Aetherial Worlds Read online

  A few months ago he hosted a small get-together for some colleagues from our department: standing buffet, wine in plastic cups, smoking outside only, in the chill, autumnal air of the backyard—“Please close the storm door, not just the screen door: it reeks of smoke in here, yuck, yuck.” Crudités and spreads—“Dip the celery sticks in the hummus and the carrot sticks in the guacamole.”

  With triumphant false modesty, Eric’s wife brought out a dish filled with hot buckwheat; the guests—the bravest, anyway—reached for it with plastic forks. Exclamations of multiculturalism and feigned delight. I tried some, too: they forgot to add salt to the kasha. It was inedible.

  It was necessary to explain some things that may have escaped Eric and his colleagues, to lower the flame of exoticism down to a common, grocery store fact: this rare pinkish grain can be obtained under the name Wolff’s Kasha at any American supermarket. Yes, it’ll be expensive, and yes, outrageously so. Cheaper buckwheat, of the dreaded Polish variety, can be obtained in any Russian store in Brighton Beach or beyond. The quality will be awful, and so will the taste; it is under-roasted and upon boiling it swells to mush, but at least there is no need to travel to Vietnam. We Russians can eat kasha for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Doctors prescribe it for diabetes. There is even an old Russian saying—“Buckwheat compliments itself”—meaning it’s so naturally delicious, there is no need to compliment the cook. You could fry it in a pan; you could slow-cook it in a cast-iron pot inside a Russian masonry stove if you had cast-iron pots and Russian masonry stoves, but you don’t; and you can never add too much butter to kasha. Oh, and if you add mushrooms!…and onions! Actually, why don’t I just show you!

  I took the kasha from his wife and quickly refried it properly. Her heart filled with hate. And Eric’s with love. Or something like it. It’s hard to tell. When I see Eric, my heart swells. But what swells in him—I just don’t know.

  * * *

  §

  Our affair proceeds with some complications, and, frankly, it’d be better if it weren’t happening at all. The clock points to December, and when it’s over, I’ll be leaving here never to come back. I’ll return to Russia; I’ll visit New York occasionally—that bolted, splendid, acicular, cast-iron, windy anthill that never sleeps; I’ll visit my friends in San Francisco, where it’s always spring and where, as the song goes, “a lilac coatroom man will hand you your manteau”—maybe he’ll hand me my coat, too, a belted cashmere one with a shawl collar, if I buy it in time. I’ll rent one of those really wide jeeps; buy myself some embossed-leather cowgirl boots with pointy toes, a cowboy hat and aviator sunglasses; stock up on water and beef jerky; and, cigarette a-danglin’, I’ll zoom through California, Nevada, and Arizona, across rocky deserts—brown and pink, lavender and purple—their mirages trembling over salty and waterless lakes. Where to? No idea. Why? No reason, just because: there is nothing better out there than the desert. The fresh, dry air through an open window, the smell of rocks, the smell of emptiness, loneliness, freedom—the right kind of smell.

  But to this tiny, ornate, gingerbread town covered with the purest of snow, I will never come back. So what do I need this love for? As I keep telling myself: I’d be better off without it. Or maybe it just seems that way.

  * * *

  —

  In the Yi language, “snow” is vo.

  * * *

  —

  Every day I keep repeating to myself that Eric is limited, poorly educated, and generally not that smart. Or if he is smart, it’s not readily apparent. And not even that attractive—teeth, shmeeth. And we have nothing to talk about. I mean, we can’t keep talking about the Pu Pèo, can we? But every time we meet, be it in that smoky student cafeteria, or in the chichi little bagel shop (and there, progressive bagels “with everything” for intellectuals and also cranberry scones, rare coffee varietals, and a free copy of the latest New Yorker for quick browsing—this could be Paris!), or at the post office—accidentally on purpose—or quite unexpectedly in the boundless campus parking lot, every time he’s back to chewing my ear off about the Pu Pèo, and every time, to my dismay, I find myself listening to his mumbling as if it’s a chorus of angels. With every passing day I get more and more stuck in this love like it’s glue.

  * * *

  —

  In the Yi language buckwheat is nge. At least that’s how I hear it. Nge.

  * * *

  —

  I’m a steadfast tin soldier: nothing gets to me—even love can’t get to me—but, dear God, when I see that lanky four-eyes; when I watch him climb out of his car like a daddy longlegs; when I suddenly recognize him, absurd in his long coat, as he materializes out of the whirling snowflakes, turning his face from the wind, covering his eyes against the blizzard, all my inner towers, bastions, and barricades melt, crumble, and disintegrate in slow motion, as in a lousy, drowsy cartoon. Tell me, dear God: Why him, specifically? Aren’t there other absurd and inarticulate bespectacled gents? Why him? I don’t understand You, Lord. Please reveal Your plans to me!

  * * *

  —

  Whenever confusion stirs within my soul, instead of going to the student cafeteria to dine on turkey corpses, I drive to that progressive bagel shop, buy myself the biggest cup of real coffee they sell and a cranberry scone, and sit by the window with the local paper. Turn it inside out and then fold it over twice to read about the latest goings-on. Pretty standard stuff: Two sedans collided on the highway with a van that was transporting dry ice—four casualties. A house was robbed: the owner stepped out for a bit and didn’t lock the front door, pinning his hopes on the storm door—hopes dashed, computer stolen. Two people fell into an ice hole on the lake and couldn’t get out. Once again campus police have detained J. Alvarez, a homeless man who for the sixth time had ignored warnings about loitering around the university. He was taken to the local precinct, where the situation was explained to him yet again, to no avail. Alvarez likes the campus; it’s spacious and pretty, and with its tree-lined paths it’s equally beautiful in the winter and summer. The female students are pretty, too, and so Alvarez comes to check out the ladies, who, in turn, complain to the administration.

  * * *

  —

  “What do you want from me, Eric?”

  “Tell me something surprising about your alphabet. The Russian alphabet.”

  “In Russian we have the letter Ъ. The ‘hard sign.’ ”

  “What does it sound like?”

  “Like nothing.”

  “At all?”

  “At all.”

  “Then why do you have it?”

  “It’s a certain type of silence, Eric. Our alphabet has elements of silence.”

  Of course I could easily explain to him the reason for using the letter Ъ, its derivation, as well as its modern and historical contexts—but why? He’s not planning to learn Russian, and he really has no need to know. It’s a waste of time. And besides, it’s already December, and I’ll soon be leaving, never to come back. I look out at the bluish evening, the town all lit up and covered with beads and tinsel—it’s close to Christmas, and here the shops have started selling gifts, sparkles, candles, and flickering well in advance. Right around Thanksgiving they start. This is a northern town, as far north as they get. Farther than that, where the earth curves, there are only simple little settlements with savage Poles and detached-from-reality Canadian-Ukrainians, cliffs and snow, giant stadium-sized supermarkets selling only canned goods to the local population that consumes no fresh greens for historical reasons, and then again cliffs and snow, snow and cliffs.

  Up there, up north, is the boundary of the habitable world, and beyond that the kingdom of darkness; from there the Arctic air comes down in massive blocks and hangs in the dark above our uncovered, or perhaps bundled-up, heads, while stars piercingly shine down through an icy lens, prickling our eyes.

  * *
*

  —

  Americans don’t seem to wear hats—perhaps they are waiting for their ears to fall off from the cold? I’ve seen them wear gloves, scarves, sure, but not hats. Perhaps they feel that it looks weak to wear them, unless, maybe, one has gone to Moscow’s Red Square and bought one of those Chinese-made polyester ushankas with earflaps and a red star; then they expect all Russian hearts to melt at the sight of them. Eric is no exception: in order to get closer to my heart, unreadable by means of his cultural codes, he tried wearing an Uzbek doppa—a square, pointed hat—only his was embroidered with beads and pink paillettes. This reminded me of Maksim Gorky when he was terminally ill. I banned it.

  Me, I swaddle my head in a warm scarf to ward off meningitis, arachnoiditis, and trigeminal neuralgia; I’ve forbidden Eric to call this scarf a “babushka” with the erroneous stress on the u. I’ve already weaned him off saying “borscht” instead of “borsch” and likewise explained to him that in Russian, as opposed to Yiddish, there are no “blintzes” but only “blinis,” no “schav” but only green “shchi,” also known as sorrel soup. I know I’m disseminating useless knowledge. I’ll leave, and he’ll go back to his erring ways, his linguistic and cultural poverty. He’ll go back to adding cumin and star anise to buckwheat, to making salad with cold farfalle pasta, red caviar, and sesame oil. Driven by his unbridled imagination, he’ll make a heap of something awful and ridiculous from mushrooms or beef.

  Rice, I’d bet, he could do well. Rice is rice, a basic, simple thing, no need to invent anything. Some things should be simple and clear. You don’t need to add anything to it—let it stay pure and unchanged, as it’s been for thousands of years.

  * * *

  —

  “Eric, how do the Pu Pèo say ‘rice’?”

  “Tsa.”

  * * *

  §

  This town, to which I’ll never return, is small, so everyone sees everything. Even if you don’t know someone, they know you. Students are the majority here, and of course they know their instructors’ faces. There is virtually no place where Eric and I can be alone. Sometimes, when we manage to see each other in some coffee shop while his wife, Emma, is teaching, we don’t even get to talk: too many acquaintances around. I know how watchful they are of other people’s affairs—I myself have gossiped with them about this one and those two. Eric is scared of Emma. And so he sits in a far corner, looking past me staring at the wall or at his cup. I respond in kind. I get heart palpitations. Don’t know what he gets.

  Emma is a beautiful, high-strung woman with long hair and anxious eyes stretching back to her temples. She teaches something artsy and can make anything and everything imaginable with her hands. She sews complex blue quilts covered with the delirious stars of otherworldly skies, weaves beaded shawls, and knits thick, puffy white coats resembling snowy hills. She hand-makes lemon and vanilla soap and other such things, conjuring up acute jealousy in women and fear and bewilderment in men. She orders emerald- and tree-bark-hued cowhides from special designer catalogs and from them makes little boxes with silver inserts—I bought one myself at a local shop, not knowing that it was made by Emma.

  She’s a real woman, unlike me; she’s a goddess of the hearth and a protector of all arts and crafts, not to mention that she volunteers at the student theater, designing and painting sets for plays that her students produce. She suspects that while she’s painting those sets Eric isn’t sitting around his office but circling the town trying to run into me—accidentally, inadvertently, unintentionally. Emma is a witch and she wishes me ill. Or maybe it just seems that way to me.

  Due to the fact that we are often unable to speak, Eric and I have developed an ability to read each other’s thoughts. It’s not terribly difficult, but of course it results in many mistakes, and our limited vocabulary comes down mostly to the nitty-gritty: Later. Yes. Not now. Me too. No. I’ll get in the car and drive—follow me.

  * * *

  —

  We tried meeting in another town, fifteen miles away from ours, where, at the edge of human settlement, we scouted a quiet inn surrounded by snowbanks but at the last minute, almost on the threshold, we ran away in fear: through a lit window and its little lace curtains we spotted two professors from our college, two married ladies—who would have thunk it?—kissing and embracing quite unambiguously over a cup of coffee in the cozy bar draped with premature Christmas lights.

  Sure, we could have wandered in saucily from the cold and resolved our mutual awkwardness with a jovial cackle: Ha-ha-ha! You too? But Eric is timid and considerate. Me, not so much, but he’s the one who lives here and I’m leaving and never coming back.

  I couldn’t have brought him back to my place: I lived at the campus hotel for homeless professors. It was cheap, but splendid and mysterious, like a haunted house. Back in the 1930s, some wealthy patron of the college donated this house when she inexplicably found she had no more use for it. The building was surrounded by the world’s fluffiest snowbanks; the rooms were so overheated that everyone kept their windows open regardless of the weather; and the beds were so narrow that one would fall off of them without fail, even while sleeping on one’s back and at attention, like a soldier in formation, there being no other godly way to sleep on them. The rooms also had odious little low armchairs, with legs like a dachshund’s. There was no smoking allowed, but of course everyone smoked while hanging out the window. No, this was wholly unsuitable for a clandestine rendezvous.

  Theoretically, we could have risked meeting at Eric’s place while Emma was teaching or set-designing, but I feared it wouldn’t end well: there have been times in my life when I was scared to death—or conversely, to laughter—and when it was necessary to urgently hide in the closet or under the bed. Emma may have been a mind reader, too; I could see it in her eyes. Having caught us, she would have given chase, pursuing us through the snow, over the treetops, through the dark blue night, leaving her students behind.

  Emma, you see, had a third eye, clearly visible when she was lit from the side, when it pulsated under her thin skin. When she would turn her head in alarm, it picked up my thoughts, like a radar detector. I felt it whenever she and Eric hosted one of their get-togethers for colleagues, which had become a weekly thing. I kept attending these by default. Not coming would certainly have aroused her suspicions. At these parties Emma would read my thoughts, watching me with her subcutaneous, still-unhatched third eye, as she filled with hate.

  To ward off this evil eye, I bought an amulet at a local antique shop. In our little town there were many such shops with all kinds of delightful thingamajigs, from old license plates to empty glass perfume bottles. Tin watering cans; porcelain kitties; dishes, washbowls, and chests of drawers. Lifeless corsets, for women with small breasts and unimaginably tiny waists; hopelessly rumpled lace parasols, for a sun that had set and stopped shining long ago. Faded enamel jewelry, old magazines, and patterned ice trays.

  The charm jumped out at me right away from where it lay, between a silver jewelry box and a Victorian lorgnette. It was a small mano fico, a real amulet, a thing of power—it was unclear how it had got there and why no one had purchased it yet. The shop owner hadn’t picked up on its value and meaning, and so, luckily, it didn’t cost me that much. I took it to a jewelry store to have a little loop soldered to it, and I also bought a silver chain for it.

  “Do you want to have it engraved, perhaps?” asked the saleswoman. “Usually these things get engraved with a name. Or a word. You know, like an incantation.”

  I looked out the window at the swirling flakes and the snowdrifts. Pure and endless. I’ll leave and they’ll stay. They’ll melt into water, and then it’ll snow again.

  “Okay, engrave it with vo. V-o.”

  “Good choice!” exclaimed the saleswoman, with not a clue what I was talking about. An excellent professional reaction.

  I started wearing the
amulet under my clothes. I kept it on at night. Emma panicked and twitched, but she was powerless against it.

  * * *

  —

  Love is a strange thing; it has a thousand faces. You can love anything and anyone. I once loved a bracelet from a shop window, but it was too expensive and I couldn’t afford it: I had a family, I had children. I worked hard, burning out my brain, so I could pay for our apartment and the kids’ college tuition, so I had something to set aside for illness, for old age, for my mother’s hospital bills, for unexpected emergencies. I couldn’t buy that bracelet, and I didn’t, but I did love it. I thought about it while falling asleep, I pined for it and shed tears for it.

  Then the spell passed. It unclasped its jaws from my heart and mercifully let me go. What difference does it make who or what it was? It could have been a person, an animal, a thing, a cloud in the sky, a book, a strophe in somebody else’s poem, the southern wind tearing at grass on the steppe, an episode from my own dream, an unexplored street making a turn in the honey glow of a setting sun, a smile from a stranger, a ship’s sail upon a blue wave, a springtime evening, a pear tree, a few notes of music from an incidental window.