Deathless Read online

  I looked out the window where she had looked for months stitched back to back. And there in the dark glowed silver wounds in the street where another Leningrad bled through: another Neva, another Dzerzhinskaya Street, all splashed with silver. And there walked a woman with swan feathers in her hair, vanishing around a corner; and there walked a short, fat creature with dead leaves on his head; and there walked a woman like a gun. And there walked Kseniya, too, her chest stained and shimmering, holding baby Sofiya’s hand as the child jumped and tried to catch the silver balloons drifting just out of her reach.

  Mamochka, she cried. So many!

  In the middle of them all came walking like a kommissar a man with eyelids so long they brushed the snow out of his path, wearing a silver brocade and a silver crown. And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.

  * * *

  The shoulder blades of Marya Morevna touched behind her back, and the knees of Ivan Nikolayevich banged together in front of his belly. Icicles grew inside the house. Together they pulled down the wallpaper to get at the paste, and then they boiled the wallpaper to make bread. They were all mouth and bone, and their eyes slipped gears whenever they tried to meet. They ate their bread with paisley and flowers on the crust, and smeared paste on it like butter. Bread had never been bread, and butter had never been butter. They could not remember such things.

  “The Germans have printed invitations to a gala ball at the Hotel Astoria,” Ivan Nikolayevich whispered, as though anyone but me might overhear him. “They will serve whole pigs, and a hundred thousand potatoes, and a cake that weighs five hundred pounds. I have seen the invitation myself. Embossed in gold ink, with a red ribbon. They say, ‘Leningrad is empty. We are only waiting for the crows to tidy things up a bit before the party.’”

  I don’t believe you, said my Marya. She is so stubborn her heart has an argument with her head every time it wants to beat. I know. I raised her, I did.

  When you are hungry, a whisper is a shout. “Whore! I will let them have you, and they will roast you on a spit with their suckling pig. What do you keep in the basement?”

  You promised, Ivanushka.

  “Fuck your promises. You are keeping food from me down there, I know it. Devil bitch. Kulak goat-wife.”

  You promised, Ivanushka.

  “Promises to the devil’s woman are no promises! No court would hold me! You are hoarding food, and you put a spell on me, in Irkutsk! Why else would I want a sack like you?”

  I hid behind the stove. Marriage bears few witnesses.

  You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

  When you are hungry, a step is a shove. Ivan hobbled to the basement door, and, well, he was a fool. Hasn’t he always been? You can’t blame a fool for his thick head. Why else was he born, but to blunder and buffoon and once a year make a black-haired girl laugh? Look, I am holding up my two hands, and between them is the old, dear house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, and between them is Marya Morevna and her husband, mad with hunger like a cow, and between them is Koschei the Deathless looking up from the darkness. He is smiling down there, and his smile has two edges.

  “Who’s down there?” Ivan said, though he knew already.

  I am so thirsty, Comrade.

  “Who is it?” Ivan peered down, his eyes searching for pickled eggs, for cherry preserves, for a jug of beer, for every good thing a cellar might have.

  I am so hungry, Comrade.

  And Ivan went down because he was a fool, and because it could not be only Koschei she kept from him. All winter he had tortured himself with dreams of the food she was hiding, and it must be there, it must, or else he was worse than a fool.

  Will you not give me a little water, Ivan Nikolayevich? Koschei said.

  Ivan’s dry body could not weep, so he borrowed on the tears of his future, so that Koschei could see his grief, and there could be no confusion.

  “Why can’t you leave us alone? Get out, get out, old man; leave us in peace.”

  I would be glad to, only I am so weak. No one should relent just because my Papa smiles.

  So the fool loosened Koschei’s ropes, and gave him water from a filthy, half-frozen puddle. Marya Morevna watched it all from the top of the stairs, and her black hair hung all around her; and I was there, so I saw him roar up toward her, and I can tell you now that she looked at the two of them with crow’s eyes and said, Yes, Kostya. Take me. Take me.

  * * *

  And then we were left alone together, Ivan Nikolayevich and I, in the frozen, dank cellar.

  I spat to show him what I thought of that.

  * * *

  Old Zvonok died because her house died. That’s what married means.

  They’d all left us already, all of them, some more than once, and if a domovaya ever showed her tears, it wasn’t me. What else can you say? Everyone died. Kseniya Yefremovna died. Sofiya Artyomovna died. Even Ivan Nikolayevich died, by spring. Only Zvonok was left, and then not her, either. A German shell hit us and left the house on our right and the house on our left still standing. Well, that’s what happens to things you love.

  I walk in the other Leningrad now. The silver one, the one with teeth. The one Marya and I saw out of the window on the coldest night of winter.

  And here, in the other house on the other Dzerzhinskaya Street, Kseniya Yefremovna still makes soup out of ration-card shadows, but now it tastes thick, and marrowy, and sweet. And I drink it down with the rest of them and it runs into my mustache instead of into my mouth, but my soul is drunk and sated.

  PART 5

  Birds of Joy and Sorrow

  Will you not say to me once more

  That word which conquers death

  And answers the riddle of my life?

  —ANNA AKHMATOVA

  24

  Nine Shades of Gold

  Marya’s black book lies open on the floor of the cellar where she no longer stands. Very slowly, mold grows in the spine, crawling out over the words, reading softly, greenly, to itself.

  A ptarmigan lays a speckled, tea-colored egg; a moorhen leaves behind her a white egg spattered with red, as if with blood. By the egg, you may guess at the bird.

  The Tsar of Birds, despite being a Tsar and not a Tsaritsa, is not wholly eggless. Speckled with jewels are his eggs, copper and chartreuse and turquoise, enameled in jet, painted with scenes of dancing girls and sunsets behind churches. And from this, child, you may guess that Alkonost is a bird of impossibly many colors, possessing a soul so rich and fecund that he cannot help lay eggs. Anything which passes through him emerges streaked with grace. Alkonost’s long tail lashes and whips, possessing feathers of indigo, fuchsia, and nine shades of gold. His broad, downy chest flashes six hues of white; his talons shine green, his claws pearl. Above his bird’s body, his human face floats beardless and exquisite, his hair bright as coins beneath his crown. All these things you could tell from his egg, if you could but see it.

  Once, Alkonost hatched a daughter. He named her Gamayun. Like her father, she saw the future and the past projected onto her eyelids like two film reels running together. Like her father, she preferred to be alone, the company of her own eggs being preferable to that of her extended family. Together, father and daughter chose the meditations and quietude of the sky over the worries of the earth. They knew how it would all come out already, you see.

  Once, because it is not possible to possess so many colors and also a hard heart, Alkonost pitied his brother, the Tsar of Life.

  “You are so fragile, Brother, and often in despair. At any moment, Death might take you.”

  “Tscha!” said the Tsar of Life. “Life is like that.”

  Alkonost, his azure tail feathers waving in the wind, embraced his brother with infinite succor and love, which he had learned from the clouds, which they had learned from the sun. His glittering wings opened around the Tsar o
f Life like the doors of a church, and when Alkonost withdrew his wingspan, they lay together in his nest, which rests so high in the mountains that the air turns to light and the light turns to air. The Tsar of Birds thatched his nest from the braids of firstborn daughters, and its softness knows no equal. Into these ropes of gold and black and red and brown the great bird laid his brother and fed him like a chick, retching his own sweet meals into the mouth of the Tsar of Life.

  Much time passed, and secret things only brothers may speak of. And all the while Alkonost tended an egg in secret, holding it beneath the feathers that covered his ankles. The egg began from his pity for the Tsar of Life. It swelled with each passing day. And each day the Tsar of Life cried out in agony, clutching his chest.

  “Brother,” he wept, “my heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it.”

  “Tscha!” said the Tsar of Birds. “Life is like that.”

  As the egg neared its time, Alkonost could conceal it no further. It shone huge and black in the light that was air and the air that was light, studded with cold, colorless diamonds. Alkonost did not love it, for it bore more of his brother’s countenance than his own. When it hatched, the two brothers peered over the shattered, starry rim of the shell to see what waited inside the thing that they had made together. Once they had seen it, they agreed to seal up the egg again and conceal it beneath their hearts, never to let it be found, to the extent of both their powers. A ptarmigan could not seal up a hatched egg. Alkonost can.

  * * *

  The voice of the Tsar of Birds is so sweet that should he wish it, anyone hearing him would forget the whole of her life, even her name. Of course, she must wish it. But should Alkonost speak with the smallest kindness, the littlest mercy, the richness of his voice would sweep away any sorrow in any heart, and leave there instead only the perfect world that might have been, if only the world had not invented hearts in the first place. For this reason, some folk stuff their ears with wax. Some seek out the bird of heaven all their days, praying to be drowned in him. Each of these cannot comprehend what drives the other. How can you want to lose yourself, your history, your name? How can you run from the voice of God? But of course, no amount of seeking will find Alkonost, and no amount of hiding will avoid him.

  Life is like that.

  25

  Gross Desertion

  At the end of a long, thin road lies the village of Yaichka. Pale gold larch trees close it in as tightly as a wall, and in the autumn, the mist touches the ground only on Sundays. Much rich-smelling smoke from well-made chimneys and aged, crisp wood rises up to the very clear night stars, which look like nails in a strong, black roof. Wolves howl in the forest, but are never seen. Thick, new straw is piled high on every roof; green onion shoots poke out of every kitchen garden. Yaichka possesses several fields whose soil forgives all offenses; four horses; ten head of cattle; two hens and a rooster for every family; three sheep (one pregnant); a solitary goat who has a passion for onion shoots; and a small river, so small it forgot its own name, but which nevertheless allows for Yaichka to possess one mill. A liking for meat keeps these numbers pleasantly accurate. Rain comes only when everyone has shut their doors as tight as they can; snow falls only after each man has chopped all the logs he needs.

  No one ever leaves Yaichka—what is out there to want? And no one ever visits from out of town. In the village they have a saying, Yaichka possesses many things, but the forest possesses Yaichka.

  Among the other things Yaichka possesses is a short, wide house where Marya Morevna lives with her husband. She has always lived here, and never anywhere else. One other thing Yaichka owns is the secret sight of Marya lying naked in the summer forest, drying her black curls in the sun. On Thursdays and Mondays she briefly touches the ring of iron keys hanging over her hearth, but cannot remember what they might unlock. Then she takes out one of the four horses—her favorite, a dapple grey named Volchya—and gallops into the larch forest so fast her heart flies out ahead of her. With her rifle on her back and her best red scarf knotted around her shoulders, she hunts in the depths of the shadows, crouching, chasing, firing—and on Thursdays and Mondays her peals of laughter are the Yaichka’s church bells. She returns with deer or rabbits, pheasant or goose, sometimes, mysteriously, a wolf flopped over Volchya’s broad back, one of those who howls but is not seen. Marya Morevna shares her meat with her village. No one likes wolf soup much, but they do not complain. Marya does not complain when her hens forget to give her eggs. Life is like that.

  Marya Morevna’s husband, Koschei Bessmertny, is so handsome that he could lend a cup of his beauty to every man in Yaichka and still charm the bark from his dogs. Wheat falls into loaves at his feet, but also at the feet of his friends, and all of Yaichka is friends with Koschei Bessmertny. When he bends to pull beets out of the earth, he sings a little song with four lines of five words each, and the last word of the song is wife. When his cow catches pregnant, he offers the calf to the family with the fewest cows, and the milking heifer to the family with the most children. Of the goat he says nothing, and lets him go on his onion-hunting way. Sometimes, in a certain light, he seems to recall to Marya someone she used to know, and could almost remember: a kind of golden cast to his black hair, a way he had of laughing, like a hound baying.

  Once, Marya Morevna woke and saw someone working the fields before Yaichka had washed the dreams from its eyes. The someone wore a bright coat of many colors, and cut grain with an enormous pair of shears.

  “Who is that?” she asked of her husband.

  “Do not look at him, volchitsa,” said the handsome Koschei. “Let him take his share.”

  Marya Morevna thought no more of it, kissed both of her husband’s sunburned cheeks, and rode into the wood after two fat beavers with tails like pancakes. When she returned to Koschei Bessmertny in the evening, being held by him was like being held by the sun, and together they relished the pale god of the butter on their bread.

  * * *

  On Marya’s left-hand side lives Vladimir Ilyich and his wife Nadya Konstantinovna, whose hens have such good memories they never forget an egg. Nadya’s scowl is so severe even winter leaves her well enough alone. Vladimir has gone bald and needs glasses, but he broke his comb over his knee and made his peace with God long ago. Around that time old Vova fell asleep with his new glasses on and was visited by a dream involving an army of red ants and an army of white ants. Somehow this led him to gather together the four Yaichkans who owned horses and devise the system of horse-shares which provides both for Marya’s hunting expeditions and for the equitable tilling of Yaichka’s several fields.

  In his youth, a smaller Vladimir encountered a beautiful jackdaw with a red blaze on her chest. The bird snapped savagely at him, and ever since then the boy has possessed a gift for convincing people of strange things. Once, he declared to his neighbors that the tall, beautiful roses that climbed the walls of his house grew unjustly, so that they received both theirs and the lilacs’ share of the rain. The roses were corrupt, he said, and both Aleksandr Fyodorovich and Grigory Yevseevich listened sympathetically over cups of sweet myod. The roses are vicious by their nature, Nadya agreed, and scowled so fiercely that the myod spilled immediately, in order to absolve itself of any involvement. Vladimir Ilyich tried to encourage the lilacs to take the rain for themselves, going so far as to hang buckets from his eaves and distribute the water himself, sprinkling it evenly among the flowers with his long, thin fingers. But this did not suffice.

  “What is to be done?” he demanded. “What is to be done?”

  And one morning the village of Yaichka woke, and the heads of Vova’s roses had all been hacked off at the neck.

  Vladimir and Nadya have two sons under their roof, Josef and Leon. They dream boys’ dreams: of getting a slice of their father’s fortune, of girls, of growing big mustaches. Several jokes concerning the brothers buzz through Yaichka, for one never hugged the other without making his hands into fists. Josef has chased Leon into the
woods many times, red in the face, bellowing for his brother never to return. But of course, around dinner, Lyova slinks back, and Josef embraces him as if nothing was amiss. Leon, for his part, scowls in his room and breaks his toys to show them who their master is. After the incident with Vladimir’s roses, Josef stomped upon all the flowers of the garden—lilac, rose, peony, daisy, and even his mother’s flowerless savories, mint and dill and thyme. He stood in the middle of all his destruction, panting, his dark eyes wild as a kicked horse, looking to his father for praise.

  “You are my favorite son,” said Vladimir Ilyich to Josef, which is all the boy ever wished to hear. “And so I forgive you for the flowers.”

  This made the child smile, but did not really shine up his disposition. One spring day, as fine as a cake, the boy marched straight up to the very kindly Sergei Mironovich and shot him with finger pistols: pow, pow! The two stared at each other in the muddy, fragrant road of Yaichka, as if remembering something that happened long ago.

  “Lyova did it!” cried Josef, frightened by Sergei’s silence, and ran off to hit his brother soundly. So it goes with Josef. Every village has one.

  On Marya’s right-hand side lives Georgy Konstantinovich, who sits out on his steps and plays his birchwood gusli so prettily that the moon faints away from love, and whose wife Galina Ivanova has a lamb’s modesty. Everything in Georgy’s house proceeds with perfect precision. Even the eggs boil when he says so, and not a moment sooner. The bees in his garden sup only at the flowers he likes best. When the wolves in the forest howl, Georgy wakes up and stands watch with his daughters all in a line, their rifles on their shoulders, and it cannot be disproven that this is why wolves are heard but not seen. Georgy is more modest, even, than his wife. He would never say that he saves Yaichka each night with his strong antiwolf posture, but his neighbors say it for him, and bring to him and his girls hot tea and slices of pie wrapped in muslin when the cold snaps. Georgy herds the cows as well, for they recognize his authority, and proceed in formation into their pen without argument.