by Lara Vapnyar
“That’s brilliant! Did you steal something yourself?”
“Yes, sure. As soon as I discovered the art of damaging, I stole plenty of things. Felt pens, paints, big sheets of white paper, and a couple of pillow cases—scissors worked especially well on pillow cases. I wanted to steal an iron. I found the handle from some other iron in the garbage so I could report our iron as damaged, but Inka managed to steal it before me. Technically the iron was mine to steal, because I signed for it, but apparently Inka didn’t feel the same way.”
“That was rotten of her to steal your iron.”
Lena smiled at Ben and said, “Thank you. I thought so too.
“So back to Vasyok. We danced together at the dance, and afterwards he asked me out. I agreed, because I was upset about Danya, and because I didn’t know how to say no, but I didn’t really want to go on a date with Vasyok. He was supposed to pick me up at nine-thirty the evening after the dance. In the morning, I told Inka that I didn’t want to go.
“ ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘He seems kind of stupid.’
“All morning I couldn’t decide if I should refuse Vasyok or not, and then we had a power outage. It happened around lunchtime, and they couldn’t prepare lunch, because everything in the kitchen and the cafeteria was down. After a while they sent some guys from the kitchen to distribute dry biscuits and buttermilk to the kids. Vasyok came to my unit with a box full of biscuits and a crate with buttermilk containers. He unloaded that in the lounge and then asked if he could talk to me in private for a second. There was some commotion—kids didn’t want biscuits or something—but I left Inka to handle it. We stepped outside and he led me to the bushes. There, he looked around and started unbuttoning his shirt. I was about to yell ‘What’re you doing!’ but he took out a long newspaper-wrapped package tucked under his belt. ‘This is for you,’ he said. The package had a faint smell of garlic, and something else, something smoky—my stomach rumbled.
“Vasyok asked me if we were seeing each other at nine-thirty. I said yes, because it would’ve felt too awkward to say no.”
Ben started to laugh.
“I can’t believe you sold yourself for a salami.”
“It wasn’t because of salami! The guy was nice to me, he took a big risk in stealing that salami for me. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“Right! The next thing you’d say would be that you didn’t even enjoy that salami.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it!
“When I got inside, Inka had just finished pouring the buttermilk for the kids. I motioned to her to come with me upstairs. I could hardly wait to unwrap the package. There were four slices of rye bread, two small cucumbers, a bunch of chives, and a large chunk of salami. Inka actually squealed with delight.”
“What a good friend you were,” Ben said.
“Why?”
“You shared your salami even after she stole your iron!”
“Huh, I guess so!” Lena laughed. “We locked the door so the kids wouldn’t see our feast, and rushed to get at the food.
“ ‘Look, look!’ Inka screamed, pointing to the tiny envelope made out of foil. ‘He wrapped some salt for the cucumbers. I can’t believe this guy, he is so thoughtful.’ The only problem was that we didn’t have a knife. We tried to slice the salami with Inka’s tiny scissors, and then with Inka’s nail file, but we didn’t get very far. We had to take turns biting into the whole piece, while munching on the bread, cucumbers, and chives.
“Inka said that I should definitely date Vasyok. Our illicit lunch put her in such a good mood that she even offered her lip gloss and rosewater perfume for the date.
“As I put my lip gloss on, I thought what an idiot I’d been to think that Danya was in love with me. So what if he made those straps for me? He helped me with my work. Maybe he did that for everybody. It didn’t mean anything. But then I remembered his face, his blue eyes, his carved features, the gentle way he held that brush for me. I still loved him, even if he didn’t love me back. But now I was going on a date with Vasyok.
“I went onto the porch at exactly nine-thirty, wearing my flimsy white top and smelling like Inka’s roses. Vasyok wasn’t there. I didn’t worry, I thought he just got held up. I had thought that the rose perfume was very elegant, but the longer I stood on the porch waiting for Vasyok, the less I liked the smell. By nine forty-five the smell started to make me sick, like the disgusting air freshener that my mother liked to use. Around ten, I decided I couldn’t stand it anymore. Plus, it was getting cold. I ran up to my room to change. But as I was rummaging through my suitcase to find a sweater, I suddenly had the distinct feeling that Vasyok wasn’t coming. I waited for him for another ten minutes or so, but I knew that he wouldn’t come, and he didn’t.
“ ‘Inka, he didn’t come,’ I said.
“ ‘What?’
“ ‘Vasyok didn’t show up.’
“ ‘Congratulations. That’s the second one that stood you up.’
“She sat with the jar of cream in her hands. She looked ugly, I noted with satisfaction. In her droopy nightgown, with dabs of white cream all over her face—still bright pink after the shower. Her eyes looked really tiny without makeup.
“The next night it was Inka’s turn to go on a date. She came back really late. I was already in bed, leafing through The Arabian Nights but unable to concentrate. Inka looked tired and sulky. She pulled her nightgown out from under her pillow, grabbed a towel, and went straight to the shower without saying a word to me. Then finally the water stopped, I heard the screech of the rusty knob, the angry rustle of the shower curtain, and Inka’s heavy steps in the hall. She was wearing a nightgown and her hair was gathered in a ponytail. She carried her jeans, her shirt, and her underwear in a pile and threw them into her laundry bag, not bothering to separate them. That was not like her. I asked how her date went, but she only said ‘Ah.’ She plopped onto her bed and took a jar with face cream from her drawer.
“And then I noticed that Inka was crying. She didn’t want me to see; she would jerk her face up so that the tears wouldn’t fall. I sat next to her on her bed and said, ‘Inka?’ She pushed her face against my shoulder and said that she’d dumped Andrey because he was a pig. ‘What did he do?’ I asked. She shook her head and said that she didn’t want to talk about it. We sat like that in silence. I was stroking her hair. Then she whispered, ‘My period started.’ I asked, ‘What?’ ‘My period started while I was with Andrey. I didn’t even notice until he put his hand down there. He said it was disgusting,’ and she started to sob. I hugged her, thinking about Kostik and Vasyok, and how they stood me up. Then I thought about Danya and started to sob too.
“The next morning Vasyok wasn’t at his usual station. A scrawny guy with thin red ears stood ladling kasha at the counter. Apparently, he was new at this job. He didn’t know that you were supposed to stir kasha before ladling—the first portions came out too thin, and the last portions came out too thick. And also he didn’t know how to hold the ladle, he tipped it over too quickly, and kasha spilled over the bowls, and slid down the edges onto the tray. He didn’t flirt or talk to the counselors. In fact, he avoided making even the slightest eye contact with us.
“ ‘Hey, where is Vasyok?’ Inka asked him.
“The new guy shook his head. But then Dena came up to us and said: ‘Don’t you know? They caught him stealing salami. I heard Vedenej yelling at him last night.’ And she winked at me as if she knew I was the one to blame.”
Ben sighed and rubbed his neck.
“So you were a femme fatale after all,” he said.
“I guess I was.”
“Listen, your story is making me hungry. Are you hungry?”
She nodded.
“There’s a diner at the next exit, we can stop there. I can’t promise you anything as exciting as stolen salami, but the food is pretty decent.”
“Okay.”
But about five miles before the exit, the traffic came to a halt, so suddenl
y that Ben barely managed to hit the brakes in time.
“What the fuck?” Ben said.
She rolled down the window and looked ahead.
“I don’t know—I can’t see anything. Probably an accident.”
They drove closer to the source of the jam and saw a bunch of cars parked on the curb on both sides of the road. A crowd of about fifty people stood on the bank of the little pond right off the highway, with more people getting out of their cars and approaching. A group of teenage boys armed with their iPhones crossed the road right in front of their car. Lena rolled her window down and asked what was going on. One of the boys ignored her, another made a face at her, but the third smiled and said: “There’s a moose in the pond, ma’am. People are snapping pictures.”
“I couldn’t care less about a moose,” Ben muttered.
But when they drew close, the moose was still there. Munching on some grass, perfectly oblivious to the crowd. It didn’t have antlers.
“Must be a female,” Ben said.
“No, I think it’s a male. It looks resigned.”
“And that’s a male quality?”
“I don’t know. It just looks like a male to me.”
The moose wasn’t pretty. Skinny, with ribs sticking out, a dingy worn coat, strange lumpy protrusions over its eyes, and long wet strings of grass stuck to its chin. It looked like the moose was drooling. Lena felt an urge to wipe his chin. Cameras big and small (from professional to tiny iPhones) kept clicking, whirring, and clicking again. Some people even knelt down to get a better perspective. “Come on, Moosey, baby, come on, turn your beautiful face! That’s a good boy!” Apparently, this woman took the resigned, oblivious, antlerless moose for a male too. On the whole, the scene reminded Lena of a press conference. A couple of greedy and excited journalists, yelling at, and snapping pictures of, their tired subject. “Mr. President,” Ben said, “care to comment?”
It was then that the moose stopped eating and retreated into the depths of the woods.
“I hate moose,” Ben said.
“Why?”
“I had a very unpleasant encounter with a moose when I was a child.”
“What did it do to you?”
“It looked at me.”
“Ooh, that is so scary!”
“Don’t laugh. It was scary! My dad had taken me hiking. There were many unmarked trails around the cabin, and Dad insisted we explore all of them. I was six, I had a blister on my foot, and I kept whining. So Dad said that he’d just walk ahead and if I couldn’t keep up with him, it was my problem.”
“You were six and he left you behind in the woods?”
“He didn’t go very far, I think he just wanted to scare me a little. So, there I was, dragging behind, crying and spreading snot all over my face. I didn’t see the moose right away because I was crying, then I saw this large blurry shape moving out of the bushes, stopping right in front of me in the middle of the road. I wiped the tears off to see it better. I think I was hoping that this thing wasn’t real, that it was a shadow or a cloud or something. Yet, somehow I knew that it was real and dangerous. I kept raising my head, throwing it back to see where the thing ended. And then I saw its eyes. It looked right at me. It saw me. It knew I was there. It was just as aware of me as I was of it. That was the scariest thing of all—the fact that the moose knew I was there.”
“What did you do?”
“What could I possibly do? I peed in my pants. Then the moose crossed the road and went away.”
“Did you call your dad?”
“I don’t remember. I just remember being back at the cabin, my pants and underpants were drying outside, and I was sitting on the futon playing with my toy Indians, dressed only in a T-shirt and socks. My socks were wet too, but Dad didn’t notice.”
“How old was he when he died?”
“Fifty-six.”
“Cancer?”
“Heart attack. It was very sudden. He’d had heart problems for a while, but he insisted they weren’t serious, and he wouldn’t even take his meds.
“He made his last trip to the cabin a few months before he died. He had wanted to take me, but I refused at the last moment. It was a Memorial Day weekend. I was fourteen. Dad was packing, I was carrying things to the car. Food, clothes, his new fishing gear, a new teakettle that he had bought specially for the cabin, a checkered blanket that my mother hated. Over the years, my mother had developed this habit: whenever she would do a spring cleaning, she would put together a pile of things that she’d grown to hate and offer them to my father. ‘Honey,’ she would say, ‘these mugs are disgusting, just looking at them makes my skin crawl, why don’t you take them to the cabin?’ Or ‘I can’t stand the sight of this thermos, why don’t you take it with you?’ Things that she didn’t particularly hate, she would just throw away.
“So, that time Dad put all our stuff in the trunk and surveyed it, and saw that my backpack wasn’t there. ‘Hey, where’s your backpack?’ he asked. I said that I wasn’t going. I sat down in the rocking chair on the porch and started rocking, hoping that this nonchalant action would give me strength against Dad’s rage. But he just nodded, as if he’d been waiting for this all along, and went to the car. He was backing out of our driveway onto the road, when he stopped the car—mid-turn—and got out. I was still on the porch, still rocking like an idiot. He didn’t look handsome or frightening, he looked old and lost, as if his will and drive had just seeped out of him. He took a couple of steps toward me, and he raised his hand as if he was going to make a long speech with a lot of persuasive gesturing. I told myself to resist. But then he dropped his hand, turned around, got back in the car, and drove away. And the second his car disappeared from our street, I felt something break inside me. I felt like chasing after the car and begging him to take me with him. But it was too late.”
A car passed them with an angry honk. Then another. Lena flinched and looked out the window.
“Ben! We’re too slow,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re driving too slowly. All the cars are honking and passing us.”
“Oh, shit, you’re right. I guess I should stop talking about Dad. It’s just the thought of going to the cabin brings up all these memories. Look at me. I have a whole carload of my past.”
“It’s the same way with me and the camp,” Lena thought. She thought of her story as this pile of clunky, chunky pieces of baggage, stuffed into Ben’s car along with his books, papers, and strange household objects.
ELEVEN
Soon after the exit, a village popped into view. A church. Another village. Another church. A pharmacy. A fire department. A compact shopping mall.
A diner.
The diner was empty save for two men in overalls finishing their plates of fish and chips, and a fat gloomy woman with a two-year-old squirming and kicking in his booster seat.
The waitress seated them at the dimly lit booth in the corner, which made their whole dinner seem mysterious and seedy.
“When was the last time you went to the cabin?” Lena asked.
“About two years ago. Leslie hates the cabin, almost as much as my mom did. She’s been trying to persuade me to sell it for years. I guess she’s right, because I hardly use it at all, but, you know, the idea of selling it pains me. I don’t think I’m ready to let it go.”
“Because of your dad and all those memories?”
“No, not really. Sometimes I think that the memories are better left behind. It’s just that the cabin is the only place where I can be alone.”
The waitress brought them two huge plates, where the sandwiches (tuna for him, roast beef for her) lay buried under piles of chips. She was a tall woman in her fifties, with red hair in braids. She didn’t smile.
Ben dug out his sandwich, swept some chips off the top, and looked it over, choosing the most convenient side for a bite. Lena bit into her sandwich in the middle, making mayonnaise and tomato juice drip out of the sides.
&nb
sp; Ben smiled and wiped some juice off her chin. Lena was suddenly overcome with affection for him.
“Am I boring you with all that talk about the cabin?”
“No, no. I’m the one who asked you.”
“After Dad died, I couldn’t bring myself to go to the cabin for a long time. Especially not alone. Or even with a girlfriend. I would only go with large groups of friends. We did that a lot when I was in college. We would take tents and camp out there using the cabin as a base. That way it didn’t feel like returning to the cabin. For some reason, I thought that if I went there alone, I’d let the cabin get to me, and I didn’t want that.
“Then when Becky turned three, I decided to go there with Becky and Erica, my ex-wife. We’d had a difficult couple of months, we had been fighting, something was clearly wrong between us, but I couldn’t tell what. I thought maybe a couple of weeks in the woods would help. I’d mentioned to Erica that I had a cabin before, but I’d never suggested going there. I’d said that it wasn’t livable. But this time I said, ‘Let’s think of it as camping.’ Erica wasn’t a big fan of camping, but she was surprisingly enthusiastic about the cabin. She gasped when she saw it. She climbed out of the car and laughed: ‘Beautiful! So beautiful!’ She said she’d had no idea it would be so beautiful. How could I have described it as such a dreary place? How could I have hidden it from her? When everything was so poetic and wonderful?”
Lena took a sip of her coffee and looked around. The little boy had finally managed to wiggle out of his seat and was now parked in his mother’s lap, happily eating French fries off his mother’s plate, dunking them in his Coke from time to time. “Oh, come on, Brandon,” the woman kept saying. “No, stop. You’re asking for it. Yes, you are! You’re pushing it, Brandon.”
