All That Is Solid Melts into Air

by Darragh McKeon

  Maria and Yevgeni climb the stairs—the lift is still out—and Maria turns the key and Yevgeni puts the greaseproof paper into the bin and lets out a belch.

  “Don’t push it, Zhenya, just because your mother’s not here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Wash your hands. We’ll get started. I’ll help you.”

  His day is getting better.

  It’s a Wednesday, which is the end of Alina’s laundry week, the day when the piles of freshly pressed sheets reach their peak, covering every available surface. Maria opens the door to the living room and steps into a tundra landscape. The place is so stark and pristine she can almost hear the Siberian winds whipping through the room.

  Alina has pinned a tag on each stack with the owner’s name and address, and Maria begins to line up the piles in order of delivery. A stack has tipped over near the windowsill and Maria picks it up and shakes out the sheets for refolding. She hands two corners to Yevgeni, and they automatically go through the process. The ritual is not without its satisfactions. Maria loves the sensation of snapping the corners of a freshly dried sheet, yanking it between her and Yevgeni, the clean, sharp lines that emerge when they each pull tight, stepping forward and back, as though they were in the middle of a formal dance.

  They pack up and start their deliveries in the falling snow.

  They knock on doors in dimly lit passageways. Hand the bags over to people whose hands are dappled with liver spots, with raised veins. They smell smells they don’t want to think about, and hear rubbish flowing down the chutes around them set into the walls, arteries of waste running inside the building. They shoulder open doors of broken glass and doors where the glass has been replaced by wood or cardboard or not replaced at all, and with these ones, with the panels absent, they step through them, but first they place their hands forward, fingers splayed, feeling for what may or may not be there, like a blind man entering an unfamiliar room.

  They go back to their apartment and restock and then head out once more, doing this systematically, building by building.

  They walk up stairways with kids sprawled all over them. Kids not much older than Yevgeni, bottles of glue in front of them, and Maria doesn’t have to tell Yevgeni to be careful because the child already knows. How can he not, the synthetic leer on their faces?

  They deliver a bag to a man with no hands, just bandaged stumps, and Maria walks inside and puts his laundry in the cupboard. The place is immaculately tidy and he explains that the woman next door comes over all the time to make sure he’s okay, and Maria feels good about this; it’s not all despair or spirit-stripping cynicism.

  They see a birdcage that contains a cardboard bird, coloured in with crayon.

  They see a red-candle waxwork of Lenin, burned down a little ways so that he looks as if he’s had a lobotomy.

  They see a medical skeleton, standing in the corner of a room, wearing a broad-brimmed black felt hat.

  Their last call is Valentina Savinkova, a friend whose husband works with Alina, and she doesn’t need to get her laundry done, but she wants to help out. Alina is a little embarrassed by her custom, but of course they’re not in a position to turn it down.

  “You don’t need to have us do this.”

  “Of course I do. I don’t want to be washing my sheets. Think of the time it saves me.”

  “You have the time.”

  “I have the time, but I don’t want to be wasting it on ironing, washing. It’s not charity, believe me. I let Varlam think it’s charity, otherwise he wouldn’t agree to it, but all that walking up and down to the basement. All those dull conversations I’d have to get into. Please”—she swats an open hand past her ear—“your sister is doing me the favour.”

  She pours vodka into three glasses and Yevgeni laughs. She looks up.

  “Zhenya, of course.” It’s her turn to laugh. “I have some kvass.”

  She goes out and comes back in with a large glass, a handle on the side.

  “Here. You can pretend it’s real beer.”

  Yevgeni doesn’t much like kvass, but he drinks a slug and pats his tongue off the roof of his mouth, the tartness of the drink drawing his cheeks together.

  Valentina looks around the room. “I should have cleaned.”

  “You’ve just talked about how you couldn’t be bothered doing laundry and now you’re saying you should have cleaned.”

  “What, you’re the KGB now? I’m contradicting myself? Fine. Is this a crime now too? You send this beautiful child over as a spy. Yes, you, Zhenya, you’re a beautiful child. I’d come over and mush your cheeks, but I’m drinking my vodka and you’d probably disappear into the couch in shame.”

  Yevgeni doesn’t know how to respond to this.

  “So why are you here too, Maria? Did you think your little spy needs some supervision?”

  “No, just help. It’s a lot of work for a kid and I had an afternoon off.”

  “An afternoon off? Sounds mysterious.”

  “It’s not. I had a meeting at his school. Alina couldn’t make it.”

  “And so you’re seeing what the child gets up to on his rounds, extorting food from vulnerable, lonely women.”

  “I’m thinking maybe he shouldn’t be doing this alone. Those kids on the stairs.”

  “I know. The corners are darker lately. I know.”

  “It’s not a good place.”

  “It’s fine. There’ll always be a few. It’s fine. It’s not like Zhenya will be getting caught up in all that. Besides, I hear you’re bound for the Conservatory, Zhenya.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That’s not what I hear. All the practicing is going well?”

  He’s silent. He doesn’t like it when adults get together and then include him. He’s just not one of them. Why pretend otherwise?

  “We got some fish. In the bedroom. Go and have a look.”

  Yevgeni bounds off the couch. Maria waits until he closes the door.

  “I’m worried about him. We still haven’t found a place for him to rehearse. An audition for the Conservatory in the spring—there’s also the possibility of a recital at my work—and the child practices on a keyboard with the volume turned down.”

  “He can’t practice at his music teacher’s?”

  “The man’s old, his wife is senile, we can’t ask more of him than we already do. You don’t happen to know of anyone with a piano?”

  “Of course not. What kind of circles do you think we move in?”

  Maria lowers her eyes. Valentina softens her tone, refills Maria’s glass.

  “I’ll ask Varlam to keep an ear out.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring my problems here.”

  “Don’t worry. I need something to keep my mind occupied. It’s a relief to hear about something practical. I’ve been worrying about the strangest things lately.”

  “What type of things?”

  “I don’t know. Just things. I’ve too much time on my hands.”

  Maria waits patiently. This is always the nature of conversation with Valentina: she approaches the topic in waves, the tide of information coming gradually. Maria, being Maria, listens while someone talks themselves into understanding, or revelation.

  “I don’t know. I’m forgetting things. My keys. My purse. I forgot my coat a few weeks ago. I was at a play at the Hermitage, on my own, and, afterwards, I walked for twenty minutes in the pounding snow before realizing I had left my coat behind.”

  “Must have been a good play.”

  “I’d tell you, but of course I can’t remember.”

  “Are you worried? Do you need to see someone?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. There are people who’d kill to be in my position, you know. Just forgetting. Having no memory makes you innocent. You can’t obscure things.”

  “Has something happened that’s made you want to forget?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Silence.

  “Ther
e’s something. What is it?”

  “I saw something the other day—a few weeks ago, actually. The strangest thing.”

  More silence. “Well, I don’t know how to put it. The strangest thing. I was in the Lefortovo—you know how sometimes it’s good for meat, the lines that sometimes spring up.”

  “Yes.”

  “It was Varlam’s birthday and I wanted to cook him something special, some pork maybe, and I hung around, went to the places where I had queued before, and eventually I came across a line and I got a shoulder of pork, a beautiful slab, let me tell you.”

  Valentina is slightly bug-eyed, with hair chopped under her ears, which further emphasizes the oval shape of her face. Maria could see her standing at the door of the memory, wondering if she should step inside it, wondering if this was doing any good.

  “Then I walked back to Kurskaya station. I was really pleased with myself. He works so hard, Varlam. You know how it is, Alina works hard too. I wanted to make him a meal to celebrate him. I know Varlam hasn’t done amazing things in his life. He’s feeling, at the moment . . . what’s the word? . . . unaccomplished. So I wanted to cook him a meal that recognizes what he means to me. A meal fit for a good man.”

  She swats the air again, scattering away irrelevant information.

  “Anyway, with this package of meat in my bag, I’m proud of myself. I’m a good wife. And I’m walking those backstreets—you know where I’m talking about, there’s a steelworks building and it’s near all those railway lines.”

  Maria nods. “Yes.”

  “The evening is coming down and I feel like the only person in the city—there’s no one else around, not even any footsteps to be heard—and I turn a corner and see something hanging from a lamppost.”

  She pauses, looking up, and her voice turns lighter.

  “And right away I feel like it’s going to be something strange. I don’t know why. The weight of it maybe, the way it swung on its own weight. And I look up and it’s a dead cat, hanging from a short piece of rope, its eyes gleaming from the streetlight. And I feel it’s looking right at me.”

  “My God.”

  “I know. Its mouth is open, fangs bared, snarling, spitting, the way cats do. I tell myself I need to get out of there, so I start to walk faster—I’m nearly running, in fact. My shoes have a thick heel, so I’m staggering and I slip but regain my footing and look up, and there’s another one. I kept my head down all the way back to the station, but I could still tell, from the corner of my eye, that there were more—maybe twenty. I don’t know. I was so worried someone would come around the corner, some militia guys, and I’d be the only one around with these fucking animals strung up, and they’d start asking me questions.”

  “Of course.”

  “I couldn’t even cook that dinner later. I just couldn’t bear the sight of raw meat. I had to dump the package near the station. The blood was leaking through the paper and getting onto my hands. I wanted to puke.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I haven’t been sleeping well since.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I’ve been forgetting things.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m glad you came today. I would have called over anyway. I wanted to ask if you’d heard anything like this before. When you wrote for the newspaper, maybe people talked about such things.”

  “No. I’m sorry. They didn’t.”

  “I’m sitting here wondering why cats are hanging from lampposts.”

  “I don’t know. It seems like a statement of some kind.”

  “Who would make a statement there? In Lefortovo?”

  “I know. But what else could it be?”

  “You don’t know. I don’t know. Such an odd fucking thing.”

  Yevgeni pushes open the door again. It’s a little too neatly timed for comfort. Maria hopes he’s just bored with the fish.

  “Did you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Their colours are beautiful.”

  “Varlam loves them. He wakes sometimes in the middle of the night and he says that if he just watches the fish, he falls asleep again.”

  “He can see them in the dark?”

  “The bottom of the tank lights up.”

  Yevgeni definitely wants one now.

  They say their good-byes and Maria hugs Valentina, offering reassurance, and Valentina mimes that she doesn’t want what she’s said to fall on other ears, and Maria nods and Valentina knows she can trust Maria. This is a woman who’s never in her life passed on a secret.

  They carry the empty laundry bags and feel the release of the weight.

  “Thanks for helping me.”

  “It’s fine, Zhenya. You’re good to do it all on your own.”

  They walk, listening to the sound of their own footsteps.

  “I suppose you want some fish now.”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “No, not really.”

  “Did you hear what we were talking about?”

  “No.”

  A pause.

  “What were you talking about?”

  “Nothing.”

  Chapter 17

  Maria is leaning against the perimeter wall at the viewing point for Lenin Hills: the Moscow River below; a ski jump and slalom course to her right; the star of the main Lomonosov tower rises high into the night sky behind her.

  This location was a favoured meeting place in her student days, with its beautiful view of the city. Men would wait here for her and take her ski jumping, a tactic, she now suspects, to get her adrenaline running, her blood pumping, desires racing. She hasn’t stood here in years. It’s the opposite side of the university from the Metro stop, and there’s always somewhere else she needs to be, even tonight. She’s resolved to make her way to Grigory’s later, a relatively short walk by the river. She needs to ask about a rehearsal place for Yevgeni. Although his offer of a piano had been several months ago, Grigory is not the type to go back on his word. He might well be agreeable to letting the boy come over a few days a week, even if he has ignored her phone calls.

  She’s waiting for Pavel—an old friend, or teacher, or lover: whichever traditionally comes first in the list of distinctions. Before her classes, she slid a note under his door, asking to meet, something she’s done every three or four months since their reacquaintance at a party last year. They rarely meet casually, even in the corridors of the faculty, but she finds it a relief to have a long-standing friend come back into her life, someone—independent of Alina—who knows her well enough to enable her to think things through. She wants to clear her mind before she meets Grigory, wants to dispel the possibility of unburdening herself to him. She’ll ask for a favour for the boy, nothing else.

  She’s been waiting for Pavel for half an hour, watching the skaters on the river below her, lit up from the Central Lenin Stadium. Her gloves are thin and her fingertips feel dumb and immobile. She’s never become used to the snapping cold of the dark season. She’s never known any other kind, and yet the deep winter always finds ways to surprise her, wrapping itself around her skin, biting at her exposed extremities. She’s reminded here though, in this spot, with couples walking past, skates slung over their shoulders, that she loves the peacefulness that descends at this time. People speaking as they dress, in muffled, layered solitude. Condensed steam everywhere, moisture-laden breath. Winter always assumes a certain otherworldly gait. It has a texture and speech all of its own, a written language, snow nestling itself in lucid patterns, iced windowpanes pleading to be deciphered, skaters cutting swirls into the frozen river.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Pavel has placed himself soundlessly beside her, an old habit which makes her jump out of her skin.

  “You startled me.”

  Pavel smiles. There’s a childish edge to his humour, always seeking an opportunity to irritate, to tease—an aspect so at odds with his status as a professor of
literature. People revere him. He repeats his question.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And so quiet. I feel like I can hear every sound on the river.”

  “Do you skate? I can’t remember.”

  “I could skate in a straight line, I just could never turn.”

  “That’s a problem.”

  “I think it was something to do with relying on only one foot. I stopped trying just before I hit my teens. It was probably a wise decision, looking back.”

  “I skate from time to time.”

  “Of course you do. The man of five hundred talents.”

  “Please, not you. If you start complimenting me, it might be the end of our friendship.”

  She smiles and they embrace, warmly.

  When Maria was a student, his lectures were eagerly awaited events not just within the department but throughout the university. The hall would be crowded with engineers, medical students, and marine biologists. They’d fill the steps, squeezing in three wide, the crowd clustering at the doorways and spilling out into the lobby, listening intently, laughing with their fellow students inside—those lucky enough to get a seat. Professor Levytsky drew effortlessly on the classics, embellishing his points with stories from the writers’ lives, their sexual proclivities, anecdotes of everyday embarrassments. He could hold a room with magnificent power, using silence as a way to taunt his audience, to stir them into their own internal opinions. From his mouth, poetry became a fine meal, each distinct word gaining its own flavour when issued from his lips.

  “You got my note?”

  “Of course, I read it with pleasure. You’ve always written a good note, Maria.”

  “I’m sure I’ve had many successors.”

  As an undergraduate in her first year, Maria had pursued him with zeal. In her first two months she wrote five love letters, slipping them under his office door in the late evenings. The letters themselves were a sexual awakening to her; she was surprised at her ability to write such sensual prose, surprised that she knew what she knew, experiencing the bodily tremors while she wrote, becoming heated as she lay her longings down in ink. And, in later weeks, when they lay in bed, him asleep, she would trace her finger along the lines on his fine-boned face, following the progress of those early words that were etched now into his crow’s-feet, chiselled into the grooves of his forehead.