The Light and the Dark (19 page)

He always tells me such amusing things! For instance, how do you like this story? The vital energy that permeates and connects everything all around us is called
chi
by the Chinese. And the
chi
can be influenced by music. In former times, in order to determine if an army was ready for battle, a musician would stand among the soldiers and blow into a special trumpet, and he drew his conclusion from the sound. If the trumpet sounded feeble, then the martial spirit was likewise, which augured defeat. In this case the general ordered his army not to join battle but retreat. Did you smile?

When the opportunity offers, Glazenap practises calligraphy. He has a whole set of brushes. And the ink is in briquettes – sticks that he grates on a stone ink slab, in a hollow with water. But there isn’t very much paper, and he often writes on a board or sheet of canvas, dipping the brush into plain water. Several hieroglyphs, written from the top downwards, make up a poem. As he finishes writing the poem, the beginning is already starting to disappear in the sun and the wind. Sashenka, if only you could see how wonderful that is!

You see, sometimes we have quite a good time here.

I’m sorry, I tried to joke, but it turned out stupid.

It’s just that I grab at every opportunity to take my mind off things.

Today Kirill was practising his calligraphy and I wanted so much to try that I couldn’t resist and made a few strokes myself. Glazenap remarked condescendingly that my stroke looked like a section of bamboo, and I felt inexpressibly proud, but that proved to be a mistake. Just imagine, a brushstroke should not resemble the head of a sheep or the tail of a rat or the leg of a stork, or a broken branch, that is, anything real at all. I know now that a horizontal stroke is like a cloud that stretches for ten thousand li. I’ve decided not to practise calligraphy any more.

Apparently the ancient writing began as a record of the procedure for offering sacrifice. The pictures showed scenes of the rite with the participants and the ritual utensils. That is all very understandable. But then something amazing happened! You see, it turned out that the mystery had become accessible to everyone who looked at the picture. A dog was a dog, a fish was a fish, a horse was a horse, a man was a man. And then they started deliberately complicating the writing, so that only the initiated could understand it. The signs started freeing themselves of the tree, the sun, the sky, the river. Previously the signs had reflected harmony and universal beauty. Now the harmony shifted into the act of writing. The characters no longer reflected beauty, they were beauty itself!

How clear and familiar this all is to me!

Kirill is sad because he won’t get home for his sister’s wedding. He says his mother didn’t want to let him go, she was terribly worried that he would be killed. He said:

‘I’ve never been afraid for myself, but now I’m afraid with her fear.’

I didn’t say anything. I know my mum is afraid for me in the same way.

When we said goodbye at the railway station, she cried and reached out to kiss me, but I felt embarrassed and kept trying to break out of her embrace.

And then her blind man suddenly wanted to hug me too. He scratched me with his stubble.

At the parting she said:

‘Well, say something to me!’

But all I could manage to force out was:

‘Go! Everything will be all right! Go!’

You see, Sasha, I had convinced myself that I didn’t love her. No, of course you can’t understand that. And to be honest, now I don’t really understand it either.

I close my eyes and see that world which is no longer visible – our old apartment, the wallpaper, the curtains at the windows, the furniture, the parquet flooring. The mirror in the dresser that I used to make faces into, trying to get to know myself. On the sofa there’s a cushion with a peacock with a button-eye that I can twist. That cushion was embroidered by my granny. The button kept coming off again and again, with some help from myself, of course, and then it was sewn back on again, which changed the peacock’s expression – sometimes he squinted in fright, sometimes he stared at the ceiling in amazement, sometimes he sniggered gleefully.

I see marks on the doorpost – mum used to measure my height by putting a book on my head. But she refused to measure herself, no matter how much I asked.

You know, once again in my thoughts I fly far away from this sultry heat, the wounds and the death, and I feel so good!

Ever since I could remember, there was a cross-section plan of an ocean-going steamship hanging over my bed and I used to gaze endlessly at the cabins, stairways and engines, the captain’s bridge,
the holds and the little figures strolling around the deck or dining at the tables in the restaurant, the sailors and the stokers – there was even a little dog stealing a sausage from the cook. I was sure my dad had hung that steamship above my bed. I loved to imagine that life – what the captain was shouting through his megaphone, what answer the redheaded cabin boy clambering up the mast was giving him. I used to invent what the sailors were saying as they scrubbed the deck. I made up all sorts of stories about the passengers and gave them funny names. Sometimes I used to draw in the missing little figures myself, for instance, a sailor hanging from a rope like a monkey, with a bucket of paint, and he’s painting the anchor.

And it was interesting and strange to wonder who I was for them.

And did they even suspect that I existed?

When we went to the dacha for the summer, I used to pick the thumbtacks out of the wall carefully, roll the picture up into a tube and not let anyone else have it. I travelled with it all the way, gazing thorough it into the distance, as if it was my telescope. Mum kept that picture with my childhood drawings for a long time until I threw the whole lot out myself.

All that was left of my father were a few patchy memories. I don’t even know how old I was. We go to the railway to meet Mum. It’s very crowded there, Dad puts me on his shoulders and tells me not to let her get past, or we’ll miss each other. I remember holding on to Dad’s neck and staring hard into the crowd. I feel anxious and afraid that we might not find each other. Suddenly I see her and shout loud enough for the whole station to hear:

‘Mum! Mum! We’re here!’

A visit to the photographer is another thing that stuck in my memory. Obviously because of my disappointment that the
promised birdie didn’t come flying out of the box. The photos taken then with my father in them disappeared somewhere, Mum probably destroyed them. The only one that survived showed me on my own with a guitar, which I was holding like a double bass.

And here’s another absolutely stupid memory: in frosty weather I touch his nose, as red as a clown’s.

I’m so glad that I can share all these things that nobody needs any more with you!

What else can I remember?

For a whole year Mum took me to special exercise sessions, in order to stretch my spine and neck – the doctors had told her I had bad posture. They used to fasten my head into a sturdy leather collar with straps for my forehead and chin and hoist me up almost all the way to the ceiling. There were other boys and girls with bad posture dangling beside me, hanging there like sticks of salami in a shop. I hated those exercises, and Mum as well, for making me go there, no matter how stubbornly I resisted.

And here’s something else. I remember that visitors came and I hid in a cupboard and sat there in the stuffy darkness until I was missed and they ran outside to look for me. They told me off and asked why I had done it. I didn’t know that myself, but now I realise that I simply wanted them to look for me, find me and be glad that they had.

You know, when I was a child sometimes the strangest ideas would come into my head. Or perhaps not all that strange. Someone gave us some French biscuits in a beautiful tin, and I started wondering what I could do with that remarkable box. Then I thought of something – I could put all sorts of things in it and bury it, and someday someone would find my box and learn all about me. I put in my photograph, some drawings, stamps, various bits and pieces from the clutter in the drawer of my desk
– stones, tin soldiers, pencils and other similar nonsense that was important to me then – and I buried it at the dacha under a jasmine bush. And then it occurred to me that many years from now, when that box was found, I wouldn’t be here any more and neither would Mum or anyone else. I had to put something in the box from Mum too. So I secretly pulled one of her photos out of an album and buried that as well. And then I was struck by the thought that I possessed amazing power – the only people who would remain were the ones I took into my tin box with me!

I wonder where that box is now? Is it really still there, under the jasmine?

Mum was always driving me outside.

‘Why are you sitting there with your books again? Go on, go and play with the children!’

But I didn’t like playing with children, they had cruel games and endless tests that you had to pass. For instance, they would hold a stretched catapult up to my eye, to see if I would blink or not.

When I was a child I really wanted to have a dog, and once I brought a stray puppy home from the street. We fed it. But when mum saw it being sick and immediately licking up its own vomit off the parquet, she wouldn’t let me keep it, no matter how much I begged her.

What else?

Granny had a box of buttons and I love playing with them – they were my army. The small white buttons were the infantry, the others represented cavalry and cannons. I remember a huge mother-of-pearl one – that was a general, who always fought against the army of another general – a tarnished copper buckle. I staged entire battles – the buttons rushed into the attack, shouted,
grappled hand to hand with each other, died. I raked the dead ones back into the box.

My Sashenka! How good it is to talk to you about all these things that have disappeared!

One day Mum took me to a performance by a conjuror. There was probably nothing special about his tricks, but at the time I was completely mesmerised by it all. Objects appeared and disappeared, one thing turned into something else. The ace of spades became the queen of hearts. The conjuror put a coin on his palm, closed his fist, opened it – and there was a white mouse. He cut off a gentleman’s tie with a pair of scissors, then joined the two halves together and the tie was intact and quite undamaged.

Then he called volunteers to come up on stage and started hypnotising them. Mum couldn’t resist this, although I grabbed hold of her and didn’t want to let her go. It was eerie and enthralling to watch real live people suddenly turn into lunatics right in front of me and move about with their eyes closed. He told Mum that a flood had started and the water was rising in the room, getting higher and higher – and she started pulling up the hem of her dress. But afterwards she said she didn’t remember anything.

I saw a conjuring set in a toy shop and cajoled Mum into buying it – she gave me it as a birthday present. What a miraculous box that was! Everything needed to amaze and delight an audience was in there. That was probably what I really wanted – not the actual tricks, but for people to love me.

What remarkable little balls made out of sponge there were in there, and silk handkerchiefs, and ribbons, an egg, a flower – it all looked real, but everything had a trick to it! Special laces, ‘Chinese rings’, a thumbstall – a thumbnail with a wick in it, as if anyone could possibly believe that my thumb was burning like a candle!

In the library I found a well-thumbed book about various great magicians, hypnotists and conjurors – I liked the idea that a man could be put in a coffin, then buried, and the grave piled over with rocks, and then the coffin would turn out to be empty! And the man who had been buried would be sitting at the table at home, waiting for everyone!

I also dreamed of becoming a conjuror and hypnotist, and I was surprised that Granny didn’t like my magnificent idea at all, she just sighed and said:

‘Monkey business!’

She wanted me to be enthusiastic about something serious.

The conjuring set had detailed descriptions of all the marvels, I tried to follow the instructions precisely, but my tricks turned out silly anyway. Or rather, when I practised in front of the mirror, everything worked, in fact the hardest thing was to learn to make the passes for distracting people’s attention, but when I showed my wonders to our guests, they didn’t so much admire my magical art as laugh at my clumsiness. The moment came when I was transfixed by the painful thought that for them I wasn’t a magician at all, but a clown. In the end I came to hate magical tricks.

But here’s something else that happened involving those tricks.

My granny fell ill. Or, rather, in the winter she slipped on the icy ground beside the post office, fell and broke her hip. She didn’t get up any more, just lay in bed for months, getting weaker. I remember Mum sighing and saying that Granny was ‘on her way out’. And I also remember the sight of Granny’s hand and head shaking and Mum brushing her hair. My granny was very beautiful when she was young, she had a long, thick plait, as thick as my arm. The plait was cut off once when she was ill and kept by us as a family relic. But by the time she was old Granny’s hair had grown long again.

One day I came home very late from grammar school. I had picked up a lot of D’s in my marks and I didn’t want to go home because I was sure I was in for another scolding. I had wandered around somewhere until it was late, and now I knew I would get it for that as well. So I arrive home, prepared for the very worst, but instead of scolding me, Mum hugs and kisses me. I didn’t understand what was going on, and then I realised – the doctor came out of Granny’s room and washed his hands thoroughly, every finger separately. Mum had a word with him, then she pressed my head against her chest and said that Granny was already at death’s door. She took me in to say goodbye.

Shortly before she died Granny became hideous, lying there dishevelled and shaking all over, especially her hands.

I don’t remember what we were talking about, but she suddenly asked me to show her a magic trick. I shook my head. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to – I couldn’t. But it was impossible to explain that to anybody.