Сергей Довлатов – Pushkin Hills / Заповедник. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 8)
“Well, what kind of a museum,” I said, “is without it – without the unhealthy interest? A healthy interest is reserved strictly for bacon.”
“Is nature not enough for you? Is it not enough that he wandered around this hillside? Swam in this river? Delighted in these scenic views…”
Why am I bothering her, I thought.
“I see,” I said. “Thank you, Vika.”
Suddenly she bent down, plucked up some weed, pointedly slapped my face with it and let out a short nervous laugh before walking off, gathering her maxiskirt with flounces.
I joined a group headed for Trigorskoye.
To my surprise, I liked the estate curators, a husband and wife. Being married, they could afford the luxury of being friendly. Polina Fyodorovna appeared to be bossy, energetic and a little conceited. Kolya looked like a bemused slouch and kept to the background.
Trigorskoye was in the middle of nowhere[52] and the management rarely came to visit. The exhibition’s layout was beautiful and logical. Pushkin as a youth, charming young ladies in love, an atmosphere of elegant summer romance.
I walked around the park and then down to the river. It was green with upside-down trees. Delicate clouds floated by.
I had an urge to take a dip[53], but a tour bus had pulled up just then.
I went to the Svyatogorsky Monastery. Old ladies were selling flowers by the gate. I bought a bunch of tulips and walked up to the grave. Tourists were taking photographs by the barrier. Their smiling faces were repugnant. Two sad saps with easels arranged themselves nearby.
I laid down the flowers at the grave and left. I needed to see the layout of the Uspensky Monastery. An echo rolled through the cool stone alcoves. Pigeons slumbered under the domes. The cathedral was real, substantial and graceful. A cracked bell glimmered from the corner of the central chamber. One tourist drummed noisily on it with a key.
In the southern chapel I saw the famous drawing by Bruni[54]. Also in there glared Pushkin’s white death mask. Two enormous paintings reproduced the secret removal and funeral. Alexander Turgenev[55]looked like a matron…
A group of tourists entered. I went to the exit.
I could hear from the back:
“Cultural history knows no other event as tragic… Tsarist rule carried out by the hand of a highsociety rascal.”
And so I settled in at Mikhail Ivanych’s. He drank without pause. He drank to the point of amazement, paralysis and delirium. Moreover, his delirium expressed itself strictly in obscenities. He swore with the same feeling a dignified older man might have while softly humming a tune – in other words, to himself, without any expectation of approval or protest.
I had seen him sober twice. On these paradoxical days, Mikhail Ivanych had the TV and radio going simultaneously. He would lie down on the bed in his trousers, pull out a box marked “Fairy Cake” and read out loud postcards received over the course of his life. He read and expounded:
Mikhail Ivanych was not liked in the village. People envied him. I’d drink, too, they thought. I’d drink and how, my friends! I’d drink myself into a motherfuckin’ grave, I would! But I got a household to run. What’s he got? Mikhail Ivanych had no household. Just the two bony dogs that occasionally disappeared for long stretches of time, a scraggy apple tree and a patch of spring onions.
One rainy evening he and I got talking:
“Misha, did you love your wife?”
“Whatsa?! My wife?! As in my woman?! Lizka, you mean?” Mikhail Ivanych was startled.
“Liza. Yelizaveta Prokhorovna.”
“Why do I need to love ’er? Just grab her by the thing and off you go…”
“But what attracted you to her?”
Mikhail Ivanych fell silent for a long time.
“She slept tidy,” he said. “Quiet as a caterpillar.”
I got my milk from the neighbours, the Nikitins. They lived respectably. A television set, Kramskoy’s
Mikhail Ivanych held the Nikitins in contempt[58]. As they did him, naturally.
“Still drinking?” enquired Nadezhda Fyodorovna, mixing chicken feed in the pail.
“I saw him at the centre,” said Nikitin, wielding a jointer plane. “Laced since the morning.”
I didn’t want to encourage them.
“But he is kind.”
“Kind,” agreed Nikitin. “Nearly killed his wife with a knife. Set all ’er dresses ablaze. The little ones running around in canvas shoes in winter… But yes, other than that he’s kind…”
“Misha is a reckless man, I understand, but he is also kind and noble at heart.”
It’s true there was something aristocratic about Mikhail Ivanych. He didn’t return empty bottles, for example; he threw them away.
“I’d feel ashamed,” he’d say. “How could I, like a beggar?”
One day he woke up feeling poorly and complained:
“I’ve got the shakes all over.”
I gave him a rouble. At lunchtime I asked:
“How goes it, feeling any better?”
“Whatsa?”
“Did you have a pick-me-up?[59]”
“Huh! It went down like water on a hot pan, it sizzled!”
In the evening he was in pain again.
“I’ll go see Nikitin. Maybe he’ll gimme[60] a rouble or just pour some…”
I stepped onto the porch and was witness to this conversation:
“Hey, neighbour, you scrud, gimme a fiver.”
“You owe me since Intercession[61].”
“I’ll pay you back.”
“We’ll talk when you do.”
“You’ll get it when I get paid.”
“Get paid?! You got booted for cause ages ago.”
“Fuck ’em and the horse they rode in on! Gimme a fiver anyway. Do it on principle, for Christ’s sake! Show them our Soviet character!”
“Don’t tell me, for vodka?”
“Whatsa? I got business…”
“A parasite like you? What kinda business?”
Mikhail Ivanych found it hard to lie; he was weak.
“I need a drink,” he said.
“I won’t give it to you. Be mad, if you want, but I won’t give it you!”
“But I’ll pay you back, from my wages.”
“No.”
And to end the conversation Nikitin went back into the house, slamming the heavy door with the blue mailbox.
“You just wait, neighbour,” fumed Mikhail Ivanych. “You wait! You’re gonna get yours! That’s right! You’ll remember this conversation!”