24 / CHRONICLESn”What chicken gods?”n”That’s what sards with a hole in the middle are called.nWater makes the holes, and you can string them and wearnthem around your neck. People say they’re lucky. Tolik, mynson, recently found two.”nMost of all, though, he liked to show me the ancientnruins. As it turned out, there were many of them scatterednaround Akulinsk.n”Great places were once here, on the shores of the PontusnEuxinus,” he would say pensively, calling the Black Sea bynits ancient Greek name.nAnd we would sit down and paint. Squeezing thenviscous, thick, bright caterpillars of paint onto iny palette, Intried, the best I could to depict the sea, the sky, the rocks,nthe faded grass. . . .nAs for Matvey, he didn’t paint any of this. Usually he setnup his paint-box very close to the sea and painted onlynwater.n”Why are you painting just water?” I asked him.n”I’m trying to penetrate its essence,” he replied. “It’s onenof the four elements that make up the universe. Earth, fire,nand air are the other three, and I want to penetrate theirnessence. I need it for the canvas I’m working on now.”na I feel you understand what I am talking about. Ida, mynwife, loves me, but she doesn’t understand what I’mndoing,” he said to me once. We were riding through thencenter of Akulinsk—he in the driver’s seat, I crouched innthe sidecar. It was Sunday and the streets were busy withnpeople. “You see, I can’t stop thinking about the universe, Incan’t stop thinking that some insignificant number of yearsnwih pass like a blip and no one of these people,” he noddednaround, “not one of them will exist.”n”There’ll be others, don’t worry,” I said.n”Yes, exactly, the others. But these, I mean these peoplenwho’re now bustling about with all the thoughts whirling inntheir heads, and all their fears, and feelings—these peoplenwill be no more …”nThe traffic light went red in front of us and we stopped.n”… And I just can’t understand,” he continued, “whynpeople think and worry so much about trifles—a promotion,na stupid quarrel, to buy or not to buy something, andnyet think so little about what’ll happen to them when theyncross that boundary, although it can happen to any one ofnus at any moment!” He was very agitated now. “Who, tellnme, who can be sure, when awakening in the morning, thatnhe’ll live till evening? No one! The boundary betweenn’here’ and ‘there,’ it’s like a film of a soap bubble! …”n”Green light, let’s go,” I said.n”… Now one is alive, and ‘here,'” he continued, notnlistening to me, his Adam’s apple going up and down hisnscrawny neck, “… a split second, and he’s dead andn’there,’ and joins those who were before him …”n”We’re holding up traffic,” I said. Horns started honkingnbehind us.n”And maybe the grocer who sells me milk in the morningndies in the evening and sees Alexander the Great ornMichelangelo!”n”But maybe he doesn’t. Maybe there’s no Alexander thenGreat over there,” I said. “Maybe people just disappear,nvanish, as if they had never existed, fall through intonnndarkness and that’s it.”n”Oh, no, no! There can’t be darkness there! No way!” henexclaimed, revving the engine.nOne day he invited me to his place. “I want you to seenmy canvas and to have dinner with us,” he said.nHe lived outside of town, not far from those ancient ruinsnwhere I had first seen him. We drove along an unpaved,ndusty street, turned around a stretch of desolated land, andnstopped beside a long, wooden house which looked like anbarrack.nIn front of the house some scraggy chickens were kickingnup the dust. Sheets were flapping on a line. Between thensheets several children were running, brandishing theirnwooden swords.n”Tolik!” Matvey called out.nA skinny, light-haired boy with a bandaged knee brokenaway from the other kids and ran up to us.n”What?”n”Nothing. Just wanted to say ‘hi,'” Matvey stroked hisnneck. “Is mother back?”n”No, not yet. And grandma’s gone to get some cabbage,”nthe boy said, looking seriously now at me, now at his father.nHe was small and puny and looked younger than his eightnyears.n”Hey, mouse,” one of the kids shouted, “you playing?”n”Yes!” Tolik shouted back, “can I?” he looked at hisnfather.nMatvey nodded, “We’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”nA long, dirty corridor with many doors was dimly lit byntwo naked bulbs. A smell of stale things, food, cats,nmildew, hung in the air. Some of the doors were ajar. Anmarch was heard blaring over the radio somewhere.n”Our apartment’s over there, at the end,” Matvey saidnwalking before me.nSeveral darkened gas stoves stood along the corridor. Onnone, a bully character, naked to the waist, with tattoos onnboth shoulders, was frying onions. On another, an obesenold woman was stirring laundry boiling in a washtub. At hernfeet a smaU boy sat on the floor, holding a live turtle andntrying to break off its leg.nWe walked to the end of the corridor, Matvey opened thendoor, and I saw a room. A plywood cupboard, a chair, ansimple iron bedstead and an unpainted table near it madenup its furnishings. At an angle to the bed stood a child’s cot,nabove which a homemade rug hung on the wall. A shaggynwolf, with his tongue hanging out, and a little girl in a rednhood talking to him among the silk trees were appliqued onnthe gray burlap.n”This is my mother-in-law’s and Tolik’s room.”nSqueezing between the table and the cupboard we wentninto the next room, which was even smaller than the first.n”And this is Ida’s and mine,” Matvey said.nA bed with a cheap blanket took up almost the entirenspace of the room. Two shelves, piled up with canvases,nbooks, rolls of paper, folders, brushes, bottles of varnish,njars of paint ran along the wall over the bed.nA huge canvas, covered by a piece of cloth, was proppednagainst the opposite wall.n”It’s too big to see it so close,” Matvey said, “you shouldnstand on the bed and lean back against the wall, then you’lln