painting by the local artist Shchukin (top hat, horse, genius, endless horizon) stood my wife, smiling…
At that moment my miserable well-being came to an end. I knew what lay ahead. I remembered our last conversation…We were divorced a year and a half ago. This elegant modern divorce felt a little like an armistice. An armistice that didn’t always end with a flash of rockets…
I remember when Justice of the Peace Chikvaidze asked my wife:
“Do you wish to claim a part of the property?”
“No,” replied Tatyana.
Then added:
“In the absence of such.”
After that we would occasionally meet as old friends, but it seemed phoney and I left for Tallinn.
A year later we met again. Our daughter was sick and Tanya moved in with me. This was no longer about love, this was fate…
We had little money and we fought often. A potful of mutual irritation bubbled quietly over a low flame…
In Tanya’s mind, the image of an unrecognized genius was clearly linked to the idea of asceticism. I, to put it mildly, was too sociable.
I said:
“Pushkin chased after women… Dostoevsky indulged in gambling… Yesenin caroused and started fights in restaurants… Vice was just as common to men of genius as virtue…”
“Then you must be at least half genius,” my wife would agree, “for you have more than enough vices…”
We continued to balance on the edge of a cliff. They say marriages like this are most enduring.
And yet the friendship was over. You can’t say, “Hey, mydear!” to a woman to whom you have whispered God knows what. It doesn’t ring right…
With what did I arrive at my thirtieth birthday, celebrated boisterously at the Dnieper restaurant? I led the life of an independent artist. That is to say I did not hold a regular job and earned money as a journalist and ghostwriter of some generals’ memoirs. I had an apartment with windows looking out onto a garbage dump. A writing table, a couch, a set of dumb-bells and a Tonus radiogram. A typewriter, a guitar, a picture of Hemingway and several pipes, kept in a ceramic mug. A lamp, a wardrobe, two chairs of the brontosaurus period, and a cat named Yefim, whom I respected deeply for his tact. Unlike my close friends and acquaintances, he strived to be a human being…
Tanya lived in the next room. Our daughter would get sick with something, then she’d get better, then sick again.
My friend Bernovich always said:
“By the time he is thirty, an artist must have resolved all his problems. Except for one – how to write.”
I claimed that fundamental problems were irresolvable. For instance, the conflict between fathers and sons. The struggle between love and duty…
We got our terminology mixed up.
In the end Bernovich would invariably say:
“You are not made for marriage…”
And yet we’ve been married ten years. Just short of ten years.
Tatyana rose over my life like the dawn’s morning light. That is, calmly, beautifully, without encouraging excessive emotions.Excessive was only her indifference. Her limitless indifference was comparable to a natural phenomenon…
An artist by the name Lobanov was celebrating his hamster’s birthday. About a dozen people crammed into the garret with a sloping ceiling. Everyone waited for Tselkov, who didn’t show. They sat on the floor even though there were plenty of chairs. By nightfall, table talk had escalated to a dispute with undertones of a fist fight. A man sporting a buzz cut and a sailor’s striped jersey was losing his voice, screaming:
“I’ll say it one more time, colour is ideological in aspect!”
(It was later discovered that he wasn’t an artist at all, but a store clerk from the Apraksin shopping centre.)
This innocent phrase for some reason infuriated one of the guests, a typeface designer. He charged at the store clerk with his fists. But the clerk, like all men with shaved heads, was brawny and acted fast. He immediately removed a false tooth, supported by a pin…
At that moment my miserable well-being came to an end. I knew what lay ahead. I remembered our last conversation…We were divorced a year and a half ago. This elegant modern divorce felt a little like an armistice. An armistice that didn’t always end with a flash of rockets…
I remember when Justice of the Peace Chikvaidze asked my wife:
“Do you wish to claim a part of the property?”
“No,” replied Tatyana.
Then added:
“In the absence of such.”
After that we would occasionally meet as old friends, but it seemed phoney and I left for Tallinn.
A year later we met again. Our daughter was sick and Tanya moved in with me. This was no longer about love, this was fate…
We had little money and we fought often. A potful of mutual irritation bubbled quietly over a low flame…
In Tanya’s mind, the image of an unrecognized genius was clearly linked to the idea of asceticism. I, to put it mildly, was too sociable.
I said:
“Pushkin chased after women… Dostoevsky indulged in gambling… Yesenin caroused and started fights in restaurants… Vice was just as common to men of genius as virtue…”
“Then you must be at least half genius,” my wife would agree, “for you have more than enough vices…”
We continued to balance on the edge of a cliff. They say marriages like this are most enduring.
And yet the friendship was over. You can’t say, “Hey, mydear!” to a woman to whom you have whispered God knows what. It doesn’t ring right…
With what did I arrive at my thirtieth birthday, celebrated boisterously at the Dnieper restaurant? I led the life of an independent artist. That is to say I did not hold a regular job and earned money as a journalist and ghostwriter of some generals’ memoirs. I had an apartment with windows looking out onto a garbage dump. A writing table, a couch, a set of dumb-bells and a Tonus radiogram. A typewriter, a guitar, a picture of Hemingway and several pipes, kept in a ceramic mug. A lamp, a wardrobe, two chairs of the brontosaurus period, and a cat named Yefim, whom I respected deeply for his tact. Unlike my close friends and acquaintances, he strived to be a human being…
Tanya lived in the next room. Our daughter would get sick with something, then she’d get better, then sick again.
My friend Bernovich always said:
“By the time he is thirty, an artist must have resolved all his problems. Except for one – how to write.”
I claimed that fundamental problems were irresolvable. For instance, the conflict between fathers and sons. The struggle between love and duty…
We got our terminology mixed up.
In the end Bernovich would invariably say:
“You are not made for marriage…”
And yet we’ve been married ten years. Just short of ten years.
Tatyana rose over my life like the dawn’s morning light. That is, calmly, beautifully, without encouraging excessive emotions.Excessive was only her indifference. Her limitless indifference was comparable to a natural phenomenon…
An artist by the name Lobanov was celebrating his hamster’s birthday. About a dozen people crammed into the garret with a sloping ceiling. Everyone waited for Tselkov, who didn’t show. They sat on the floor even though there were plenty of chairs. By nightfall, table talk had escalated to a dispute with undertones of a fist fight. A man sporting a buzz cut and a sailor’s striped jersey was losing his voice, screaming:
“I’ll say it one more time, colour is ideological in aspect!”
(It was later discovered that he wasn’t an artist at all, but a store clerk from the Apraksin shopping centre.)
This innocent phrase for some reason infuriated one of the guests, a typeface designer. He charged at the store clerk with his fists. But the clerk, like all men with shaved heads, was brawny and acted fast. He immediately removed a false tooth, supported by a pin…
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