Free Pushkin Hills by Sergei Dovlatov

I find that disquieting. There must be a catch to this sense of normality. And yet what’s even more frightening is chaos…
    Let’s say we make it official. But wouldn’t that be amoral? Since morality will not tolerate any pressure…
    Morality must flow out of our nature organically. How does it go in Shakespeare:“Thou, nature, art my goddess.”*
    Then again, who said it? Edmund! A rare kind of scoundrel…
    So everything is getting terribly confused.
    Nonetheless, a question remains: who would dare accuse a hawk or wolf of being amoral? Who would call amoral a marsh, a blizzard or the desert heat?
    An imposed morality is a challenge to the forces of nature. In short, if I do marry out of a sense of duty, then it will be amoral…
    Once Tanya called me herself. Of her own volition. For someone like her, that was almost subversive.
    “Are you free?”
    “Unfortunately not,” I said. “I’ve got a teletype.”
    For about three years, I’d been turning down all unexpected invitations. The mysterious word “teletype” was supposed to sound convincing.
    “My cousin is here. I’ve always wanted you two to meet.”
    And why shouldn’t I meet a fellow drinker?
    In the evening, I went over to Tanya’s. I had a little for courage. Then a little more. At seven I rang her doorbell. And a minute later, after an awkward crush in the corridor, I saw her cousin.
    He had taken a seat in the way police officers, provocateurs and midnight guests do, with his side to the table.
    The lad looked strong.
    A brick-brown face towered over a wall of shoulders. Its dome was crowned with a brittle and dusty patch of last year’s grass. The stucco arches of his ears were swallowed up by the semi-darkness. The bastion of his wide solid forehead was missing embrasures. The gaping lips gloomed like a ravine. The flickering small swamps of his eyes, veiled by an icy cloud, questioned. The bottomless, cavernous mouth nurtured a threat.
    The cousin got up and extended his left hand like a battleship. I barely suppressed a cry when his steel vice gripped my hand.
    And then he collapsed onto a screeching chair. The granite millstones quivered. A short but crushing earthquake had turned the man’s face into ruins for a moment. Among which bloomed, only to die shortly thereafter, a pale-red blossom of a smile.
    The man introduced himself with importance:
    “Erich-Maria.”
    “Boris.” I smiled listlessly.
    “And now you have met,” said Tanya.
    Then she went to fuss about in the kitchen.
    I stayed silent, as if crushed by a heavy load. And felt his eyes on me, cold and hard, like the barrel of a rifle.
    An iron hand came down on my shoulders. My flimsy jacket suddenly felt tight.
    I remember I burst out with something ridiculous. Something terribly polite.
    “You are forgetting yourself, maestro!”
    “Silence!” uttered the man sitting opposite me, menacingly.
    And then:
    “Why haven’t you married her, you son of a bitch? What are you waiting for, scumbag?”
    “If this is my conscience,” a thought flashed through my mind, “then it is rather unattractive.”
    I began to lose my sense of reality. The contours of the world blurred hopelessly. The cousin-structure reached for the wine with interest.
    I heard the tram rattle outside. I pulled at my elbows to straighten my jacket.
    Then I said, as authoritatively as I could:
    “Hey, cousin, please keep your hands to yourself! I’ve been planning to have a constructive discussion about marriage for some time. I have champagne in my briefcase. Give me a minute.”
    And with resolve I set the bottle on the smooth, polished table.
    This is how we got married.
    The cousin’s name was Edik Malinin, as I later found out, and he was a martial-arts instructor at a centre for deaf mutes.
    But that day I evidently drank too much. Even before I showed up at Tatyana’s. And must have imagined God knows what…
    We got married officially in June, just before setting off for the Riga