The Sarabande of Sara’s Band

Chapter I-1

Chapter IAt the very least about a perfect morning, imperfect marriages, former classmates, and a family crypt.

When I look at my coffee maker in the morning, it seems like I’m an oil tycoon. There it is – my black gold, at first slowly, and then very quickly, it fills the glass pot. It would be interesting to know if the freshly baked tycoons taste their oil? Or whether it tastes good for them if you weigh its value? It tastes good to me.

Every morning I do things precisely this way. At first I breathe in the coffee aroma, then I take my first sip and place the cup on the table. I open up the immense window that goes from the floor to the ceiling a little bit, I light up a cigarette, and then I return to the coffee. It’s not as hot. Only after that can I make myself a few bite-size sandwiches. When my morning starts in a different way, that means just one thing: I have serious life changes going on or problems.

I spend about an hour in my kitchen every morning, sometimes even more. At that time I manage to drink up several cups of coffee, read the newspaper or a chapter of a book, drink a glass of juice, if I haven’t forgotten to buy it, eat several bite-size cheese sandwiches, and if I have inspiration – make and eat an omelet.

I often turn on the television with the intention of hearing something interesting or useful, but something like that happens quite rarely. That is, I turn on the TV nearly every morning, but I heard something interesting or useful just three months ago – that was marked on a sticky on my refrigerator. I note everything that strikes me. That day on the morning news they were talking about people feeding a small whale. I like whales. I like them so much that I’m sure I wouldn’t be opposed to keeping a small whale at home, but in as much as that’s impossible, I don’t have any pets at home. It’s likely I like them so much because they’re like fountains, and I really like fountains. Once I even used to collect pictures of them, but then something happened and I stopped collecting them.

My kitchen isn’t a kitchen – that’s what my mother thinks, taking into consideration the kitchen of that apartment, in which my childhood flashed past and in which right now the old age of my parents live. In my kitchen you can easily have a party for ten people, it’s a large dining area. Besides the usual kitchen furniture, there’s a couch here, two comfortable wide armchairs, a table, and even an old German upright “R. Yors & Kallmann” piano. It’s black, shiny, and adorned with two candelabras.

It reminds me of a family crypt. You get the impression that his honor Judge R. Yors and the well-known author of the operetta Kallmann found their eternal repose right here.

On this crypt there is even a family coat of arms, which looks like: an elephant, an Indian Raja gazing at the sky, a UFO, or a Soviet satellite. The upright piano is an inheritance of my former wife. Neither I nor she knows how to play it. Usually, one of our mutual friends played it (most often a canine waltz). But nearly everyone still argued over why this upright piano had a third pedal. I never took part in these arguments, in as much as I didn’t know why the piano had a first or second pedal, not to speak already about the third one.

My wife’s father, in fact, handed down this piano to me personally. He used to treat my wife less carefully, perhaps because she was younger than the piano and not as expensive. When we got divorced, my wife asked if I wouldn’t object to the piano for the time being staying at my place. I categorically objected, but it remained here anyway. My wife was a lawyer, and as it’s well known, it’s impossible to frighten lawyers with objections.

I just had turned twenty-one when we got married. My wife and I were the same age and former classmates. Between the time that you’re sitting at the same desk, and the time you fall a sleep in the same bed, it’s not a big difference. That’s how it seemed to me. I think I simply just didn’t really think about it, but gave preference to a person, whose hand I felt warmly all ten years of school. Physical warmth is closer for a child than the spiritual. The need for the spiritual is formed later.

In school I was a cleverer student than she. I can’t name a subject I couldn’t handle. She was a satisfactory student, but she was very active. Already in the seventh grade they entrusted her to be in charge of the lessons on peaceful Soviet society,1 to participate in all the school and extracurricular representative activities, and to be the taskmaster for the others. I see her on stage – purposeful, sure of herself, a blonde with smoothly coiffed hair, not a kilo of excess weight, and without any hesitation. A straight, gray skirt, a cream-colored blouse, skin-colored tights, black pumps, fresh water pearls on her neck.

It’s interesting that even back in school I understood that Inna, that’s her name, could completely be the helmsman of my life. The question of choice for me has always been the most complicated. I couldn’t calmly decide even simple things – I wavered, exhausted myself with doubts. I often fell asleep and woke up with one and the same brain signal, from which my stomach, hands and eyes became moist: “And if suddenly nothing turns out?” Inna knew what needed to be done and in which order. To every one of my questions “And if suddenly nothing turns out?”, she answered so sincerely “why shouldn’t it?” that I instantly calmed down. With her knack, she even charmed my parents, who are quite solitary and childish people.

Of course, after completing school, my life without Inna began. Not because I wished for that. It’s just that she was no longer sitting next to me. She went to study law, and I – geography– at the university. It turned out that we ended up waking up in the same bed – she wanted that. But this differed little from the process of copying homework. The same kind of help at school. I – would give, and she – accepted, as was fitting. Later one of my friends would say, that in this way “your typical women’s psychology was formed.” However, then it seemed to me that my post-school life was without Inna. In truth, all my important life situations were not resolved without consultations with her. But somehow she asked, why don’t we get married, since we understand one another so well and have been with each other for so long? I accepted this question of hers as an inevitable decision.

Our marriage was childless. Inna wanted one, but just couldn’t get pregnant. Before we received the results of tests, she blamed me for everything. “Active spermatozoa rush to meet ovules, like joyous dogs that flap their tails! But your spermatozoa are somnambulist dogs, who don’t flap their tails, they’re ill.”

After this observation of hers, for a long time I couldn’t come. I couldn’t externally release an insatiable flock of feeble dogs. Then it turned out it was not me who was at fault for us being childless. This certainly became the beginning of the extinction of our marriage. She wasn’t able to forgive me for my joyous dogs that flap their tails.

“You would have gotten divorced anyway, because you finally began to long for independence,” one of my friends said. He was right. I became a successful correspondent and analyst. Then I was working for a well-known travel agency. I prepared materials for their site, pamphlets, analytical notes regarding places for vacations and active tourism. All the leading publications that needed articles on travel trips, the customs of faraway lands, and the behavior of animals, began to publish me. I was able to write about all of that brilliantly.

Despite my school and university successes, which did not augment any of my confidence, my career and creative victories added a certain unknown ingredient to my dough. A different person began to be kneaded out of me. Unaware of this myself, I learned to make decisions. I sold my one-room apartment in the center of town that I had received from my grandmother, took out credit, and acquired a contemporary three-room apartment. With this, certainly, I really surprised Inna’s father. He looked at me as though I were Achilles, who had made a shield and a sword from his heel, or stepped on the throat of my enemy with it. This irritated Inna. Probably, this is the way a person feels, who, her entire life, has driven a horse, until later a lord jumps out of the carriage, who has been pampering himself on pillows, and takes the reins in his hands. Such treachery! I understood everything, but I couldn’t do anything – her persistent activity and excessive pressure also began to irritate me. “Weigh the fact that the double letters of a name add a sense of purpose from birth to a person. This is like the pecking of a beak – until it nails the unfortunate bug, it will keep pecking. You had very few chances for success with her.” That’s what my friend Tymofiy said about Inna. He wasn’t a psychologist, but always expressed himself with a knowledge of the matter.

Seven years of marriage. I can’t believe we lived so many years together. How many times I said “hello” to her, how many times she wished me good night, and how many times there was “thank you, please, I don’t understand you, sorry, I also had that in mind, stop that, wait, that’s disgusting, don’t get worked up over such little things, where’s my charger, what should I do with this, that’s not my fault, and who’s supposed to take care of this, for the third day we don’t have freshener in the bathroom, shut your beak, where are we going on vacation, who’s going to finish the borsht, did you invite Tanya, it’s your fault for everything, and I warned you, you should have listened to your parents, why did you need that, you’ll never understand this, you’re at home, tea or coffee, an omelet or salad” — thousands, tens of thousands, or maybe hundreds? And how many kisses there were, spermatozoa – those that flapped their tails and those that didn’t? How many vowels and consonants of our married interactions? Thou-sands! But we weren’t there. Maybe, because, we had never lived together. It’s painful to part at the time when “she” and “you” have managed to turn into “we,” at least in part. That was not our case. It seemed to me that our marriage – was “she.” When “I” was born, just like for any child growing up, I wanted independence. And I got it. Right now I’m thirty-two. I got used to living like “me,” and I really liked that – living like “me!” Despite that, from time to time in my life a “she” appeared, but my life hasn’t turned into a “we.”

Until I Met SaraI went to the wardrobe, opened it, and for a long time looked at a sundress. I grabbed the hem of it and put it next to my face. A piece of tiny-petaled azure silk. This was Sara. Sara was in the kitchen. In the kitchen she was a teacup with the image of a rainbow on it, and also with four brown coffee cups, an orange plate with claret red chrysanthemums, and an open bottle of Martini & Rossi. There she was a ceramic tray with dry fruits. There she was a carton of milk and a box of “Start” oat and fruit cereal. Sara smiled while I was champing on the “Start,” like pastry, washing it down with coffee. She never did it that way.

Sara was in the bathroom. There she was a means for caring for curly hair. A toothbrush. Almond oil. A comb and a hair dryer. I opened up the almond oil, sullied my nose with it, began to smile. That is the scent of my happiness now. In my bedroom Sara was a silk nightshirt, left on a chair by the bed; a silver frame with a family picture on the windowsill in the accompaniment of azaleas, similar to a medley of southern American girls in multicolored hats; a straw basket, where from now on, my and her clean socks lived, our running shorts, her stockings, her nylon underwear; a thin hair band with small gold stones, which turned Sara into an Eastern princess, and which today like a golden-toothed smile lay on a bedside table. Sara’s heart lived in my stomach, I sensed it every moment.