Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov Page A

geometry of the bicycles were the things I’ll remember about this unhappy June…
    I called Tanya twice. And each time it felt awkward. It felt like her life was following a rhythm different from my own. I felt silly, like a fan who’d jumped out onto a football field.
    There were strange voices in our apartment. Tanya would ask me unexpected questions. For instance:
    “Where do we keep electricity bills?”
    Or:
    “Would you mind if I sold my gold chain?”
    I didn’t even know that my wife owned anything valuable…
    Tanya ran from pillar to post filing documents. She complained about bureaucrats and bribe-takers.
    “I have in my bag,” she said, “ten bars of chocolate, four tickets to seeKobzon and three copies of Tsvetaeva’s poetry…”*
    Tanya seemed excited and almost happy.
    What could I say to her? Beg her for the tenth time, “Do not leave?”
    I felt humiliated by her absorption in her own affairs. What about me with my problems of an almost dissident?
    Tanya had no time for me. Finally something important was happening…
    Once she called me herself. Luckily I was at the tourist centre. At the library in the main building, actually. I had to run across the entire facility. It turned out Tanya needed a document giving her permission to take the child. Saying I had no material claims.
    Tanya dictated a few official phrases. I remember these words: “…a child in the amount of one…”
    “Have it notarized there and send it to me. That will be simplest.”
    “I can come to you,” I said.
    “Right now that’s not necessary.”
    There was a pause.
    “But will we have time to say goodbye?”
    “Of course. Please don’t think…”
    She was almost making excuses. She felt guilty because of her disregard. For her hasty “that’s not necessary”…
    Evidently, I’d become an agonizing problem that she had managed to solve. In other words, someone from her past. With all my vices and virtues. None of which mattered any more…
    That day I got drunk. Got myself a bottle of vodka and finished it all on my own.
    I didn’t want to invite Misha – conversations with him required too much effort. They reminded me of my university chats with Professor Likhachyov. Only with Likhachyov I made the effort to appear smarter and with this one, just the opposite – I tried to be as plain and simple as I could.
    For example, Mikhail Ivanych would ask:
    “You know why Jews have their knobs snipped? So their joysticks work better…”
    And I agreed, amiably:
    “I guess so… I suppose that’s what it is…”
    Anyway, I walked to the grove near the bathhouse and sat resting against a birch tree. I drank a bottle of Moskovskaya vodka on an empty stomach, chain-smoking and chewing on rowanberries.
    The world didn’t improve right away. At first I was disturbed by the mosquitoes. Some slimy thing kept trying to crawl up my leg. And the grass felt soggy.
    Eventually, everything changed. The woods parted, encircled me and welcomed me into their sultry bosom. For a time, I felt myself a harmonious part of the universal whole. The bitterness of the rowanberry seemed inseparable from the damp smell of the grass. The leaves overhead vibrated slightly from the buzzingof mosquitoes. The clouds floated by, as if on a TV screen, and even a spider’s web looked like a jewel.
    I felt ready to cry, though I still understood it was the alcohol’s doing. Evidently, harmony hides itself at the bottom of the bottle…
    I kept saying to myself:
    “Pushkin too had debts and an uneasy relationship with the government. Plus the trouble with his wife, not to mention his difficult temperament…
    “And so what? They opened a museum. Hired tour guides – forty of them. And each one loves Pushkin madly…
    “Where were you all before, I’d like to know? And who is the butt of your collective derision now?”
    I never got an answer to my questions. I fell asleep…
    When I woke up it was almost eight. Twigs and branches beamed