by Alina Adams
And she had a lot of stuff. Books, CDs, magazines, clothes, pictures, souvenir knick-knacks from her travels, flyers touting local events she wanted to check out but probably wouldn't because of her travels. Which was why Bex was always complaining that she didn't have enough space for the stuff she'd accumulated. But Bex was twenty-four years old, and she'd only lived in her studio for a year. Luba and Svetlana were two people who'd shared their one room for almost thirty years. And still, the place was neater than Bex's domicile.
Each of the twin beds on either wall was covered by a freshly ironed bedspread. Their glass and wood china cabinet may have been stuffed with dishes, crystal vases, and ceramic figurines of rosy-cheeked animals from Russian folktales, but there wasn't a spec of dust in sight. Thick rugs hung from three of the walls to keep the cold out. The fourth wall, though, the one directly across from the door so that it was the first thing you saw upon entering, was the Igor Marchenko Memorial Wall.
It wasn't titled as such, naturally, but Bex wondered what else you would call a wall that, first and foremost, boasted a legal-paper-sized black-and-white portrait of Igor at the age of eight or so, dressed in a homemade skating outfit with a large V at the chest, performing a stag jump, arms crossed, one leg stretched out, the other tucked under him? Beneath that picture was a series of smaller photos, Igor-through-the- ages, each showing him on the ice or with a trophy in his hands. The actual trophies jostled for space upon a little wooden perch underneath the gallery. They, too, were devoid of any dust.
Bex pulled a digital camera out of her pocket, and asked, "Can I take a picture?"
Gil would have her head for not bringing a camera crew to document the scene—it was just the kind of heart-jerker he believed fans were watching 24/7 for—but maybe this would make up for it.
"No!" Luba and Svetlana both protested much more vehemently than Bex might have expected. Svetlana even jumped in front of the display, to block Bex's shot.
"Why not?" Bex asked, genuinely confused. This shrine had obviously been built to honor Igor. Why wouldn't they want it seen?
"No television," Svetlana insisted. "Not inside our home. He cannot know you were here. He told us, we must not talk to anyone about Igor, or there will be danger!"
CHAPTER NINE
"Who?" Bex only managed to get out a single, English word. In that time, Sasha had already leapt in with a flurry of Russian, triggering another flurry of responses from Svetlana and Luba.
Completely lost on the speech side, Bex tried to guess what was going on from their body language. Both Svetlana and Luba were shaking their heads, waving their arms, pointing out the window, down the street, to the phone, to Bex, to the pictures of Igor, to Sasha, then shaking their heads some more and practically wailing. Sasha continued asking calm, measured questions, never raising his voice or allowing himself to be derailed. At least, that's what Bex hoped he was doing. All she knew was that he was the only one in the room not shouting.
Well, except for Bex. Who was simply standing there, mute, watching the fracas as if it were a tennis match.
After several minutes—during which time the twins' mother poked her head in and presumably screamed for
them all to be quiet, prompting Luba to take a break from yelling at Sasha to howl back at the mother until she grabbed her kids and disappeared—Sasha managed to calm both women down to the point where they stopped yelling. They sat down, Luba on her bed, Svetlana on a chair closest to the dining table. They were still trying to explain something to Sasha, but the shrieks had deflated into yelps.
“Tell Bex," Sasha ordered in English. He rested his hands on Bex's shoulders and guided her until she stood directly in Luba and Svetlana's sightline. Bex wondered if she should maybe be doing something to encourage the process, yet nothing useful came immediately to mind.
“Tell Bex, please, what you have told me," Sasha repeated.
Luba and Svetlana looked at each other across the small room, both took a deep breath in preparation, then closed their mouths without saying a word. Each seemed to be willing the other to go first. Bex decided to speed up the process by offering, "You know, I never got a chance to offer my condolences about Igor's death. I'm really sorry. I know you must have missed him so much all these years he was gone. Did you at least get a chance to see him before... before?"
Luba shook her head. She covered her face with her hands, pressing both palms hard against her cheekbones as if squeezing back tears, but, when she lowered her arms, her eyes were dry. She shook her head again.
Svetlana said, "No. We did not. We could not."
"Why?"
Mother and daughter exchanged glances again. Luba seemed content to let Sveta speak for both of them, so her daughter damned the Kalishnikovs and plunged ahead. She said, "We were frightened. The man who called, he warned us not to come and see Igor, or there would be danger."
"I don't understand. Someone threatened you? Who was it?"
Sasha suggested, "Maybe you should explain to her from the beginning. So she understands. This is difficult for her to understand. She is American."
Bex wondered what that was supposed to mean. Yet the epithet(?), compliment(?), fact(?), appeared to make perfect sense to Luba and Svetlana.
Igor's sister nodded. She looked over her shoulder at the picture of Igor as a little boy, and began: "Igor was selected for joining number one skating group at Moscow rink when he is ten years old. It is the big honor. Important coaches believe Igor is talented, he can be champion for U.S.S.R. It is the big honor, and the big fortune for us, his family. When Igor win Junior World Championship one year later, we are given apartment of our own to live in. Not communal. A bedroom for Igor, Mama sleeps in the front room, and a bedroom for me and my husband, Fedor. It is like dream, having so much space. We are very happy."
Bex was about to say that she could imagine. And then she realized that no, she actually couldn't in the slightest.
"When Igor defects," Sveta continued, "we lose everything. Not only apartment. My husband and I, we lose our places in the University. Fedor was studying to be doctor, I to be an engineer. We are called in front of our classes, and the Komsomol leader—that is the leader of the young Communist Party group, she stands us in front of our class and she calls us many awful names. We are traitors to our motherland, we are criminals. We spit on everything the U.S.S.R. gave us as gifts, she says. And then our fellow students, they stand up, one by one by one. My best friend, she is girl I study with since the first form in school, she tells everyone I have always been traitor, that I would rip pictures of Lenin out of our schoolbooks, that I talk about running away to America and going on American television and telling lies about the Soviet Union. That I never come to the required May Day parades. I came to every parade! And I wore my young pioneer uniform proudly! I never..." Svetlana trailed off.
She took a moment to collect herself. And then she went on. "It does not matter now. Because soon Fedor leaves me. He tells me Igor and my family ruined his future. His whole life. He goes to medical school in Siberia. He thinks maybe the disgrace is not so severe there, and they will let him finish his education. But I cannot do this. I cannot leave Mama. I am all she has left."
At that, Luba reached over to squeeze her daughter's hand. "Sveta is very good girl," she said softly.
Svetlana gestured around the room they were standing in. "Mama and I are sent here to live. Communal, again. It is not the most awful. We are used to it and, I think, we can adjust, we can survive. We are strong. But, then ..."
"Yes?" Bex prompted. "What happened then?"
"Then the others come."
"What others? You mean your neighbors? The other family?"
It took Sveta a moment to understand what Bex was asking and, when she finally did, she simply laughed. "Oh, no. No, no, no, no... The other family, they are here before we arrive. Not the woman and the two children, but the old woman and her son and her husband, then. No, they do not bother us. Not more than average.
It is life, we do not complain. No, who comes a few months after us, it is that man, Valeri Konstantin, the team leader of Igor's group. And Igor's coach, Alexandr Troika. They are both judged to be punished, like us, for Igor's defection. They also to lose their apartments. They also sent here. Only difference is, they have much nicer apartments before. We—we are used to live like this. Not Konstantin. Not Troika. And especially not Troika's wife. The first day they are sent here, Konstantin and Troika, they are both drunk, they come to stand under our window and they throw rocks! They break the glass! They are calling us the most awful, horrible names. Names you should never say in front of woman. They yell so loudly, one neighbor of ours, she pours boiling water on them from teakettle to make them go away. But this does not stop them. For many years later, they come back. Troika, he grabs me in the hallway of my home, and he presses me against the wall. He hits my head and he threatens to... he threatens... he is an evil man, I think. He tells me his wife, she is so angry with him about he and she living here, that she will not... he says if she will not, then I should... he says..." This time, Svetlana seemed sincerely out of words. She bit her lip and stared out the window.
Her mother picked up the story. She told Sasha something in Russian and urged him to translate for Bex.
Sasha cleared his throat. "She says this abuse of them, it went on for many years. Particularly awful after Igor won the Olympics. Do you know, after the scores went up and Igor was declared the winner, the entire television network in all of Russia went to a black screen, and then, a few moments later, they began showing the skiing event. Igor's name was never mentioned again during the games. Except by Konstantin. The night Igor won, he smeared dog excrement all over their door and the walls. The neighbors, all of them on this floor, they made Luba and Sveta clean it up, wipe it up with their hands and their skirts and... and their mouths. They drag them out of their apartment by the hair and they threw them on the ground and they pour buckets of dirty water over them, yelling for them to clean it up, clean it up, you traitors, you criminals."
Bex thought she might be sick. But, strangely, she seemed to be the only one. In Svetlana and Luba's cases, Bex could guess it was because this all happened so long ago, they'd had time to make peace with it. Or at least, they had lost the capacity to be hurt by it. Sasha, on the other hand, as he relayed the story, seemed utterly nonplussed by the tale. He wasn't unemotional. He seemed authentically sympathetic to what the women had gone through, if Bex could judge by the gentle way he'd questioned them, and the calm manner in which he translated Luba's words. But he also didn't appear shocked by anything he was saying. In fact, his tone sounded more resigned than anything else. As if he'd expected no different and was simply doing his duty by educating Bex about how this part of the world, his part of the world, worked.
Bex felt genuinely sorry for what Luba and Sveta had gone through. But she was most upset by how Sasha seemed to accept their treatment as a matter of course.
"Did you do anything about this?" Bex demanded. She could hear how harsh her voice sounded and she realized that it was inappropriate. But, the reality was, their tale, in combination with their passivity in telling it, had made her angry. She knew she had no right to be angry, especially not at the victims. And yet she was. "Did you contact the police? Did you complain? What did you do about the way you were treated?"
To Bex's disappointment, if not exactly to her surprise, all three acted as resigned to her unwarranted cross-examination as they had to the initial violence.
Luba spread her hands helplessly. Svetlana simply shook her head. And it was Sasha who explained, "There is no one who could help them. What Igor did, it was the worst of worse crimes in the Soviet Union. They are very lucky they were not sent out of the city, or put in prison or..."
"We were very lucky," Sveta agreed.
"How long did Konstantin and Troika go on harassing you?" Bex asked.
"Oh, not long, not long," Sveta reassured. "When the Soviet Union is over, and the past is forgotten, Konstantin, he receives place back in skating federation. He is very happy. He leaves us alone, thank the God."
Bex crunched some quick numbers. Igor defected in 1977. The Soviet Union officially collapsed in 1991. Even assuming Konstantin was reinstated the moment Boris Yeltsin climbed atop that tank, that still left fourteen years for the Marchenkos to suffer.
Not long, Svetlana had said. Not long at all.
"What about Alexandr Troika? I know he wasn't reinstated. Konstantin told me it was too late, no one remembered him, no one wanted to train with him, anymore."
Luba said something to Sasha. Sasha translated, "That is true. He did not return to coaching."
"So what happened to him?"
Sveta said, "Nothing happened to him. He lives, he works. Sometimes, when he drinks very much, he still comes to scream at us. But now it is different. In the past, when someone comes to scream about traitors to Mother Russia, the neighbors, they do not dare to stop him, or some other neighbor maybe report them to police as supporting non-loyal activity. But now, when he comes to yell, the neighbors, they are not afraid of being called traitors, too, so they yell for him to shut his mouth and they force him to go away. This goes on for a while, and he stops yelling. Maybe years have passed since he comes to bother us. He is just old, angry man now. I see his wife on the street, she does not talk to me. She gives me the evil eye and she spits, but she does not talk. So it is over, I think. Everyone has forgotten."
"But, you said someone called you. Before Igor came back to Russia, you said someone called you and warned you not to see him, or there would be danger."
"Konstantin." Luba finally spoke up without using Sasha as a go-between. Her eyes radiating anger for the first time since Bex came in, she spat out, "Konstantin."
"Valeri Konstantin called you?" Bex felt she needed to clarify. "The president of the Russian Figure Skating Federation called and threatened you?"
"Yes," Sveta said. "He phone us himself. The week before Igor was coming. He tell us not to come to arena for competition. He remind us, he knows where we live. He knows where Mama work, and where I work. He say there will be great danger to us if we come to see Igor."
"Did he say why he didn't want you to come?"
"It is because, if Mama and I come to arena, there will be newspaper writers there, and he think they will ask us many questions about Igor's defection. Konstantin is afraid we will tell the world what he do to us many years ago. He is president of federation. It will sound very bad for him."
Bex agreed. It would sound very bad for him. In fact, it was exactly the kind of messy scandal a man could lose his cushy federation position over, especially if the International Skating Union (ISU), concerned about their own image by association, put pressure on him to step down. Bex imagined that, if the details got out, Konstantin could find himself back exactly where Igor Marchenko's defection first put him—which was nowhere in skating, with no hope even, this time around, for a regime-change reprieve.
Bex knew it was petty and childish but, at that moment, she very much wanted the story to get out. And she, even more, wanted to be the one in charge of dispersing it.
She asked Sveta and Luba, "Did you even get the chance to see Igor again before he died? Did he maybe stop by here..."
Luba shook her head.
Sveta explained, "After the competition, Igor said. He said, let me to finish my work, so I am free, then I will come to see you. And then, he said, I will come home."
Bex and Sasha took the stairs down from the eleventh floor. There was, in theory, an elevator, which they had ridden up an hour earlier. But, after waiting ten minutes and not seeing the overhead numbers so much as budge, they decided to give up false hope and trek on down. The stairway was illuminated by a single uncovered fluorescent light bulb dangling from the ceiling. Which seemed to be smashed and even the chain stolen on every floor divisible by three. Bex and Sasha kept their hands on the sticky railing (good thing it was winter and gloves
were handy, though Bex planned to ditch hers in the nearest garbage can as soon as they stepped outside), and followed the reeking aroma of human urine, which grew stronger the closer they got to the ground.
Bex and Sasha had barely set foot in the lobby when they were accosted. It was Sveta and Luba's mustached neighbor, and he obviously wanted to make some point very, very clear.
Despite Bex's lack of Russian fluency, even she could recognize the same few words repeated over and over again.
Sasha said, "This is Vadim. He would like you to know something."
"I'm listening," Bex said.
"He would like you to know that his neighbors, the women, they are big liars, and you must not believe their lies."
"I see..." Bex smiled politely at Vadim, who was watching her intently and nodding along with Sasha's translation, though he presumably didn't understand a word that was being said. "Does he have any proof of his assertions?"
Sasha relayed Bex's query. Russian followed.
"He says you can ask anyone in the building. They will tell you. The women are liars. They want Americans to believe all Russians are savages. They are not savages. They are good people. His father was a veteran of the Great Patriotic War."
That was nice. If irrelevant. Though Vadim's local character reference did give Bex an idea. She prompted Sasha. "Could you ask Vadim, please, if he recalls where exactly around here Alexandr Troika still lives?"
It turned out that Igor's former coach and Konstantin's alleged partner in crime was located in an identical high-rise two blocks away. On the fourteenth floor this time. And with an elevator that didn't even pretend to be working. The door was open when Bex and Sasha got there. It had apparently been turned into a makeshift trash receptacle several days—or weeks—before. Bex would have thrown her soiled gloves into the pile of old liquor bottles, rotting food, and torn-up mail, except that she still had another dim stairwell to conquer, and she wasn't counting on this one being any more hygienic.
