Everything Happens as It Does (11 page)

47.
Snow

 

When Maria failed to come back before nightfall, the old couple became worried. The baby was quiet. The old woman prepared milk, according to her own recipe, and the baby liked it very much. Everything was fine with the child, but it was getting dark outside, it was snowing, and they didn't know what to do. There was no such thing as a telephone in the house.

When it became completely dark, the old man put on his fur coat, took a gas lamp and went outside to try and wade his way through the snow to the nearest neighbors. They had a telephone.

Time passed. The baby fell asleep again, the wick of the other gas lamp was visibly coming to its end, and the old woman was bustling about the house, doing her unending chores.

At a certain point the old man came back, covered in snow, and stomped his feet at the threshold. He said that tomorrow, when it was daylight again, they were to send people to look for Maria.

 

48.
New Year's and Other Kinds of Beginnings

 

During the week between Christmas and New Year's, while Fanny was in Athens, while Philip was struggling to listen to his body and not to his head, while Mr. V. and Madame loved each other, while Raya played hide-and-seek with her daughter, while Boris was away, and while Rallie and her friends were barely surviving, Valentin and Margarita were alone in the house.

It wasn't the first time. Every now and then, Maria would disappear for a few days and they wouldn't know where she was.

When an unfamiliar voice on the phone asked if Maria was at home, Margarita was alone. There followed a long and painful conversation, equally confusing for both parties. Then the phone fell silent for another day.

When it rang again, Valentin recognized the voice of his father. But hardly. Now the voice prohibited contradiction; it demanded. It insisted that Valentin come to the hospital to see his father immediately, but no mention of this should be made to Margarita.

His father was waiting for him in his office. He was wearing a white uniform. He was sitting behind his desk and his face reminded Valentin of the way his father used to be many years ago. He barely remembered that face any more.

Philip stood up, came to Valentin and put his arms around him. Then he whispered in his ear that his mother was dead.

For a long time Valentin remained seated on a chair in his father's office. Silent. His father's words hung in the air, suspended between them. His first reaction was to keep them there, outside, for a little longer. Something enormous had emerged. Something enormous was here and was refusing to leave. No one could remove it.

Then he remembered the baby. He had never thought about the baby as separate from Maria. What had happened to the baby? The likeliest possibility, even now, seemed to be that his mother had taken him with her.

His father told him that the baby was with Boris's parents. And no one knew where Boris was.

Later, who knows how much later, Valentin said that he wanted to see his mother. With his new face, his father replied that he could see her, but in a place that was not a room and on something that was not a bed.

Valentin understood what he was saying and stood up. The air was so thick that walking through it and breathing were impossible. Valentin could breathe only in short heaves, internally, without taking the air in. He concentrated on trying to make the oxygen inside circulate endlessly.

He was blind to where they were going. He followed only the white blur of his father's back, trying hard not to lose it. This white thing was going to take him to his mother.

They reached a place, some newly created space, where his mother had also come for the first time.

His father opened a lid in the wall and pulled out a bed, which remained suspended in the air. It was at chest height. The two of them stood, one on each side. His father's hands slowly unwrapped something that looked like a swaddle. And Valentin saw her.

He saw her in a way he had never seen her before. He had always known that his mother was different from everyone else. That the degrees of difference between other people were much smaller than those between her and other people.

But now, he saw her the way he could see her only once. She was naked and her body shone like an oval pearl on a bed of black hair. This was not the body of a woman, but that of a child. He could not take his eyes off the body, it was exquisite. He lingered at the slender line of her shoulders as if he could find shelter there before approaching the face. He knew that if he looked at the face, it would all be over.

Then he took a deep breath and looked at her. The air turned his heart over and Valentin felt such acute pain that he thought he was dying. It hurt unbearably, and unbearably, his inaccessible mother was now becoming accessible to the whole world.

Maria and her face, pearl-white and smooth, her impossible face. Not rest, but triumph.

Yet something was missing. Something was different. Her eyes were no longer there. Her eyes were closed.

She lay in her shell. Voiceless, sightless.

Valentin closed his eyes, and something shook him. He could see her looking at him with her foggy irises, smiling at him, telling him to go away.

His father wrapped her back in her swaddle. Valentin turned and left. He heard the bed sliding back into the wall with a bang.

He hurried. He did not want his father to catch up with him.

He wanted to go back to Margarita. Back to where he had something to do, for a long time, an indefinite amount of time. Where the three of them, with the baby, would have to continue living with Maria's absence.

While she was still with them, her absence, which kept everyone at a distance and made her different, used to scare them.

Now, when she was no longer with them, they had to somehow domesticate her absence. Now the three of them had to make it—Maria's life.

And maybe there were other lives to make, too.

 

49.
Parents

 

In the kitchen, the old couple was sitting by the fire with the baby when Boris came in. He nodded to no one in particular and headed for the baby.

The old man stood up and tried to block his way. Boris pushed him aside with such force that the old man found himself on the ground.

“Maria…” the old woman tried to tell him something, but Boris had already grabbed the baby, holding him tight to his chest. The baby buried its little head in the fold of his neck and rested there. Boris stood still for a moment. His figure loomed gigantic in the house of his tiny old parents, who looked at him with horror, as if he were the goddess Nemesis come to punish them.

They had stopped talking to each other years ago, and did not exchange any words now. After a while Boris sat down with his legs crossed by the fire, the baby still in his arms. The old woman approached, placed a feeding bottle next to him, and retreated. From the corners of the house came creaking, and then all fell silent. Only the wind whistled through the poplars with a monotonous sea-like sound. But the old woman and the old man, having never seen the sea, remained deaf to the waves breaking in the branches.

The old man stood up and approached Boris. He could not stand in front of Boris because of the fire. He was hardly taller than his sitting son. He put his hand on his shoulder.

Boris's body shook at the touch, and continued shaking in silence, until the old man kneeled on the ground and put his small arms around Boris's shoulders, barely able to embrace him.

Boris was weeping for the first time in his life. He wasn't even sure he knew what was happening to him. The whole world was quaking, shaking off some kind of incomprehensible unmemorable dream. Boris saw himself putting the baby on the ground and taking his father in his arms. He heard himself say, “Dad, where is Mom.” He could not remember ever having spoken these words before. His father stood up without saying a word and disappeared in turn.

Boris took up the baby again. He was no longer crying. He stood up and looked down at the funny doll's house of a room. The room where he had grown up. What will we do with each other? This is what.

Boris walked out of the house with the baby in his arms and vanished into the darkness. He did not even take the feeding bottle.

Upstairs, kneeling, the old man and the old woman were praying.

 

50.
Fanny

 

Fanny walked into her mother's living room, which looked completely changed. It now resembled the cheerful American living room from
Married with Children
. Mr. V jumped to his feet and hurried to hug her. Her mother glowed and radiated sparkles in a radius of at least two yards.

There was something indescribable about the two of them. No guesswork was necessary—they were happy, they were overflowing with joy. Fanny could not believe her eyes.

The elegant Mr. V. and the plump Madame sat down next to each other on the sofa and took each other's hand. Then they fixed contemplative eyes on some improbable sitcom on TV.

Fanny could look around at her leisure. Not a single word about their absence for Christmas. Her vigilant mother was literally on another planet.

She noticed that something was different about the room but for a while could not tell what exactly. Then she saw that the paintings on the walls were replaced by unreal-looking though real enough tapestries in wide crinkled golden frames. A ridiculous woven Diana with a swan. And more than half a dozen others.

Fanny could hardly believe it. At least no one could deny that the tapestries matched perfectly with the dreamy couple on the sofa. And the sitcom, for that matter. Fanny knew style when she saw it and this here was style; foreign to her, but style.

She suddenly felt the need for a drink and went to the liquor cabinet. Her mother didn't even seem to notice. Before, it would have been impossible to take a single step around her mother's house without being closely watched. Let alone go to the liquor cabinet for a drink.

She sat across from them and they raised their glasses to her. Cheers. There was something insane about the situation. Fanny slipped off her shoes and folded her legs on the armchair, which welcomed her as an old friend. She stared at these funny faces—one of them like that of a horse, stiff in a British kind of way, the other—a Viennese oval, with dimples. Both perfect. She gulped her drink with great pleasure and asked what the sitcom was about.

Her mother relaxed her head back into Mr. V.'s elbow and closed her eyes in rapture. Later Fanny was not able to remember what they told her about the sitcom. She only remembered how they were speaking to her and how she wished it would never end.

It felt so strange. After quite a few glasses and toasts for the New Year, Mr. V. ordered a taxi for her.

When she got home, the misanthropic cat Pavoné was purring on the table. Fanny hugged him and walked around the whole apartment, with a bounce in her step.

She decided to rent the place out and find something else for herself. Then she called the twins.

 

51.
Boris, Philip, the Baby, and the Others

 

The phone and the doorbell rang almost at the same moment in Maria's house. While Margarita opened the door to Boris and the baby, Valentin picked up the receiver. When Fanny asked him if she could come over, he didn't know what to say. She ended the conversation after he gave her the address. It was two o'clock in the morning.

Margarita did not yet know. Valentin had passed the entire afternoon talking to her, but without being able to reach the point of no return. Talking to Margarita had gradually taken him out of his semi-unconscious state.

When he put down the phone, Valentin went to look for her and found her in her room. The baby was on her bed, and she and Boris were standing on each side of the bed, watching. Valentin came to the foot of the bed—just then the eyes of all three met somewhere at the top of a pyramid, at the base of which lay the baby. While they were looking at one another, they could hear the child's rising, gurgling sounds.

Valentin saw Margarita's pupils widen. He started going through all the things that could seem unusual and troubling to her—it was night, not day, Boris was in the house, the baby was without Maria, and who knew what else. The baby without Maria was probably the most disconcerting. What else? He felt increasing panic at what had to happen, unsure that he would be able to handle it. Boris's posture and face projected something that confused him even more.

At this moment a bell rang and broke the pyramid. Fanny came in, and while he was showing her into the living room, Margarita followed closely at his heels. She had lit up with joy at seeing Fanny. Valentin left them and went back to Boris. He waved to him to come into the kitchen and the two sat down at the table.

Where were they to go from here? They had come so far and now the silence could be broken, or not. Both knew that Maria was dead, but they knew it in a different way. For Valentin this knowledge was so overwhelming that no words could rise to his mouth.

Boris poured himself a glass of mineral water from the fridge and sat back down at the table. The liquid, lens-like, magnified the hand holding it. His other hand reached out and took Valentin's arm. He grabbed him somewhere above the elbow and with such force that Valentin searched for his eyes.

It was a true grip of friendship. While drinking his water, Boris continued to hold his arm and looked him in the eyes.

The doorbell rang again. It was Philip. He came in and sat down with them in the kitchen. Music from Margarita's piano drifted in from the living room. Fanny must have convinced her to play.

Valentin felt the world swirl around him. Something needed to be done, here in this house, but it could not be done. Instead, other things were happening. This music, for example, and the baby in Margarita's room, and the two fathers staring at each other, and his mother, absent. If she could have been here, it would have been different.

Valentin went to see the baby and found Fanny there. He bent toward her and whispered in her ear that his mother was dead, his mother and the mother of Margarita and the baby. Then he took the already sleeping baby to its crib.

He went back to the kitchen and asked Boris and Philip if they wanted to get some rest. Both said no. Margarita was still playing. Valentin suddenly remembered Christmas Eve and the party at Fanny's. He said to himself that there was nothing else to do, at least nothing else for him to do. He stretched out on the sofa in the living room and closed his eyes. Margarita was playing Mozart. Just before falling asleep, he felt Fanny's presence nearby. She sat in an armchair. There were white candles burning everywhere: around the fireplace and the piano, on the table, and everywhere else. People moved around him, covered him with a blanket, and he sank into quiet nothingness.