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She paces back up the corridor. Reaches up to the shelf over the coats for the running shoes, takes them down. Light blue. Soft on the insides, lightweight, well stitched, a logo on the sides. She carries the evidence back to his door.

“I’m holding them in my hands, Zhenya. Tell me right now.”

Silence.

“The last thing…” She’s so angry she can barely get the words out. “Believe me, the last thing we need…”

Silence.

She bangs on the door again.

“I won’t have this conversation from behind a door.”

“Fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I am your mother. This isn’t a hotel.”

“I know. If it was they’d leave me alone.”

“He decides to be funny. He decides he’s a big enough man to be smart. Be smart, see where it gets you. Be smart, your recital two weeks away. You don’t know this yet, but believe me when I say—I am your mother, believe me—‘there’s nothing in life…’”

“‘…so tragic as a wasted talent.’” His voice is muffled behind the door, but she can tell he’s saying it as if he’s reciting a nursery rhyme, a mockingly sing-song tone to his voice.

Her will beginning to break. “Zhenya, please. I only want what’s best for you. Open the door.” Her voice wavering.

Neighbours knocking on the wall. The superintendent will be up again. She can’t, on top of everything, afford to get an official warning. It won’t help anything if they’re homeless.

Nothing.

“Fine. You’ll have to come out, to eat, to pee. I’ll be waiting.”

She leans her back against the door, then slides down. This is just the beginning. Everything coming undone. It had to happen. She expected it, deep down. She starts to cry. Hopefully, he’ll hear her. She flings the running shoes down the corridor and they bounce off the walls, bounding into the kitchen, their energy somehow igniting hers again.

“They’re going out the window,” she calls back as she stands up and follows them, makes a point of sliding open the balcony door as loudly as possible in protest. Holds them in her hand, dangling them from their laces, pulls back her arm. But of course she can’t follow through. Who knows where he might have got them? They could belong to someone else, and, besides, good footwear can’t be wasted. They’re well made, they’ll last. They’re not a family that can throw good clothes away, even those of dubious origin. She looks at them, hanging from her fist, turning slowly in unison, joined in their fate, and she remembers she’s left the iron on.

She moves to unplug it, does so and leans against the counter. A shirtsleeve lifts in a stream of breeze, and she turns to the freshly pressed shirts lined up on their hangers, and reaches over and drags them all down, dropping with them. She grabs the whole bunch of them and wrings them into a bundle and bites them, bites down hard, stifling a scream, and they lie there, twisted, until Maria comes home.

Chapter 24

Mr. Leibniz lives in an old apartment in the Tverskoy district, in the same rooms where he spent his childhood. The walls are wood-panelled, faded and warped now, with intricately moulded covings and large double windows that open out onto the street. The building is four storeys high, weathered turquoise, with the brickwork showing in large, damp patches at street level, varnish peeling off the windows.

Maria has only been here in summertime, to watch Yevgeni play. She likes coming here; it has the same old-world look as their street in Togliatti. Approaching it alone, through narrow, cobbled streets and courtyards, allows her to relive some of her childhood, to gaze up at the high windows smattered with men in ushankas looking down upon her. Walking through the place allows the everyday to slip, momentarily, into the background. The stairway of the old house has an ancient smell, a nutty mustiness. She walks past the first landing, where Mr. Leibniz’s neighbour peeks his stubbled face out of his door, noting her arrival. Up two more flights. On each one, the steps are coloured with a mosaic of light from the small stained-glass window above the landing, each window cracked in its own distinctive way, a triangular notch missing from the first, the second with a hairline fracture that runs diagonally along its length which someone taped up years ago, so that now the tape has its own particular antiquity, parched and glossy, delicate to the touch.

The steps have an endearing groan. Maria imagines they’ve been consistent in their complaints throughout the years, never failing to let out a bleat of misery when pressed upon. An impulse with which she can empathize. She walks the steps with trepidation, the weight of all these developments resting upon her. She’s put so much on the boy. This is no situation for him to become involved in. She’s tried to put aside the thought that she’s endangering his future prospects, but such a thing is impossible.

She stands on the mat at the door and kicks the skirting board to dislodge the snow in her soles, cursing herself for not doing this on the way into the building. A small stack of snow is deposited on the mat, its surface sculpted with the pattern of her soles. She knocks on his door and hears him respond, and she turns the handle and walks inside, saying, “Hello,” softly as her head rounds the door.

Mr. Leibniz stands behind his wife, cutting and shaping her hair, a sheet draped around her body. They’re framed in the large window, almost two-dimensional, his wife sitting benignly in profile, wet hair sticking to the sides of her face, and Mr. Leibniz behind her, trapping hair between his fingers and chopping with the scissors. Mr. Leibniz waves a hand in greeting and smiles but stays at his post.

“Sorry. She was getting restless, so I’ve decided to give her a trim. It calms her down. Please, come in.”

Maria had picked some snowdrops from the gardens nearby, and she holds them forward uncertainly, feeling like a schoolgirl.

“Thank you. They’re beautiful. You’ll find something in the kitchen. Would you mind?”

“Of course not.”

She emerges a couple of minutes later with the flowers standing in a jug half filled with water. She walks towards the table and places the flowers down beside Mr. Leibniz’s wife, just out of her reach, and she smiles at them, a beautiful, clear smile, then looks at Maria, and confusion sweeps its way across her eyes, needing a cue, aware that she knows the face.

“This is Zhenya’s aunt. Maria Nikolaevna. You remember Zhenya?”

The smile unrelenting. Maria can tell she holds the smile as a way of staving off the confusion. Her look contains something else now, a shadow of distress, on some level an awareness that she should know this name, this woman, and a panic there too, unsure how to gauge the seriousness of her crime.

Mr. Leibniz leans over and takes his wife’s hand, running his thumb over the topography of soft veins. He introduces her again.

“It’s Zhenya’s aunt, Maria Nikolaevna. Don’t worry if you don’t recognize her. She’s only been here a few times.”

“Ah, good. Maria Nikolaevna. Come and sit. The bus will be along at any moment.”

Maria smiles and nods. “Of course. I’ll wait with you.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Maria finds this unnerving at first, but then realizes that Mr. Leibniz wants his wife to become used to her presence, to relax with a stranger in the room, and once she understands this, Maria too relaxes and just watches him at work, watches him combing and cutting, her own thoughts falling in tandem with the fine, white hair that laces together on the floor around the chair. He clips methodically. He combs the hair, then pinches it, then clips. Maria is impressed at the fluency with which he transfers the comb and scissors, the comb almost sidestepping them, slotting automatically between his fingers. Every few minutes he steps back and brings his eye line level with his wife’s shoulders and pulls the strands of her hair downwards on both sides simultaneously, ensuring symmetry. His wife sits with the sheet tied up around her neck, hands underneath, formless, just the bright, calm face, looking out the window. After a few minutes of this he begins to talk.