by Maria Reva
* * *
—
Daniil reached the entrance to his building in late evening. His eyelids were heavy with fatigue, but his feet resisted going inside. Perhaps it was the hacking coughs, the endless questions, the innumerable pairs of shoes he’d have to dig through just to find his slippers. With his index finger he traced the red stenciled numbers and letters beside the main entrance. Nineteen thirty-three Ivansk Street. The building was a clone of the other two buildings on the block: identical panels, square windows, and metal entrances; identical wear in the mortar; identical rebar under the balconies, leaching rust. Nineteen thirty-three Ivansk was solidly there, in front of his nose. He blinked. But if it wasn’t? He stepped closer to the stenciled numbers, felt the cold breath of the concrete. Was he the only one who could see it? It was there. Or it wasn’t.
“Fudgy Cow?” a voice behind him asked.
Daniil jumped, and turned. He discerned the hunched silhouette of one of the benchers. From the spot the man occupied—right bench, left armrest—he knew it was Pyotr Palashkin, retired English teacher, loyal Voice of America listener. Palashkin lit a cigarette, illuminating his mole-specked face, and handed a candy to Daniil. The chubby cow on the paper wrapper smiled up at him dreamily. Daniil hadn’t seen candy like this for months. He pocketed it for later.
“What are you out here stroking the wall for?” Palashkin asked.
Daniil shrugged. “I was just on my way in.” He stayed put.
Palashkin looked up at the sky. He said in a low voice, “It’s all going to collapse, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Whispers are all we hear now, rumors here and there, but give it a few more years. Know what I’m saying? It’s all going kaput.”
Daniil gave the concrete wall a pat. “Let’s just hope none of us are inside when she goes.”
“What are you, cuckoo in the head? We’re already inside. And I’m not talking about that building.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m outside,” Daniil said, now feeling unsure.
“Go eat your Fudgy Cow, Daniil.” Palashkin extinguished his cigarette between his thumb and his index finger, stood up, and disappeared into the dark.
* * *
—
Daniil bent so close to the glass partition, he could almost curl his lips through the circular opening. The woman in booth number 7 (booths 1 to 6 were CLOSED FOR TECHNICAL BREAK), Kirovka Department of Gas, wore a fuzzy yellow sweater that Daniil found comforting, even inviting. He gazed at her and felt a twinge of hope.
The woman shut the directory with a thud. “What was it, 1933 Petrovsk, you said?”
“Ivansk.”
“Look, I’ve heard rumors about that place, but it’s not on any of the lists. Nineteen thirty-three Petrovsk is, though.”
“That doesn’t help me.”
“Don’t be hostile, Citizen. You are one of many, and I work alone.”
“I know you know 1933 Ivansk exists. It exists enough for you to fiddle with the gas when you feel like it,” Daniil said.
“What are you accusing us of, exactly?”
“Us? I thought you worked alone.”
The woman took off her reading glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Refer to the town council with your questions.”
“Already did. They said you’d fix it.”
“Refer to the factory in charge of your suite assignment.”
“What do they know? The whole combine is in a state of panic.” Daniil was referring to the problem of the string bean.
“Best wishes with your heating problem,” the woman pronounced. “Next!”
* * *
—
Candies Available for Civilian Consumption: Masha and Bear / Bear in the North / Little Bear / Clumsy Bear / Stratosphere / Strike! / Brighter! / Little Squirrel / Thumbelina / Moscow in Evening / Kiev in Evening / Fantastic Bird / Little Lemon / Little Lenin / Snowflake / Jelly / Fuzzy / Iris / Fudgy Cow / Little Red Hat / Alyonka / Little Miracle / Solidarity / Leningrad / Bird’s Milk / Red Poppy / Mask / Meteorite / Vizit / Red Moscow / Dream / Caramel Crab Necks / Goose Feet / Duck Beaks / Kiss Kiss / Golden Key / Snow / Crazy Bee…And So Many More!
* * *
—
Daniil entered his apartment to find every square centimeter of shelf and bed space covered in stacks of red bills. His relatives had squeezed themselves into corners to count the money.
Daniil backed out of the apartment, closed the door behind him, stood on the landing until he had counted to thirty, and reentered. The red bills were still there. All right, he thought, so the hallucination continues. Run with it. Let the mind have its fancy.
The children’s shrieks and snivels and coughs rang out from the kitchen, yet seemed warped and far away, as though they were coming from inside a tunnel.
Uncle Timko, the only grown-up not counting bills, sat cross-legged on Daniil’s bunk, hacking away at a block of wood with a mallet and chisel. “Your grandfather’s disappearing testicles saved the day, Daniil,” he said, without looking up.
“I can’t stand lamenting them anymore,” said Grandfather Grishko, cocooned in a comforter. “Back in my district, they enjoyed quite a reputation. The girls would come from far and wide—” He went on to say a few things Daniil chose to expunge from his hallucination.
“The children!” Aunt Nika exclaimed from the depths of her fur.
Grandfather Grishko tossed a red stack at Daniil, and Daniil leafed through the crisp bills, half-expecting them to crackle and burst into pyrotechnic stars.
“This is my life’s savings, Daniil,” his grandfather said. “I’ve been keeping it for hard times, and hard times have arrived. Take the money. Don’t ask me where I’ve been stashing it. Put it in for heating, bribe someone—anything.”
Daniil mustered a weak thank-you.
Uncle Timko held up his mangled block of wood. “Does this look like a spoon or a toothpick?”
“Neither.”
“It’s supposed to be both.”
“You’re getting wood chips all over my sheets,” protested Daniil.
Uncle Timko ignored him. “Spoon on one end, toothpick on the other. A basic instrument of survival.”
When at last the counting was done, Grandfather Grishko’s savings, along with money the other relatives had scrounged up, came to a hefty 8,752 rubles and 59 kopeks.
Daniil did a quick calculation in his head, imagining what 8,752 rubles and 59 kopeks could buy. He took the rabid inflation into account, and recalled the prices he’d seen at the half-empty state store the week before. Then he looked up from the stacks of bills into the expectant eyes of his family.
“We’ve got enough here to buy one space heater,” he declared. He quickly held up a cautionary finger to stop the dreamers in the room. “If I can find one.”
* * *
—
The next day, Daniil found another memo on his desk, this one from Sergei Igorovich:
TO FILL UNFILLABLE STRING-BEAN TRIANGULAR VOID, ENGINEER TRIANGULAR VEGETABLE.
DUE FRIDAY.
Daniil rubbed his temples. An irresistible desire to stretch came over him. He wanted his body to fill the office, his arms and legs to stick out of the doors and windows. He wanted to leap and gambol where wild pearwood grew. His great parachute lungs would inflate, sucking up all the air on the planet.
The phone rang.
Sergei Igorovich was calling from his office again. He stood in his doorway, coiling the powder-blue phone cable around his index finger. “Is that a Fudgy Cow on your desk?”
“Just the wrapper, Sergei Igorovich.”
“I haven’t had one in months.”
The line filled with heavy silence.
“I should get back to the triangular vegetable, Sergei Igorovich.”
“You should.” Sergei Igorovich kept the receiver pressed to his ear. “Blinov?”
“Yes, Sergei Igorovich.”
“Was it good?”
“The candy? A bit stale.”
Sergei Igorovich let out a brief moan before glancing over at his own superior’s office, to find that he was being observed as well. He hung up.
Daniil placed the wrapper in his drawer, beside the T-square and his drawings of the Cheburashka gang. He turned to the diagram lying on his desk: a tin can containing exactly seventeen black olives. Seventeen was the maximum capacity, provided the olives were a constant size. The ones in the middle compacted into cubes, with barely any space for brine. Good, thought Daniil. No one drinks the brine anyway.
* * *
—
The heater was set to a lavish High. Its amber power light flickered like a campfire. Fourteen figures huddled around the rattling tin box and took turns allowing the warm air to tickle their faces. A few disrobed down to their sweaters. A bottle of samogon appeared from its hiding place, as did a can of sprats. Daniil felt warmth spread to his toes, to his chilliest spots. Aunt Nika took off her hood; her cheeks had gained a lively red. Grandfather Grishko sat on a stool like a king, knees spread, about to bite into a piece of vobla jerky he claimed predated the Great October Revolution.
“Let’s hope the jerky has fared better than Ukraine,” toasted Aunt Nika.
A knock came at the door.
Everyone fell quiet.
Another knock.
Aunt Nika poked Daniil’s arm.
Daniil took another swig of home brew, slid off his chair (which Uncle Timko immediately occupied), and opened the door.
Two tall men in black beanies stood in the narrow hallway, holding a coffin.
Daniil felt himself teeter as his relatives crowded behind him. “If you’re here to collect me, I’m not ready yet.”
“We need access to your apartment, Citizen,” the square-jawed man on the right said.
“Why?” Daniil asked.
The man on the left, endowed with wet meaty lips, rolled his eyes at his colleague. “God dammit, Petya, do we have to give an explanation at every landing?”
“An explanation would be nice,” Daniil insisted.
“The guy on ninth croaked, and the stair landings aren’t wide enough to pivot the coffin,” Petya said. “So we need to do it inside the apartments.”
“Yet somehow you got it all the way up to ninth.” Daniil knew the cabinet-size elevator wouldn’t have been an option.
“When the coffin was empty, we could turn it upright.”
“And now you can’t.”
Petya narrowed his eyes at Daniil. “Some might find that disrespectful, Citizen.” In agreement, Baba Ola flicked the back of Daniil’s neck with her stone-hard fingers. Petya said, “Look, this thing isn’t getting any lighter.”
“You sure you aren’t here to collect anyone?” Daniil asked.
“As you can see, we’ve already collected. Now let us in.”
Daniil stood aside and the men lumbered in with the coffin, trampling on shoes without taking off their own, scratching the wallpaper.
“Yasha, we’ll have to move the cot to make room,” Petya said.
“Which one?”
“Pink flower sheets.”
“Keep holding your end while I set mine down,” Yasha instructed. “Toasty in here, eh?”
“Yes, mind the heater by your feet,” Daniil chimed in.
“I’ll have to step out on the balcony while you pivot.”
Baba Ola lunged at the men, yelling something about the balcony, but no one understood exactly what.
A panicked brood of hens stormed the room.
Aunt Nika clutched at her chest. “Sweet Saint Nicholas.”
“We’ll have to report this poultry enterprise, Citizens,” said Petya.
Daniil was about to tell them these strange hens must have hopped over from another balcony when everything went dark.
The heater’s rattle ceased. The hens were stunned silent. Through the window, Daniil could see that the neighboring buildings were blacked out as well.
“Electrical shortages,” Yasha said. “Heard about it on the radio. Said to stay tuned for scheduled blackouts.”
“Setting the coffin down,” Petya said, voice strained. “It’s about to slip out of my hands—”
“Slow, slow—”
A delicate, protracted crunch—the sound of slowly crushed tin—filled seventeen pairs of ears. Daniil had counted: seventeen, if you included the man in the coffin. For a few seconds, no one said a word.
“Well, looks like we’re going to be here awhile.” Yasha sighed and shuffled, and the stale smell of socks wafted through the air. “Wasn’t there some jerky going around?”
Daniil’s head whirled. Seventeen humans in one room, arms and legs and fingers and toes laced together. Plus one bay leaf. The crunch of the space heater replayed in his mind, even as the cold seeped in. A small clawed foot stepped on his. Seventeen olives. Daniil would die just like this, stuffed and brined with the others, their single coffin stuck in someone else’s bedroom. No one drinks the brine anyway. A brush of feathers huddled on his feet, shivering. Daniil took a step forward, and the feathers swished past. In the dark he felt for the coffin, yanked out the crumpled space heater from underneath it. The corner of the coffin slammed against the floor. The children screamed.
Daniil stepped onto the balcony, flung the heater over the ledge. For a second he felt weightless, as if he himself had taken to the air. A hollow crash echoed against the walls of the adjacent buildings.
He stepped back inside and sank down on his bunk. Wood chips scratched between his fingers.
Grandfather Grishko was the first to speak. “Daniil, go down and get it.” The whispered words were slow, grave. “We’ll get it fixed.”
What was his grandfather hoping for? Still, Daniil would do as he was told, if only to get out of the crowded suite. Then he felt the cold steel of his uncle’s mallet and chisel among the wood chips. He grabbed the instruments and descended to the ground floor. A gruff voice offered caramels but Daniil snatched the bencher’s cigarette lighter instead. He lit its flame, illuminating the red stenciled numbers on the front of the building.
And then he knew what he had to do. He had to get heating, because heating meant Number 1933 Ivansk existed. And if the building existed, he and his family had a place, even in the form of a scribble buried deep in a directory. He would show them proof. He would show the ones behind the glass partitions—he would bring the stenciled numbers to them. Daniil positioned the chisel. The first hit formed a long crack in the concrete, but kept the numbers whole.
LITTLE RABBIT
Sometimes they arrive in vans from the maternity ward. Sometimes in strollers, or inside shawls wrapped around waists. Sometimes from the village, sometimes from the town. Few of the babies have names. If they arrive healthy, they were born unwanted; if wanted, then unhealthy.
The baby house sits tucked behind a hill, out of sight of the village and the town.
It’s bad luck to talk about or show pictures of the babies living at the baby house, much like it’s bad luck to talk about or show pictures of a train wreck or a natural disaster.
The main hall of the baby house has bright windows and three rows of beds, and a sanitarka who makes rounds with a milk bottle. She strokes the babies, talks to each in turn.
She says, “My kitten.”
