Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “You’re breaking Mama’s heart,” I said.

  “Soon enough she’ll have the baby to play with. She’ll be fine,” she said.

  I moved toward her, feeling choked up, all because of the baby, no doubt. “You know it won’t be the same,” I said, and I felt her softening momentarily too.

  “Look,” she said, “I need to go. Ever since the war—well, I just need to get out of this city. I’m not the same person I was when we left here. Everywhere I go, I see Papa and Baba Tonya. I need a fresh start. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  I looked back at the parents. Of course I understood. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to get out—leaving the shadow of Papa and Baba’s deaths and our tumultuous country. I wondered what Papa would have made of my sister, who strangely had come to hate frills just as much as he had; the difference was that he believed that the state had done its best to serve him, while Polina saw the state as hypocritical, noting that not all people were surviving on the bare minimum. But Polya didn’t want to think of him anymore.

  I would be the one to stay in Kiev, haunted by Papa and Baba’s ghosts. I wasn’t allowed to leave, and never would be. It had been our duty to leave for the mountains to help our country, even if it almost killed us. And now we needed to stay put for our country’s sake.

  “It’s our duty to stay,” I said solemnly, and she sighed, thinking I was just another mindless organ of the state, no doubt, but I had run out of ideas.

  She cupped my face in turn. “You are more beautiful than ever,” she said, but this did not sound like a compliment. “Look out for my letters,” she added.

  She leaned in to give me a stiff hug, taking a far wider berth than necessary, as if the thought of brushing against my enormous belly disgusted her. Well, that was that. I knew she judged me for the life I led now, but it was not something I had strived for, the nice coat and bureaucrat husband: it was just what happened to me. But there was no point in trying to tell her this. She had already made up her mind about me. Bogdan, meanwhile, treated me with his usual smugness, never failing to make me feel thoroughly uncomfortable.

  He finished saying goodbye to his brother and patted me on the back. “Take care of yourself,” he said. It was hard to believe there was a time when he and I spoke nearly every day. I hardly knew him. And I tried to hardly think about him.

  They got on the train and did not look back, and I turned toward the parents and my wet-eyed husband; he and his brother were like ice and fire, but he would miss the rascal. I was in a fog for the rest of the day. I tried not to think of the last time I was on a train, during our return to Kiev, when Bogdan kissed me. What if I had truly returned the kiss? Was he just trying to torture me after he heard about my nuptials, or was he giving me one last chance to be his? If I had acted differently, would I be the one running off to Rome, starting anew? These pointless thoughts vibrated through me for the rest of the day and into the night, when I felt my first contractions.

  I gave birth to my son almost a month early, likely as a result of the stress of my sister and Bogdan’s exit. After my Tolik was born, a tiny, fragile creature who never grew full size, to my mind, I was utterly consumed by caring for him and had no time to care about things like my husband giving up literature or my sister leaving the country or even Bogdan’s self-satisfied smile when he announced their departure.

  I read to the helpless being in my arms, my boy who happily suckled my breasts; I was delighted to find that, unlike many women of my generation who had suffered during the war, I had no shortage of milk and didn’t have to send my husband to the milkman twice a day. Misha would stand over me during this sacred process, as awed as if he were standing before the dawn breaking over a dark sky. So what if we had stopped our nightly reading sessions, or if I was utterly exhausted with my boy, but too stubborn to follow my husband’s suggestion of taking on a nanny? We had a good life, overall. Not the most exciting life, but we had decent clothes for ourselves and the child, a dacha outside the city and seaside vacations to boot, access to foreign goods.

  Did I think of Bogdan from time to time? When I drank tea, I thought of him pressing those cups to his eyes under the train to make little Yaroslava laugh. When I saw boys shuffling in the streets, I thought of the rascal I knew before the war. And when I saw that my husband was a tool of the state while I had my doubts about the way the country was run, I remembered Bogdan and his critiques of Stalin, and thought he was safer abroad. But did I think of him—that way? I can’t say. Sometimes. I’m not certain.

  Polya and Bogdan were never married, and all I learned of them came from Bogdan’s occasional letters addressed to Misha and me—so much for looking out for Polya’s letters! He claimed the happy couple had found more opportunities in Rome than Kiev could provide, that they were thriving in a romantic land filled with pasta and olives and sunlight, but Misha read between the lines. It seemed Bogdan worked for the black market, likely peddling goods, while my sister involved herself in another stinky animal shelter. There was no mention of children, which I thought a bit strange, but then again, my sister and Bogdan fancied themselves iconoclastic bohemians, and perhaps they would hold off on that venture. As the years went on, though, I wondered if my sister had been so ravaged by the war that she was unable to bear children, though I chastised myself when I spent too much time fretting about my careless sister, who only sent me “health and kisses” at the end of Bogdan’s letters.

  Mama acted as if she were fine without Polya, but I knew she missed her inconsequential banter about her dogs, as if they were the boys who used to walk her to school. My Tolik seemed to help a little bit. The first time she held him, she mentioned my father, for once. “Other fathers were so scared, thinking they would drop their new babies,” she had said. “But not yours. He was never afraid of holding you.” She still lived in the big room all by herself. The only person she socialized with was Aunt Mila for the occasional tea. She was the one who told me Mama had passed away just after my son’s third birthday. “The apartment has been vacated,” she told me, and then she asked after several pieces of furniture, and I said she could have all of them, even the divan. I sent news of her death to Polina, but Bogdan wrote back with his condolences, saying they were too tied up to return for the funeral. Only then did I understand that they were gone for good. If Mama’s death would not bring Polina back, then nothing would.

  Though I should not have taken their stubbornness too personally: when Bogdan’s parents passed away when my son was seven—Uncle Konstantin, who I was amazed lasted as long as he did after the war, of a heart attack, his wife of grief a few months later—Bogdan and Polina did not return to Kiev for that either. But my hands were too full to brood over them: the Orlovs had passed on their lavish six-bedroom apartment to us, and Misha and I set about moving into the cavernous, porcelain-filled place that made me feel ill at ease. It reminded me of my grandmother’s luxurious apartment outside Postal Square, which was only a five-minute jaunt from our new home, a place I went out of my way to avoid when I walked home from work. Recalling my grandmother’s apartment and its pointless excess, my first act as woman of the house was to fire the maids and the cooks, conceding that my husband could keep his driver. Did he like the life of luxury, my husband? I believe he could have done without it, but he needed to keep up appearances as the new head of the Institute.

  When my boy was in his eighth year, a letter from Bogdan arrived. It was addressed to me instead of his brother, and only for a moment did my heart flutter before I understood bad news was coming. Polina has passed away after a battle with cancer. She was in agony and is better off now. I plan to return to the Motherland—to nurse my broken heart in Kiev. If possible, I would love to stay with my favorite brother and sister. I took the letter to the gilded balcony outside our dining room, which offered a stunning view of the Dnieper in the distance, and turned it over in my hands. I told myself
that my sister had been effectively dead since she chose to leave the country the month before my son was born, so this should not have changed anything for me. And yet—

  Tolik played with his train set at my feet, taking in the fresh air. I recalled the day when Polina and I ran down the halls of what was then the vast Orlov apartment, wondering what could possibly be done in so many rooms. After my sister rolled around on the Orlov bed, she and I ran to the balcony I stood on now, and my sister did a dance, the ruffles on her dress bouncing up and down as she cried, “I am queen! I am queen of the city!” I got caught up in her hysteria, though I was at least ten, too old for such antics, and we danced until we got winded, and then my sister sat down. “Look at this thing,” she had said, spreading her arms wide to indicate the balcony. “It’s the size of a small country.”

  I was on edge when Misha left to pick up his brother at the station two weeks later. Nearly a decade had passed since I saw Bogdan, when my heart churned with terrible confusion and longing. Now I would know whether my feelings had been genuine. I grew more anxious, not just about what I would think of Bogdan but over what he would think of me playing house in the cavernous government bastion I called home. I was still growing accustomed to it, yet there we lived, with high ceilings, arched windows, and a fireplace in the parlor with a piano in it, one Misha refused to get rid of though neither of us could play. What would Bogdan, with his proletarian beliefs and hatred for all things fancy, have to say about my new lifestyle?

  When he arrived, I felt ridiculous for considering that Bogdan would care that we had replaced his parents as heads of his former household. “Larissa,” he whispered, and I gave him a quick hug. I could hardly look into his weary eyes, which hid under his disheveled sandy hair. The broken man who walked through our door did not seem like someone who could care that he was returning to his gilded childhood home. He was utterly defeated, nothing like the mischievous boy I remembered. He was in mourning, of course, and in a way, so was I, but still, I was relieved to feel no attraction to him, only pity. He spent his first week in our cabinet, studying an old atlas from before the Great War, tracing the outlines of countries where he had never been, as if to form an escape route from his hopeless existence. Though he did seem to turn the corner after a while, and I believe my son was responsible. Bogdan would take my serious child to the park behind our apartment, and it cheered him greatly.

  My husband was a man of action. He had a barber trim Bogdan’s hair and face, and he did shed about ten years, touching his face periodically as if he, too, could not believe it was really his. Though he still moped, he gained weight and looked presentable enough that Misha made him a courier for the Institute’s laboratory. His task was to carry boxes of chemicals from various laboratories all over the city to the Institute. He took to the job, though he still believed everyone at the Institute was a Fascist, his brother included. He must have put his rebellious thoughts aside because he realized that getting out of the house was more important than sticking to his principles at that juncture.

  He enjoyed the fresh air, the walks punctuated by bus rides, the interactions with the scientists, as if he, too, were a learned man. After several months of stability, he moved into a small apartment of his own, four floors above ours. His final goodbye was sitting down at our untouched piano and playing a perfectly competent rendition of “Für Elise”—this was just one of the many things he must have learned to do while he was gone. Misha was relieved, not only because his brother was thriving but also because we would get some relief from his dark, manic energy. How quiet the house was in the evenings, without Bogdan and his brooding and tales from Rome, his smirking criticism of our acidic red wine!

  I still felt it, after all—the improbable pull toward this broken man. I loved my husband, but he worked such long hours and, well, most of our conversations were centered on our boy. I loved my boy, too, but he was such a serious, solemn creature, preferring his toys to people, not as interested in reading with his mama as I had hoped, though he did have a soft spot for his playful uncle Bogdan, who was still more comfortable with children than his fellow man, ever since he joked around with young Yaroslava. Again, I could not help but wonder why he and my sister had not reproduced.

  I was bold enough to ask one afternoon, when Bogdan and I took Tolik to the park. He ran ahead of us to the swings and we watched him from a bench.

  “I’m sorry you—could not have children,” I said. Bogdan narrowed his eyes and I bumbled on. “That, you two weren’t able…”

  I didn’t think anything had the power to truly stun him until I saw the look on his face. He had made it through the war without being shocked. And even though my sister’s death had devastated him, he still bore it like a fact of life, something to be expected. But now he jumped from the bench like it was smoldering. I had hardly mentioned my sister to him, and he had likely imagined I would say something tender about her, if I said anything at all.

  “Is that what you think?” he said, laughing rather cruelly. “All this time, you thought—well,” he said, brushing imaginary dirt off his trousers. “You think you’re so special because you walk around quoting old dead bores, but you’re not. Anyone can get a diploma, but it takes more to learn how to live. And you, Larissa, should not discuss matters you know nothing about.”

  He began pushing my son on his swing before I had a chance to apologize.

  “You’re flying high in the sky, little man!” Bogdan said.

  “I’m a rocket!” my son cried.

  “You’ll blast right to the stars if we keep going like this,” said Bogdan, pushing harder, perhaps with a bit too much zeal, but I did not stop him. “You’ll go straight into space.” He did not look at me again, but I could feel him, daring me to tell him to slow down.

  I thought the incident would break us, but it never came up again. We remained allies and continued to spend the late afternoons with my son together when I wasn’t working. This continued for the next few years, in fact—Bogdan regaling me with tales of Rome while managing to avoid the topic of my sister, criticizing the Soviet government while I gave my assent by not rebuking him and tried to change the subject by offering amusing tales of my wayward students. How I treasured our conversations! Right up until the day he died.

  He was poisoned by accident. I was not there, yet I have pictured the scene again and again over the years. He was carrying a box of chemicals to the Institute and tripped in the snow. Of all the things he had ever carried, he happened to drop several vials of mercury. If he had left the box on the ground, then I might be telling a different story. But he was finally back in the swing of things, eager to please, relishing his status as chief courier. He rummaged in the snow for what he could salvage, placing the few unbroken vials back in the box and carrying it all the way to the Institute. He probably hummed all the way there to keep calm, silver leaking down his hands, staining the white ground. As he approached the majestic building that his father had built from scratch, he might have been filled with a sense of fate, of his small place in the universe.

  He began to feel dizzy, but he still made it to the lab, walking up four marble stories. By the time he set the box down on the laboratory table and explained what had happened, his world was a blur. When the concerned scientists sat him down, he began to vomit blood. Misha was summoned to accompany his brother to the hospital, where the verdict was clear: mercury poisoning.

  My husband was devastated, of course. “My brother,” he kept mumbling as we got into bed. How did this happen? Why was one brother a strong father and capable scientist, while the other festered in his bed? I should not have been shocked by this cruel twist of fate, when my own father was cold in the ground while his brother was alive and well. I held my husband and tucked him in, and then I sat at the kitchen window smoking all night long. I picked up Karamazov, but it wore me out. Bogdan had been right all those years ago. Fyodor Mikhailovic
h did take too long to get to the point.

  It took Bogdan almost two weeks to die. At first, he was still himself, and though I knew it was selfish, I finally found the nerve to ask about my sister again. Was she happy, all those years away from home? I didn’t dare ask what she thought about me.

  “She was perfectly happy,” he said. “More with her dogs than me,” he added with a smile. “How she loved those foul creatures. But yes, Larissa, she was pleased with her life.”

  “Good,” I said. Was I relieved? Had I wanted her to be miserable—or at least to feel a dull thud of unhappiness, like I did?

  “We were perfectly capable of having children,” he continued. “It was your sister, Larissa. She didn’t want them.”

  “Why ever not?”

  Once I got married and came to my senses, I did not seriously consider childlessness. At the time, this was unthinkable—like deciding to cut off your own breast. I tried to recall my youthful feelings about my uncle never procreating; he saw what having children could do, especially if troubles arose, Revolutions or typhus or the need to send said children to an orphanage. Polya saw what family did to our father. His family failed to care for him; he failed to care for us. I could understand her desire to forgo children after that, to never worry about not giving adequate care. Still, it was terrible that she was gone for good, and soon Bogdan would be, too, that there would be no trace of them.

  “She said she already had everything she needed,” Bogdan said. “What was I supposed to do, Larissa? I loved her.”

  “She didn’t seem to care about my child, certainly,” I said, suddenly angry with my sister for leaving this man to die alone, without a child by his side for comfort. I could have brought my son, a serious teenager, but it was hardly safe. “She loved her rabid animals, but she didn’t even bother waiting for my son to be born before taking off. Even that last day at the station—”