But Piotr had no aptitude for negotiating. As a child, his mother haggled with department store saleswomen, pointing out every uneven stitch, every crooked button, until the saleswomen offered 10, 15 percent off. Piotr, on the other hand, accepted fixed prices, nonnegotiable stickers. Haggling played no part in his cost/reward analysis.
“If you can get tangible concessions,” Connor said, “then your efforts are worth it. Nothing comes for free.”
They wandered the interior of Eastern Market. T-shirts with unfamiliar slang. Stained glass sun catchers and wind chimes. Carved-wood elephants. Piotr needed none of it: in his one-bedroom apartment, he had all that was necessary. He tapped a wind spinner, reticulated glass bars glued into a spiral. The edges undulated, a golden ocean wave. If only all beautiful things could be so simple.
A salesman spread Walkmans of dubious origin on a blanket across the floor. One was the size of a deck of cards, thin and silvery as a fish. “Do you like music?” Connor asked Piotr. The salesman flashed a crooked smile. Connor picked one off the ground.
“Beauty, huh?” the salesman asked. Connor shook his head and stepped backward, then forward again. He pointed to the thin one.
“How much?”
“For you, my man, ten bucks.”
“Ten! Maybe if it were new. But look here—” Connor pointed at a scratch in the silver paint, revealing plastic beneath. “It’s damaged. How do I even know if it still works?”
From his pants pocket, the salesman produced two AA batteries. He found a cassette squirreled inside his jacket. He detached the headphones from around his neck and plugged them in. Connor and Piotr pressed their heads together. The music that came forth wasn’t to Piotr’s taste.
“Headphones ain’t included,” the man said.
“Not included? I’ll give you a dollar if you’re not including the headphones.”
“No way,” he said.
“These things are antiques. How many have you sold in the last week? The last month?”
“Five, then.”
“Do they even still make cassettes? I should just buy a CD player.” Connor started to move away. “Let’s go, Piotr.”
“Hold up, hold up. You’re killing me, man. OK. One buck.”
Connor had been palming the dollar since the start of the encounter, the paper soft from overuse. On the Orange Line back to Federal Triangle, Connor pressed the Walkman into Piotr’s hands: See how easy it is? he seemed to say. You could be me in no time.
The military airport in Bhuj has been overwhelmed by incoming flights. Planes idle on the tarmac nose to tail. The previous day, USAID sent a C-5 Galaxy’s worth of goods, and the air traffic controllers said the plane couldn’t land. The runway, they feared, would crumble beneath its massive weight. What the earthquake had not destroyed, the Americans would. Typical.
But the pilot found a way. The wheels left a river of melted rubber as they touched down. The plane seemed as big as the base itself. Its belly opened to a city of boxes secured to the floor with fist-thick ropes.
The military now reserves Bhuj for food aid, rescue equipment, and medical personnel. Today, housing materials — canvas tents, plastic-sheeting roofs, galvanized-metal walls — are to arrive at the Gandhidham Military Base. Piotr will see to their distribution.
“This might be an all-day affair,” Lorraine says. “The roads are a mess, so I don’t know how long it’ll take to get there.” Her hair has expanded like a sponge in water, her head a fibrous mass of dark-brown curls. She hands him a dossier: maps and charts and graphs. Seismic activity, population density, estimated damage, loss of life. The sheets curl around his arms, a ceaseless rustle of paper, and he clamps them in his armpit to keep them stationary. His skin smells of a fax machine’s insides.
“Have you been getting any sleep?” she asks, and he shrugs. She breathes out long and slow, as if frustrated. She is nearly ten years younger than he is and has also worked in disaster relief for nearly her entire life. Piotr admires the commitment to her work: no family other than her elderly parents, no distractions to take her away from her precise, unrelenting focus. And yet, she treats him and Ted with a maternal softness, as if she holds what she feels for them like a golden stone within her heart.
“It’s going to take us a few more minutes to finalize transport,” she says. “Try to get some rest.”
He returns to the tent, where he removes his glasses, puts down his pencil, and rubs his temples. White hairs have established a stronghold there. He pinches the bridge of his nose. A rare moment of calm, this moment after sunrise, when morning stains the sky blue. In a nearby field, trucks rumble, engines low. Behemoths dreaming of a stampede.
An Indian gentleman, dressed in clean clothing, steps in. “Hello,” the man says, unaccountably cheery. He introduces himself as the special government liaison for Gujarat. The locals refer to him as “babu,” both an insult and an honorific. He is a fixer who greases the wheels of Indian bureaucracy — if one needs a building permit or a new irrigation canal, he can help. Sometimes even out of the goodness of his heart.
Babu Roshan clasps Piotr’s right hand. “I understand that you’re arranging housing,” he says.
“We will be distributing materials, yes.”
“Good, good,” he says, with a distracted air that suggests that anything Piotr says will be good. “The housing here.” He shakes his head. “Unsatisfactory.”
“It will take time to rebuild.”
“The work you do is truly commendable. Truly, truly.” He folds his hands together and places them on his belly. “I come with a simple request. A minor one. If you can acquire semipermanent housing, would you be able to set one aside?”
Piotr puts his glasses back on to get a better look. Babu Roshan has a well-fed, flush complexion. He reeks of cologne.
“If it were me alone,” he says, “I would happily sleep on the ground in the open air. I am accustomed to having little. But my wife and elderly mother — Oh! You should see how they shiver. I must do anything I can do to ease their suffering. Are you married, sir?”
Piotr nods.
“Then you understand the lengths you would go to protect your family.”
“The situation is the same for everyone,” Piotr says.
Babu Roshan nods vigorously. “We are glad you are here,” he says, “but when you leave, you leave behind nothing but canvas tents and good intentions. Surely you want to do more.”
“I can promise nothing,” Piotr says. Hopes are double-edged swords.
“I understand,” Babu Roshan says. “But if you need anything, I have considerable knowledge of the area. I can aid you.” He bows. “Should you need my aid, that is.” He leaves, trailing cologne into the sunshine.
Distractions, Connor had once told him, keep one sane. Piotr slips his earpieces back in, and Vassilov begins his repertoire once more.
The cassette of etudes and preludes was a gift from Rana. She bought it during a shopping excursion in Astoria. It featured the great Ukrainian pianist Arkady Vassilov, recorded in 1969 at Durgatev Concert Hall in Kiev. As a child, Piotr wanted to be a concert pianist, and even though he showed no signs of being a prodigy, he practiced rigorously, religiously. But at thirteen, he realized his small hands and short fingers would never achieve Vassilov’s grace. He couldn’t play chords of more than an octave, and his fingers tangled trying to chase arpeggios. So he abandoned his lessons. His parents were disappointed, but Piotr knew, as much as anything else, his own limits.