She

I am sitting in my short dark-blue trousers in the rattling tramcar, dangling my restless legs and feet in their white socks and new sandals, looking through the huge windowpane. And the world beyond that windowpane seems to me mysterious and boundless, and I long to know what this boundless, mysterious outside world is actually like.

And She, in her little pink skirt, white lace and white ribbons, with her straw-coloured doll’s ringlets, is sitting opposite me and looking at me. Only later shall I find out that the word «she» — if you wish to give it a special meaning — must be written with a capital letter, but at the time... at the time, somehow I simply could not turn my face calmly towards her and look straight into her eyes. One moment I scrutinized them in the reflection of the tramcar windows, the next I directly cast piratical glances at them, whereupon she looked away with utter indifference.

I am sitting in the tramcar and looking out of the window. It‘s a huge window. And the world beyond it is immeasurably huge — it‘s Moscow. Over its seven hills tramcars are rumbling; mine rumbles along Tverskiy and Strasniy boulevards, across Trubnoy square towards Tsvetnoy boulevard and straight to the centre of all there is in this immeasurable world, the State circus...

«Carandash in the ring!» «Performing bears» «Acrobats under the big top!»

And here I am screwing up my eyes — «Ding-ding!» the tramcar is rattling along — while round the ring horses are prancing and galloping and whips are cracking over their heads. And up there, on the tightrope, right at the top, as high as the very heavens, there She is, my bright-eyed Goldilocks!

Only for a few delightfully long seconds do I close my eyes, but that is precisely the time when She manages both to perform some acrobatic feats and to fall off the tightrope as if into an abyss, while I, like a swift-winged hawk, dash down the rows of seats and catch her just before she hits the carpet...

 

The tramcar is jerking along over the metal track, its brakes screeching round the bends and the glass in its window-frames clinking mockingly. It races swiftly downhill along Yaroslav highway from Malo-Moskovskaya past Alexeevskoye village towards Ostankino park.

How enormous Moscow is!

I still look and look through the window. In the dusty glass I can dimly see a reflection. I try to make out its outlines — it’s She!

In my clenched left hand I hold a coin, in my right one a penknife. And both my hands are deep in the pockets of my shabby knickerbocker breeches. Now, if I start swinging my leg a little more, my bare foot in its worn sandal may — quite by chance, of course - touch the edge of her cornflower-coloured shoes. She does not swing her legs like me or look out of the window . With her dark eyelashes downcast, she gazes at her knees upon which, in the folds of her snow-white dress, there lies a thin blue book. At home I, too, have one like this; and I know by heart all the poems contained in it. Just there, where the book is open, opposite the full-page picture, on the right, of a troika with its driver - precisely the one she is looking at, trying at the same time with the fingers of her left hand to brush the golden coffee-coloured locks away from her eyes — just there, there is a poem entitled «The winter road». Now, if she would only close her book... oh God, if I were bold enough, I would softly recite to her: «Through the billowing mist, the moon heaves into sight, Over the melancholy glades flows its melancholy light...» And on the next page: «In the creek by the sea stands a green oak-tree...» And on the very last one: «Companion of my sombre days, my age-worn darling...» here I always remember my own beloved grandma... But She just goes on looking at Her book; and it seems to me that She is taking no interest in me whatsoever. And if She does, neither She nor I know how to say so to each other. Neither of us knows anything about That as yet. And we do not even know what it is that we do not know and what It is for, and why there is such a thing as what we are for the time being not entitled to know, and how and when we shall find out about It.

But it seems to me that we are already beginning to sense... something very, very important. In my case, for instance, that I am being connected to some rather strange but at the same time wonderful and extremely exciting magnetic field — a field of mutual attraction where at present we can communicate only on the wavelengths of deep sighs, bewilderment and dreaming...

The tramcar is slowing down. Now it will go round and stop not far from the boat-house that nestles on the shore of the small lake, just opposite Sheremetiev palace in Ostankino park. It is tramcar number seventeen. Here it will make a small loop and start on its way back to that wide endless space called Yaroslav highway and then along it to Rjevsk railway-station, and afterwards past Sukharev tower to the district of Mary’s Grove where it will then disappear into that tangle of winding streets and alleys.

But while the wheels are braking (now I needn’t even screw up my eyes), She and I will sail in a boat to the middle of the lake — I at the oars and She sitting in the stern with that same thin little book. A gentle breeze will turn over the pages on Her lap, the sun will shine right above our boat — high up in the sky — and looking over my head, in a whisper, for only me to hear, She will declaim: «That year out in the open the autumn weather lasted long...» (this is from another book, one my mother is fond of reading). And I, listening to her (not to my mother), looking down and repeating the words after her to the same rhythm, will push the long clumsy oars in and out of the smooth water, and keeping them at times pointed skyward, will look out of the corner of my eye at the silvery amber streams cascading down them and glittering in the sunlight...

— « Hickory, hickory, dock, The bride and bridegroom hit a rock, Their boat was smashed, The bride got splashed...» It was like a chair suddenly falling with a crash! Like the thunder of a chimney tumbling down, a cracker unexpectedly exploding next to oneear! In the nearest boat, three laughing nasty kids! I should have scorned their mockery, but my thirst for the heroic demands immediate and, inevitably, harsh retribution. And so, within the short seconds when the tramcar is rounding the bend and She, still absorbed in Her book, is rising from Her seat, I revel in the vision of a victorious naval battle: thanks to a skilful blow of my oar removed from its rowlock, I overturn my opponents’ boat — loud splashings, cries for help, our opponents’ distorted faces, the keel of the capsized boat rocking sadly on the waves, and three pairs of boys’ arms reaching out for it...

Ding, ding, ding! The tramcar is coming to a stop.

 

The steamboat is sailing on the Moscow river. « Moscow» again! « Moscow» — everything everywhere is named after it! The boat had sailed for a whole night already. And in the morning fragments of a ship destroyed by German bombs drifted by.

I am standing on deck and looking at the water. Looking long and hard without taking my eyes off it, and it seems to me that if I looked into this water still more intently, it could reveal to me part of the mystery of last night’s tragedy. But this water ... is like water: both calm and not very transparent, somewhat enticing and yet also frightening. Perhaps to-day it is indeed slightly more mysterious...

I look round.

She, too, is standing on deck; however She is not looking at the water, like me, but at the sky. My eyes follow Hers, and I see a large bird: a white and grey seagull is hovering quite close to the mast.

«Aren’t these birds lucky!» the thought flashes through my mind. «They know nothing about war or the troubles it brings us, they just fly where they want to. And altogether they live in a different way from us, as if nothing were happening round about them.» There is something unnatural about that, or so it seems to me, but also something that sets one musing; thus beside this disturbing flow of the river and this disquieting life, there is something else, something invisible and all-embracing that never changes the eternal rhythm set for it once and for all. Whereupon suddenly at the back, the very back of my consciousness I feel a shudder of fear and awe as I begin to realize the inconceivable scale of the world surrounding us and of its even more unfathomable mysteries. And here I stand looking in the direction of the seagull and watch its impetuous flight against the background of an intense blue sky, and even actually feel how my eyes and Hers meet on that bird soaring high up in the air; but now, or so it seems to me, I somehow know that I am not simply sailing as an evacuee, not simply participating in a collective flight from the horror of the German bombs over Moscow, but taking my first timid steps in that world whose intrinsic nature I still have to discover, though it is too soon for that and that is not the essence of what matters most at the moment.

The «Maxim Gorki» is sailing down the Moscow river, carrying evacuees from the Greater Moscow sanatorium for TB patients called «Daisy», over fifty sick children of different ages and, together with them, doctors, teachers, administrators, nurses and two or three nurse-maids. And in addition to all that staff, various members of their families. There were strangers, too, whom we called «fellow-travellers».

But what about that brown-eyed girl with the long chestnut plait hanging down from under her dark-blue beret, the one who cast a heedless glance at me and now, as though nothing had happened, is already gazing again at the seagull sitting on the mast, and then at the landscape gliding past: is she a «fellow-traveller» or, like me, one of the «various family members»? I know she is deliberately not looking my way, though she has noticed me.

And I am not looking her way, either.

It was an early September morning of the year 1941 in the middle of a wide Russian river. There was a cloudless blue sky. And there was a seagull, but no longer only one - now several seagulls were hovering above our heads. And there were Her eyes slyly half-closed. And She and I were sailing together somewhere far away, we did not know where, towards something we didn’t know, for we didn’t know how long, away from all that was lovable and real — I from my mother and my father, who himself had already parted with me to go up to the front, but also from my beloved grandmother, and my friends in my nice little green Moscow backyard, and from my school which I’d left so unexpectedly...

Suddenly German planes swoop down on us. Or rather, all at once a fire breaks out round us, while explosions and heart-breaking screams rend the air: «Help!!! Help!!!» Only then does it occur to me: «These are fascist airplanes!» The ship is listing to the right (we’re standing on the left). No, quite wrong — if it were to the right, we wouldn’t be able to jump straight into the water and would hit the side. It’s listing to the left, and... She and I at the same instant take a desperate leap. No — a blast sweeps Her overboard, it’s better that way. I look for a lifebuoy: some sailors standing on deck are flinging them into the waves and shouting something but I can’t hear what they’re saying. I can see that not one of the lifebuoys is falling within her reach. Then I jump into the water myself. I can’t swim (and still cannot), but what does it matter?

Slowly sailing along the smooth surface of the Moscow river, past the peaceful rolling landscape, the «Maxim Gorki» rhythmically splashed through the water with its paddle wheels. The girl with the blue beret looked intently in my direction, somewhat slyly — it seemed to me — half-closing her brown eyes, and disappeared through the doorway of the corridor leading to the first-class cabins.

 

I had already noticed her on the pier. She stood with her back to me in a white dress with blue spots; its skirt, blown by the wind, was ready at any time to turn into a sail and whenever this threat became quite real, she would slide her sun-tanned arms down her hips while still intently looking at the path leading to the landing-stage. Her long hair with glints of auburn was not plaited but, held tightly by one black ribbon, hung down her strong back almost to her waist. «The girl is waiting for someone», I said to myself; and she turned round.

I stepped on to the landing-stage, taking Her image with me on the river-boat.

Here the Ob River was particularly wide; however, a long island overgrown with almost impenetrable raspberry, currant and blackberry bushes jutted out on our side of the river and concealed the actual distance to the opposite bank, so that when the boat suddenly got past the promontory and out into the open waters, one felt a thrill of rapturous amazement. That same wonder I read in her eyes, too. Now she was sitting opposite me on the open deck and looking somewhere over the rails. «And where are the ones, or the one, she was waiting for?» I looked round but didn’t notice anybody.

She could be either my age or just a little older; she belonged to that generation of teenagers who, growing up vigorously in the comparatively peaceful thirties, got suddenly scorched in the early forties, and now did not so much murmur as shrink into themselves because they felt either secretly uncomfortable, or secretly glad, that they were still so young and could not be among those who risked, any minute, being consumed in the blaze of the terrible war raging somewhere in the west.

Several times I felt her half-attentive, half-abstracted look flit like a breeze across my face. Several times, too, my sidelong glances caught the impatient gestures of her hands, now supporting the back of her head, now clasping her knees, now leaning on the seat palms downwards. Several times, as if just to herself, she began humming the tunes of war-songs that we all sadly knew, and when I made an attempt to join in, she looked at me like a nursery-school teacher, broke off and suddenly, with her deep nearly mature voice, started singing aloud a song that I now heard for the first time, about a young girl and a sailor, back from the front, whose encounter was brief but left a deep mark in her heart; however:

 

«Not a word does the sailor write,

Not even his address does he send to me.

But what brings me still more woe

Is that they call me his wife

For what reason I don’t know...»

 

The song rose over the open waters of the boundless river, which gave its words special, symbolic implications; and remembering how, when she was on the pier, she couldn’t take her eyes off the path going down to the river from the military hospital that stood among fir-trees on the steep slope of the riverbank, I thought: she must have been visiting one of the wounded.

I looked round again — in my mind’s eye this time — and saw Him. Next to her there sat a fair-haired smiling lad in a sailor’s blouse and bell-bottom trousers. A peakless cap lay on one knee and its black snake-like ribbons fluttered in the wind, while his right arm lay round her shoulders. And she was not trying to push it away. And she was smiling at him...

This will happen to me later on, too: there She will be , but next to Her it will not be me but Him, that is, whenever She is a different She; whenever She is only the embodiment of that magical polarized force that casts a spell over us and attracts our «opposite sign» — but crosses our life with a transit ticket, on its way to other lands and other realms.

 

I was not quite nineteen; my cotton tunic was steaming with sweat that would not dry in the unabating heat. Our platoon of foot-soldiers from a detached infantry battalion, tossed from one place to another in accordance with the tactical plan of some higher command, had settled down for a rest near the railway-station of the little southern town of Balta, in the Odessa military district. It was now five years since the last day of the war, and five years to a Romantic young man, who is moreover measuring the flight of time not by the calendar but by the hands of a clock, or at the worst by the days of the week, five years is more than enough for him to perceive the blue sky, and the clouds gliding across it over his head, as something peaceful, even soothing. And at that hour in the morning the whole scene round our stopping-place looked more than peaceful and so did the peaceful inhabitants of that area — so blissfully, reassuringly peaceful. And my «brothers-in-arms» on urgent military service, though jaded by a forced march with knapsacks, rolled-up overcoats and battle equipment — old-fashioned rifles — did not miss the opportunity, once out of their garrison, to engage in a thoroughly peaceful occupation, an eternal one, like all that has to do with love: embroidering verbal patterns on gallant snares and nets cast either unhurriedly, or on the contrary in haste, even though there seems to be no chance of any success whatsoever. Our brief halt on the grass and benches of the shady park near the railway-station was marked by the sweetest coincidence: precisely at the same time, from the train that pulled in along the platform, there alighted a group of merrily chattering girls in light summer-dresses, carrying handbags and briefcases, thanks to which you could not possibly mistake them for anything but students, either local ones or from somewhere else and here on errands of their own. From the train they came straight into the small park to wait for their bus, made themselves comfortable on the benches we had not taken, nearer the exit, and while babbling away kept an eye on the bus-stop.

«High-class beauties!» said the sergeant sitting next to me, smacking his lips, and, spitting with gusto on the grass, he stood up nimbly and with a slightly rolling gait moved slowly towards them; others followed him.

«The colts have grown restive,» the young lieutenant sitting nearby muttered either to himself or to me, and he stood up too. I thought his freckled high-cheekboned face showed some perplexity at this unexpected turn of events, and he did not know how to react to it appropriately: should he clamp down on his subordinates or just ignore them, or perhaps, yielding to the temptation, join them himself? After looking for a long time at his wrist-watch, then at me, as if to seek moral support (because I was a Muscovite and an «intellectual», he favoured me, up to a point, with his trust), and not finding any either from his watch or from me, he preferred to lean against the trunk of a huge poplar and stand still in watchful contemplation.

As for me, I sat motionless in my meditative posture, with my eyes half-closed and my heart still beating fast, all my joints and muscles aching, and in my ears the drone of a running engine which did not come from without but from somewhere deep within at the back of my head. And now my consciousness was already hovering outside time and space; half-present and half-absent, seeing and understanding everything but with that aloofness from reality which enables me, without any special effort, to transfer it from the realm of sharp images to a hazy nowhere, and then smoothly to take off for any point in space and what I most long for: a vision of the people and things dear to me.

At that period in my army life, more often than not I flew away to my quiet little Moscow street, Malo-Moskovskaya, went up the three flights of wooden steps — four, then twice nine - to the first floor of our two-storey house and stopped short outside the door with its two letter-boxes, ours and the neighbours’; stopped short and listened: could my mother or grandma feel I was already here?...

Girls who could be attracted by soldiers in peace-time simply did not interest me. As far as I was concerned, in a situation where I regarded myself as humiliated by the circumstances of my own fate, I rejected any active display of romanticism and therefore resolutely dismissed any random thought of the possibility of thus, offhandedly, expressing what in my understanding was something essentially intimate, naturally secret, and required that particular state of mind in which between two «I» ‘s the sign of equality would easily fit in.

But on that day, when I suddenly looked up straight ahead of me, I discovered that that hazy nowhere had taken on concrete outlines and appeared to me as a fully completed composition: in the foreground a path running to the left in which a dried-up stream had cut a small channel, in the middle ground the stately trunk of a lime tree with the figures of two girls whom its magnificent green top partly concealed as if it were a tent, and behind them a fence with a gate against a background of amber haze. What first attracted my attention was that the two girls obviously belonged to the group, but stood at some distance from it; and next, that one of them, a dark-haired girl in blue, was half-facing me whereas the one who had brown hair and was wearing a pink skirt and white blouse and leaned against the tree with her arms folded across her chest — her briefcase lay on the grass — never stopped looking in my direction; even when our eyes met, she did not hurriedly look away, as could be expected, but without undue haste lowered her eyes to the ground for a little while then, as if with a certain determination, quickly looked up at me again and turned away. «Now it is for ever,» it flashed into my mind, «for ever and ever will I remember this day, this hour, this park and the uncertain colour of these eyes which so easily drew the sign of equality on the crumpled page of my journal.»

When the bus came and prepared to leave to my fellow-soldiers’ noisy farewells, I stood silently by the fence, gazing into one of the lowered windows, expecting with a pang of anguish — would I or would I not be granted another sign? I did not know what, how or in what shape — but without fail a confirmation that it had been She! This in a remote Russian province, in a group of provincial students who had just been laughing with soldiers and still went on showering like confetti winsome smiles upon them and jokes such as : «Dasha, Dashka, come on! do have a look: see how your chap is jigging up and down. You just wait, he’ll be sending you a perfumed little letter with flowers in it next»; «Lenochka, what about that dark-eyed fellow over there? Who is he staring at? He must be eyeing our curly-haired Masha! What are you shaking your head for, Masha? To let go such a marvellous creature...»

Masha? Yes, it must be Masha. And I saw the back of her white blouse. «Come on, do turn round, come on...» my lips murmured. She did not turn round. That provincial girl too could wait. And as if in answer to my thoughts, I heard the sergeant’s voice next to me addressing I didn’t know whom:

«From the Odessa teacher-training...»

Sending out clouds of dust from under its wheels, already at the very end of the street and approaching the bend in the road, the bus was driving away from me into its nebulous eternity...

The floor under our feet is jolting, we sway from side to side, and my right hand holds on to the hand-rail, close to her left one; my left hand, hanging down by the side of my cotton riding-breeches, is trying to get hold of her heavy briefcase, but her right one resists; and her head, rocking slightly from side to side, seems to say: «No — no...». Whereas her eyes looking into mine say plainly: «Yes! Of course — yes!» And again the bus jolts and sways, and again her head goes right and left, and again from her eyes dark-blue beams of light dart at me and tell me something I perfectly understand...

 

For some time I kept looking for Her in almost every girl that passed by. Whenever round the corner of some street I caught a glimpse of a slender figure with a long plait or with hair blowing in the wind, or when a creature with fiery eyes, as it seemed to me, got into the tramcar or the carriage of the underground or suburban train, I immediately started, even if I didn’t crane my neck like a goose, and grew all tense and ready to rush after her if necessary to the world’s end... But never did I actually dash off after anyone.

Until one day, at some point in my «dashing» mood, I again recalled the girl I had once seen in a photograph: fair-haired, in a sailor’s blouse, with a bow on her slightly bent head, and a dreamy look in her huge eyes. The photograph was fixed to the side of a small hanging cupboard by the window of the communal room in Novossibirsk in which, during the war years, her family and mine were accommodated. She and her doctor mother had come from blockaded Leningrad, and my mother and grandmother from almost front-line Moscow. They had been living there already for a whole year, whereas I had just come back to my family after a year’s separation. «It’s...», and my mother told me her name. «She’s a very nice girl; but of course she’s much older now than in this snapshot. She will soon be here and you’ll see for yourself». She was soon there. And as it turned out later on, she for ever entered and settled, with all her characteristic cosiness and love of comfort, somewhere in the romantic part of my consciousness, so deeply in fact and yet so unobtrusively that when eighteen months later we each went back to our own heroic cities, I did not at first realize the seriousness of what had happened until, after many years had elapsed and I had during that long separation adorned my «little Christmas tree of a girl» with every sparkling decoration I could possibly think of, I dashed from Moscow to Leningrad to crown her with a golden star... and marry her to crown it all!

Thus for a long time She — was embodied by her.

 

But then one day... as I sat in a carriage of the Leningrad underground, holding on my lap my five-year-old daughter with her pink ribbons in her two chestnut-coloured little braids, I saw that opposite us, among numerous other people who in no way whatsoever had drawn my attention, there was also a couple sitting almost in the same posture as we were, except that the other daughter was not on her father’s lap but on her young mother’s. Our daughters, as I understood, had already for a long time been exchanging glances, and the mother of the other girl, the fair-haired one, was whispering something in her ear; something like: «Do calm down and behave properly... We don’t know them at all...» And when she raised her head and fixed her gaze on me — with a surprised, embarrassed look in her eyes, in which a door seemed slightly to open, as a garden-gate may be left ajar as if by chance — I at once managed to slip in and glance round...

Honestly , if I had not been me, we would probably have left the carriage there and then together with our daughters (to their embarrassment and delight), gone up the long escalator of the Leningrad underground and walked... well, let us say down the Nevsky Prospekt, past Gostinni Dvor and Kazan cathedral, with its monuments to Field-Marshals Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly, and I would not have failed to try and find out how it so happened that I came across Her only now... so hopelessly late...

In Her eyes there were only questions. As for me — admitting that time turns its wheels not in the least in my favour, and absolutely refusing to take this into consideration and yet, in fact, taking it into consideration, and knowing that according to some law beyond our understanding the wheels of time had been turning and were still turning for all of us, now faster, now more slowly, and seldom in unison — when, after a few stops, She rose and, together with Her daughter, moved slowly towards the door, I, in my mind’s eye, in defiance of all the circumstances, also rose and followed them...

The reel of the recurrent somnambulistic film that had been turning in my consciousness already for some time, was blotting out the pictures of the present moment. Round me, apparently, some people stood up, others sat down, somebody was telling someone about something... and, as it turned out, for a few minutes I did not even answer some questions asked by my grey-eyed child. And only when my little daughter suddenly stopped asking did I, as if recovering my senses, feel something concrete — her hand on top of mine — and see her eyes staring at me with a surprised, questioning look.

 

By now, for a very long time I had ceased glancing round. And it was a long time, too, since either my daughter or my son had sat on my lap. Just as before, my favourite pastime, when travelling by public transport, was to read or gaze at the world beyond the window; but my books were thicker now and more often accompanied by a newspaper, and the world had equally broadened. Its geography had, for many reasons, become more accessible and my understanding of it more ambivalent.

But here I am, sitting in a Moscow suburban train and reading, let us say, a newspaper...

Or I am sitting in the carriage of a long-distance train...

I am sitting in an airplane...

At a table in the dining-room of a transatlantic liner...

In a nice little Montmartre caf й ...

In a Fleet Street pub...

Wandering on cobble-stones on the bank of the Seine...

Of the Loire...

Sitting on a bench in Hyde Park...

Or in St. Mark’s square...

And how many times after that have I, a confirmed agnostic, addressed the Almighty more or less in these words: «O, merciful God, You, the only one who has seen and knows everything, answer me: — what use is all this to me? What use to me are all these countless lives I have lived in my mind’s eye — within minutes, even seconds, draining my cup to the dregs, getting slightly intoxicated but never till the end quenching my thirst? I don’t know whether according to You I have sinned, but I will honestly confess to You that if I have, I do not know in what way. That is why I am not asking for forgiveness, or even for advice, readily given by those who have been raised by someone or other to the dignity of Your ministry — they are just as helpless in such matters, and they too are mere mortals. Let them solve their own problems. Nor can I address You in the words that I often hear from the lips of my weaker brothers: ‘Shield your son, steeped in secret sin, from all temptation, and show him the righteous way so that he may look his brethren and grandchildren in the face with a clear conscience.’ I do look, and with a clear conscience, too. Astonished I may be; and also, perhaps grieved — very much so — for I have not found true community of spirit; however, I have wandered over the world, in sunshine and in shadow, a pilgrim or Ulysses of love...»

 

But there were dreams. Few are those who have not experienced that burning state of bitterness, or joy, when from one reality — the esoteric one — you shift into that which is controlled by terrestrial gravity. In dreams I not only fly, and swim like a dolphin, but now and again I also meet the one who, it seemed, embodied Her. Sometimes I recognize those with whom — there — I closely associated, though always through the filter of social etiquette. In dreams relationships are just as easy as flying, and then you understand with some surprise: after all it was possible...

Some of my dreams I wrote down, I do not know why. But only one etched itself upon my memory, became one with it, and now I no longer know: did it actually happen, or did it not?

There She was — not just in my expectations but in my sudden feeling of unwavering certainty. She! precisely She whom I had so long been waiting for and dreaming of and without whom I could not imagine finishing my assignment on earth. For I always took it for granted that somewhere, some time, She and I would meet, and She would walk if only a few steps with me along one of life’s many roads. So that I was ready to wait as long as was necessary...

And so we met.

In my now advanced years and corresponding circumstances, I have begun to notice that I did not so much fear as unconsciously avoid meeting Her in the world of real facts, of great responsibilities and concrete duties.

I think that, appearing as She did in my dreams, She too avoided the same things in real life. I do not know where She came from (She was not one of those whom I had met before), but She came — as if we had always been together — without any affectation, any pathos, any sobbing or passion: eye to eye, hand in hand, in step one with the other, and... we both ran, fleeing some inexorable impending danger. Together we went out into the street through the doorway of a block of flats and into the cool twilight of the quiet city. We had to get away fast, but I suddenly found that I was wearing only a light shirt whereas She was carrying a raincoat. The fear of leaving these flats for ever (that it was for ever, I was absolutely sure) seemed stronger than the fear of the cold and of catching a chill. «She probably doesn’t need it,» I thought of the raincoat, but She was already silently offering it to me and silently pulling me away from the door.

We went along some unfamiliar streets, crossed others, trying to avoid the squares, trying to look calm and not attract strangers’ attention. At that moment fleeing was our only common concern, but it contained within it the essential meaning of crucial situations when our whole fundamental nature reveals itself and, in terms of everyday life, relationships appear in their true light.

I felt as something self-evident our unity — within us and without, in what was taking place now, or had taken place in the past or still lay ahead of us, and even in what had never been and now would never be...

Grasping at life greedily, tightly holding hands, we made the most of its swift slipping away, feeling in some way like characters out of Dante — happy in being outcasts and yet children of our century and of our conception of it.

The city was not receding but growing, and the increasing traffic filled it with a ubiquitous hum.

Suddenly a noisy crowd of teenagers started shouting at us from across the road, challenging us to react: «Heil! Heil! Heil!» And the stereotype rooted in one’s memory added: «Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!»

There it was... I understood that this was but the continuation of the same danger from which we were trying to hide, and the wisest thing was not to enter into an argument with them but physically to slip by without getting sullied... As when you’re walking along a dry road and suddenly come across a sea of mud, and you’re wearing your new boots that have never yet been mended, and your well-pressed trousers, and your girl-friend has on her patent leather pumps. You look round for a dry patch. You would take her up in your arms, never mind your boots and trouser crease, but rain-drops begin to fall and somewhere nearby there’s a flash of lightning. And your quick-witted girl-friend takes off her shoes herself, and carrying them in her left hand, holds out her right hand to you...

«Heil...», She said in a loud whisper over my shoulder. And we broke away from the fiendish horde.

«Heil! Heil!» the hysterical faces of the teenagers and adults coming our way went on yelling at us. There was no end to them and no salvation from them — except in that one word I had heard said in a stage whisper over my shoulder.

«Heil!» I shouted too, raising my arm to greet them in return. «Heil! Heil!»

By then there was nothing in the air but the word «Heil!» and the clatter of iron-shod boots, the shout of stentorian commands and the clink of rifle-butts on the roadway, and cars hooting their horns while, marching past us, companies of madmen, mistaking me for some reason for a high-rank officer, punctuated the din of their salutes with their heels. The shout of a new command reached my ears — their throats nearly burst and the air filled with a roar: «Heil Hitler!!!»

Was that hell or only its threshold? Slowly and as calmly as I could I turned round. But there was nowhere to go. Behind me those same companies marched smartly, and somewhere close by I heard the trumpets of a brass-band. Then, assuming a dramatic pose and grasping Her hand even more tightly, «Heil!» I shouted at the top of my voice; «Heil!» not quite so loud... «Heil» almost in a whisper — in the suddenly spreading silence of the deserted city...

I was standing by myself in a quiet empty square with depressingly dim street-lamps. No one had laid hands on us but — She had vanished. Peering into the gloom of the endless, deserted streets, I stood waiting, hoping that in one of them any minute now, She, who had just been «saved» thanks to me, would reappear and would again silently take my hand...

Popping out quite unexpectedly from behind a cloud, the moon, for some painfully long seconds, lit up the cobbled road with its wet slippery stones — my Golgotha — and vanished once more.

 

A procession of motorcars was driving unhurriedly along the smooth asphalted road towards Sainte-Genevi и ve-des-Bois, a town in the suburbs of Paris.

It was early autumn; the time — about midday; over the highway a dome of pale-blue sky veiled here and there by feathery clouds, from behind which a still rather warm sun, not content with just being guessed at, peeped out now and then.

In the black front car, through all of whose windows only flowers could be seen, was that part of me which, having recently completed its assignment on earth, was journeying along a route I had myself chosen in advance. Had I wished, I could now have been anywhere else, but something far more important than mere curiosity kept me beside those friends and relatives of mine who at this moment were sincerely grieving.

Leaving the motorway, the procession turned to take the road leading to the town. It drove past sights that had long been familiar, among them a large yellow building, a keep — the remains of an old fortress — that had always held a special place in my heart: there some Russian refugees of the so-called first wave lived through their emigrant years. Then came a succession of houses with small shops, hairdressers’, firms and offices of one kind or another, little private houses, rows of carefully pruned trees and beds of autumn flowers. Not very far from the churchyard the procession filed across the square where there stands an enormous «Carrefour» supermarket...

Another couple of turns, and there...

At one of three tables set outside a small caf й under a huge straggly plane-tree, on the corner of the street that the procession was driving along and another it was about to cross, She was sitting — precisely the one who had once vanished from the nameless square of that nameless terrifying city into that nameless dark nowhere.

Within seconds, before our eyes met, I recognized all of Her at once by the gracefulness of Her figure and Her particular bearing: free and easy yet also reserved and proud, both calm and tense, remote from all that surrounded Her and at the same time - it was very obvious — sitting still with an air of expectancy.

Our eyes met as I was flying away from the car — Her eyes were flying towards me - and converged somewhere halfway, before the instant of our brief embrace.

As She had done before, She took my hand, yet She did not pull me away from any threatening danger but, glancing calmly after the gradually disappearing procession, nodded in its direction: «There?»

«No.» I shook my head.

Fully relying on those from whom I had parted here for a time, I was sure that the carefully worked out ritual would be performed smoothly. All that each of them was thinking about me I could hear and would always remember; as for farewell tears, if there were any, I had shed them myself more than once.

So let us leave to this world the things of this world.

Without casting shadows, we moved away from the little table beside which stood a white chair with peeling paint — it was exactly like all the others except that on this one there hung Her beige raincoat.

«Shall we take it?»

«No. We won’t be needing it now.»

I glanced at Her and... And suddenly — it was like a blow — something somewhere broke through, a wave of heart-wringing joyful recognition surged within me, and now I was quite certain that there, in that dream, it had not been our first encounter and this was not our second! In my dream I had no doubts about that, yet on waking up... But after all, She and I did not meet that time simply by chance: we had left that block of flats — our home — together! Now I could recognize not only Her figure but also Her face, the intonation of Her voice. And that smile, with which She was looking at my face and into my eyes, staring at Her so foolishly.

«You... you...» I did not dare utter her name. She burst out laughing:

«Well, if you are Ulysses, why shouldn’t I be Penelope?»

Her laughter sounded playful and challenging.

«Penelope? No,no... Everything with us has been different from the start...And I — how long ago it was! — I failed to acknowledge that you were She, the one I had so often dreamt about, so long yearned for... We simply don’t need names.»

I felt like adding something else and explaining, when suddenly I understood that it was all unnecessary. The shadow of a moment’s sadness clouded my companion’s face (I could only see Her profile) : Her smile vanished, She pursed Her lips, frowned, narrowed Her eyes. And then again Her face brightened, our eyes met, we walked with longer steps. And — She stretched out Her arms to me...

September, 1997