Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “Oh, Larissa,” he said, closing his eyes. “Why don’t you let it go?”

  “Of course I have,” I said, hugging myself. “I was just…” Only then did I see how selfish I was acting, grumbling about my sister when this poor man was at death’s door. This man who found it in him to give me advice during his last days on Earth. Sound advice, at that. Then again, he was the one who declared his love to me in the mountains, when my father was missing, when I was fairly certain he was dead already. He didn’t have the most considerate timing either.

  “We all would have starved to death in the mountains if it wasn’t for you,” I said.

  He offered me one weak nod that was almost a bow. And then I returned his long-ago kiss from the train—right on his mercury-stained lips. I didn’t care if it killed me. I was already dead. He looked a bit stunned but not displeased, and when he closed his eyes shortly after, it took me a moment to realize it was not due to pleasure but because he needed to rest, to prepare his body for destruction. I stood over him for as long as the nurses would allow.

  After that, he turned sallow and then gray and then lost consciousness altogether. I still returned every day to see him, recalling what he once said about how it was obvious Father Zosima’s corpse would stink to the heavens, no matter how pure he claimed to be. He smelled like nothing, and I sensed that he would continue to be innocent, even when he passed on.

  Two weeks later, the Institute gave him a big, hearty funeral. Why wouldn’t they? He was the son of Konstantin Orlov and the brother of Mikhail Orlov, its director, never mind the fact that it was exactly the kind of thing he would have hated, all that pomp and circumstance from the hypocritical bureaucrats he loathed and yet worked for, the very people who killed him. Misha gave an impassioned speech on behalf of his brother, about how he was an original thinker who never followed trends, an inspiration to us all, a speech that flirted with blasphemy but never crossed the line. There was a banquet afterward for the hundred or so guests, and as I studied the caviar and gleaming grapes and deviled eggs and endless bottles of wine, I couldn’t help but see it through Bogdan’s or my sister’s eyes—thousands of rubles wasted on people who didn’t care for Bogdan, which would have been better spent on the poor, or the roads, or even homeless dogs.

  Uncle Pasha, still a bachelor who would live for another few years, made it to the funeral from Kharkov, and was a bright spot on this occasion. “A spirited boy,” he had said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “My princess,” he whispered, “has become a queen.” Though he was approaching old age, he still carried that lightness about him, and did not seem lonely, making me wonder if I knew anything at all about whether or not everyone needed a family, though he was happy to watch over Tolik as my husband and I made the rounds. But you wouldn’t believe who else I saw, a far more unwelcome visitor from the past than my dear uncle.

  Yulia Garanina in the flesh—Aunt Yulia, as I called her when I was a child. She had not aged a day, and in fact looked quite radiant and plump compared to the woman I had remembered from the war, though she had never quite looked hungry even then, not like the rest of us. She was still working in the metallurgy division, and there she was, with a new husband and a small boy about Tolik’s age who had dark hair and a serious expression, none of the blond lightheartedness of poor Yaroslava, the older sister he would never meet. Luckily I had my Misha, because if I had been alone, I might not have restrained myself. Seeing that bejeweled, heartless woman who had once called me and my sister thieves for taking two measly pieces of chocolate from her treasure trove made my blood boil.

  “Larissachka,” she said, holding my hands in hers as if we were dear old friends. “How nice to see you. You’re looking well. I’m so sorry about Bogdan, he was such a big, warmhearted boy. We had some good times together, really. Can you believe how long ago it was that we were all in the mountains?”

  I released my hands from her icy grip. I could not believe the way she was talking—as if she were reminiscing about a summer vacation! I backed away from her, but she kept going.

  “When I think of those years, do you know what I remember most? The sunsets. I have been all over the world since then, all over, but I can tell you that no city holds a candle to Lower Turinsk’s sunsets. They took my breath away every time. I have never seen a sky so pink and purple in all my life before the sun went down below the scraggly trees—they were simply stunning, darling, don’t you remember?”

  “What I remember,” I said, raising my voice at this ghastly woman, and then faltering. I remembered the stink of flesh and death and urine and the sensation that we were already walking corpses, that we were living in the land of the dead. In the nearly three miserable years we had spent there, the only sunset I could recall was on the evening after my sister got lost by fainting in a snowbank, clutching her white dog. When I dragged her in, our parents collapsed over her, crying madly. The sun was going down right then. It was something unbelievable—the sky painted orange, so luminous and benevolent. Me and my sister and Mama and Papa and our grandmother and the Orlovs—we stood by the balcony and watched the sun fall below the pines until the darkness filled the room. But I would not share this memory with this self-serving woman, who spoke of sunsets like her time in the deadly mountains was a wild romp.

  “What I remember,” I said again, catching the alarm creeping into her face. “Is something else entirely.”

  Misha stepped in front of me. “Thank you for honoring my brother’s life,” he said. He bowed and pulled me away before I could do any damage. He was grinding his jaw. It was rare that he allowed someone to get under his skin—it was a relief to see it, actually, and it made him seem more human. I saw him as a young man on the evening when Aunt Yulia chastised my sister after we had tried to steal her chocolate, when he had stood by without defending me, and now he was refusing to contradict her again. She walked away with her skirts bouncing behind her. I was tempted to yank her back by her hair, to give her a swift kick in the stomach. That ridiculous woman and her sunsets! It was a blessing I never saw her again.

  The next morning, I decided to stop avoiding my grandmother’s old apartment on the way to work; the mountain world was dead to me, belonging to ancient times. I walked through Postal Square and was surprised that no fireworks or lightning bolts greeted me when I found the building, which was smaller than I remembered. The two columns still stood at the entrance and the windows were high and majestic, but it was no larger than my home. Through its arched front window, I could almost see my sister and grandmother and Aunt Shura, laughing recklessly as they did the can-can, tangled up in that blasted boa like they were never going to die. After a few minutes, the front door opened and a man emerged holding the hand of a little girl. I watched them cross the street, and then I went on my way. That was the only time I ever stood there.

  * * *

  —

  I do not realize I am crying until the drops hit my keyboard. Natasha has tears in her eyes. Though I must say that in spite of her current pouting, she has appeared to be in better spirits lately, looking less done in. Perhaps my story has rejuvenated the girl after all. But what, I wonder, will bring me back to life?

  “That’s it,” I say as I wipe my face.

  “I’m sorry, Baba,” Natasha says. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Do not be sorry, my darling. You had nothing to do with it.”

  I take a long sip of my tea but it has gotten cold, so I put the kettle on once more. It’s nearly midnight. A light in the building across the street flickers off, followed by another, the world winding down. Again she tells me she is sorry, and I do not even know which part she is sorry about. The destruction of my city? My estrangement from my sister—or her eventual death? Bogdan’s sad demise?

  “In fact,” I tell Natasha, “it was after Bogdan died that your grandfather bought the cottage on the sea. We always vacationed on the sea, but h
e thought it would be nice for us to have our own place. Or rather, a place for me and your father to go in the summers while he was at work, a place to call our own.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Natasha says. Then she clears her throat and adds, “I guess there’s a lot I don’t know.”

  “That’s right, my child.”

  She runs a hand through her hair, looking uneasy, and then adds: “Did you always have affairs, or was it after…”

  I sigh before I decide to go on. Of course she was aware of my dalliances, though they dwindled by her teenage years. “Until your uncle Bogdan died, I didn’t entertain the notion of being disloyal to your grandfather—the biggest betrayal at that point in our marriage was his refusal to read with me. But after I saw Bogdan again—well—I felt that old passion again and needed to do something with it. The seaside cottage appeared like a safe harbor in a storm. I know you can’t possibly understand it, but that’s the way it was.”

  “I’m not judging you, Baba. I never have.”

  “That is kind of you, darling. When I first made eyes at a bachelor by the sea, I thought this was it, that I was living the life my coquettish sister would have lived if the war hadn’t ravaged her, making her shift her priorities from flirting to hating the government and caring for dirty dogs. During my first rendezvous, I pretended I was Polina—not shorn-haired, wan Polina who left Kiev for a second time, but the bright-bodied girl with the long red hair who still turned heads when our family arrived at the station to leave for the mountains. I felt alive again, the world heavy with possibility, the future no longer a guillotine slowly bearing down over my head. That’s just how it happened. I didn’t stop and think about it, really.”

  “And Grandpa Misha? Did he know?”

  “Who could say, dear child? He was brilliant—how could he have missed it? He never said a word about it, all those long years. He only hinted at it at the end of his days, when he became sweeter, more forthcoming. ‘I hope you have found the excitement you were after,’ he said to me just a few months before he passed. ‘Of course I did, my darling,’ I told him, because what was I supposed to do, ask for clarification?”

  I picture my husband at the very end. His heart was weak, we were in the hospital, we both knew this was it. And as I watched him resting there, I thought that he had not only grown to resemble his serious father but that he had outgrown him. He had outlived him by several decades, and it was as if he had become an even more extreme version of the state-fearing bureaucrat in the process, one who would have raged over seeing his porcelain vases and lacquered dining table carted off forever. One who would have been livid that I was leaving our immaculate home to live out my remaining days by the sea.

  I put my head in my hands. “You must excuse me. Preparing for the move has exhausted me.”

  “Thank you for telling me all that, Baba. You didn’t have to.”

  I laugh weakly. “I bet you got more than you bargained for when you asked, didn’t you, darling? I’m sure you have a hard time understanding. You are so devoted to Yuri. It’s a beautiful thing to see.”

  She gives me a wan smile and blinks a few times, a strange reaction. “I understand everything. I had my wild days. Don’t you remember?”

  “Who could forget?” I say, recalling the endless stream of deadbeats she had dated, some of whom I had the misfortune of meeting. One of them even had a piece of metal going through his nostril like some kind of a bull in search of a matador. I believe he called himself “Rainfeather.” It was ridiculous. But now my tea boils and I excuse myself. I have said too much.

  Tomorrow I leave for good—Misha’s men came this morning to haul everything away. I watched them carry off the drab old landscapes, the uncomfortable velvet dining chairs, the ivory coatrack, things that meant nothing to me while they were a part of my daily existence, and yet I felt heavy as I watched them being wrested from our home, like a part of my soul was being dragged out along with them.

  After I began my story, I decided the natural place to donate all the money from the sales. I will be giving the money to the Kharkov orphanage where my father and Uncle Pasha spent their adolescence, if you can believe it. I made a call to confirm that it was still standing, and it was. I considered visiting, but I thought the trip wouldn’t do me any good, only adding weight to my old body. “Come on by,” the woman in charge kept telling me. “See what kind of a place it is.” I told her I was old, too old, but thanked her for the invitation anyway.

  I hear Stas entering the apartment before I can mention the orphanage to Natasha. He apologizes for missing the last part of my story; he got a call offering him a new position as a waiter and had a few details to work out. I congratulate him and prepare to tell him that I didn’t miss him one bit, though perhaps I did a little, perhaps I am growing a bit fond of the derelict boy. But he looks too solemn for kidding around, and also a bit different. Something is off about him.

  “Nice haircut,” I tell him. “With it, you almost do not look like a homosexual.”

  Natasha gives a nervous, gentle laugh. “He’s not gay, Baba.”

  “Whatever you say. This kind of thing does not ruffle my feathers,” I tell her, though I am a bit surprised. “In any event, boy, the hair does not look bad,” I say.

  “Thanks,” he says, running a hand through his hair.

  I am depleted. I try to focus on the prospect of sinking into my warm bed—a moment of reflection with the dregs of my tea and a few pages of Tsvetaeva’s Moscow Diaries should do the trick. I long for Misha to rest beside me, to feel his bulk weighing down his half of the mattress, to have his arm draped around me in the night. To hear his heavy snore, which annoyed me every night until I no longer heard it, until I finally learned how loud the night was, how it could keep me up for hours—the planes soaring overhead, the cars roaring by, the cool air hitting the windowpanes—sounds my husband had kept at bay.

  “Listen, Baba,” Natasha says, inching closer to the screen. “I meant what I said earlier. I’d love it if you came to visit this summer. It would be so good to see you, to have you meet Tally…and, well, I’m putting on a play and I’d love for you to see it.”

  “A play?” I say, intrigued in spite of myself. “About what, darling?”

  “A one-woman show,” she tells me. “It’ll be a surprise. But I think you’d love it.”

  “I haven’t seen you onstage in a while.”

  “Exactly.”

  I light a cigarette, picturing the long days ahead. The morning’s journey to the sea. The days when I try to relive my long-ago summers, with young Natasha and my lovers at my side, the only place where I felt happy. But the joy I felt beside those crashing waves—it wasn’t because of those lovers. It was because I was with my darling granddaughter, a girl whose life I was shaping, who felt at ease with me in a way she never did in her own home. I was saving her, in my own way.

  Though I failed my sister, there was Natasha, my second chance. I did nothing for my sister when our father or our grandmother died besides disdain her for not toughening up. I did not carry out my promise to my father to take care of her. I let Bogdan step in and do the caretaking, and where did that lead her? Then I barely tried to keep her in Kiev, where I could have brought her back to life, and instead just watched her walk off to her new life while I only cared about the child in my belly—a child who, it was true, would one day bring me my greatest joy through Natasha, but I could have spent more time caring about my damn sister.

  As I stare at Natasha’s gorgeous, weary face, it feels ridiculous to live out my end on the sea without the person who made me happy there. I do the calculations. I will still have nearly two months on the water on my own before I take off. And then—another chance to see Natasha onstage. How could I deny her?

  “Oh, darling,” I say. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  Natasha

 
Stas helps me lug a bunch of last-minute crap to the stage two weeks before opening night. As I turn on the lights over the set, I have to say I feel pretty fucking proud. The rusty old train car is on-point. The craggy mountains in the background look almost real from a distance, with the dark, wispy clouds hovering above them. The apartment to the left of the train is just how I pictured it, with its wooden beds and fiery stove and even a broom in the corner. The ground is covered in little pieces of gravel that it will be tough to walk over. The market hides behind the train car, old wooden carts filled with fake rotting onions and potatoes. And I made it all happen, by begging old Babies founder Vadim to use his stage, asking Slavik, another Babies defector who made killer sets and also owed me one, to help put this thing together, but mostly by working my ass off to write the damn play. The last six weeks have been crazy, but in the best possible way. It’s amazing, how much I got done while Talia was napping. If only Mama could have seen me, poring over my notebooks, replaying my recorded calls with Baba over and over, crossing shit out, saying words aloud to see if they sounded right, crumpling paper up like a mad scientist, focused as hell on my pages in a way I had never felt about a single assignment in high school, like a good little student-actress.

  The last time I was onstage, not long after I got together with Yuri, it was for a stupid Anna Karenina spinoff, a story told from the point of view of Dolly, a much more woman-friendly version where Anna gets to run away with her lover and nobody dies, and even old Karenin finds happiness again. It was called Happy Wife and it was a bit one-noted. But I missed it, standing under the bright lights as an empowered Dolly, feeling free after kicking my loser husband aside. My grandpa watched a video of that one from Kiev and wrote, You were too deferential to Anna onstage. You needed to showcase your talents a bit more. That one cracked me up; as if I hadn’t tried! And now I take a photo of the stage and post it: #curtainsuptomorrow #Iseeyoupostpartum #Sovietstoriestolife, and wait for the flood of love to pour in; at this point I’ve stopped posting anything about my family so people know what to focus on. I’ve got two weeks to go and I want every last thing to sparkle, the show, the stage, the lighting, my costumes, I want the theater to be packed. Since Baba really is going to see it after all, and I want it to be perfect, especially since she doesn’t even know what it’s about.