Everything Happens as It Does (9 page)

37.
Weakness and Breath

 

Philip was trying to get Rallie out of the car. Finally she got to her feet, but her head immediately dropped on his shoulder. He propped her up with both arms and led her toward the hospital's entrance. Rallie walked with her eyes closed, tripping repeatedly. When they entered the brightly lit corridor, she opened her eyes, squinted for a moment, and froze. Brown benches gaped like holes on both sides. Come on, just a few more steps, Philip whispered, but Rallie stiffened her legs and began to slide onto the floor. Philip held her up and managed to pull both of them onto a bench. Not a soul was anywhere to be seen.

Rallie opened her eyes and quickly shut them again. A marble-blue vein on her temple was visibly pulsing. She turned her face toward his neck as if to huddle in him, and he heard her say: No!

What do you mean “no”? You need help.

No! Rallie shouted, making Philip start in his seat.

He thought that someone would appear now, but nothing of the kind happened.

Please, take me out of here, Rallie sobbed.

Philip did not answer and she began to cry like a small child. Her weeping swelled like some new natural force
—
it was like nothing he had seen before. Rallie sobbed and hudded into him as if it were the end of the world. Worse still, as if the world had vanished and nothing remained except this weeping little girl who had peed her pants.

Philip felt the sobs rise in his own throat and covered Rallie's head with his hand, pulling her against his shoulder as if trying to hide her. Or to hide himself. He had never been so close to another person.

You're not allowed to sit here, a voice in a white uniform said by his side.

The voice shook him out of the dream he had sunk into together with Rallie.

We'll leave.

Philip lifted the now sleeping girl, took her in his arms, and carried her to the car. He was no longer scared of the substances she had taken, whatever they were.

When he parked in front of his apartment building, he saw that the lights in his place were lit. He locked the car on his side, opened the passenger door and lifted Rallie again. No one saw them.

He put her on his bed, took off both their shoes, made a little tent out of blankets, and wrapped his arms around her. Rallie's breath became regular and soon Philip fell asleep.

 

38.
On the Road

 

Early the next morning, Maria left the house wrapped down to her knees in a black woolen scarf. The baby was still asleep in its basket, and in any case, there was someone to take care of him when he woke up. The old man and the old woman were already awake and moving about, the fire was lit.

Fine snowflakes descended through the air. Maria's car lay dormant under a thick layer of snow, but she never even glanced at it. She walked through the flurry of stars, and her shape soon melted into the whiteness.

She marched up the hill, toward the chapel where Boris had been baptized that hot summer the neighbor's boy had died. Her padded suede boots sank in the snow. The old couple had not tried to talk her out of it; they knew they couldn't. Climbing through the heavy snow was not for everyone, but if Maria had decided to do it, she would, no matter what.

She entered the white forest, the wintry silence. Her feet sank almost to her knees. She soon found out, however, how to exert the least possible effort and started moving much faster. She simply had to lift her knees to her chest as if wading through water. She walked quickly, in tiny steps, like a little black crow hopping in the snow.

A strange narrow path unwound behind her and the snow was beginning to cover it again. It looked intimate and personal, of no use to anyone else.

Having found her rhythm, Maria advanced with the lightness of a bird. The distance grew behind her and she started to laugh. First she smiled, not the eerie smile that made everyone suddenly chilly and silent. Her smile was real, showing a nice row of little white teeth, a child's smile. She walked and smiled, walked and laughed, until she heard her own voice ringing, a sound foreign to her, the voice of Maria walking through the snow. A voice meant for no one. A voice that had nothing to do with the commanding intonations Mr. V. had heard. When she remembered Mr. V. she laughed even louder. She had never met anyone so sweet and funny. He was a man from a family with a history. Or simply a family man. The word “family” made her laugh even more.

What would Mr. V. do without his family history?

As a matter of principle Maria did not permit herself such thoughts. No analyses of any kind. A snapshot was sufficient for her. Analysis made one weak. It interfered with one's goals. People who believed they achieved anything by analyzing the situation deluded themselves. They never achieved what they wanted, instead achieving something else. Who knows what exactly, something they would describe with arbitrary words. Most often, words that simply come to mind. Laughter swept through the white forest, accompanying Maria along the way.

Usually things happen very quickly, just like that. What people fail to understand is that things have already happened. Their senses are only sharp enough to put them on the alert. Those more sensitive can perceive that something or other is beginning. Then they believe themselves clear-sighted and quick because they have been able to see a beginning, or whatever word they choose for it, and they start to think. Laughter rang through the forest, scattering through the snow.

Other people needed to think. Maria simply knew things. Thinking made the years of one's life feel like a burden. But Maria was hopping lightly; her breath came out in laughs, carrying her forward.

Poor man. She never meant to shock him. Or at least not as much. She didn't want to think about him. What a strange thing, she was thinking. He was so funny and so kind, he deserved… Who knows really? Maria burst into laughter again and fell in the snow.

She remained lying in the soft thickness. She rolled over on her back and spread her arms. Down there the tree branches were black. Black on white. Or black under white. Or white over black.

And the snow was falling and falling. She imagined closing her eyes and white snowflakes covering her black scarf and her black hair and her black velvety boots.

She felt tempted like never before. The unspeakable tenderness of the snow. Black underneath the white. The world can be described. Maria knew this. Or rather, the world allows descriptions. And resists thought. Maria turned sideways onto her elbow and propped her head on her hand. As if she was on a bed. A bed as wide as a forest. The snow descended like a winding sheet. The world accepts you if you don't try to think about it. Maria was not thinking about it, she was watching it. She was watching the world, and it was watching her. How marvelous. She never thought about other people, but now she suddenly remembered Boris. His word for this was “communication.”

She turned again and got up on all fours. She took a few steps like this and started laughing again. She felt the urge to get up and walk.

She raised her head a little like a turtle and saw the chapel in front of her. She was here, and it was there—waiting for her.

Here I come.

She started slowly, her scarf, held between her fingers, trailed behind her. For a moment she stood motionless in front of the chapel. Looking back down the forest, with its black strokes against the white, she considered the path she had walked. It was part of her now, filling her with that familiar onslaught of force.

She touched the door with the bare tips of her fingers, which protruded from the unfinished, black-knit gloves.

She only touched it.

The door recognized her and opened itself.

Then it closed behind her.

 

39.
Aldehydes and Ketones

 

Christmas morning in the city. Valentin was watching from the window of his garret. The white roofs stretched under him like a rolling sea.

He had sneaked out of Fanny's with excessive politeness, even though the party had been dying down anyway. His last memory of it was Margarita sitting at the piano and her music. It was real music, wholly separate from any possible imperfections of the performance.

That Margarita had gathered enough courage to play in front of an audience was a miracle. It had never happened before. She played at home, he knew she also played at their father's place, but that was all. How many times they had begged her to play. Something had changed.

Valentin could not tell if it was good or bad that Margarita had played the piano. He wanted to believe it was good.

In the same train of thought he remembered Raya and realized that he had neither seen her, nor spoken to her for more than a week.

He grabbed his coat and rushed down the stairs. The telephone booths by the university looked deserted. For a fraction of a second he considered going back home, to Maria's. Her white house, impossible to miss, was only a couple of stops by tram, on the corner of Stambolijski Boulevard and Samuil Street. No, he decided to go there later. Now he wanted to hear Raya's voice.

The little Ralitsa, his five-year-old daughter, answered the phone. He told her he had presents for her and they agreed that he would come over to bring them.

Raya opened the door and Valentin could immediately see that she had been drinking.

Her eyes were shiny, her words tripped over one another. Like a spoiled child, she slurred her syllables and paused after banalities like “of course,” “whatever you say,” or “okay.”

Their daughter was running around the rooms, hugging the plush monsters he had brought her. He managed to understand that Raya was planning to spend New Year's Eve with some girlfriends, and he left, feeling oppressed by the smell of unwashed clothes, the dirty dishes, and the reigning chaos. What a nightmare. What had happened to her house. How much he needed her house the way it was before, how much he needed it now when he no longer wanted anything from her. How much this house could help him, if only she could be happy again.

He left with a sense of hopelessness, thinking that in spite of all her qualities and her mild temper, Raya was never going to find a man for herself.

And that was all he wanted—to know that there was a man to take care of her and the child.

He asked himself why. Why this torment, this riddle. The solution seemed to be just around the corner, sitting like a sphinx, beckoning. It had scared him at the time and he had decided not to deal with it. But the thing was still there, waiting. It didn't seem like it was going anywhere.

What the hell, Valentin thought to himself and suddenly cheered up. Raya needed a man. It was easy. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Ergo…

 

40.
Love Stuff

 

Their story seemed unfinished and weaving a pattern of its own. Raya was not showing interest in anything, Valentin was pursuing his studies, their daughter was growing up. But there were two things that resembled knots in the whole affair. One was out in the open—Raya was drinking; the other was hidden—Valentin was unable to make love. This, in a strange way, brought them together, as neither was doing anything with anybody else.

Raya gravitated toward journalism. She hung around radio stations, newspapers; wrote freelance news reports, interviews, reviews of the foreign press. She could speak many languages—French, English, German, Italian. But she neither cared to define herself as having any particular profession, nor wanted to make herself in some way irreplaceable. She had languidly accepted Valentin's attentions, then his lovemaking, then his child. When he had bristled at the news of her pregnancy, she had realized that she was in love. That she could not live without him.

He secretly admired her daring, her charm, which was winning her so many friends. Admired her flexibility in changing from one thing to another. Until he felt the weight of that lightness. And it filled him with inexplicable fury. He blamed himself, but pushed Raya away anyway.

At that moment, Raya was just discovering how much she needed him. But her need made him panic. While these complex states were evolving, no decision could be taken and the baby was born—to everyone's relief.

Maria offered to take them home, both Valentin and Raya. Raya said no, Valentin said no. Raya continued to live with her parents, with the baby. Unsurprisingly, her parents accused Valentin of being irresponsible, he stopped going there and the first few years were a nightmare. Later Raya started working and moved with her daughter to a place of her own. She did something Valentin had dreamt about doing with her, back then when the time had been right.

Every now and then both reassured themselves that all was well, time was passing, things were fine. But whenever they met, the space between them filled with strange ambiguity, a thick cloud annihilating all possibility for shared thrills and desires. When either of them managed to pierce through the cloud, as now with the plush Christmas monsters, both behaved like amateur actors unexpectedly forced into an unfamiliar play. They tried to guess what their lines should be, to keep things from falling completely apart. At least that was what her father thought. And Raya's father was no ordinary man. He was a bigshot. Apart from the fact that he looked like Jeremy Irons, he had the capacity of gathering the world around him and twisting it around his pinky. And the world was happy. Well, such people existed, nothing to be done about that.

Valentin vaguely suspected that Raya's father played a significant role in the whole misunderstanding, even if only in accepting the baby with open arms, as if it were one of his own. He had even heard him say “the children of my children are also my children,” with such boundless, yet exclusive generosity. At least that was how Valentin felt about the situation. But he could never talk about it to anyone.

 

41.
In the Fog

 

Valentin went back to his room and hurled himself onto the bed, covering his head with a blanket. Something was knocking on the door of his mind, but he had no desire to let it in. His thoughts kept crashing against the same words, “once the decision taken…” His daughter's age, the years, like the beginnings of a bridge extending from one side of the river, but with no support, like a floating arch over the water, and every Christmas he was adding to it. But what was he adding? Length? He was just making it more fragile. Did he have any chance of reaching the opposite bank?

You could look at it the other way—the bridge, once built in its entirety, was blown up on the opposite side of the river, so that whatever was left stood hanging on this side, as if by magic, like the bridge in Avignon.

He let the images flow, drifting with them, half-seeing, half-hearing, giving in to the tingling in his stomach, like a child in its cradle, swinging down into an abyss with squeals of delight. One of the last half-formed tendrils of thought he felt before falling asleep was that he needed to write something, to glue some pieces together…

He woke up with the image of Raya's face in his dream. He could not remember anything except her face. She had accompanied him to the gates of the waking world as if not allowed to cross over. He sat up in his bed and propped his back against the wall. He could hear the blood pounding in his head. He closed his eyes and tried to descend back into the sensation of his dream and elicit its unarticulated meaning. It held a key to something. But his mind had never been able to roam freely and he soon became angry with the futility of his attempt.

Things can be thought about. Valentin believed that every equation led to a solution. The problem was that he was not very good at math. States of mind such as this indefinite, wandering sensation exhausted him. How strange that all of these things, decided upon a long time ago, kept hovering about, refusing to ebb into the past. His decision to leave Raya, for example.

The past was not at all a quiet background, a foil to his new adventures. There was still something to be done, but what was it—that was the riddle. He suddenly thought of his mother and shivered. What would Maria do in such a case, or rather, what
did
she do? Nothing. The answer was nothing, she did nothing.

On the other hand, he couldn't stand the idea of doing nothing—and wasn't that what it meant to be Valentin? Or at least try to be Valentin?

Then he thought that if Raya got married, maybe he would be able to make love again.