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Read Russia 2nd pass:Layout 1 5/2/12 1:03 AM Page 27
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suddenly showed through in the animal carcasses; the currents of life washing
over the taxidermic sculptor’s hands had turned hot.
But even so, any union between Ertel and Elizaveta Nikolaevna was absolutely
impossible. Pavel Ivanovich had been firmly married for a long time.
He belonged to that high-tensile class of men who have to change themselves
completely in order to change their life partner. He and Anna had lived in
peace and harmony since their student days. In addition to large copper curls
from which coins could have been minted and rosy-pink skin sprinkled with
fine freckles, Anna Ertel also possessed an unassailable inner tranquillity and
faith in the stability of all the circumstances and objects surrounding her. And
although for a long time already the married couple’s handshake-firm kisses
had expressed an attachment of friendship rather than love, he couldn’t possibly
desecrate her faith. As imperturbably as she did everything in the world,
Anna had borne Pavel Ivanovich two healthy, long-legged sons. Redheaded
like their mother, each with an entire planetarium of freckles on his pink features,
the boys loved their father ardently, dreamed of fabulous hunts in mysterious
jungles and already helped in the workshop. And if Pavel Ivanovich
had decided, nonetheless, to make the break, he would have had to abandon
not only the boys, not only the large apartment in Izmailovo—his home sweet
home, where white curtains breathed and white furniture stood on the floor
like porcelain—not only that . . . He would have had to hand over all the memories
of his youth to Anna for safekeeping: the way the two of them had
watched a wedge of cranes receding into the distance, fluttering like a waving
handkerchief; the way they had once lost their younger child, Kostya, at the
Kazan railway station and found him, smeared all over with some kind of black
candy and without his new jacket; and all the triumphs of his life, at which they
used to rejoice together. In short, Ertel would have had to leave Anna almost
all of himself, minus that part, the very existence of which would have completely
changed her entire notion of how the world was arranged.
But even so Ertel couldn’t help himself. He was jealous of Elizaveta
Nikolaevna’s contacts with Mr. K and Mr. T, suspecting that, with her docile
amenability and detachment, she was quite capable of complying with her
sponsors’ wishes in her bare, flat widow’s bed. He was afraid to touch the
tremulous whiteness of her fingers and instead he stroked the cat, who would
present his velvet belly, only to sink his claws and teeth into the stranger’s
hand and wind himself round it like a striped, muscular snake. As often happens
with people in love, Ertel knew the overgrown yard of that cherished
Stalin-era apartment block better than its residents did. Sometimes, even