Their last call is Valentina Savinkova, a friend whose husband works with Alina, and she doesn’t need to get her laundry done, but she wants to help out. Alina is a little embarrassed by her custom, but of course they’re not in a position to turn it down.
“You don’t need to have us do this.”
“Of course I do. I don’t want to be washing my sheets. Think of the time it saves me.”
“You have the time.”
“I have the time, but I don’t want to be wasting it on ironing, washing. It’s not charity, believe me. I let Varlam think it’s charity, otherwise he wouldn’t agree to it, but all that walking up and down to the basement. All those dull conversations I’d have to get into. Please”—she swats an open hand past her ear—“your sister is doing me the favour.”
She pours vodka into three glasses and Yevgeni laughs. She looks up.
“Zhenya, of course.” It’s her turn to laugh. “I have some kvass.”
She goes out and comes back in with a large glass, a handle on the side.
“Here. You can pretend it’s real beer.”
Yevgeni doesn’t much like kvass, but he drinks a slug and pats his tongue off the roof of his mouth, the tartness of the drink drawing his cheeks together.
Valentina looks around the room. “I should have cleaned.”
“You’ve just talked about how you couldn’t be bothered doing laundry and now you’re saying you should have cleaned.”
“What, you’re the KGB now? I’m contradicting myself? Fine. Is this a crime now too? You send this beautiful child over as a spy. Yes, you, Zhenya, you’re a beautiful child. I’d come over and mush your cheeks, but I’m drinking my vodka and you’d probably disappear into the couch in shame.”
Yevgeni doesn’t know how to respond to this.
“So why are you here too, Maria? Did you think your little spy needs some supervision?”
“No, just help. It’s a lot of work for a kid and I had an afternoon off.”
“An afternoon off? Sounds mysterious.”
“It’s not. I had a meeting at his school. Alina couldn’t make it.”
“And so you’re seeing what the child gets up to on his rounds, extorting food from vulnerable, lonely women.”
“I’m thinking maybe he shouldn’t be doing this alone. Those kids on the stairs.”
“I know. The corners are darker lately. I know.”
“It’s not a good place.”
“It’s fine. There’ll always be a few. It’s fine. It’s not like Zhenya will be getting caught up in all that. Besides, I hear you’re bound for the Conservatory, Zhenya.”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s not what I hear. All the practicing is going well?”
He’s silent. He doesn’t like it when adults get together and then include him. He’s just not one of them. Why pretend otherwise?
“We got some fish. In the bedroom. Go and have a look.”
Yevgeni bounds off the couch. Maria waits until he closes the door.
“I’m worried about him. We still haven’t found a place for him to rehearse. An audition for the Conservatory in the spring—there’s also the possibility of a recital at my work—and the child practices on a keyboard with the volume turned down.”
“He can’t practice at his music teacher’s?”
“The man’s old, his wife is senile, we can’t ask more of him than we already do. You don’t happen to know of anyone with a piano?”
“Of course not. What kind of circles do you think we move in?”
Maria lowers her eyes. Valentina softens her tone, refills Maria’s glass.
“I’ll ask Varlam to keep an ear out.”
“Thanks. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring my problems here.”
“Don’t worry. I need something to keep my mind occupied. It’s a relief to hear about something practical. I’ve been worrying about the strangest things lately.”
“What type of things?”
“I don’t know. Just things. I’ve too much time on my hands.”
Maria waits patiently. This is always the nature of conversation with Valentina: she approaches the topic in waves, the tide of information coming gradually. Maria, being Maria, listens while someone talks themselves into understanding, or revelation.
“I don’t know. I’m forgetting things. My keys. My purse. I forgot my coat a few weeks ago. I was at a play at the Hermitage, on my own, and, afterwards, I walked for twenty minutes in the pounding snow before realizing I had left my coat behind.”
“Must have been a good play.”
“I’d tell you, but of course I can’t remember.”
“Are you worried? Do you need to see someone?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. There are people who’d kill to be in my position, you know. Just forgetting. Having no memory makes you innocent. You can’t obscure things.”
“Has something happened that’s made you want to forget?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
Silence.
“There’s something. What is it?”
“I saw something the other day—a few weeks ago, actually. The strangest thing.”
More silence. “Well, I don’t know how to put it. The strangest thing. I was in the Lefortovo—you know how sometimes it’s good for meat, the lines that sometimes spring up.”
“Yes.”
“It was Varlam’s birthday and I wanted to cook him something special, some pork maybe, and I hung around, went to the places where I had queued before, and eventually I came across a line and I got a shoulder of pork, a beautiful slab, let me tell you.”
Valentina is slightly bug-eyed, with hair chopped under her ears, which further emphasizes the oval shape of her face. Maria could see her standing at the door of the memory, wondering if she should step inside it, wondering if this was doing any good.
“Then I walked back to Kurskaya station. I was really pleased with myself. He works so hard, Varlam. You know how it is, Alina works hard too. I wanted to make him a meal to celebrate him. I know Varlam hasn’t done amazing things in his life. He’s feeling, at the moment… what’s the word?… unaccomplished. So I wanted to cook him a meal that recognizes what he means to me. A meal fit for a good man.”
She swats the air again, scattering away irrelevant information.
“Anyway, with this package of meat in my bag, I’m proud of myself. I’m a good wife. And I’m walking those backstreets—you know where I’m talking about, there’s a steelworks building and it’s near all those railway lines.”
Maria nods. “Yes.”
“The evening is coming down and I feel like the only person in the city—there’s no one else around, not even any footsteps to be heard—and I turn a corner and see something hanging from a lamppost.”
She pauses, looking up, and her voice turns lighter.
“And right away I feel like it’s going to be something strange. I don’t know why. The weight of it maybe, the way it swung on its own weight. And I look up and it’s a dead cat, hanging from a short piece of rope, its eyes gleaming from the streetlight. And I feel it’s looking right at me.”
“My God.”
“I know. Its mouth is open, fangs bared, snarling, spitting, the way cats do. I tell myself I need to get out of there, so I start to walk faster—I’m nearly running, in fact. My shoes have a thick heel, so I’m staggering and I slip but regain my footing and look up, and there’s another one. I kept my head down all the way back to the station, but I could still tell, from the corner of my eye, that there were more—maybe twenty. I don’t know. I was so worried someone would come around the corner, some militia guys, and I’d be the only one around with these fucking animals strung up, and they’d start asking me questions.”