She paces back to him and grabs his arm and drags him back into motion, and he’s as raggedly obedient as a stitched doll.
This child needs to learn some things.
They get on the Metro and talk it out. Yevgeni explains what happened and Maria can see a kind of logic behind it. The things you can’t do as a kid, the actions you can’t take, how the smallest things become magnified, reaching crisis point.
She stops him midsentence.
“Show me your arm.”
“What?”
“Show me your arm.”
Yevgeni pulls his sweater back. Nothing. He knows what she’s looking for already, trying to look casual. Nothing escapes this kid.
“The other one.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Okay, it’s there, you don’t need proof, Mam has seen it already.”
“It’s a Chinese burn then.”
“Yes.”
“Do we need to be worried?”
“No.”
“Zhenya?”
“No.”
“Are there a lot of other kids getting them? Be honest now.”
“Yes. Loads.”
“You’re not the only one.”
“No. We do it all the time.”
Taunts, name-calling, ear smacking, spitting, kicking, teachers handing out beatings, snot flicking, note passing. Thank Christ she isn’t still in school.
She’ll let the subject rest, but she can’t guarantee that she won’t come back to it. It’s a fine balance, being a live-in aunt. She wants him to confide in her, but she feels many of the maternal responsibilities, the same irrational fears, as Alina does.
“I have a question,” Maria says. “Do you know any Prokofiev?”
“Eh”—he thinks for a minute—“no.”
“Do you know who Prokofiev is?”
He looks at her, eyebrows raised. Of course he knows who Prokofiev is. That’s like asking who Lenin is.
“My manager at work is asking about a recital. If you played for them it would be a big help to me.”
But he doesn’t know any Prokofiev.
“But I don’t know any Prokofiev. Do I have to play Prokofiev?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m just asking, in theory, if you had to. It might not happen.”
He says “yes.” He says “of course.” But he hunches in on himself in a way Maria knows. He doesn’t want to do it. He’s worried about his timing. He’s worried about everything.
The train pulls into their stop and they get out, the platform so empty, everybody still at work, and Maria feels an urge to get back on the train and make the most of the afternoon, take him to Red Square, have him walk around the shops in GUM, let him smell real food, perfume; touch fur. The child has never experienced what it’s like to run your hand along a shining pelt. Or they could have tea in the Metropol, have waiters bow to them, hear the clink of teacups, go to a show in the Bolshoi, put his hand on the appliqué wallpaper. Be other people for an afternoon.
But, they can’t afford such things, and he has laundry to deliver and she has a class to teach. And, besides, Alina would kill her.
They walk up the steps into the sunlight. The market is here, as always. Vegetables. Military wear. Resoled boots. Sunglasses for the November glare. You could probably get yourself some nuclear warheads here, if you had the money. There’s a container of figs with the lid off on one of the tables. It’s maybe ten years since she’s tasted one.
She moves on. She’ll buy something, an indulgence to make sure there’s no hard feelings. She’s said her piece. The boy has had quite an afternoon: it can’t be easy being a prodigy.
They stop at a blini stall and Yevgeni orders one with ham and egg and Maria says, “What? Everything I touch turns to gold? Come on now. Be reasonable.” And he smiles guiltily and orders one with red cabbage and sausage. Little runt, he knows the limits. The woman pours the mixture onto her round hot plate and then swirls it with the long, flat knife so it runs to the edge but doesn’t spill over.
Nearing the towers, the drunks have colonized the playgrounds, sitting on swings, glugging from bottles. One is lying flat on the merry-go-round, his head extending out one end, legs the other, a bottle of antifreeze lying on his chest, staring up at the photos of soldiers on the windows above him, memorials to family members who have died in service. All of them in their full dress, caps tilted high. The standard shots from academy graduation, faded with the weather. At night, when the lights are on, they cast a ghostly pallor over the place, giving a fleeting impression of stained glass. Maria knows that most of these soldiers were as stupid as tree trunks, fired up on their own testosterone, but she likes their glowing presence, a reminder that a home isn’t just comprised of furniture and electricity and plumbing. She understands why the babushkas can’t walk past one without blessing themselves.
Maria and Yevgeni climb the stairs—the lift is still out—and Maria turns the key and Yevgeni puts the greaseproof paper into the bin and lets out a belch.
“Don’t push it, Zhenya, just because your mother’s not here.”
“Sorry.”
“Wash your hands. We’ll get started. I’ll help you.”
His day is getting better.
It’s a Wednesday, which is the end of Alina’s laundry week, the day when the piles of freshly pressed sheets reach their peak, covering every available surface. Maria opens the door to the living room and steps into a tundra landscape. The place is so stark and pristine she can almost hear the Siberian winds whipping through the room.
Alina has pinned a tag on each stack with the owner’s name and address, and Maria begins to line up the piles in order of delivery. A stack has tipped over near the windowsill and Maria picks it up and shakes out the sheets for refolding. She hands two corners to Yevgeni, and they automatically go through the process. The ritual is not without its satisfactions. Maria loves the sensation of snapping the corners of a freshly dried sheet, yanking it between her and Yevgeni, the clean, sharp lines that emerge when they each pull tight, stepping forward and back, as though they were in the middle of a formal dance.
They pack up and start their deliveries in the falling snow.
They knock on doors in dimly lit passageways. Hand the bags over to people whose hands are dappled with liver spots, with raised veins. They smell smells they don’t want to think about, and hear rubbish flowing down the chutes around them set into the walls, arteries of waste running inside the building. They shoulder open doors of broken glass and doors where the glass has been replaced by wood or cardboard or not replaced at all, and with these ones, with the panels absent, they step through them, but first they place their hands forward, fingers splayed, feeling for what may or may not be there, like a blind man entering an unfamiliar room.
They go back to their apartment and restock and then head out once more, doing this systematically, building by building.
They walk up stairways with kids sprawled all over them. Kids not much older than Yevgeni, bottles of glue in front of them, and Maria doesn’t have to tell Yevgeni to be careful because the child already knows. How can he not, the synthetic leer on their faces?
They deliver a bag to a man with no hands, just bandaged stumps, and Maria walks inside and puts his laundry in the cupboard. The place is immaculately tidy and he explains that the woman next door comes over all the time to make sure he’s okay, and Maria feels good about this; it’s not all despair or spirit-stripping cynicism.
They see a birdcage that contains a cardboard bird, coloured in with crayon.
They see a red-candle waxwork of Lenin, burned down a little ways so that he looks as if he’s had a lobotomy.
They see a medical skeleton, standing in the corner of a room, wearing a broad-brimmed black felt hat.