Polina didn’t feel much guilt over her drinking. She’d gained amazing knowledge that she would have missed without it. The books wouldn’t have sung to her without this wondrous secret window, which sometimes nearly flew off its hinges. That was worth any side effects. The moment when a book began its raging storm. When it began to surrender in a silken symphony, when all the voices of all the instruments were individually and collectively audible: the French horn, the oboe, the contrabass; irony, context, intertextuality. If only she could share this some day . . .
It wasn’t as if Polina had never talked about what she read with anyone. There had been situations in her life, parties for example, where people chatted in a way she experienced as meaningful. Not just trivial tongue-wagging or, even worse, flirtation concealed as conversation, which could begin out of nowhere, on any topic, even Chekhov. The rules of that game were not at all clear to Polina. Once at a premier she’d stood dressed to the nines with a glass of champagne in her hand along with the rest of the audience, in the company of a man she knew a little and a woman who was a complete stranger, and imagined that they were talking about The Cherry Orchard. But the conversation wasn’t really about The Cherry Orchard.
Apparently she was supposed to realize this and then immediately excuse herself with a bow before retreating to another corner of the hall and slipping out of the party, but she had frozen in place, as always. She made the mistake of thinking the moment would pass—that was what an ignoramus she was—believing that soon the conversation would return to the way it had been. There they had been just a moment ago, the man, the woman, and her, and Chekhov in all his glory. She had actually begun to warm to the conversation, and her cheeks had burned with excitement as she returned to the adaptation they had seen on stage two hours before, to the blackness lit by only a sea of candles. Candles as snow-white cherry trees in bloom and buckets of tears, of weeping, such deep sorrow that it couldn’t help infecting the audience . . . And then suddenly the woman and the man weren’t there any more. Some strange membrane had appeared between her and the two of them. They didn’t even see her.
Was the fault in her? Had she said something foolish? Did her breath smell bad? The man and woman spoke to each other, quoting the play from memory. “Did you eat the frogs?” “I had crocodile.” It was absurd. “It smells of patchouli here.” How did they suddenly decide to repeat all the lines about smells? “Who here stinks of herring?” It was irritating, but they seemed to be endlessly amused. “Go, my dear man, you reek of chicken,”—were they mocking her? They sang to each other like birds, chirp, chirp, fiuuuu-druip-druipdruip, and she found she couldn’t move any more. “I can smell the cognac on you, my darling,” “my little cucumber,” and her cheeks began to burn with shame.
Fortunately there was plenty of champagne served at these parties.
At another, more high-brow frolic she managed to take the baton. An emeritus professor of history from Nantes University in France gave her a tip. “Read Swedenborg,” he suggested as they discussed Christianity and mysticism. Polina took his advice and read. That could have turned into something if another event the gentleman said he would attend hadn’t been canceled due to a hostage crisis that occurred in the House of Culture of State Ball-Bearing Plant Number 1.
Polina was left quite alone with her Swedenborg. She never saw the French gentleman again. She had completely forgotten his name (you know how little names mean when a conversation is flowing), and no one in her circle of acquaintance seemed to know whom she meant when she went fishing for information afterwards. No one knew whom she was talking about when she described a man who looked disconcertingly like an old Jean-Louis Trintignant with a red scarf around his neck—could she have invented him entirely? In any case, Polina had a sticky question for him about Swedenborg that it now appeared would go permanently unanswered.
Here in the new home, sitting on the flying carpet, Polina knows she has finally found a suitable audience, an audience who won’t initiate any brazen, erotic merrymaking before her eyes, who won’t retreat into the washroom or disappear without a trace because of an unlucky terrorist attack. Polina knows she could try anything, so she decides to give it her best. She tosses out a slightly more precise sentence than before: My name is Polina Yurievna Solovyeva, and I am an alcoholic. After the final word she snaps her mouth shut in satisfaction, like a cat who’s just licked the last drop of cream from a plate. She just didn’t lick her lips.
Oh, the confusion her confession arouses! Everyone is as quiet as a mouse. They stare, appearing to wait for her to continue. Polina, who sprawls imposing and lumpy next to trim, thin-legged
