Galina
Yermoshina
trans.
Jennifer Croft
Below:
the careful, precisely lined Earth, soon to be replaced by the even surface of
the ocean swimming with icebergs approximately the size of a pencil or your
average splinter. Then the clouds’ turn
will come, and through the gaps we’ll see the icy edge of Canada, with snowy
mountains and occasional rivers.
America finds shelter from the gaze of the solid cloudiness, like
someone who has a sore throat, and we haven’t taken any honey—or any
remedy. Suddenly we find ourselves
below the clouds, 60 degrees F on the thermometer, trembling now from the cold,
now from nerves. They take us along the
streets and the crossings strangely familiar.
We’ve returned to Moscow. But
the suburb comes to an end in a landscape that is not at all Moscow, and the
driver begins to count: “Fourth, Fifth street…Follow the numbers!”--so as to
not miss the necessary short quarter-block we want.
Time
stretched out endlessly and took on the form of rocky islands with the general
name of New York. The dreams stopped
and continued to stand still in the most interesting places all night, and in
the morning, moving too late, disappeared in front of our eyes. Vision waned, subsided to that one point
from which grow the contours of the city—different and at different times of
day. Our eyes couldn’t contain the changes occurring, weren’t fast enough to
follow the gaze, and much that had been imprinted in the depths of the pupil,
on the back wall of the retina, begins to manifest itself only now, like the
background of a photograph. The horizon
slipped away, dissolved into the ocean, became an unnecessary detail in a proof
of the existence of other shores.
In
an apartment on the tenth floor (Manhattan) a cat grumbles discontentedly,
commencing an impossible maneuver in order to outrun those who would cross the
vectors of its movement, or distrustfully sniffling, having found himself, by
the will of fate, face to face with a person on the couch, and it’s on the back
of the couch, and, indignantly avoiding the extended hand, disappears into one
of the countless rooms of the apartment.
One entire wall is arranged with shelves of books, which are never
touched—which the tiny smiling girl, crawling on her stomach opposite, knows
well. She crawls to her multicolored
books with hard bright pages.
The
second wall is taken up with scrolls of Chinese pictographs (the wife, my
hostess, is Chinese), and the third with windows and the couch, and the fourth
with a glass cube that holds a calm, melancholy boa constrictor, which silently
and motionlessly contemplates the space surrounding it. Innate composure and restraint don’t allow
it to display an outward interest in anything but mice. “Baby and Snake don’t meet,” says my host. Baby continues to smile raptly, eating up
his oatmeal, and Snake calmly looks out from within the thick glass, weighted
down from above with giant cockle shells, metal disks and a wooden crocodile. Sometimes the constrictor is allowed to
climb outside so as to lie in the guest’s hands, trying to fit its head under
her arm as if into a hole in the ground (never raise him up to your face, he
might bite, warns my host); or doing snake exercises, the primary element of
which appears to be my host, holding snake by the tale high above the floor; or
taking a walk in the improvised city jungles, crawling along the crossbeams of
a wooden folding chair, slowly and with dignity exchanging bows with its own
tail, when it meets the tail during periodic bends of its blackish-yellow
strong body.
And
at that time on the other shore of the Hudson, in a little three-story house
surrounded by the same sort of well-wishing neighbors with spruce wreaths
hanging on their doors, morning began long ago, and the nighttime inhabitants
are going to bed. Life here goes in two
directions: nocturnal and diurnal. And
the people who follow these directions meet only in the morning and the
evening, the time of day that is bordering, neutral. In the tiny garden with a broken wicket gate (and a lot is broken
here: the doorbell, the faucet; we added further destruction by breaking the
door handle; the house immediately got its revenge—one person’s boots fell
apart), near the elevated porch stands my host’s motorcycle (the car is parked
two blocks away—nearby there’s no space), on the shelf in the entryway stand
sentry three multicolored crash helmets.
Onto the creaking stairs to the second floor they lead out a noble, dark
gray pig to get acquainted. It politely
responds to its own name and carries itself freely, with a refined air, dancing
from time to time on its high hoofs.
And in the bathroom, in a glass case, small striped animals with
enormous furry tails crackle like rattlesnakes if one knocks incautiously on
the lid of their little wooden house, and only as night approaches do they
peek, confused and alert, out of their little burrow.
On
the wall hangs an Egyptian papyrus, and on the partition, the Foster coat of
arms, and on the table, a miniature Saint Petersburg Palace Square, and on the
bedside stand and the little tables, photographs and bouquets of dried
flowers. American breakfast—cornflakes
with milk, a glass of orange juice—and we go outside to the shore of the
Hudson—from which, later, the lights of Manhattan, reflected in the most
nocturnal river in the world, shift softly the borders of day to the
horizon. Everything remains round about
and on the other side, calmly gazing into one’s eyes, arousing not amazement
and admiration, but standing nearby, and allowing one to enter or observe from
the side, inviting and leaving the freedom of your choice and my choice. So calmly and trustfully children fall
asleep—so the city stays at the distance of an outstretched hand—look, listen,
smile—all of this is yours. Then one
remembers like the dream about the time, called the time that wasn’t, from
which there are no distances or hours, only the everlasting now, the today that
won’t go away, materializing from that reality that is improbable and
imaginary.
The
morning Amtrak was a little late and probably for that reason sped up along the
twist of the Hudson, probing deep into the continent to a small piece on the
map of America, where two names are united—the village of Red Hook and Bard
College.
This
is how New England looks in the spring.
Multicolored neat houses, most of which are two-storied, the
administration building with a big red hook in the front, clean streets and
little local boys joyfully crying “Hi!” in response to a smile. The room on the second floor of the hotel
with the fireplace, the antique buffet, a cradle, a wide bed, and a nice
announcement requesting one to draw the curtain of the bathroom when taking a
shower so as not to flood the bar below.
Near the windows are old armchairs, and one can imagine Emily Dickinson,
looking out from just such a window over Amherst to find out if Robin had flown
into a neighboring tree, and how Daisy and the caterpillar in the garden are
doing. And a walk along the quiet and comfortable
country cemetery, green with grass, white with memorials, yellow with the sun,
and striped with the American flags above every gravestone. Domestic death, calm, unfrightening, and
it’s joyful and bright—peaceful—for the deceased Americans buried here. A small churchyard surrounds the
cemetery—for every confession its own church, but there is one God, no one
takes offense.
And
beyond the hotel (opposite which is the official funeral home) is a small pond,
where near the shore on a black log a big turtle warms itself, swiftly slipping
away into the water at our appearance.
And very near the tiny forest a round burrow where a large reddish
animal has hidden itself—a fox, I would assume. And a small shop of fish and reptiles where frogs, geckos,
turtles, and a newborn boa constrictor the width of a finger and twenty
centimeters long stroll around the aquariums.
In
the morning at Bard College a long search for the seal necessary for the
director’s note, and the delighted bewilderment of the Americans as regards the
Russian weakness for seals and stamps.
(The seal was found in some office, placed, true enough, not in ink but
embossed, as a souvenir on a page in my notepad.) Then long searches for the local Bard College waterfall, about
which everyone had heard, but no one knew the way. And a strange find: on the outermost spot of the cliff of the
waterfall—a rusty iron eagle, sitting like an orphan on something reminiscent
of a globe. And the return through the
students’ garden, where a cute American scarecrow had been installed, with the
face of a Chinese philosopher in denim overalls and a skirt with a bright
flower pattern. The evening train
returned us to noisy New York, to one of the corners of Broadway, the one with
the monument to Dante, the Statue of Liberty on the roof of one of the
buildings, tame squirrels, and the street lamps of “Streets” and
“Avenues.”
We
went to the Metropolitan Museum with Russian student tickets for half price,
receiving red tin badges with the letter M, which we all stuck to the edge of
our shirts and jackets. Americans love
large spaces. So full of air and light
is the Egyptian hall with the Avenue of the Sphinxes, the wooden temple and
reservoir, along the edge of which sat rock crocodiles and resting
tourists. We flung coins into the water
and searched for a museum plan—German, Spanish, French, even Chinese, but no
Russian.
The
cozy little Chinese courtyard paved in large round stones and steps leading to
a cool, low room with three apertures leading out to a solid, whitewashed wall,
in the background of which grew thin grass with wide umbrellas on narrow spikes
and a gray oval or fantastic twist of rock.
Such lively windows, pictures, little slices of life, where below the
rock, possibly, a lizard had settled, and along a stalk of grass crawled
another ladybug. Swallows come in the
summer, and garden snakes slither; fall brings the migratory spiders on their
transparent thread, and miniature lakes in depressions in the stone. One can go outside and become part of the
picture oneself.
In the Japanese galleries fantastically weathered stones on carved wooden pedestals one could see what the Japanese do at home on Sundays, and then it was already time for us to leave—soon all of this will be closing with whatever serves Americans as lock and key. We still managed to borrow a smooth black pebble from the tub of plants in the noiseless eastern waterfall and photograph the long paper lantern in the corner of the cool room. Along the museum steps, warmed by the day, on the path in Central Park where indefatigable Americans run somewhere along the length of the pond, enclosed by a metallic grid—so they don’t fall in? And in the vicinity the green grass, grottoes, fountains, baseball, squirrels taking cookies out of your hands, streams and small waterfalls, bridges and little bridges, stones, pebbles, stone blocks and independent cliffs. And we go home, where for the last time they give us the constrictor to hold for a while, and then the subway and the unhurried walk along quiet Hoboken to a second familiar home with a broken doorbell, from which tomorrow morning (managing first to get to the bank of the Hudson and throw a coin from the pier) they’ll take us to the airport. On the road we look around at length, and finally understand that this is how America comes to an end. And in front of us is JFK, Terminal 3, going down which Ed Foster will say, “We did it!” having in mind either the parking or the conference or the end of the trip. And we get on our Boeing and breach the clouds above the Atlantic and count out the time that it will be afterwards, with the short timeless night above the wings, and the sudden beginning of the Moscow morning of the longest day. And our internal clocks will still give American time for quite a while, forcing us to fall asleep in a New York morning in overcast Samara, knowing that on the other side of the Earth the sun is coming up now.