it went. Margarita was, after all, Margarita, and even her father would never be able to understand her.

Most of the time she played the piano for him. Music brought back something in him, something he loved but could not reach in any other way. When his daughter played the piano, Philip admired her ability to remember scores. But soon enough he would forget about the scores and surrender to the music—the way, he remembered, he had surrendered to Maria.

He was aware that something inappropriate was taking place. It was huge and it was not supposed to happen.

Margarita would always sense when the current would start trickling out of her father. As if Philip's surface had cracked. She would stop playing then. It was her way of showing her love.

Then he would shut down and leave. She had no idea why.

Her relationship with her brother had improved. Now he was a student at the university and he was telling her about all kinds of things. Margarita listened to him in her typical manner—she would concentrate for a second, following the story, then she would lose the thread again. Valentin would react in a funny way—he would get angry, as if Margarita was deliberately trying to annoy him. “She can't understand a word. I'm just wasting my time.” Then he would come back, astonished by how much she actually remembered. And who said she needed to understand everything?

He would sometimes study for his exams with her and then they had a lot of fun. She knew she was helping him and felt proud.

Gradually, having the experience of other relationships, Valentin became very attached to his sister. Margarita was like a crystal mirror. Also, she was becoming prettier by the day. Her beauty had something childish and fragile about it. It was incredibly easy to hurt her or make her anxious.

According to Valentin, their mother was giving them too much freedom. A helpless creature like Margarita, who could get into all kinds of trouble, being out and about doing God knows what… He couldn't bear the thought. But as usual, when he finally summoned the courage to speak to Maria, their conversation just dissipated into smiles and looks, which made Valentin realize that nothing would change, that he was worrying for no reason, and nothing bad could ever happen to Margarita.

After that conversation, he started taking Margarita with him whenever he could. He became closer to people who showed an attitude toward her similar to his own. In various circles of friends, Margarita was thus welcomed and loved. It became easier for Valentin to know where she went when she went alone. Sooner or later someone would tell him they saw her somewhere. Or he would try to guess.

Their relationship with Maria was odd. Maria had never seemed worried that one of the twins was different. In fact, around her mother, Margarita was at her most normal. Maria allowed her things that were forbidden to others—for example, she allowed her to come to her, avoiding the girl much less than she avoided everyone else; she even went to Margarita herself; she let her cuddle and play with her hair. Maria would always read fairy tales to her and Margarita knew them by heart. Margarita knew countless fairy tales. When she learned how to read, only Maria showed no surprise. But she did not appear happy about it either. As if the fact that Margarita was gradually entering the world of other people destroyed some essential bond with her mother. Valentin had noticed that his sister was a little timid with their mother, afraid to let her know that the world had become bigger, or that it had left any permanent traces in her mind.

Maria did not protest when Valentin started taking his sister out. But he knew that she didn't like it and was merely tolerating it for the time being.

 

18.
Girls and Mirrors

 

No matter what she put on, the mirror reflected back an unfamiliar image.

In the beginning this seemed normal. One put on clothes in order to become someone else. Changing clothes changed everything.

But there was also what she could observe in other people. For example, her mother. For a very long time she believed that Maria always wore the same clothes. Her mother was her mother and that was it. When she began to notice that Maria's clothes were similar, yet different from one day to the next, she went to the bedroom and opened the wardrobe. It was filled with darkness—all clothes were dark-colored, most of them black, and all of them shapeless, masses of fabric with an occasional seam. Margarita took them down and threw them on the floor, where they landed with a whisper. They were so light—so different from the heavy sweaters, coats and trousers others wore. Margarita sat down on the floor and buried her hands in the fabric. Her mother's clothes responded with a lifelike shiver. She lay down and buried her face in them—no smell. Unlike everything else, animate or inanimate, Maria had no smell. The clothes were tender, caressing, but they smelled of nothing. Or maybe nothing smelled like Maria.

Then Margarita tried to put something on; she didn't know exactly what it was. A piece of clothing. She struggled for a while with the dark violet folds. Just when she thought she could glide her arms or her head in it, she realized there was no hole but only new layers of fabric unfolding in different directions. She persisted, slid her legs and arms blunderingly, without being able to put the thing on. Maria's clothes also persisted, slipping off of her body to the ground. Margarita crumpled them furiously, grabbing them with both hands and pouring them over herself like water. They rolled down like streams, spreading when they reached the flat floor.

Suddenly Margarita stopped and looked down. She was standing ankle-deep in a moving, rippling mass. She lifted one foot, then the other—the fabric filled the empty space as soon as it appeared, then it settled back into stillness. Margarita sat down again and started crying, she was not strong enough to fight the clothes. And she couldn't put them back where they came from, either. She sat in the middle of the lake of fabric, her tears trickling down her cheeks and over the cloth. Gradually, she quieted down as something interesting began to draw her attention. The fabric did not absorb her tears; the water drops from her eyes rolled over and disappeared into the folds like translucent pearls. Margarita tried to catch them but they vanished too quickly, without leaving a trace. Then the tears stopped, and Margarita stayed on the floor, gazing absently. Her mother found her still sitting there. She lifted her up without a word and took her out of the room.

Then there was a period when Margarita refused to change her clothes. She would feel great anxiety whenever Maria tried to force her. Her mother let her be. It was painful, Valentin remonstrated, it was unacceptable, but, as with everything in which Maria was involved, the problem reached its own resolution. Margarita stopped paying attention to clothes, she somehow forgot about them. She would put on and take off her clothes again. End of story.

But then something else happened. Margarita saw herself for the first time. Until then she had only felt herself from within, she had learned a thing or two, but somehow one-sidedly, as if under an umbrella hiding half the world from sight.

She began to make up her face, or more precisely, to paint her face. Her face was like a clean porcelain bowl and invited all kinds of painting. She usually stopped after doing one eye. And that's how she went about for a long time—with one eye that was her own, and an eye that wasn't.

Maria was never bothered, Valentin was not happy. What now? His sister was a Cyclops. His sister was a clown. On top of that, she did it well. And sometimes snuck out of the house with only one eye painted like this.

One day it was he who stopped her in the middle of putting on her make-up. He had come to pick her up to visit some friends. She was just finishing one eye. When he dragged her to the taxi, he couldn't say if she had managed to finish with it or if he had interrupted her. Her eye was made-up perfectly, even Valentin couldn't deny it.

Margarita entered their friends' house without the slightest embarrassment. He was walking close by her side and everyone began to turn around. Then a mirror made him stop short in his stride. He and Margarita. He and his sister. The two of them together.

Half of her face was identical to his. As if she had merely borrowed it. For the time being. The other half… the other half was something Valentin felt unable to describe. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Names of stones dashed through his mind—turquoise, sapphire, ruby, gold, malachite, onyx. What else? Nothing. It was something alive looking at him in the mirror. It was like an ephemerally divine gift for infidels. For the
wretched
. A gift to make them pause, stunned for a second. A handful of time.

A handful of precious stones. Valentin stared at the other face of his sister. The one that was not his own.

Other faces crowded around them. Other voices gathered, saying pleasant things. The din was becoming denser and denser.

The two remained frozen.

Until Margarita pulled herself away and ran out.