“He wants me to teach it to talk.”
She pauses. An exquisite pause.
“So he can still hear my voice if I die.”
And they look at each other, the pathos of the simple request working its way into the backs of their eyes, and then they buckle into laughter at precisely the same moment, tears streaming down, their lungs heaving with the gale of unfettered, unrelenting mirth, because they both know this child, both have an understanding of his kooky ways, the kid who spends entire days humming Mendelssohn but can’t get his timing right, who can recite multiplication tables up to obscene numbers but can’t handle long division, and they let all that has been pent up flow through their ribs and find its expression in full-mouthed hysterics.
After it breathes itself out they find themselves hunched against the wall. Maria lights a cigarette, and they compose themselves under the bare bulb’s light. And now they have two items to pass, the vodka and a cigarette.
Maria is the first to break the silence.
“Another city, where would you go?”
“East or west?”
“Whichever.”
“The big ones. The ones with good TV and plenty of hair spray. Paris, London, New York. Maybe Tokyo.”
“Tokyo?”
“Yes, the lights. I imagine they have a neon skyline. And the cramming of people in the underground train. And to be a foot taller than everyone else. To look down on everyone from a height. To be the queen of the rush hour.”
“Tokyo. But you’d have to bow fifty times a day.”
“Well, that would be another reason. The bowing, all these little people paying homage to me. And you?”
“A city with a white beach and women who drink from fancy glasses. A city with palm trees. I’ll do what foreigners always do, open a bar on the beach. You can come and sit, wear large sunglasses, be mysterious, and Zhenya can play for tips, take requests from drunk honeymooners. Maybe even get a little action for himself.”
Alina palms her on the side of the head. More a sweep of the hair than an actual strike.
“What, the boy will never have sex?”
Alina scrunches her face and flails around Maria’s head, both laughing again. With who else could they let their guard down like this, become schoolgirls again, enjoying surreptitious cigarettes and speculating about boys?
The moment passes and they take another drink.
“The hand exercises. You know about these?” Maria asks.
“Of course I know. The kid’s obsessed. I come to wake him in the morning and he’s lying there with his arms up towards the ceiling, bending those skinny wrists.”
“You know about the rose clippers?”
Alina stops laughing, alert now. She doesn’t like it when Maria notices something about her boy before she does.
“What about them?”
“Nothing. A funny thing, that’s all.”
An edge to her listening.
“So funny that you won’t say what it is?”
“Well. It’s nothing. I found him a couple of weeks ago, that’s all. He was clenching and unclenching a pair of rose clippers.”
Maria does the action.
“Where did he get them?”
“Evgenia Ivanovich downstairs—you know how she likes her flowers. It’s not important. Anyway, he’s clenching and unclenching and I ask him what he’s doing and of course he says, ‘Nothing.’ So I keep pushing and he says he’s strengthening his hand. And I say, ‘Why are you strengthening your hand, surely it’s strong enough?’ And he says, ‘When I’m in the audition, and the other kids are there and we shake hands. I want to crush them. I want them to be scared of me.’ ”
Maria tails off as soon as she’s said this. When it comes out of the mouth of a nine-year-old, one as bedraggled as Zhenya, there’s a ridiculousness in the schoolboy bravado. But the words coming cold, straight out of her own mouth, carry a supreme sadness. Even music, beautiful melodies become an instrument of power here. The kid is constantly surrounded by forces that want to crush him to dust.
“I think he’s still being bullied.”
“Don’t worry. He’s a stubborn kid, he’s smarter than any of them. He’ll do okay.”
“The other day, I get him to slice some carrots. I tell him to roll up his sleeves—why add to the laundry basket?—he refuses. I get suspicious. I walk over and pull up his sleeves and there’s a red mark on his arm. He says they call it a Chinese burn. He says it’s nothing, some game. Says it’s just a thing they’re doing.”
“It’s a Chinese burn. This is what kids do.”
“Since when? It never happened when we were young.”
“It happened, it just never happened to us.”
“Meaning?”
Maria didn’t mean to bring it up. The age-old argument leaking out again, slipping its way between sentences.
She sighs. “Meaning what it means.”
Alina shakes her head in disbelief.
“And so it begins. Cling to it, dear sister, cling to your bitterness. What else do you have?”
Maria shrugs her shoulders.
“It’s not bitterness. I’m just willing to recognize him for what he was.”
“How do I spend my hours? In a hairnet pulling sheets from a line, feeding them through a mechanical roller. Ironing like a madwoman in the evenings. I have a mouth to feed; he had four. It was some extra money. A side job. People, the few who knew what he did, understand that. There are such things as shoes and bread and soup. I never saw you refuse them; our bones never jutted like some other children. Necessity. People understand, even now. Those who know.”
The tension rises, a particular tension for this particular subject.
“It was not laundry work. It was not even work. And people don’t understand. And everybody knew, everyone knows. Name his friends—go ahead, count them. Who came to console us when he disappeared?”
“They were frightened. They didn’t wish to be connected. They were all involved to some extent. He took no pleasure in it. How can you make this be anything else? We had dolls, we had books. Do you think you would have led the life you did if we had no books?”
“It was not just a side job.”
“Did he beat us? Did he make her life a misery? Not him. Be ashamed of those men instead. Set your life against those men. I say it again: you had dolls.”
“It was not a side job. The day that you realize it, that day will arrive.”
“Well, I’m not young and it has no marking on the calendar. I’m still waiting.”
Neither of them speaks. Maria goes back inside and places the pressed clothes into a delivery bag, one hand on top, one on the bottom. She puts a saucepan of water on to boil and spoons tea into the pot.
Their father went to the races on a Saturday afternoon and never returned. There were no explanations or justifications for his work, how he betrayed others, led them to a life of imaginable misery. They couldn’t sit with him, understand him, listen to an old man’s regrets. Only a void remains, and it continues to wrap around their lives, tying them together in ignorance.
Maria sits listening to the water boil, currents of the past lapping inside her. The clank of a card hitting the metal bucket occasionally makes its way into the apartment. It’s always like this. The recurring subject that dominates their lives. Every lengthy conversation comes around to it eventually, teasing out the intangibles, the unknowables. Because who really can have a clue as to why Nikolai Kovalev did what he did, pushing his little wood pieces, aligning all his forces. Maybe it was valour or self-sacrifice or vanity or greed. Maybe it was something he never thought about, just numbers on a sheet, little codes. Maybe he was more worried about his opponent’s opening gambit or the exposed position of his rook.
Alina shuts the balcony door and places the near-empty bottle on the kitchen counter. She wets the tea with the boiling water and waits for the leaves to settle into zavarka. Maria watches her by the reflection in the glass do
or.
Alina fills the pot and takes down two cups and puts them on the table, letting the tea stew again, then, after a few minutes, pouring. It smells strong, relaxing. Maria thinks that she’d like to take a bath, but she’d have to clean off everyone else’s scum first, not something she’s prepared to do right now. Instead she tells Alina about the meeting.
“I know all the arguments. Of course you’ll say it’s a good opportunity, and it is. But I can’t think about coming home, after my day, and opening that book and taking notes for hours on end. Three, four, five years of this. Already I can’t face that thought.”
“But you said you never get to use your brain. You’d be pushing yourself, thinking in a new way. That’s good, surely?”
“I don’t have a natural aptitude for it. I could do it, but I’d have to grind it out. I’d have to study harder than most other people.”
“And there’d be classes. You enjoy classes. Other engineers with opinions, curiosity.”
“But I already have classes. They respect me in the Lomonosov. There’s talk of giving me more hours—even a junior position. I was hoping that by next year they’d offer me some lectures, give me a research brief. You want to know about longer term, the Lomonosov is longer term. It holds more possibilities than being another clipboard holder in a factory. And it wouldn’t take years of drudgery.”
“And now this.”
“And now this.”
“We can’t do without your teaching money for a few years. There’s only so much ironing that will fit in this place.”
They both look around. There are stacks of finely pressed sheets everywhere. They have to tiptoe around them. Shirts hang from a specially constructed rail, dozens of them. They sit in a sea of cotton and polyester.
“They’re saying, ‘We own you, you can’t do something else.’ ”
“Well, maybe show them your fidelity, prove your love to them, they might move on to some other person.”
“So I make a gesture?”
“Yes. Show how it benefits them to have you do other things. Show them you bring them something of benefit. You’re cultured. They respect culture. Bring that to them in some way.”
“What about a recital? If they come and they like it, they donate. Use it to get Zhenya a rehearsal room. It might even brighten everyone up a bit.”
“So then. Zhenya will play.”
“You know how he is, though. Maybe he can’t handle it.”
“It’s for his aunt. If I asked, maybe not; but you, he’d learn to walk on his hands for you.”
They finish their tea and unfold Maria’s bed and Alina helps her to change her sheets and pillowcase and they turn off the lights and settle down in their separate rooms and think about how they’ve survived together. No husbands or parents to rely on. If they disagree on their past, then they disagree on their past. It can’t separate them. And each of them thinks how good it is to have a sister.
In the morning Maria walks across the courtyard and watches the watchers. Curtains flick overhead, figures stepping away from the glass. Nothing that happens in this stretch of land goes unseen. She steps over the kerbstones that are half painted, a job which the maintenance men occupied themselves with for a few days, before finding some other distraction.
She hasn’t slept well, her mind ticking over after her conversation with Alina and then one thing leading to another, thoughts whirring uncontrollably in the dark. When this happens, which isn’t often, she thinks of it as her mind unspooling, all those blank working hours being cast out, reclaiming their freedom.
She passes a car with brown tape in place of a back window. There are great mounds of uncollected rubbish on the sides of the pomoyka. Plastic bags stacked upon plastic bags. The children use them as combat shelters for their snowball fights, and she can conjure up the sour stench that will rise again when the snow melts and the air heats. The smell of a new spring.
Children adapt.
They take an untreated football pitch and use it as an obstacle course. They play volleyball with taped-up wads of newspaper. They don’t have basketball hoops here, so they kick the seats out of old kitchen chairs and lash them to drainpipes. They spend their young lives inventing games with stratified, nuanced, ingenious rules and spend their adult lives resenting the constraints around them.
The bus steams up and bobbles to a stop.
Maria looks at bare branches set against the sky, lines running into one another, sturdy boughs tapering off into a fine filigree.
She wants to make love on a warm night with moonlight shimmering down rain-slicked streets.
When Mr. Shalamov arrives Maria’s waiting in the armchair outside his office. The secretary refuses to look at her, resenting her intrusion. A different species from the people that inhabit these rooms, with their well-cut suits. Even the secretary in a matching jacket and skirt. Maria wonders if the secretary changes into her work clothes, just like everyone else. Surely she can’t wear a skirt like that outside in such cold, even with thick tights on. She can’t have a locker room, and Maria thinks of her changing in the management toilets, rising in status as soon as she slips on the soft material, and in the evening shedding that skin again, becoming just another nameless face, sneaking onto the bus home, averting her eyes, hoping that she won’t see a worker she recognizes. Or more likely she feeds off the high-powered lives that surround her, massaging their bodies as well as their egos, sharing their beds.
Maria stands and speaks before the secretary has a chance to interject.
“Mr. Shalamov.”
He stops and looks at her and then looks at the secretary.
“I’m sorry to intrude. I just wanted to continue our conversation from yesterday evening.”
A glaze in his eyes. She can tell he doesn’t recognize her.
“We talked about the Lomonosov.”
He turns when recollection strikes him.
“Yes. We’ll pick the matter up another time. Anya will set up an appointment. You’ll be notified.”
His back is to her and he’s moving towards his office door. She rattles off her prepared lines.
“I would like to make amends for my lack of participation in some of our previous cultural activities, I have a suggestion for an event that would be good for morale.”
He stops and turns.
“Is there a problem with morale?”
His voice is icy. He’s focusing intently on her. A cool, dispassionate glare.
Maria’s nervousness melts away, instinct kicks in. She’s faced a look like this dozens of times, someone uncertain about her intentions. She slows her pace, lifts her shoulders, talks to him clearly and warmly, like an equal.
“Let me begin again. My nephew is a talented pianist, a candidate for the Conservatory. I’d like to arrange a concert, in recognition of the abilities that are nurtured here. So many of our workers are gifted. Of course, you’re in a better position than anybody to recognize this. I would like to arrange an evening in celebration of such great talents, an evening that honours the efforts of the simple worker, our ability to work in harmony. Perhaps some Prokofiev sonatas.”
He nods, taking in her words.
“A fine suggestion Mrs. . . .”
“Brovkina.”
“Mrs. Brovkina, but perhaps now is not the right time.”
“I should mention that my nephew is nine years old. The evening could function as a symbol of our potential.”
“Nine years old. The child can play Prokofiev?”
“Yes, sir. He’ll be auditioning for the Conservatory in the spring.”
He looks at the floor and looks up again.
“I’ll think about it. As you say, such an event may contain a powerful symbolism. And we do our best to support talents, in whatever form they appear. I’ll discuss it with our director of culture.”
“Thank you, sir.”
He turns in to his office. The secretary looks at her. Maria smiles.
“Thank you
for your patience.”
She walks down the metal steps and makes her way to her bench, and her working day begins. She tells herself that this is a good morning. She’ll keep telling herself this, even if she doesn’t believe it.
Chapter 13
Once again Grigory walks this flat landscape with the pale evening light drawing down, his only respite from the plain, hastily constructed buildings that are now his home. He came to this resettlement camp three months ago, when swathes of corn covered the fields and combine harvesters traced the land, supported by locals who tied the straw in bundles, standing it on end to dry and be taken home later for their horses. Rows and rows of them inching forwards, like a local mob whose intent was to beat the land into submission. A year before, this would have been a sight to take pleasure in, to watch a community reap their harvest, but Grigory has developed a suspicion of all types of agriculture, all signs of growth. He knows the dangers that lurk in the most innocuous things.
When he left Chernobyl they were harvesting too. Men from the clean villages on the outer rim of the exclusion zone would enter their neighbours’ evacuated farms and pluck beets or potatoes from the earth. Often they’d take their children out of school, bring them along; their wives also. These were men who had always trusted the soil; it had never failed to provide for them. How could they believe the earth had betrayed them when vegetables were growing in front of their eyes? They would ask why they were allowed to work their own farms and yet their neighbours were forced to move because of some imaginary boundary. If their cattle needed feed, their neighbours wouldn’t begrudge them. The feed sits in sacks—how can it be contaminated? Even the kolkhoz offices endorsed this view. They posted signs saying it was permissible to eat salad vegetables: lettuce, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers. There were instructions for dealing with contaminated chickens. They advised people to wear protective gear and boil the chicken in salt water, to use the meat for pâté or salami and pour the water down the toilet.
All That Is Solid Melts into Air Page 15
