came home from work. I asked him: “Did you buy it back, Serenky?”
“No,” he said, “I forgot.”
I waited another day. He had a day off. Then he brought home a wrapped package. I opened it and saw a plain coat from the Moscow garment factory. It’s worth a hundred and forty-five rubles with the fur — I’m wearing it now.
Misha got excited: “How fortunate, look, it’s your size!” I didn’t know what to say. So I said: “My head is spinning, Misha.”
Then the doorbell rang. It was Verochka. She looked very happy — and on her was my moleskin manteau . . .
Is he here? Are you leaving?
Oh, that’s not him. I’m almost done with my story. I cried terribly. He was with her the whole time. Thought I wouldn’t find out. So I’m here for a divorce. I can’t. He’s worse. He didn’t think about me, he stole from me.
. . . No, I don’t know your future wife.
How she waited for you!
No, I’m not here for a funeral.
I’m going home now. I wish you happiness.
A SIMPLE LIFE
I
Life is simple but we like to make it complicated. I recall the following incident.
There was a woman sculptor who lived in an attic room in Berlin. Attic rooms in Berlin are cheap, but they are freezing cold. The windows face almost directly into the sky, while the glass isn’t properly fitted to its frame. The iron stove smells of intense heat, short-lived comfort. The clay cools in the vats.
It’s difficult to live in Berlin. The gray asphalt streets are clean. In the summer, they are filled with the scent of vanilla from flowers that bloom in clean flowerbeds. The house façades look like interior walls, and the sky — I’m starting to remember now — is uninviting and foreign, it’s very urban, organized, and it’s not even a sky, but a spotless blue lid over the gray walls of houses that extend toward it.
They asked civil engineers at a conference: Will the person who sweeps streets get the same salary as the chief engineer in a socialist state?
It’s easier now to imagine socialism in Russia than the idea that streets are going to be cleaned by machines.
A quiet battery-powered car with rubber brushes cleaned the street in front of Ksana’s house. The car cleaned and polished the street until it shined. At night the street froze in the reflection of illuminated buildings.
The attic room was lit by a gas lamp. The clay was cooling in the vat. And the stove occasionally hummed.
The woman was beautiful and she didn’t love anyone.
She sculpted and applied wet clay on the badly connected rusty armature.
Art is difficult.
The sculpture stood wrapped in heavy rags. The rags would dry slowly and turn gray. At first they would look like carved draperies, then they would turn completely gray. She had to wet them again. The metal frame was bending with great difficulty.
The woman was beautiful and she had many suitors. They brought her flowers. She didn’t love anyone. That’s probably why she had so many suitors.
One of them was a German architect.
He had a villa on the outskirts of the city. The old asphalt road flowed from the city and streamed past the small house. In the spring, the garden was filled with the scent of vanilla. In the summer, it bloomed with exquisite black roses.
The water would freeze in the attic room. Not in the summer, of course. But it seemed that it was always summer in the small house by the gray road, while it was always winter in the attic room.
When summer would arrive in the attic room, the rags on the sculpture would dry faster and the corrugated sheets on the roof would get blazing hot.
The woman decided to visit the architect in the winter.
He had a small, specially made coffee pot. They poured coffee into small, specially made cups. Then they added some Benedictine to the coffee. There were specially built wooden chairs with sloping backs by the wall. The chairs were uncomfortable and they had armrests that were also specially built.
The host made jokes. He had removed his jacket and sat in his bright vest. He kept joking and wasn’t shy at all that he was unattractive.
The woman sat examining her own portrait in Die Dame, a women’s fashion magazine. There was a strange horse’s muzzle behind her own familiar face. The photograph was taken in a riding arena. It was arranged by the host. And that was pleasant.
“Will you be my wife?” asked the host.
It was a nice room. There was a lot of space under the delicate tables and chairs. There was a ceiling over her head instead of a sky. While the sky above the attic room didn’t seem urban enough.
It looked like a sky from a Dutch novel.
The Dutch sometimes notice the sky and get scared.
Ksana didn’t say anything. She got up. Looked at the table. Everything was in order. The cups, the coffee pot, the biscuits.
She passed through the special room and went into the bathroom.
The bathroom shined with its tiled walls and nickel faucets.
The bathtub was made from enameled cast iron.
Ksana opened the faucet with hot water. The room filled with the sound of running water. The shiny walls lost half their gleam. Sponges hung in their string baskets. Round bars of soap sat in their round dishes.
The woman slowly undressed. The hot water was filling up the tub, playfully reflecting on the ceiling.
II
She didn’t marry him. The conversation was interrupted by her bath. Then she had to dry her hair, and that reminds one more of catching a cold than of love.
The conversation was interrupted and the quartered sky was left hanging above the attic room.
Occasionally a Czech painter would sit under that sky.
He painted on small boards. White on black, black on white. The paintings were all alike.
Shorosh was timid, quiet, and hungry, but he published small pamphlets several times a year. They were derisive, bold pamphlets in Czech, which nobody read or understood in Berlin.
He would always stay at Ksana’s for so long that the sky would disappear behind the window casing in the ceiling. The casing would fill with blackness. Then Shorosh would descend the dark stairwell and wait to see if anyone was coming out of the house to walk a dog.
All German shepherds look the same, like glasses or bottles of beer. They all wear identical collars and their
