The Story of a Friendship

THE TENDER AND UTTERLY NATURAL BOND THAT CAN DEVELOP BETWEEN TWO STRANGERS BROUGHT TOGETHER BY MISFORTUNE AND CHANCE.

Acquaintance

I moved to Moscow in February 2018. It was a new city, a new home, and I was surrounded by people I didn’t know. I needed to unpack, yet I lay on the floor of my apartment on a stack of winter jackets (I had no furniture), staring at the ceiling. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. I was surprised, because I hadn’t yet given anyone my address.

“Who’s there?” I asked anxiously of the door.

“My name is Dima. I’m your neighbor! I’ve come to give you some important news.”

I opened the door a crack and saw a disheveled, grey-haired fellow. A plaid shirt stuffed into bulging sweatpants. He was holding a rag-dog clown in a red cap.

“This evening there’s going to be a heavy snowstorm, so be careful,” the fellow said. “And on Monday it’s going to be 18 below. Do you have warm socks?”

I murmured something through the door opening, touched by this concern for my well-being. The fellow held out his puppet: “This is Petya, my best friend. And what is your name?”

I introduced myself and shook Petya’s cotton hand.

My neighbor smiled, wished me a good day, and made to leave just as my cat Darwin approached the door.

“Oh!” the neighbor said. “You have a friend as well! So, we are not alone.”

So began our strange friendship.

The next day, I heard the neighbor’s voice through my very thin door. He was explaining to someone in our hallway that the thing he most regretted in life was that he never learned to play the piano. From that day, I often heard his voice and could never resist the urge to tiptoe up to the door to hear what he was saying.

“Be so kind, right this way, I’ll hold the door for you,” he said to another neighbor, who had arrived home with her hands full with her dog’s leash and some shopping bags.

“I pushed the elevator button for you. Here it comes,” he said to the doctor.

“There will be a snowstorm tomorrow, be careful,” he said, it seemed, to whomever would listen.

“Zhenya! Hello! I’ve come down to check the mail… I haven’t seen you in a long time – you’re always disappearing somewhere!” he said sometime in the middle of March as we met by the mailboxes. His beard was combed and, it seemed, perhaps even trimmed.

“I travel for work, and then I was homesick…”

“And I thought you were gone! Zhenya, you know, I didn’t give you anything for March 8. I made a present, but you were never home. Come with me!”

The door to his apartment was open. There were rustling sounds as Dmitry poked around in his hallway and then, with a look of triumph, he held out a compact disc.

“I wanted to give you Brahms’ Fourth Symphony! You know, it is just superb in its ambiguity. It has a very unusual final movement: it’s difficult to know if it’s tragic or celebratory. Many say that there is tragedy at the end. But I feel it’s really a celebration. What do you hear? Please tell me your thoughts later!”

I took the disc. I had absolutely nothing to play it on. When I returned to my apartment, I noticed that my hands were shaking. No one else in Moscow had given me a gift on March 8.

Soon, Dmitry again stopped me on the stairs and informed me that he writes poetry. I concluded that he was lonely. Otherwise, why would he be hanging around the entryway waiting for someone to walk by?

Then, later, I needed a hammer. Dmitry invited me into his place: flowered wallpaper, an aging chandelier, loosened parquet tiles. I caught an ancient smell from my childhood – it was the smell of my grandmother’s cabinets and porcelain. He shuffled a bit and then called to somewhere in the darkness of the apartment: “Do we have a hammer, ma?”

A quiet voice wafted from the darkness and into the corridor: “Yes, in the suitcase.”

Far down the hallway, a shadow appeared. Ma walked out, thin and aged. She slowly made her way up to us and silently met my eyes with her own – grey and dreary. I read in them an apology for her son’s behavior: “Yes, that’s how he is, a puppet for a friend, please forgive us.”

I returned to my apartment and hugged my teddy bear, Anton Palych.

Gradually the knocks on the door became routine and frequent. Dmitry would bring a newspaper, or a book from his library, or ask me to say hello to Petya the clown, or warn me that I should take an umbrella when I go outside. And he constantly shared his thoughts on life.

One evening my neighbor scratched on my door: “Zhenya, I wrote a poem about you! Could you pop in to visit? I want to recite it for you.”

This time he invited me into the living room and “ma” got up from the sofa. Grey frock, grey eyes, grey hair, surrounded by crossword books with red-yellow-green covers. She introduced herself as Irina Solomonovna and looked at me with curiosity as I looked around their home. An old sideboard with a set of crystal. A massive chest of drawers. A Soviet-era stereo system in the corner. A piano. Sagging armchairs with grimy throw covers. Shabby, herringbone parquet floors. Dusty, with breadcrumbs on the floor by the table…

“Zhenya, if you are actually ready to listen to Dmitry’s poems,” Irina Solomonovna said, “prepare yourself to become a bit weary.”

Dmitry placed a hefty notebook on the table. Opened it and cleared his throat. His handwriting was large, slanting, spanning three lines. For fifteen minutes he solemnly recited disconnected phrases about space, constellations, the appearance of Zhenya as a symbol of a fresh breeze and the Mother of God, innocence and kindness. When he was done, Mama suggested we have tea. She opened the sideboard with a key and took out a dusty tea service. She shuffled off into the kitchen to rinse it. A mountain of cheese-filled pastries appeared, food supplied by their social worker. I delicately extracted the fact that, aside from their social worker, no one stopped in to visit. Mama’s legs were weak, she was afraid to take a walk, and, while a year ago she would still go outside to sit on the bench near the entrance of our building, by then, she had completely stopped. Every step was hard work and fearful. Sometimes Dmitry takes Petya on walks around the building. They have no relatives, or friends either.

I asked how they cope with the housework, and discovered that Mama sometimes cooks and washes the dishes. Dmitry can heat up soup and pour tea. But there is no one to clean up around the house: Dmitry has severe joint pain and can barely bend over. They have no washing machine. Mama washes the essentials in a basin, by hand. I felt sorry for them and wanted to help out in some way.

“I have a washing machine, for me it would be no trouble,” I said.

Irina Solomonovna suddenly stopped smiling and cut me off: “Thank you, but no. We haven’t yet sunk that low.”

Embarrassed, I was getting ready to leave when Dmitry said, “Zhenya, come to my birthday party this Thursday. Mama and I will have a cake.” And Irina Solomonovna added an olive branch: “On Sundays at nine in the evening we listen to concerts on the radio. This is probably of no interest to you, but if you like, you are welcome.”

As we were in the corridor, she whispered that I should pay no mind to Dima. He has schizophrenia, she said, and had been like this since childhood. All her life his excessive friendliness with the neighbors has made her uncomfortable. I said I understood long ago and he doesn’t bother me in the least. She silently reached out to touch my arm.

Friendship

For Dmitry’s birthday I bought a small boombox at Avito, and my friend Oleg in Petrozavodsk sent me a stack of CDs with the complete works of Mozart. Dmitry suggested that we listen to his Piano Concerto No. 25 together. As the music came on, he bowed his head, raised his index finger and twirled it in tempo.

“Now, listen, now comes the piano solo! Oh, how wonderful! Superb! Did you know, Zhenya, that this was one of his last concertos. Within two years, Mozart died… I dreamed of listening to this!”

Mozart sounded as good in the half-darkened room as in a church. Booming, majestic, penetrating the very soul. Mama was carefully unwrapping packets of pills. Petya was sitting in Dmitry’s lap. (“He really likes Mozart, Zhenya.”) Even the walls seemed to close in a bit. Thirty-five minutes of music – so personal, so all-encompassing – that I, more than likely, would never have heard were it not for Dmitry, in a timelessness just on the other side of my apartment wall.

The next day, in thanks for the present, Dmitry brought me a book by Bianki and a roll with some tvorog.

He began to stop by daily: either with a newspaper, some news, or some poems. He always passed on regards from his mother and Petya. And in early summer he conveyed his mother’s invitation to her birthday celebration.

I ran to the florists for some violets, changed into slippers, and went next door. There was no hint of celebration in the air. But there was a thin torte and a small bag of Mishka in the North chocolates. They gave me the chocolates, and then sliced up the torte. I drank tea and ate the torte while Dmitry and Mama drank water and took their medicines. Then my neighbor leaned back in his chair and announced that the following day marked a year since their downstairs neighbor passed away.

“You didn’t meet her, Zhenya, but Sofia Valentinovna and I were very, very close!” Dmitry said. “Every week she brought Mama and me her copy of Arguments and Facts, and on the weekend she stopped by for tea and cookies. When she was bedridden and could no longer walk, she asked her son to bring us a cake on my birthday. We had a very, very warm friendship. And for tomorrow, in her honor, I am writing a poem in C major. About her, it simply has to be in C major!”

It gradually became clear that for anyone who died in our apartment block (Dmitry and his Mama had lived here their whole lives, outliving many), Dmitry dedicated a poem. Some in a minor key, some in a major key. Unable to restrain myself, I asked, “And when I die, will you also dedicate a poem to me?”

“Zhenya, of course, there can be no question!” Not the slightest sign of embarrassment. “I have already written five poems in your honor! But if you die, I will honor your memory as best I can!”

Then he talked of how Chopin drives him crazy, and how, a very long time ago, when he was younger and in better shape, he and his mother went to the Philharmonic and he sobbed from joy.

Mama smiled at the violets, and it occurred to me that it was far more pleasant to live with the knowledge that after one’s death someone would write about you in C major.

Gradually, my visits for tea and radio became regular, and each time Irina Solomonovna was glad to see me. I bought her tulips, or chrysanthemums, and candies. And she gradually let me into her life.

I told her about my travels for work or pleasure; she talked about the books she’s read. Her eyesight, despite her age, was excellent, and she literally devoured books. Every time I stopped in she was reading some classic or other: Tolstoy, Chekhov, Cervantes, Dickens. Once, Irina Solomonovna admitted that she continually re-reads her library. She doesn’t go to stores, and has no internet, and does not know where to get new books. Then I started to bring her some of mine. She excitedly read Dovlatov, Vodolazkin, and Donna Tartt (she said nobody in the future would ever top The Goldfinch). When she had read everything, I started to get books from friends. Once, I posted on social media that I was looking for used books for my neighbor. And then for an entire week I traveled around Moscow picking them up. Irina Solomonovna was very happy. I have never seen anyone’s eyes light up like that at the sight of a book.

I also filled her life with flowers. She and Dima didn’t have any (other than the violets I had given them), yet Irina Solomonovna loved them so. I got a Christmas cactus to put in her bedroom window. Then I bought a few ficus plants at Avito. Her room greened up and became cozy. It was hard for her to water them herself, so Dmitry was charged with caring for the greenery. When I went on long trips, I brought my plants to their apartment. “We are helping each other like real neighbors,” Dmitry said happily, grabbing his watering can.

Once, over tea, Irina Solomonovna recounted how her father had been caught up in the Stalinist repression. How the secret police came and repeatedly searched their home. How there was nothing to eat. How she dreamed of becoming a musician as a child, and took piano lessons. And how, when her father was arrested, she and her mother no longer had enough money for music. “She couldn’t buy me a piano, and I got a chicken leg to eat just once a month. But aside from music, I loved the English language, so I put all my effort into that.”

She told of how her father returned, but was constantly sick and soon died. How she loved to ride the bicycle. How Dima was born and how her husband left her with a sick son and went to join relatives in Israel. How she could also have left the country – “But why? I’m a true Muscovite!” Alone with Dmitry, she delivered newspapers, wrote for journals, worked in archives – essentially took whatever work she could get. She often had epileptic seizures, but she literally just got up and went back to work. And how Dmitry graduated from school and attended a technical institute but could not work: the schizophrenia did not allow it. He himself talked about his sickness without the slightest embarrassment, as if it were something quite everyday and ordinary.

“I have always been sick, since childhood. But after the technical institute the voices arrived. I heard them all the time, they gave me no peace, so I started taking strong medicines. The voices left, but a persecution mania, fears, appeared… I understand everything about my illness. Doctors have always been grateful that I can describe my condition in detail.”

Irina Solomonovna did not remarry. She put all her effort into her son and her work. And so they have for many years lived and been sick alongside one another. The mother consoles her son when he starts having an episode or a schizophrenic delirium, and the son takes care of his mother during her epileptic attacks and supports her as best he can. I have never before met two people who are simultaneously so alone and at the same time so completed by one another. The more I learned about them, the more I wanted to somehow brighten up their lives.

I recall how once I bought my neighbors some buns. They got a bit worked up and insisted on exchanging them for soup. I refused, but stopped in to listen to Mozart. As the music played, Dmitry spoke about the composer’s life. Surprisingly, he knows every key point of his biography, all the important dates. “What a smart boy you have,” I whispered to his mother. And she whispered back, “Please tell him this, so he stops worrying that he’ll be taken away to an institution.”

I never discussed it with them, but I often wondered, “what will happen to Dima when his mother is gone? They have no relatives. The father who left for Israel recently died. His mother seems to be holding onto life merely for the sake of her son, but how long does she have left? Dmitry is constantly on medication, visits the doctor, is aware of the course of his disease, and controls his seizures. By all appearances, he is merely prone to overthinking and obsessive fears. In general, he seems to be in complete control of his life. But what will become of him when he is alone? His mother has willed the apartment to him, but he is afraid he might be judged incompetent and sent to an institution. “An internat would be the end of my entire life! I’d die immediately there,” Dima said, not having in mind a physical death. It’s understandable.

It was not always a good time for me to open the door at Dmitry’s knock. Sometimes I was working on a text, or in the middle of a video conference, or I simply wanted to lie down in solitude. His knocks meant I would have to listen to his disjointed poetry or his strange theories (which he would repeat three times – a consequence of his illness). For example, once he yelled at my door that freedom was responsibility, and that is why many feared freedom. “I’m talking about me, Zhenya! Just imagine, if I were able to publish my poems. I would be responsible for my every word! For my entire cosmic philosophy. That is very scary. So I shouldn’t worry that Mama’s the only one who hears them.”

Another time, he brought me some rolls, but I had a stomach ache and turned down the offering. He said, “I want to support you with my thoughts. What distinguishes us from the animals is our ability to endure. This is a gift! Through patience comes humility. And humility, Zhenya, is our ticket to the Kingdom of God.”

“I hope,” I replied, “that in my case the Kingdom of God will not come soon.”

“Of course, of course, it’s too early for you to die! I am just saying that the Kingdom of God is unavoidable, this is the B-flat major chord of life. And patience is what takes us there! Be patient, Zhenya. And don’t be discouraged. Whatever trials are sent to us, illnesses, loneliness… our main happiness is just to live, to have an interest in and a taste for life. I keep telling myself this so that I don’t become discouraged. And don’t you let yourself be down. Mama and I are close by and always ready to support you. Everything that we have, we will give you if you need it.”

How could I not open the door for him?

In general, my neighbors were surprisingly good at lifting my spirits. Sometimes I would return from a trip completely spent. I would burrow into my bed and lay quietly, as if I were not there at all. But Dima always knew that I had returned, and would knock early in the morning: “Why haven’t you stopped by, Zhenya? I heard you, that you’d returned! Come over for dinner with Mama and me! Mama finished Dovlatov, and they’re putting in plastic windows for us!”

I stopped in and the mother immediately asked what was up with my face.

“For the last few days, Irina Solomonovna, I’ve been wanting to just scream.”

“Zhenya, when you want to scream, come to us. There will be a concert on the radio Saturday evening. If you like, you can scream while it is playing. Just not very loudly.”

I laughed and ask her about happiness. She replied, “I am happy. I had love, I have a sound mind, and I have keen eyes to read books. I have a radio. There is Dima, and Dima has me. A helper comes and helps us for free… Why shouldn’t I be happy.”

Dima agreed, “Mama reads all day, and then she sleeps. She has no time to be unhappy. And I write poetry, and when I write, I am happy! Even if I never publish my poems and no one reads them, but still, I write! Yes, I’m lonely, and loneliness is a very unpleasant thing. But, my God, I don’t owe anyone anything!”

“I don’t have any friends, other than you,” his mother said. “But I don’t feel alone. I have my books! Shall I give you something to read?”

Irina Solomonovna has many classic works. I asked if she had any Chekhov, as that I could reread. Her expression shifted and she said quietly, “I have Chekhov, but I cannot let you borrow him, for technical reasons.” She guiltily explained that Chekhov had been her mother’s favorite writer. Before her mother died, she was bedridden for three months. She could not get to the toilet, could not wash up, but she was able to read. “And so she read Chekhov,” my neighbor said. “Piled the books all over herself and read. When she died, I had to throw away the sofa on which she had lain: bedbugs got into it and it stank terribly. And Chekhov… you see, Zhenya, he also stinks through and through. I put him behind the glass, and there he stays…”

I asked why she didn’t just throw the books away?

“How could I, Zhenya? It’s Chekhov!”

Shortly before trouble visited their home and our regular interactions came to an end, I fell ill with a high fever, and could barely get out of bed. I answered Dmitry’s familiar knock with a cough that I was sick. An hour later, there came another knock. A strange knock that was very persistent. I opened the door and gasped: Dmitry’s mother was standing before me, disheveled and holding out a bowl of soup in her trembling hands. The soup shook and spilled. I grasped the plate and she said, “Zhenya, to get better, you definitely must have soup. Eat.” She turned around and, groping the walls as she went, shuffled back to her apartment. I stared after her, dumbfounded. A person afraid of even walking from her room to the kitchen has navigated the landing to bring me soup. That is something!

That same day there came another knock. Irina Solomonovna, now with her hair combed, issued an order: “Give me the plate and spoon; I’ll give you some meat and potatoes!”

“I don’t feel comfortable, and I’m full…” I mumbled.

“What do you mean, don’t feel comfortable? You need to eat!”

Apparently, a round trip with a full bowl was more than she could manage, because Dmitry was already standing on the threshold. “Zhenya,” he said, solemnly, as always, handing me the bowl. “Your illness is a cross! You are being given the honor of bearing it! Today I wrote a poem of support in your honor. That’s what it’s called, ‘The Cross.’” Seeing my expression, he hurriedly informed me that he would not recite it just now, because, as he could see, I was suffering enough as it was.

I ate Irina Solomonovna’s concoction, practically sobbing with emotion. How could I have ever imagined that complete strangers – old and sick and themselves in need of some tender loving care – would be taking care of me?

Trouble

Then Irina Solomonovna fell in the bathroom and broke her leg. Hospital, cast, followed by bed rest. After they removed the cast, my neighbor was afraid to walk around the apartment, even with the help of a walker. Yet she made attempts, bit by bit. When she got used to it, I brought her crutches, but she refused to walk on her own, and basically would just lay in bed. I, of course, dutifully lectured her on the importance of walking to prevent further problems. But who was I and what did I know about her pain and fears? Once, in March, Dmitry came knocking. “Zhenya, Mama wants to show you something!” I went to their apartment and saw Irina Solomonovna standing in the middle of the hallway, wobbling, and without crutches. “Look, Zhenya, I am walking already!” And this gave me such joy, it was as if I myself had regained the ability to walk.

The next day, my neighbor again knocked. “Zhenya, come help, Mama has fallen!” My house slippers flew off on the landing as I raced to their door in escalating panic: “What if she’s broken something again!”

Irina Solomonovna lay sprawled across the room, and apologized. “There’s a threshold there. I couldn’t quite get over it.” We lifted her up. Nothing was broken. She was lucky.

After this incident, she again began using her walker. Fear had killed all progress. A part-time helper began coming from a Jewish charity. Natalya Viktorovna cooked, cleaned, and made sure that Irina Solomonovna took her medicines on time. I calmed down.

Then the pandemic happened, and I was off to the tundra for two months. I phoned her from there, and she laughed. “As usual, we’re sitting around. I walk a bit to the kitchen.” When I returned, Irina Solomonova was cooking again and only rarely steadying herself on the walls.

All spring, Irina Solomonovna never once went outside. I proposed accompanying her out into the courtyard to sit on the bench. She promised to think about it, and the next day I picked her up off the floor in the hallway. All talk of an outing stopped.

Every time I stopped by I would mention the pleasant breeze outside, or how the roses were coming up near the building. She took my hints, but kept silent. At the end of July, for the umpteenth time, not hoping for anything, I said, “Let’s go for a walk, summer won’t last forever.” And Irina Solomonovna suddenly answered, “I’ll just change my clothes.”

Instead of her dressing gown, she had on a colorful dress, stockings on her legs, and she had combed her hair and put on a straw hat (it had belonged to her grandmother, but was very well preserved). We left the apartment. She hesitated at the elevator, but got in anyway. And when we started to go out the door, she looked at me with such eyes that I became frightened. She’s so fragile, where am I dragging her? Will she manage, and what if something happens? But we took a step, then another, and soon left the bench behind. We took very small, slow steps, and her arm seemed to have fused into my elbow. When we got about halfway along the length of our building, she suddenly stopped and groaned.

“Zhenya, oh Lord, I forgot to put in my teeth. How embarrassing! I’ve never left the house without my teeth!”

“You haven’t been outside for a year, why are we talking about teeth? Thank God you remembered to put your shoes on!”

We laughed and kept moving.

She refused to go as far as the next building. “My good friend lived there, and she recently passed away. I don’t want to go there.”

So I asked about the friend.

“They’ve all died. Now there’s only me, the steadfast tin soldier.”

Heroically, we walked around two buildings, looked at all the flower beds, then collapsed on the front bench. We talked for a long time. She stammered, forgot words. “Zhenya,” she said, “I’m sorry, I just haven’t chatted for a long time.”

In the elevator, Irina Solomonovna said that this had been one of the best days in a long time. And I was glad for her being able to see summer. We planned to take another walk in a few days, but that walk did not happen. A stroke happened.

The next morning, my neighbor woke me with a knock at six. “Mama fell, Zhenya, come help!”

She lay near her chair in an inhuman pose that made me think she had broken in half. I saw a bruise on her arm and another on her knee.

“Did you get these just now?”

“No, a long time ago,” she lied.

The next day I woke at five to shouts in the hallway. “… Zhenya’s not home, and I have no one to turn to! Open up!” A few insistent knocks on the neighboring door, then steps across the landing to another door. “Mama fell! I can’t get her up by myself! Open up! Help me!” I started to pull on my jogging pants, getting tangled up in the pant legs. I stepped out of my apartment just at the moment when Dmitry was rushing about near the elevator and shouting through the open door of his apartment, “Mama, no one is opening their door for me. I don’t know where to run!”

Half of my neighbor was lying in the bathroom, the other half in the hallway. The water closets in our building are about the size of a phone booth, so how could anyone fall down there? With great difficulty, I squeezed between my neighbor and the commode and got her on the seat, then covered her with her dressing gown. She looked at me with eyes full of shame and fear. “Go,” she whispered. “I’ve got it from here.”

When I got back into my apartment, my hands were shaking, and I continued to hear the sound in my head of Dmitry banging on the door, shouting, “I have no one else to turn to!”

Half an hour later, he came to tell me that Mama had fallen asleep. I asked what he would have done if I hadn’t been at home?

“One time, she lay on the floor all day until the social worker arrived,” he replied. “You see, Zhenya, people have stopped opening their doors for me. I think they are completely fed up with me.”

And for the first time I was overcome with anger. I understand why they don’t open their doors. But chatter is one thing, and help is another. He’s asking for help getting his mother up off the floor. How can you hide behind your door when a man is rushing about in despair on the other side?

About a week later, in the morning, I jumped up after hearing cries from the neighbors. I made out the word “ambulance,” which scared me, and ran over. There were already doctors in the apartment. Irina Solomonovna was sitting on her bed, looking around fearfully.

“Who are you, a neighbor?” someone asked. “Has she been uncommunicative for long? Help us find her underwear! And socks, she needs socks. It doesn’t matter which ones; they’ll undress her in intensive care.”

Trembling from the chaos that surrounded him, Dmitry said that since first thing that morning he had been unable to get a response from his mother. It seemed like a stroke, and they’d need to figure that out at the hospital.

As I was putting socks on her cold feet, I asked her, “Do you recognize me?” And suddenly she smiled and said distinctly, “Zhenya! Of course I recognize you!”

Those were her first words of the morning and we immediately perked up. Perhaps this suggested a positive prognosis? The doctor looked at me with tired, blue eyes and said, “It’s too bad she needs hospitalization. Covid is everywhere, and she is old. No one cares about them (old people) there.”

They took my neighbor away in nylons, a short coat over her nightgown, and thin socks (I put her warmer ones in her pocket). No books, no warm sweater, nothing. And it was impossible to visit. You could only send messages. A few times I stopped by with a postcard from Dima and me, some books, diapers, and fruit. So that she would know that we missed her and were eager to see her back home.

When Irina Solomonovna returned two weeks later she was a different person. I feared that, after her stroke, she would be worse, but she was better. Her voice had never been so lively and loud. In addition to treating the stroke, they had thoroughly examined and diagnosed her and prescribed a medication regimen. I mentally thanked the doctors for “patching up” our babushka.

But the joy was short-lived.

After a few vigorous days, my neighbor suddenly began to wither and decline again. Her temperature rose. We called a doctor and he listened to her lungs and heart, said she had a cold, and ordered her to rest in bed and drink plenty of fluids. Irina Solomonovna became so weak that she could no longer get out of bed by herself to go to the toilet, and one night, in an attempt to do just that, she simply fell out of her bed.

At six in the morning, Dmitry knocked on my door, crying “Mama fell and lay on the floor all night!”

I ran over to them. Irina lay on the floor near the sofa amid smears of excrement. The smell was unbearable. Holding my breath, I lifted her up off the floor and placed her on the bed. Her hands and feet were filthy and I had to scrub her for a long time with a soapy sponge, as everything had dried up hard overnight.

As I was washing her, I discovered some fresh abrasions on her arms and legs. From fragments of phrases, I realized that she had fallen out of bed at about one in the morning. Unable to get up, she didn’t want to call out to wake up her son, because she knew he would run to me, and it was uncomfortable to wake me up at night. So she just lay there and waited for morning.

Dmitry said he would clean up everything on the floor. I changed my neighbor’s diaper and, spent, went back to my apartment.

Life had not prepared me for this. I got into the shower and scrubbed myself down with a sponge for a long time.

Then I lay down and took a long time getting to sleep, only to be again awoken by the neighbor’s knock. “Zhenya, my hips are in pain and I can’t bend over to clean the floor. Zhenya, we can’t leave it that way, please for goodness’ sake help us!”

I did not move. I didn’t want to go anywhere, to wipe up anything. I wanted to sleep. And then I imagined Irina Solomonovna lying on her bed, unable to do anything. Just as, perhaps, in my old age, I might lie, and no one would come to my aid.

And so I got up.

It turned out to be Covid. She had been infected in the hospital. She could not take an ambulance to the hospital and check-in directly. According to the rules, you had to first go for a CT scan at the polyclinic. They volunteered to take her there, but she needed someone to accompany her. By that time, I had also fallen ill (apparently, I got infected while lifting and washing Irina). There was no other option – we had to get Irina Solomonovna checked into a hospital. So at six o’clock, she on her stretcher and I alongside her, took the ambulance to the polyclinic.

At the polyclinic we were greeted by a coughing, six-hour-long line. The security guard said that people were being brought in constantly, that the corridors were packed 24 hours a day.

We endured the contaminated area side-by-side with coughing people until one in the morning. Irina Solomonovna courageously sat upright the entire time, never once complaining, something that was difficult even for me. She turned out to have pneumonia in one-quarter of one lung. If it got worse, we were told to quickly call the ambulance. “And the ambulance will again bring us here?” I asked. “Yes,” they said, “that is the normal procedure.”

The taxi driver home told us how they refused to send an ambulance for his grandmother until she was coughing up blood. How he yelled and swore as she lay for half a day, almost unconscious, in the corridor.

“The directive from above is not to treat the elderly,” he said. “It is beneficial for the state if they die quietly at home.”

Medicine didn’t help. Irina Solomonovna’s condition grew worse and worse. And so, after a long round of pleading, the ambulance finally took her away. I breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant that they might be able to save her. And also that I could lie quietly – by that time my temperature was 39° C (102.2° F) and I found it difficult to walk over to their place or to talk with the doctors. Dima had also fallen ill, and he needed peace as well.

Our respite was not long. Four days later, Irina was discharged from the hospital with supposedly “a positive trend.” The lab test for Covid came back negative. And then, after one day at home, Irina Solomonovna developed a fever.

I phoned an aid organization and requested that she get round-the-clock care. They said it could be done, but that first she had to get better. I called both the doctor and the ambulance a few times. No result. As soon as the doctor heard that Irina Solmonovna had only just been discharged, he refused to visit. If you’ve been discharged, that means everything is fine.

“Zhenya,” Dima said. “You understand we are just ballast for the state. No one is interested in saving us.”

How many members of this ballast generation were laid up around the country?

I wrote about my neighbor’s illness on social media. A neurologist I didn’t know, Mikhail, responded, and offered to come by and examine Irina Solmonovna. I asked him to bring a pulse oximeter so that, if it showed something, we could call the ambulance again. Mikhail measured her saturation and gasped: 75! [An ideal level is 96 to 99. Anything under 92 and you need urgent medical aid.] Irina’s fingers were turning blue and she could barely talk. I asked Mikhail to call an ambulance, because when a doctor calls you get a totally different response. I already grasped that, for them to take an elderly person away, you need to have someone right alongside them, insisting all the way. With my temperature soaring, I was not in a position to do any insisting. But the doctors that showed up turned out to be good ones. They were shocked when I showed them her hospital discharge documents: they had admitted her on the fourth and discharged her on the ninth… How is that even possible? They certainly did not complete her treatment. And now this was the result: two days later she was essentially dying.

Irina Solomonovna was taken back to the “covid hospital.” The doctors gave her minimal chances of recovery. I did not understand how she had endured so much, how she was still alive, until she said, “Dima cannot be left alone.”

One Happy Summer

And yet, Irina Solomonova survived. This time they treated her for a long time and brought her home Covid-free. I found her on the couch, thin and weak, but asking for new books. It was either a miracle, or simply her personal perseverance.

As if celebrating her return, the Christmas cactus I gave her had bloomed on the windowsill. It had never bloomed before, but it made an effort for the occasion. Once again, I was relieved.

Irina Solmonovna could not walk, even with a walker, but gradually she got some color in her cheeks and began reading a lot. They had a live-in aide, so I did not have to rush over in the morning in response to calls for help. Only when the aide was away would Dmitry call for my help.

“Zhenya, Mama needs to use the toilet, can you help me sit her on the potty?” Soon I stopped being shocked by such requests.

I’d slip my feet into some slippers, walk to their apartment – straight down the corridor and to the right. Sit her upright in her bed, lower her porcelain legs one-by-one to the floor. Grab her around the waist, and bring her to the bedside commode. She would wrap her arms around my neck (a real hug), and we would stand like that while Dima pulled her diaper to the floor.

We would then leave her alone and go to the kitchen. And, as if nothing unusual were going on, Dima would share his thoughts on happiness: “There is no need to march into life as if it’s a battle for happiness. Often happiness shows up all on its own.” He told me that a certain Fedya had moved into the apartment on the seventh floor, where some academician had died six months before. A young man with a wife and small child. And he had become friends with Fedya. So it seemed that, aside from me, there was another person in our wing of the building who was ready to help him and his mother.

Irina Solomonovna called out in a weak voice, “All done.” She hugs my neck again while Dima puts the diaper back on.

What does a person feel, when forced to stand, pantless, alongside another person and next to a full toilet? She seemed fragile to me, almost like a child. Vulnerable. Exposed. Not sure how to let her know that everything was fine, I gently stroked her back.

Two years ago, this proud woman would not even let me wash her clothes. How quickly and inescapably misfortune can erase boundaries, and how close and utterly natural can the bond between two absolute strangers become.

In the spring, Irina Solomonovna began to reminisce about how she and I had walked around our building and then warmed our bones on the bench. “I can’t do that any longer,” she said. And so I started to scheme about where I could get a wheelchair and some muscle, because I really wanted her to be able to again.

“I console myself with the fact,” Dmitry said, interjecting himself into our talk of spring, “that loneliness and weakness are not the worst things. The worst thing is not to inherit the Kingdom of God. Our life, any life, will end sooner or later. But we will have the Kingdom of God.”

We ordered a wheelchair from social services, and while we waited, the nurse tried leading Irina Solomonovna around the apartment while holding her arm. When it became clear that with support like this she could move her legs a bit, we persuaded her to go outside onto the bench. We latched onto her arms, led her into the elevator, and then – voila! – we sat on the bench. It was a warm, sunny day. Everywhere, greenery was emerging, and the air was filled with butterflies and delicious odors. Irina Solomonovna sat beneath a hat, squinting into the sun and smiling.

Dmitry followed us outside and I witnessed an awkward scene, a tender showdown.

“Ma–a–am,” he whined, “can I bring Petya out for a walk?”

“You may not.”

“But ma–a–am, please… he wants to go on a walk too!”

Irina Solomonovna wouldn’t budge. Dima shuffled away, sullen, leaving us alone. And I asked why she would not let him bring the clown outside. 

“You see, Zhenya, I’m worried that people will laugh at Dima because of Petya,” she replied. “It’s stupid for a grown man to walk around with a toy.”

“Not stupid at all,” I said. “Every adult has the right to an emotional-support toy. Myself, I have my cat Khoska.”

And I told her about my plush British-looking cat who wears a coat and goes with me on all my travels, who I cuddle with on airplanes, and whom I sometimes sleep with when I am sad, and how I take his coat off when it’s hot. Irina Solomonovna was incredulous. I dashed inside to get him.

“Here he is, pleased to make your acquaintance,” I said.

She petted Khoska’s paw and chuckled. Dmitry came over and I introduced him, and then, again, he asked, “Ma–a–am, can I bring Petya out?”

She looked at Khoska and me, sighed, and agreed. Dima brought Petya out and we shook hands. And Irina Solomonovna spoke with the voice of Petya (mimicking a clown quite well, actually), saying, “Hello, cat in a coat. What’s your name?” And I, in Khoska’s voice answered,
“I am Khoska, and I am from the tundra!” And we snorted and laughed like horses.

For the next half hour, we all sat side-by-side on the bench: Irina, Khoska, Petya, Dima, and I. To others, adults sitting outside with their toys probably looked a bit strange, but we didn’t give a damn.

All summer long we waited for the wheelchair from social services. I tried to find one among my friends, but Irina Solomonovna said it wasn’t necessary. She said that over the summer she would be getting strong enough for longer trips. I really wanted to take her around the neighborhood where she grew up, the park where she used to walk. For ten years she had not ventured beyond the courtyard of our apartment building, and much had changed; it had become beautiful and green.

Then, in early September, they finally delivered the wheelchair. I arrived with a rosé to mark the occasion, but Irina Solomonovna said, “I’ll pass; I have a stomach ache.”

To which Dmitry added, “I can’t, I’m on antispasmodics.”

“So what?” I said. “I’m on antipsychotics.”

The nurse chimed in, “I’m sick of it all, I can drink anything.”

We drank from crystal shot glasses, discussed medicines, the weather, and Russian rock. And then I dressed Irina Solomonovna in my funny pajama pants (it’s all that fit her), and somehow or other we rolled out into freedom.

Irina Solomonovna drank it all in. We took a group photo near the fountain: I had never before seen her with such a childlike smile.

Soon afterward, I took a two-week vacation at a sanatorium. I called my neighbors from there to find out how things were going and was shocked: Irina Solomonovna had been taken to the hospital with heart trouble. Dmitry assured me that he had spoken with his mother and she had been moved from intensive care to a regular ward. She had asked for her slippers and diapers, so everything was fine. Then the next day the nurse wrote to me that Irina Solomonova had passed away. It was impossible to believe.

When I returned and stopped in to visit, for a second I imagined Irina Solomonovna on the sofa, reading a book. It seemed as if she had only stepped into the kitchen for a moment. I saw her glasses, a stool with her medicines, an unfinished cup of tea, wilting flowers… And Dmitry wrote a poem: “Without Mama in A Minor.”

“Mama passed on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross,” he said. “It is a sign that God will not abandon me.”

A few days later, Dmitry asked me to help sort out his mother’s things. He said he wanted to help her pass to the next world. For that, I needed to find a piece of her clothing that I could wear, that would go on living.

With trembling hands, I went through her closet. So many dresses and blouses yellowed by time. There were some cute vintage outfits. A little black dress (that she had sewn herself), puffy, with a grey, polka-dotted flounce. When was the last time she wore this? And where did she go?

It’s difficult to touch a stranger’s things. Even more difficult is to realize that, other than you, there is no one else left to touch them.

“Zhenya, you have to pick out something that you will wear. Mama will be happy.”

I found a knit coat with a colorful pattern. I tried it on, and it fit as if it was made for me.

I also took a black dress; it was so very appealing, with barely noticeable embroidered rosebuds. And also the puffy one with the flounce.

I did not have time to go through the whole closet, but I promised to return and sort out the rest. Some of it could go to a charity shop, other things that were very old could be recycled.

The next day, when I put on my neighbor’s coat for the first time, I saw Irina Solmonovna in the mirror: wearing a hat, healthy, proud, and strong. I learned that she had been taken to the hospital in the pajama pants that she had worn while riding in the wheelchair. They disappeared there, of course. Well, Irina Solomonovna, it seems we’ve made a little clothing swap.

It’s now been just over six months since Irina Solmonovna died, and to this day it sometimes seems as if she is still here. As if I could be returning home and she’d call out, “Zhenchka, come over! How was your trip?”

Dmitry is being a real trooper. He still knocks on my door and those of our other neighbors, bringing some rolls or newspapers. And I look in on him to make sure he is okay.

He’s had a few panic attacks where he starts yelling that they’d take him away to an institution, that the neighbors were going to complain and then the police would come… I’d sit him down in his armchair and spend a long time explaining that he is a good person, that no one is going to bother him, and that there was no way we were going to let him be taken to some institution. That settles him down.

Dmitry endlessly writes poems dedicated to his mother, saying it helps him get through the day. Our Radio – which he has begun listening to – also helps.

Just when I was finishing writing this article, Dmitry brought me the complete works of Chekhov, the ones that reputedly smelled of bedbugs.

“This, Zhenya, is a gift for you from my mother and me. She would be happy to know that Chekhov is in good hands.”

The books smell of nothing but love.