by Dara Horn
“Tolya says he wants to meet the other kids in the building,” he heard Raisya say through his own thoughts. Suddenly he was ashamed that he hadn’t been paying attention, noticing, again, the thick veil of thoughts that hung before his eyes and passed for life. “Tolya says he just moved in. He hates being the new kid.”
“Tolya is making things up, baby,” Boris said, and stroked her hair. Sheaths of black silk grew out of his daughter’s head. “Tolya’s father told me they’ve lived here even longer than we have.”
“But Tolya says he doesn’t know any other kids here.”
“Well, you didn’t, either, until you met him.”
Raisya pulled at her own hair, twisting a lock around her finger. Boris glanced at her tiny finger, wrapped in black hair, and marveled. So much beauty in the world, and no one notices it! “That’s not true,” Raisya pouted. “I know Basha down the hall.”
“Fine, you know Basha down the hall,” Boris said, fumbling for his key and imagining that Tatiana was already home, even though he knew for a fact she wasn’t. Was it really her work that kept her out so late? Was it possible to ask her? Was it possible not to?
Raisya stuck out her tongue, pointing it toward Basha’s apartment. “I hate Basha down the hall.”
Boris turned the key in the lock. “You shouldn’t hate people, Raisya,” he heard himself saying. It was something Tatiana liked to say.
“Why not?” Raisya asked.
To Boris’s surprise, he couldn’t think of a good answer. Fortunately, Raisya soon forgot she had asked and wandered into the tiny alcove, walled off with a bookcase, that served as her room. But after she left for school the next morning, Boris took down the little painting his art teacher had once given him, removed it from its frame, checked that Der Nister’s folded story was still tucked into the wooden canvas struts, and slid it behind his daughter’s rows of children’s books. The Popovs worked for the museum, and you couldn’t be too careful about things like that.
BORIS’S WORK HAD inexplicably slowed down. He was being assigned to fewer and fewer projects; his supervisor claimed it was a slow season for everyone, but Boris heard his colleagues complaining of having too much to do. There had been a pay cut, too, which Boris assumed was universal; it would have been capitalistic to ask. He started coming home earlier, afraid of the hours spent doodling at his desk. Meanwhile, Tatiana was staying even later at her lab. So Boris and Raisya spent more of their evenings with the Popovs. It was much roomier than their shared apartment upstairs with all of its annoying neighbors, where there was no space for her to play, and Boris was grateful to have Raisya with him, at least. The children’s center where she spent her afternoons reminded him a bit too much of Malakhovka. Besides, he was beginning to like Sergei. With Tatiana gone all evening, it was rare that he had a chance to talk to another adult about anything besides work. And Raisya seemed to like it there. Tolya’s supply of toys, and Tolya himself, were a source of endless fascination.
Sergei’s toys fascinated Boris, too. Being a senior state museum administrator—along with having what Boris gathered to be an impressive military record, judging by all the medals displayed on the walls and shelves—was apparently a job that conferred far more privileges than being a lowly civil engineer who never once served in the Red Army, and while the rational part of Boris’s brain took pride in the fact that his country rewarded anti-fascists and placed such value on art, the stark contrast between Sergei’s life and his own life one flight up pained him more than he would admit. First there was the apartment itself, an unfathomably private one which consisted of three small rooms that the family had all to themselves, with a private bath and kitchen and even a separate bedroom for the child, who would grow up without hearing his parents’ fights. Then there was the abundance within the home—the cabinets always stocked with the high-quality liquor that Sergei shared with Boris; the bowls always full of candies that made Raisya salivate from the moment she walked in the door; the electric refrigerator (no communal iceboxes here) that, when Boris once sneaked a look, revealed itself to be a treasure chest of foods a child could grow on: rows of milk bottles standing like soldiers, shining heaps of fruits and vegetables, meat and fish ready to be roasted in the Popovs’ private oven. Boris often wished, for Raisya’s sake, that they would be invited to stay for supper, but somehow they never were. And then there were the dozens of paintings, which Boris was beginning to suspect might not be copies at all.
“You have some remarkable reproductions here,” he ventured one day in front of the paintings in Sergei’s living room, after a few shots of vodka had loosened his tongue. He smiled, trying to sound friendly rather than suspicious. They were alone, as was becoming typical in these early evenings. Irina was out with her friends, and Tolya and Raisya had run off to Tolya’s bedroom, their arms loaded with paper and tubes of paint.
Sergei laughed, an odd snort restrained by a frown. “That’s because they’re professional fakes,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Boris asked, and suddenly in Sergei’s living room he sensed the presence of the veil, the film of vague memories and worries separating him from the moment he was living through. It horrified him. He looked at Sergei and saw nothing at all. Only the paintings on the walls seemed real.
“Officially I’m an administrator at the museum, but informally I supervise appraisals,” Sergei was saying. “When I was in the army I was in charge of forging documents for espionage, and I became a bit of an expert on how to make something look authentic when it isn’t. So now I can spot a lot of things that most people wouldn’t notice.”
“It’s nice that that sort of thing has civilian applications,” Boris murmured, attempting to say something pleasant but not exactly complimentary. Every time Sergei mentioned the army, Boris felt himself becoming just a bit older, his hairline sneaking even farther back.
“You’d be surprised how many times the museum acquires pieces that turn out to be fakes,” Sergei said. “Especially when there are so many ways to spot a bad one. Turn it upside down, for example. An upside-down fake almost always looks unnatural. The professionals know about the easy tricks like that.”
“Professionals?” Boris asked.
“Most people don’t know that there’s such a thing as professional art forgers,” Sergei said, leaning toward Boris as if sharing a secret. His breath smelled less like vodka than like milk. “The country has been flooded with art since the war, but then there are the opportunists who pollute the supply with counterfeits. You’ve got to sort out the real ones from the fakes. Cheap fakes are easy to catch. The ones I have here are from the real talent, the people who are actually artists in real life, and then they also have a bit of the science background to age the canvas and all that. These are trophy pieces for me. Look at this Rembrandt, for instance,” he said, standing up and lifting what looked like a small antique painting off the wall. “This guy knew what he was doing. Period canvas, period frame, aged paint, and the image is pretty good. He’s a real artist. But I have a feel for these things. It was my idea to strip it down in the corner under the frame until we came to the layer where the primer was anachronistic.”
“Hmph,” Boris said, letting out a puff of air in awe.
Sergei returned the painting to the wall. “Of course, with a child at home, I’m better off without originals anyway. With these, I wouldn’t feel so bad if Tolya decided to decorate one of them with Irina’s lipstick.”
Boris laughed, relieved that the conversation had moved back to something he understood. “It’s amazing how many things kids can destroy,” he said. “My wife is always terrified that Raisya’s going to stick her finger into an electrical socket.”
“Yes, or tear apart your documents.” Sergei grinned. “If I didn’t keep mine in a safe place, Tolya would have turned them into paintings by now.” He leaned in toward Boris, miming a conspiracy. “Judging by your daughter’s energy, I should hope you do the same.”
Boris laughed ag
ain. “Of course,” he said, thrilled by the acknowledgment of his own worth. But just then Raisya and Tolya suddenly ran into the room, bounding toward their fathers’ arms. At the last second, Tolya cut Raisya off and leapt up to where Boris was sitting, laughing hysterically as Raisya remained on the floor. Boris jumped as the red-haired boy landed heavily in his lap, but Raisya was laughing, too. The chubby boy had already slipped off of Boris’s knees when Sergei swooped down behind Boris’s featherweight daughter and swept her up into the sky above his head.
Sergei laughed along with his son, but Raisya, midair, had stopped laughing. For an instant, looking at her held aloft by Sergei, her black hair momentarily floating on air, Boris remembered a painting in his art teacher’s private room, the one of the artist’s wife flying like a flag on the wind. Her hair fell to her suspended shoulders, and Raisya made a face.
“Put me down,” she said, her voice strangely dark.
Sergei laughed again, a forced laugh. He had heard that she meant it. Still, he waited a moment longer before lowering her to his waist. “Why don’t you bring this one home?” he said quickly, passing her to Boris as Irina appeared in the doorway. Amid handshakes and kisses, Boris and an oddly sullen Raisya went back upstairs.
It was another long night that night. After Raisya went to sleep, Boris, inspired by Sergei, lifted his mattress off the bed frame and examined all that passed for his own “documents,” the treasures underneath. It had been a long time since he had looked. Most of their photographs were in albums, but here were a few that he had somehow never put away: a picture of himself and Tatiana on a trip to Odessa (when had his hair begun to disappear?), one of Tatiana pregnant, frowning at the person behind the camera, a small portrait of Tatiana’s mother, wearing a smile that Boris had never seen her wear in real life, several pictures of Tatiana as a girl, a group portrait of Boris with the engineering union, and finally a picture of Raisya as a baby, her mouth open and her eyes wide. The rest of the things under the mattress were papers. His and Tatiana’s identity papers (Nationality: Jewish), Raisya’s (the same), two sets of divorce papers, one marriage certificate, three thin scientific periodicals with articles Tatiana had written, typescripts of several studies Tatiana had done years ago, notices from various government agencies pertaining to their apartment, and finally, piles of clippings Boris had received during the war from the American newspapers that published his letters on behalf of the Anti-Fascist Committee, and responses from people who had pledged their support. They were the closest things he had to the medals on Sergei’s wall.
Tatiana arrived well after midnight. They made love mechanically, the way one eats after a fast—not seeking pleasure, but merely relief. It ended quickly, and Boris drifted into sleep. Tatiana no longer even appeared in his dreams. Instead, he dreamed of walking with Raisya, running hand in hand with her, taking off with her like airplanes into the air, and then flying with her, for miles, over the town.
“I DON’T LIKE Tolya’s daddy,” Raisya said one evening as they sat down to another private dinner together. They had been spending evenings at the Popovs’ for almost two months, and they had still never been invited to stay for supper. Privately Boris blamed Irina, who probably took Tatiana’s constant absence as some sort of insult. Meanwhile, as Tatiana continued to linger in her lab, Boris had started serving Raisya meals at a little card table in their room, unwilling to share her company with the other couples who crowded the table in the communal kitchen. The long table there reminded him too much of Malakhovka, of being elbowed out of the way by the other boys. But his cooking skills came from Malakhovka, too. Most of their meals consisted of fried potatoes with onions, and sometimes red cabbage salad. That night the potatoes had come out slightly burned.
“I don’t like Tolya’s daddy,” Raisya repeated. “He’s mean.”
Boris reached across the table and served her some cabbage that he knew she would not eat. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Raisya. The Popovs are very nice to you.”
“Tolya says his daddy once ran someone over with a truck. On purpose. For his job.”
Boris held back a sigh. “Baby, I told you before, Tolya likes to make things up. He imagines things. Tolya’s daddy doesn’t even drive a truck. His parents work for the museum.”
“But he told me.”
“Maybe Tolya was remembering something his daddy told him about the war,” Boris said. He decided to ask Sergei whether he had ever been in the tank corps. Still, it disturbed him that Raisya had to live in a world where other children didn’t hesitate to lie to her, where things she was told about the workings of the world would later turn out to be grossly untrue.
Raisya ignored him and gulped down her milk—the milk, Boris now remembered, that he had diluted with water from the sink, to make it last until the next time Tatiana was paid. He was an engineer, married to a biologist, working in the most progressive country in the world, and he could barely afford to feed his five-year-old daughter. He watched the thin gray liquid sliding between her perfect lips and remembered the bottles of milk in Sergei’s refrigerator, an entire army of milk. Suddenly he felt nauseated at himself, at the whole world.
“I think it’s mean to run over someone with a truck,” Raisya said.
“It certainly is,” Boris replied absently, picking at his food. Thinking of the milk made his own hunger seem dirty and cheap. Was Tatiana really at her lab all this time, or was he absurdly naive? Boris thought for a moment of leaving the dishes in the communal kitchen for Tatiana to do when she came home, but it would be too directly hostile. He looked back up at Raisya. Her nose was narrow like Tatiana’s, but her lips were soft and full. The dent below her nose was shallow, like his mother’s.
“Tolya says the person his daddy ran over was trying to run over the whole country, so his daddy had to run him over first,” Raisya said. Bits of potato leaked between her lips. “How could somebody run over the whole country with a truck? It would take forever.”
“Reyzele,” Boris said, putting down his fork. It was his Yiddish nickname for her, and he almost never used it because Tatiana hated it. But when he called her that, he felt as if they were secret lovers, speaking a language all their own. “Reyzele.”
“What?” she said in Russian, irritated. She was engrossed in stabbing an uncooperative potato with a fork.
“Reyzele, Tolya likes to imagine things. He makes things up that aren’t really there.”
“I told Tolya that nobody should ever run over anybody with a truck,” she said, missing the potato again. “No matter what the run-over person did.”
Boris put his hands on the table. “Reyzele, I want to tell you something. I know some people think it’s important to have a good imagination, but I don’t want you to imagine things like Tolya does. I want you to see what’s really there. It’s really hard sometimes to see what’s really there.”
The potato finally surrendered to her fork. She looked up at him, and her eyes were so dark and penetrating that he leaned back in his seat. “I do see things,” she said slowly. “I see everything.”
Boris sighed, frustrated. It was the same feeling he had had a few weeks ago while trying to help her learn how to add, the bleak realization that something important was simply not getting through. “Let’s clean up these dishes,” he said. But when he saw her slide down from her seat, her chin level with the tabletop, he couldn’t help but swoop down and lift her off the ground, flying her through the air. This time she laughed.
His usual strategy was to eat with her late before putting her straight to bed; she seemed to fall asleep more quickly that way. After he finished the dishes, he helped her into her nightgown, wedged himself onto her tiny bed, and read aloud to her from a picture book. That night the book was one Tatiana had brought home from the library. It was something about a cat who tormented the mice who lived in his house, stealing their cheese and crushing them in his paws. In the end, predictably, the mice united, rose up, and killed the cat so that they co
uld rule the house in peace and brotherhood. When he finished reading, Raisya frowned.
“I hate that book,” she said.
Boris closed the book. “I didn’t really like it, either,” he confessed. The illustrations had been ugly. “Do you want me to read you something else?”
“No,” she said with a yawn. “I hate all books.”
This surprised him. The last report from her school had claimed that she was becoming an excellent reader. “Why?”
“Because they’re made up. Tell me a real story.”
“What do you mean, a real story?”
“A real thing that really happened to you. When you were little.” She closed her eyes, waiting.
Boris looked at her eyelashes, dark seals over her perfect face. What could he possibly tell her? He didn’t know how to make things up. “When I was little,” he began. He felt his stomach clench, burned potatoes and ugly memories churning his gut. At last he thought of something.
“When I was little,” he began again, “I used to like to paint pictures. Once there was a famous artist who liked a picture I made, and he wanted to keep it.”
Raisya’s lips moved, perfect lips like dark fallen petals of a flower, her eyes still closed. “What was your picture?” she asked.
Boris paused. “A baby,” he said. “It was a picture of a baby.” He waited for her to ask for details, but she didn’t. He continued. “This artist wanted to keep it, but I said I wouldn’t give it to him unless he gave me one of his. So he gave me a picture he made of a man floating in the sky. It’s the one we had hanging on the wall, but right now it’s—it’s put away,” he finished.
“Mmm,” Raisya breathed, and turned on her side. Boris put his hand on her head, stroking her hair. Suddenly she opened her eyes. “Did your parents ever tell you stories before bed?” she asked.
Boris stared at her. He had never told her about his parents, and had long dreaded the day when she might ask. Even Tatiana barely knew; he had claimed to have been too young to remember, and she had believed him. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice low.
