Out in the fields the snow is so deep that Artyom has to wade through it. He keeps his pelvis lower to the ground and leans into his steps. It takes so much effort that he doesn’t feel the cold. He reaches the first trees of the forest and trudges inside. These trees mark a border; time slows as you pass through the line of branchless trunks. The light that comes down has air inside, as if it’s been passed through a tea strainer, and the rays split into strands of drops as they fall onto the forest floor, landing silently like dancers, turning as they descend.
The sound of his own breath. Trickles from hidden streams. A branch struggling under its load. The air, too, somehow distilled. Smoky air. Strong air.
Tall trunks with no branches. A stoat slithers up one, twenty metres away, a white blur ascending.
Artyom walks and sits and walks again, looking for fallen branches. When he is thirsty he scoops snow into his mouth and looks up at the canopy far above him.
It was a forest, back there, that claimed his father, and in the silence Artyom can feel a connection amongst these tall trees, as if they are drawing him here. They sway nervously, confessing their remorse, creaking like a door forced open in the wind.
BACK IN MINSK, they had been in the emergency shelter for a month before they found his father. New people kept arriving. At the end of the first week, their floor space was cut in half, so they no longer had room to lie down flat. They were forced to sleep in shifts, there were so many of them bunched in under that roof. The whole place stank of sweat. People complained continuously of the smell. Babies were getting rashes from not being cleaned. Eventually, the militia set up a line of hoses at the back of the warehouse to deal with the problem. Everyone was given a plastic bag, and you queued up at the back door, and once you stepped outside you had to strip naked and put your clothes into the bag. You had to tie a knot in the bag and then, still holding your clothes, you’d stand in front of the wall, near a drain, and the militia would hose you down. Afterwards, you used your own clothes to dry yourself off, then put them back on and reentered the warehouse, with small puddles between your toes, your shirt and underwear sticking to you. For the first few days the militia guys would rate the women. The women would stand in a line, naked, holding their plastic bags in front of their genitals, and the guards would shout out a score between one and ten. If any woman complained, her bag would be sprayed until it was torn and her clothes soaked through, so she would have to walk back inside naked or sodden, the material sticking to her skin, under the watchful eyes of a thousand people.
Sofya would always come back crying. His mother always came back quiet and stayed quiet for most of the day.
There was a place to wash babies. Gas rings were laid out on the ground with metal buckets of water resting on top of them. Another bucket of cold water would be placed on the ground beside each one, so the mothers could balance the temperature of the water and then scoop and pour it over the babies. Artyom saw one mother accidentally touch her child’s foot on the metal rim of a hot bucket, burning it. The infant wailed, bellowing with such desperation that a crowd of people came outside to see what was wrong.
There was no information about his father. Not the first week. Not the first month.
People talked in the beginning about how they got here, what they were doing before the call to evacuation. They went through their whole routines: who said what, who did what. People speculated. Many thought it was the capitalists that had sabotaged the plant, infiltrated it somehow over a long period of time and caused this chaos. The capitalists were intimidated by the progress of Soviet energy, they were becoming desperate in their scheming. People didn’t stray into wider subjects, though, they didn’t talk about where they came from, what paths their lives had taken and—as Artyom came to notice—after the first week, they almost stopped talking altogether.
Nobody knew anything about what had happened to their loved ones. A great blanket of longing descended upon the building. There were guards stationed along the perimeter fence; no one could pass without bribing one of them. Some gave away all they had in the first few days and walked to the hospitals or the other shelters, but they couldn’t find any information there either and were forced to return for the food and shelter offered to them, poorer than before, no chance of release until they were told they could go—if they would ever be told they could go.
Arguments broke out over floor space. Every centimetre was a precious commodity. Some people would try to adjust the makeshift walls of their allocation, and those who had been cheated would return and scream and tussle, and Artyom saw how petty people could become when desperate.
They had been there almost a month when Artyom’s mother woke him in the middle of the night.
“Artyom,” she whispered.
He woke easily. He couldn’t sleep soundly in this place, his body so confined, the constant shuffling noise, snores, sleepy mumbles, infants taking it in turns to wail their complaints.
“Yes?”
“There’s something I need you to do.”
She pulled out a small package from the folds of her clothes, a piece of soft cloth, wrapped very tightly with some elastic cord. She unwound the cord and displayed three gold nuggets. Artyom couldn’t see them very well in such weak light, so it was only when he touched them that he realized they were teeth.
He pulled his hand back, startled.
“Where did you get them?”
“It’s not important.”
“It is important. Where did you get them?”
“I didn’t steal them.”
“Well, they’re not yours. You don’t have any gold teeth.”
She was quiet; she let him realize it himself.
“They’re Grandmama’s.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Plenty of people do it. Before she died, your grandmother made us promise we wouldn’t bury her with them.”
Artyom was quiet for a few moments.
“Are you angry?” she asked.
“No. I just didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry, Artyom.”
She didn’t speak until she could see he was ready to continue.
“I need to find your father. Things are getting desperate. We can’t stay here forever.”
“Okay.”
“These are the only things of value that we own. You’ll need one to bribe the guard. After that, only use them if you have to. I want you to find Maksim Vissarionovich, the man who brought us here. He’ll be kind to us. See if he knows someone—a nurse, a Party official. Anyone.”
“Where will I find him?”
“Look for rubbish bins on the street. Ask any rubbish collectors you come across. If you still can’t find him, go back to Lilya’s building and wait for him at his lock-up.”
“Okay. Do we know his last name?”
“No. I never asked.”
Artyom’s mother shook her head as she said this, regretting her stupidity. She was close to him; Artyom could smell her sour breath. She took his face in her hands.
“You know not to use any of the gold unless you have to.”
“Yes.”
She kissed him on the forehead.
“Thank you, Artyushka. And remember to come back. If you went missing too, I couldn’t bear it.”
“I should go now, shouldn’t I? Maksim will be working soon.”
“Yes, you should.”
Artyom knew she was watching him as he walked softly to the door, stepping over limbs that spilled into the passageway.
At the gate, when he had given one of the pieces of gold to the guards, he asked them to point him in the direction of the city centre, but they just shrugged; they weren’t from here.
So Artyom walked through the industrial wasteland, his first time alone in the city. He saw some crows gathered around a stray rubbish bag and kicked out at them, announcing his presence on the streets, and they exploded upwards, the group splintering as it gained height. He saw the smear of streetlights ahead and made his way in
their direction, passing a textile factory and a car scrapyard. When he reached the main road he followed the flow of traffic, reasoning that, at this time of the morning, people would be heading towards the city. He walked for an hour, the pavement narrowing, trees becoming more prominent, grass aisles in the middle of the road. He looked everywhere, drank it all in. There were old houses made of stone, with stone-roofed porches. The buildings here were solid, were made to last.
Artyom found himself touching everything. Now that he could see it in daylight, had time to reflect on it, the city was different in every sensory way. Even the space of the city was completely unlike the spaces he was used to, with the rectangles of sky between buildings. The sweeping streets. Statues and chiselled lintels. Gateposts. The lines in the road. The big, green lane where the officials drove. The kerbstones. The railings. All of this not alien but odd, unlike anything he was used to.
His father was safe. He had to be. He was somewhere else in the city, confined in a different area. Looking for them, just as they were looking for him.
Eventually, Artyom stopped at a crossroads and saw a street with full rubbish bins taking up half the pavement outside the houses. Artyom stopped a passerby, a man with a long, gray coat, the top button dangling from a thread. He asked if the rubbish would be collected this morning, and the man opened his eyes wide, held his arm out, and pivoted around, displaying the rubbish bins in answer, and walked on.
Artyom sat at a bus stop and waited. Every ten minutes or so a bus would pull up and the driver would open the door for him, then shake his head in irritation when Artyom waved him onwards. There were so many cars on the street: Moskviches, Volgas, Russo-Balts, Vazes, Zaporozhetses. He was in awe of the lines and colour of them, listening to the roar of their engines. All of these, having come alive from the pages of the manuals, there in actuality, speeding along the road in front of him. He approached some of the parked cars and ran his hand along their contours, but a woman in the row of houses opposite shouted at him, told him to mind his business.
If Iosif were here they’d probably find a way to pop the bonnet on some of them and slaver over the engines. Iosif was so much more adventurous than he was. Artyom thinks he remembers Iosif saying he had an aunt in the city, so he’s probably being well looked after. He’s probably watching television at night and eating tinned peaches straight from the can. Although, maybe not. Things don’t always work out the way you expect. After all, Artyom had an aunt in the city too, so Iosif could be saying the same about him.
He was hungry. In the shelter they’d be handing round breakfast by now. There were so many people there at this stage that there were no more queues; the militia came around delivering bags with packages of food for each meal, collecting the bags when everyone had eaten. Artyom hoped his mother would save something for him. But of course she would, she was his mother.
He waited for a while and then approached one of the bins and rummaged around. Nothing. He dug through a few more. Near the end of the street he found the carcass of a chicken, some tea leaves stuck to it, bits of newspaper, but nothing he couldn’t pick off. He ran his fingers in the spaces between the legs and the body, scooped up slivers of white meat from between its ribs. Real meat. Now that he had a taste for it, he wanted to stuff the entire thing into his mouth, wanted to crunch on the bones until there was nothing left. He raised the carcass to his mouth and licked it, taking in some tea leaves but mostly enjoying the grease on his tongue.
“Hey. Get away from there.”
The rubbish collectors had rounded the corner. They hung from the truck in their bright orange jackets, staring at him. One of them stepped down.
“What are you doing? Get away, you fucking rat.”
Artyom wiped the grease from his mouth with his sleeve.
“I’m sorry. I was waiting for you. I’m looking for Maksim Vissarionovich. He collects rubbish.”
“I think you’re looking for fucking dysentery. That’s what I think.”
Artyom didn’t know what dysentery was.
“I need to speak to Maksim Vissarionovich. Do you know him?”
“No. And I don’t care. Go and root through some other rubbish. Just do it in another area of town.”
The man was standing close to his face, all aggression. Artyom stepped out of his way, and the men emptied the bins into the back of the truck and clattered them on the pavement. Artyom was fascinated. He’d never seen a vehicle like this one. It had an internal arm that crushed the rubbish down and drew it inside. He stood and watched as they passed. But they didn’t go very far. The truck cut out and when they tried starting it again the engine just made a dull, straining sound. They popped the bonnet and rummaged around for five minutes with the same result. Artyom knew that sound. He approached the engine and grabbed the ignition coil with such assurance that the men let him carry on. He unbolted the coil, cleaned the contact points with his shirt, then replaced it in its slot and tightened the bolts. He gave a thumbs-up to the driver, who turned over the ignition, and they listened to it moan and gurn until it spluttered into life.
The man who had spoken to him smiled wryly, calmer now. “What’s this guy’s name again?”
“Maksim Vissarionovich. I don’t know his last name. He lives near the bus station.”
“Anyone know him?” he asked his workmates.
Shakes of the head.
“Okay. We’ll find you someone who does.”
He indicated for Artyom to sit in the cab, and the rest of the men returned to their platforms and grabbed their respective handles. They drove through the streets, low-hanging branches scraping the windshield. The driver had a knob on the steering wheel, which he used to drive the thing one-handed, grinding it around corners, driving so close to lampposts and walls that Artyom was sure they were going to crash, until he flicked the wheel in the right direction and the truck spun around miraculously on its own axis.
They left the city and, after a few minutes, turned off into a narrow side road arched with trees. They stopped at a barrier, where the driver flashed a card to a man in the booth, and they edged down a slope and onto a concrete platform.
Gulls dropped down from the sky and skimmed over a vast synthetic territory, a seascape that was entirely made up of things discarded. Bulbous plastic bags, strings of electrical cable, and soggy cardboard were congealed into a single, amorphous mass. Bulldozers surfed the waves of slosh, surging uncertainly against the semisolid waste. They looked as if they could tip over at any moment, but they climbed steadfastly before plunging back once more into the expanse.
The man from the back of the truck walked forward to a tin shed twenty metres away. Artyom sat in silence in the cab, the driver barely looking at him—not out of spite or revulsion, Artyom sensed, he was just a man who didn’t feel a need to make a connection, who was happy in his own thoughts. The man emerged from the shed and beckoned him with a wave, and Artyom opened the cab door and the air slithered into his nostrils, leaving a filmy residue against the back of his throat. He had never smelled anything like it. He clasped his hand to his nose and breathed only into the cupped space of his palm. As he stepped out onto the ground, a grey, cloacal muck encased his shoes. It was a struggle even to walk in this place.
“I asked around. He’s due back in a couple of minutes. You can wait here.”
“Thanks.”
“And you. Thanks for your help.”
They shook hands and the man climbed back on the truck. Artyom watched as it rounded one of the mounds and backed up against a low concrete wall, and spat out its chewed-up contents. The men stood around and shared a cigarette and talked amongst themselves, and when their truck was emptied they stood at their positions once more and drove up the laneway, back into the morning, into fresh air.
Artyom stood and watched, captivated, his hand still in front of his face, and took shallow breaths through his mouth. The graveyard of all that was once useful. It was all a kind of greyish brown, an anonymous sight.
After a few minutes of looking, he was shocked to realize that there were some people moving through the rubbish, covered in this sludge, barely distinguishable from their surroundings. They walked with sacks slung over their shoulders and picked things up and examined them, turning them over in their hands. What a way of life. Rising every morning to scavenge around this hollow, barren terrain. This was not a place Artyom could ever have imagined, a place so man-made. He looked out at these people wading through filth, letting out a bleat of delight if they salvaged something they could sell, finding small traces of encouragement buried in all the desolation, their comrades running towards them to share in the excitement. And Artyom would return frequently to this moment in the following weeks, when he watched sickness engulf his father, when blood seeped out through the pores of his father’s skin, when he began to realize that he could never understand or predict the pathways that someone’s life could take; that the will of a desperate person was stronger than anything he knew and that fate unspools in its own stubborn way, beyond influence or rationale.
Maksim arrived and greeted him, full of consideration, and fed him and took him back to the shelter, returning three days later, having located his father in one of the hospitals. Maksim waited at the gate while they washed as well as they could and dressed in the best clothes they had brought with them. As they got in the car, she looked at her children and said, “Don’t we look well?” and smiled. It had been a month since Artyom had seen his mother smile. He found the sight so reassuring, as comforting as a fire on a winter’s afternoon.
At the front door of the hospital they used the last gold tooth to bribe their way into the building.
There was nobody else there. The place was wrapped in silence. The only sounds were the echoes of footsteps that rang through the corridors. It was disconcerting to see a public building so empty. A shrill silence. Their ears attuned to the constant turmoil of the shelter. Sofya said, “I think my ears are going to crack,” and Artyom knew what she meant.
Once the attendant had given assurances that he would take them to Artyom’s father, Maksim said his good-byes and wished them luck. He slipped some money into Artyom’s mother’s hand, but she refused to take it. They struggled for a few moments, grasping each other’s wrists, and Maksim kept saying, “Please,” even though he was the one leaving the money and, eventually, Artyom’s mother relented. He left them his phone number. “Please. You’ve no one to look after you. If you need help, I’ll help,” and walked out the door. Each one of them called out their thanks, but he batted it away, kept his head down.
All That Is Solid Melts into Air Page 23
