Polina lived in a fourteen-story yellow-brick building on the top floor, at the place where Pokrovsky Boulevard turned to Yauzsky Boulevard. The bedroom window and balcony gave a handsome view of the city, dominated by Stalin’s Tooth, one of the seven architectural wonders of Moscow built by Stalin. Those Seven Sisters, as the buildings were called, slightly resembled the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but they were too rambling and lonely. Their towers made them medieval, or neoclassical, or maybe, perhaps, baroque? During the day, with clear weather and binoculars, from the window of Polina’s home one could catch a glimpse behind Stalin’s Tooth of the roof of Zlom and the red banner flapping there with the embroidered injunction, Love the art in yourself not yourself in the art, which could not be seen unless the wind was stiff and more or less in one direction, so that the flag flew straight as an arrow.
There was Polina’s daily life: a kilometer from Yauzsky Boulevard to the other side of Stalin’s Tooth and from behind Stalin’s Tooth one kilometer back to Yauzsky Boulevard. Polina enjoyed walking. Now and then in the mornings, when she glanced at her reflection in a display window (yes, she did that too, all people do), she didn’t check her hair or posture. No single detail interested her. She was only checking that she was there, more or less complete; that she had legs, arms, and a head, even if it didn’t feel like it. Unfortunately she needed all of these things to be out among people.
There was also another kind of window, one that didn’t open from Polina’s flat, not from the kitchen, the living room, or the bedroom, which all faced different directions and offered views and details for spotting through binoculars but which Polina had already grown tired of. Her very own secret window opened when an alcoholic beverage was poured into a glass. The first snifter of cognac, the tilt of the glass, the strong, brown liquid flowing into her mouth and beginning to work there. Polina breathed through her nose while the liquid was still in the concave dish of her tongue, and then, abracadabra, her whole body filled with fresh air, with an otherworldly gust, with promises and expectation. This was her real life. She had permission to take up her books when this window opened. She had permission for anything for a moment, to be a philosopher, a mass murderer, a princess, or maybe even a horse. Without a glass the books were mute to her, and that was a bad thing, because she loved books. She just had to open them first, and to open them she needed a special torsion arm, one that cranked her up out of the endless circle of numbers, from the addition, subtraction, and multiplication. She liked that too, but in a very finite way. Business was dealt with on the sixth floor of the Agency for Dramatic Arts without the agony of creativity, which she encountered almost every day in the canteen downstairs. There was always some Dimitri or Vladimir shouting, some wounded artist with visage downcast, and it was amusing to watch. Especially when the production was rubbish, in no imaginable way worth all that shouting and sulking. At those moments Polina felt a malicious schadenfreude. She would walk out of opening night at intermission smiling from ear to ear even though she knew the production would cause losses for the theatre.
Yes, numbers were good. Nodding acquaintances but not lovers. Only books were lovers. But it was a long journey to them, much longer than from Yauzsky Boulevard to the other side of Stalin’s Tooth, and Polina’s mind did not open to the words printed on the paper through only the power of perambulation.
Polina usually came home after seven o’clock, ate, and settled in for the night. She didn’t turn to a book until everything else was ready, when nothing else stood out in the wrong place. Even the tassels of the oriental rug had to be straight. “Begemot, my kitty, come to Mamotška’s lap and let’s read,” Polina said. The cat also liked books, or at least being in her lap. All the distractions and bustling were done for the day. The lady of the house took to her reading chair and extended her hand toward the graceful three-legged table, where the day’s estimated serving was at the ready, which could be refreshed if necessary, and usually was. But there were reasons for that. Polina wanted the books to really mean something. Otherwise reading them was pointless. She didn’t read frivolous books, the kind you could talk about at work to make yourself approachable. She only read the crème de la crème, and only when intoxicated.
Polina read for herself. She was not, for example, waiting for the man of her life, into whose ear she would pour whispers of the honey of her sophistication, because she knew well enough that in Russia there were roughly ten million more women than men and that the best had already been skimmed off the top. She had abundant empirical evidence of this fact. She wasn’t just looking for Anyone. No drunk, unemployed losers, dependent carrion crows, abusers, or thieves. She read for her own sake just as some women really do dress up only for themselves. They brush on mascara first thing in the morning after polishing their faces, even if they don’t intend to step outside all day or let anyone else inside. Polina at least didn’t intend to let anyone inside. No one was coming. She also never, EVER, approached the Dimitris and Vladimirs to share her thoughts—what would she have said to them? She preferred to socialize with liqueurs, cognac, and wine. Each beverage type had its own place in the bar cabinet. The liqueurs were on top, the cognacs in the middle, and the horizontal,
