She missed most of his early years, too busy travelling around the country reporting the small victories of working life, writing them up as though the workers were living sainted existences, achieving the greatest deeds, when all she saw was squalor and cynicism.
The newspaper sent her on journeys to faraway places, hidden corners of the Union where life continued in the most extraordinary circumstances, often barely any heat or light, toughened people who understood how to subsist with the most meagre of resources, reminding her of deep-sea urchins adapting to an almost extraterrestrial environment.
She had acted as a priest of sorts. There were times on those trips when people would tell her their most delicate intimacies, staring deep into the embers of a dying fire. Of course, they all thought initially that she was with the KGB, there to draw truths from them. But a few hours in her company and they realized she was too real to be truly invested in the system. She was too loose with her talk, too self-deprecating, telling little stories on herself, dropping small comments that could be interpreted as criticisms; though they would also hold up as factual statements if she was ever reported.
Salt miners in Solikamsk, grinding out a day’s work in those crystalline tunnels. Or the sovkhozy—the state farms—in Uzbekistan, where the summer crops spread out past the curve of the earth, where she interviewed averagely built men with enormous, hoary hands, hands so roughened by the weather that the skin was separated into pads, like a dog’s paw. The grain silos, military in their bearing, gigantic cylindrical tanks from which biblical quantities of grain would pour into the bellies of vast trucks.
Everything enormous. That was the overriding sense that remained with her. The utter, mind-melting scale of the Union.
And how, in the wake of such experiences, could she not write of the reality of the lives she met? She sees now that she always knew, at least on some level, that such words would lead to a revoking of her privileges, a banishment from her profession.
Maria considers her nephew as he sits on her knee, warmth flowing from him, seeping through her overcoat, which she has not yet taken off.
His finger has healed, which is a relief to all. Though there’s a swelling around the area of the fracture, like a huge, dormant boil. A physiotherapist in the next building showed them some finger-strengthening exercises, a series of bends and waggles which Yevgeni performed with religious devotion before bedtime.
They bought him a keyboard in the summer, one that sits on two metal trestles. A man that Alina does laundry for, a truck driver, smuggled it back from Berlin. Alina gave him two months free laundry for it, in addition to three months of Maria’s wages, most of what she had saved up since she arrived. But when he brought it in the door and set it up and Yevgeni sat down to play for the three of them, Maria couldn’t but feel a swelling pride, couldn’t think of anything else she’d like to spend her money on, a satisfaction that lasted for perhaps five minutes, until the neighbours started banging on the door, threatening to call the building superintendent, have them kicked out. It hasn’t made a sound in four months. They tried various strategies to appease the neighbours. They brought vodka and sausages around to those closest, but when others heard about the windfall, they wanted their share. People at the far end of the building started to complain, even though they’d have to strain to hear even the faintest traces of a note. So they stopped giving out gifts. They would not be blackmailed. Such behaviour from grown adults.
So the genius plays with no sound, which, at first, she thought a picture of impotence. Now, even though it no doubt hinders his advancement, she thinks it’s glorious. Sometimes Maria arrives home and sees him in the living room, her bedroom, and he’s flowing to the music, doing all the dips and turns of head and drops of delicate hands that she sees in the concert pianists, and at first she thought he was copying them, emulating them in the same way that kids take on the celebrations of footballers. After watching him though, on separate occasions, watching him when he doesn’t know anybody is looking, she realizes he’s doing it of his own accord, dancing internally as he presses down on the dull plastic keys.
But all has not been so smooth recently. His tempo is beginning to drift. It’s a slight quirk that seems to be growing exponentially. The auditions for the central school of the Conservatory are next April, and Yevgeni’s training has come unstuck. There’s a tautness in the household. Mr. Leibniz has asserted that the boy would either grow out of his musical difficulties or fall deeply into the disordered void; there’s no way to train it out of him. “Music is a sensual medium,” he says, “his style cannot be counted back to purity.” Maria passed the bathroom the other night and saw Alina gripping the taps, leaning back on her heels, head on the sink rim. Of course, if he doesn’t get in the first time he can always reapply the next year, but the boy doesn’t deal well with failure. Maria thinks that if he doesn’t succeed initially, he won’t get in. He has a fiery will. He blazes in his pursuit of the music. He’s not one of those vapid automatons she sees when they go to a recital there, when they sit in that pale-green room and watch stooped men with silver-tipped canes greet each other and assess the performer’s pedigree as if they were a racehorse. Afterwards each musician receives their applause utterly devoid of appreciation, bending as though their body has finally refused to carry itself upright.
They look at their audience and see only judgement. They proclaim in silence to the room that they’re talentless, worthless. If only you knew the paltry depths of my ability. How painful it is even to stand here and receive such graciousness, how utterly unworthy I am. So excruciating that they can barely keep their eyes open. It’s all such bullshit. Every one of them has an ego the size of that barge of an instrument they play. Maria always feels the urge to walk up to the podium, grab them by the shoulders, and shake them till their teeth rattle. Precious little orchids.
Her favourite thing about the Conservatory is to stand outside it, especially on weekdays—though she hasn’t done this since she moved to the outskirts of the city—when the students are practising and the windows over the courtyard are all thrown open and a great clatter emerges. All these styles and tempos and tones competing with each other. All that sweat being expended. You feel as if you’re standing in front of a great cauldron of creativity. All that discordance so full of life, so utterly at odds with the translucent figures that sit up on the rostrum at the recitals.
No, Yevgeni is definitely not of that mold, and it’s another thing she loves about him. There are tantrums. Sometimes after lessons he locks himself into the bathroom and refuses to come out. He throws things at walls. He bites his keyboard, bites his knuckles, pulls at his hair, kicks doorframes and lampposts, a tumult of rage inside the kid.
And yet there’s a joy to his playing; she delights in his fingers. Yevgeni has the lightest fingers. They skip along his knee while he watches TV. He often eats dinner with one hand, drumming into the tablecloth with the other. Sometimes they brush their teeth in the bathroom together and he hums scales as he does so. He jumps from foot to foot, singing each note in an almost perfect pitch, at least to Maria’s untrained ears. Occasionally he even sits at her old typewriter, working the keys to a hammered frenzy, and she likes the sound of this too, the rhythm of who she used to be, given voice to the wider world once more.
Symphonies are running on the record player every waking moment. Debussy accompanies her as she clips her toenails, Mendelssohn guides the spoon as she heats beans.