The Light and the Dark (31 page)

There was something pitiful about him.

Before I went to sleep I took down a book at random from the shelves to read, it was some old work about types of building stone. Apparently ‘sarcophagus’ was the name of a type of stone quarried in Troas that possessed the property of annihilating the body of a dead man, including even the bones, without leaving a trace, so they made tombs out of it. Flesh-devouring. It was strange, stone absorbing a human being.

I woke up early in the morning, in the dark, when everyone was still asleep, and went to the railway station without saying goodbye to anyone. I left on the first train.

Before I left I had lied to Mum, saying that I would stay overnight at a friend’s place, but after I got back, as we drank tea I told her I had gone to see my father.

She didn’t speak for a long time, clinking the spoon in her cup. Then suddenly she said:

‘What for? He’s not your father.’

I was dumbfounded.

And then Mum told me that when she was young this architect
had wooed her for several years, but she had never loved him.

‘He invites me to a concert and we walk along the aisle in the hall, everyone’s looking at us, and I’m dying of shame for him – scruffy and crumpled, smelling of plain soap.’

He asked her to marry him – she refused. But when she became pregnant with me, she remembered about him and agreed. She said that at the wedding she tried to pull her stomach in, but nobody noticed anything anyway.

It was as much as I could do to mumble:

‘But that means you used him!’

‘Yes, I suppose I acted meanly. Perhaps. But for your sake I would have done anything. I told myself: the child has to have a father. I thought it would be possible to love him. It didn’t work out. I told myself I had to! But in the end I realised I couldn’t carry on. I tried to persuade myself to be grateful to him, but when it came to it I was almost sick every time he touched me. It wasn’t a family, it was torture. And the moment came when I exploded. It was a difficult time for him – a bridge he designed had collapsed. And then I told him everything as well.’

When I recovered my wits I asked:

‘Then who is my father?’

She took out a pack of
papyrosas
that she hid from my stepfather and lit up at the window. I waited.

Finally she answered.

‘What difference does it make? Perhaps you never had a father. From the moment you appeared in my stomach you had no one else but me. Consider it a virgin birth.’

And she gave a bitter laugh. She never said another word about it.

There, my Sashenka, I’ve told you.

Do you know what is really amusing? At the time I wanted to write a serious story or even a novella about this: a youth searches
for his father and finally finds him. I didn’t understand that it is really a very funny story. Good Lord, and I wanted to be a writer! To be a writer is to be no one.

Sasha, I find that me, the old one, funny and repulsive now. I have crossed him out. I’m so old already, and I still don’t know anything about myself. Who am I? What do I want? I’m still no one! I still haven’t done anything in this life! I could find any number of excuses for that, but I don’t want to look for them. I’m starting all over again from the very basics. I know, I can feel, that someone different, someone real, is growing inside me. And he has so much strength and desire to do something important! When I get back, I’m not going to waste a single minute. Everything’s going to be different. I shall have time to do so many things, accomplish so much! I shall even look at the sky quite differently.

I know, you read these stupid lines and you thought: He can look at the sky anyway …

No, Sashenka, that’s not right, not right!

Do you know what idea has just come into my head? You’ll laugh. Please don’t laugh, my darling!

When I get back, I could become a teacher.

I imagine that now you’ll recall how the ancient Greeks chose their teachers. A slave breaks his arm or his leg and becomes useless for any kind of work, and then his masters say: ‘That’s another pedagogue we have!’

I don’t know what sort of teacher I would make, but somehow I have the feeling that it’s for me. In any case, I could give it a try.

Yes, somehow I have the feeling that I could make a good teacher. I could teach literature. Why not? What do you think?

In general, thoughts keep coming into my head now that were
completely impossible before. For instance, I want us to have a child. Are you surprised?

I was surprised at myself. And for some reason I want it to be a boy.

But I imagine him already grown up a bit. I don’t know anything at all about babes in arms and I’m probably afraid of them. I think, for instance, about how we’ll play chess – and I’ll play without a queen, to encourage his love of the game.

I’ll record his height by putting a book on his head.

We’ll draw together, make things. I’ll show him how to make a whistle out of an acacia pod.

I imagine myself teaching him to ride a bicycle, he weaves all over the place and I run behind, holding on to the saddle. But that’s after he grows up a bit.

We’ll have everything, Sashka, my darling, believe me!

And I also imagine that you’ll go away somewhere and we’ll wait for you and go to meet you at the railway station. There’ll be heaps of people there. I’ll sit him on my shoulders and tell him to look out for you, or else we’ll miss each other. He’ll see you and shout:

‘Mum! Mum! We’re here!’

Yesterday I had night duty. I dropped into the children’s ward and showed them a slide strip on the wall about little Tom Thumb. He threw his crumbs to the hungry birds, as if he knew from the very beginning about the ogre’s castle he had been brought to with his brothers and sisters and he didn’t need bread any more.

Then I get to Sonechka’s room.

She’s still lying like that with the acorn in her little fist, still absolutely doesn’t want to die, although nothing at all can be done.

I stroked her gaunt arm.

Wound up the grasshopper-watch.

Snow falling outside. Quiet, slow. Soft, fluffy, mute.

I lay down on the edge of the bed and hugged her, pressed her against myself. Started whispering in her ear:

‘Sonechka, listen to me. I’m going to tell you something very important. Try to understand. I know you can hear me now. In one book I read about death that it’s like when you’re a child playing outside in the snow, and your mother watches you through the window, and then she calls you. You’ve just been out playing for long enough and it’s time to go home. You’ve tumbled about in the snowdrifts, you’re wet, your felt boots are full of snow. You’d like to go on and on playing, but it’s time. And it’s no good trying to argue. You’re stubborn, and that’s really great. There’s only a little handful of you left, and you’re still clinging on to life. You don’t want to go. You’re a great girl! Such a tiny little girl, you’re really great! But you have to understand that you can’t live, you know. It’s all the same to you, but you’ve worn your parents ragged. They love you so much! They’ve been told there’s no hope. The doctors who looked at you and wanted to help you very much, they can’t do anything. Don’t feel hurt about it! Perhaps they might not understand some other things, but they know all about this. They seem like big, grown-up, clever people to you, but they really can’t do anything. Believe me, if you could just look at your body, you’d realise straightaway that it’s no use to you any more. You shouldn’t cling to it any longer. Do you understand that if you let your body go, you’ll be helping your parents – you love them very much too, don’t you? They’re worn out.
Even just a little drop of hope could give them the strength to carry on, despite everything. But when there’s no hope left, it just hurts really, really badly. They’ll feel better if you die. It’s hard to understand, but try, my skinny little honey-bunny. Just look at this body, it’s absolutely no use to you now. It can’t dance any more, it will never be able to curtsy, or run, or skip about, or draw, or go outside. When it dies, that will be great. You know, life is a lavish gift. Everything in it is lavish. And your death is a gift. A gift to the people who love you. It’s very important for people when their dear ones leave them. That’s a gift too. It’s the only way they can understand anything about life. The death of the people we love, people dear to us, is a gift that can help us understand the important reason why we are here. And then, just imagine, you’re a little girl who really doesn’t know anything yet, not even why a light bulb shines, not to mention things like Fresnel’s double mirror, but when this happens, you’ll learn something that none of the grown-ups here, not even the wisest ones, know – it will all be revealed to you. If you like, I can take your acorn, bury it in the ground in spring and it will grow into a little tree. Now you tell me, what can an acorn, living its little acorny life, know about the life of an oak tree? A body is just a body. You grow out of your ballet shoes, don’t you? It’s just that you’ve grown out of your body too. And here’s the most important thing: don’t be afraid that you’ll suddenly be alone. Remember, you drew the way a tight little thread runs back from every object to a single point? That’s the way the world is. In the beginning we were all together, a single whole. Then everything was scattered, but that little thread pulling us back was attached to every one of us. And afterwards the whole world will gather back together at that single point. Everyone will go back there – first you, then Donka, then your mummy and daddy – it’s doesn’t matter who goes first. Some
people call it the vanishing point, but its best name is the convergence point, because that’s the place where we’ll all be together. Even railway tracks come together there. And all the trams go there. And the kite that you and your daddy launched was flying back there to that point, only it got tangled in the wires. Just imagine, it’s still hanging up there. It waved to me today as I was coming to work. But it’s late already. Outside the window the snow’s falling, thick and white. It’s quiet. Everybody’s sleeping already, they’ve run themselves to a standstill. My little girl, this body of yours can’t do anything any more, but you can do everything. Now curl up tight and warm!

Sasha, my odd-eyed love!

I dreamed about you today!

Would you believe, I can’t remember the dream exactly now, but we were going somewhere together. Then for some reason you disappeared and I ran after you, but I couldn’t run, all my movements were as laborious as if I was up to my chest in water. Why is it that dreams are forgotten straightaway? Never mind, it’s not important. The important thing is that I dreamed about you, and we were together.

And perhaps you dreamed about me too? Imagine that my dream met your dream somewhere, they kissed, put their arms round each other and hugged each other tight.

My little girl! My love!

Tientsin will be stormed in two days. At least, that’s what they say. Everyone here is expecting it, but no one really knows anything
for sure. We’re preparing for the expedition to Peking, but then again they say that we’ll have to wait until the rainy season – where are those rains now? – and it’s unlikely that we’ll be able to set out before then. Rumours, rumours and more rumours. That’s all that keeps everyone going here.

I’m alive and well, although I’ve lost a lot of weight and all my clothes are falling off me. For the last few days I’ve been having stomach problems again. I went to the doctor, but Zaremba only advised me not to eat anything for the time being. I haven’t developed lice yet. Like most of us here, I wash and shave only occasionally, I’m all shaggy. Today I decided to have a shave and spruce myself up. I sat on an empty shell crate and scraped off my five-day stubble. A scrap of bandage served as a shaving brush. I don’t have a little mirror to shave with – I broke mine and had to borrow Kirill’s. I may not shave regularly here, but every now and then I have to, otherwise I’d go completely to seed.

You know, I looked in the mirror when I was shaving and suddenly saw myself with my mouth open. You understand – I saw myself dead. I’ve started seeing everybody as they will be after they die, including myself.