Ilya Selvinsky
Portrait of my mother

She climbs the stairs to the fifth floor.
A dark old lady with bitter eyes.
The staircase is the same, and the door's the same...
But she's as nervous as a girl taking exam.

Her lips twitch. There's pain under her heart.
From inside comes the bravura sound of a piano.
Her own son's strange life
Gazes out impassively from the copper plate.

Here the kitchen is jokingly called "ravine,"
The child-sized diner, "reception room."
After-lunch tea is called "five o'clock."
(Who knows what that means!)

But their odd remarks, their "local tongue,"
Give a sense of smugness that alienates her,
Like the slanting rays of autumn
That seem unaware of your presence.

Finally she presses the bell.
Its chill remains on her fingers.
She hears... there it is... the sound of his footsteps.
Yet, it is he, her child!

A last time she adjusts her head scarf...
Straus is let loose onto the stairwell.
I smile at her, take her coat,
Give her a smacking kiss. I'm trying.
She is so woebegone. Maybe I
Speak in too deep a voice? I strain to be gentle.
These are the best moments of her life,
For a while she feels peace.
And as with the wretched, worn fox fur,
The ice is stripped from her soul.
Her everlasting face becomes again
As it was in Simferopol.
And I hear the sweet sounds
And the Crimean countryside springs to life once more...
As in winter hay the dry cornflower,
So in her speech a Tatar word appears.
But suddenly "senap" and "shashla" vanish
And the old woman's face becomes a tragic mask:

Her grandchild's voice resounds; "Mama!
The dark old woman's come."
And my wife enters, calling us to tea,
And awkwardly we leave the room.
The old woman walks, life grief personified,
And my wife and I, filled with guilt...
But then from behind the table,
My rosy mother-in-law rises to greet us,
My stepdaughter shoots up, like an arrow,
My wife's niece springs to her feet.
And each one feels she's done something wrong.
And they all form up in a line.
As if the Furies were abroad.
Goddesses of maternal rights.

But this guard of honor, the old woman
Greets with a bitter smile.
She feels like a rock here, hard pressed
By queen and pawns.
The roots of mortification have sunk deep.
Henceforth her son's image
Is profaned, like the Jerusalem of the Jews,
Suddenly become a holy place of Christendom.

What good is respect to her? It comes with old age.
There's no acknowledgment from the visitors.
She's just the grown-up son's old nanny,
Who happens to have turned up at these gentlefolk
And the smoky, work-worn hand
With its talons and calouses — the hand of a crow —
Makes two jerking movements toward the sugar
And suddenly stops as if scalded,
As if transfixed by a million eyes...
And her mood is so dark, it's as if
Her hand has been seized
And placed in the flames on some execution square.

And all are silent. Either it's too trivial,
Or, on the contrary, myth-sized, for a tragedy.
She takes two small lumps,
Although she'd very much like a third.
And, irritated, I take one more
And smile as I put it in her cup.
"What for?" She shrugs her shoulder —
And everyone feels uncomfortable.
Then my wife calls her again,
Puts her to bed, covers her with a deer pelt.
But she dreams she is living
With her son in the cottage by the oak tree.
That he has neither wife, nor children.
She takes care of his thousands in a stocking...
What for? Why? Even she doesn't know.
It just like that. For spiritual nourishment.

Then she comes to, as out of a drunken state,
Heaves a sigh, recovers her forces:
"Son, would you give an old woman some sugar,
Only don't let her know," trembling she says.
And, winking, I repair to the "ravine"
And call my wife out from the "reception room":
"Love, give me a bag for mama,
But make it seem you don't know a thing!"
And my mother leaves, holding on to the ledge,
Cautiously placing one foot before the other,
One small step after another, hobbling downstairs,
Wooden herself, like some wooden toy,
Hiding the sugar in her much darned plaid,
Dreadfully wounded,
Smoked in the smoke of kitchen years,
An ancient angel, disfigured by life.

Mother leaves, and the darkness gathers.
It is dark, with the lamp upstairs on the landing;
Like the black conscience of a patricide
The giant show looms behind me.
But what can I do? And what's to be done?
Am I the only one such things happen to?
"Drop in, some time!.. And the air whistles
In your breast, choked with tears.
Mother leaves. Like a hunchbacked beetle
Into the terrible abyss of this multistoried bulk.
One might say, to her end. To her grave. Step by step.
My dear... my tear-stained mother...

Translated by Daniel Weissbort