Happiness is Possible (6 page)

Moreover, my own native parts failed to notice my return. For our Vaskovo neighbours, many of whom had known me since my childhood, I had long ago ceased to be either one of their own or a stranger; I was just another summer resident. Even I felt that my status was somewhat unreal. Who was I? A squatter in voluntary exile; a fictitious bachelor . . . The night after I arrived, I was woken by voices under my window. I thought at first that it was petty thieves on my land, but when I looked, I spied a young couple who had made themselves comfortable on my bench, as if it was in a city park. The girl was timid to begin with and kept looking round at the house, but her boyfriend reassured her by saying: ‘Don't be afraid, no one lives here'. I didn't begrudge the young people the use of the bench, especially since they were fairly quiet on the whole, but the assertion that ‘no one lives here' stung me. The next day I wound up my parents' wall clock with the pendulum, installed my computer and washed my
dacha
trousers: I hung them outside to dry, like a flag, as a warning to all wandering couples.

I started grafting myself onto village life with a change of image. In order to be less different from the local men, I started wearing my father's old jacket everywhere instead of fancy imported anoraks. I only shaved now when it was absolutely necessary, or when I couldn't sleep because of the prickling. I actually changed surprisingly quickly, as if some kind of genetic programme that had been switched off in the city had suddenly started to work. In the same way that a dog, abandoned by its masters, turns into a synanthropic wolf – unless, of course, it simply dies.

I wasn't really trying to make anyone like me, but my neighbours took a benevolent view of my reversion to a primordial state. They started recognising me and saying hello to me. One day Vyacheslav, who lived in the house opposite, stopped me in the street and started complaining at great length about his wife Lenka, who was ‘whoring'– all the signs were that she was whoring, only he didn't know who with. Perhaps Vyacheslav was just sounding me out because he suspected his Lenka was whoring with me, but I took the very supposition as a compliment and surprised myself by responding with a torrent of such sympathetic, heartfelt obscenities that Vyacheslav suggested there and then that we have a drink together in a spirit of male solidarity. And as it happened, he already a bottle with him, tucked into the front of his trouser belt, like some American's pistol. So we drank it right there by the fence, without any snacks to go with it.

But in all fairness, there was something fictitious about my new life. No matter how bad his hangover was and regardless of his problems with Lenka, my neighbour Vyacheslav went to work every day. My other neighbour Mikha, an alcoholic, didn't go to work. But he turned up early every morning for a daily briefing at the beer kiosk. Vyacheslav earned his money by forging iron in a hardware factory. Mikha and his friends fetched and carried for the Azeris at the market. But I acquired my means of subsistence from the only cash machine in the whole of Vaskovo, and I felt slightly ashamed of that.

I worked too, of course, although I wouldn't have had the nerve to make such a claim to Vyacheslav or Mikha. Judge for yourself. Every morning, in complete and utter ignorance of all printed and televised news, sometimes without even putting on my underpants, I sat down at the computer with a cup of coffee. To write. The open window on the left of the monitor looked into the garden, where apples were ripening on the elderly trees and falling to the ground with a thud. And the words in my head ripened and fell like those apples. Their fall was also accompanied by thudding – the sound of the keyboard, which attracted the attention of a fat crow, who often flew onto my plot of land. It looked to him as if I was pecking at something tasty and he wasn't that far wrong. That crow was the only creature in Vaskovo who knew what I did, but even he could hardly have considered it work.

The only thing that could interrupt me was urgent physiological necessity or the trilling of the mobile phone. It was Tamara calling, of course. I pressed the green key with a sigh and an energetic rustling stirred in the handset.

‘Hi! Didn't wake you, did I?'

‘No.'

‘Then why does your voice sound like that?'

‘I was working.'

‘Tell me another! All right then, listen . . .'

And I would receive the latest despatch from the flat-swap front. Certificates, agreements, negotiations . . . information that my ears simply didn't need to hear.

‘Good, good,' I said, interrupting the assertive flow of Toma's report, ‘why don't you tell me about how you're getting on?'

‘Me?' she said, breaking off. ‘About me? Listen, I haven't got time right now – I'll tell you when I come.'

Tamara had been promising for a long time to choose some day at the weekend to come out and see me in Vaskovo.

‘I have to see how you've set up house, and apart from that . . .'

Her ‘apart from that' meant she hadn't forgotten that for each other we were still husband and wife, regardless of any paper divorce. However, week after week went by; a month went by and then another, and my appointment with Toma kept being postponed, as the phrase goes, ‘due to circumstances beyond our control'. And then the telephone link between us was broken off, but that was my fault.

The misfortune occurred during one of my walks. The thing is, when someone from the city has made the move to the bosom of nature, he is simply obliged to go walking in the forest and down by the river. He may write or be an idle drone, he may or may not drink vodka with the locals, but going out in the evening to feed the mosquitoes is a sacred responsibility. So every evening, if there was no rain, I set off to ramble through the countryside around Vaskovo. Sometimes I clearly recognised memorable places from my childhood, but more often I found them greatly changed. The familiar forest clearings were overgrown, the little river had shifted its banks in places, young trees had grown tall and many old ones had been struck by lightning. I didn't feel sad, though: nature is changeable and fluid, but manages to remain itself, even as it changes, unlike the city.

Well, anyway, it was during one of these walks of mine that disaster struck. I remember that I was already heading for home, walking along the riverbank. Having staggered a fair distance, I was feeling a bit tired and when I spotted a log protruding from the water's edge, I decided to sit down on it to take a rest and have a smoke. The log proved to be wet and muddy, so I didn't sit down. But I did light up. And just at that moment I seemed to hear an inner voice. Or rather, not a voice, I simply felt an impulse. ‘Look,' said the impulse, ‘what's that? There's something on the bottom.' That kind of thing happens to me quite often, I hear promptings inside myself: ‘Look over that way' . . . ‘Do such-and-such' – and every time I obey unthinkingly. I did the same this time, leaning down over the water to get a good look at this ostensibly interesting something and, as I did so, the mobile phone slipped out of my breast pocket and plopped into the river. My impulse-cum-voice had deceived me, as also happens quite often; there hadn't been anything interesting on the bottom. But now there was, of course: my mobile phone. There was no point in fishing the phone out of the river, so I didn't even try.

From then on Tamara didn't call me. That is, she probably called, but she couldn't get through, because I'd drowned my mobile. But she didn't come either.

Autumn was approaching. The nights were getting cooler and so were the days. Showers arrived more frequently and lasted longer. When the sky loured, I battened shut the little window on the left of the monitor, the one that looked onto the garden. The rain drummed on the tinplate window-ledge; I drummed on the keyboard with my fingers; the words dripped into the text and flowed into the horizontal rivulets of lines. I still devoted the best hours of the day to my beloved prose. Nothing distracted me and my time was only measured out by the muffled chiming of the bells of Vaskovo's little church. But one day my efforts were interrupted by an unexpected knock at the door. I put on my trousers and went to answer it. My neighbour Vyacheslav was standing on the porch.

‘Howdy!'

‘Howdy!'

I thought I heard a challenging note in his greeting.

‘Are you going to let me in, or what?'

‘Come in . . . To what do I owe the pleasure?'

‘Nothing special. Lenka didn't come home last night.'

‘What's that got to do with me? She's not here.'

‘I can see that . . .' Vyacheslav muttered sullenly. ‘But what's your fly doing open?'

‘Well, I wasn't actually expecting visitors.'

Perplexed not so much by the visit itself as by its early timing, I enquired why Vyacheslav wasn't at work. It turned to be a Saturday.

‘Ah, neighbour, you've really hit rock bottom,' Vyacheslav remarked sternly. ‘Even Mikha can tell Saturday from Friday. You need gingering up a bit.'

Naturally, Vyacheslav had a bottle under his belt and we sat down in my little kitchen to drink it. I got the impression that, once he had set his mind at rest about me, my neighbour forgot all about his Lenka, because initially our conversation ran along abstract lines. But after the third or fourth shot, Vyacheslav's thoughts came full circle – not to Lenka, but to myself.

‘What I can't understand, neighbour, is how come you're on holiday all summer long. Leave in compensation for a dirty job, is it? Let on where to find work like that, will you? I forge iron and I only get two weeks off in the year.'

So I had to let on. I told Vyacheslav I was a literary man, a kind of writer. And even though I was out at the
dacha
, I was busy all the time. And so he wouldn't feel envious, I lied and said that forging words was no easier than forging iron. Naturally, Vyacheslav didn't believe me.

‘All right, forget it,' he said. ‘You get by without working, good for you. But how do you get by without a woman, that's the question. I haven't seen that little wife of yours around for a long time.'

I opened my mouth to say something, I don't remember now exactly what, but that's not important, because my reply was never uttered.

‘Who's that you're talking about?' a familiar voice asked from the doorway.

It was Tamara.

‘Speak of the devil . . .' Vyacheslav muttered. ‘All right then, time I was going.'

He started pulling himself together and a minute later he had disappeared, taking the unfinished bottle with him. Dumbfounded by Toma's sudden appearance, I froze, uncertain whether I should approach her. I was expecting immediate castigation for drinking so early in the day, for the disorder in the kitchen and for goodness only knows what else . . . But strangely enough, Toma looked almost as embarrassed as Vyacheslav when he fled.

‘You know what,' she said in a quiet voice. ‘I'd like to have a drink with you too.'

I couldn't believe my ears.

‘But he . . . Vyacheslav took the vodka with him.'

‘That's no problem,' Toma said with a bashful smile. ‘I've got something better than that.'

She took a bottle of cognac out of her bag.

Now I wasn't just dumbfounded, I was absolutely flabbergasted. As I tidied up the dining table, I tried to think what could possibly be the reason for Toma's unprecedented bonhomie. If she had come to celebrate the purchase of a new flat, where were all the fanfares? Why was she not flaunting her triumph? An alarming premonition was already constricting my chest, but I didn't jump in with any questions, deciding it would be best if things were clarified over a glass of cognac.

Finally everything was ready and we sat down at the table. Tamara opened the cognac herself and poured some for both of us.

‘Off we go!' she said, obviously nervous as she raised her glass.

‘Where are we going?' I enquired cautiously. ‘What are we drinking to, dear?'

‘You'll find out in a moment . . .'

She downed her glass in one and took a bite of an apple. I did the same.

‘Well, let's hear it.'

Toma became embarrassed again, but made an effort to carry on.

‘Here goes then . . . Basically, as they say, I've got good news and bad news. Bad for you, that is . . . or maybe it isn't, I don't know, I don't know anything. Let's have another drink.'

We had another drink, only it didn't seem to help Toma much. But she ploughed on notwithstanding.

‘The first piece of news is: we're not selling our flat. Are you glad?'

Taken aback, I simply shrugged.

‘And the second piece of news is: I don't live there any more.'

‘Now that is interesting . . .' I muttered. ‘May I have a few more details?'

Tamara had to take another drink. And so did I.

‘Well you see,' she said, steadying her breathing, ‘we met in this estate agency, he was buying a flat too. And so we thought, why do we need two?'

‘We?' I asked, turning numb.

‘We,' she whispered, and tears sprang to her eyes.

I got up. I was fearsome, appalling.

‘I called you!' Tamara cried out. ‘I called and called! Why weren't you available?'

I dropped the stool and walked out of the kitchen. A minute later I came back. Toma was sobbing and gnawing on an apple. Without saying a word, I grabbed the cigarettes off the table, jerked my umbrella off its nail and ran out of the house.

I marched on and on. Striding along without even seeing where I was going. It started raining, but I kept on marching. Suddenly I heard a thin, childish voice.

‘Mister! Mister!'

But my ears heard without hearing and it was some time before I realised the voice was talking to me. When I did realise, I automatically flung up the hand with my watch on it.