only to look at him to see how much improved he was, Anna was anxious about the appointment. She very much wanted to bring Doctor Shchedrin something as a sign of her deep gratitude; she’d bought a bundle of palm fronds from a street vendor, but upon arriving home, she’d discovered that the man had cheated her. The furry buds had frozen in transport, and once inside the apartment, they’d fallen dead from their stems.
Help came to Anna in the form of a small package. Viktor Ipalyevich received it from the postman, laid it on the table, and eyed it suspiciously. Anna, resting on the sofa before her afternoon shift, raised her head and asked, “Why don’t you open it?”
“Because I know what’s inside.” He stroked his beard.
“Who sent it?”
He held out the package, which was wrapped in brown paper. She was able to decipher the postmark: “State Publishing House of the Soviet Union.” “Is this … your book?” She was already on her feet.
“They’re not that far along yet. I think it must be the print proof.”
“Open it!” she cried impatiently.
“I don’t know …”
“What are you waiting for?”
“I’m feeling scared about the jacket design.” He ran his hand over the package, as if the reason for his fear could be felt through the paper. “Open it, daughter, and tell me what you see.”
With three steps, she was in the kitchen. She came back with a knife and leaned over the table.
“No, wait, I’ll do it,” Viktor Ipalyevich said. “I’ll open it myself.” Carefully, as though disarming a bomb, he stuck the knife into the package, drew the blade slowly through wrapping paper and glue, and exposed an inner package. He partially opened this one, too, saw something red inside, and hesitated. “You do it.” He handed her the knife.
Anna cut the package open at once. The cover of the book showed a black sun; bright red birds flew out of its center and turned into a girl’s hair. At first glance, the picture perplexed Anna, but she liked her father’s name, printed in large white letters and taking up the top third of the cover.
“No dust jacket?” The poet was standing behind her with a look of deep disappointment on his face.
“What do you think?” Her eyes moved back and forth between him and the book.
“They’re printing only a paperback edition.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He snatched the book and flexed it vehemently with both hands. “It’s cheap, don’t you see! It doesn’t lie snugly in the hand. It feels like some ephemeral periodical—like a magazine you flip through and throw away.”
“Nobody would treat a book of yours like a magazine.”
“It won’t even stand up properly on a shelf!” He thrust the book into an open space between two others. The little volume sagged laxly to one side and then fell over rearward. “There you go, that’s what my work’s worth!”
“Papa, it’s a volume of poetry. Of course it’s thinner and lighter than a three-hundred-page book.” She laid it in the center of the table.
“Precisely, and that’s why it has to have a solid cover! Poems are the compressed experience of life. They should be in books you can carry around with you and take out when you’re ready for them. But this thing … !” He opened it and immediately closed it again. “It looks like a map of the Moscow subway system!”
“You’re exaggerating. See how good the title looks? They made a real effort.” She pointed to the handsome, slanted script, the letters red against the black of the sun.
“The engraving’s by Khlebnikov,” he said, nodding gently. “I think he’s the right choice. His art’s harmonious with mine.”
“What does it mean—the birds, the girl’s hair?”
“What does it mean? Don’t have a clue,” the poet growled. “Khlebnikov always was a pretty woolly-headed artist.” Viktor Ipalyevich picked up the book a third time, as if it were gradually gaining in value. “They’ve used high-quality paper.” He ran his eyes over the imprint, the title, and the foreword, which had been written by the director of the Conservatory.
Viktor Ipalyevich Tsazukhin’s legacy comprises thirty years of Soviet lyric poetry and is the expression of an epoch rich in hard-won victories as well as painful losses. Tsazukhin is a man produced by the Revolution; his striving toward the Soviet ideal, the longing in his work for justice and moral perfection, his fraught thought processes, which reflect his heart’s joys and sorrows, and above all, the melody of his verses, which are attuned to