It was not simply reminiscence but a life that was much more real, much more intense than the life lived by his shadow in Berlin. It was a marvelous romance that developed with genuine, tender care.
By the second week of August in northern Russia there is already a touch of autumn in the air. Every now and again a small yellow leaf falls from a birch tree; the broad fields, already harvested, have a bright autumnal emptiness. Along the forest’s edge, where an expanse of tall grass spared by the haymakers shows its sheen to the wind, torpid bumblebees sleep on the mauve cushions of scabious flowers. And one afternoon, in a pavilion of the park —
Yes, the pavilion. It stood on rotting piles above a ravine, reached from either side by two sloping footbridges, slippery with alder aments and fir needles.
In its small diamond-shaped window frames were panes of different-colored glass: if, say, you looked through a blue one the world seemed frozen in a lunar trance; through a yellow one, everything appeared extraordinarily gay, through a red one, the sky looked pink and the foliage as dark as burgundy. Some of the panes were broken, their jagged edges joined up by a spider’s web. Inside, the pavilion was whitewashed; vacationists who illegally wandered into the estate’s park from their dachas had scribbled in pencil on the walls and on the folding table.
One day Mary and two of her rather plain girl friends wandered there too. He first overtook them on a path which ran alongside the river, and drove so close that her girl friends leaped aside with a shriek. He drove on round the park, cut through the middle and then from a distance through the leaves watched them go into the pavilion. He leaned his bicycle up against a tree and went in after them.
‘This is private property,’ he said in a low, hoarse voice. ‘There’s even a notice on the gate saying so.’
She said nothing in reply, looking at him with her mischievous, slanting eyes. Pointing to one of the faint graffiti he inquired, ‘Did you do that?’
It said: ‘On the third of July Mary, Lida and Nina sat out a thunderstorm in this pavilion.’
All three of them burst out laughing and then he laughed too. He sat on the window table, swinging his legs, and noticed with annoyance that he had torn one of his black socks at the ankle. Suddenly, pointing at the pink hole in the silk, Mary said, ‘Look — the sun has come out.’
They talked about thunderstorms, about the people living in the dachas, about his having had typhus, about the funny student at the military hospital and about the concert.
She had adorable mobile eyebrows, a dark complexion with a covering of very fine, lustrous down which gave a specially warm tinge to her cheeks; her nostrils flared as she talked, emitting short laughs and sucking the sweetness from a grass stalk; her voice was rapid and burry, with sudden chest tones, and a dimple quivered at her open neck.
Then toward evening he escorted her and her friends to the village and as they walked down a green, weed— grown forest path, at the spot where stood a lame bench, he told them with a very straight face, ‘Macaroni grows in Italy. When still small it’s called vermicelli. That means Mike’s worms in Italian.’
He arranged to take them all boating next day; but she appeared without her companions. At the rickety jetty he unwound the clanking chain of the rowboat, a big heavy affair of mahogany, removed the tarpaulin, screwed in the rowlocks, pulled the oars out of a long box, inserted the rudder pintle into its steel socket.
From some distance came the steady roar of the sluice gates at the water mill; one could distinguish the foamy folds of the falling water and the russet-gold sheen of pine logs that floated near.
Mary sat at the rudder. He pushed off with a boat hook and slowly started to row along the park shore where dense alder shrubs cast reflections like black eye-spots upon the water and many dark-blue demoiselle dragonflies flittered about. Then he turned into the middle of the river, weaving between the islets of algal brocade, while Mary, holding both ends of the tiller rope in one hand, dangled the other in the water trying to pull off the shiny yellow heads of waterlilies. The rowlocks creaked at every stroke of the oars and as he leaned back, then stretched forward, Mary, facing him in the stern, alternately moved away and drew closer in her navy-blue jacket, open over a light blouse that breathed with her.
