The Get-together
©Irina Borisova

Nothing had changed during fifteen years, except that as each member came in the door, the ones already there were puzzled for a moment -- then a smile, a gesture, an intonation of the voice filled in the time gap; in a few seconds the middle-aged women and men sitting around were adjusted to what the others had now become.

Once they had been ten, a community of people based on the exigencies of a common job. Each for reasons of their own had found their way to the house on a proving ground among birches and antennas, covered with snow in winter, scattered with yellow leaves in autumn, cut from the world by a wall of rain or basking in the morning sun of summer. They worked there during the mid-eighties, in the decline of socialism, when nobody could suppose what might happen in less than ten years, when their antennas and radar were tuned to other proving grounds beyond the ocean, when their job was marked with a security levels, when they came on shift and were let in the cafeteria out of queue lest they should miss, God forbid, the slightest anomalies in the curves traced by their recorders.

Since then time passed, separate for each one and spent their own way, and common for all with its unique swiftness, as the linen hastily woven of many-coloured threads, and everyone came to the get-together as if to see each other and to chat, but in reality to find out what kind of changes had happened during these years in the lives of others, to try to expand their own observation perspective and to light up their own line in a common flow this way.

As previously, during times of common dinners on their night shifts, they sat around the table and their conversation, it seems, was interrupted only yesterday, all the difference was in the quantity of the events which had happened since their last gathering, nobody pronounced long narrative monologues describing these events in chronological order, all of them, as previously, talked about their routine as if implying that those around them should know the context in which their new life passed, and those around them were really approximately up on through accidental meetings and rumours, if something absolutely strange sounded, then as if by common agreement, a short question was asked and an equally short answer was given, then a conversation flew further from already a new starting point.

Their role functions also remained: their former chief, now the host in whose shining with perfect neatness bachelor's apartment they gathered, was remotely silent and suddenly witty, the former geophysicist, as previously, drank much and became drunk fast, kept close to the women and was sentimentally-enthusiastic, the former radar engineer, as before, talked with an impassive face of his interesting life holding both the men's and the women's attention, the only difference was that then when he had been slim, handsome, thirty five years old, he had told of his unusual in those times work on the side on the design and repairing audio technique for rock-musicians, and sometimes of his adventures on the Gulf of Finland beaches, now he had grown heavy and grey, he told of his business, salting, packing and selling salted fish and of summer adventures on the Spanish beaches. The women sighed, smiled, questioned, the geophysicist brotherly hugged a curly woman with the derisive eyes and did not forget to make compliments to the middle- aged grey-eyed beauty, sitting opposite and listening to the radar engineer with the same naive seriousness. The third woman was small, imperceptible, she silently smiled moving her eyes from one person to another and readily responded to the geophysicist's words addressed to her: "Let's have s smoke, kid."

They sat, drank vodka and red wine from a big paper box, ate sausages and fruit bought in a supermarket, were happy that the past fifteen years had changed only the outer circumstances of everyone, but not the essence of their relationship with each other, it meant that past time has touched only outer, not fundamental sides of life. They discussed these outer changes with pleasant easiness, as if something inessential, as train passengers, sitting at a compartment table, looking out in the window, naturally discussed the landscapes passing by.

They started from the place of their former job, the grey-eyed beauty who lived in a village not far from the proving ground, said that their former house was destroyed and neglected, windows were broken, the wind blew along its corridors and the lemonade factory where she currently worked was erected in the former cafeteria. The radar engineer sighed saying that he had not soldered out the enriched with gold microchips from his radar which it was possible to sell very dearly at an electronic market. The former chief assured him with a grin that even five years ago he had exactly the same thoughts regarding the cable entries the location of which was known to a narrow circle of persons, and he had even driven there with a friend to dig them out and cut off, but not only were the entries absent, but the channels too were filled up with earth on which the goose-food generously grew.

The former geophysicist listened to them with a happy smile: it was he who had initiated and organised this get- together, working at two jobs as a guard for the furniture factory and jeans store, spending long hours at his service in a solitude or in a company of people of quite a different circle, he experienced the shortage of communication, he had long ago dreamed to get together this way, and having also recently learned that the three of those who had once sat at the table in the house in a proving ground would never more appear close by, he felt even more clearly that the moment had come when it was necessary to meet people close in their spirit, relation or connected by common memories more often and to try to interpret life so swiftly leaking away in a kind of disconnected hustle and bustle. Lately he caught himself that, for instance, stirring his morning tea or brushing his teeth in the bathroom or entering a warm home from the frosty street he had suddenly realised that that same moment would never repeat itself, that time given out to him steadily shrank and that everything in life happened only for the last time.

Meanwhile the people around returned to the present the outline of which was already more or less drawn, the time of details came. The grey-eyed and the curly women talked of their children and grandchildren and showed their pictures with gentle and tranquil smiles. The host, the only one who remained loyal to the profession spoke of his current job in the area of satellite communication with a reserved pride. The former radar engineer described his autonomous existence, his fish company worked absolutely illegally, getting around the tax inspection, the sanitary control and other officials complicating people's life. He spoke of the technology of fish-salting and preservation, he said that at a wholesale yard where he rented rooms he was called a "herring-man", that he did not care what he was called, the most important thing was that he was on his own and did not depend on anyone. Having defiantly thrown his head up he said that he really often worked himself, without any helpers, in a rubber apron and gloves because timing was the most important in this process, if you stood gaping you might throw away the product. He also talked of total drinking and carelessness of people working for him, about great quantities of chemicals added in his production, and that dye-stuff and preservatives though officially approved and certified corroded his gloves and apron till holes and that he did not eat his production himself and did not advise his acquaintances to do it either.

This declaration brought laughter, exclamations and many questions what particularly was better not to eat and how to distinguish the provision of good quality from one poisoned by chemistry to which he impassively replied that all modern food was exposed to the influence of chemicals though sausages, of course, were beyond competition. He added chuckling that he personally did not see any special reason for worrying in this matter as all the people present had not so much longer to live. This notice of his and the glance which he darted around everyone brought various reaction: the host hemmed and filled the glasses, the grey-eyed beauty sighed and became sorrowful, the geophysicist tried to express his long borne thought about their age and the necessity of regular get-togethers for comprehending life. He proposed a toast to those who had been with them before and everyone joined him. Becoming sober of the importance of what he wished to say so long ago the geophysicist started to talk about one of those who had passed away, his fellow-mate Boris Petrovich, also the geophysicist of the shift in whose apartment they had always gathered on holidays previously, even not in his own apartment, but in the apartment of his either granddaughter or the relation, in the old district, with a tiled stove, with a big dog sitting in the hall. The geophysicist said that Boris Petrovich was really an educated person, that there was something in his image "from then", from those times about which everyone so nostalgically sighed now: the nobility, a constant, even if to shake him at night, benevolence, the sincere pleasure of communication with people. The geophysicist started to talk of memory, that it was the only thing protecting from transiency of life as looking back, though inversely directed, still helped to preserve the illusion of the endlessness of existence the loss of which was so much perceptible with coming age. He recalled the memoirs of Boris Petrovich's father, an officer of the Tsar's Army, then an officer of Red Army, a huge five hundred page work which they had all read at a proving ground, but the grey-eyed beauty interrupted him, having started to talk of her deceased girlfriend Vera, also their former colleague, a grey, rosy woman who had fussed around her late and only child and now left him, a twenty years old student, completely alone, but a twenty years old boy was still a child and it would be good to find out something about his father as a boy, of course, needed both support and help.

The curly woman decisively objected that nobody should be searched for and nothing should be investigated, better let the boy become accustomed to living on his own, many fathers did not need their children, and she gave an example of her ex-husband, the father of her two daughters, who had abandoned them to the mercy of fate in the full swing of inflation, it was good yet that she had managed then to find a job as a pre-packer at a supermarket. Not long ago that ex-husband of hers had given a lift home for her younger daughter with a girlfriend from their metro station passing by when the girls returned late from the disco and having not recognised his own daughter had accepted little payment from them. Hearing the sarcastic laughter with which the curly woman told them about her ex-husband's action, everyone in either event felt that the changes still have happened, so little she now resembled the previous laughter with the dimples on her cheeks for whom the favourite of all their team, the programmer Pashka, had been hopelessly in love. And having recalled how Pashka used to ask for moving his shift to get in the same shift with her, the host thought that many things really did not inspire as previously and though he himself still went and would always go to far away hiking expeditions, but if previously it had been breathtaking even to think that soon he would fly to that unknown yet spot on the map, now he immediately started to think if the hike-load would be realistic, taking everything else for granted, and the same was about his daughter for the meetings with which he had previously fought, having clenched his teeth, with his ex-wife, now he was often surprised to see a smiling girl with a smooth face in his door as he had absolutely forgotten that she had promised to come that day, and sometimes he even caught himself on a slight feeling of vexation that he would not manage to see an interesting program on the Discovery channel.

The host did not notice the gaze from another end of the table fastened upon him: the little woman, as previously, imperceptible among others, looked at him and recalled how much joy and grief he had brought to her then; everything had seemed to go right, once they had even been about to go to on a hiking expedition together, but a girlfriend- separator had edged her way into though that girl did not especially need him, but managed to do her business. And there had been bitter night tears and despair from which the little woman so much dreamed to get rid of, but having got rid of them she understood that even they were happiness. Then later, there was an attempt to arrange her life through her acquaintances in Finland, to become married to a widowed Russian with two children, that attempt had not worked, but everything happened unexpectedly at her current work at a grocery, at a department of wines on tap, where a constant client, a bald, not much to look at man, a port worker, remarkable for nothing, drinking much, but kind and with an apartment, stuck to her and though she had to put an effort to lessen his weakness for spirits, and several times she was about to leave at all, still everything had become eventually more or less settled, they got along and he treated her mom well.

The radar engineer asked what everyone heard about Pashka, and all of them started to talk at once, the women heard in different versions that Pashka had left for America, but had not settled down there, had become depressed, started drinking, returned and eventually started drinking excessively, had a heart attack and died. The radar engineer expressed some doubt saying that Pashka had never drunk too much, on the contrary, he had liked modern ventures with a healthy way of life and starving. The geophysicist, on the contrary, recalled how Pashka had brought meat to the proving ground in big quantities which his mother had carried from a restaurant where she had worked as a chef, and which the women had fried for all the company in the kitchen. The host said that he did not know about America, but once in the metro he had run across Arkasha, a former technician of their shift, who said that he had seen Pashka on a cross-roads driving a BMW, and Pashka was safe and sound and looked not badly, and everyone started to make even a louder noise, some of them said that it had been not Pashka, others doubted the rumours of Pashka's death and in the legends about America. The radar engineer pulled a telephone note-book out of his pocket, opened it and held it out to the grey-eyed beauty, looking round at everyone fearfully she said she was afraid to call, still sighed, dialed up the number in hesitation, asked for Pavel and her eyes suddenly flared up with joy, she started to speak rapidly and with agitation that they called from his former job, as they all got together and recalled him, and it was a pity that he was abroad, everyone very much wished to see him. She explained with enthusiasm: "Thanks goodness, as we all thought that he . . .", but the radar engineer has already pressed the telephone lever and expressively curled his finger around his temple, and the beauty still remained frozen with her opened for the continuation of the phrase mouth, and everyone roared with laughter, and out-voicing each other began to find out who was the first to start a rumour about Pashka's death, and the beauty who has come round fast, happily laughed and cried the loudest of all that they told her on another end of the wire that Pashka really worked in America and would come next time in February, but she was sure that he had died also because once during a booze-up at a proving ground Pashka had become sad and had told her that he had been sure he would not live till his old age and even had scribbled a receipt in his cups that he would not already remain in the world by the two thousand year. And everyone roared with even louder laughter, the curly woman shone with joy, and the geophysicist cried that someone most likely had confused Pashka with a really deceased hardware engineer from another house who had really had drinking binges even then, and who used to call in to the bosses for spirit as if to dissolve rosin for soldering, but in reality there was not a rosin in the glass where they had splashed some spirit for him, but smashed fruit-drops which looked exactly like rosin and with which he had drank the begged spirit as they had no time to dissolve in it.

And everyone got into happily-excited condition because they had been mistaken and Pashka turned out to be alive, that's why they had managed to win back at least one point and it meant that there could be malfunctions in the irreversibility of life, that miracles and the mistakes were possible and everything was not so hopeless, and as if in confirmation of that the host started to tell them about the technician Arkasha, that being sixty he had none of grey hair, had a toothache for the first time in his life and working as an electrician for Lenin's memorial cabin he managed to provide for his two ex-wives and a daughter, and when there was no money for beer he sold tickets to the free entry cabin following a well-know example. The host laughed saying that for five hundred rubles, cheaper than shoes cost, Arkasha managed to buy a car and even to go in it in summer to Astrakhan. Inspired by his own story the host again filled the glasses and toasted for their ability not only to survive, but also to live in this difficult period. The geophysicist started to develop this topic with fervour, he recalled that place from the memoirs of Boris Petrovich's father where the author's wife, a fragile creature, had sat in still decorated with carpets, but already cold post-revolution apartment of her father-lawyer and had clumsily knocked on a boot put on a shoe-making last, simultaneously persuading her young husband that previously empty, good-for-nothing life before the revolution had become so remarkable and bright after it. The geophysicist exclaimed how ridiculous our present attempts to worm ourselves into their passed away life and to debate what could be if and how they should do for us to feel better were, but our descendants would probably try to judge the same way about us twisting and thinking over our unusual historical period. They listened to him badly being distracted by the grey-eyed beauty who got down to do the radar engineer's hair claiming that he was not cared for and neglected and having become silent the geophysicist drank wine and recalled how he had held thick yellow sheets of memoirs with genuine corrections and misprints in his hands and the complete life of passed away people had seemed to him more real than his own one which still continued, he wished to narrow his eyes, to pinch himself and it seemed to him that if he had lived once before and had forgotten everything he was as never close to that, the current was hardly more real than the past and there was not a big difference between what was going on and what had been.

The geophysicist drank and looked at people sitting at the table, at the radar engineer who obediently accepted the touch of the grey-eyed beauty's hands and who said meanwhile how grateful he was to all the women who had been with him in his life, the geophysicist thought that a current instant was so short that it was as if it did not exist by mathematical laws, having flown off it gained sense, the details traced clearly in it as in a painting moved away from the eyes. From flown off instants the past formed, it constantly grew larger and larger, it merged with literary inventions and with memories of other people making up the thought-space around rustling expanses of which humble old people wandered.

Having noticed that the women were about to leave, the geophysicist, having stumbled, rushed to see them off, and the women simultaneously started to protest, ordered men to not let him go, but to put him to the couch to take a sleep, and then he, getting tangled in tabs, started to give them fur-coats. And having kissed each other with the men, laughing and coquetting the women darted out to the frosty street and went to the stop still shining with the smiles after all the kisses and complements said to them, little by little returning, each one, in thoughts to their own reality, to the children, grandchildren, the little woman to her not much to look at husband, to all those in whom their life had dissolved long ago.

The men who remained in the flat poured, drank and poured again, they huddled in the middle of the room with the glasses in their hands, they dissonantly hummed looking into each other's eyes under the bright light of the chandelier. They stood this way for a long time yet, they sat at the table, they went to the balcony and drank, then, having put the geophysicist who had completely cut his way out to the couch, the host and the radar engineer smoked and watched TV waiting until the geophysicist would sleep off his drunkenness and when the radar engineer also having become sober would be able to take him home and then go home himself and when everyone would continue their life after the finished get-together.