There’re fewer and fewer cobwebs these days.
Soon there won’t be any at all.
Instant coffee’s sour and reeks like a burnt cork but I drank down the whole cup. It’s like medicine: unpleasant but necessary.
I need to buy coffee beans but haven’t been able to force myself to leave the house today.
I wanted to fix a little sandwich with sliced sausage and onion but had to be patient. You can’t breathe onion on a client.
When I’m waiting for clients, I just walk around the house and page aimlessly through books. I can’t even lie down for a nap: I’d fall right to sleep from nerves and then I’d be sluggish and inept. And talking with a stranger would be absolutely unbearable for me. That’s something people sense from micromovements, from sideways glances, from . . . They sense it but they themselves don’t realize what’s happening.
I turned on the “ministerial” green lamp. The light settled in a cozy circle and the room outside its boundaries turned alien and a tiny bit hostile.
I tore off a shred of paper towel and wiped up a ring of coffee on the counter. No matter how hard you try, coffee’s always going to leave a ring: microscopic channels in a pottery coffee mug expand when warm. That’s actually exactly why they invented the saucer, but a cup and saucer is another aesthetic.
I changed into jeans and a sweater with a Norwegian pattern. I balled up my sweatpants and T-shirt, and tossed them into the bedroom.
What else have I forgotten?
Nothing, I guess.
Uh-huh, and then the phone started ringing.
The melody sounded muffled; where did I stick it this time? I lifted up the couch cushion. Not there. Then I realized it was in the pocket of my sweatpants. The phone had stopped ringing by the time I got to the bedroom, by the time I’d extracted it from the pocket. A missed call. What a pain.
They called back.
“Is this . . . Where do I go?”
A businesslike person, someone serious. It’s in the voice. It’s harder to work with businesslike people. On the one hand. But on the other hand, they always know what they want.
He’d driven to Dacha Street instead of Dacha Lane. The usual story.
I explained how to get here, fearing the whole time that the phone would be shut off, for nonpayment, during the conversation. That reflects poorly on one’s image.
But he turned out to be a sensible person. Once again, on the one hand it’s easier to work with sensible people, but on the other, it’s more complicated. That’s basically how everything always is.
Five minutes later he was beeping his horn in the driveway. Drops quivered on the surface of the car’s polished hood—each drop contained a miniature darkening sky. When I grabbed for the gate latch, it turned out to be wet, too, so I didn’t shake his hand—he was a solid, youngish guy in a Turkish leather jacket and narrow-toed black shoes—but I greeted him and turned to walk down the path to the house.
“You don’t need to take off your shoes,” I said, just in case, since my back sensed that he’d fallen an instant behind me at the threshold.
He didn’t take off his jacket, either, which was too bad. It’s harder to work with people in street clothes. They’re mentally ready to get up and leave at any moment.
From the worn leather chair where I seated him, he had a good view of my desk, with that pool of light creeping toward the edge, plus the reflected brightness on the lid of my laptop. My face was concealed in shadow. The creative process is a mystery and I’m an authorized representative of that mystery, the ambassador of a big glimmering mystery in this man’s small, rational world.
“Your place isn’t bad,” he said, looking around approvingly. “It’s cozy.”
He felt awkward. They almost always feel awkward, and then I feel awkward because they feel awkward.
“Sery told me you’re able to . . .” he said, before giggling from shyness. “I thought, well, why not, and, well . . .”
I took my pipe out of its stand and started filling it. I actually can’t stand the pipe; it’s a lot of bother. But it’s a very useful thing for ambiance.
“Do you have any specific requests?”
“Well . . . Basically yes, I do. No!”
I do run into this. Now I needed to draw him out, to untangle everything carefully and cautiously.
I never imagined when I was just getting started in this line of work that I’d be touching the intimate sides of the soul so much.
“Good. Then tell me about yourself.”
“Why?” He was frightened.
“Well, I need to know what to use as a starting point in my work.”
“I was born in Ryazan.” He took a deep breath, as if he were about to go underwater. “My mother . . . Mama . . . worked in the city housing office, at ZhEK . . . My father, well, he left the family. I don’t really remember him.”
Got it. He felt shy around his mother—she was an exhausted, clumsy woman. And he’s still miserable about manliness. And fishing trips together. Other boys’ fathers gave them bicycles. Took them to soccer. What else do boys do with their fathers? In reality, it’s probably lots of “Be quiet, Papa’s busy!” and “Be quiet, Papa’s resting!” But that’s other boys . . . everything probably would’ve been fine for him.
“Hold on a minute.” I set a little Dictaphone between him and me.
He tensed, pulling away. “What’s that for? We don’t need that.”
I understood that, too. I’d readied a notepad with a smart leather blotter, just in case this happened. Nowadays probably not many people know what the word “blotter” means. A devourer of ink, that’s what it is. Nice leather, a nice notepad, and a Parker with a gold nib. For an instant, with a shift in perspective and a quick swoop, I saw myself through his eyes: my face half shadowed, half illuminated by the lampshade’s greenish reflected light: I had an otherworldly, removed appearance. And the geometrically knitted pattern of the sweater. Only there was a rogue little brown spot next to my collar. I squinted cautiously and, yes, there was a small spot. I’d dripped coffee on myself, what a pain!
“We moved here . . . I went into the fourth grade at School Number 101. The school where they tossed the principal out the window.”
“What? They really tossed out the principal?”
“Yes, but that was after my time. Well, and it was actually the second floor. He just broke a collarbone. Well and a rib, too. But he didn’t come back. You can all kiss my butt, he said. You’re all thugs. The teachers and the students. He works in the coat check at the Ariadne gym.”
Wow, they tossed out the bald man. That’s quite something.
I got distracted for a minute, which is bad. On the other hand, it’s fine. The conversation was lively.
“So if you moved from Ryazan, they probably laughed at your pronunciation. Your classmates, I mean?”
He went silent, then said, “Yes, at first.”
I wonder what he did so they stopped laughing. Underhanded revenge? Nasty pranks? Fights? Learning to speak like a local?
“Did you settle into your class easily?”
“No.” His voice got a little higher than before, from the involuntary tension of his larynx muscles. “They don’t like new kids. They made fun of me in all kinds of ways. A thumbtack on a chair and, well . . . I had to fight.”
He sighed with relief and relaxed as he said the last word. It was bad at first but then he stood up for his right to exist, unashamedly stood up for himself. School 101 still had the same hoodlums.
“I was small for my age,” he said, “so I fought with my teeth, my feet, whatever. And then I somehow had a growth spurt and, well, they got left behind. But why do you ask?”
He used “and, well” as filler words. I wondered if he even noticed.
That wasn’t the worst option. Sery often said “it’s, like.” It’s very hard to work with a person who says “it’s, like.”
“A person’s character,” I said, puffing pipe smoke, “forms during childhood.”
The fact of the matter is that this isn’t a matter of character: it’s about unfulfilled wishes, hurt pride, and offenses that were driven deep inside but never forgotten. And I pull them out into the light. Which is why I need to work carefully. I remember how scared I was when I was just starting out, when one of my clients suddenly burst into tears.
“So what do you do now?” I lifted my palm, anticipating his answer. “No, no, in general terms . . .”
“Cargo transportation,” he said. “A so-so operation. Small. But there’s a consistent client base and orders.”
An accomplished person. But not completely. A not-quite-accomplished person, let’s say. Accomplished people don’t come to me. There’s no reason. But this one has the means to pay for something frivolous. Something’s itching, pulling at him, preventing him from living.
“Married?”
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
He spoke as if he was waving it off. No problems with women. But not a womanizer. He wasn’t caught up in that, meaning we’ll set aside anything related to romantic intrigue.
Most likely generous. Gave her money for clothes. That’s what he’d say, “Here, take this for yourself, for clothes.”
“Where do you like to take vacations? By the sea, in the mountains? Paris, Rome? Where have you been?”
“I don’t know.” He thought. “I don’t like being in the mountains. Or being a tourist: you drag yourself around, following a guide like a fool. I don’t know languages. I didn’t study them as a child. My mother said we didn’t have money for foolishness. Why bother with languages, like hell you’ll go abroad. She said the photography club was better. Who knew things would turn out like this? Nobody needs photography nowadays. Everybody has those cameras that look like soap dishes . . . They’re digital.”
He came back to his childhood all the time. A lot of them are like that. I’m used to it.
“Is it okay to smoke in here?”
“It’s okay,” I said and puffed out some smoke as confirmation. Its pale, disintegrating strands shrouded his face for an instant. He was still nervous.
He took out a cigarette, a Camel—almost all of them smoke Camels—then clicked his lighter, set the pack on the table, and reached for the ashtray. He was a little tense but not in a hurry, and his movements were precise: he gestured away from himself rather than toward himself, meaning he was generous and not fussy. But he was the secretive type, didn’t wave his hands around for no reason.
I took out the blotter and scribbled on the notepad, looking businesslike so he could calm down. The nib scratched cozily. A forgotten sound from childhood. For almost everybody.
A gust of wind hit the wet leaves outside: one leaf came off and stuck to the outside of the black glass like a huge moth.
“And then I realized they were all liars . . .”
I looked up and listened: it turned out he’d been talking about something while I was jotting. “And she was lying . . . and so was my grandmother . . . and the ones on television, too . . . Why should I believe them? I took my satchel, like I was going to school, and left. Got on the bus. It didn’t matter where I went. I thought the main thing was to go far away. And, well . . . She got me on my feet . . . She cried later. They registered me with juvenile services. And what did I do? Fine, they’d deemed me a troublemaker. So be it. And I ran wild.”
He spoke as if he were in a trance. They think it’s all forgotten. Buried. That they’re grownups, adults, that they have more important things in their lives than childhood dreams and insults. But they remember all that when they’re here. One thing dredges up another. It’s like a string of lights on a Christmas tree. To turn one on, you have to turn them all on.
“Hold on, that’s enough for now.”
Wanderlust. Stubbornness. Contrariness. Good qualities but inconvenient. They probably harped on him, saying that if he didn’t obey his elders, he’d be sure to land in jail or something like that.
And it suddenly occurred to me that he’d probably been a pretty decent kid. When I was a child I wouldn’t have been against having a friend like him.
He flinched as if I’d unexpectedly hit him but he pulled himself together quickly.
“You said yourself to talk about what I wanted.”
“I just can’t keep up, taking notes. When you were little, about ten, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
Guys like this usually say sailor or cosmonaut. Usually one of those two. If it’s sailor, he’s a romantic. If it’s cosmonaut, he’s a romantic and a fool. Here’s hoping he doesn’t say cosmonaut. I prefer not to work with science fiction. There’s basically almost no material to work with there.
“A sailor. Especially because we moved here. And the sea’s here. And when I saw it, shi . . . shoot, it was amazing. So much water, incredible. Ships in port. Snazzy sailors, foreigners all in white walking up and down the boulevard, arm in arm with girls, laughing. I ran after them, begging for gum.”
“Do you regret not going into seafaring?”
“I don’t know. It’s a rotten profession. Really. It’s an iron box, the engine’s clanging, there’s nowhere to go. Back then it seemed like there it was, the whole world, and you’re in it and all that. Oh, I don’t know, everything was so . . . so much like a party, a party that never ends. Dazzling. I dreamt about other countries. They were out there somewhere: London, Paris, New York. Far away, inaccessible. I saw them later. Well, London. Well, and Paris.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“Of course I liked it. But . . .”
I slammed the notepad shut. “All set, I got everything.”
He seemed a little overwhelmed. He’d gone back and forth for a long time about whether or not to come, then he loosened up and kept babbling. He was ready to talk on and on. This is actually a standard case. You couldn’t get more standard. But I wouldn’t think of telling him that.
I reassured him, just in case. “I have my own system. Semantic analysis, linguistic, statistical workup. I’ve collected material. Come back in a week. Call first, I’ll set up a time for you. Something will have taken shape by then.”
He breathed a sigh of relief but I saw he was gazing, unfocused, as if into himself. In these cases, as the classics say, “his gaze clouded over.”
Now he’ll get into his car and head home, and most likely it will overwhelm him as he drives. All those offenses—small but mean—that he’d tried not to remember, tried to bury deeper, like a fastidious cat covers its excrement. All the unbought bicycles, all the older kids’ jabs and punches, all the adults’ deceptions. Everything will rise to the surface.
It’s scary to be small and vulnerable. It’s scary to depend on the will of big people you don’t understand. You can still be okay if you consider them infallible. But later it can suddenly turn out that they’re not stern, chastising gods, just weak people who lack the power to hold back their annoyance. And even though they lack the power to protect you from the scary world, they can make things difficult for you.
“Drink some cognac when you get home,” I said. “Make sure it’s good cognac. With lemon. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said, wiping his palms on his trousers.
I hoped he’d have someone with him to greet the night. That’s always easier.
Drops slid down the window glass. A tiny dot of light trembled in each.
I’ll stay here in the warm house and he’ll walk back to a car parked on a little road that’s too narrow, where the neighbors are always ranting that they can’t walk or drive past because of my clients.
And the darkness will embrace him, just as it embraces us all in the end.
