The Night is Bright

Journal of the Word No. 71

«We are all spinning our fates spinning ...
                                       N. gumilev
“Let it be night for you, light.”
                                      Mm. Tsvetaeva

Dmitry Roshka hardly concealed his irritation – today’s meeting dragged on into obscenity – but continued to methodically sign his books, simultaneously answering readers’ questions. These questions practically did not change, and therefore he answered without thinking, in a quiet voice, smiling friendlyly, while not forgetting to keep his distance. Is it true that working on your famous novel, you lived on ten rubles a week? Were you surprised by the success, the huge circulations and the prestigious literary award? What are your creative plans?

This question got particularly nervous because it sounded like a joke. The last book came out ten years ago. It was given easily, as if someone was dictating the text, and he, re-reading what was written the day before, was puzzled, sometimes not understanding how him These perfect lines came in. The book was endlessly reprinted and invariably sold out, however, as well as previous collections. And there were new plans, only they remained plans, because they did not illuminate new ideas, because the feeling of absolute happiness disappeared, when you sit at the table, do not wait for inspiration, but try to keep up with it, without noticing or being distracted by what is happening around you. At such hours he felt himself Mozart; the texts were born entirely, in their verbal score, and, writing them down, he had only to arrange dynamic shades, strokes, which he called illumination, allowing to penetrate into the depth and philosophicness of his prose. And then it went somewhere; creativity, creation, became work, and what was written in the evening, it seemed and was written in the morning, heavy and tortured.

The hall is almost empty. A little more, and you can go home, in the calm twilight of the apartment.

- How do you sign the book? What's your name? he asked an older, provincial-looking woman.

- Vera. But this is not for me, for my mother, she hastily replied. Sign Prudkovskaya Emilia Stepanovna.

He carefully put the name on the glossy spread and asked, “Your mother, isn’t she a teacher?”

- She will be glad that you remembered her, the woman bent over and breathed in his face. - Of course you learned from her. She's so proud, especially when you're on TV. I'm in Moscow passing by. I see the meeting is announced. I decided to surprise my mother, bring your autographed book. Could you put something personal down here?

- Say hello to her, tell her that I remember her. He stumbled and, bowing back, began to look for the car keys in his briefcase. - Yeah, just say hi. Sorry, I'm late.

Dmitry Pavlovich loved to drive a car. It relaxed him. Moscow traffic jams, he perceived as a gift for thought: he watched the faces, the behavior of people languishing in neighboring cars, composed fates. And now, stuck just ten minutes from home, he was involuntarily thinking about this joyously immediate woman, Vera, or rather her mother. How old is she now? Probably eighty, like his mom. They're the same generation. Mom over the years somehow dried up, hunched, and she most likely splashed, because in her youth she was lush, loose, with wide sides and full, with dimples on her elbows, arms. And there was a dimple on her cheek, which made Emilia Stepanovna always seem friendly and funny. Nose potatoes, blond, greasy, slightly twisted hair in a short haircut, and bluish eyes under thick glasses. I think she had two children. Yeah, right, girl and boy. When their class was sent to collect grapes in the fall, Emilia Stepanovna carried them around the field in a large basket like puppies, and, charter, left them under a tree. They slept there, pressing their backs against each other, then reluctantly chewed grapes, which in the heat seemed unbearably sugary, washed down with warm tea of the color of urine, from a bottle with a nipple. In the evening, at the bus station, she was met by her husband, who returned from the war, seemingly whole, but somehow slowed down, with a face that never changes his detached and surprised expression. Something his drooping figure with sloping shoulders and a small head resembled a narrow bottle with a plug stuck not to the end. He held the children in his arms—both mother-like straw, greasy hair, sculpted under short straight eyelashes, and white with blue skin—and followed his wife, rearranging his legs finely in heavy boots. And she was hurriedly seeding in front, full legs, twisted, with folds on her ankles, stockings, telling something, waving her arms and laughing with her sobbing laugh. From the cut of the black satin skirt looked unchanged white with a narrow lace, combine.

- I would like that, said Mirra, his classmate, why hide such beauty under a skirt? And with regret I looked at my shapeless, long lost color, dress. And Dima walked away, because even in the fresh morning air there was a heavy smell of stale clothes and unwashed body emanating from Myrrh. And it always smelled from his mouth, which he was embarrassed to say, so he tried not to communicate with her. Like everyone else in the class. But Mirra’s family lived in the same house with him, and his mother, who for some reason felt sorry for them all, sometimes asked Dima to take the remains of soup, a couple of potatoes or a piece of soap there. He never went into the apartment because of the stink: holding his breath, sticking a gear in his hands and, without saying a word, ran away. But the musty smell of ill health, mold and garbage cleansing, bursting onto the landing, haunted him for a long time. And even now, after an incredible number of years, sitting in the smell of leather upholstery brand new Chevrolet, he involuntarily wrinkled.

Mirra admired Emilia Stepanovna and always looked at her with mute adoration. And she did not treat her either well or badly - she just did not notice how they do not notice from day to day standing in the same place an object that they used to walk around so as not to get hurt. Walking between the rows, she never stayed at her desk, where she sat alone, did not hug her by the shoulders, like other children, and almost never addressed her except on the rare occasions when she called to the board. And when she came out, Emilia Stepanovna either pushed her chair back or stood up to the window, from there absent-mindedly listening to the answer. Sit down. As always," she said disapprovingly and explained, "Myrrh is still far behind, let's wait for better times.

Dima knew that in the evacuation, having got into some Uzbek village for ten houses, Mirra went to school with a great delay and therefore was enrolled not in the sixth grade, but in their fourth. Writing, and especially arithmetic, was given to her with difficulty, but neither the children nor the teacher herself wanted to study with her, because instead of pity she caused dislike. And teased, especially after a physical education class, when she climbed to the very top of the Swedish stairs in a long jersey over her unknown where she got her soldier's pants without buttons, and from below you could see everything that the jersey hid in the usual plane of stay. Mitya was sick of what he saw. Approaching Emilia Stepanovna for some time watched Mirra frozen upstairs and ordered her to get off. She clumsily descended, climbed barefoot into men's shoes without laces and silently followed the teacher into the corridor. The principal advised her to go home before the end of class to avoid the ridicule of her classmates. She didn't show up at school for three days until Dimina's mother gave her her embroidered, caged red dress, and Dima was angry every time he saw Mirra in it. He did not understand pity for this gray-eyed brow-eyed girl with a huge ragged braid and the pungent smell of desperate poverty. He refused to sympathize with her, because they themselves lived in poverty, five in the same room with the kitchen - he, his parents and older sisters - but their poverty did not stink or make a mockery of themselves. And Mirra, who was always around him, trying to draw attention to himself and make friends, angered him even more because she made him rude, proving to everyone that he had nothing to do with her.

The cars finally crawled. The “janitors” earned, swiping large drops of the beginning spring rain from the windows. The house was empty and quiet. Strong smell of lilac - in the morning, on the day of departure for the dacha, the wife left a bouquet in the vase. And he hated this bitter smell, which always began to hurt his head, so he went to the kitchen to brew fragrant coffee brought from Colombia, although he did not want to drink. I didn’t want to just lie down and close my eyes.

Age - you get tired of what.

This woman really resembled her mother. The same fussy and sloppy; ineptly made-up face with floury specks of powder on a sweaty nose, floating blue shadows, faded lipstick remains. Emilia Stepanovna used lipstick only on the eve of big holidays. Then she appeared in a red crepestin blouse, tucked in the same black satin skirt with a cut. Dima noticed that on such days she taught more inspired and emotionally and, unusually, was distracted from the topic. So it was on that pre-May Day, when Emilia Stepanovna, crushed. After reading the book, I started thinking aloud. She knew how to praise, pick up encouraging words from which she wanted to fly, and Dima always waited for them, condescendingly pitying those who did not meet teacher expectations.

“Myrrh,” she sighed, stopping at the back of the desk, “what can you say?” It is sad and sad that even such an exciting topic did not arouse emotions in you. Everything is gray, wretched, within a radius of five verbs and three adjectives. Not to mention grammatical errors. Although, here you need to give a discount - a non-Russian person is not able to feel the Russian language. And you're Jewish. No, I do not want to say that the Jews or some Turks are stupid, but they do not have this sense of great language.

She smiled cheerfully and patted Mirra on the shoulder with a notebook. She, continuing to look at the teacher with loving eyes, said: “And I’m Russian.” ?

- What kind of Russian are you with that name? Emilia Stepanovna smiled sympathetically, and a cozy dimple crawled on her cheek, so adored by Mirra.

- I'm telling the truth, you just don't know. - In a puppy's voice, she objected.

- Stop it, the teacher shouted, looking her in the eye for the first time in a year.

- But my father, a Moldovan, works for a Russian newspaper, and he says that the word "exciting" is wrong. It is necessary to say exhilarating, and you yourself made a mistake, Dima suddenly blurted out for himself and snapped, hitting the stone gaze of the teacher.

She came close to him and stood, nervously tapping on the desk with knuckles of plump fingers with bitten nails. On the clenched lips sprawled unevenly overlaid lipstick, and therefore the mouth seemed a little skewed.

- Get out of class, Roshka, and grab your girlfriend.

She pointed to the door. Under the arm, on a red crepe, a wet spot spread.

From that day, Emilia Stepanovna stopped noticing him the same way as Mirra, and in order to ignore it was even easier, she sat them at one desk, on the side of the wall. At first, Dima tried to catch her gaze, but she looked past or through, and smiled indifferently, over his head, to nowhere. Because of this, Dima hated Mirra even more, and she, feeling this, became even more withdrawn, and now she moved away herself when he sat next to her. But one day in May, she suddenly recalled Dima to the sidelines and whispered: You heard Emilia Stepanovna say that she loves everything lilac, especially flowers. If we bring a lilac, maybe she'll realize we love her.

- And the money?

- In the old cemetery you can break a huge bouquet. I go there often because after the funeral, the butts hand out handfuls of boiled rice. You just have to go when it's dark, after the evening service.

Having hardly opened the cast-iron gates, they entered the cemetery, and immediately, moving to its old, overgrown with shrubs and grass, they suffocated with the smell of lilac. In the fresh, damp air it smelled unusually strong, although it grew in the distance, on the opposite side, along the fence, where crosses, monuments and gazebos had already run out, and as they approached this lilac hedge, it became completely dark. The branches broke with a loud crack, exposing the delicate green skin. And they chose the smoothest, with lush, barely blossomed clusters, mercilessly throwing a little wilted under their feet.

- You will see, she will like it, Mirra repeated, and this muttering convinced them both that when she saw the bouquets placed on the table in the early morning, the teacher would finally notice them. The rain started suddenly, and they climbed under the bushes. But the rain quickly penetrated there, and now and then shaking the jets on the head and behind the spine. Five minutes later, it was over, as were the flashes of lightning. And it became very dark and very quiet. But somehow it wasn't scary. On the contrary, Dima was surprised by the feeling of security and peace, which he felt only once, a long time ago, when his mother hugged him from somewhere running and hid him from someone, shielding herself.

Myrrh gently shook off heavy drops of water from broken branches and sat next to the wet grass. Her half-dissolved heavy braid touched the ground, and from this she became like the Little Mermaid from the picture, just like from the dimina book of fairy tales of Andersen. With spread fingers, she began to comb the strands of blond hair, but again began to splash. After picking up the bouquets, they ran to school. On the first floor there were parties, and on the second floor, where a dim light bulb lit up the stairs, there was no one. The door to the classroom was open and smelled of chlorine, which had recently been washed the floors. Mirra laid out the lilac on the table so that the branches formed a fan, then took out a brown stem thread from her pocket and clutched the ends of the bouquet with it, tying a kind of bow. They went home in anticipation of happiness, which remained one night.

Dmitry Pavlovich liked to work at night, when nothing was distracting – no noise outside the window, no ringing of kitchenware, no phone calls with the subsequent chatter of his wife and her constant surprised or sympathetic exclamations. His first story, or rather, it was a fairy tale, he wrote at night, after a scolding, given by his father for a late return. He didn't say a word about lilacs. But at night, sitting at the kitchen table, what was thought in the cemetery - vague memories, first experienced sensations - he tried to express in words that sounded quite different on paper, and their meaning was different, deeper than if they were spoken aloud. And my mom wasn't surprised to find him in the dim kitchen doing this. I read and said strange words: "You hear other people's souls better at night, and you begin to understand your own." And he believed her—childish faith—though he only realized much later what she was saying. And he also remembered the fright when for a split second it seemed to him that he could not return from the fictional world, would be lost and would not be found. And as he grew older, he himself longed for this state of lostness, which was the very inspiration—and he always tried to keep it or prolong it, realizing the futility of trying.

Mirra waited around the corner of their gray, Stalinist-built home. All the way to school, she smiled, and the joy of waiting passed on to him. He smiled, too, as he looked at her, but he pulled back when she tried to hold his hand. The scent of lilac caught them on the stairs, and in the class he was so strong that Dima for some reason clamped. Around the table stood children and looked with perplexity at the disheveled broom of drooping, wrinkled bunches.

- It was necessary yesterday to wrap the ends of the branches with a wet cloth, Mirra whispered and sank, seeing Emilia Stepanovna in the doors. She came up, looked anxiously over her heads and twisted.

- Who brought this filth? she asked nervously, and Dima felt a nasty cold crawling between the shoulder blades. - Are you kidding me? Over me!? I teach you, I tolerate you, and you are with me.

She was shaking her head, and her voice was squealing, and soft curls with traces of rubber bands from beasts were beating against thick glasses.

- Who? I just want to know the name of that ungrateful bitch!

Suddenly, she stopped looking at Mirra, still smiling happily. “You,” Emilia Stepanovna shouted, “you have always hated me!” You want to be like everyone else. You're different. Look at you, the unwashed, stinking larvae with the carte name. And your flowers are just as stinky. Where did you collect them, on the graves?

She squeamishly, elbow pushed the branches to the floor, and they slapped Mirra under her feet with a deaf knock. - Go get that garbage. And you know what, you better go to another school, away from here.

Clumsily bent down, Mirra gathered the flowers in a ruffle and silently walked out of the classroom. Then she returned silently, sat down at the desk and sat down until the end of her classes without saying a word. And for the next few weeks, no one heard her voice. Except for Dima, no one ever spoke to her. And he stopped, realizing the failure of these attempts. Actually, everything got better: Emilia Stepanovna transplanted him to the front desk, and for him she became the former sweet, funny, good-natured teacher. But for some reason every day he accumulated a causeless anger towards her, and what he and Mirra once liked so much - dimples on his elbows and cheeks, the defenseless squint of his eyes, the sweet smell of floral perfume, the eternal combine in the section of his skirt - became hateful. And he hated Mirra, too, because every time he looked at her indifferent face, he felt guilty and hated himself.

The day before the summer holidays Emilia Stepanovna came in a new dress – black with a white round collar. This knitted collar was unevenly sewn, and therefore the neck seemed slightly curved. And the puffy ankles of the legs also seemed crooked due to the twisted arrow of stockings. Emilia Stepanovna was in a great mood from the warm, almost summer weather, from the bouquets brought by her students, from her new dress, which she constantly pulled at the waist, and from the feeling of herself - young, beautiful and loved. She took out from the folder a stack of photos of their class, taken the day before by a guest photographer, and began to distribute them.

- Fifteen minutes from now, we'll be standing on a solemn lineup," she said in a trembling voice, "and you'll be in fifth grade. You will start a completely different, almost adult life. New subjects, new teachers. But I hope that you will not forget me, your first teacher, who guided you for four years and taught you not only arithmetic, reading and writing, but also kindness, friendship and everything that comes in handy in life. But these photos will help your memory, and many years later you, as adults, will open the album and remember our class and me, as we are now.

Dima looked at the photo. Twelve boys in two rows to the right of the teacher and ten girls to the left. He and Mirra on the edges. Mirra's face is not visible because her head is lowered, her long bangs close her eyes, and her shoulders are raised, as if she was ashamed of her height and wanted to appear lower, more imperceptible, pretending that she did not exist at all.

- Well, if you want to forget about someone, it is easy to do, Emilia Stepanovna continued.

She took scissors and carefully carved Mirra, leaving a black silhouette in its place. “I hope the work lessons were not in vain for you,” she finished and smiled affectionately so that the sweet dimple on her cheek appeared deeper than usual.

Something prevented Dima from breathing, just as in a dream, when he ran and grabbed the air with his mouth, and cried and screamed until he hit his mother's skirt, and when he woke up, he could not remember what made him seek salvation.

There it is, this photo album, in the bookcase on the top shelf. Dmitry Pavlovich revealed it in the middle: brown thick pages - now they do not do such - with slots for clipped photos. Here he is, on the far left: resiny curly hair, protruding ears, a nose with a hump, an attentive glance directly into the lens, slightly lowered corners of the lips. And two gaping emptiness contours - the teacher in the center and Mirra on the right. He carved them both out: Mirra in her last lesson, and Emilia Stepanovna in the evening when she returned home, leaving the teacher locked up in the classroom, alone in an empty school. He still remembers her to the smallest detail, sitting at a table, filling out a class magazine for the last time - a stack of some papers next to her. White shoes-boats lying under the chair, and she sits somehow childish, hanging one leg, bent the other under itself. She took off her glasses, wearily rubbed her eyes, her potato nose, yawned and began to write with concentration again. Dima closed the door and turned the key stolen by the guard during the day. The last thing he heard was a quiet, surprised scream and slapping bare feet on the floor. And when Emilia Stepanovna started knocking on the door, he was already on the street, and from there he looked at the rushing shadow in the only illuminated window.

Dmitry Pavlovich chuckled at that childish attempt to erase, to erase from memory what he could not change, what denied justice and testified to his weakness. And this unknown woman who came from, Faith, confirmed her futility.

In the summer, Mirra disappeared – he never saw her again in the yard or in the nearby park, where she often played with the baby – and it turned out that she was placed in some kind of hospital for children with mental disorders.

- Here is the unhappy family," said the mother at dinner, "there is a lost child, a stranger is taken, and he is unwell.

- As a stranger, Dima wondered, is Mirra a stranger?

- Yeah. Their girl died of typhus in the evacuation, and this one – her name was Masha Nikitina – was picked up on the train when they returned home. Her mother died on the same train, I can't remember why. And Masha they gave the name of their daughter – she was the same age.

- So, is Mirra Russian?

- By blood, yes, but not by paperwork. You can understand them. But the daughter will not return, and the child with that name to live as a stigma, although she does not look like a Jew. Pity her and her parents. Now it is not known whether he will speak again, and most importantly, they cannot determine the cause - whether something hereditary, or the result of shock. How can you tell if she's silent?

It was dark, but I didn’t want to turn on the light. Dmitry Pavlovich postponed the album and lay down. Through the open window, only the noise of rain came - the windows of the apartment did not go to the noisy avenue, but to the yard. Tomorrow, early in the morning, he promised his wife, especially since his son and family will be there, and guests were invited to celebrate the beginning of the summer season. It was a long day, and these creative meetings are incredibly tiring with their meaninglessness. And once he enjoyed being the center of attention, feeling interested in himself, discussing what was written, proving something to people he had seen for the first time and would never meet again. Then it was inspiring, because it charged with faith in yourself, in the exclusivity of your talent. And now he was deliberately killing time in this way, because it was easier and less humiliating than reading his own incompetent, tortured lines during the night.

An alarmed memory kept me awake. The lilac-and-coffee-smelling night seemed to freeze between evening and morning, between the once experienced but forgotten past and the present.

There was a road, in the lowlands, under the hill, and the locomotive horns, the knocking of trains on the distillation were heard. There was a railroad on the other side. And he walked in the heat, in the dust. The sand was full of sand, but for some reason it was impossible to stop and shake it out. He walked for a long time, in a string of other people. Nobody said where they were all going. He kept asking the woman holding his hand. He couldn't see her face. Behind was a girl of seven years old, red in freckles, dragging a bag from which a bald doll looked out. On the right, a little further away, there was a man in uniform, in boots, with a machine gun. His face is hidden under the helmet. But you hear screams. So he walked forward, and you can see his back wet with sweat. Something was going on where the soldier went and they finally stopped. The woman holding his hand squatted - she has a very young face, black hair under a scarf - and whispered, hugging: "Dania, look over there. You see there are three women up there on the hill? Run to the one crying on the left. You hear me. Just her. And don't look back. Please don't look back! She ripped his hands off hers, pushed him, and he ran. At first silent, and then climbing up, screaming and choking with fear and despair. And there, upstairs, he was met by other hands, and he fell silent, because there was no strength left to cry. For a moment, he came to the edge and found with his eyes a woman in a scarf. She wandered without looking back, hunched, like an old woman.

The elevator door slammed, and again there was a poem. In the room, through loosely drawn curtains, feeling the first sunlight grated parquet, the morning crawled. Wrapped with a blanket, Dmitry Pavlovich reached for the phone and dialed the number of the dacha.

- I will not be able to come," he told his wife, "an urgent business trip, apologize to the guests, and, without listening to her questions, hung up the phone.

Now I had to call my mom and then go to the airport, try to buy a ticket at the counter. He picked up the phone and dialed the number.

- Yes, I do, they answered at the other end.

Mom's voice hasn't changed a bit over the years, you can never say that it belongs to an eighty-year-old woman. Here the father is another thing, coughing in the old-fashioned way, and the voice from years of smoking became creaky and hoarse.

- Yes, I'm listening. Go ahead.

- Mom, you? I might fly in today. If I get tickets. No, nothing happened, so I'm going to see you at work.

Now, about the tickets. He reached for the phone again, but the phone rang.

- Dmitry Pavlovich, this is Anton, from the Writers' Union. Two hours later, a delegation of foreign writers arrives. I have to meet you. Your presence is essential. We know it's Sunday, but we can't trust young people with that responsibility. Names are not the same, and they have not yet learned to behave decently. Up there, your excuses won't be understood. So wait for the car.

Belated objections ran into horns, and Dmitry Pavlovich hung up the phone. Well, maybe it's for the best. That woman told him not to look back, and he'll keep his word. And dreams are just traces of childhood fears and guesses, the answers to which it is better not to know..

What an obsessive smell lilac has. Dmitry Pavlovich pulled out a bouquet from the vase, stuck it in a plastic bag and headed to the garbage conduit.

A new day was beginning.