Calligraphy Lesson (7 page)

-you must take a close look at this little Jewess which Cyril abducted from Solomon's alphabet—all the grace in the steep line of her flaunted hip!” Everyone was silent, dumbstruck, but I kept talking and talking, powerless to stop myself. “Without a doubt, the person who wrote this is extraordinary, or rather, artistic. Hence the unevenness, the anxiety, the total lack of rhythm (which indicates emotional contentment), death poured outward for the time being. A tremendous, unconscious life force drives the ends of the line sharply upward. The diacriticals and the marks between the lines stretch and break off. They try to tear the word to shreds, annoyed over what has been left undone, unrealized, overlooked!” At this Burinsky rose from his seat. He walked toward the door, donning his hat as he went, and when he pulled even with me hissed through his teeth, “Fool!” Regardless, the court scheduled a second expert opinion, and of course they declared that the cashier had written the note. He was convicted, and after the hearing, while everyone was retrieving their coats in the
checkroom, the judge came up to me and said, “God will punish you. Wait and see!” But it's all right. I'm alive. Alive, breathing, eating, and using up a stack of paper every day. My pen still scratches, punishes, and pardons. What's so important about that? I'm perfectly willing to admit that right now, this very minute, he may be whimpering from hunger, or freezing, or has had his teeth knocked out and is being raped by his cellmates, or that he's not even alive but lying in some morgue with a toe tag, or has simply faded away with time, written in cheap ink. Not that there's anything so awful about that. My God, what makes him any better than me or even you, that we should have regrets? Because there has yet to be a case, even the longest and most convoluted, at the end of which, when all was said and done, a pen did not place a period.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE:

Like much of Mikhail Shishkin's writing, “Calligraphy Lesson” is highly allusive and attentive to the formal qualities of a story both inventively told and steeped in Russian atmospherics.

The reader will want to be aware of two issues in particular.

First, what the English reader may not realize—but the Russian will pick up instantly—is that the various women's names refer to characters from Russian classics: Sofia Pavlovna from Griboedov's play
Woe from Wit
; Tatiana Dmitrievna from Pushkin's long poem
Evgeny Onegin
; Nastasia Filippovna from Dostoevsky's
Idiot
; Anna Arkadievna from Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina
; and Larochka (Lara) from Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago.

Second, the passage describing the calligraphy of a specific Russian word
posed what was for me an unprecedented dilemma arising from the fact that in it Shishkin describes each letter as an object, yet the word's lexical meaning remains important.

The Russian word is colloquial, inappropriate for a court of law. Uttered by the defendant, this authentically felt word adds conviction and force to her statement. When the judge repeats it, he reinforces its power, but it's almost as if he's put quotes around it, so far is it from a judge's usual level of discourse. The narrator embeds the intense emotion the word has acquired in this context into his painstaking description of how each letter is to be written, but for him the act of writing is simultaneously a kind of self-protection. By focusing on the physical act of writing he is able to distance himself from the extreme human misery he witnesses over and over.

How could I convey the section's brilliant emotion but also truly translate it for the English reader? Should I or shouldn't I rewrite the passage to reflect the English cursive of the word's translation? It's a legitimate choice: the French translator decided to recast the passage to describe the word's French translation;
I decided to do both. I translated and reproduced the Russian word. In the pre-digital era, when Cyrillic characters were technically difficult to reproduce and so were rarely included in translations, I might have been inclined (or forced) to go the other way. Thanks to modern technology and to the fact that Shishkin's description was based on the letters' visual characteristics, which English readers could see and appreciate for themselves, I did not have to forgo Shishkin's tour de force (although I could not recreate his double-entendre: “
on a stick” is a euphemism for the Russian expression “shit on a stick,” that is, something or someone utterly repulsive, worthless, or despicable).

Translating Shishkin means maintaining his virtuosic tension between complex detail and deeply felt emotion.

Marian Schwartz

The Blind Musician

 

How odd it felt to ring this doorbell while holding the cherished key tight in my pocket. To see again on the coatrack in the entryway her tasteless coat with the mother of pearl buttons. To walk through the rooms with all their brazen mirrors acting all innocent. To inhale the medicine smell that had once been completely aired out. To make as if I didn't know where the cotton balls were kept. To bear her stranger's hands holding the same lidded Chinese mug I'd fed him tea in like a little boy.

Zhenya,
⁶
my sweet Zhenya, I really think I'm better. I don't get dizzy anymore. I slept last night. True, I had an awful dream: I'd grown a beard. I rushed to the dream book and read that if the beard is long, that means honor and respect; if short, a trial. Lord, what drivel! Wait a little. Alexei Pavlovich will be home from work soon.

No no, Verochka Lvovna,
⁷
I'll just help you tidy up and be on my way.

But Zhenya, this might just be the healing action of the little gray housedress. Who knows? And the whole point was to get away from the hospital gown. Listen, there's no way I can thank you for all you've done for us. I do realize how unpleasant it is—the trips to the hospital, the bandages, the pus, the bedpan.

Stop it! And don't you dare say those things ever again. Did they bring your prosthesis?

What prosthesis? It's an ordinary brassiere they've stuffed with something. Help me hook it up.

There, Verochka Lvovna, look how nice.

At home, in the dark entryway, I bumped into suitcases.

Zhenya, how you've grown! I barely recognize you! I remember you when you were this high! You and your father were always playing Gulliver. He'd spread his legs and shout, “Gulliver!” And you'd run back and forth, bubbling over with giggles. Remember? I came to visit and everyone here was hysterical because you'd eaten two apricots and swallowed the pits. The pits were sharp and got stuck in your bottom. Poor thing, you were wailing and no one knew what to do. They were just about to take you to the hospital, but I said, “Stop!” I washed my hands, poured oil over my finger, and in I went! I rotated one pit and both popped out as if they'd been shot from a cannon. And this is my Roman. Do you recognize my Roman? You were little when he and I came to visit and you played together. There was no leaving you alone for a minute or there'd be a fight. Remember how you ate all the candies and said it was him? I locked myself up in the bathroom with little Roman and took a belt to him. Immediately you pounded on the door: “Aunt Mika,
⁸
Aunt Mika, don't beat him, don't beat him, it was me!” You look so much like your papa, not at all like your mama. Your mama and I were like sisters. Here, look, this is us at the seashore, hugging, wearing identical swimsuits. That's what we told everyone, that we were sisters. Then she got married, became a provincial, and had you. That's where everything happened to
your mama, too. We aren't staying long, Zhenya dear. Your papa wrote, “Stay as long as you like.” But we're here just a little while. Once Roman passes his exams, we'll find an apartment. How pretty you've become! May Roman touch your face?

Kind Alexei Pavlovich, something's happened. Oh no, as always the ardor of my feelings raises no doubts. But in the last few days, I admit, I haven't been able to shake a sensation that I can't bring myself to put into words. Just like in
Gulliver,
the picture, remember? You're the cook, you're plucking a turkey, I'm sewing something, and suddenly a face peeks in the window, only it's not a face of our—Lilliputian—proportions. The turkey falls to the floor. The needle jabs my finger, and the people we'd imagined ourselves to be up to that moment, whose lives were special and happy, are thrown into disarray. But I knew you were right before, you know. It only seems that you're sculpting me in your own image and likeness, whereas in this reality, rainy since morning, you yourself are merely the fruit of my fantasies, a perfectly commonplace occurrence in
belles lettres
. Apparently, it doesn't take a great mind or an exacting imagination to create this world. Make the paper white, the ink black, yesterday's leftover bread stale, the stockings thrown over the chair back, having given up the ghost, the window transparent from rain, the sky grayish, and the land sinful. But maybe nothing worse happened than what you so feared. Even that little fool Psyche couldn't love in the dark her whole life. And it certainly wasn't the sisters' instigation that made her, on that last night, take a sharpened razor and a lamp filled to the top with oil to identify her secret husband, who was kind to the touch but invisible in the fortunate darkness. Alone now, she worries in her sorrow, although her decision has been made and her soul is adamant. Nonetheless she still wavers, rushes, delays, dares, trembles, despairs, rages,
hates, and loves the darkness she has taken in, but evening is on its way to night, and the girl hastily hides the razor under her pillow and covers the burning lamp with a flowerpot. The final moments of anticipation. Agonizing, crazy-making moments that make her shudder. Suddenly the rustle of an approach. And now Psyche welcomes the night ascending to her—its shoulders and back scattered with freckles, like oatmeal. Coitus with the darkness. At last her mystery spouse falls still beside her, rolled up in a ball. Now Psyche, weakened in body and soul, rises, takes out the lamp, clasps the razor in her fist, takes a step, still not daring to look, and lifts the lamp, expecting to see on her bed a god or a beast—but it's you.