Голубые ступени / Stepping into the blue

Михаил Садовский

Книга известного писателя Михаила Садовского состоит из 11 рассказов, повествующих о разных сторонах жизни нашей страны, Европы, Америки в середине двадцатого века. Перевод сделан профессором Университета в Оттаве (Канада) носителем языка Джоном Вудсворсом. Это гарантирует высокое качество перевода. Издание особенно заинтересует студентов, школьников, разных читателей, как пособие для изучающих иностранный язык русский или английский.

Stepping into the blue

[Golubye stupeni]

She stopped suddenly, surprised to see that the top three steps looked a pale blue. She even threw a backward glance at the broad concrete staircase leading to the heavy oak doors of the old building — the steps behind her were the usual gray color, even darker today because they were wet. But now these — she turned forward again… Water was flowing over them from the plaza in front of the main entrance, covering the stairway like a carpet from the top down, and in this smooth streaming surface could be seen the reflection of the sky — a pale blue March sky, as if it too was flowing down from on high and turning everything pale blue.

Through the transparent surface could be seen potholes brimming with water, where the reflection was a little darker, and one could see the outlines of pebbles and grains of sand strewn by the concierge earlier that morning, as it had been quite slippery. But now the sun was melting the last deposits of snow on the roof, and the drops struck angrily against the plaza surface, muddying the lower part of the doors with their spray, and then the whole lot — the drops, the spray — ran down the steps, bringing the sky with them. A pale blue sky.

She stood there, her small tote-bag slung over her left shoulder, so that the hump-like deformity on the right side of her back was barely noticeable. She couldn’t bring herself to set foot on this shimmering pale blue surface. Feeling her heart thumping mightily, she was amazed to find herself still rooted to the spot, held against her will by this pale blue flood, as though drenched by it, brimming over with it, rejoicing in it and dumbfounded by it all at the same time. The people walking by were oblivious to the sky under their feet and trampled on it, shattering the image. But the sky behaved as it usually did after any kind of storm or clouds — it once again recovered its happy and pale blue self.

And all at once she became acutely aware that she might never see it again. Never see this sky! — she could not admit to herself that she would not be seeing it, or the one for whose sake she had come here. All at once nothing seemed to make sense to her — but she would not be seeing the sky.

She had lived on hope for so many years that neither she nor anyone else could destroy this hope in a flash. The thought «I shan’t be seeing this sky» was so much vaster and colder that somehow it didn’t seem to disturb her. While it was indeed a real possibility — that she wouldn’t see the sky, or walk beneath it, or fly through it, or breathe it in — all this was abstract. On the other hand, not to see him — this completely defied utterance, defied even formulation. Everything else she could take but that. Even the professor whose clinic she was now going to for the operation had not been able to change her mind. And here were these pale blue steps, this sky beneath her feet…

She realised, of course, that this image hadn’t presented itself to her sight simply by chance, and now she knew perfectly well that the professor was right, but this could no longer make any difference — even to the sky which had thrown itself at her feet across her path, which she now could not bring herself to set foot on. «All right, all right, just another moment, just a wee bit — and I’ll go on up, I’ll go through that door — nobody’s looking — I’m coming!»

One in ten — a slim chance, indeed — slim, yes, but for her that had long ceased to be significant, for without this operation she wouldn’t have any chance at all, not even one. Ever since she realized that she couldn’t — and wouldn’t — live without him, she hadn’t had any chances, not even one in ten.

When they were little they had gone to school together, right from the first grade, from day one. He was short too, even shorter than her by a wee bit, and the hump on her back wasn’t so noticeable back then. The doctors somehow tricked her Mama into believing that in time her back could become straight. After she had grown older and the hump had swelled into all its ugliness, she and Mama eventually realized that they had been lied to, and after delving into all the specialized literature on the subject, they were finally convinced.

Her Mama wasn’t completely literate, not like his Mama. But here was something they had in common — each of them had a mother on her own, with no father. Her father had been taken away even before the war and incarcerated for «ten years with no outside communication permitted».¹ Neither he nor his mother had been afraid at the time, they hadn’t rejected her family, as had many of their other acquaintances,² but three years later his father died at the very outset of the war.

They had become friends right off, since both of them immediately found themselves at the edge of the mainstream. He didn’t know how to stand up for himself — he didn’t like noisy games or rough-housing — while she was shy about her awkwardness.

But, even more than by this physical weakness, they were united by something else. They felt themselves ’chosen’, even among their own kind — not by birth but by their ability to hear what their friends and schoolmates were saying. They were both endowed with an acute sense of hearing — maybe not an absolute pitch, but still a kind of hearing that was very rare, capable of distinguishing dozens if not hundreds of overtones. They especially liked listening to the ring of church bells, but of course that kind of opportunity didn’t come along very often.

She imagined what it would be like after the operation, and even stood on tip-toe. Three centimetres. She shut her eyes tight and just stood there. Three centimetres meant she would be able to reach his face, his lips — so sweet, so sweet! And she could not bring herself to even think that this might not happen, since «impossible» was simply out of the question! Then why should she picture it to herself, and fantasize?

She opened her eyes again. A gentleman passer-by looked at her — after all, she was pretty and she knew it. She had a perfectly formed nose — a rarity, just like the way Pushkin³ called «two pairs of slender legs» a rarity. Her hair, too, could be called luxuriant, as it did not hang down straight but fell around her face in ever-so-soft waves of lush dark brown.

The man averted his eyes and walked on. Would he look back or not? He did, and she smiled: everything would turn out all right. She had guessed he would, and he did — and that meant everything would turn out all right!

The springtimes, as indeed the years, had rolled by virtually unnoticed — perhaps because they were always together. The world for her always began with him, and everything that happened in the world was connected with him — study, leisure, mutual friends. As for girl-friends of her own — she didn’t have any.

After graduating from a special school for the musically gifted they had both gone on to post-secondary studies, even ending up in the same classes with the same professors. Once again, nothing had changed externally — they just had a whole lot of new friends.

And the leisure-time activities available to them were by no means a source of division — quite to the contrary. They didn’t go to dances — she for obvious reasons and he because he didn’t know how to dance and was shy around girls. Besides, the thought of going to a dance simply never even entered his head — why should it? Why, indeed? Like everyone else, they would go to the movies. Television had only just made its appearance and few people had a set. They would buy rush tickets to the theater, and of course did not miss any opportunity to go to a concert, especially at the Conservatory, where they almost always could get in free of charge.

Music indeed was a unifying factor in their lives. There they were equals, and she never felt from him even the slightest hint at her misfortune, though it was something that she, with her uniquely acute perception of the world around her and her sense of being punished by it, would have undoubtedly felt if there had been the slightest hint at it. No. Not once did he ever think of her physical handicap, either with pity or with annoyance. She, for her part, was sure that she was being punished for the sins of one of her forebears, and that now it had fallen to her to atone for that person’s guilt.

Without letting him know (it was the only thing she ever kept secret from the closest person in the world to her) she read books on the subject, on the eternal existence of souls, on re-incarnation. There was nobody she could even dare ask about it, only learn what she could on her own. If they ever found out about this at the Conservatory, she would pay dearly. A cruel price. She could even be expelled.

And he lived next door to her. He didn’t notice other girls, other women, as most of the fellows his age did. He didn’t even look upon her as a woman. It simply never entered his head — they were just friends. And that was it. She had been happy about that, comforting herself with the patronizing thought: «He’s still young. Boys mature later, as a rule.»

All at once the sun went behind a little dark cloud. The sharp change in light broke her train of reflection. «Okay! Okay!» she muttered to herself. «Okay!» She looked at her watch. «Five minutes to go!»

She shook her head, remembering the fear she had experienced in connection with their first term papers. She had written about the composer Shebalin, he about Prokofieff. They had helped each other, read their papers aloud to each other. And it had paid off! First came the praise from their professors, and then from journal readers, as both papers were recommended for publication.

By now she had become quite busy, and she had begun running short on time — exccept where he was concerned. He was her primary advisor and critic. He was the first she shared her joys with, to whom she inscribed her pages with their scent of fresh printer’s ink. Nobody else even asked her any more. She was his and he was hers.

As she stood there people floated one after the other past her eyes…

As the time for graduation approached, it had dawned on her that the worst part of all was now at hand — work assignments. She couldn’t imagine that soon they would be forced to see each other only rarely. They had studied together for so many years — a rare stroke of luck indeed that it had lasted that long.

Now there would come graduation, and then it would be off to work — he to one place, she to another. No, this she could not even imagine. She just couldn’t and that was it. Her lovely face with just a hint of a heavy chin became very tense — she herself noticed it in the mirror. She also caught a glimpse of how the masculine look that had been cast upon her would first flare up and then slip off to one side. She felt it wasn’t so much the result of her ’deformity’ (as she thought of it) as of the tension written all over her face and dwelling in her eyes. No, she would accept anything — anything but being apart from him. Everything within her cried out with this desperate plea!

But why? She protested to herself: «We can’t spend our whole life together!»

Why? And once more she countered: Why not? And the answer that came to her of its own accord stunned her: «Because I love him!» Oh Lord, how did this happen? Oh Lord! Who else could possibly give her an answer?

He for his part had noticed nothing. Where had he been when she herself was only guessing at it?! He didn’t seem to need any other female companionship — he was happy being with her.

Everybody was fond of him, as they are fond of any cheerful fellow they have got accustomed to who never refuses to help, and if an extra rouble comes his way (an extremely rare occurrence), is always ready to give it to someone else. «Well, he might need it,» he would reply to her pragmatic warning that «he’ll only just fritter it away in any case».

«But he’ll still need it!» He couldn’t see how he could refuse.

She protested against the approaching separation with her whole being, tense and super-sensitive as it was. She had no idea how she would live or what she would do. The main thing was not to make a spectacle of her feelings, and not to impose herself, so that he would not suffer on her account. That would never do! But without him? Without him — what would she ever do without him? Such a thought was unreal! For her there simply could never be a ’without him’.

But nobody could possibly have predicted the way it actually turned out.

All the members of the graduating class (and there weren’t that many of them) were handed their assignments — she was detailed to work on the Conservatory’s own academic journal. Everyone received an assignment, except for him.

«You are so talented, you have a such a special profile, that we can’t assign you a place just yet!» an official at the ministry told him with a supercilious smile. He was crushed. No matter what he did now, no matter where he looked for work, he would still not have his degree, since the degrees were awarded only after the work assignments. A vicious circle!

She gave an involuntary shiver at the memory of it. Still, it meant they could continue to see each other every evening. But then along came the «Doctors’ plot».⁴ They had spoken earlier about his Jewish background (she herself knew what it was like to be an outcast after her own father was taken) — there had been insults and fears in great supply, but now it became even physically frightening, perhaps because they were beginning to understand more as they advanced in years, or perhaps it was true that nothing quite so frightening had happened before. The word Jew had been turned into a stigmatizing label. A curse. One thing was clear: no work now meant certain death — no internal identity documents.

So she took to making telephone calls. She canvassed her friends. And acquaintances. Even acquaintances of acquaintances.

«Irochka,» they would ask her. «Who are you making such a fuss about? Don’t you have a good position?» And when they found out who it was she was trying to assist, the conversation would end. But still…

«Maybe it’s a miracle,» she thought, when things finally did work out. «Maybe it’s true that I got help from heaven!» And back at home she secretly kissed the little cross she kept underneath a slip of paper at the bottom of a jewelry box.

She had been afraid at first (though needlessly) that he might object to the placement she had obtained for him. After all, with a first-class honours degree from the Moscow Conservatory how could he stoop to teaching kids in a music school? She smiled. And now four years had gone by already and he didn’t even want to leave.

She looked at her watch. Time to go.

She wasn’t concerned. She didn’t hurry. She didn’t even think about it — she forced herself not to think about what would happen in the future, ever since she realized that whatever happened she couldn’t live without him. The important step had already been taken: she had found a professor who was willing to operate on her. That had proved very difficult. Extremely. One chance in ten — to be three centimetres taller and straighter.

She looked up at the sun — the cloud had moved on, and in her head there were no more trite words, such as «everything will turn out all right».

«Good timing!» she only thought. «He’ll be away for a week. I’ve written Mama a note. Everything’s been taken care of.

«Mama, mama… She was always telling me: „Remember, Irka,⁵ once you fall in love you’ll lose everything. You’re just like me, you can’t do anything half-way in life.“ Oh, Mamochka, Mama!»

She slipped her fingers under the broad belt across her chest, gave her shoulder a shake to adjust her bag, and this brought her back with a jolt. The steps ahead of her had become simply wet, and people had every reason to go quite calmly up and down them without noticing anything. From the moment she realized she loved him she had known she would be taking this step, and she would carry through. She would take this step, whether he was faithful to her or not — for her there was no other choice.

She closed her eyelids for a moment, then raised her leg and stepped into the ’sky’, its blueness now completely shattered. Her footsteps — one, two, three — left wet imprints in the snow-slushy water, which once more resumed its downward course, reflecting the sky. Everything looked as it did before. Did it make any difference to the steps, the water or the sky who their disturber was or why?

Примечания

1

Ten years with no outside communication permitted — a Soviet euphemism indicating execution by a firing squad.

2

It was a common occurrence for families of anyone imprisoned as an ’enemy of the state’ to be ostracized by most of their acquaintances.

3

Alexander Pushkin — a celebrated Russian poet of the early 19th century, considered by many to be the father of Russian literature.

4

The Doctors’ plot (in Russian: delo vrachej — literally, «the doctors’ case») — a supposed plot by a number of doctors (many of them Jewish) to kill Stalin, widely held to be a ruse perpetrated by Stalin himself. All the doctors were freed a few days following Stalin’s death in March 1953.

5

Both Irka and Irochka are diminutive forms of the name Irina, each befitting the respective context.