In Times of Fading Light

“Let me have your plates, and stay just where you are,” Irina commanded them, so firmly that even the new girlfriend didn’t venture to get to her feet.

Nadyeshda Ivanovna was still sawing away at her leg of goose, getting nowhere. It grew no smaller. Wilhelm had the gramophone needle stuck in the groove of his back-when-we-were-in-Moscow reminiscences.

Irina took the ruins of her goose into the kitchen.

She cleared away the red cabbage and green cabbage. More than half the dumplings were left over, too.

She sat down on the only kitchen chair and lit herself a cigarette.

A picture came into her mind: Granny Marfa, her mother, Nadyeshda, and she herself—three figures bending in silence over a pan in which gray strips of pork swam among cabbage.

Why would anyone be a vegetarian? Was the woman sick? Or sorry for the animals?

Sasha came into the kitchen. “Hey, let’s have a cigarette together.”

He took a Club from Irina’s pack, and she offered him her lighter.

“Are you sad, Mama?”

“No, why?”

They smoked in silence for a little while. Irina began to suspect that the new girlfriend had sent Sasha to find her.

“Why is she a vegetarian?”

“She isn’t really a vegetarian, she does eat meat sometimes.”

“But people need meat,” said Irina. “A human being needs meat!”

“Mama, you can’t condemn a person for something like that.”

“I’m not condemning her, just asking.”

They smoked.

“Nice girl,” said Irina.

“Yes, she is,” said Sasha.

They went on smoking.

“What matters most to me is for you to be happy,” said Irina.

Outside, a few isolated snowflakes fell. Fell into the garden, which was already black with twilight, and disappeared.

Sasha ground out his cigarette. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Oh, Sasha, you join the others. I’m going to make coffee now.”

Sasha took Irina by the shoulders, pulled her up, and hugged her.

“Oh, Sashenka,” said Irina.

It was good to have such a grown-up son—and one who still smelled like a baby.

Irina put on water for coffee, put the leftovers into smaller bowls, left the dumplings in the big serving dish because she couldn’t find another the right size. Placed the pan containing the remains of the slightly too tough goose in the larder, with its lid on. Stacked the dirty dishes beside the sink.

Maybe Sasha really was different?

It was beginning, thought Irina as she poured melted butter over the stollen and dusted it with icing sugar, it was beginning to be rather a strain, living up to what Kurt wanted. Always feeling his critical eyes on her. Always exposed to comparison with younger women. Well, yes, she was getting older, damn it, she was nearly fifty—in fact officially she was over fifty. Back in the past, she had added two years to her age in order to deceive the authorities. Had changed the seven of her year of birth to a five, so that she could join in the war. And even if she always celebrated her real birthday, and told all her friends her real age—the year of birth on her papers accompanied her like a constant threat that always, and this was the dreadful thing, always came true. Came true faster all the time, at that. The moment her official age was in the room with her, her real age was coming closer. It was a time-smashing machine, thought Irina, it was as if she were doomed to age faster than other women: For the homeland, for Stalin, hurrah!

Over coffee there was another surprise; the new girlfriend was studying psychology. Not history, like Sasha.

“You mean we have that kind of thing here?” marveled Charlotte.

“Tsychology,” pronounced Wilhelm, “is a tseudoscience.”

“Not a genuine branch of knowledge,” Kurt corrected him. “According to Comrade Stalin, it’s a sham science.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked the new girlfriend.

“Could be the science of shamans,” said Sasha.

“Oh, this is all so interesting,” said Charlotte in dulcet tones. “No, seriously, children, very interesting. I’m convinced there’s a connection between the body and… and what was it again?”

“The psyche,” said the new girlfriend.

Although she smiled, her gimlet glance was as piercing as ever.

Here Kurt rose to his feet and said, “Well, children, and now I’ll put on a little Christmas music.”

That was the signal. The presents had already been placed in front of each recipient’s seat; only Charlotte kept hers in the man-made fiber bag and handed them out directly—a transgression of the rules that annoyed Irina every Christmas. Now they all began undoing packages, rustling gift wrap, laboriously untying ribbons, unfolding paper, smoothing it out—and it occurred to Irina to wonder whether the new girlfriend was trying to draw conclusions about her own “psyche” from the gift wrap she had used. Who knew? Psychology—what was that like for Sasha? Wouldn’t you feel as if you were kind of under observation all the time?

Only Wilhelm sat there motionless, ignoring his presents. Nadyeshda Ivanovna jumped up and went to fetch the socks she had knitted for Sasha and Kurt. Charlotte was delighted with the travel bag of toiletries, just what she’d really wanted—what for? The new girlfriend sniffed at her perfume as if it were a bomb (next time—if there was a next time—she was going to get a pair of cotton pantyhose). Kurt had been given a pipe, and expressed his pleasure exuberantly; that is to say, he briefly acted like a six-year-old, put the pipe in his mouth, pulled the socks over his hands, and above the Christmas music chanted a rhyme he had made up in which “a pipe to smoke” rhymed with “cold toes are a joke.” Alexander tried out his new electric razor (Irina had already given him his real present, the Mongolian lambskin coat, in advance, so that it wouldn’t look too big a gift now); and Nadyeshda Ivanovna, who had been given a flowered woolen scarf and a heating pad for her bed, because she had been used to sleeping on the tiled stove in Slava, asked ten times if it hadn’t all been far too expensive, until Irina snapped at her under her breath.

Irina, too, had had her present in advance. Kurt had given her a dress and a pair of matching shoes. Not like that, of course, but in the form of an envelope containing money for her to buy them—Kurt was barely capable of buying a packet of crispbread on his own, let alone ladies’ clothing—but Irina was happy. She didn’t expect anything else. She certainly didn’t want a present from Sasha, whose grant was only two hundred marks (he really lived on Kurt’s—and her—subsidies), and she had even forbidden him to give her one; her mother had never given her anything for Christmas; only Granny Marfa had once given her a doll, homemade out of rags and straw, and mocked by the other children because her eyes were drawn on in indelible pencil. Her name was Katya, and to this day tears came to Irina’s eyes when she thought of that doll. And Charlotte’s wipe-clean tablecloths went into the garbage anyway, after a certain delay for the sake of good manners.

However, what Charlotte brought out of her man-made fiber bag this time was not a tablecloth. Or a calendar. It was THE BOOK. For the last six months, Charlotte had talked of nothing but her book, which was not in fact her book at all, since she had only written a foreword, but she acted as if this foreword was the most important part of the book, as if no one would want to read the book without her foreword! In short, the foreword had now at last been published, along with the book, and Charlotte gave everyone a copy—signed, of course! Alexander got one, the new girlfriend got one (it was signed again now, because it turned out that Charlotte hadn’t known her name), and Kurt and Irina got one