History

Four Elder Ladies

Rob McReddin

There stand an old woman in the yard, and she has a clock in her hands.
I’m passing by the old woman, stopping and asking, ‘What time is it now?’
‘Look,’ she says in reply.
I look and I see that there are no hands on the clock’s face.
‘There are no hands here,’ I say.
(D. Charms. ‘An old woman.’)

Hermann Bertholdovitch Schwarz. Selling agent’ I read in his card. The card slightly smells a sweet smell of gunpowder.
I look up and see myself reflected in double lenses of Hermann Bertholdovitch. I also see a strawy roof of his moustache. All the rest is so lean and insignificant that you can’t set eyes on it.
‘Are you Alex?’ the double lenses ask.
‘Yeah,’ I reply and stretch my lips beyond all possibilities. Where did this idiotic Hollywood smile come from to me?
‘Let’s go,’ the agent pronounces and lames along grey houses.
I place the greatest hopes on him. I cannot tell why, but it seems to me that he is the very person who’ll take me to a quiet small room in an apartment inhabited only by decrepit elder ladies. Elder ladies only. No drunkards, no hysterical babies and their hysterical mommies. I’m eager to get a cosy sweet home. Even if it’s in the communal apartment2, even if its windows look onto the yard, even if it without lift and telephone, but this communal flat is to be quiet and calm and inhabited by old ladies only. Calm old women listening to the radio, feeding sparrows with crumbs, nursing grey striped cats. I’m even ready for cats. Let them be.
‘Tell me more details about the flat,’ I ask Hermann Bertholdovitch. ‘Have you been there by yourselves?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he answers hastily, ‘a very pleasant clean flat. There are five rooms in it and the layout is wonderful. Without an official corridor. A good old apartment.’
‘How many inhabitants?’
‘Four. Four tenants. Four lonely old women.’
‘Really?’ I ask myself. ‘Exactly what I wanted. Is it possible I’m lucky at last?’
We leave the Kronverksky prospect and turn into a cosy lane. ‘The Tatar lane’ I read on the building wall. Well, if Tatar let it be Tatar. The exotic name at least.
We go upstairs and stop on the last floor near a large two-shattered door. A very common door. It is dirty enough and it is bedraggled enough with a massive postbox out of usage. Five ring buttons on the left. Five yellowish round plates near them.
‘Here we are,’ the agent announces, pulls the keys out of his pocket and tries to arrange numerous locks.
I’ve got a pause to examine the plates under the buttons.
‘Elisabeth Allier’. It’s the upper plate.
A little bit lower — ‘Magdaleine Mattsdotter.’ What a name!
There is an ordinary piece of paper under the third button with a laconic inky word ‘Chanteenova’.
The next plate won’t do at all – ‘Pheodora Akakievna Paleolog’! Just the Empress Pheodora! But the last as far as I remember bore no relation to the Paleologs. But still! Well! Pheodora Akakievna indeed!
The plate under the fifth button is empty.
‘Don’t put your mind to the smell,’ the agent says, ‘the old ladies are fond of fried fish.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I say in reply, ‘I also like fried fish. But aren’t they by any chance the Vietnamese?’
‘But why?’
‘When I was a student in our hostel the Vietnamese were fond of frying herrings.’
‘No, they are not Vietnamese. Though one of them is really of Asian origin. But they are quiet. Very quiet. You won’t notice and hear them.’
The last lock loosed its jaws, and we entered into the semi-darkness of an antechamber. Deathly silence was reigning in the flat.

How wonderful! How wonderful is to have a little and even not very clean, not very cosy yet, but a place of your own!
After a long wandering from one doorway to another, from house to house, from area to area, from city to city to find yourself at last on a weighed down sofa in a small room on the fourth floor, and this room’s windows look onto the roofs only! Only the roofs and the sky over them!
During the first three days I was just lying about at home and contemplating the rusty roofs and the blue sky. I left for nowhere, only for the kitchen to bring some tea and plain food. What reason to leave? What’s happening there, out of doors, I know it perfectly! I know the streets – I’ve been wandering along them for ages. There is nothing new there for me. Home! Here is the new thing for me! How to live, how to earn my daily bread, where to work – I can’t care less! Not now. All in good time.
For these three days I’ve never seen my neighbours.

That night some bothering feeling made me wake up. Made wake and sit up on the creaking sofa.
Over the darkness of roofs there were huge heaps of grey clouds hanging.
I’m not a smoker indeed, but I keep little tobacco for emergency. Just in cases lake this. I pull a cigarette out of the packet, take a box of matches from the table, leave the room and move towards the kitchen, all in the full dark. Sitting near the window I see a white smoke leaving the dark kitchen and changing into a narrow black stream in the pale light of the street. But before I can see this smoke it reaches my lungs through the throat, whirls and blackens there, and only then it appears in the darkness, and, a moment later, in the pale light.
But every time it reaches the lungs, my agitation increases God knows why. Why?
Maybe, the house owning affects me in this manner? Maybe, I’m frightened by the idea to loose my home, now, when I got it at last? Yes, these are foolish terrors provoked by this unusual situation. I’d better imagine something pleasant and soft, and go to bed.
I hate to go to bed.
And this is very natural — I’ve been staying at home for three days. I must leave the house tomorrow and go for a walk. And by the way, the food supply is coming to an end.
That’s it.
This is my terror.
I explain to myself…
And I find these explanations ridiculous.
They are ridiculous because they are logical. But as for me, I continue to feel unexplainable, unlogical terror. And if it’s so, according to the logic everything is ridiculous.
Oh, what a rubbish I’m talking!
Yes, sleep on it! I’d better go to bed.
I softly jump down from the window-sill and going to the corridor trying not to disturb the creaking floor. ..
Stop! Here it is! That is the reason! This is the heart of the matter! Something wrong in the flat! Something changed! The creaking floor! It was NOT creaking during the previous three days! The water was not bubbling in the pipes, the gnats were not itching over the ear, the tea-spoon was not tinkling in the glass, the clock was not ticking! Deathly silence was reigning in the flat.
I suddenly stop at the kitchen threshold and turn to the window. Something wrong with the picture behind the window.
Clouds!
Clouds were floating in the sky. Were floating yesterday, the day before yesterday, three days ago they were floating. Now they are paralyzed!
Not a sound behind the window! Not a breeze! The smoke of my cigarette is hanging in the air in front of the window, unmoving! Deathly silence is behind the window now!
Suddenly the whole symphony of domestic sounds avalanches upon my head. It’s just like they broke in my mind a huge bottle full of tiny bells!
The floor boards are creaking like masts in the middle of a storm, the gnats are roaring like bombers, the Niagara falls are sinking down the rusty pipes and loudly, in a kettledrum rumbling manner, the clock is striking against the top of my head: tick-tick. Bom-bom. One by one, with my heart in time, rhythmically and loudly.
I’m beginning to feel giddy (or I began to feel giddy? I don’t know is it the past or the present?), I see that I’m ready to faint.
I should hobble to the room and fall asleep. What a luck – the sleeplessness troubles are over.
Slowly, very carefully, touching the wall with my hand, I move into the corridor.
Here, in the end of it, just near my door there is an ancient mirror. Dirty, filthy, dull, without any reflections in it.
In a perfect darkness of the flat full of sounds there is the filthy mirror without any reflections. And in the depth of this mirror, in its dizzy and terrifying depth a blade-like thin bright stripe flashes. And its brightness is too grate to tell its colour.

I am laying on the sofa in my room. In a semi-darkness of the white night I can see a small and a very narrow-eyed old woman. She’s standing at the foot of my bed.
I think she’s a Buryat woman. Or a Kazakh woman. And maybe neither Buryat no Kazakh – I’m not an expert on Asiatic people.
She’s wearing a parti-coloured oriental robe. It seems that she’s speaking something. I strain the ear.
‘And then, when the victory was close,’ I catch a weak old whispering voice,’ when we deluged almost all the Earth with us the most awful thing happened. Perfidy! Just perfidy helped Juy-Khuan! Only his insidious charms could lock us in the mirrors and bring low to this worthless slavery position! But our time is coming! We’ll wake up! We’ll become strong, and beware then! The Fish will be the first to wake up! And answer me right now, how long you, a nobody, are going to mind not your but my business?’
I see that the old woman has some cat-like creature in her hands. She brings it close to my feet, and the last one immediately sticks into me with its sharp teeth.
I’m screaming hopelessly, I’m trying to kick it, but the creature holds me so firmly that I see clear: one more movement and I lose my toes!
I wake up covered with a cold sweat. My feet are on fire, I’m scratching them with vigour. They are bleeding now. I spit and rub the feet. Bloody bugs! I hate them! The cockroaches or even the gnats are better! But, of course, when you, still alive, are being eaten by the bugs your dreams ought to be wonderful!
The room looks like in my horrible dream exactly: the semi-darkness of the white night, the creaking sofa, and the roofs and unmoving clouds behind the window.
Hell! Hell! Hell! Where have the bugs come from? They were not here during the last three days! Where from? I’ll buy an insecticide tomorrow and spray it all over the room!
An alarm-clock is loudly ticking on the table. I’ve got a big red alarm-clock. I like it very much. I brought it from a distance. I’ve bought it right in Prague in one of the crooked streets of the Old Town. It is always with me. I even had it on me when I had no watch. I still has no watch but I don’t take the clock with me. It ticks too loudly, and the cops check me very often. They think it’s a bomb.
Now the alarm-clock tells seven past six. What a night! Heat, bugs, parched throat and this rotten dream!
I’m very thirsty. I’d go for a kettle.
In the corridor I turn the head involuntarily to the filthy mirror. It is dark as usual and reflects nothing. It seems only that some waves bother its surface.
I turn away from the looking-glass and go to the kitchen.
It is dark in the corridor. Where are the neighbours I wonder? In the country, maybe? How can they have been staying in their rooms for three days? And maybe they all died at once? Maybe, four dead old ladies are in the flat now, and I’ll know about this only when the smell appears. Then there will be the bustle with the police and inquiry, and in the end they’ll imprison me. For I poisoned four old women.
But think by yourselves — is it possible that four old women die at once in the same day when I occupied my room? It’s impossible. And I will not be able to explain anything. I have not left home for the last three days, no one has seen me, so I have no alibi! Here it is!
Thinking like that I open the kitchen door…
I shudder from head to feet and swear loudly. It’s because of surprise.
There is a light in the kitchen, and a woman is sitting at the table.
I’m starting to relax when I see that it is a young woman and an extremely beautiful one.
‘Good morning,’ I say feeling a little confused, ‘you almost frightened me.’
The woman is smiling and looking with her green eyes very lustfully.
‘I’m a new neighbour,’ I continue, ‘I’ve been living here for three days only. Alex is my name.’
The woman is smiling and looking lustfully.
‘And what’s your name?’ I ask her.
‘Phedya,’2 she answers with a grimace.
‘What a foolish girl you are, Phedya’, I think and smile with my idiotic American smile.
‘Very unusual name for a girl,’ I speak aloud.
She produces some coquettish ‘ha-ha’ only. What a fool! Who is she? She must be somebody’s grand-daughter, took one of the oldies from the country.
I turn to the cooker and light the gas. This moment a gentle woman’s hand touches my buttock.
I turn my head inquiring.
She’s looking at me and smiling. Looking, smiling and touching my arse!
A silent scene.
She gets up, comes up to me and catches desirably my upper lip with her mouth.
I feel an extreme excitement. She, I guess, feels my excitement too, and she starts to rub against it with her hip in the most shameless manner. I step back involuntarily, grasp the cooker with the both hands and scream. My right hand touches the fire.
Phedja takes at last her tongue out of my mouth (but look here, I could bite it) and, still smiling, turns slowly and sails out of the kitchen. And she petted me between my thighs as the farewell!
I feel my heart beating somewhere in my ears. Chaos reigns in my mind just like in my previous dream.
But just think! What should I do? I’m unable to think about anything. I must run into the corridor right now, catch up with her and calmly (the grand-ma hasn’t to know) carry her to my room. I really must her…
I run into the corridor as noiselessly as possible. She’s not here! Where? In what room? Maybe…
A warm wave spreads over me. I must be blushing like a rose. Yes, of course! She must go to my room!
I go resolutely towards my door.
A sharp ringing of a yellow cup over the door stops me. Somebody is ringing my bell. Somebody’s pressing a yellow-grey button with no name under it.
What a nasty sound!

Within a frame of the opened door I see twice reflected eyes of Hermann Bertholdovich.
I’m flying into a rage when I remember what time it is now.
‘Why, Hermann! Ain’t it too early to pay visits?’
‘Quite the contrary, it’s a right time,’ he declares, and makes imprudently his way into the apartment.
‘What on Earth!’ I flare up. ‘Six in the morning! What a business can we have together? The documents put in order, the money was paid, what else?’
‘We’ve got no business together,’ he answers not favouring me even with a look, ‘and it’s not six in the morning at all. It is not a morning and not an evening, in this place at least. As for the out-of-doors, it’s been being midnight for twenty-four hours.
Talking all this nonsense he’s moving along the corridor towards the mirror and trying to look into it this way and that.
I’m sniffing up – maybe, he’s drunken? But the reek of alcohol absents. Is he tripping? What on Earth! Of course, I’ll be happy to deal with drugs!
Haven’t seen anything in the dull mirror, Hermann Schwarz turns to me at last.
‘Where are they?’
‘Who?’ I can’t see.
‘The elder ladies.’
‘I’d wish to know it myself.’
‘Listen, you, don’t f**k my brains,’ he continues roughly, ‘the time stopped at last midnight. I hope, you are not going to deny this sure sigh of their appearance!’
‘He’s an idiot’, I think. Or a drug taker. Curse it! I really must send him out of the flat.
‘Yes, of course,’ I pronounce sugary showing my American grin, ‘of course, it’s a sure sigh.’
‘Yes,’ he nods. ‘And where are they?’
‘You see,’ I begin drawling, trying to think anything out, ‘they are here, but they are not here at the same time…’
‘You, why are you beating around the bush?’ he’s irritated, ‘it’s their common condition, you must understand it.’
‘Of course, of course,’ I agree hustily, ‘they always act like this, now here, next moment there…’
‘In short!’ he insists. ‘Who is here?’
‘Here there is only a charming girl,’ I see clear that my Cupids had flown away yet. Hermann is howling so loudly that the grand-mother ought to hear, and I’d better put off with the grand-daughter. ‘A beautiful girl with her grand-ma.’
I’m almost shouting having a dull hope for my neighbours support.
‘A girl? With her grand-ma? What a grand-ma?’
‘A girl with a wonderful female name Phedja.’
‘Why? Pheodora? Where is this old whore? Where has she crawled from? Answer! From what a hole?’
And at this moment this four-eyed half-witted idiot starts to rush about the corridor forcing all the doors.
I’ll have to hit in his face and make him get out. While I’m thinking if it should be the right hook or the left one, he forces my room’s door. The only unlocked door.
Yes, it’s time to act. I decidedly come into the room after him waiting for a sort of jealousy scene.
There is no Pheodora in the room, the possessed agent only. He’s looking around carefully, listening to, and it seems he’s trying to catch some scent.
‘I’ve never thought,’ he pronounces in a low voice, ‘that the exit is exactly here. Why, what a perfect idiot I am. What could be easier?’
Telling this, he opens the cupboard and disappears in it closing its door.
I turn the key quickly. The cupboard is solid, ancient, made of oak. He will stay in it till my return. As for me I find a public call-box and ring up the police. Or an ambulance car is better? No, I call up the police, let them think by themselves.
I look at the clock. It’s a quarter to six. How could it be a quarter to six? I’ve got up at seven past six!
I take the clock. It continues to tick loudly – it runs! It runs, of course, but it doesn’t tell the time. Its big hand hangs loosely and lifelessly on its pin. It points to six because of the low of gravity only.
I shake the treacherous alarm-clock violently.
Its small hand falls off with a slight click.

I am standing near the outdoor, I’m going to leave and call up the police. How many hours am I standing like this? It’s difficult to say. Why am I standing unmoving? I’m afraid that something could happen during my absence. I guess, I should tell Pheodora and her grand-mother about the agent in the cupboard. Phedja means Pheodora. It is a rare name nowadays. She must be Pheodora Akakievna’s grand-daughter. It’s very common when they name grand-daughters after grand-mothers. I think I’m right. But I should warn them about the agent.
I turn about. In what room do they live? I’ll knock all the doors, but I start with the kitchen.
Thank God! In the kitchen two very fine-looking old ladies are sitting at the table and cutting some roots. Thank God, I can see at last my survivals. Not four, but two, it doesn’t matter. They are so nice. I love them like my family!
‘Good morning!’ I great them with my thirty two teethed smile. ‘How do you do! I’m so happy to see you!’
‘How are you, Orgeil? Or it is you, Boniface?’
‘Elisabeth, concentrate yourself! Can’t you see, he’s a human being, not incubus?’
‘Oh, yes. I’m so short-sighted now! How d’you do, young man!’
‘I bed my pardon,’ I start, ‘but in my cupboard there sits a mad selling agent…’
‘Let this old whore Pheodora deals with him,’ replies the lady who had been named Elisabeth, ‘we don’t care about this perfect fool.’
‘He’s a complete idiot,’ agrees the second elder lady. ‘Not like his father. The last had invented one useful thing at least.’
‘Quite right, Magdaleine, the gunpowder is an indispensable thing, though, of course, it is less important than the menstrual blood.’
‘Don’t stand like a statue, young man,’ Magdaleine addresses to me, ‘clean that big copper.’
‘I would help you with pleasure, but I’d like to ring up the police first, or the ambulance at least. The man in the cupboard is really out of his shoes.’
‘Don’t worry, he was always out of his shoes. A man who holds in contempt the noble art of witchcraft substituting it for a science must not be in his shoes indeed’, Magdaleine is laughing.
‘Quite right, he usually must be in the cupboard’, Elisabeth continues, and suddenly shouts with all her might, ‘Pheodora, old whore, you’ve got a skeleton in your cupboard!
I love these funny old women more and more. Not knowing why I take the huge copper and start to clean it.
‘Let me introduce myself’, I say. ‘I’m Alex.’
‘Elisabeth Allier.’
‘Magdaleine Mattsdotter.’
‘I’m happy to meet you. I’m happy that you have appeared at last, or I began feel sad in my loneliness. You must be waiting for some guests, or it is a vegetable supply for the winter?’
‘Those guests who can appear here, they’d better go to the goat’s ass,’ Magdaleine says friendly. ‘By the way, was anybody roaming here?’
‘If to say nothing of the mad agent in my cupboard, I’ve met a beautiful girl Phedja by name.’
‘It is the old whore Pheodora,’ Elisabeth explains. ‘This pederast Schwarz used to make advances to her.’
I’m a little bit shocked but at the same time encouraged by the frankness of these nice old ladies.
‘But it’s not very usual for pederasts to court young ladies,’ I object timidly.
‘Ha! Is it usual for monks to have sons?’
‘This is a moot point, and as for Pheodora, I can’t agree with you.’
‘Why?’
‘She can’t be old. I guess, she’s younger than me.’
‘In what year was you born?’
‘In seventy one.’
‘Oho!’ Magdaleine starts. ‘Then you are one thousand nine hundred twenty seven years old! Then you are older than we too!’
I’m laughing in reply. What nice, humorous old women!
‘Listen,’ Elisabeth stares at me, ‘Are you here for the Fish too?
‘No,’ I answer, ‘I’m not a fisher-man at all, I just live here.’
‘That’s good,’ Elisabeth calms down. ‘You see, not we only need the Fish, this old whore Pheodora also needs the Fish. Imagine, she wants to be the Empress again. But of the both Empires this time.’
‘But not of the Eastern and Western ones,’ Magdaleine continues. ‘Of the Back and Front Empires of the Looking-glass!’
‘Flog her when meet, ’cause you are older,’ Elisabeth advises.
‘You can do the same with that narrow-eyed hag if meet her,’ Magdaleine says.
And at this moment I’m going sweat. My scratched feet start to burn. ‘Narrow-eyed hag?’ Is this coincidence possible?
‘How unusual,’ I say. ‘There was one Asiatic hag in my dream. She was telling me something about Juy-Khuan. More of this, her cat bit me.’
‘It was the female demon Chanteen,’ Magdaleine nods with understanding, ‘she was among those who were lucky to avoid from the Yellow Emperor’s charms.’
‘Who’s charms?’
‘Juy-Khuan’s. As you remember, he was the very person who imprisoned the looking-glass creatures into the looking-glass and mirrors. Chanteen is set on it now. She wants to discharge her peoples.’
‘She’s very patriotic,’ Elisabeth continues. ‘Patriotic-idiotic. Every time the Fish appears, she runs to the mirror and spoils the whole fishing for us. Wants to save the Fish. The wakening of the others depends on the Fish.’
‘And what’s then?’
‘Rebellion and revolution!’
Very, very slowly, from the depth, from the bottom of my soul, just like from the depth of the ancient mirror, a bright stripe flashes. It is a light. It is a conjecture: the Empress Pheodora, female demon Chan Teen, Elisabeth Allier, Magdaleine Mattsdotter… I know these names. I saw them before. In the books on history, in the terrifying stories by Poo Soon Leen, in the works on the Witch Hunt of the medieval Europe. And even the half-witted son of the monk Berthold Schwartz is quite clear now though I’ve never heard about him. I dare to ask only one, the last, question:
‘For what purpose do you want the Fish?’
The elder ladies exchange the surprised glances.
‘For what purpose? The Fish is the slipping and sparkling creature, nobody could touch it, but everybody saw it in the depth of the mirrors,’ they answer all together.
‘Yes, I see it now,’ I say, ‘but I have to leave for a moment.’
‘It’s not very nice out-of-doors now,’ Magdaleine pronounces, ‘you’d better to wait for the end of the fishing, then we’ll see.’
‘What?’
‘Everything will be perfect if we catch the Fish, if not, we’ll have to wait for all put in order.’
‘How long?’
‘From seven to seventy years.’
‘No, I’d better leave now for a while.’

It’s rather cold outside, but there is no wind. The clouds seem painted in the sky.
There is nobody seen in the street.
I do not know what to do. It’s useless to call up anybody now. I walk along the street and come automatically into a shop in the corner. Something wrong here too. I haven’t seen such a scenery for a long time.
Empty counters. Price-lists on them. I see astronomical, beyond one’s understanding, figures in the lists. I’m sure that it’s out of order, it’s impossible!
But vodka costs the same. I point to the bottle silently and give the money.
In the street I put the glass bottle into my pocket.
I’m walking drawing closer to the walls. Let me meet nobody! I’m afraid, they’ll speak to me some unknown language. I eager to get home, drink the vodka and fall asleep.
I come up to my house in the Tatar lane. There is some other door here now, and it is locked. There is a plate near the door: ‘Psycho-neurological hospital’.
I see quite clear now — I’ll never get home.
The worst thing is my favorite alarm-clock I left there, upstairs.
But, however, the devil take it! It is without hands!

October, 1998.

Comments:

1Communal apartment (or flat) is a Soviet institution. It’s a flat where you live in one or sometimes several rooms and share kitchen and bathroom and so on with other tenants.

2Phedya is a short form of a masculine name Pheodor nowadays. The name Pheodora its female form, but it’s very old-fashioned.