Bella Akhmadulina
Fever

I must he ill, of course. I’ve been shivering
for three days now like a horse before the races.
Even the haughty man who lives on my landing
has said as much to me:
Bella, you’re shaking!

Please control yourself, this strange disease of yours
is rocking the walls, it gets in everywhere.
My children are driven mad by it, and at night
it shatters all my cups and kitchenware.

I tried to answer him: Yes
I do tremble,
more and more, though I mean no harm to anyone.
But tell everyone on the floor, in any case,
I’ve made up my mind to leave the house this evening.

However, I was then so jerked about by
fever, my words shook with it; my legs
wobbled; I couldn’t even bring my
lips together into the shape of a smile.

My neighbour, leaning over the banister,
observed me with disgust he didn’t hide.
Which I encouraged.
— This is just
a beginning. What happens next, I wonder.

Because this is no ordinary illness. I‘m sorry to
tell you, there are as many wild and
alien creatures flashing about in me
as in a drop of water under a microscope.

My fever lashed mc harder and harder, and
drove its sharp nails under my skin. It was
something like the rain whipping an
aspen tree, and damaging every leaf.

I thought: I seem to he moving about rapidly
as I stand here, at least my muscles are moving.
My body is out of my control completely.
The thing is freely doing whatever it likes.

And it’s getting away from me. I wonder if
it will suddenly and dangerously disappear?
Like a ball slipping out of a child’s hand,
or a piece of string unreeling from a finger?

I didn’t like any of it. To
the doctor
I said, (though I’m timid with him)
— you know, I’m a proud woman! I can’t have my
body disobeying me for ever!

My doctor explained:
Yours is a simple disease,
perhaps even harmless, unfortunately
you are vibrating so fast I can’t examine you.

You see, when anything vibrates, as you are,
and its movements are so very quick and small,
the object is reduced, visibly speaking
to — nothing. All I can see is: mist.

So my doctor put his golden instrument
against my indefinite body, and a sharp
electric wave chilled me at once
as if I had been flooded with green fire.

and the needle and the scales registered horror.
The mercury began to seethe with violence.
The glass shattered, everything splashed about,
and a few splinters drew blood from my fingers.

— he careful, doctor, I cried. But
he wasn’t worried. Instead, he proclaimed: Your
poor organism is
now functioning normally.

Which made me sad. I knew myself to belong
to another norm than he had ever intended.
One that floated above my own spirit only
because I was too narrow for such immensity.

And those many figures of my ordeals had
trained my nervous system so that now
my nerves were bursting through my skin, like old
springs through a mattress, screeching at me.

My wrist was still out of shape with its huge
and buzzing pulse, that always bad insisted
on racing greedily: Damn it then, run free, I cried
I’ll choke with you, as Neva chokes St Petersburg.

For at night my brain has become so sharp with
waiting, my ear so open to silence, if
a door squeaks or a book drops, then —
with an explosion — it’s the end of me.

I have never learnt to tame those beasts
inside, that guzzle human blood.
In my presence, draughts blow under doors!
Candles flare — before I extinguish them!

And one enormous tear is always ready
to spill over the rim of my eyes.
My own spirit distorts everything.
My own hell would corrupt heaven.

The doctor wrote me out a Latin scrip.
The sensible and healthy girl in
the chemists shop was able to read the
music in it from the punctuation.

And now my whole house bas been softened by
the healing kiss of that valerian,
the medicine has licked into every
wound I have, with its minty tongue.

My neighbour is delighted, three times he
has congratulated me on my recovery,
(though his children). He has even
put in a word for me with the house management.

I have repaid a few visits and debts already,
answered some letters. I wander about
in some kind of profitable circles.
And no longer keep any wine in my cupboard.

Around me - not a sound, not a soul.
My table is dead, dust hides everything on it.
My blunt pencils like illiterate
snouts, are all lying in darkness.

And like a defeated horse, all my
steps are sluggish and hobbling now.
So all is well. But my nights are
disturbed with certain dangerous premonitions.

My doctor has not yet found me out. However
it will not long be possible to
fool him. He may have cured me once, but
soon I know I shall burn and freeze again.

A snail in its grave of bone I am
for the moment saved by blindness and silence —
but still the horns of sick antennae itch
and will rise up once again from my forehead.

Star-fall of full stops and hyphens, I
summon your shower to me! I want to
die with the silvery goose flesh of
water nymphs burning in my spine.

Fever! I am your tambourine, strike me
without pity! I shall dance, like
a ballerina to your music, or
live like a chilled puppy in your frost.

So far I haven’t even begun to
shiver. No, let’s not even discuss that. Yet
my observant neighbour is already
becoming rather cold to mc when we meet. 

Translated by Elaine Feinstein