KATANIA  When I was a child, I had a family of doll people. They lived in a red shoebox painted to look like a house, with a dark-brown roof and yellow awnings. Inside the house, there was a set of plastic toy furniture, plus some random household items: a matchbox television, a mirror crafted from a piece of foil, and a thick rug secretly cut out of my old sweater. I also had a few plastic farm animals—a cow, a pig, a goat, and a very large (larger than the cow) chicken, which lived outside the shoebox. The family itself consisted of the following individuals: One pretty little doll, made of soft plastic, with painted-on hair and dress, who, in my games, represented me. One naked, bald, vaguely female doll, made of hard shiny plastic, whom I designated the mother. I made her a Greek-style tunic out of an old handkerchief and glued a lock of my own hair to her head. Two tiny baby dolls of unidentified gender, made of hard, matte plastic, and wrapped in blankets of the same kind of plastic. And one hedgehog with a human body, dressed in a long skirt and apron, with tight, curly hair covered with a kerchief, to whom I assigned the role of grandmother. What my family lacked was a father, but a father doll was a true rarity. Nobody I knew had a father doll. Most of the kids I knew didn’t even have fathers. I didn’t have a father; mine died when I was two. My family consisted of my mother, my grandmother, and me. That was perfectly normal. Fathers had a tendency to die, or to lose themselves to alcoholism, or to simply “up and go.” Our next-door neighbor up and went to the Far North one night. He announced his decision by screaming on the staircase, “I’m sick of you all!” “So you’re just gonna up and go, huh? Well, good riddance!” his wife screamed back. But his three-year-old daughter cried for weeks. I could hear her through the thin walls of our apartment. Fatherlessness was so common that even the Soviet authorities were aware of it. The Soviet authorities were famous for being protective of their citizens, so whenever a certain item was scarce they did their best to make that scarcity less conspicuous. My mother, who used to write school textbooks, was prohibited from even mentioning those scarce items. When composing a math problem, for instance, she couldn’t mention bananas, because they were impossible to get in most parts of Russia. She could use apples, but not bananas. Chicken, but not beef. Mothers, but not fathers. She was allowed to write, “A mother gave her three children six apples and asked them to divide the fruit equally,” but forbidden to write about a father asking his kids to do the same thing with bananas. She told me this when I was in my teens, and I didn’t believe her. I combed through my old textbooks to try to prove her wrong, but I couldn’t find a single mention of a father, beef, or bananas. FROM THE ISSUEBUY AS A PRINTE-MAIL THIS So imagine my surprise, my joy, when I suddenly got a father doll as a gift! My uncle had bought it for me on a business trip to Bulgaria. It was a beautiful doll, just the right size, a little shorter than the mother and the grandmother but taller than the kid. It had a hard body and a face made of soft, squeezable plastic, painted in masculine shades of brown. Brown eyes, brown lips, brown nostrils. Brown hair made out of some very hairlike material. A perpetual warm brown smile. It was dressed in what appeared to be a Bulgarian national costume of felt hat and boots, rumpled cotton pants, embroidered shirt, and a leather belt. This was exactly how I imagined an ideal father would look. The father doll had only one imperfection—a bad hip. His left leg wouldn’t stay in place. It kept detaching from his torso and dangling in his pants. But I loved the doll so much that I didn’t see even this as a shortcoming until Tania pointed it out. Tania and I had become friends exactly ten months before the arrival of the father doll. It was September, the first week of school, and Tania threw a tantrum during the annual Tea with Parents. We were all crowded into our small classroom, with our parents crouching over our kid-size desks. The school cafeteria provided us with hot tea, but the parents were required to bring pastries and cakes, and also a cup and a saucer for their child and themselves. Tania’s mother had apparently brought the wrong cup. “I wanted the blue one!” Tania screamed. “The blue one with the gold rim! The blue one! The blue one!” Her voice rose so high that I kept an eye on my cup, hoping it would break, the way cups sometimes did in movies when somebody screamed like that. But then I realized that it was far more interesting to watch Tania. She had fair skin, covered with pale freckles. She had turned tomato red, but her freckles had stayed the same color—I’d never seen anything like that. She closed her eyes, and squeezed her hands into fists, and a vein throbbed on her temple, bright blue and fat. Everybody else in the room fell silent. Our teacher was very young—barely out of college—and she had no idea what to do. But Tania’s mother simply stood up and smiled and said that she’d go home and get the blue one. She was a tall woman, with a large soft body and a fair complexion like Tania’s. Even her hair was the same color as her daughter’s, only hers was fixed in a bun on the back of her head, and Tania’s was plaited into a thick braid. Tania’s tantrum ended as soon as her mother was out the door. She opened her eyes and sat down, and her skin quickly faded back to pale pink. The teacher asked if she was O.K., and she nodded. Everybody started chatting, pouring tea, and cutting cake again, as if the tantrum had never happened. But I couldn’t take my eyes off Tania. She noticed my admiring stare and smiled at me with a warm and very grownup expression. “Don’t you just hate it when you have to drink your tea from the wrong cup?” she said. I nodded respectfully, as if I were very familiar with the difficulty of this situation. But what I admired was her courage. I would never have had the guts to throw a tantrum. And my mother would never have taken it so calmly. Just a few days before, she had kicked me in the ribs simply for crawling around on the floor and meowing while she was on the phone. I didn’t blame her. I had tried to meow into the receiver, even though I knew that she was talking to her boss. After that tea, Tania and I started walking home together. We lived in the same building, which was only five minutes away from school. It was nine stories high and extremely long—it looked like a skyscraper lying on its side. There were twelve entrances. I lived in No. 2. Tania lived in No. 9. Across the street from our building there was an abandoned apple orchard. We often stopped there on the way home. We’d climb one of the trees and sit swinging our legs and talking about school, about our favorite cartoons, about our dolls. But I could never stay for more than fifteen minutes or so, because my grandmother was waiting for me at home. Once, I complained to Tania about what a pest my grandmother was. Tania said that her grandmother was dead. “She died a year ago. Her lungs didn’t work. She was breathing like this.” Tania did a very good impression of rhythmic wheezing. “My grandfather died of a stroke,” I said. “His whole body was paralyzed. He couldn’t even go to the bathroom by himself. The nurse had to stick her hand up his butt and get the poop out.” “My grandmother’s sister died of a stroke, too,” Tania said. “She was in a coma. I don’t think she pooped at all.” “How did your father die?” I asked. I knew that Tania didn’t have a father, and for some reason I assumed that he was dead, like mine. “My father isn’t dead!” Tania shrieked, her face turning red the way it had at the Tea with Parents. “He’s away on a business trip! In America. He misses me every day!” I was so stunned by her sudden change of mood that I couldn’t process her words. I just stood there staring at her. She swung her schoolbag as if she were about to hit me on the head with it, but changed her mind and ran off toward her entrance. I went home, crying. I cried on and off for the rest of the day. My grandmother and then my mother kept asking me what was wrong, but I wouldn’t say. I didn’t really understand it myself. Perhaps what I was feeling was shame—not just the mortification of having made the wrong assumption about Tania’s father but the deeper, sickening humiliation of being excluded from the élite group of children who had fathers. The next day at school, I tried to avoid Tania. I did my best not to look in her direction during classes; I didn’t talk to her at recess; I sat at the opposite end of the table at lunch. And at the end of the day I went into the bathroom and waited there until everybody had gone home. It didn’t work. When I finally came out, I saw Tania waiting for me on the school porch. I considered pretending that she wasn’t there, but then decided that that would be too silly. We walked home together. After that incident, we never talked about our families again, but we did talk about our dolls. I would boast about how many animals mine had. “A cow, a pig, a really huge chicken!” And Tania would say, with a dismissive smile, “Mine live in a city. There is no space for farm animals. Their names are Sigrid, Amaranta, and Arabella. Amaranta and Arabella are scientists, but Sigrid is an actress.” One day Tania invited me over. I hesitated. She had a key hanging around her neck on a long blue ribbon. A lot of kids in my class had their apartment key hanging from their neck. They were supposed to go home, let themselves in, heat up their dinner, and wait for their mother to come home. They knew how to turn on a stove; they didn’t worry that the match would burn down too quickly and hurt their fingers. They knew how to pour soup from the pot into their bowl without splashing it all over the floor. I couldn’t imagine ever becoming that accomplished. My grandmother was always waiting for me at home. She would watch from the window, and as soon as she saw me she’d put dinner on the stove and rush to open the door. I didn’t have to ring the bell, let alone unlock the door myself. I was afraid that if I went to Tania’s apartment I would somehow betray my incompetence. But if I didn’t go I might betray my incompetence in an even worse way. I went. Tania unlocked the door with admirable skill. I said that I needed to call my grandmother. Tania pointed to the phone, which stood on a little shelf next to the coatrack. I called and told a complicated lie about an after-school gymnastics class. I hoped the gymnastics thing would impress my grandmother, who was always telling me that if I didn’t do gymnastics I would grow up with a crooked back. The lie worked, and I turned to Tania, expecting her to be impressed with my ingenuity. What I saw instead was a cold, mocking expression. Her apartment was smaller than ours. Only one room—we had three. The TV was smaller, and the furniture shabbier, and the dishes in the cupboard didn’t gleam the way ours did. “Do you want some of my dinner?” Tania asked. I imagined her asking me to light a match or ladle the soup and shook my head. “Good,” she said. “I’m not hungry, either. Do you want to see my dolls?” I did. Very much so. Tania’s dolls lived in a shoebox, too. Only her shoebox was white and stood perched on the edge of a large dresser. “It’s a skyscraper,” she explained. “Like they have in America.” The dolls didn’t have a lot of furniture, but they had a plastic airplane placed on a little shelf by the box. A tiny ladder led from inside their “apartment” to the plane. “They need it when they go on business trips. Or, if there is a fire in the building, they can just get in the plane and fly off.” “Where are they now?” I asked. “Arabella is away on a business trip, but I can show you Amaranta and Sigrid.” Amaranta was sitting in the bathtub. She looked a lot like my mother doll, but bigger and less bald. Sigrid was still in bed. Her head rested on a tiny pillow and her body was covered with a handkerchief. She was a tiny blonde, made of polished wood. She was beautiful and thin and foreign in a way my dolls could never hope to be. “She’s very pretty,” I said. “She’s talented, too,” Tania said. As I was putting on my shoes to go home, I spotted another little doll stuck behind the shoe rack. This one was plastic. She had broken arms and a smashed-in face. I figured that this was Arabella. The next time, we went to my place. My grandmother gave us barley soup and chicken with mashed potatoes. I was a little worried that Tania wouldn’t like the food and would throw a tantrum or something, but she ate quickly and gracefully, said “Thank you,” and carried her dishes to the sink when she was done. My grandmother was delighted with her. After dinner, I led Tania into my room. She took everything in with a quizzical expression, as if making an inspection. “So you have your own room?” she asked. I nodded. I was suddenly impressed by the fact that I had my own room. “And you have a balcony?” I said, “Yeah.” She walked over to the rug that was hanging on the wall above my bed and yanked at its tassels. “And you have rugs and everything,” she said. I nodded and yanked at the tassels, too. “You’re rich, aren’t you?” I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know whether we were rich or not. Tania seemed to like my dolls. She took them out of the box one by one and nodded in approval. She smiled at the grandmother. “Hedgehog! That’s clever,” she said. She petted my pig, she stroked the cow’s back. “So, they’re farmers, right? They live in a village?” she asked. I had never thought about this. They had a barn and all those animals—so I supposed they were farmers and did live in a village. “Listen,” Tania said. “Let’s give your animals a bath.” But then my grandmother came in and said that it was time for Tania to go home and for me to do my homework. “See this key?” Tania said, pointing to the key around her neck. “I can come and go as I please. But you, you’re stuck with your grandmother. You may be rich, but I have my freedom.” Even then, at seven, I found the pathos of her words nauseating, but I was more pleased than angered. After she left, I looked around my room, at the balcony door, the rug, the nice furniture, and the red shoebox full of well-to-do farmers, and I felt enormous satisfaction. I didn’t have a key, but so what? I guess I didn’t care that much about freedom. My newfound identity was shattered as soon as my mother got home. I asked her if we were rich. She laughed for two full minutes, then bent over and pointed to her feet. “Look at my boots,” she said. “Do they look like the boots of a rich person to you?” The boots were scuffed, discolored, and covered with brown stains. Later that night, on my way to the bathroom, I overheard my mother and grandmother talking about Tania. “What do you think of that girl?” my mother asked. “I don’t know.” “Apparently she told Katya we were rich.” “Rich?” Now it was my grandmother’s turn to laugh. Then she blew her nose and said, “She seemed polite.” “Polite! Huh! I wish you could see how she treats her mother.” And my mother told my grandmother about the Tea with Parents tantrum. After that, she started whispering. I couldn’t hear anything. Fortunately for me, my grandmother, who was partly deaf, couldn’t hear, either. My mother had to switch back to her normal volume. She said she’d heard that Tania’s father had defected. I heard my grandmother gasp. “Sveta’s aunt said that he went on a business trip to the States and stayed. Just like that. Went to the authorities there and asked for refugee status or something. Can you imagine not caring about your wife and kid at all? Sveta’s aunt said that Tania’s mother was taken in for questioning. I’m sure she hadn’t even known about his plans.” “Of course she hadn’t!” my grandmother said. “Still, she got fired from her job.” “That poor, poor woman.” After that they started talking about our leaking fridge, and whether it was time to call somebody to fix it, and I tiptoed back to my room. I didn’t entirely understand what they’d been talking about, but I gathered that what Tania’s father had done was something hateful and ugly. I felt sorry for Tania, but I also gloated a little. My father might have died, but at least he hadn’t done it on purpose. In January, Tania proposed that we create a country for our dolls. We named it Katania—a combination of our names, Katya and Tania—and decided that it should have only two inhabited places: a village called Katushki and a city called T-City. The next step was to create a map. We took four huge sheets of paper, taped them together, and started drawing. We painted the road from Katushki to T-City the usual brown color of roads. It meandered through the green of the woods, got almost as far as the ocean, made a loop, and returned to a bridge across the river. To make the river, we cut a wavy strip of foil from a chocolate wrapper and glued it to the map. The bridge was a simple strip of gray paper that we glued over the river. We weren’t happy with the bridge, because the yellow glue seeped out from under the edges and spilled all over the river. “You know what it looks like?” I asked Tania, pointing to the glue stains. “Snot!” she said, and I laughed, because that was exactly what I was thinking. We spent months crouching over that map, drawing and redrawing the contours, changing or enhancing the colors, until our hands turned glossy and dark from all the paint. It was so much fun that I was sorry when the summer vacation started, because I knew that Tania would be going to stay with her grandfather in his village. My own summer was uneventful, because I refused to go to camp. “But it’s free!” my mother lamented. “My office pays for it!” I was adamant. At the end of June, she took a week off to take me to Leningrad, but I came down with a fever on the train ride there and couldn’t enjoy the trip. On hot July weekends, my mother and I would take the morning train to the countryside, where we strolled down a dirt path through a wood to a pond, and we swam and then ate hard-boiled eggs and cheese on a grassy hill that smelled like hay. We always stayed a little longer than we’d planned and had to run to the station to catch our train back to Moscow. On weekdays, I mostly stayed in our sweltering apartment, pacing around my room, complaining that I was bored. One day, I got inspired, took four old wooden rulers, broke them into pieces, and glued them back together in the shape of a chicken coop. My huge chicken barely fit inside. Otherwise, I mostly neglected my dolls. But then my uncle came back from Bulgaria and brought me the father doll. I don’t think I ever loved a toy so much. I spent the first week just playing with him all day long. When I noticed his bad hip, I tried to fix it with tape, but when that didn’t work I decided that he was even better this way. Even more special. I would feed him and dress him (his boots were removable!) and make the other family members dote on him. “How’s your leg today, honey? Better? No? Not even a little? Well, sit down and rest, then.” And he would beam his brown smile at everything and everybody. I loved to sit him on the sofa next to the little girl doll and a pig or a goat and have them watch my matchbox TV. They stayed like that for hours, while the babies slept, the grandmother cooked in the kitchen, and the mother either worked or pasted her hair on in the bathroom. “Isn’t it a picture of happiness!” my mother exclaimed, and I didn’t like her sarcasm one bit. I couldn’t wait to show my new doll to Tania. I counted the days until August 22nd, the day she was supposed to come back. But Tania didn’t come on the 22nd. Nor did she come on the 23rd. I called her a million times, and even walked by her window, looking up, hoping to catch sight of her. She called me on the 25th to say that she was sick with a stomach flu. I offered to visit her, but Tania said she’d come to my place the next day. She rang the bell at nine in the morning, as we were finishing breakfast. I got out of my chair so fast that I knocked over the soft-boiled egg on my plate, spilling the yolk onto the table. Tania had grown about an inch over the summer; she was taller than me. She’d also lost weight and got a nice tan. Her skin was now darker than her hair. My grandmother offered her some breakfast, but she said she’d just eaten. Grandmother then urged me to come back and finish my meal. I refused—I couldn’t wait any longer. I took Tania by the elbow and dragged her toward my room. “Look, look what I’ve got,” I kept chanting. The whole doll family was gathered in their living room. The father and the little girl on the sofa. The mother and grandmother on the chair at the table. The twins lay on the floor, because there was no other place for them. Tania didn’t notice the father at first. She thought I was referring to the chicken coop. She approved of the chicken coop. She said, “That’s clever.” “No!” I said, pointing to the father doll. “Look here. Look what I’ve got. It’s their father!” Now Tania saw him. She seemed to tense all over, then she reached into the box. There was a certain stiffness to her movements that made me apprehensive. She picked the father up gingerly, slowly, and brought him close to her face. For a second, I was afraid that she was going to eat him. But she just examined him, touched his hair, stroked the felt on his hat, sniffed at his leather boots. “It’s a boy doll,” she said in a grave tone. “Yeah,” I said. “It’s a boy doll. It’s their father.” She was about to put him back when she noticed that his left leg was dangling in his pants. “It’s damaged!” she said, and I saw an expression of relief spread across her face. “No, it’s not damaged,” I said. “Yes, it is. It’s a cripple,” she said. “He’s not a cripple,” I said, and reached to take the father back. She dodged away from me. “He’s a cripple, all right. And look at that stupid smile. Is he a retard, too?” “He’s not!” I screamed. I tried to grab my father doll out of her hand, but she jumped away. “Cripple and retard, cripple and retard,” she started to sing, swinging the father in her hand. “Your father is worse!” I screamed. She stopped singing and stared at me. I tried to remember that ugly word my mother had used. Defitted? Defetated? Effected? I couldn’t. I had to put it in the words I knew. “He ran off! He up and went!” I said. “He doesn’t care about you! He hates you! He’s sick of you!” Tania’s face was turning that scary beet color. I didn’t care. “He’s never coming back!” “You’re lying!” Tania yelled and punched me on the shoulder. I tried to hit her back, but she ducked, then lunged for the balcony door, brandishing the father doll in her hand like a trophy. I imagined him falling nine floors down to the pavement, his dear face destroyed just like Arabella’s. I leaped at Tania, and fell to the floor on top of her, pounding her in the chest. Her body felt firm and resilient under my fists, as if it were made of durable rubber. I’d had no idea that hitting someone could feel so good. I kept pounding, even after she had released the father and started to wail. I didn’t stop until my mother and my grandmother ran into the room and pulled me off her. My mother punished me by taking away my dolls for two months. She put all the animals into the shoebox with the people, closed the lid, and balanced it on top of the bookcase. As if it were nothing, as if it weren’t a house where a family lived! I remember crying, and counting the days until I’d get them back. But when my mother finally handed me the box I was disappointed. The dolls didn’t seem so interesting anymore. They led their quiet, uneventful lives in the shoebox. The children either slept or misbehaved. The grandmother snarled at them. The father nursed his bad hip. The mother kept losing her hair. By the end of the year, I had stopped playing with the dolls altogether, and my grandmother gave them to the little girl next door, the one whose father had gone to the Far North. Tania and I didn’t play together anymore. We avoided each other at school. Then, a year later, she and her mother moved, and she transferred to a different school. I didn’t see her again until the end of high school, when her mother threw a going-away party for her. Tania was moving to America. Her father had arranged for her to go to college there. I didn’t want to go to the party, but my mother insisted. Tania had grown a whole head taller than me and acquired a strange, restless manner. She talked very fast, with fidgety gestures, and her eyes kept flickering from one object to another. She said that her father had got back in touch about two years earlier, but I couldn’t ask her any questions, because there were so many people there—and all of them wanted to talk to Tania, or kiss her, or corner her against a wall and give her useless advice. I didn’t stay at the party long, but I kept thinking about it for days. It was odd that Tania had invited me in the first place, when we hadn’t spoken for years. Apparently, she needed me, of all people, to know that her father did care about her after all. Ten years later, when my husband and I immigrated to the U.S., I tried to look her up, but couldn’t find her. I assumed that she had changed her name. Another eight years passed, and then all of a sudden I got a message from her on Facebook. “Aren’t you Katya V. from my old school?” I had just finalized my divorce and changed back to my maiden name. If I hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t have been able to find me. I was aching to know what had become of her, or at least what she looked like now, but her Facebook page didn’t tell me much. She barely posted anything, and her face in the profile picture was half blocked by the child in her arms. Tania said that she was spending the summer at her house in the Berkshires and invited me to visit. She’d caught me at a strange moment in my life. I was about to start a two-week vacation—my first since the divorce and the first I would spend alone—but I had no idea what to do with it. Back when most of my friends were planning their summer, the pain of the divorce had been too great and the future too murky for me to commit to anything. I had assumed that I’d be too depressed to go anywhere. The protective layer I’d grown during my married years had been peeled off, leaving me completely exposed. But when the summer finally started I found that I felt better. The idea of being on my own began to excite me. I still felt exposed, but I also felt that the exposure would help me regain some long-forgotten intensity of living. With no husband’s wishes to satisfy, I could go anywhere I wanted. Except that the nice vacation spots were already booked, and the affordable plane tickets were gone. Tania’s invitation gave me an idea: I’d drive up to her place, visit with her, and then continue driving north. No plan, no destination—I’d just drive as far as I wanted and find somewhere to stay. I’d never done anything like this, but I felt that it was time to do things I’d never done before. Tania sent incredibly detailed driving directions and insisted that I turn off my G.P.S. In my years of driving in the U.S., I had become addicted to my G.P.S., and I couldn’t imagine turning it off, so I decided to keep Tania’s directions in mind while listening to the G.P.S., and to follow my intuition whenever they disagreed. This strategy got me lost as soon as I ventured off the highway, but I didn’t really mind. The closer I got to Tania’s place, the more I dreaded our initial conversation. I did want to talk about our childhood, but to get there we would need to catch up first. I’d have to tell her that my mother had died. That I probably wouldn’t be able to have children. And that my husband had left me. “Up and went. Because he was sick of me.” (I guess I didn’t really understand the cruelty of those words until my divorce.) At least my career was on the right track. That was something. “Recalculating,” the G.P.S. informed me for the twentieth time, in the face of my disobedience. It demanded that I go back to the highway, which was clearly wrong. But Tania’s directions had also stopped making sense. I decided to disregard both of them and took the prettiest road that led uphill. I realized that I hadn’t visited the countryside in years. All those quaint houses, all those barns, all those animals in pastures made me feel both nostalgic and alienated. I knew that I’d never want to live in a place like this. At some point, I came to a fork in the road. I chose to veer to the right and continue uphill. A beautiful property came into view: a meadow full of daisies, a little pond with a single duck, a cluster of lilac bushes, a few apple trees, an extensive vegetable garden, and, at the top of the hill, a house that looked remarkably like my old shoebox. It was painted red, with yellow awnings. I slowed down to admire the view, just as my G.P.S. reluctantly announced that I had reached my destination. I drove a few feet forward and saw the address printed on a little sign: “12 Berry Hill Road.” As I pulled into the driveway, the front door was opened by a large woman in a flowery sundress, her blond hair fixed in a little bun. My first thought was that Tania’s mother had come to visit, but then I realized that this was Tania herself. Tania, who’d grown large and soft. When she hugged me, it felt like being smothered in a down blanket. Within ten minutes, I understood that I needn’t have worried about having to tell her all the sad things that had happened in my life. She didn’t ask me any questions, and she didn’t let me talk. As soon as I set foot in the house, she began a never-ending tour, up and down the stairs, in and out of doors, through rooms, across halls. She didn’t even offer me a drink. I had to ask for a glass of water, and then she gave me a bottle of Evian to drink on the go. Tania talked faster than ever, and there was no way to protect myself from the gushes of information. Post and beam. Restored and reassembled in 1993. Hemlock timber. Wooden pegs. Dyed plaster walls. Central air. Finnish sauna off the master bedroom. Japanese toilet in the guest bathroom. (After four hours in the car, I used this with great enthusiasm.) Six bedrooms wasn’t so big, she informed me. The in-laws had a twelve-bedroom in a neighboring town. Their pond was ridiculous, though. Not fit for swimming. Tania’s pond was perfect, but the kids still preferred to swim in the pool. The kids were away right now. Attending a tennis day camp. A large framed photograph of the family graced the living-room wall above a huge, obviously antique sofa. In the picture, Tania, her husband, and their two daughters sat on that same sofa, smiling. I thought that they were smiling a little too hard. I liked the look of the older girl, though. She reminded me of the Tania I’d known as a girl. The adult Tania took a long look at the picture. “I guess we’re happy,” she said. “Pretty hard not to be in a house like this,” I said and bit my tongue. But, fortunately, Tania didn’t hear the sarcasm in my tone. The tour was starting to wear me out. I didn’t know what reaction she expected. Continuous admiration? Or a bitter acknowledgment of her wealth? Something like her reaction when I took her on a tour of my room twenty-eight years before? “So—you have six bedrooms? And you have antique sofas and everything? You’re rich, aren’t you?” I was relieved when we finally left the house. But the tour wasn’t over yet. Tania led me to the garden. Keeping a garden was such a pain, she said. Row-cropping. Draining the soil. Weeding. Aphids. Maggots. Cutworms. Beetles. Did I know how difficult it was to find a decent gardener or a decent pest man? But it was beautiful, wasn’t it? Peas. Carrots. Look at the kale. Five types of kale. Rows and rows of kale. They all enjoyed eating kale. Yes, the kids, too. Kale did wonders for their health. Simply wonders. As did eating eggs from their own chickens. Tania led me to her pièce de résistance—a chicken coop. A spacious wooden construction that housed ten or twelve chickens. All white, all big, all well fed. “I can’t believe you have chickens!” I said, unable to contain my laughter. “What’s so funny?” she asked. Tania had built herself an exact replica of my old doll house, down to the chicken coop, but she didn’t seem to see the absurdity of the situation. “Do you remember Katania?” I asked. “Do I remember what?” “Katania, our country?” She looked at me, straining to understand what I was talking about. “Katania,” I said, “the country that we created for our dolls. Mine lived in a village and yours lived in a city.” “Vaguely,” she said. “I remember that we got in a big fight once.” I nodded. “Because you wouldn’t share your dolls.” “Right,” I said. “I teach my kids to share.” “Good idea,” I said, and looked at my watch. It was time for me to go, I told her. Tania didn’t protest. She said it was a pity that I wouldn’t meet her husband and kids, but otherwise she appeared to be satisfied with my visit. As it happened, though, I did get to take a look at her husband. I had just pulled out of the driveway when I saw a silver Lexus pulling in. A man got out of the car, and I recognized him from the photograph above the sofa. He was wearing white linen pants and a white button-down shirt. He took a big pastry box from the passenger seat and started walking toward the house. There was something strange about his gait, but at first I didn’t realize what it was. Then I got it: he was putting his entire weight on his right leg. He walked as if his left leg didn’t work. He walked as if it were detached at the hip. 小时候，我有一个娃娃家庭，它们住在一个被染成房子模样的红色鞋盒里。这所房子有深棕色的屋顶和黄色的遮阳蓬，房子里面摆着一整套塑料玩具家居，以及一些随意添置的日常用品，包括火柴盒电视机，用锡箔纸做的镜子，还有我偷偷从旧毛衣上剪下一片做成的厚毛毯。此外，我还有一些塑料农场动物，一头奶牛，一头猪，一只山羊，外加一只很大很大（比奶牛都大）的小鸡，它住在鞋盒外边。 这个家庭的成员还有：一个漂亮的软塑料小娃娃，头发和连衣裙染过色，在游戏中代表我自己；一个赤身裸体，头发掉光的娃娃，大概是女的，它是用有光泽的硬塑料做的，我把它当妈妈，并且用旧手帕给她做了个希腊风格的长袍，把自己的头发粘到他头上；两个性别未知的小婴儿，使用的材料是表面粗糙的硬塑料，被同种塑料做成的毯子包裹着；还有一只长着人身的刺猬，身穿长裙，围着围裙，浓密的卷发被头巾包住，我让它当奶奶。 我的玩具家庭缺个父亲，但父亲娃娃难得一见。我认识的人都没有父亲娃娃，很多孩子甚至没有爸爸。我也没有爸爸，他在我两岁的时候就死了，我家的成员有妈妈、奶奶和我。这种情况很正常，父亲往往会死，或者嗜酒如命，或者干脆“一走了之”。隔壁邻居就在某天晚上动身去遥远的北方（the Far North）。 他站在楼梯吼出自己的决定，“我受够你们了！” “所以你就要一走了之，哼？行啊，正好解脱了！”他的妻子也叫喊着。他三岁的女儿哭了好几个星期，我可以透过公寓薄薄的墙壁听到哭声。 没有父亲在我们这很普遍，苏联政府都有所察觉。苏联政府出了名地爱护自己的公民，所以无论什么时候哪样东西稀缺了，他们就竭尽全力掩盖这东西的稀缺性。我妈妈曾经编写过学校教材，当时哪怕提一下稀缺物品都不被允许。例如，妈妈要编数学题，她就不能提香蕉，因为俄罗斯大多数地方根本见不到香蕉。她能说苹果，但不能说香蕉，可以说鸡肉，但不能说牛肉，可以说母亲，但不能说父亲。她可以写“一位母亲给她的孩子们六个苹果，要求他们平均分”，但绝不能写父亲要求孩子们平均分香蕉。在我十几岁的时候，她跟我说过这些，但当我当时根本不信。于是我仔细翻看我的旧课本，想证明她错了，却找不出一个提到父亲、牛肉或者香蕉的地方。 所以，你可以想象得出我拿到父亲娃娃时的那种惊讶和欢喜！叔叔出差到保加利亚，给我带回了娃娃当礼物。它是个漂亮的娃娃，尺寸真正好，比妈妈和奶奶矮一点，但要比小孩子高，他身体硬邦邦，脸是可挤压的软塑料做的，被染成了充满男子气概的棕色色调。他有棕色的眼睛，棕色的嘴唇，棕色的鼻孔，用某种很类似头发的材料做成的棕色头发，还有永远保持着的棕色微笑。他的衣着像是保加利亚的传统民族服饰：毡帽，靴子，起皱的棉质裤子，绣花衬衫。这正是我想象中完美父亲的形象。 父亲娃娃只有一点缺憾——屁股坏了，左腿错了位，和躯干分离，悬在裤腿里。但是，我爱极了这个娃娃，所以根本没觉得这是缺陷，直到塔尼亚指了出来。 我和塔尼亚是在父亲娃娃到来前十个月成为朋友的。那是九月份开学第一周，学校每年举办的家长茶话会，所有人全挤在我们的小教室里，父母们蜷伏在孩子用的桌子上。学校食堂为我们提供热茶，但要求父母们自带点心和蛋糕，还有茶杯和茶碟。塔尼亚的妈妈显然带错杯子了，于是乎塔尼亚在茶话会上大发脾气。 “我要蓝色的杯子！”她叫道，“有金边的蓝色杯子！蓝色的！蓝色的！” 她的声音很大，我盯着杯子，期待它能像电影中有人尖叫把杯子叫碎那样。但后来我意识到看塔尼亚更加有趣，她皮肤白皙，长着暗淡的雀斑。她的皮肤变成了番茄一样的红色，雀斑却没有变化，我之前从没有见过这样的事情。她闭上眼，手指攥成拳头，太阳穴的血管抽动，又蓝又粗。教室里的其他人突然静下来，我们的老师太年轻（刚刚走出校门），此时手足无措。塔尼亚的妈妈径直站起，笑着说自己要回家那蓝色的杯子。她身材高大，身体柔软，和塔尼亚的皮肤一样白皙，甚至头发也和她女儿一样，只不过她的头发梳成了发髻，而塔尼亚则编了大辫子。. 她妈妈一出门，塔尼亚就不发脾气了，睁开眼坐下来，皮肤迅速恢复成浅粉色。老师问她是不是还好，她点点头。大家又开始聊天，倒茶，切蛋糕，彷佛没有发脾气这回事。可我始终不能把目光从塔尼亚身上挪开。她察觉到我在敬佩地看她，朝我笑笑，脸上露出热情的表情，很像个大人。 “你不讨厌从错误的杯子里喝茶吗？”她说。 我恭敬地点点头，好像很了解其中的艰难。可是，我敬佩的是她的勇气，因为我自己从不敢发脾气，妈妈绝不会这么冷静地对待我发脾气。恰在几天前，妈妈在打电话，我在地上到处爬，学猫叫，她就踢到我的肋骨。我并不怪她，因为我知道她在和她老板讲话，却仍想让电话那头听到猫叫。 那次茶话会之后，我和塔尼亚开始一起回家。我们住在同一栋建筑，上学只需要走五分钟。这栋楼有九层，但长得很，看起来像躺着的摩天大楼。它共有十二个入口，我住在12号入口，她住在9号入口。从大楼出来，穿过街道就来到了一个废弃的苹果园。我们常常在回家途中进去玩，爬上一棵树，坐在上面荡着腿，聊聊学校，聊聊最喜欢的动画片，聊聊我们的娃娃。但是我从不会在那停留超过十五分钟左右，因为奶奶在等我回家。 有一次我跟塔尼亚抱怨奶奶太讨厌，塔尼亚说她奶奶死了，“她一年前死了，她的肺不能呼吸，呼吸起来像这样。”她表演有节奏的气喘很逼真。 “我爷爷中风死了，”我说，“他全身麻痹，不会自己上厕所，护士必须用手撑着他的屁股，好让便便出来。” 我知道塔尼亚没有爸爸，出于某种原因，我猜想他已经死了，就像我的爸爸。 “我爸爸没有死！”塔尼亚厉声尖吼，脸变得像家长茶话会那次一样红。 “他出差去了！他在美国，他每天都在想我。” 她情绪突变着实让我大吃一惊，脑子发懵没法理解她的话，我只是站在那看着她。她晃动着书包，好像要打我的头，却又改变主意，跑到通向她家的入口。我哭着回了家，后来一直断断续续地哭。奶奶和妈妈先后一直问我怎么了，但我什么也不说。我自己搞不清楚究竟是怎么回事，可能是感到羞耻，不只是错误地认为塔尼亚爸爸死了而带来的屈辱，还有被排除在有爸爸的精英团体之外深层耻辱，让人生厌。 第二天上学，我想躲着塔尼亚，上课的时候尽可能不朝她那边看，在课间也不跟她说话，吃午饭也坐在和她相反的方向。一天要结束了，我跑进浴室等到所有人都回家才出来。但一切都是白费功夫，我一出来就看见塔尼亚在学校走廊等我。我心想假装她不在那，后来想想这么做好傻气。于是我们一起走回家了。 这件事之后，我们再没有说起各自的家庭，却喜欢聊家里的娃娃。我自夸有好多动物，“一只奶牛，一头猪，一只超大的鸡！”塔尼亚则轻蔑地笑道：“我的娃娃住在城市，没地方养动物，他们叫西格丽德，亚马兰塔和阿拉贝拉，亚马兰塔和阿拉贝拉是科学家，而西格丽德是个演员。” 有一天，塔尼亚邀请我去她家，我犹豫了一下。她脖子上的蓝丝带有钥匙，而且班上很多孩子的脖子上都有公寓钥匙。他们回家，自己可以进家，加热饭菜，等待妈妈来家。他们知道怎么打开烤箱，不担心火柴燃得太快烧到手指，知道怎么从壶里倒汤而不会撒得满地都是。我想都想不到怎么完成这些事情，奶奶总是等我回家，在窗口张望，看见我就把饭菜放进烤炉，跑去开门。我不需要按门铃，更不用自己开门。我担心如果去塔尼亚家，我会显出自己的笨拙，可是如果不去，可能更加显出自己什么都不会。 于是我去了她家。塔尼亚娴熟地把锁打开。我说我要给奶奶打个电话，塔尼亚指指电话，电话在紧邻衣架的小架子上。我打电话编了个复杂的谎话，说放学后要上体操课。我希望体操的事会让奶奶有印象，她总是说如果不做体操我就会驼背。我说的谎话奏效了，于是转过身，以为她会欣赏我的聪明才智。然而，我看到的是一副冷淡、嘲笑的表情。 她的公寓比我家的小，只有一个房间（我家有三间房），电视机也小，家居破旧，碗橱里的碗碟也没有我家闪亮。 “你想吃点我的早饭吗？”塔尼亚问我。 我想着她会叫我划火柴或者倒汤，便摇摇头。 “行，”她说，“我也不饿。你要看看我的娃娃吗？” 我想看，非常非常想看。 塔尼亚的娃娃同样住在鞋盒里，只不过她的鞋盒是白色的，放在一个大梳妆台的边缘。她说：“这是座摩天大楼，就像他们在美国有的那一座。”娃娃们没有很多家具，但在盒子的小架子上，他们有一个塑料飞机场，一架小梯子连接着“公寓”和飞机。 “他们出差需要坐飞机，要是房子失火了，他们就可以上飞机飞走！” “他们现在在哪儿？”我问。 “阿拉贝拉出差去了，不过我可以给你看亚马兰塔和西格丽德。” 亚马兰塔坐在浴缸里，样子很像我的妈妈娃娃，就是体型大一点，没那么秃头。西格丽德还躺在床上，头枕着小枕头，身体盖着手帕。她是用抛光木材做成的，金发碧眼，美丽动人，身材纤瘦，是个外国人。我的娃娃从不会希望长成这样。 “她很漂亮，“我说。 “她也挺有本领的。”塔尼亚说。 在穿鞋准备回家的时候，我看到了鞋架后边放着一个小娃娃，它是塑料做的，胳膊折断，脸面破碎。我认出这就是阿拉贝拉。 第二次，我们去了我家。 奶奶给我们准备了大麦茶和鸡肉配土豆泥，我担心塔尼亚不喜欢吃而发脾气。然而，她吃得很快，动作文雅，吃完后说声“谢谢”，还把自己的碟子放到水槽。奶奶很喜欢她。 晚餐过后，我带塔尼亚来到我房间。不管看什么东西，她脸上都带着古怪的表情，好像视察工作似的。 “你有自己的房间？”她问。 我点点头。我有自己的房间，这让我心里为之一震。 “你还有阳台？” 我说：“是啊。” 毛毯挂在床上边的墙面，她走过去猛地拉了下毛毯的流苏。 “你还有毛毯什么的全都有，”她说。 我点点头，也猛拉流苏。 “你们很有钱，对不对？” 我耸耸肩，说实话我不知道我们是不是很有钱。 塔尼亚似乎喜欢我的娃娃，她把娃娃一个个从鞋盒里拿出来，对着每个娃娃赞许地点头。她对着奶奶娃娃笑了。“是刺猬！太妙了，”她说。她拍拍我的小猪，摸摸奶牛的背，“所以说，他们是农民，对吗？他们住在乡村吗？”她问道。 我从没想过这个问题，他们有谷仓和各种动物，所以我猜想他们是农民，确实住在乡村。 “听着，”她说，“让我们给你的动物洗个澡吧。” 但这时候奶奶走进来说，塔尼亚该回家了，而我是时候做家庭作业了。 “看到这把钥匙了吗？”塔尼亚指着脖子上挂的钥匙，“我来去很自由，可你呢，你要得靠你奶奶。你或许有钱，但我有自由。” 即便仅有七岁，我也感到她话语中透出的伤感叫人厌恶。不过，我并不生气，倒不如说很高兴。她走之后，我环视我的房间，看看阳台的门，地毯，好看的家居，装满富裕农民的红鞋盒，感到由衷地满足。我没有钥匙，但这又怎么样呢？我觉得我不那么在乎自由问题。 这新发掘的富人身份被回到家的妈妈给彻底毁灭了。我问她我们是不是很有钱，她足足笑了两分钟，然后弯腰指着脚说：“看看我的靴子。对你来说，它们看上去像有钱人穿的吗？”这双靴子有了磨损痕迹，脱了色，上面分布着棕色的斑点。 那天晚上，我在去浴室的路上听到妈妈和奶奶在谈论塔尼亚。 “你觉得那女孩怎么样？”妈妈说。 “不清楚。” “很明显她跟卡特雅说我们很有钱。” “有钱？” 现在轮到奶奶大笑起来。 接着她擤擤鼻子，说：“她看起来挺有礼貌。” “有礼貌！哼！我真希望你瞧瞧她是怎么对待她妈妈的。”妈妈告诉奶奶塔尼亚在家长茶话会上发脾气的事情。然后，她开始低语，我什么也听不清楚。不过很幸运，奶奶耳朵有点背，也什么都听不清。妈妈不得不恢复正常音量，说自己听说塔尼亚爸爸叛变了。 我听到奶奶倒吸了一口气。 “斯维特的婶婶说他去美国出差，然后就没回来。就那样，找到美国政府，要求获得难民身份什么的。你能想象全然不顾妻儿吗？斯维特的婶婶说塔尼亚的妈妈被带走接受问话。我肯定她对他的计划一无所知。” “她当然不知道！”奶奶说。 “尽管如此，她还是丢了工作。” “可怜，可怜的女人。” 随后他们聊起家里冰箱漏了，该不该叫人来修修。我踮着脚，回到自己屋里。 我完全理解不了她们刚才的对话，但我猜塔尼亚的爸爸做了什么见不得人的事情。我为塔尼亚感到遗憾，同时又有点幸灾乐祸：我爸爸可能死了，但至少不是故意为之。 一月份，塔尼亚提议我们为娃娃们建立一个国家，我们将其称为卡雅尼亚，即我们的名字卡雅和塔尼亚的结合，并决定它应该只有两个居住地——名为Katushki的乡村和叫T-city的城市。下一步是绘一张地图。我们找来四张大纸，用胶水把它们粘在一起，开始画图。我们用通常表示道路的棕色，画一条由Katushki通往T-city的道路，穿过绿油油的树林，几乎到达海洋，转个圈回到跨河大桥。为了做这条河，我们从巧克力包装纸上剪下一条锡箔纸粘到地图上，用一条白灰纸粘在河面上当桥。我们对这座桥不很满意，因为黄色的胶水从边上露出来，洒满了河面。 “你知道这像什么吗？”我指着漏出来的胶水问塔尼亚。 “鼻涕！”她说。我大笑起来，因为这正是我想到的。 我们花了几个月伏在地图之上，一而再地画轮廓，改变或加深颜色，直到手上沾满颜料，黑得发亮。画地图实在太有趣了，暑假的到来让我有些沮丧，因为我知道塔尼亚要和她爷爷回乡下住。 我的夏天过得平淡无奇，因为我拒绝参加夏令营。“但那是免费的，”妈妈惋惜地说，“我办公室出的钱。”六月末，她抽出一周时间带我去列宁格勒，但我在前往那里的火车上发烧了，享受不到旅行的快乐。在七月燥热难耐的周末，妈妈和我坐早上的火车去乡下。我们沿着一条土路漫步，穿过树林，来到池塘边。我们游游泳，在长满草的山上吃吃奶酪和煮得过熟的鸡蛋，这里闻起来有股甘草的气息。我们总是要比计划多玩一会儿，因而不得不跑去车站，好赶上返回莫斯科的火车。 但在平时，我一般宅在闷热的公寓里，在屋子里踱来踱去，抱怨无聊透顶的生活。有一天，我心血来潮，拿四个破旧的木头尺子，把它们砸成片儿，然后粘成鸡舍的样子，那只超大的小鸡差不多正好可以住进去。除此之外我几乎想不到娃娃们。 后来，我叔叔从保加利亚出差回来，给我带了个父亲娃娃。 我从没想过自己会这么爱一个玩具，第一周我和他形影不离。后来我发现他的屁股坏了，于是想用胶带修好，但这办法行不通，我干脆认为这样反倒更好，娃娃显得更加特别，我可以喂他吃饭，给他穿衣（他的靴子可以脱掉！），让其他家庭成员宠他爱他。 “今天你的腿怎么样，亲爱的？好点没？没有？一丁点儿也没有？好吧，那就坐下来休息休息。” 他会冲一切事物和所有人露出那棕色的微笑。 我喜欢让他挨着小女儿娃娃坐在沙发上，旁边再有一只猪或者山羊，让他们一起看我的火柴盒电视机。它们一看就是好几个小时，与此同时婴儿们在乖乖睡觉，奶奶在厨房煮饭，妈妈要么工作，要么在浴室里给自己粘头发。“这不就是幸福的画面嘛！”妈妈大声说道，而我一点也不喜欢妈妈的讽刺。 我等不及要给塔尼亚看我的新娃娃了，掰着指头算日子，直到8月22号，她应该回来的那天。但她没有在22号回来，到了23号也没有回来。我给她打了无数次电话，甚至走到她的窗户底下张望，希望能看见她。25号那天，她给我打电话，说自己得了肠胃炎。我提出要去看她，但塔尼亚说第二天她就回来。第二天早上九点钟，她按响门铃，当时我们正要吃完早饭。我迅速从椅子上起身，因为动作太快喷打翻了盘子里的溏心鸡蛋，蛋黄撒了一桌子。 塔尼亚一个夏天大约长高了一英寸，比我都高，体重也减轻了，肤色变成了赏心悦目的棕褐色，现在肤色都比头发的颜色深。奶奶给她拿了些早餐，不过她说已经吃过了。于是奶奶催我回来把饭吃完。但我说不吃了，因为我等不及了。 我挽着塔尼亚，把她拉到我房间，“快看，看我得到什么，”我欢欣鼓舞地说。 娃娃全家都聚集在卧室，父亲和小女儿坐着沙发，妈妈和奶奶坐在桌子边的椅子上，双胞胎躺在地面，因为没有多余的地方给他们了。 塔尼亚起初没有注意到父亲娃娃，以为我指的是鸡舍。她称赞那个鸡舍：“鸡舍做得很巧。” “不是！”我说着指指父亲娃娃，“看这里，看看我得到什么，他们的爸爸！” 现在塔尼亚看见了它，浑身紧张，接着手伸进了鞋盒。她的动作有些僵硬，让我心里很不安。她小心翼翼，慢慢地拿起父亲娃娃，贴近自己的脸。第二次，我害怕她会吃了它，但她只是打量，摸摸他的头发，敲敲帽子上的毡制品，闻闻他的皮靴。 “他是个男娃娃，”她神情严肃地说。 “是啊，”我说，“他是个男娃娃，是他们的爸爸。” 她准备把他放回原位时，突然发现娃娃的左腿悬在裤管里。 “这娃娃是坏的！”她说， “没有，他没坏。”我说。 “他就是坏了，他是个瘸子。”她说。 “他不是瘸子，”我，伸手要拿回父亲娃娃，而她躲开了我。 “他是个瘸子，没有错。看看那傻不啦叽的笑，他还是个傻子？” “他不是！”我叫起来。 我拼命想从她手里夺过父亲娃娃，但她跳到了一边。 “瘸子加傻子，瘸子加傻子，”她唱起歌来，手里挥舞着父亲娃娃。 “你爸爸更烂。”我尖叫道。 她不唱歌了，只是盯着我。 我试着想起妈妈说过的那个脏词。攀贬？盘变？拍扁？但就是想不起来，于是我得用自己的词来说。“他跑了，他一走了之！”我说，“他根本不关心你！他恨你！他受够了你！” 塔尼亚的脸霎时变白，很是吓人。可我一点也不在乎。 “他永远不会回来！” “你说谎！”塔尼亚叫道，冲我肩膀打了一拳，我要回敬她，却不料她躲开了，然后踢开阳台的门，挥舞着父亲娃娃，好像拿着胜利品一样。 我想象着他落下九层楼，直接摔在人行道上，脸毁得像阿拉贝拉。我扑向塔尼亚，把她压在地板上，捶打她的胸，拳头打在她的身体，感觉很结实有弹性，好像是用耐用橡胶做的。我不知道打人感觉这么好，我一直打她。即便她松开了父亲娃娃，哭号起来，我没有停下，直到妈妈和奶奶跑过来把我拉开。 妈妈罚我两个星期不准玩娃娃，把所有动物和娃娃统统放进鞋盒，盖上盖子，放到书柜顶上，彷佛它什么都不是，不是一个家庭居住的房子！我记得自己一直哭，数着拿回鞋盒的日子。然而，当妈妈最终把盒子递给我的时候，我大失所望，这些娃娃再也不有趣了。他们在鞋盒里过着宁静平凡的生活：孩子们要么睡觉，要么淘气捣蛋，奶奶冲他们乱吼，父亲看护自己坏掉的屁股，妈妈一直掉头发。到了年终，我不再玩娃娃了，奶奶把他们送给隔壁的小女孩，她的父亲去了遥远的北方。 我和塔尼亚再没有一起玩过，在学校都躲避对方。一年后，她和她妈妈搬家了，她转进另一所学校。我再也没见过她，直到高中结束，她妈妈为她办了一个欢送会，塔尼亚要搬到美国，她父亲已经安排她去那里上大学。我不想去，可是妈妈坚持要我去。 塔尼亚比我高出了一头，养成了一种焦躁的奇怪习惯。她讲话极快，手势不断，眼睛不断瞟来瞟去。她说她父亲两年前和她们取得联系，但我无法问她任何问题，因为这里的人太多，并且多数人都想要和她说话，或者吻她，或者把她拦在墙边提出毫无价值的建议。我没有停留多长时间，但心里想了好几天，很奇怪起初塔尼亚没有邀请我，我们多年没有说过话。很明显，在所有人中，她需要让我知道她父亲一直把她放在心上。 十年后，我和丈夫移民美国，于是我想和她取得联系，但根本找不到她。我以为她已经更名改姓了。八年又过去了，突然之间我在facebook上收到她发来的信息，“你是来自我母校的卡雅，对不对？” 那时我刚刚离婚，改回了娘家姓，要是我不这么做，她不可能找得到我。 我迫切地想知道她后来的事情，至少看看她现在长什么样，但是她的facebook页面能告诉我的信息不多。她很少更新页面，头像里的脸被臂弯里的孩子遮住了一半。 塔尼亚说她正在伯克郡的家中消夏，并邀请我来坐坐。 她出现在我生命中的奇怪节点。当时我正要休假两周——这是离婚后的第一次，也是第一次一个人过，但我不知道该做些什么。回想当时很多朋友都在为夏天做计划，离婚的痛楚就格外强烈，未来格外混沌不清，我都不知道可以做些什么。我认为自己太消沉了，哪儿也去不了。结婚期间形成的保护层也已经剥干刮净，自己完全暴露在外。 但夏天最终到来时，我意外地发现自己感觉好许多，自立自足的想法让我兴奋起来。尽管依然感觉暴露在外，我却认为这样反而可以帮助我重拾长久以来遗忘掉的生活紧张度。不用满足丈夫的愿望，我想去哪里就去哪里，当然除了风景优美的独家景点已经预定，买得起的机票已经售罄。 塔尼亚的邀请让我有了主意：我开车去她家，拜访她，然后继续开车北上，没有计划，没有目的地，想走多远就走多远，找个可以停留的地方。我之前从没做过类似的事情，但感觉是时候做些没做过的事情了。 塔尼亚发给我的驾驶说明事无巨细，她坚持让我关掉GPS。我在美国开了这么多年车，已经严重依赖GPS，很难想象关掉它会怎样。所以我决定记住塔尼亚给我的方位，同时开着GPS，一旦两者冲突，我就靠直觉走。这样一来，我下了高速就迷了路，但我不在乎。越接近塔尼亚的家，我越害怕我们怎么开始聊天。我不想谈我们的孩子，但届时我们必须要说一下彼此的情况。我不得不跟她说，我妈妈去世了，我可能生不了孩子，丈夫离我而去，“一走了之，因为他受够了我”（在离婚前，我不能真正理解这些话的残酷无情）。至少我的生活回归正轨，这算得上好兆头了。 “重新计算，”GPS对我说了有二十次，都因为我的逆反。它要求我返回高速公路，但这明显不对，同时塔尼亚给的说明也讲不通了。于是我决定不管这两个东西了，顺着最漂亮的路往山上走。我想到自己好多年没来乡下了，所有这些古怪的房子，所有这些谷仓，所有这些动物，都让我感到既怀旧又陌生。我知道自己不想生活在这样的地方。 某一刻，我走到一个岔道，选择右转继续爬山。一座美丽的房产进入视野：草地上种满了雏菊，小池塘里有一只鸭子，一簇浅紫色的灌木丛，几棵苹果树，偌大的蔬菜园，山顶上有一座房子像极了我的旧鞋盒。这栋房子被刷成了红色，遮阳棚被刷成了黄色。我减速欣赏风景，就在这时GPS不情愿地宣布我已经抵达目的地，我向前开了几英尺，看见一个小牌子上写着地址——“蓝莓丘12路”。 在我把车开进院子里的车道时，一个身着太阳裙女人打开前门，金发扎成了发髻。我第一反应这是塔尼亚的妈妈来她家了，但随后我知道她就是塔尼亚本人，现在的她又胖又软，抱着我，我就像塞进了羽绒被里。 不到十分钟，我明白我不需要担心必须告诉她我身上发生的悲剧。她没有问我任何问题，根本没让我插嘴。从进门开始，她带着我楼上楼下，门里门外，这屋那屋，门厅走廊，一刻不停地参观。她都没有给我递杯喝的，我只得问她要杯水，然后她给我一瓶依云矿泉水边走边喝。 塔尼亚语速比以前更快，我没办法听如潮的信息。屋子的梁柱结构，1993年经过修缮重组，铁衫木，木栓，染色灰泥墙，中央空调，主卧室外的芬兰桑拿室，客房浴室的日式厕所（因为在车里待了四个小时，我满心欢喜地用了一下）。她告诉我说六个卧室不是很大，旁边镇上的亲家有十二个卧室，不过他们的池塘很可笑，不适合游泳，但塔尼亚的水池完美无瑕，但孩子们还是喜欢去游泳池游泳，孩子们现在不在家，参加网球夏令营了。 在一个明显是古董的大沙发上面，有一个装帧起来的全家福照片，让客厅顿显优雅。在照片里，塔尼亚、她丈夫和两个女儿坐在一个沙发上满脸微笑。但我觉得他们笑得有点太僵硬了，不过我喜欢她的大女儿，让我想起还是小女孩的塔尼亚。 成年的塔尼亚盯着照片看了许久，说：“我想我们是幸福的。” “不住在这样的房子真是太煎熬了。”我说完就赶紧绷住嘴，但好在塔尼亚没有听出来我语气里暗藏的讽刺。这次参观让我身心疲惫，我不知道她期望得到什么反应，赞美连连？内心愤懑地承认她很有钱？就像二十八年前我带她参观我房间时她的反应那样？“这么说的话，你有六间卧室？古董沙发什么的全都有？你很有钱，是不是？” 最后离开房间的时候，我松了口气。然而，参观还未结束，塔尼亚接着把我带到花园。 她说，管理花园很累人，把植物修剪成排，排水，除草，有蚜虫，蛆虫，毛虫，甲壳虫。我知道找个像样的园丁或除虫人有多难吗？但花园还是很漂亮，不是吗？有豌豆，有胡萝卜。看看那甘蓝，五种甘蓝，一垅垅甘蓝，他们喜欢吃甘蓝。是的，孩子们也喜欢。甘蓝大大促进他们的身体健康，大大地促进，就像吃自己养的鸡下的蛋。 塔尼亚带着我去看她参观之旅的主菜——一个鸡舍，宽敞的木质建筑，里面有十只或者是十二只鸡，全都是白的，个个膘肥体壮。 “我真不敢相信你养有鸡。”我抑制不住自己的笑意。 “什么那么好笑？”她问道。 塔尼亚完全按照我的娃娃屋建自己的房子，鸡舍都完全一样，而她仿佛丝毫没有意识到其中的荒唐。 “你记得卡雅尼亚吗？”我问道。 “我记得什么？” “卡雅尼亚，我们的国家？” 她看着我，努力想明白我在说什么。 “卡雅尼亚，”我说，“我们为娃娃们建立的国家，我的娃娃住在乡村，你的娃娃住在城市。” “有点记不清了，”她说，“我们当初还狠狠打了一架。” 我点点头。 “因为你不和我玩你的娃娃。” “没错，”我说。 “我教育我的孩子要学会分享。” “好想法，”我说。我看看表，对她说我要走了。 塔尼亚没有异议，表示很遗憾我不能见见她的丈夫和孩子，但她似乎对我的到来很满意。 不过很巧的是，我看到了她的丈夫。就在开出车道的时候，我看见一个银色凌志车开进来，一个男人从车里出来，我根据沙发上的照片认出了他。他穿着白色亚麻裤和白色领尖有纽扣的衬衫，从乘客座上拿出一个大大的点心盒，向房子走去。 我感觉他走起路来怪怪的，但一开始没想起来哪里不对。后来我恍然大悟，他把身体的全部重量压在右腿，走路的时候左腿似乎使不上劲，就像屁股和腿是分开的。 |
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