Something wrong with Rozanov

Ansable Vesyolie rebyata (Fun pals) – For the last time

Moscow, November 2003

An accident — that was what his father said. He insisted that the official death certificate, issued at the ZAGS based on the autopsy report, state exactly that: “accidental death.” Grigory had even considered leveraging his old police connections to pressure the ZAGS employees, but he realized he would have to tell people how Irina had actually died and beg for help. That was something he categorically refused to do. In the official stamped document, the cause of death was listed as “X61 Intentional self-poisoning by and exposure to antiepileptic, sedative-hypnotic, antiparkinsonism and psychotropic drugs,” branded from above with a blue seal that Grigory had accidentally smeared with his thumb while the ink was still fresh. All of it — the smeared stamp, the fine print deciphering the cause of death on the last damn piece of paper in Irina Rozanova’s life — felt like something defective and ugly. The code on the death certificate was a problem. According to the laws of the Russian Orthodox Church, funeral rites are not performed for suicides: to lay hands on oneself is to reject life, the highest gift from God that can be bestowed upon a human, and is considered the gravest mortal sin. Here, Grigory’s connections actually proved useful: through several handshakes, he found a priest willing to help — for a hefty donation to the church he served, paid, ironically, in dollars from the very stash of currency Irina had accumulated a few years ago against Grigory’s prohibitions. She was too young to have told her relatives what kind of funeral she would have wanted; that was, after all, the domain of the elderly, who prepare for death while still alive — saving money for a plot at the cemetery, an expensive coffin, and a proper wake. For the first time, Ilya wondered:how would Mom have wanted to be buried?Did she have such thoughts as she was slowly dying from poisoning, perhaps to distract her mind, thrashing in agony, so it wouldn't be so excruciatingly painful? Did she imagine the mound of her own grave, with two funeral wreaths leaning against the cross, black ribbons draping down the sides? Wreaths gradually fade and crumble: the hot July sun scorches them, the harsh February blizzards batter them. The wooden cross is eventually replaced by a slab of black granite. What coffin would she have chosen — ash or oak? What clothes would she have wanted to be dressed in? Which photograph would she have selected for her monument? They chose the one that stood on the nightstand by her bed. Grigory sent Ilya to a print shop in the neighboring district to make a high-quality copy and laminate it — they would hang it on the wooden cross, and later, once winter was over and the stone monument was erected in about six months, they would make a beautiful engraving from the original photo. The funeral began early in the morning on the third day. At 7:00 AM, a black Volga hearse pulled up to the morgue — clearly polished before departure but already splattered with November mud from the road. There weren't many people. Father, Ilya and Alexey, Aunt Lena, Mom’s best friend — a deep trace of emptiness was imprinted on her eyelids, swollen from crying. The Vetrov family arrived right at the start: Gennady, his wife, and their daughter Svetlana; some distant relatives, friends, and family acquaintances arrived later, at the church. The funeral service took place in a small church outside Moscow, which took them about an hour to reach. Grigory told Aunt Lena, "Look after the children," seated everyone in a black Gazelle van, and rode in the hearse with the driver himself. Ilya had tried to go with him, and even, unexpectedly to himself, burst into tears and screamed at the entrance to the morgue, but he stopped quickly, receiving in response only his father’s silent stare, heavy as a stone wall. By Grigory Rozanov’s decree, crying was forbidden, both now and later. Even despite the fact that a twelve-year-old boy was about to bury his own mother. According to classical Orthodox traditions, theotpevanie— the funeral service — usually lasted about an hour; in Irina Rozanova’s case, they were done in less than thirty minutes. Such was the condition of the priest who had risked, in his words, his reputation in the tight-knit suburban town to render the family this mournful service. After the mournful chanting, which echoed hollowly against the painted vaults of the church, people approached the open coffin, turned with its head toward the altar, one by one: everyone had to bow and kiss the deceased on the forehead, which was covered by an embroidered paper band. For the first time since that ill-fated evening, Ilya saw his mother’s face: in the morgue, they had applied a little makeup, adding an inappropriate rosy blush to her cheeks. Her eyes were tightly shut; her thin light-brown eyebrows seemed raised. Her whole face, white with some unfamiliar bluish tint, looked as if it had been forcefully pulled back against her skull, as if she were greatly surprised by something while fast asleep. Light-brown curls framed her flat cheeks — her hair was the only thing that still looked alive, filled with life; her body suddenly seemed a quarter smaller than before, especially her tiny, thin waist, encased in a snow-white cotton blouse. Her hands were neatly folded on her stomach, finger to finger. Must not cry,he repeated to himself,Mom, I promise I won't cry.How badly he wanted to say it out loud! To wake her with his babbling thin voice, like in early childhood when he would run to her bed while Irina was still sleeping, waking her to go have breakfast and drink sweet morning tea together. Mom would wake up quickly, and they would lie together for a few more minutes — her hands were surprisingly soft and warm, heated by the sleep that was slowly drifting away. Ilya stood by the open coffin longer than anyone else, looking at his mother for the last time. There were no tears in his eyes, no thoughts in his head; around him, there were no sounds, no air, and this church probably didn't exist either. Everything around him slowed down, became almost motionless; even the unkind, cold wind of late autumn took pity on him, ceasing to batter the dirty church windows. Ilya covered the spot on his chest, below his collarbones, with his palm: under the layers of his clothes rested the gold cross that Irina had worn for as long as her son could remember. Four of them carried the coffin along the cemetery road: Grigory and Gennady Vetrov in the front, Alexey and Ilya in the back. Behind them walked Svetlana, her mother, and Aunt Lena; in their hands were fresh red carnations wrapped in newspaper against the cold, and large funeral wreaths with black ribbons. Ilya stepped carefully, feeling the soil, soaked from the long November rains, squelching under the soles of his boots — sometimes his own, sometimes his brother’s to the right, sometimes the men’s in front. There had been a slight frost at night, but the road was still saturated with moisture, and grey-brown slippery mud clung to their shoes. Ilya was afraid one of them would slip and fall, so he dug his fingers into the ridge of the lacquered wooden coffin as if it would help him feel more steady. The road led deep into the cemetery, to the part that did not belong to the church: they walked along a fenced graveyard dotted with endless rows of identical graves, both fresh and abandoned. Between some graves stood sad, peeling birch trees; sparse dry leaves could be seen here and there on their branches. The wind stirred the yellow dry leaves as if the birch were waving a handkerchief after someone. The cemetery workers, three of them, greeted Grigory with a handshake and saluted him, then sharply, in one coordinated movement, intercepted the coffin and lowered it onto the straps stretched over the freshly dug grave. Now, into this rectangular hole in the freezing earth, they would place the coffin, and his mother would remain underground forever in this large lacquered box, disproportionately massive relative to her fragile body. Grigory took a handful of black soil from a pile of earth next to the grave and threw it down onto the wooden lid. The clods of earth landed with a short, dull thud. Everyone repeated this action in turn, according to the degree of kinship and age: first Alexey, then Ilya, Aunt Lena, then Gennady and his wife and daughter, then everyone else. From behind the backs of the Rozanov sons came women's weeping and the lamentations of some familiar aunts whom Ilya barely knew: "Oh, Irochka. Lord, Irochka, why did you do this to us?" To us?Ilya repeated mentally. In his head, the question sounded different:Why did you do this to yourself, Irochka? He found no answers; it was scary to even think about those answers, but thoughts about causes, consequences, and how to live with all this dragged toward his head like the thin black tentacles of an unknown deep-sea beast. They set up the wreaths and leaned them against the wooden cross standing at the head of the grave; the mound was covered with reddish sand, upon which they laid fresh spruce boughs, similar to those Ilya liked to lie under at home, near New Year's, when they brought the tree into the house. The scent coming from them was very similar, but here it immediately mixed with the musty, sweetish smell of cemetery earth. The women, without a word, approached the grave to lay red carnations on top of the spruce branches — in a few minutes, the sandy mound began to look like a blooming flowerbed. The only island of color among graves covered with brown, dry leaves. Ilya raised his eyes to the sky, grey as lead, covered by a layer of ragged clouds. Between the tops of the birches and the sparse fir trees, blackened by the years, crows flew, talking to each other in a manner known only to them. Grigory said something to the others present — Ilya didn't hear and didn't listen — and used a thumbtack to attach the laminated photo of Irina to the wooden cross. Prickly, fine snowflakes landed on Ilya’s shoulders and wind-tousled curls. The first snow of the year had begun to fall.

***

Thepominki— the wake — took place at the Rozanov house. Ilya helped the women set the table, not really understanding why they were doing all this. They ate in silence; sometimes someone would break the quiet to share memories of Irina that came to mind. Mostly, they said she was very beautiful and kind, that she joked wonderfully and knew how to treat everything with humor, even in the most difficult times. One of the guests at the wake noted that she made one of the best borschts in his life. Laughter rang out — kind, brief — but Ilya, hearing it, flinched and looked at the offending guest with cold malice, as if trying to punish him with a look for that inappropriate chuckle. On Mom’s piano, next to Irina’s photograph draped with a black ribbon, stood a shot glass of vodka covered with a slice of rye bread. Forks and knives clinked, people chewed — some with appetite, some reluctantly pushing cutlery around their plates. Grigory was silent and had not uttered a word the entire time. Sitting next to Ilya, Aunt Lena kept putting pieces of boiled potato with dill, sauerkraut, and a chicken leg onto his plate, but Ilya couldn't bite off even a piece. Mom used to do that, and now she is gone. Today she was buried. Whose fault was it? Could this cheerful, curly-haired boy be to blame for his mother's death? Could he have done something to prevent this? Skipped practice or not stayed late with teammates after it to cheer each other up before the upcoming competition? Returned home at least a little earlier to call an ambulance sooner or to catch Mom while she was still cooking the last dinner for her family? Could his older brother, Alexey, be to blame, who had barely appeared at home after entering the police academy? He could have gone home after his studies instead of to his junkie friends, and found Mom a few hours earlier. He could have saved her too. Father could have not gone to the bathhouse with his former colleagues to drink vodka and lazily fish by the river. He knew better than anyone what had been happening with Mom for the long months leading up to that day. He could have been there, he could have been a better husband, he could have not fought with her and never in his life raised a hand against her. So which of them was to blame? Ilya reached for his mother's cross on his chest, which, he realized even now, he would wear all his life — as a symbol and a memory of the moment when he had to grow up abruptly, in a single second. He had to find the strength to comprehend things a twelve-year-old child shouldn't even have to think about. Ilya was familiar with the concept of guilt, but on levels insignificant compared to this: when he broke his grandmother's favorite vase and tried to glue it back together with office glue, and had to apologize; when he foolishly was rude to his father and got the belt for it; when he told his mom he'd be home for dinner but returned an hour and a half late because he got carried away playing in the yard and lost track of time, and she was worried sick. It turned out one could be guilty for the fact that a person is no longer here. Her presence was the only thing that could create warmth in the house. Now it was cold — and would be tomorrow, and the day after, and months later. The temperature in their apartment was nearing zero, just like the number of dialogues between the father and the brothers. No one explained anything, and no one said anything to anyone, as if nothing had happened at all.