“Come on inside.”
“I can’t,” Yevgeni says. “There’s somewhere I have to be.”
“What? You’re such a busy man that you can’t spare five minutes? Come on, say hello to a few friends of mine. It’ll do you good.”
“I really can’t. It’s important.”
“Don’t insult me, ‘It’s important.’ This is important too. These are people it will do you good to know. If they get to know your name, that’s a good thing, Zhenya. It’ll be a help to your mother, believe me.”
Iakov leads him through a corridor to a lighted doorway at the end. To the right of the door sits a two-tone barber’s chair, white and beige. A framed photograph of Yuri Gagarin hangs over one of the mirrors; over the other is a black-and-white photo of some Spartak footballer. In the corner there are some fake plants, stooping due to the weight of the dust that’s layered their leaves. To the left of the door there’s a table surrounded by seven men, some similar to Anatoly with the same withered features, and a couple of others Yevgeni recognizes as the men who were roasting potatoes that time Iakov had called him over.
There’s a poker game going on, and when they see Yevgeni the men kick up.
“Hey, what is this?”
“No cartoons in here, Iakov. Get the fucking kid out.”
“He’s a kid, it’s fine.”
“You’re a fucking kid—this one here, he’s barely out of nappies. I don’t want him squealing and bitching in my ear. Put him back in his playpen.”
“He’s a kid, he’s quiet.”
“I swear I never want another one in my sight. Fucking screaming at three in the morning. How many mornings was I woken up by bawling?”
“Too many.”
The men all nod in consent.
“Come on,” Iakov reasons. “He’s been walking around for me for the last few hours. Let him stay long enough to warm up his bones.”
Anatoly stands up, pointing towards Iakov.
“I know this boy since he was four years old. Before he had that girl’s haircut, which, by the way, I have offered three thousand times.”
“No cutting my hair, Anatoly. Forget it. It’s where I draw my great strength.”
He flexes a nascent bicep.
A round of guffaws.
Anatoly takes Iakov by the shoulders, pushes him into a chair, and nods towards Yevgeni.
“Your child can stay, but if I hear a fucking squeak.”
“He won’t say anything.”
“A single fucking squeak, so help me.”
Anatoly looks at Yevgeni, winks, and points towards the barber’s chair. Yevgeni sits down to watch.
Silence sweeps through the room, and the men get down to the serious business of the game. One of them whips the cards around the table, and they don’t take them up and look at them, as Yevgeni has always done the few times they played at home; instead they keep them flat, taking only a brief peek at the corners. They don’t use roubles to bet but various mechanical materials, a combination of nails and bolts and screws and nuts. There’s a mound of these in the middle of the table and various-sized clumps in front of the men. Yevgeni knows he should go. His mother and aunt and Mr. Leibniz will be waiting. But twenty minutes more. He has twenty minutes before he really needs to leave. He can make up some time by running. He watches and keeps his mouth shut and the game expands into sequences, ranging from the tense and perfunctory—where everyone is concentrated on the other, throwing little sidelong looks, one of them massaging some small bolts in his hands as though he is rolling a cigarette—to a more expansive mode, where they drink and laugh and talk of obscure things, of women and former jobs. And occasionally there’s an eruption, when someone takes a hand unexpectedly, when they brandish their cards, laying them out like a fan, wrists up, and there follows an outburst from the others, an intestinal moaning, hands slung towards the ceiling in frustration at the vagaries of the game. Yevgeni has never actually seen grown men play a game up close before. How odd it seems that, even at their age, they are caught up in the same dilemmas as he sees in his school yard, the laws of luck and skill.
Yevgeni can’t make out who’s winning. Each pile of chips seems to be roughly the same shape and size, with the exception of Anatoly’s, whose resources are quickly depleting, forcing him to play more erratically, until finally a hand comes down to Anatoly and another man. Anatoly has no more nails or screws in front of him; everything has been pushed to the centre of the table. Iakov drums the table lightly to ratchet up the tension, and Anatoly looks at him as if he might reach forward and pull Iakov’s fingers from their sockets, and so he stops, looking sheepish.
Anatoly lays his cards forward. Yevgeni can tell it’s an impressive hand by their expressions, the downturned mouths and tucked chins and faint nods. The man opposite takes a moment to display his own cards, enjoying the moment of strike, looking at Anatoly with a predatory eye. Yevgeni can tell by this look, even before the man shows his hand, that Anatoly has been defeated. Anatoly knows it too, a small death occurring throughout his features, the faint glaze of hope and expectation extinguished, and his face becomes even more shrunken, looking as though it might be swallowed by his shoulders at any moment.
He shakes hands reluctantly with the other man and walks from the table in disgust, sitting on the arm of the barber’s chair, suffering the ultimate cardplayer’s indignity, unable to participate in a game in his own home.
He sits beside Yevgeni, and Yevgeni folds his arms, an action that seems to age the boy by fifty years, drawing him into the bitter circumference of the luckless gambler. They watch a few hands, and then Anatoly leans in closer.
“You hungry? You want something to eat?”
“No, I’m fine, thank you.”
“I’m hungry. I have some ham blinchiki in the fridge. You want some?”
“Okay then. Thank you.”
“Okay then.”
Anatoly puts a hand on Yevgeni’s head to punctuate the end of their exchange. He leaves the room, and a couple of minutes later the lights go out. The men at the table curse and someone flicks a cigarette lighter and they are caught in tiny intimacy, the flame dancing shadows around the room. They call to Anatoly for some candles, and he calls back that he’s looking already and emerges a few minutes later holding a plate of steaming blinchiki in one hand and a candle in the other. He offers the plate to Yevgeni, who takes one of the blinchiki, and then Anatoly places the plate on the table and rummages in his pockets, drawing out some extra candles, and the men murmur their gratitude and continue their game as if nothing has happened. Anatoly, still holding his own candle, tilts his head to Yevgeni, gesturing towards the corridor.
“Come with me.”
Yevgeni follows him, touching the walls to guide himself, until Anatoly opens the door onto the street, where the city is shrouded in black, hiding from itself, betraying nothing. There’s a rich, syrupy darkness. A car turns a corner, and its lights reveal corners of buildings, stalks of lampposts, as though the street is being rediscovered, someone stumbling upon it after many years, blowing away the dust, smelling the musty air. The darkness turns all sound to a whisper. And then a floop and crackle. Yevgeni thinks for a fleeting second that the city is cracking, breaking into fragments, but there is colour now, a flash of blue coming from his left, and he turns to see blue bursts of fireworks light up the dark velvet air. He’s seen fireworks before, of course, but not without any surrounding light. Not when they’re the only colour to be seen in the whole city. There’s a line of people leaning against the opposing walls, and the blue wash clings to their features, a look of delight flaring across their faces. As his eyes adjust, Yevgeni can see others walking now, coming from the cusp of the hill, heads bobbing in the slope of their walk, edging slowly along the pavement, all points of orientation obliterated. Others in doorways become defined, old men on canes and women with mufflers and buckled boots watch the night. They gaze up and down the street and sometimes bend over to take it in from other angles. A large bird beats its wings above them, and Yevgeni looks up to see it gliding over, its span almost connecting the rooftops.