Happiness is Possible (2 page)

I'd have liked to change the subject, only there's a problem. I still can't find my sandals. Or rather, one of them. Philip rarely steals the complete pair; even he has enough brains to realise I can't escape from him in just one. I've looked for it in the front hall, and in the kitchen, and under the sofa in the room – but all in vain. The sandal's not in any of the places where it ought to be. Even the kidnapper himself is confused. He'd be only too glad to help me now: Phil's intuition tells him I've already given up the idea of going out on my own and I'm willing to take him along with me. We'll go for a stroll together, the pair of us inseparable, as ever, if only the other half of my pair of sandals shows up. But where is it? Phil can't remember. And it seems like only a moment ago he had it in his teeth. . .

This time he's really outdone himself: he buried it in our bed! Of course, that same sandal is immediately applied to his backside. But then, the question could be raised of why, sandal or no sandal, the bed is still unmade. Except that there isn't anyone to raise it: the solitary life has its own bitter privileges. The snag is that I'm not entirely solitary. If I wish to retreat into genuine solitude, Philip imposes his company on me, and when I get the urge to commune with him, it turns out that he's not really a person after all.

Well, things can just carry on the way they are, it's no great disaster if not everything goes the way I'd like it to. It's about time I got used to it. Especially since there are occasional happy coincidences – for instance, the good weather and my desire to go for a walk. When I think about it, there are lots of these coincidences. Say, we get into the lift and there's a sweet little bitch already riding down in it. That's for Phil, of course, but at least I can feel glad for him.

To be honest, though, I prefer reliable pleasures, without any coincidences. For instance, our Tajik doorman is an unfailingly pleasant individual, come rain or shine.

‘Hello, Nasir!'

See, he gave me a little wave. It isn't a holiday today, or Nasir would certainly have congratulated me on it. He congratulates me on all the Orthodox holidays and Russia Day. I only congratulate him on the end of Ramadan, because that's the only Muslim holiday I know. Incidentally, there's someone who's familiar with our entire stairwell from top to bottom. If I weren't so shy, I'd have complained to him about my contentious neighbours long ago. I've noticed lots of people do that: they take all their little woes to Nasir, and he decides who merely deserves his sympathy and whose problem merits a call to the emergency services or the militia. Which means that in the person of Nasir we have another coincidence, in this case of the pleasant with the useful.

Phil and I walk outside and immediately meet another Tajik sweeping the pavement. But this is no coincidence, it's merely the norm. A Tajik and a broom in summer, a Tajik and an ice pick in winter, a Tajik and a lawnmower – these are all integral concepts of Moscow life. True, I have heard that in the business-class neighbourhood to which my ex-wife has moved, the sweeping is done by Ukrainians, but it's not yet clear who does the job better. I've got no complaints about the Tajiks; I don't know how they feel about me.

I look around, adjusting to the dense air at ground level while I wait for Phil to relieve himself quickly in the bushes by the entrance. I've learned not to feel ashamed of this habit of his. Now we're ready to set off, I just have to note the time. I like to keep track of time, not only when I'm boiling an egg or something else, but whatever I'm doing. I don't actually know which ancestors I inherited this meticulous approach from. I raise my wrist to my eyes, but there's no watch on it – I forgot to put it on when I was looking for my sandals. All right, it's no disaster. The sun is stuck in the south, between blocks 24 and 26B, and it seems to me that it will be hanging there for a long time yet. We have lots of time, time already past and time still to squander. As the true descendant of that anonymous meticulous ancestor I have, of course, planned out the route of our walk in advance, and we can easily cover it in the time available. We'll manage it all right, if Phil doesn't give every single bush a thorough sniffing and I don't analyse every single Tajik that we meet.

My plans involve walking all the way to a genuine, large park. This is a realistic goal, we only have to walk past two neighbourhoods of seventeen-storey buildings exactly like mine, past another neighbourhood of buildings a bit older and lower, cross a couple of streets with traffic and one major road and then walk two hundred yards along that road. Not far by Moscow standards. In theory, about twenty minutes' walking; in practice – that is, with Philip – forty. But since I don't have a watch with me, that doesn't matter anyway.

So, we go to the park but, naturally, not to the gates that were erected by the municipal authorities, where there's always a militiaman hanging about, yawning. We infiltrate the territory of the park illegally, via a shorter path, known only to me and Philip and another two or three hundred thousand Muscovites. This inconspicuous path runs between the brick wall of a factory and an old abandoned sports ground. Although the sports ground isn't entirely abandoned. Drinking and sleeping on the remains of the stands are tramps (aka Individuals of No Fixed Abode) and several aboriginal Muscovites who have latched onto them. And some young guys are screeching belligerently as they kick up their feet clad in high boots and smash bricks against their shaven heads. While the Tajiks sweep the streets,
they
are honing their martial arts skills. The young guys look terrifying, but Philip and I have nothing to fear. My ancestors' twisted strands of DNA could not possibly have endowed me more clearly with the features of the titular ethnic group, while Philip's rather more complicated genome has moulded him into a purebred mongrel. And anyway, the skinheads are so busy smashing bricks, they're not likely to notice anyone else nearby. I don't think they can see anything but stars right now.

Our secret point of access is masked by a heap of rubbish – broken bricks and all sorts of dubious garbage that gets dumped by the tramps. Not everybody would even guess that this is the entrance to a genuine big park.

Blessed be the fences of Russia! We have so many of them, but there's a secret way through every one. Knowledge of these gaps is what makes us free men and women. Like any arcane knowledge, it gives us a sense of elite superiority. Probably the first thing Russians do when they get to the next world is seek out the loose planks in the fence enclosing the Pastures of Heaven. They seek them out in order to wander to and fro at will, bypassing the apostolic face-control. The knowledge of passable gaps is a prerogative of the local population. In our provincial towns, only the locals can move about without sinking knee-deep in mud, and every native Muscovite is naturally endowed at birth with knowledge of the metro system map. Although I wasn't born in Moscow, I regard myself as a local too, because I have mastered this loophole. Tamara, my ex-wife, is a native Muscovite, and it feels good to know that since she left me I have by no means lost my way in the big city.

Once in the park, the first thing I do, to our great mutual satisfaction, is unleash myself from Phil. Even for creatures who are very close, it's good sometimes to separate, to lose sight of each other. To go running off, but not very far and only for a short while, and then, when that momentary pang of orphanhood strikes, you can stand up on your back legs in the grass and see: Yes, there it is, my own kindred creature. Of course, when I let Phil go, I don't abandon my responsibility for him. If a mounted militiaman were suddenly to appear and ask whose dog that is running around, I should be obliged to admit that it is mine. For that, the militiaman could reprimand me and prohibit further off-the-leash dog walking, or he could simply nod and proceed majestically on his way. I don't know what he would do, because so far not a single militiaman, either mounted or on foot, has ever shown up in this remote corner of the park. There isn't really anything here for the militia to patrol: no one can disturb the public peace, for lack of any public, and no one can damage public property for lack of any such item. That's what's so wonderful about a genuine big park – the authorities aren't able to put it all in good order. The authorities don't have enough benches, lamps, paving slabs and militiamen – and that's just the way we like it. Phil and I both prefer paths that lurk in the unmown grass and trees that haven't grown according to a plan from the department of landscaping, but simply where the parental seed happened to fall. Perhaps that's because, after all, both he and I are only first-generation urbanites?

But this is not yet the final point on our itinerary. We go further. The faint, narrow track is hidden, as I have already said, in the unmown grass, which is actually mostly old, vicious nettles that sting even through trousers. Then we have to clamber down a steep slope that would be easier to slide down on my backside. At the bottom there's a permanently soggy little meadow that squishes underfoot. We cross it, gathering burrs along the way, surrounded by bees and dragonflies that shoot up around us in alarm. Just a little bit further, and we shall arrive at our destination. ‘But what kind of destination is it,' you ask, ‘if it takes such a great effort to reach?' A moment's patience, please. We force our way through a barrage of tenacious little bushes, and there it is before us, the goal of our journey. And that goal is the River Moscow.

The Moscow, greenish and not very wide, washing against a bank reinforced with boulders. Like any river, it serves as a natural barrier, a dividing line and border. Here on the riverbank the park ends. And somewhere in the navigable channel – perhaps where that pyramidal buoy is bobbing about – lies the border of my municipal district. If I were to take it into my head to swim across that border, I would emerge onto the far bank as a second-class citizen. If I were to lodge a complaint with the local council, they wouldn't even bother to register it, they'd send me back across the river.

‘There is no land for us beyond the Moscow,' I remark jokingly to Phil.

But he's quite happy on his own native riverbank. After a quick slurp of the Moscow's dubious water, he sets off on his usual duck hunt and I sit down on a rock and take out a cigarette. Phil has his interests and I have mine. I smoke and gaze at the river, anticipating the appearance of some little ship. But the Moscow waterway is surprisingly deserted. I can't understand how there can be almost no pulse beating in the aquatic artery of such an immense city. Especially at a time when life is seething so exuberantly on dry land. And seething with particular intensity in that district beyond the river where my complaints have no validity. Over there, white-and-pink business-class apartment blocks rise up into the air one behind the other. On the twenty-fourth floor of one of them my ex-wife lives her bright, sparkling new life. I know the building, I can even see it from my little rock. If I had a pair of binoculars, I could examine Tamara's windows from here.

I sit there, waiting for a little ship and thinking how strangely everything has turned out. Tamara and I never used to go for walks in this part of the park, because it's impossible to walk in high heels here, but now I trudge all this way as if I were coming to visit her.

Summer. Saturday morning. A self-assured Geländewagen in the stream of cars rushing out of the city. Dmitry Pavlovich and Tamara are driving to the
dacha
in their jeep. Tamara is Dmitry Pavlovich's second wife and Dmitry Pavlovich is Tamara's second husband. I don't know who Dmitry Pavlovich's first wife was; he doesn't associate with her anymore. But I was Tamara's first husband and they're driving to my
dacha
. They actually have a country house of their own, but since Tamara introduced me and Dmitry Pavlovich, they've started visiting me regularly. Dmitry Pavlovich and I are on a friendly footing, as they say. I address him simply, by his abbreviated patronymic – Pavlich – the same way as his driver does. I've seen the driver a couple of times; he is Pavlich's namesake, another Dmitry, so to avoid confusing them, everybody calls him Little Dima. Little Dima is six feet seven inches tall.

Dmitry Pavlovich has several reasons for travelling to Vaskovo, sixty kilometres from the centre of Moscow, to visit me several times this summer. Firstly, it does no harm for his Geländewagen to remember occasionally that it's an SUV. Secondly, Dmitry Pavlovich claims he thinks my shish kebab is absolutely wonderful. And thirdly, for some reason he finds it necessary to share his observations on life with me. Dmitry Pavlovich himself is a man of business, these observations are of no use to him, but I'm the only writer among his acquaintances. He thinks factual material is very important for me, so that I won't have to ‘suck it all out of my finger', as he puts it. I'll tell you later what his material's like and where he sucks it out of.

It's harder to understand why Toma comes to my place. If I ask her, she'll answer without a second thought: ‘What do you mean, why? I have to make sure you're alive and well. And someone has to water your vegetable patch'. But it's worth remembering that if a woman answers without a second thought, it means she's lying. She never watered the vegetable patch, even when we were married. I suspect she doesn't water the patch at their new country seat either, if there is one. It seems more likely to me that she comes here to convince herself once again that she hasn't fallen back in love with me. And at the same time to compare me, the slob, with her Dima; just look how clever and observant he is, he could quite easily have been a man of letters too, if only he wasn't so busy with business and knew how to write.

So on Saturday morning this couple are driving to my
dacha
. It being the weekend, Dmitry Pavlovich is driving the car himself. He swings the wheel left and right and Moscow turns first one side of itself, and then another, to the windows of the Geländewagen. The car radio is playing. Seven speakers, hidden in various places, create full surround sound, so the DJ's squawking is sometimes here, sometimes there, like an escaped parrot fluttering around the interior. When Dmitry Pavlovich is at the wheel, he prefers the sounds the radio makes to the sounds that Tamara would make. She knows this and keeps quiet.

Meanwhile, the cityscape outside the windows changes. At the present moment the highway is lined with concrete warehouse terminals that look like immense shoe boxes. They alternate with concrete high rises that look like warehouse terminals. This is the Moscow periphery. Soon there'll be the orbital highway, and beyond that . . . There's actually nothing very terrible beyond it, it's just that it's this psychological frontier: the MOH or Moscow Orbital Highway. As it approaches, Tamara starts showing signs of anxiety and eventually breaks her silence.

‘It's the ring road soon,' she announces.

‘Well, so?' Dmitry Pavlovich responds.

‘Are you going to stop to get some food?'

‘Dammit!' he exclaims in annoyance. ‘Why didn't you say anything earlier?'

‘Sure, it's always me who has to think of everything!'

Dmitry Pavlovich slows down and watches the sides of the road.

‘Just try finding a decent shop round here . . .' he mutters with a frown.

There are shops here all right, but they lack impressive brand names: just plain ‘Delicatessen' and ‘Groceries'. Eventually Tamara spies a big, spanking new supermarket up ahead.

‘There,' she says, pointing. ‘See it – on the left?'

‘I can see it's on the left,' Dmitry Pavlovich responds sullenly. ‘The question is, where do I find a place for a U-turn?'

He pulls up at the verge, but doesn't get out of the car, just carries on sitting there with his arms round the steering wheel.

‘What are you thinking about, Dima?' Tamara asks him.

‘I'm wondering where I can make a U-turn,' Dima answers. ‘We'll have to drive to the ring road.'

Tamara has been married before; she knows how to exercise self-restraint.

‘We're here,' she says in a calm voice, ‘and the shop's over there. All we have to do is cross the road. There's no point in looking for a place to turn.'

Don't get the idea that Dmitry Pavlovich is slightly dim-witted. He's no more dim-witted than other men, and in his own area, according to Tamara, he's quite the creative individual. It's just that he's a territorial creature, and his creative capacity decreases proportionally as he moves further away from the city centre. But now Tamara takes control of things. She manages to persuade Dmitry Pavlovich to stroll across to the other side of the road, since there happens to be a pedestrian underpass not far from the spot where they have stopped. Every cloud has its silver lining. By stretching his legs for a few minutes, Dmitry Pavlovich will augment his stock of observations on life and avoid arriving empty-handed to visit a writer.

And so our couple abandon the Geländewagen and set off to the supermarket for provisions to bring to Vaskovo. Meanwhile in Vaskovo, preparations to receive them are already under way. The old stocks of provisions have been audited: some have been extracted from the fridge, some have been scraped off the frying pan. Everything that might offend Tamara with its appearance and smell has been thrown into the compost pit. The garland of freshly washed socks has been removed from the kitchen as an excessively pathetic symbol of the bachelor life. The small double bed I share with Phil has been made up. Phil himself has been brushed more or less clean. Even the sky above Vaskovo somehow looks especially clean and well-scrubbed today – but that's not due to my efforts.

The blue of the sky, the green of the gardens – a delightful rural district scene. I smoke on the porch, enlivening the composition with a patch of bright red: I'm wearing a scarlet Finnish t-shirt that Tamara once bought for me. In years of wearing, it hasn't faded – when I've got it on, insects come flying up to investigate whether there's any nectar on me: even little beetles are suckers for something foreign. But what do they need nectar for, when the air here is so pure and delicious? ‘It's really great to have a
dacha
in Vaskovo,' I think complacently between drags. ‘I wouldn't swap it for anything.' But in reality, I did that already a long time ago: swapped Vaskovo for Moscow. Because – I'll tell you a secret – the
dacha
isn't really a
dacha
at all, it's my very first home. Yes, dear people, I was born here, but I later abandoned my native parts. I used to play on this porch as a child. My father and mother lived out their lives in this little house. And it was Tamara who taught me to call this place a
dacha
.

Something stirs on the nearby church bell tower – the human clock is about to chime the hour. . . Should I shout and ask if they can see an approaching Geländewagen from up there?

‘Bong-ng-ng!'

It's coming. I can feel it in my heart. And there it is, bowling slowly along my street, crunching the stone chips and feeling out the potholes with its broad tyres. Show more spunk, automobile, you're an off-roader! The encounter is now assured: Misty, Philip's friend who doubles as the local town crier, runs out in front of the Geländewagen like a paparazzo in front of some movie diva, choking on his ecstatic barking as he bites at its wheel. And now my neighbours have stuck their heads out from behind their fences, like puppets peering round screens. Only this time they're not giving the performance, but gaping at the car. All right, let them decide if the sight was worth abandoning their vegetable gardens for.

The Geländewagen is still moving, but conflict has already arisen in the welcoming committee: in their excitement Philip and Misty have got into a scuffle. I settle the incident with a few well-aimed kicks, but the general air of tension persists. And now ready, get set – the automobile has stopped outside my gate. The doors on both sides of it swing open and two quite different feet appear below them; on the left, a woman's foot in a light shoe; on the right, a man's foot in a long-nosed ankle boot. They both step down onto the soil of Vaskovo rather uncertainly . . . and basically that's it: the arrival has taken place. After that come the hugs, the tickling of dogs behind the ears and the unloading of the boot. Three or four minutes later, the stage is already deserted, apart from Misty and the Geländewagen. The Geländewagen, however, has played its part for today; its heart stopped beating even before the gate closed behind its master, it barely even had time to whistle in farewell. To Misty it is now no more than a cooling heap of metal. Quite indifferently, purely for form's sake, the little dog sprinkles a motionless tyre and trots off about his business. The performance is over.

But is it really over? If we move backstage, we'll see the show is still going on, out of sight of prying eyes.

‘A great place you've got here!' Dmitry Pavlovich booms in his deep voice, drawing the air in noisily through his nose. ‘You know, kind of cosy . . .'

He says that to be magnanimous, and I disagree to be modest.

‘What's so very cosy . . . ? The country's the country.'

‘Oh, come on,' Dmitry Pavlovich protests. ‘I see you've got apples over there.'

‘Big deal, apples . . . Apples grow at your hacienda, don't they, Pavlich?'

‘Na-ah . . . Tomka grows those whatsits there . . . orchids. And they smell of shit.'

He casts a sidelong glance at Tamara, and he's not wrong – she admonishes him.

‘I don't like it when you talk like that. It's not becoming to a man.'

Tamara wants her Dima to appear
comme il faut
in my company.

‘And incidentally,' she continues in a defiant tone, ‘while we're on the subject, it smells of that round here without any orchids. And his apples are only good for compote.'

‘Well, compote's something at least . . .' Dmitry Pavlovich is squinting sideways at me now. ‘And as for the stench, Bunny, you're wrong there – there's no smell like that . . .' – and, deliberately taking another deep breath, he unexpectedly sucks in a midge and gives a shrill sneeze.

To put an end to their quarrel, I invite both ‘bunnies' inside. But even here the theatricals continue. Tamara assumes an air of no-nonsense solicitude and checks the cleanliness of my kitchen. Dmitry Pavlovich demonstrates his relaxed amiability and common touch by taking a seat in Phil's armchair without being asked. I don't drive him off: let his expensive trousers collect a good thick coating of dog hair. The only reason Phil doesn't growl at him is because he's already investigated the bags that arrived with the visitors and now he's pretending to be a cute little doggy, in hopes of rich pickings. An understandable motive, if not very pretty. But just why I am pretending to be a cute and affectionate relative is something I can't explain.

The day passes in the way that a summer day at the
dacha
should: in glorious idleness. So that it will be remembered for nothing but this state of drowsy, delightful drifting. The scene in my garden is a kind of orgy in reverse, with the four of us relaxing in the style of a pride of lions. Philip sprawls in the shade under a bush. Tamara sunbathes on the grass, displaying her lack of cellulite. Dmitry Pavlovich, as the dominant male, reclines in the hammock with a newspaper. And I am also installed rather comfortably in an old wicker armchair. To avoid dozing off completely, Dmitry Pavlovich and I do the crossword as a team. The division of labour is as follows: I give the answers and he writes them in with a pencil.

‘A composer beginning with G.'

‘Gounod,' I reply.

‘Doesn't fit. Five letters'

‘Gluck, then.'

‘Well done, the writer . . . Right, next . . . A condition of an insurance contract . . . ten letters, starting with D . . . Oh, that's deductible!'

‘That's my great brain!' Tamara purrs from the grass.

I thought she wasn't listening to us. That's the first word her Dima has guessed.

‘Damage,' Dmitry Pavlovich continues.

‘Injury,' I reply.

‘No, only four letters.'

‘Loss, then.'

‘Loss, loss . . . Right . . .'

Dmitry Pavlovich suddenly jerked his head up and swayed in the hammock.

‘Listen, today Tomka and I saw this little scene – it might come in handy to you as a writer. This tramp and his lady tramp are swearing at each other in an underground passage. He hits her, and she yells at him: “Do you want to lose me?”.'

A pause.

‘Is that it?'

‘Well yes . . . “Do you want to lose me?” – it's hilarious.'

‘I don't see anything funny about it,' Tamara puts in.

I agree with her.