Horns of a Dilemma

Leningrad, pre-glasnost. The streets are treacherous with melting snow and thawing ice, the season bleak, the city chill, remote as a nineteenth-century aquatint of itself. It is afternoon, the light strained dully through voluminous layers of cloud.

I have been stalking my quarry for three days now, and it seems I have run her to earth. You can see her clearly through the window of this cafe, leaning against the stone wall outside the bookshop across the street.

It is time to cross the road and take a closer look...

It is as I suspected.

Tears are pouring down her cheeks and soaking into her pale woollen scarf. She doesn"t appear to belong in this place.

Inside the shop, a man with a ferocious black beard is fossicking among old books, rapt in contemplation of the titles in Cyrillic.

The two may not have anything to do with each other, but one senses that in fact there"s some connection. They may or may not be foreigners, it"s difficult to tell.

Her watery blue-green eyes and general appearance make it hard to say whether she"s a local or not. Similarly, plenty of Russians look like him. Perhaps their clothes are suspect. Although there is nothing startling about them, they don"t appear to be of Soviet manufacture.

Anyway, she is weeping.

Why is she weeping? At least one person wants to know, apart from me.

A faded, shabbily-dressed, weatherbeaten woman of indeterminate age detaches herself from the purposefully-moving stream of pedestrians to approach the young woman.

"What"s the matter?" she asks abruptly.

The young woman understands, and answers hesitantly. (So she could be a local after all. Does it matter? Do we need to know? But I think she is a foreigner.)

"N-nothing," she sniffles.

The passer-by is not so easily put off.

"There must be something," she insists.

The young woman becomes embarrassed, agitated.

The other woman doesn"t budge. Clearly she is not going to depart until her curiosity has been satisfied. Meanwhile, I have edged as close as I can. The two women are not aware of my presence.

The young woman begins, through a fresh spasm of sobs and sniffles.

"Well, it"s... my husband..."

"Got another woman, has he?" asks the older one, a knowing gleam in her eye.

"N-not exactly, no..."

"Then what...?"

"Well, you see... h-he doesn"t love me," she stammers, mortified.

"Is that all?"

"H-he never did." A muffled sob escapes. "He was in love with someone here, when he was a student. I think... he still is..."

"Well," replies the other matter-of-factly. "Put horns on him then. Simple as that! Why not just put horns on him? You"ll feel much better then."

The young woman is overcome. What on earth is this woman suggesting? Her face crimsons with comprehension. Confusion registers in her expression.

How could she think of such a thing? Besides, it"s not as if he"s...done anything. Not as far as she knows, that is. Anyway, that"s not the point. She wants him to love her. That wouldn"t change the way he feels about her, doing what this woman says...

(This is what I think she thinks. You see, it is a compulsion of mine to decipher the workings of people"s minds.)

"Ah," the other woman is saying, "life"s like that. During the war, there were real stories I could tell you. Why, even me. My daughter. Never saw the father again. He went away, never came back. Killed at the front, most probably... But I don"t cry about it. I have my daughter, we have our lives to live. Why waste tears?"

She glances sharply at the stranger.

"You feel better now, don"t you? Just do as I say," she advises firmly. "Put horns on him." Brusquely she squeezes the young woman"s hand and merges with the briskly-moving current of passers-by.

The young woman with watery eyes looks around, suddenly lost. Where did the bluff, kindly woman go? Had she imagined her entirely? Instead, she sees that on the frozen pavement near her feet a man lies on his back, out cold. A half-smoked cigarette, the tip still glowing, is held loosely between his lips. His face is unshaven. His arms are loosely crooked across his chest, his knees are bent upwards in an inverted V. She didn"t see him fall. She has heard about such people, taking a short-cut to oblivion via the vodka bottle. She even imagines she can understand why.

It is like a dream. She isn"t sure what"s real any more. She can do nothing for the man. He is at a stage past caring.

So preoccupied is she with the inert figure at her feet that she still doesn"t notice me. I have moved close enough to touch her, if I wanted to. But I don"t need to touch her yet. My efforts are concentrated instead on making her a gift of an idea. What is the idea, you ask? Perhaps you will understand if I show you what she does with it.

The young woman glances over her shoulder through the frosty bookshop window at the bearded man. (So it seems they are connected.) Her imagination does a small involuntary skip, and for a fleeting instant horns appear and disappear on his head.

What kind were they, quick! She only caught a glimpse of them. Too late! But what kind of horns would suit him best? Bull horns, like in the Spanish arena? No, too Mediterranean. Goat horns? Tempting, yes, but no. Buffalo horns? No, wrong type. Something dense and foresty. Stag horns? Getting better. That"s it! Moose horns!

She fixes a pair of moose horns on his head and begins to giggle. Soon she is laughing helplessly until the tears begin to flow again. Nobody stops to ask her why she is laughing.

The bearded man emerges from the shop with a bundle of roughly-wrapped books under his arm.

"What"s so funny?" he asks gruffly. (He is speaking a language I understand imperfectly, but I get the picture well enough. Here, I shall improvise.)

"Well?"

"Oh, nothing," she chortles. "That woman, you, life!" She laughs again. He doesn"t understand. She can see him puffing up with indignation.

"Well, I"m glad you find me such a joke," he begins peevishly.

"Oh," she says, " you wouldn"t understand, but the thought of you with horns...!"

His face flushes deeply. His features are heavy with self-righteous rage. In that instant, she wonders if she ever loved him at all. She wonders why it seemed so important for him to love her.

She begins almost to dance along the street, perilously close to losing her footing on the thin ice. She imagines horns sprouting at random from the heads of passing men and giggles to herself at her own invention. "It"s easy to put horns on them," she thinks. "I could do it to all of them if I wanted to."

Behind her in the distance, her husband"s voice (this must be the husband) reaches her as a bellow.

"Have you taken leave of your senses?" he rumbles.

"You can"t catch me," she shrieks. "I"m fast, I"m free! You"ll never catch me now!"

She imagines she hears the thud of feet (or is it hooves?) pursuing her, and lets out a small shriek of anticipation. Maybe at last, just once, he will acknowledge that she matters more to him than books and scholarship and the academy. In her mind she is not, at that moment, the unhappy and neglected student-wife of an aspiring professor, but a reckless and unlikely Daphne being pursued improbably over ice by an incongruously horned Apollo. Such is the capacity of unconscious desires to assert themselves irrespective of circumstance. And you no doubt wonder how I know her so intimately. Let me tell you only this. She is closer to me than she will ever be to him.

Had she looked back in time, she would have seen a bearded, hornless Dostoevskian figure turn a corner, a bundle tucked beneath his arm, and become lost to view.

As you see, the whole idea got out of hand, and so did she. I had to let her go, although she hasn"t seen the last of me.

It isn"t easy, being a writer in Russia.