The older boy changes his grip, considers the punishment. Breakage is not out of the question. Yevgeni knows this, Ivan knows this. Testing the flexibility of the joint. Testing the will of Yevgeni.
“So where’s your papa when your two mamas are home?”
“He died in Afghanistan.”
A pause. Ivan looks at him, sees him for the first time.
“My father went to Afghanistan.”
A stabbing note of woe in Ivan’s voice. A glance towards somewhere distant.
Yevgeni may be okay.
It’s just the two of them now. Their joined experience, a father in a war zone, separating them from everything else. Ivan holds the younger kid’s finger. Holding it in his fist. An odd point of contact, he realizes, looking at it, holding the finger in a baby’s grasp.
The Tchaikovsky kid is staring at him, really looking now, like he’s trying to discover something. Like he wants Ivan to repeat what he said. Ivan can feel the tension releasing in the kid’s hand. There is the possibility of letting him go. There is definitely that possibility. But Alek’s here. And word would spread.
He takes in the kid, measuring everything. Fucking pathetic really: sprawly limbs, a body that looks like it was made from spare parts, angled joints, everything at a slant. Ivan’s father taught him to stand square, be grounded. Another lesson to be thankful for. When his father speaks, Ivan listens. A man who went to war.
“There’s a difference, though, between our fathers. Know what it is?”
Calmness glazes Ivan’s eyes. Yevgeni can see his own reflection in them, the vague shape of his hair. The moment turns, irrevocably. He takes a breath, a fleeting image of his tears stored in a small, dark reservoir near his brain. His words create a surface ripple as he speaks.
“No. What?”
Ivan grasps Yevgeni’s wrist with his other hand. A fist around his finger, another around his wrist.
“Mine came back.”
Silence. Stillness. A jerk from Ivan, his lower lip clamped between his teeth.
The sound of a branch snapping.
Yevgeni doesn’t cry out and he manages to be proud of this—in the middle of the pain—to let out a sound means they’ll see him again, maybe next week. These are the rules.
A station guard walks up, asks their names. Yevgeni is bent over, hand folded into his stomach, cheeks puffed. The guard repeats his question and they answer him. “Pavel.” “Yuri.” They know better than to give their real names. They look at him blankly: “So what, no problems.” Alek scuffs a shoe on the floor, tugs at his crotch through his pocket. Yevgeni raises the good arm to the man. “I’m fine,” the gesture says.
“He’s got some cramp. We’re just waiting on him.” Ivan says this. Alek hangs back in these situations. This is why Ivan is Ivan and Alek is Alek.
The man walks off. Alek gives Yevgeni a final ear flick, a little bonus pain, and they make for the platform as the train pulls in.
Lazy-eye fucker.
Yevgeni’s tears come as they saunter away, overflowing the lip of the reservoir.
He stumbles forward, away from the arch, breath leaking from him, saliva bubbling down his chin. He wants to go somewhere dark to hide, maybe to sleep, but there’s no place to be alone in this city. Even if he went home and locked himself in the bathroom, there’d be a fist banging on the door. He might get five minutes of peace. Definitely no more than ten. People living in each other’s lives. In his life. Sharing his bath, his toilet. His mother tells him he’s lucky to have his own bed. She says this to him and he doesn’t know what to reply. Maybe his bed will be the next thing. Maybe he’ll have to curl up beside a stranger someday soon. He never knows when the rules will change again.
Yevgeni tucks the wounded hand under his jacket. The pain has its own heartbeat. He cradles the hand inside his jacket like it’s not a part of him, it’s something else, a wounded bird, an abandoned kitten. He feels an urge to let out a whimper, to give voice to the stricken hand, but what if his test isn’t over yet? There’s always someone who might hear.
Mr. Leibniz, his teacher, will be waiting. Yevgeni can see the old man sitting on the piano stool, looking out into the yard, checking his watch.
Maybe he should still go there. Mr. Leibniz would certainly be annoyed, but surely when he sees the finger he’d understand the pain involved, do something about it.
He needs to go somewhere. He knows this. Stand around here much longer and the station guard will come back. Never attract attention. The great rule of this city. Blend in. Walk in a group. Speak quietly. Keep your good fortune to yourself. Queue patiently. These are things that no one has ever said to him, at least not directly. Yevgeni picked them up from simply being here, alive to the quick of his skin.
The city reveals itself to him all the time, slinging its patterns across the most innocuous things. On sunny days, when shadows sit sharp and defined along the ground, he sees people following lines of shade, scuttling along near walls, slinking away from the glare of the light. Or waiting at traffic lights, everyone hunched together, inhabiting a small rectangle of sun-starved concrete. The things he knows, he knows from being alone amongst others. Walking, listening, watching. Last summer he sat on a step and looked at a queue that stretched out in front of a fishmonger’s, everyone sweating and gossiping. And when it was too hot to talk, they stood in silence, breathing. Taking air in and pushing it out together, like they were all part of the same thing, some long, straggled creature. Sometimes he thinks that people stand in line just to be part of a line. To become part of the shapes that are created to fit them.
His mother spends her day working in a laundry and then comes home and washes and irons the neighbours’ clothes. People call round at all hours with baskets of dirty garments. His mother didn’t choose this. He knows she hates it. But someone has to do laundry, to keep clothes clean, keep them free from creases. Why not his mother? Everyone adapting to need.
And still they all want him to play Mozart and Schubert and he can’t help asking himself: Where’s the need in that? But he’s too young to ask questions. This is what he’s always told. So he asks them to himself and doesn’t look for an answer. There are questions that float down to him from the mosaics. He has so many questions. He used to write them down but his mother found the sheets in his scrapbook and burned them. She said he had other things to concentrate on. She may as well have kicked him in the stomach. Still the questions keep bubbling in his brain. He straightens and asks himself: Why did anyone feel the need to put a mosaic of a parachute jumper on the ceiling of a Metro station? But it somehow feels more fascinating down here. The rush of clouds and sky has an intensity to it, in a place without fresh air, a chandeliered tunnel.
Mr. Leibniz would have plenty of questions. He’d treat Yevgeni like a broken artifact, a precious heirloom that had fallen off the mantelpiece. He wouldn’t be concerned about the pain, at least not at first. He’d think of the weeks of rehearsals that would be missed, the competition schedule that would have to be rearranged. He’d place a hand on his forehead and bring his fingers together by running them across his tufted eyebrows. And then he’d look at Yevgeni with disappointment. Yevgeni hates that look.
People cascade down the escalators again, pour onto the platforms. Someone jostles his hand and Yevgeni lets out a stunted moan and then allows the surge to sweep him up, before finally coming to a stop at the platform’s edge. He stands there and leans gently towards the track to catch a look at the incoming train as it rounds the curve, headlights bulldozing through the darkness.