The Gift (21 page)

During the next six months (until Uncle Oleg almost forcibly took us abroad) we tried to find out how, and where, he had perished—and indeed whether he had perished at all. Apart from the fact that it happened in Siberia (Siberia is a big place!) on the return journey from Central Asia, we found out nothing at all. Can it be that they hid from us the place and circumstances of his mysterious death and have continued to hide them to this day? (His biography in the Soviet Encyclopaedia ends simply with the words:
He died in 1919.)
Or did the contradictoriness of the vague evidence truly rule out any explicitness in their answers? Once in Berlin we learned one or two supplementary things from various sources and from various people, but these supplements turned out to be nothing but new layers of uncertainty rather than glimpses through it. Two shaky versions, both more or less of a deductive nature (and telling us nothing, moreover, about the most important point: how exactly did he die—if he died), were entangled in one another and mutually contradictory. According to one of them, news of his death was brought to Semipalatinsk by a Kirghiz; according to the other, it was brought by a Cossack to Ak-Bulat. What was my father’s route? Was he going from Semirechie to Omsk (by way of the feather-grass steppe, with the guide on a piebald pony) or from the Pamirs to Orenburg through the Turgay region (by way of the sandy steppe, with the guide on a camel, he himself on a horse, birchbark-stirruped, from well to well, avoiding villages and railway lines)? How did he pass through the storm of the peasant war, how did he steer clear of the Reds? I cannot make anything out. And then, what kind of
shapka-nevidimka
, “invisible-making cap,” could have fitted him, who would have worn even that at a rakish angle? Did he hide in fishermen’s huts (as Krüger supposes) at the post “Aralskoye more” among the stolid Urals Old-Believers? And if he died, how did he die? “What is your profession?” Pugachyov asked the astronomer Lowitz. “Counting the stars.” Whereupon they hanged him so he could be nearer the stars. Oh, how did he die? From illness? From exposure? From thirst? By the hand of man? And if—by somebody’s hand, can that hand be still living, taking bread, raising a glass, chasing flies, stirring, pointing, beckoning, lying motionless, shaking other hands? Did he return their fire for a long time? Did he save a last bullet for himself? Was he taken alive? Did they bring him to the parlor car at the railway headquarters of some punitive detachment (I can see its hideous locomotive stoked with dried fish), having suspected him of being a White spy (and not without reason: he knew well the White general, Lavr Kornilov, with whom once in his youth he had traveled over the Steppe of Despair and whom in later years he had seen in China)? Did they shoot him in the ladies’ room of some godforsaken station (broken looking glass, tattered plush), or did they lead him out into some kitchen garden one dark night and wait for the moon to peep out? How did he wait with them in the dark? With a smile of disdain? And if a whitish moth had hovered among the shadowy burdocks he would, even at that moment, I
know
, have followed it with that same glance of encouragement with which, on occasion, after evening tea, smoking his pipe in our Leshino garden, he used to greet the pink hawks sampling our lilacs.

But sometimes I get the impression that all this is a rubbishy rumor, a tired legend, that it has been created out of those same suspicious granules of approximate knowledge that I use myself when my dreams muddle through regions known to me only by hearsay or out of books, so that the first knowledgeable person who has really seen at the time the places referred to will refuse to recognize them, will make fun of the exoticism of my thoughts, the hills of my sorrow, the precipices of my imagination, and will find in my conjectures just as many topographical errors as he will
anachronisms. So much the better. Once the rumor of my father’s death is a fiction, must it not then be conceded that his very journey out of Asia is merely attached in the shape of a tail to this fiction (like that kite which in Pushkin’s story young Grinyov fashioned out of a map), and that perhaps, if my father even did set out on this return journey (and was not dashed to pieces in an abyss, not held in captivity by Buddhist monks) he chose a completely different road? I have even had occasion to hear surmises (sounding like belated advice) that he could well have proceeded west to Ladakh in order to go south into India, or why could he not have pushed on to China and from there, on any ship to any port in the world?

“Whether it was this way or that, Mother, all material connected with his life is now collected at my place. Out of swarms of drafts, long manuscript extracts from books, indecipherable jottings on miscellaneous sheets of paper, penciled remarks straggling over the margins of other writings of mine; out of half-crossed-out sentences, unfinished words, and improvidently abbreviated, already forgotten names, hiding from full view among my papers; out of the fragile staticism of irredeemable information, already destroyed in places by a too swift movement of thought, which in turn dissolved into nothingness; out of all this I must now make a lucid, orderly book. At times I feel that somewhere it has already been written by me, that it is here, hiding in this inky jungle, that I have only to free it part by part from the darkness and the parts will fall together of themselves.… But what is the use of that to me when this labor of liberation now seems to me so difficult and complicated and when I am so much afraid I might dirty it with a flashy phrase, or wear it out in the course of transfer onto paper, that I already doubt whether the book will be written at all. You yourself wrote to me of the demands which in such a task should be presupposed. But now I am of the opinion that I would fulfill them badly. Do not scold me for weakness and cowardice. Sometime I shall read you at random disjointed and inchoate extracts from what I have written: how little it resembles my statuesque dream! All these months while I was making my research, taking notes, recollecting and thinking, I was blissfully
happy: I was certain that something unprecedentedly beautiful was being created, that my notes were merely small props for the work, trail-marks, pegs, and that the most important thing was developing and being created of itself, but now I see, like waking up on the floor, that besides these pitiful notes there is nothing. What shall I do? You know, when I read his or Grum’s books and I hear their entrancing rhythm, when I study the position of the words that can neither be replaced nor rearranged, it seems to me a sacrilege to take all this and dilute it with myself. If you like I’ll admit it: I myself am a mere seeker of verbal adventures, and forgive me if I refuse to hunt down my fancies on my father’s own collecting ground. I have realized, you see, the impossibility of having the imagery of his travels germinate without contaminating them with a kind of secondary poetization, which keeps departing further and further from that real poetry with which the live experience of these receptive, knowledgeable and chaste naturalists endowed their research.”

“Of course I understand and sympathize,” answered his mother. “It is a pity you cannot manage it, but of course you must not force yourself. On the other hand I am convinced that you are exaggerating a little. I am convinced that, if you thought less about style, about difficulties, about the poetaster’s cliché that ‘with a kiss starts the death of romance,’ etc., you would produce something very good, very true and very interesting. Only if you imagine him reading your book and you feel it grates upon him, and makes you ashamed, then, of course, give it up, give it up. But I know this cannot be, I know he would tell you: well done. Even more: I am convinced that some day you shall yet write this book.”

The external stimulus to the cancel of his work was provided for Fyodor by his removal to another lodging. To his landlady’s credit it must be said that she had put up with him for a very long time, for two years. But when she was offered the chance of obtaining an ideal roomer in April—an elderly spinster rising at seven thirty, working in an office till six, dining at her sister’s and retiring at ten—Frau Stoboy requested Fyodor to find himself another roof within the month. He continually postponed his inquiries, not only out of laziness and an optimistic tendency to
endow a stretch of granted time with the rounded shape of eternity, but also because he found it unbearably nasty to invade alien worlds for the purpose of discovering a place for himself. Mme. Chernyshevski, however, promised him her assistance. March was drawing to an end when, one evening, she said to him:

“I think I have something for you. You once saw here Tamara Grigorievna, the Armenian lady. She has had a room in the flat of a Russian family but now wants to turn it over to somebody.”

“Which means it’s a bad room if she wants to get rid of it,” remarked Fyodor carelessly.

“No, it’s simply that she’s going back to her husband. However, if you don’t like it in advance then I won’t do anything about it.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” said Fyodor. “I like the idea very much, really I do.”

“Naturally, there’s no guarantee the room is not already disposed of, but still I would advise you to give her a ring.”

“Oh, of course,” said Fyodor.

“Since I know you,” continued Mme. Chernyshevski, already leafing through a black notebook, “and since I know you’ll never ring yourself …”

“I’ll do it first thing tomorrow,” said Fyodor.

“…  since you will never do it—Uhland forty-eight thirty-one—I’ll do it myself. I’ll get her right now and you can ask her everything.”

“Stop, wait a minute,” said Fyodor anxiously. “I have no idea what I have to ask.”

“Don’t worry, she’ll tell you herself.” And Mme. Chernyshevski, rapidly repeating the number under her breath, stretched her hand toward the little table with the telephone.

As soon as she put the receiver to her ear her body assumed its usual telephone posture on the sofa; from a sitting attitude she slipped into a reclining one, adjusted her skirt without looking, and her blue eyes wandered here and there as she waited to be connected. “It would be nice—” she began, but then the girl answered and Mme. Chernyshevski said the number with a kind of abstract exhortation in her tone and a special rhythm in her
pronunciation of the figures—as if 48 was the thesis and 31 the antithesis—adding in the shape of a synthesis:
ja wohl
.

“It would be nice,” she re-addressed Fyodor, “if she went there with you. I’m sure you’ve never in your life …” Suddenly, with a smile, dropping her eyes, moving a plump shoulder and slightly crossing her outstretched legs: “Tamara Grigorievna?” she asked in a new voice, suave and inviting. She laughed softly as she listened, pinching a fold in her skirt. “Yes, it’s me, you’re right. I thought that as always you wouldn’t recognize me. All right—let’s say often.” Settling her tone even more comfortably: “Well, what’s new?” She listened to what was new, blinking; as if in parenthesis she pushed a box of fruit-paste bonbons in Fyodor’s direction; then the toes of her small feet in their shabby velvet slippers began to rub gently against one another; they stopped. “Yes, so I’ve heard, but I thought he had a permanent practice.” She continued to listen. One could make out in the silence the infinitely small drumming of the voice from another world. “Well, that’s ridiculous,” said Alexandra Yakovlevna, “oh, that’s ridiculous.” … “So that’s how things are with you,” she drawled after a moment, and then, to a quick question which sounded to Fyodor like a microscopic bark, she replied with a sigh: “Yes, more or less, nothing new. Alexander Yakovlevich is well, keeps himself busy, he’s at a concert now, and I have nothing to report, nothing special. Right now I have here … Well, of course, it amuses him, but you can’t imagine how I sometimes dream of going away somewhere with him, even if only for a month. What’s that? Oh, anywhere. Generally speaking, things get a little depressing at times, but otherwise there’s nothing new.” She slowly inspected her palm and remained like that with her hand before her. “Tamara Grigorievna, I have Godunov-Cherdyntsev here. By the way, he’s looking for a room. Do those people of yours.… Oh, that’s wonderful. Wait a minute, I’m passing him the receiver.”

“How do you do?” said Fyodor, bowing to the telephone. “I’ve been told by Alexandra Yakovlevna—”

Loudly, so that it even tickled his middle ear, an extraordinarily nimble and distinct voice took over the conversation. “The room’s
not yet rented,” began the almost unknown Tamara Grigorievna, “and as it happens they would very much like to have a Russian boarder. I’ll tell you right away who they are. The name is Shchyogolev, that tells you nothing, but in Russia he was a public prosecutor, a very, very cultured and pleasant gentleman.… Then there is his wife, who is also extremely nice, and a daughter from the first marriage. Now listen: they live at 15 Agamemnonstrasse, a wonderful district, in a small flat but
hoch-modern
, central heating, bath—in short, everything you could wish for. The room you’ll live in is delightful, but [with a retractive intonation] it looks out onto the yard, that of course is a small minus. I’ll tell you how much I paid for it, I paid thirty-five marks a month. It is quiet and has a fine daybed. Well, there we are. What else can I tell you? I had my meals there and I must confess the food was excellent, excellent, but you must ask them the price yourself. I was on a diet. Here’s what we’ll do now. I have to be there in any case tomorrow morning, about half past eleven, I’m very punctual, so you come there too.”

“Wait a second,” said Fyodor (for whom to rise at ten was the equivalent of rising at five for anyone else). “Wait a second. I’m afraid that tomorrow … Perhaps it might be better if I …”

He wanted to say: “give you a ring,” but Mme. Chernyshevski, who was sitting nearby, made such eyes that with a gulp he instantly corrected himself: “Yes, I think on the whole I can,” he said without animation, “thank you, I’ll come.”

“Well then [in a narrative tone], it’s 15, Agamemnonstrasse, third floor, with an elevator. So that’s what we’ll do. Until tomorrow then, I shall be very glad to see you.”