In July, Dmitrieva’s mother, Ksenia Fyodorovna, became seriously ill, and she was taken to Botkin Hospital, where she spent twelve days with a suspected diagnosis of the worst kind. The operation was performed in September, the worst was confirmed, but Ksenia Fyodorovna, believing she had an ulcer, felt better, soon began walking, and in October, she was sent home, having gained weight and firmly convinced that she was on the road to recovery. It was precisely then, when Ksenia Fyodorovna returned from the hospital, that Dmitrieva’s wife started the exchange: she decided to urgently move in with her mother-in-law, who lived alone in a nice, twenty-square-meter room on Profsoyuznaya Street.
Dmitriev himself had raised conversations about uniting with his mother, doing so more than once. But that was long ago, in times when Lena’s relationship with Ksenia Fyodorovna had not yet been forged into the rigid and enduring form of hostility that existed now, after fourteen years of Dmitriev’s married life. He was always met with Lena’s firm resistance, and over the years, the idea appeared less and less often. And then only in moments of irritation. It had turned into a portable and convenient, a l w a y s o n h a n d, weapon for minor family squabbles. When Dmitriev wanted to sting Lena for something, to accuse her of selfishness or callousness, he would say, “That’s why you don’t want to live with my mother.” When the need to wound or press on a sore spot arose for Lena, she would say, “That’s why I can’t live with your mother and never will, because you are exactly like her, and I’ve had enough of just you.”
All of this used to yank at Dmitriev, tormenting him. Because of his mother, he had fierce arguments with his wife, reaching wild exasperation over some spiteful word spoken by Lena; because of his wife, he embarked on agonizing “clarifications of relations” with his mother, after which his mother would not speak to him for several days. He stubbornly tried to bring them together, reconcile them, settled them together at the dacha, and once even bought both of them passes to the Riga seaside resort, but nothing good ever came of it. Some barrier stood between the two women, and they could not overcome it. Why it was like this, he did not understand, although he used to ponder it often. Why did two intelligent, universally respected women—Ksenia Fyodorovna worked as a senior bibliographer in a large academic library, and Lena was involved in translating English technical texts and was said to be an excellent translator, even participating in the compilation of some specialized translation textbook—why did two good women, who deeply loved Dmitriev, also a good person, and his daughter Natashka, stubbornly nurture a mutual antipathy that hardened with the years?
He tormented himself, marveled, and racked his brain, but then he got used to it. He got used to it because he saw that the same thing happened to everyone, and everyone got used to it. And he settled on the truth that there is nothing wiser or more valuable in life than peace, and that it must be protected with all one’s might. Therefore, when Lena suddenly started talking about the exchange with the Markusheviches—late in the evening, they had finished dinner long ago, Natashka was asleep—Dmitriev was scared. Who were the Markusheviches? Where did she find them? A two-room apartment on Malaya Gruzinskaya Street. He understood Lena’s secret and simple thought, and from this understanding, fear penetrated his heart, and he turned pale, drooped, unable to look Lena in the eye.
Since he was silent, Lena continued: the mother’s room on Profsoyuznaya would certainly appeal to them; it would suit them geographically because Markushevich’s wife worked somewhere near Kaluzhskaya Zastava, but their own room would probably require a surcharge. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be interested. They could, of course, try to exchange their room for something more worthwhile; it would be a triple exchange, which wasn’t frightening. They had to act energetically. Do something every day. The best thing was to find a broker. Lyusya knew a broker, an old man, very nice. He, however, didn’t give anyone his address or phone number but appeared unannounced, a real conspirator, but he should appear at Lyusya’s soon: she owed him money. That was the law: you should never give them money upfront…
While talking, Lena was making the bed. He couldn’t look her in the eye; he wanted to now, but Lena stood with her side or her back to him, and when she turned around and he looked directly into her eyes—myopic, with pupils widened from evening reading—he saw determination. She had probably been preparing for this conversation for a long time, maybe since the first day she learned of his mother’s illness. That’s when the idea struck her. And while he, overwhelmed with dread, rushed around seeing doctors, calling hospitals, arranging things, and tormenting himself, she was contemplating, figuring things out. And now she had found some Markusheviches. Oddly, he felt neither anger nor pain now. Only a fleeting thought of life’s ruthlessness. Lena was not to blame; she was a part of this life, a part of the ruthlessness. Besides, could one be angry at a person who lacked, for instance, a musical ear? Lena was always characterized by a certain spiritual—no, not deafness, that was too strong—a certain spiritual inaccuracy, and this quality became even sharper when Lena’s other, strongest quality came into play: the ability to get her own way.
He latched onto what was close by: why did they need a broker if the apartment on Malaya Gruzinskaya was already found? A broker was needed if they had to exchange their room. And generally, to speed up the whole process. She wouldn’t pay him a kopeck until she had the tenancy order in her hands. It wouldn’t cost that much, about a hundred rubles, a hundred and fifty maximum. Just so! She interpreted his gloom in her own way. What a sensitive soul, what a psychologist. He said that she should have waited until he initiated this conversation himself, and if he didn’t, it meant it wasn’t necessary, it wasn’t allowed, and that wasn’t what they should be thinking about now.
“Vitya, I understand. Forgive me,” Lena said with effort. “But…” (He saw that it was very difficult for her, yet she would speak to the end.) “First, you’ve already started this conversation, haven’t you? Many times. And second, this is necessary for all of us, and first and foremost for your mother. Vitya, my dear, I understand you and pity you like no one else, and I’m telling you: it is necessary! Believe me…”
She hugged him. Her arms squeezed him tighter and tighter. He knew: this sudden affection was genuine. But he felt irritation and pushed Lena away with his elbow.
“You shouldn’t have started this now!” he repeated gloomily.
“Well, alright, forgive me. But I’m not thinking about myself, am I…”
“Be quiet!” he almost shouted in a whisper.
Lena moved away to the couch and continued making the bed in silence. She pulled out of the drawer at the head of the couch a thick checkered tablecloth, which usually served as a padding under the sheet but was sometimes used for its primary purpose on the dining table. She placed the sheet on the tablecloth; it puffed up and lay unevenly, and Lena bent over, stretching her arms forward to reach the far edge of the couch—her face instantly flushed with color, and her stomach sagged low and appeared very large to Dmitriev—and smoothed out the wrinkled corners (when Dmitriev made the bed, he never smoothed the corners). Then she threw two pillows onto the sheet, near the drawer, one of which had a less fresh pillowcase; this pillow belonged to Dmitriev. Pulling two cotton blankets from the drawer and placing them on the couch, Lena said in a trembling voice:
“You seem to be accusing me of tactlessness, but honestly, Vitya, I truly was thinking of all of us… Of Natashka’s future…”
“How can you!”
“What?”
“How can you even talk about this now? How can you say that? That’s what amazes me.” He felt his irritation growing and straining to break free. “By God, there’s some kind of emotional defect in you. Some kind of underdevelopment of feeling. Something, forgive me, s u b h u m a n. How can you? The point is, it is m y mother who is sick, not yours, isn’t that right? And if I were you…”
“Speak softer.”
“If I were you, I would never initiate…”
“Quiet!” she waved her hand.
They both listened. No, everything was quiet. Their daughter was sleeping behind the screen in the corner. Her desk, where she did her homework in the evenings, was also behind the screen. Dmitriev had built and hung a shelf for books above the desk, ran electricity there for a table lamp—creating a separate small room, a “solitary cell,” as they called it in the family, behind the screen. Dmitriev and Lena slept on a wide, Czechoslovakian-made couch, fortunately bought three years ago and the object of their acquaintances’ envy. The couch stood by the window, separated from the “solitary cell” by an oak buffet with carved decorations, which Lena had inherited from her grandmother—an absurd item that Dmitriev had repeatedly suggested selling; Lena wasn’t against it either, but her mother objected. Vera Lazarevna lived nearby, two houses away, and came to Lena almost daily under the pretext of “helping Natashenka” and “making things easier for Lenusya,” but in reality, with the sole purpose of shamelessly interfering in their private life.
In the evenings, lying down on their Czech bed—which turned out not to be very sturdy, soon becoming wobbly and creaking with every movement—Dmitriev and Lena always listened intently to the sounds coming from the “solitary cell,” trying to figure out if their daughter was asleep or not. Dmitriev would call out quietly to check: “Natash! Hey, Natash!” Lena would approach on tiptoe and look through the gap in the screen. About six years ago, they hired a nanny, and she slept on a folding cot right there in the room. The Fandeyevs, their neighbors, objected to her being in the hallway. The old woman suffered from insomnia and had extremely sharp hearing; she would mutter, groan, and listen all night long: sometimes a mouse scratching, sometimes a cockroach running, sometimes the faucet in the kitchen was forgotten. When the old woman left, the Dmitrieva’s experienced something akin to a second honeymoon.
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