Moscow but Dreaming

by Ekaterina Sedia

  “What else?”

  Claudia flipped through the book. “Doesn’t say anything else.”

  “I suppose it could work,” Anton said. “If she becomes a person, we can hand her over to the police.”

  Claudia nodded. Or we can keep her, she thought. Some things were best left unsaid, and thought about only in Bulgarian.

  “How do we catch it?”

  “It says the kikimoras can’t resist bobbins, warm milk, and unfinished sewing.”

  “Let’s try all of those,” Anton said, his eyes glinting with unexpected enthusiasm.

  Before they went to bed, they laid out their enticements on the kitchen table: Claudia’s mother’s birchwood bobbins, a cup of microwaved milk, and one of Anton’s shirts Claudia began to hem, but never got around to finishing. Next to the shirt they left thread and needles, turned off the lights, and stomped to the bedroom with an overwrought display of fatigue. They stretched, yawned, and told each other how tired they were; they giggled like children at their deceit, and whispered conspiratorially, their lips brushing past the other’s ears. Claudia could not remember the last time she felt so close to him; they lay in bed, listening, whispering, holding hands.

  At midnight, the kikimora started her habitual wailing and screeching and shattering of now sparse glass, but soon she fell quiet. There was a brief clatter of the bobbins, and Claudia tensed and sat up, grabbing a pair of scissors from the bedside table. Anton and Claudia tiptoed back to the kitchen, and watched silently as the kikimora drained the milk in one long thirsty swallow, and started on sewing. She was no better at it than at counting, but persisted, quickly covering the bottom of Anton’s shirt in mismatched tracks of stitches and crooked seams that weaved through the fabric like the footprints of a drunk in the snow. She was so preoccupied with her task, her small soiled hands flying, that she did not notice when Claudia snuck up behind her.

  Claudia grabbed the small body, disconcertingly cold and slippery, and hugged it tight to her chest. The kikimora shrieked and flailed with the strength surprising in someone so small. She almost kicked free, but Anton grabbed her reed-thin shoulders and pinned them to the floor. Her legs kicked up, blurring with speed, and she screamed and screamed, like a wounded animal. Claudia’s hands shook as she took the scissors to the creature’s wispy hair, and with two swift strokes exposed a cross-shaped patch of her white skull.

  The girl went quiet and limp, her eyes rolling back in her head. For one dreary moment, Claudia feared that they killed her, and she shook the girl—so tiny, she couldn’t be more than three years old—until her eyes swiveled back and met Claudia’s. “Ba-ba,” the girl said.

  “Where did you find her?” said the social worker, looking up with tired eyes from his paper-littered desk.

  “She was hiding in our cellar,” Anton answered. “We found her yesterday.”

  “We’ll check her against all missing persons reports,” the social worker said. “Thanks for bringing her in.”

  The little girl, sensing that something was amiss, grabbed onto Claudia’s hand, looking at her with pleading dark eyes. She had quite a bit of a lazy eye, but Claudia did not care. To her, the little changeling was the most precious thing, no matter how lopsided or cross-eyed.

  Claudia squeezed the girl’s hand. “What if no one claims her?” she said. “What will happen to her?”

  “Foster care,” said the social worker. “What, you’re interested?”

  “Yes,” Claudia said, avoiding looking at Anton. “Please keep us posted—I don’t want someone else taking her in.”

  “Okay,” he said, and gave the little kikimora a thorough looking over. “Don’t worry, I’m sure the competition won’t be stiff.”

  As they left the social services building, Claudia listened absently to the girl’s crying inside.

  “Well?” Anton said. “What’s that foster nonsense?”

  “She’s ours,” Claudia whispered fiercely. “She chose us, and we are not turning her away.”

  “But—”

  She spun around, cutting him off. “Anton, I never asked you for anything. I put up with a lot of shit. But you can’t deny me this.” She stared at Anton, silently challenging him. The cars passed by in the broad streets without sidewalks, and above them the cloudless May sky bloomed azure. The birds twittered in a few perfunctory maples lining the parking lot.

  “I guess she did come to us,” Anton said, and patted his pockets for the car keys. “Maybe it is a sign.”

  Satisfied, Claudia nodded and walked to the car. At home, she resumed her busy routine, but never strayed away from the phone for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Despite her irrational fears, there were no living relatives uncovered, and no desperate couples rushed to adopt the girl. She had scoliosis, and her eyes were badly crossed. She did not speak, but seemed relieved to be brought back to the home where she first became human, comforted by familiar sounds of the chickens clucking in the back yard, and smells of the first preserves of the season.

  Anton never took more than a perfunctory interest in the child, but Claudia did not mind. Tina, as she named the girl, seemed content to follow Claudia around the house and the backyard, and watched her every movement with quiet intensity. For a few weeks Claudia felt happy—as happy as she was when she and Anton first moved into the house, full of hope. And just as then, the happiness soon gave way to discontent.

  She could’ve coped with an ill child—she could’ve spent nights sitting up soothing fevers, administering injections, giving sponge baths. But she did not know what to do when Tina went rigid and screamed and screamed without any visible provocation, without an end, growing hoarse but still screaming and moaning, the back of her throat shredded with exertion. She couldn’t cope when the girl banged her head against the table, the pulsing blue vein in her forehead vehemently searching for the sharp edge, when the girl clawed her own face, gouging deep parallel ravines into her translucent skin.

  “What will we do?” Claudia asked Anton, as Tina napped in her lap, temporarily consoled, curled up like a shrimp.

  “I don’t know,” Anton said. He had good grace not to add, You wanted this. “Maybe she needs to see a doctor.”

  Claudia’s fingers ran through the girl’s hair absently. “Maybe.”

  Tina did not like the idea of leaving the house—she kicked when they loaded her into the car and strapped her down in a plastic safety seat. She bit Anton’s arm as he buckled the seatbelt over her. Two crescent wounds swelled with blood. He frowned and got into the driver’s seat.

  Claudia looked out of the window at the fluffy clouds littering the sky and kept quiet. She did not want to admit that Anton was right, and stubbornly hoped that things would work out. They just had to.

  They had to wait in the reception area, and Claudia blushed and lowered her head under the disapproving eyes of the receptionist and a few parents. Tina twisted and hissed, slid off her chair as if she had no bones, and tried to bang her head on the coffee table, littered with colorful fans of magazines.

  “Shh,” Claudia whispered, and held Tina’s head. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

  Anton stared at the wall opposite him, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He wanted nothing to do with either of them, and didn’t even try to hide it.

  When they were finally called in, Claudia had to resist an urge to jerk Tina by her arm, just drag her along like a floppy doll. Instead, she carried her. The girl tried to slide through her arms like soap.

  The doctor, a nice young woman just a little older than Claudia, listened to her sympathetically, every now and again giving Tina a penetrating look. Tina still hissed, but remained still in the cocoon formed by Claudia’s arms and lap, squirming only occasionally.

  The doctor told them that Tina had an autism spectrum disorder—they were not sure exactly which one. “But they are pretty similar,” the doctor said.

  Anton spoke for the first time since they got there. “Can you
fix it?”

  “Unfortunately, no,” the young doctor said. “There are therapies that can help her adjust. We can teach her to relate to other people.”

  “But she’s not going to get better,” Anton said, standing up. He turned to Claudia. “Let’s go.”

  The doctor gave him a card. “This is our behavioral therapy center,” she said. “You may want to check it out.”

  As they were leaving, the doctor caught Claudia’s sleeve. “She’s in your foster care, correct?”

  Claudia nodded. “What does it have to do with anything?”

  “There are institutions for autistic children,” the doctor said. “The state will take care of it if you need it.”

  “Thanks,” Anton said, and left.

  “The book said she would become human.” Anton paced across the kitchen floor, and when he turned his shoes squeaked on the polished tiles.

  “She did,” Claudia said, in a whisper, afraid to wake up Tina, who napped on the floor by the kitchen table. “It’s not her fault that she’s ill.” She sat down next to the child, running her fingers through the wisps of her light hair, all signs of the cross shorn into it obliterated by the new willful growth. It’s my fault, Claudia thought. I wanted to make her human, and I broke her.

  Tina shifted in her sleep, and uttered a wordless whimper. “Don’t worry,” Claudia said to her, even though the girl could neither hear nor understand her. “We’re not giving you away. You’re ours now.”

  Anton sat on the floor next to them, watching Tina as if she were an exotic animal, impossible to comprehend. Claudia supposed she was, just like everyone else. She was grateful that her husband put in an effort, at least. Most didn’t bother at all.

  “Her hair is growing back,” Claudia said. “Do you think it’ll make a difference?”

  Anton shrugged and yawned. “Let’s go to bed.”

  She tucked the blanket around Tina and followed him to the bedroom. Both of them lay sleepless, listening to the small tired noises houses make at night. They heard Tina waking up and whimpering, then her shuffling footsteps across the kitchen floor, the clicking of the screen door latch.

  The screen door banged in the wind. Anton shifted but didn’t get up. Claudia balled the sheet in her fist as she heard the angry clucking of chickens and a small, halting voice. “One, two, three,” Tina counted and laughed. “One, two, three.” Then the clicking of the bobbins started, portending a disaster.

  YOU DREAM

  This is a recurring dream, the kind that lingers, and lately it has become more frequent. And it takes a while to realize that you are not, in fact, standing in front of the brick apartment building, its doorway cavernous and warm, your hands in your pockets, cigarette smoke leaking slowly between your lips and into the frozen air. It takes you a while to even remember that you’ve quit smoking years ago. And yet, here it is, clinging to the collar of your winter coat in a persistent, suffocating cloud, and you can taste it still.

  It takes you even longer to remember why you dreamt about this building on the outskirts of Moscow—that you used to live there, but this is not why; you’re there because of the boy who used to live in the same building but the other entrance. You cannot remember his name or whether you were really friends or just nodded at each other, passing by like boats in the lonely concrete sea of the yard, a fringe of consumptive poplars looking nothing like the palms of the tropical isles neither of you were ever likely to see. You know, though, that there was never any unpleasant physicality between the two of you, even after you learned to throw your body between yourself and whomever was trying to get too close.

  You sit up in your bed and want a smoke, and whisper to yourself, It was never sex. Never. It was a defensive reflex, the same as a lizard that aborts its tail and escapes while some predator dumbly noses around the mysteriously wriggling appendage. You’d learned to do it with your entire body, and only the spirit escaped, not watching from the distance, running instead for the hills and the razor slash of the distant horizon. It was always about escaping.

  Anyway, the boy: as far as you can recall, he had an average and pale face, he was short and slouched, his hands always in the pockets of his ratty hand-me-down winter coat, too short for him. His straight dark hair was always falling ungracefully across his forehead, and the only thing even remotely remarkable about him was the fact that even in the deadest winter cold his eyes remained warm and soft and brown, and he looked at everything with the same subdued delight. Finding oneself in the diffuse cone of his nearsighted gaze was both disconcerting and comforting, since he seemed to be the only person in the entire universe who honestly didn’t want anything from you.

  You try to remember what happened to him—you think vaguely that he died as a teen after being drafted, died somewhere in Chechnya; or maybe it was his older brother, and the boy just disappeared one day. Maybe he is still there, at his old apartment, and the memory of his death is a confabulated excuse for not having kept in touch. That seems likely.

  It’s time to get up anyway, and you stare out the window; you’ve moved from the grey suburbs to the sort-of center, near the Moscow River’s bend, where it is somewhat less grey and the lights of opulence are visible across the river. You try to be satisfied with your lot in life, but discontent lingers, so you eye your pantyhose, tangled and twisted into a noose, and your short skirt, the one you’re getting too old for, and you keep getting a sneaking suspicion that your immediate boss feels the same way and soon enough he’ll trade you for a newer model, like he does with his BMWs.

  So you call in sick. No one minds since there’s yet another economic crisis in progress, and chances are no one will be paid until right before the New Year. And they can type their own damn reports, those twelve managers and only two of you to do the actual work. It doesn’t matter. You dig through your wardrobe and find half-forgotten woolly tights, scratchy and severe and thick, and a long gabardine skirt with a broken zipper, which you fix with a safety pin. You wrap your head in the flowery kerchief every Russian woman owns—even if she never bought one, it was given as a gift, or, barring all normal means of acquisition, spontaneously generated in her apartment. You suspect that yours is one of those, an immaculately gotten kerchief with fat cabbage roses on a velvet-black background with tangled fringe.

  It is warmer outside than you expected, what with the dreams of winter and whatnot, but the wind is still cutting and it throws handfuls of bright yellow poplar leaves in your face as you walk away from the embankment. Your shoulders stoop under a grey woolen cardigan, and your walk is awkward, unnatural in flat shoes, and you feel as if you keep falling heavily on your heels, the familiar support elevating them above ground missing. Your face feels naked without the makeup.

  St. Nicholas’ church is open and empty, the smell of frankincense and whatever church incense they use there tickling your nostrils and yet infusing you with reflexive peace, conditioned like a dog that salivates at the sound of the bell. You buy a thin brown candle and plop it in front an icon, wherever there’s space, and mumble something prayer-like under your breath.

  The mass is long over and only black-clad old women are there, rearranging and correcting falling candles, sweeping the heavy stone tiles of the floor. They look at you with their cataracts, blue like skimmed milk, and mumble under their breath. You catch the word “whore” and try not to take it personally—after all, this is what they call every woman who is not them, whether she is mortifying her flesh with woolen tights or not. You try to will your legs to not itch and end up backing behind a column and scratching discreetly.

  You are not sure what brought on this religious impulse, except for the boy you miss without having known him. Then you think of the rest of his family, his numerous siblings, always hungry and underdressed, and it resolves in your memory, finally: he was a son of a defrocked priest who was forced into disgrace and living in a common apartment building instead of a parish house, no longer surviving off tithes, but the very modes
t salary of a night watchman. His wife worked at the meat factory across the street and always brought home bulging sacks dripping with blood, filled with tripe and bones and stomachs, and it was never enough for their brood, which, by your estimate, was somewhere between seven and nine. Poorer and more fecund than real priests, even.

  “May I help you?” A soft, stuttering voice startles you from your reverie and you spook upright, your head springing back and almost breaking the nose of the speaker.

  The young priest steps back, calm, his hands behind his back. “You look spiritually wrought,” he says, smile bristling his soft beard, light as flax. “You need guidance.”

  “I don’t,” you say with unnecessary force, the wraiths of your twelve bosses rearing their heads, the images of people always telling you what you need. “I need information. Why would a priest be defrocked?”

  “Depends,” he answers with the same softness, the change of topic barely breaking his cadence. “Are we talking about now, or in the past? Because the synod just defrocked a priest the other day, for marrying two men.”

  “No,” you say. “Before—in the seventies or early eighties. A priest in Moscow was defrocked. He had children.”

  “Most of us do,” young Father says, musing. “Back then, that would’ve been insubordination, most likely. Failure to respect the hierarchy. Talking badly about the hierarchy. Or possibly a failure to inform—or maybe informing on the wrong people, the wrong things.” He sighs heavily, his grey eyes misting over. “You know, I grew up in the church. I’m not afraid of ever losing my faith—when I was young, I saw one priest beating another up with an icon.”

  Normally you would laugh at the image, but his thoughtful sincerity stops you. “I see,” you say.

  “Do you know that priest’s name?”

  “Father Dmitri,” you say.

  “No last name?”

  You shake your head and feel stupid.

  “Do you know what church he was assigned to before his defrocking?”