Who Is Martha? (8 page)

“The Caucasian goldcrest is all you can think of? God in Heaven, what have you been doing at university in Lemberg?” Levadski’s mother got up from the chair. From below, she looked like she had silently and secretly died during Levadski’s absence. Levadski also rose and went to the window. His mother turned towards him. What a relief! From this angle she looked like an old woman, a faded beauty, blossoming decay, a firm figure of resolution.

“The rednecked goose, my son. Branta ruficollis. The favorite dish of the Caucasus. Did you not come across it in your studies?”

“We mainly explored the birds of Europe.”

“Dear child. Don’t you have any world maps, eyes in your head? Chechnya is in the North Caucasus and therefore in Europe. Wake up!”

“Who says so?” Levadski laughed.

“I do, and so does science.”

“What science?” Levadski shook with laughter. Tears rolled down his face. Or were they beads of sweat?

“Don’t cry,” said Levadski’s mother. Levadski made a dismissive gesture and howled. “Cartography, geography and human intelligence tell us so, my son,” she went on. “The Caucasus lies on the edge of Europe, and with that, Elbrus is our highest mountain.”

The northern red-necked goose, the most colorful and beautiful of all the sea geese, really had flown past Levadski the student without making a noise. How could he live, learn, drink honey vodka, without knowing that the red-neck goose existed, that it bred in the tundra of West Siberia and wintered on the southwest coast of the Caspian Sea? It was a mystery to him.

“Is it really such a magnificent bird, the northern rednecked goose?” Levadski asked with a tear-stained face.

“Yes,” said his mother and handed him her handkerchief embroidered with calyces set in squares.

“If they arrive in great droves at the Caspian Sea, you can definitely conclude there is a bitterly cold winter further in the north. The geese live according to a strict daily routine in their winter habitat: before sunrise they take off for the grazing land. The main swarm with thousands of birds sets out last. When the sun goes down, the return flight to their overnight stay begins.” Levadski let the tears flow. “You must follow me,” Levadski’s mother said and shrugged her shoulders. “I am going!” she said a little louder and raised her eyebrows, throwing her forehead into a myriad of unflattering lines.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because it must be so.”

“What must be so? You must manipulate me, exploit my love for you and throw my studies to the wind? After all, you paid for them, mother!”

“That’s beside the point. When my child’s life is at stake, I am unwavering. You are coming with me, and if you are not, then I will go and die far away from you in an ignominious manner. And nobody will commit my body to the earth.”

“This is blackmail, madness!” said Levadski stamping his foot.

“So it is,” Levadski’s mother said, “I am going now.”

VI

L
EVADSKI WENT WITH HIS MOTHER.
F
ROM A FLY-INFESTED
train station in southern Russia, he wired his institute in Lemberg. DETAINED STOP MOTHER ILL STOP PERMISSION FOR TIME OFF STOP

From time to time he felt a faint glimmer of hope that his mother would turn back as soon as she saw the snow-covered peaks of Mount Kazbek and drank from the pure springs, and that he would be able to continue dedicating his time to his birds and his studies, and the letter and all talk of an imminent Flood would simply be a bad dream. Levadski’s mother caught sight of Mount Kazbek’s peak, drank from pure springs, and did not turn back. Not in her dreams did she think of turning her back on the mountains.

They stayed the night in guesthouses with ceilings that grew lower and lower; fleas ransacked their beds. Swallow nests, at which a landlord proudly pointed a dirty finger, hung like old hamburgers from the beams of the house. When Levadski and Levadski’s mother more frequently came across shepherds by the wayside leaning on their staffs and wearing tall fur hats, Levadski knew: there was no going back.

In a Chechen mountain village almost seven thousand feet above sea level, Levadski became a shepherd. His mother became the wife of the village elder and the ornament of the village, an honor she owed to her pale skin, the result of an iron deficiency. From his stepfather, Levadski received a tall sheep’s wool hat that covered half his face. He wore it and looked like the other eyeless men everywhere nodding off, leaning on their staffs. Slowly Levadski embraced the hat. He believed he could think clearly beneath it. The tall fur hat wasn’t completely absurd. During the day it protected Levadski’s head from the heat, in the evening from the cold. Here, too, the dear Lord breathed purpose into all things that men were given to create.

After a year as a shepherd, when Levadski toyed with the idea of leaving his mother and resuming his studies, German soldiers marched into Poland. The Flood drowned the land. It drowned Lemberg. It drowned Stanislau, Tarnopol, Brody, forests and marshes, it licked the claws of the startled birds and sent its fetid breath to the stars. The stars said to hell with the Flood, just as they had always said to hell with the Flood. This in itself was a consolation. The ornithological institute in Lemberg was bound to be closed, Levadski thought, I can in all likelihood once again forget about banding the birds this year.

The Flood spread further to the east. “They won’t get this far,” Levadski’s mother said. She was right. The Germans were stopped at Mozdok in North Ossetia and never reached Chechnya. This, however, did not prevent the Russians from cramming all the Chechens into trains and deporting them to Central Asia as traitors and collaborators with the German army.

Perhaps it was owing to Levadski’s mother’s dazzlingly white skin and Levadski’s height (he was two heads taller than the other Chechen shepherds) that the two enjoyed the privilege of being allowed to work in a kolkhoz. Levadski’s mother milked cows from dawn till dusk and mourned for her second husband, who had died on the deportation train. Levadski worked his way up from load hauler to first secretary of the kolkhoz.

Years later, everything that had legs was on the move: the Chechens went back to Chechnya, Levadski and his mother went back to the village that was now part of Ukraine. When they stepped off the train his mother suddenly stood still and gripped Levadski by the sleeve, as if she had choked on a word. Then they continued on their way.

They strode towards the village like lovers, over furrowed and frozen fields. Levadski saw the village houses leaning against each other like old acquaintances, embarrassed, as if they had been spattered with excrement. None of them had stirred from their place. The forester’s house had shaken off its roof in the years of separation and filled with bitterness, and perhaps out of defiance, too, it had spit out all its doors and window frames. Blind and shattered, it crouched there beneath an open sky.

“The birdbath is missing,” Levadski’s mother declared and burst into tears. The count’s birdbath, a present made by the old nobleman on the occasion of Levadski’s birth, was gone. Levadski knew that it had arrived wrapped in gold paper and tied with a velvet bow, a present as fateful as a split second in which one looks into another’s eyes before diving into a fatal passion. There was no trace of the birdbath anymore, and for a fleeting moment Levadski felt as if he had never been born, as if he had spent these years as a wandering bubble, imagining that it had all been a dream in his head. When they turned around and went back to the railway station, the strange feeling had left him.

Levadski’s mother died in a drafty Lemberg hospital filled with creaky beds, shortly after Levadski’s promotion. The coughing, even the sighs of the patients, became a tragicomic affair through the ever-present creaking. Levadski’s mother laughed constantly; her bed laughed with her. She was always saying romantic things. “My heart is a broken sugar bowl, my son, your mother’s teeny old heart is a teeny bone china cup.” The diminutives cost her a lot of effort, but seemed to amuse her much: “In death everything becomes smaller, just as it should, my son,” she said, smiling. Levadski nodded and knew that he would understand later. Much later, just not now. “So, here we are,” were her last words. Levadski often thought of this, and that nothing better would have occurred to him in her place.

VII

L
EVADSKI WAS SITTING IN THE KITCHEN, BLOWING ON THE
flower created by the gas flame. The petals dispersed and grew back immediately. “I can also strangle you,” Levadski said to the flame and switched it off. The soft hiss of the gas flower died away. “Your company bores me!” said Levadski to the stove.

With shuffling steps he entered the living room, and as he could think of nothing better to do, sat down in the rocking chair, which he instantly regretted. Getting up – wrath of the Almighty! – was getting more difficult the more years Levadski had at his back. He stared at his telephone as if wanting to hypnotize it: come here, come here, come over here! The telephone did not react. Groaning, Levadski lifted himself out of the rocking chair, went to the phone, and grabbed the receiver. As he dialed the number of his favorite radio station, he could feel his hand growing clammy. Radio World Harmony – the number he had memorized years ago and never used. Now I am ninety-six, thought Levadski, and I am calling a radio station like a schoolboy!

“Radio World Harmony” the voice answered.

“Good evening, I have a re–”

“Before we connect you with one of our staff members,” the voice continued, “we would like to ask you to participate in our survey.”

“A request,” Levadski said a little more loudly into the receiver, “a song by Ra–”

“Please respond to the questions with yes or no,” the voice said.

“–by Ray Price,
For The Good Times
,” Levadski said.

“Ready! Let’s begin. First question: are you listening to us over the radio?” Levadski’s eyes widened.

“How else? What nonsense!”

“Sorry, your answer was unclear. Are you listening to us on the internet?”

“Oh right! No.”

“Sorry, your answer was unclear. Are you a young listener?”

“No.”

“Thank you for your answer. Are you satisfied with the variety of music that the station offers?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for your answer. Do you find our radio hosts pleasant and easy to listen to?”

“Well …”

“Sorry, your answer was unclear. Would you like more features on culture?” Levadski waved his hand in the air.

“By all means, yes!”

“Sorry, your answer was unclear …”

“My God, you stupid snail!” Levadski shouted into the receiver.

“… Thank you for participating in our survey. We are connecting you.”

“Radio World Harmony. Good evening!”

“Are you there?” Levadski asked cautiously.

“Where else?” the voice said with indignation.

“Excuse me. Good evening. I have a request, a song by Ray Price –
For the Good Times
.”

“Let’s see,” the voice said, “Ray Price. Ray Price …
For the Good Times
. We’ll play it between 10 and 11 p.m. during the request show.”

“Thank you!”

“Not at all.” The voice turned into a dead dial tone. Levadski placed the phone on the receiver. He waited for the request show. His song was the last.

How often, thought Levadski, have I laughed at the people who call up the radio station, and now I have done it myself! Levadski felt something akin to deep satisfaction.

Don’t look so sad

I know it’s over.

“Oh dear,” Levadski sighed.

But life goes on

And this old world

Will keep on turning.

Let’s just be glad

We had some time

“To spend together,” Levadski whispered.

To spend together …

And make believe you love me

One more time

For the good times …

“… and now for the news of the day.”

Levadski switched off the radio. He lay down in bed and imagined he was lying in the suite in the Hotel Imperial where he’d stayed during the Northern Bald Ibis Conference in Vienna in 2002. In the spacious room the air was heavy with the scent of flowers and furniture polish. An imposing crystal chandelier sprouted from a ceiling rose. It swung above Levadski like a cut teardrop. Back and forth, back and forth, and sleep seeps through the midnight blue silk wallpaper on the walls. Delicious silence.

The next morning Levadski dialed the number of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center. A young lady gave her double-barreled name in a singsong voice. Levadski introduced himself by reading out the captions of some newspaper articles that had been sent to him after the conference. “Foster father in a light airplane: away with the borders! Reintroduction into the wild project, historically unparalleled. Paving the way ahead, Ukrainian ornithologist breaks all barriers … Well, yes. Barriers, barriers, barriers, you see, Madam, human beings are forever being confronted with limitations, internal or external. Sometimes the shoes are too tight, sometimes the coffin too close, do you understand what I mean?”

The employee of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center seemed to be crying in silence at the other end of the receiver, then Levadski heard an escalation of strangled sounds and asked the young lady to connect him with a man. When a male voice answered at the other end of the line, Levadski introduced himself again by reading the same captions. “Foster father in a light plane: away with the borders! Reintroduction into the wild project, historically unparalleled. Paving the way ahead, Ukrainian ornithologist breaks all barriers.”

“Oh, Professor Levadski, of course, of course. The young lady? Oh, right. An intern. Yes, yes. Exactly. Overtaxed is the right word. Exactly. Our best. Exactly. But of course people still know who you are. Of course. Even small fry like myself. I have grown up with your intellectually stimulating articles in the annual magazine. Sorry? Whether I personally liked them? For example,
On the Red-Backed Shrike’s Humane Art of Impaling Insects and Large Prey on Thorns
, or
How Global Warming Alters Fish Stocks and Turns North Sea Birds into Cannibals
. Sorry? You would like a favor?”