Happiness is Possible (19 page)

In principle, Lariska's situation seemed quite typical and rather ordinary to me but, as someone close to her, who also happened to be drinking her Hennessy, I felt duty-bound to express sympathy.

‘You're such an interesting woman,' I remarked, ‘and he actually called you that . . . By the way, who is he, this boyfriend of yours?'

‘You mean, what does he do?' she asked with a casual wave of her hand. ‘He's a supplier, what else?'

‘No, what I meant was: Is he a Muscovite?'

Lariska nodded.

‘Of course he is. All my suppliers are Muscovites.'

‘There, you see, Larochka!' I said, raising my finger. ‘Now you listen to me, I know about these things. You'll never click with a Muscovite.'

She raised her eyebrows sharply.

‘And why's that?'

‘Because . . . because there's a force of mutual repulsion that exists between Muscovites. It's hard to explain, but trust me on this.'

Lariska sipped thoughtfully on her cognac.

‘So what can I do? All my suppliers are locals . . .'

I felt sorry for her.

‘I don't even know what advice to give you . . .' I said, shaking my head helplessly. ‘You could try crying a bit, I suppose.'

But Lariska was too proud to cry.

‘Moscow doesn't believe in tears!' she declared theatrically. ‘I'd rather . . . I'd rather get drunk!'

My niece promptly demonstrated that she was a woman of her word. She got drunk right there in my kitchen, without even stirring from the spot. When Lariska felt like being sick, I took her to the bathroom and then put her to bed. In the morning she put on her makeup, got into her deluxe auto and drove off to do business.

After that Lariska started visiting regularly. She probably didn't have any close girlfriends. In any case, it's not every girlfriend that you can simply massacre a bottle with, and she felt at ease with me. We downed our cognac like two men and picked over the bones of personal life like two women.

Everything was just great, apart from the fact that Phil, a regular participant in all my kitchen chat sessions, believed that conversation over cognac could not take the place of personal life as such. He himself didn't drink any cognac and he kept mum – but only until his own personal requirements became too pressing. When that happened, we left Lariska to ponder the most recent tentative conclusions reached and went out to the dog's area in the yard. Generally speaking, the personal life of dogs takes place in a public forum.

Our own special little area was still intact then. What a truly significant symbol of public utility that fence was! How many times it had protected Phil from large, aggressive dogs – and protected small, decorative dogs from Phil! Bitches, of course, didn't count – they were protected against the teeth of the male dogs by nature herself. But only from the teeth: the space inside the fence was a no-go area for bitches on their more sensitive days.

Things went on like this for a year or even longer. Chat sessions over cognac became a regular habit for Lariska and me. On the one hand, this was no bad thing; people need to have habits – they create the illusion that life is stable. But not all habits lead to good outcomes, indeed, we know that some of our habits actually complicate and even shorten our lives. I believe that our joint cognac habit could have led Lariska to alcoholism; and then her business would have fallen into decay and all her suppliers would have abandoned her. That kind of career is fairly typical: driving over the capital's asphalt roads is so nerve-wracking that many, very many of those who thought they would conquer her end up taking to drink.

But our chats suddenly came to an end, and in the light of what I have already said, I can't really say that I regret it. In any case, Lariska disappeared again. She didn't come to see me for a week, then two, then three, and after that I stopped thinking about her, because my own problems were piling up.

It all started with the local authorities demolishing our dogs' area. There was no fence left to provide refuge and the result was that Phil, wandering round the yard as the fancy took him, found a girlfriend. Unfortunately, the girlfriend's master and I failed to realise that the relationship between our two pets was getting serious, and one evening we found ourselves running across the courtyard, uttering stupid cries of ‘Phoo!' while Phil and his new flame consummated the act that renders all estates and classes equal. The degree of equalisation was significant in this case, because my canine friend was coupling with a pedigree Dalmatian.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but in its canine version the act concerned lasts for rather a long time and is quite impossible to interrupt at a late stage. So the Dalmatian's master and I had no option but to sort things out between ourselves while we waited for it to end. Basically, from the dogs' point of view (which I am inclined to share) there was nothing unnatural in the act of coition that was taking place, but my adversary did not agree. Our dialogue went something like this:

Bitch's Master: Do you realise what you've done? She's an exhibition dog.

I: I haven't done anything. You should take more care walking your prize exhibit.

B.M.: These bloody mongrels are all over the place now.

I: Would you rather she was covered by a Riesenschnauzer?

B.M.: You're a bloody Riesenschnauzer yourself.

I: Ha, look who's talking!

Fortunately we never got as far as fisticuffs, because the dogs concluded their business while we crossed swords. Their feelings on parting were most tender-hearted, which is more than can be said for their masters.

The occurrence described above had diametrically opposed consequences for me and Phil. Having cut loose in this fashion, Philip felt, quite naturally, that his stature had been substantially enhanced, while I experienced the opposite effect. That cry of ‘You're a bloody Riesenschnauzer yourself' left a bitter residue in my soul. Sometimes, when I got the feeling that something had been left unsaid, I used to go out into the yard and look around for the Dalmatian's master. I don't know what I wanted from him, I wasn't even sure that I really wanted to meet him.

Nonetheless, the meeting did take place and, of course, it took place when I was absolutely unprepared for it. I didn't run into the Dalmatian's master in our communal yard or some other obvious spot, but in a crowded metro carriage. The metro is not really the right place for delving into canine genealogy, and I pretended not to notice the gentleman, but he spotted me and squeezed up close.

‘Hello!' he shouted, smiling for some reason.

I raised one eyebrow in reply.

‘Fancy meeting you here!' he continued chirpily.

‘It's an abominably small world,' I muttered, but fortunately he didn't hear.

‘What? Do you know that Vesta had six pups?'

It took me a moment to realise who Vesta was, then I roared in reply:

‘Congratulations! Are you going to sue for alimony?'

At this point the train stopped at the station where the Dalmatian's master and I were both getting off.

‘Alimony? Don't say that!' he exclaimed, taking me by the arm, ‘They're so loveable. I tell you what . . . come over for the christening. With your . . . I'm sorry, I don't know what either of you are called.'

So the unexpected outcome of the stupid story of Phil's cutting loose was a happy ending.

In addition, it turned out that while we were engrossed in these events, the plot in my niece Lariska's life had taken another twist – a surprising one that also led to a happy ending. I read about it in an e-mail I received on the evening of the day I learned that Phil had become a father. The message, from Sweden, informed me that Lariska had got married and would soon become a mother. Omitting all the romantic details, since I am no great lover of such things, the gist of the message was that one fine day it had dawned on Lariska to change her supplier and, unlike the Moscow suppliers, the Swedish model had met her requirements in every respect. He didn't wander about the place in his underpants, only farted in the designated areas and didn't think Lariska a stupid fool. So now the business partners were on their honeymoon, which they were spending gathering mushrooms under the pine trees on the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia.

Naturally, I was delighted by this message from my niece, but it also gave me pause for thought. Why shouldn't certain Moscow businesswomen take note of Lariska's experience? Although, of course, Sweden is a small country and its supply of suppliers is strictly limited.

As for me, for the first time in a long time, I retired to bed that evening in an optimistic frame of mind. Say what you will, but it's no bad thing when the world acquires six new half-Dalmatians and one new half-Swede.

Grisha Zamoisky is dead; I was informed of his death and the date of the funeral on the phone by his wife Mila. She told me in a grave, strangely detached kind of voice, as if she were speaking on behalf of the deceased. Exactly the kind of voice, with a slight hint of accusation, in which the surviving relatives of someone recently deceased usually communicate with the world around them. In fact, Grisha would never have spoken to me from the next world in that tone: he and Mila are old, close friends of mine, except that now he is in the past tense.

We were in the same student group at college. Grisha and Mila were the witnesses when Tamara and I got married in the third year, and a year later they employed our services in the same capacity. On graduating from college, our girls were free to seek employment wherever they wished and Grisha and I found good jobs in a Moscow engineering office. He and I even ended up in the same department, which could have been cause for a certain rivalry between us – two young specialists at the very start of their career . . . But no rivalry sprang up and it never have could have done. I heard somewhere that only one in ten of all graduates from technical colleges eventually becomes a half-decent engineer. Of the remaining third-raters, three make administrative careers, three leave to ‘find themselves' in the sphere of the humanities and three swell the ranks of the good-for-nothings in white coats that abound in all engineering and design organisations and only display any kind of activity when leave and free holiday travel are being allocated. Well, you have probably already guessed that neither I nor Zamoisky demonstrated any talent as engineers, great or otherwise. What's more, we unfortunately lacked the essential low villainy and cunning required to suck up to the boss. Grisha and I very soon realised that we were in no danger of creative development or administrative advancement in the engineering office. But after that our ways parted, in accordance with the statistical pattern adduced above. I shifted the workload of my brain from the left hemisphere to the right and became a novelist, but Grisha continued to serve as an infantry private in the engineering ranks until the end of his days.

For many years our two families were friends. Although I must admit, with my hand on my heart, that only the Zamoiskys had a genuine family, because a genuine family is one in which there are children. Unfortunately, when it came to reproduction the score was two-nil in the Zamoiskys' favour, although Grisha was not entirely satisfied with the result of their productive efforts: both their children were of the female sex.

‘I tried, I really did . . .' he lamented after the birth of the second little girl, ‘but it's the same again . . . Just that much, that's all that was missing!' he said, showing me the tip of his little finger.

However, despite the lack of what Grisha had in mind, Liza and Nastya – that's what his daughters were called – were as lively and mischievous as boys. Their angelic little foreheads were frequently adorned with bumps and their plump extremities with scrapes and bruises. With only a year between them, the girls squabbled over anything at all, but the most frequent cause for a quarrel was who was going to ride on daddy's shoulders. Grisha carried them for a very long time, until Mila forbade it for reasons of decency. But even then almost every weekend dad and daughters set out on an excursion. These excursions, often quite long, were always educational in nature. Zamoisky might have been a hopeless engineer, but he had a passion for mechanisms, so he took his little girls to an exhibition of armoured vehicles, or an air show, or simply to the Polytechnical Museum. His daughters never objected to this programme of events; perhaps they felt guilty for not being born the boys that their daddy had wanted.

I hope you can pardon my excessively keen interest in the way that other people's children grow up. Let's just put it down to a writer's professional quirk.

The years passed and the little girls began developing as individuals. Liza ‘grew in the leg' which, according to Mila, guaranteed her the figure of a fashion model in the future; but Nastya grew a little bit everywhere, which soon guaranteed male interest. Apart from a polite interest in armoured vehicles, Liza demonstrated the usual inclinations of little girls and did well at school. Nastya's progress at school was erratic and Mila was frightened by her inclinations. At a very early age her parents started discovering in her room cigarettes and other artefacts which indicated that they needed to keep a close eye on the girl.

Be that as it may, Tamara and I loved them both. When we came to visit the Zamoiskys, the girls kissed us on the cheek. Then Liza went to her room ‘to study', but Nastya hung about with the grown-ups and butted into our conversations until Mila drove her out. When this happened, Grisha sighed furtively; I think that, despite her difficult character, Nastya was his favourite and he especially regretted having failed to bestow on her that snippet the size of the tip of his little finger.

At that time we used to get together with the Zamoiskys three or four times a year, that is, quite often. General speaking, those were hard times, especially in financial terms and especially for lower echelon staff engineers. So on our way to see them Tamara and I tried as far as possible to buy everything necessary for the meal. And later, during that meal, we delicately avoided talking about money or Grisha's job. For their part, the Zamoiskys tried to avoid the subject of children with us. If Mila was careless enough to start chattering about the stresses of parenthood, Grisha stepped on her foot under the table. We and the Zamoiskys secretly regarded each other as unfortunate. Perhaps that was what made us close during those difficult years.

Later, when the state of society started to improve, we started seeing each other less often. I actually managed to conceal our divorce from the Zamoiskys for more than a year. They didn't even find out about it from me, but by chance from some acquaintances that we had in common. I remember the telephone call from Grisha.

‘Listen, my friend, I heard that you and Tamara are . . . you know?' he enquired cautiously.

‘Yes, indeed: our ways have parted.'

‘Mmm, I see . . .' he sighed sadly after a pause. ‘So now what?'

‘Nothing. I'm writing.'

Poor Zamoisky! I'm sure he hadn't read a single one of my books. His intellectual spirit perished long before his body. Such, perhaps is the price of family happiness . . . Perhaps now, when he has also left his family, I ought to put a little volume in his grave. With an inscription: ‘To my friend Grisha for his journey'. Only I don't have a volume with me and the priest would abuse me for it. But then who knows, the priests in Moscow turn a blind eye to many things. This one is performing the funeral service even though I think he realises the deceased was not baptised. And the priest certainly knows that afterwards we'll take him to an entirely non-Orthodox establishment: the crematorium.

‘Poor Mila!' someone whispers right in my ear.

She came after all. Tamara takes my arm and presses herself against me, and I feel her trembling slightly.

‘Are you on your own?'

‘With Little Dima. He's outside.'

‘And Palich?'

‘Why would he come? He didn't know him.'

‘Yes, that's right . . .'

The funeral is over. The priest extinguishes his censer and gives instructions, telling us ‘dear ones' what to do at the cemetery when saying our final farewell to the deceased. Mila gazes intently at the priest, but I know she doesn't hear a word he's saying. It's okay, Tamara's with her. So are Liza and Nastya. I wouldn't have recognised them – they've become such grown-up ladies.

We carry Zamoisky to the hearse – myself and three other men, colleagues of his from work. It's heavy work.

We drive to the cemetery. Tamara has taken Mila and her daughters with her in the car and I, knowing that I will be needed again to help with the coffin, have taken a seat in the hearse with Grisha and his colleagues. The budget-class Moscow hearse is a refurbished minibus. A space has been freed up at the centre of it for the main passenger, and benches for those accompanying him have been set along the sides. We sit there, holding the lid of the coffin in place with our knees – the bumpy road keeps shaking it off. The hearse smells of petrol, damp wood and stale alcohol. Of course, Grisha's colleagues have taken a drink or two beforehand and they tell stories about work all the way. The point is for Zamoisky to figure as the central character in every story. I learn lots of new things about Grisha and as I listen I recall the corridor of the engineering office, the rubbish bins overflowing with cigarette butts and the same kind of storytellers, only twenty years ago.

The potholes jolt us up into the air and again a storyteller loses his thread. He gazes in confusion at Zamoisky's coffin.

‘Yes,' says one colleague, filling in the gap. ‘Grisha went early, all right.'

‘Yes he did,' say the others, nodding, ‘he should have lived a bit longer.'

The potholes indicate that we are already approaching the cemetery. Wiping the steamy window, I see a large open area packed with minibus hearses just like ours. The queue for the next world. After squeezing into a free space, the driver switches off the engine and sets off to reconnoitre. Well, if that's how things are, we can get out too, for a smoke and a breath of fresh air. We clamber out of the hearse, everybody except Zamoisky; he doesn't smoke any more.

Not far away I spot the Geländewagen, which arrived before us. The women are probably sitting inside, concealing their tears behind the tinted windows, but Little Dima is striding up and down outside with a cigarette.

‘Hi!' I say, walking over to him.

‘Hi . . .'

‘Did you find the way to the cemetery okay?'

Dima laughs.

‘I could find that road with my eyes closed. The number of our lads I drove here . . .'

‘I see . . .'

In previous times Little Dima was a member of what he calls ‘an unofficial trade union'.

The queue for the crematorium moves more quickly than we could have expected. In less than an hour we are already carrying Zamoisky into the leave-taking hall or, rather, pushing him in, because there's a trolley here for the convenience of clients. As we push the trolley over to the special plinth at the back of the hall, the female attendant switches on the sad music; she puts it on quietly, so as not to interfere with the funeral orations. There will be orations, have no doubt about that. Grisha's colleagues are already whispering among themselves, evidently identifying the most eloquent of their number. Now the coffin has been installed on the plinth and opened again. The eloquent colleague steps up to its foot and . . . mutters something unintelligible. He looks as if he has been summoned to the boss's office for a dressing-down. With the threads of his report thoroughly tangled together he looks round for support from his colleagues and one of them comes to his rescue. With an effort, the two of them formulate some kind of statement in their engineering-office language about Grisha's professional and social achievements. It sounds as if they are reading a Diploma of Honour in chorus, only instead of wishes for continued success, their address concludes with the words ‘rest in peace'.

The crematorium attendant keeps glancing at her watch. It's time for us to get on with kissing the deceased and carrying out the priest's instructions. We line up and take turns to kiss. It's not a pleasant procedure; some of us shirk it.

It's over. The deceased has been sprinkled with earth from a paper bag, the coffin has been closed and nailed shut and is now moving into the opening in the wall. There are no flames raging in the opening, it's not the furnace just yet, but soon . . . I was probably right not to put my little book in Grisha's coffin, it would have burned up.

As soon as the opening in the wall closes, the attendant turns off the music. For a few seconds a faint whisper runs round the hall and the sound of noses being blown with restraint can be heard from various corners . . . Then suddenly in the middle of the silence a loud sobbing breaks out – the first during the entire ceremony. Liza is weeping on Mila's breast like a little girl. Nastya looks at her sister, biting her lip.

‘Silly fool!' she whispers angrily . . . and faints.

Tamara, standing beside her, barely manages to catch her in time, but the crematorium attendant is there in a flash with the smelling salts.

‘It's all right, it's all right,' she says, ‘just the usual procedure.'

Probably. She ought to know.

The funeral is over, and our next stop as part of ‘the usual procedure' is the wake, which takes place at the Zamoiskys' flat in rather crowded conditions, but is generally well up to the mark. I'll omit any descriptions in order to avoid the appalling monologues from Grisha's colleagues.

The evening is already dark when we make our way back from the wake. I sit on the back seat of the Geländewagen with Tamara and listen to her telling me how Mila came home from work to find Grisha dead. ‘Mila comes home and he's sitting there at the table. And the soup in front of him is already cold . . .'

‘Calm down . . .' I say and pull her close.

We drive on for a while in silence, but I feel Toma's body start trembling slightly. She's crying.

‘You're much too . . .' I mutter. ‘You shouldn't take it so much to heart . . .'

Toma raises her tearstained face.

‘I'm sorry . . . I suddenly felt afraid: what if I come to see you, and you're sitting there like that . . . sitting with your soup in front of you.'

I conceal my ironic smile in the dark.

‘Why me, and not your Dmitry Pavlovich?'

‘I don't know,' she says, moving away almost angrily. ‘I just thought about you now.'