“You’ll be fine. You’ll go home or you’ll adapt.”
“Thank you,” Artyom’s mother said.
“I’m just saying what I know.”
A pause.
“Where do you take it all?” Artyom asked. They didn’t have anyone to collect their rubbish at home. If they didn’t need something they burned it. There must be a big fire somewhere.
“To the dump.”
“You don’t burn it?”
The man looked surprised. “No. We don’t burn it. We pile it up.”
“And then what do you do?”
The rest of the men laughed at the question, but the man with the milky chin took it in and thought about it.
“We put more on top of it.”
“So it’s where things end up?”
“Yes. I suppose so.”
Another man said, “It’s where we’ve ended up,” and they laughed again.
They arrived at a warehouse on the outskirts of the city, a long, squat building surrounded by other long, squat buildings. The men helped them disembark, carrying the sacks and the roll of undercarpet. Artyom’s mother took off Maksim’s jacket and handed it to him, and he refused it but she was insistent, an immovable stubbornness in her voice, so he took it and she shook his hand and they called out their thanks to the men on the truck, each of whom responded with an open hand, covered by a ragged glove, and the truck disappeared into the morning, the suspension wheezing in the distance.
On the ground were the imprints of thousands of feet, leading from everywhere, merging into a muddy route to the entrance.
Artyom’s mother announced their arrival to the guards and they asked where she was from and heard their names, but they were just obeying routine, they had no lists to cross off and just nodded towards the door.
There were no queues in the warehouse; everyone had been registered during the night. All they could see were people laid out in their minute homes. Every family had a couple of square metres of carpet, cordoned off by drooping pieces of cardboard that had been taped to the floor. Thousands of small lives compacted together. Artyom recalled lifting a large stone and seeing a swarm of insects crawling underneath. This was what a city would look like if you took away all the walls and furniture.
Nearly everyone was sleeping. There were only a few people moving about, so few that it seemed odd to look at a vertical figure, someone standing or walking: seeing this many people stretched out gave the illusion that humans were built to exist on a horizontal plane. Odd, too, to see so many people exist in silence after the chaotic noise of the previous day.
Pigeons flapped overhead, darting their heads to take in every aspect of the place.
A woman wearing a yellow sash approached them. They could tell from her face that the smell from Maksim’s jacket still lingered. The woman spoke to them with distaste.
“Your cards.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The cards.”
Artyom’s mother stalled, not understanding; surely they wouldn’t refuse them entry.
Artyom leaned in towards his mother. “She’s asking for the cards they gave us before we boarded the buses. When they scanned us with their metres.”
“Of course.” She directed her reply to the woman, and patted her body and pulled out a small purse from under her sweater with some roubles and three categorization cards.
The woman looked at them and asked Artyom’s mother to confirm their full names and dates of birth, which she did. The woman nodded towards Artyom and Sofya.
“You can’t hold their cards for them. They’ll need to show them any time they’re asked.”
“Of course.”
“Come with me.”
She led them to a door with a series of locks and took out a set of keys and turned the bolts one by one and told them to wait there. Artyom peeked inside, saw piles of green blankets set on top of desks, and he guessed that this room was originally the office area of whatever it was this warehouse stored. The woman returned holding a small stack.
She handed the blankets to Sofya, gave Artyom’s mother an improvised map, hand-drawn, showed them how the area had been divided into sections, and told them that they would collect their food once a day from the provisions area in the far corner of the building. Their section would be called over the loudspeakers and they would present their cards and get their food and bring it back to their living quarters. She said “living quarters” without a trace of irony, as if they should be grateful to inhabit a strip of carpet.
She pointed out their section and turned the map to the back, which revealed the number of their area. Artyom’s mother asked where the toilets were and the woman pointed to a sign with an arrow halfway down the left-hand wall.
Artyom’s mother asked if there were showers.
“There are no showers.”
“What about washing?”
“Let’s hope it rains every few days.”
Artyom’s mother took in this information without surprise.
“My husband is missing. Where can I find out about his arrival?”
The woman snorted through her nostrils. “Look around. Everyone’s husband is missing.”
They looked and could see very few men.
“A representative from the secretariat will visit this afternoon. We will know more then. Food will be handed out midmorning. Have your cards with you at all times. If you cannot present your card, we will confiscate your food. That is all.”
“One last thing.”
The woman paused, resenting the time that was being demanded of her.
“Do you know how long we’ll be here?”
“As long as you’re told.”
The woman turned away and sat on a chair against the wall and picked up a magazine.
They walked through the maze of carpet and cardboard and sprawled limbs, finally finding their area, a space just big enough for the three of them to lie side by side. At the farm, whenever a cow was sick, they would section it off in its own pen until it recovered. That pen was bigger than their area. Probably more comfortable too, Artyom thought, if the straw was fresh.
Sofya sat on the roll of undercarpet, and said, “So this is home.”
Artyom’s mother chewed her gums and nodded, not looking at them.
Artyom walked outside. He could hear his mother calling instructions to him in frustrated whispers, but he didn’t care. He needed to be alone. At least he could take in the peace of the morning. Everything that his eyes set upon was made of steel and concrete. A line of pylons stretched out with corkscrew endings, which balanced a series of buzzing wires. Trucks passed on the roadside; so fast and heavy that he could feel the concrete bounce under his feet.
Not a blade of grass to be seen.
Nothing breathing, not even himself.
All that had come before erased in a single day.
“HE’S ASLEEP NOW. We can get to work.”
Grigory’s voice brings Artyom back to the room. It takes a moment for him to readjust, to concentrate on the job at hand. He looks down and sees the dog at rest, a comical leer on its lips, its molars showing. He puts his hand in its coat. It’s good to touch the hair of an animal, coarse and alive.
Grigory says something, and Artyom turns around, not comprehending. Grigory repeats the word: “Ready?”
Gently, they turn the dog onto its back and Grigory clips its hindquarters, then shaves it with a razor, so that eventually the dog looks like a creature of two halves: hair and skin. Artyom can’t help but smile at how strange it looks, can’t help but think that if a dog has such a thing as vanity, it’s in for quite a surprise. Grigory instructs Artyom to hold its hindquarters off the floor, and he does so and is surprised at the weight of the animal. Grigory wraps plaster of Paris around its pelvis, dipping the swatches in the bowl of water before he does so, then has Artyom help him fold the dog’s legs into its body, so it can drag itself along while it recovers. They both take pleasure in their actions: healing something that contains no mystery; a broken bone that will be fixed, that is definable, a medical problem that has a resolution. And they both quietly look forward to the day when they will cut the bandage away from this animal and see it walk, unsteadily, across the yard, its trauma behind it.