“My love and my joy, if I die from illness, madness or sadness, if before the time allotted me by fate is up, I can’t get enough of looking at you, enough joy in the dilapidated mills on the emerald wormwood hills, if I don’t drink my fill of the transparent water from your immortal hands, if I don’t make it to the end, if I don’t tell everything that I wanted to tell about you, about myself, if one day I die without saying farewell—forgive me.”
“The rhododendron, growing every minute somewhere in Alpine meadows, are far happier than we, for they know neither love, nor hate, nor the Perillo slipper system, and they don’t even die, since all nature, excepting man, is one undying, indestructible whole.”
“No one is capable of memorizing: the sound of rain, the aroma of night violets, premonition and many other things.”
“All right, but how do you begin, what words do you use?”
“I don’t know why it so happens in life that one absolutely can’t do something simple but important.”
Chapter One
Nymphaea
So, but where to begin, with what words? Never mind, start with the words: over there, by the station pond. By the station? But that’s incorrect, a stylistic error, Vodokachka (Water Pump) would certainly correct you; “station-side” is used for a buffet or a newsstand, but not a pond; a pond can be “near-station.” Well, call it near-station, does it matter? Fine, then I’ll begin this way: over there, by the near-station pond. Wait a minute, and the station, the station itself, please, if it’s not too much trouble, describe the station, what was the station like, what was the platform like: wooden or concrete, what houses stood nearby, perhaps you remember their color, or perhaps you know the people who lived in those houses at that station? Yes, I know, or rather, I knew some people who lived at the station, and I can tell you something about them, but not now, later, sometime, but right now I’ll describe the station. It’s ordinary: a signalman’s booth, bushes, a ticket booth, a platform, which was, incidentally, wooden, creaky, planked, nails often stuck out, and you shouldn’t walk there barefoot. There were trees growing around the station: aspens, pines—that is, different trees, different ones. An ordinary station—the station itself—but what was beyond the station, that seemed very nice, unusual: the pond, tall grass, a dance floor, a grove, a recreation center, and other things. People usually went swimming in the near-station pond in the evening, after work, arriving on the commuter trains and swimming. No, but first they scattered, walking to their dachas. Tired, puffing, wiping their faces with handkerchiefs, dragging briefcases, string bags, their spleens throbbing. Don’t you remember what was in the string bags? Tea, sugar, butter, sausage; fresh fish, thrashing its tail; pasta, groats, onions, pre-made meals; less often—salt. They walked to their dachas, drank tea on the verandas, put on their pajamas, strolled—hands-behind-their-backs—through the gardens, peered into the fire barrels with their greening water, were surprised by the multitude of frogs—they jumped everywhere in the grass—played with children and dogs, played badminton, drank kvass from the refrigerators, watched television, talked with neighbors. And if it hadn’t gotten dark yet, they headed in groups to the pond—to swim. And why didn’t they go to the river? They were afraid of the whirlpools and currents, the wind and the waves, the deep pools and the bottom weeds. Or maybe there just wasn’t a river? Maybe. But what was it called? The river was called.
In effect, all the paths and walkways, all of them in our area, led to the pond. Thin, faint, almost unreal paths led from the farthest dachas, located at the edge of the forest. They barely glowed in the evening, shimmering, while the more significant paths, trampled down long ago and forever, walkways so beaten down that there could be no question of any grass growing on them—such walkways and paths glowed clearly, white and steadily. That’s at sunset, yes, naturally, at sunset, or rather, immediately after sunset, at dusk. And so, merging into one another, all the paths led towards the pond. Eventually, a few hundred meters from the shore, they connected into one beautiful road. And this road went a little through the mown fields, and then entered a birch grove. Look around and admit: was it good or bad in the evening, in the gray light, to ride into the grove on a bicycle? Good. Because a bicycle is always good, in any weather, at any age. Take, for example, our colleague Pavlov. He was a physiologist, conducted various experiments with animals, and rode his bicycle a lot. In one school textbook—you, of course, remember this book—there is a special chapter about Pavlov. First there are pictures showing dogs with some special physiological tubes sewn into their throats, and it is explained that the dogs got used to receiving food at the sound of a bell, and when Pavlov didn’t give them food, but only rang the bell for nothing—then the animals got excited and their saliva flowed—it’s quite amazing. Pavlov had a bicycle, and the academic rode it often. One trip is also shown in the textbook. Pavlov is old there, but vigorous. He is riding, observing nature, and the bell on the handlebars—it’s just like in the experiments, exactly the same. Furthermore, Pavlov had a long gray beard, like Mikheev, who lived, and perhaps still lives, in our dacha village. Mikheev and Pavlov—they both loved cycling, but the difference here is this: Pavlov rode the bicycle for pleasure, he was resting, but for Mikheev the bicycle was always work; that was his job: delivering correspondence by bicycle. We should talk about him, the postman Mikheev—or maybe his surname was, is, and will be Medvedev?—separately; he should be given some special time, and one of us—you or I—will definitely do it. However, I think you know the postman better, since you lived at the dacha much longer than I did, although, if you ask the neighbors, they will surely say that the question is very difficult and that it’s almost impossible to figure it out. We, the neighbors will say, didn’t really keep track of you—that is, of us, and what kind of strange question is that, why do you suddenly need to find out some ridiculous things, does it matter who lived there for how long, it’s just not serious, they’ll say, go do something useful: it’s May in your garden, and the trees, apparently, aren’t dug around at all, and you probably like to eat apples, even the flighty Norvegov, they’ll remark, is digging in the front garden since morning. Yes, he’s digging, we will answer—one of us—or we’ll say in unison: yes, he’s digging. Our tutor Norvegov has the time for it, he has the desire. Besides, he has a garden, a house, and we—we no longer have anything of the sort—neither the time, nor the garden, nor the house. You simply forgot, we haven’t lived here in the village for a long time, maybe nine years. We sold the dacha, we just up and sold it. I suspect that you, as a more talkative, sociable person, will want to add something, start gossiping, start explaining why we sold it and why, from your point of view, it wasn’t necessary to sell it, and not just wasn’t necessary, but shouldn’t have been sold. But let’s get away from them, let’s leave on the first commuter train, I don’t want to hear their voices.
Our father sold the dacha when he retired, although the pension turned out to be so large that the dacha postman Mikheev, who has dreamed of a good new bicycle all his life but still can’t save enough money because he’s not so much generous as simply thriftless—well, Mikheev, when he learned from one of our neighbors, the comrade prosecutor, how much pension our father would receive, he nearly fell off his bicycle. The postman was calmly riding along the fence behind which the neighbor’s dacha was located—by the way, don’t you remember his surname? No, you can’t recall it right away: a poor memory for names, and what’s the point of remembering all these names, surnames—right? Of course, but if we knew the surname, it would be easier to tell the story. But we can invent a conditional surname, they are—no matter how you look at it—all conditional, even if they are real. But on the other hand, if we use a conditional surname, people will think we’re making something up here, trying to deceive someone, mislead them, but we have absolutely nothing to hide; the conversation is about a neighbor, a neighbor whom everyone in the village knows, and they know that he works as a comrade prosecutor, and his dacha is ordinary, not very chic, and maybe it was wrong to gossip that his house was built from stolen bricks—what do you think? Huh? What are you talking about? Aren’t you listening to me? No, I’m listening, I was just thinking that those bottles probably contained beer. What bottles? Those big ones, in the neighbor’s shed, they contained ordinary beer—what do you think? I don’t know, I don’t remember, I haven’t thought about that time for a long time. And at the moment when Mikheev was riding past the neighbor’s house, the owner was standing on the threshold of the shed and examining a bottle of beer against the light. Mikheev’s bicycle rattled loudly, bouncing on the pine roots sticking out of the ground, and the neighbor couldn’t help but hear and recognize Mikheev’s bicycle. And hearing and recognizing it, he quickly went up to the fence to ask if there were any letters, but instead—unexpectedly for himself—he informed the postman: the prosecutor, said the comrade prosecutor, did you hear? He retired. Smiling. How much did they give him? — replied Mikheev, without stopping, but only braking slightly, — how much money? He glanced back in his movement, and the neighbor saw that the postman’s tanned face expressed nothing. The postman, as always, looked calm, only his beard with pine needles stuck to it fluttered in the wind: in the wind born of speed, in the high-speed bicycle wind, and the neighbor—had he been even a little bit of a poet—would certainly have thought that Mikheev’s face, fanned by all the dacha drafts, seemed to radiate wind itself and that Mikheev was the very person who was known in the village under the name of The Sender of the Wind. More precisely, they didn’t know him. No one had even seen this person, perhaps he didn’t exist at all. But in the evenings, after swimming in the pond, the dacha residents would gather on the glassed-in verandas, sit in wicker chairs, and tell each other different stories, and one of them was the legend of The Sender. Some claimed he was young and wise, others—that he was old and foolish, a third group insisted that he was middle-aged but underdeveloped and uneducated, and a fourth—that he was old and clever. There were also fifth groups who claimed that The Sender was young and decrepit, a fool—but a genius. They said that he appears on one of the sunniest and warmest days of summer, rides a bicycle, whistles into a hazel whistle, and only sends wind over the area he is riding through. It was implied that The Sender only sends wind over the area where there are too many dachas and dacha residents. Yes, yes, and that was exactly such an area. If I’m not mistaken, there are three or four dacha villages near the station. And what was the station called? — I can’t quite see it from a distance. The station was called.
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