She cups her hands to her cheeks to warm them and realizes she is sweating, despite the cold. She turns in to the courtyard. Flat, grey shapes all around. Anyone who has felt the urge to do so has left home already, so she is alone down here, figures bobbing on balconies above her. Alina is one of them, no doubt.
She finds her building and traces her hand across the number on the porch just to make sure. She yanks open the door and can feel the concrete under her feet, markedly different from the snow and gravel. The crimson tip of a cigarette whirls in the air at waist level. Someone is sitting there.
“Hello?” A man’s voice, vulnerable, unsure.
She pauses.
“Hello. Is there someone there, please?”
She should walk on. This is not a place to speak to an unknown man, unprotected. But there’s something in the voice. She stops.
“What do you want?”
She can hear a shuffling, the crimson tip rises, he is standing; the flare of a match, a jawline, is revealed for a fleeting moment. The light compresses and the flame is drawn nearer a face, a nose, an eye. His eye.
“Grigory?”
His upper lip stretches into a smile, a row of teeth.
“Maria? Is it you?”
She replies breathlessly, “Yes. Is it you?”
“Yes.”
The cigarette is discarded, the match goes out. He lights another one, closer to his face this time, leaner than she has known, shadow-sculpted, hollowed-out eyes. An aged face. He steps closer, brings the match to her. She can feel the lick of its heat. He reaches out in the dark, finding her, both of them trembling from the cold of the night, from the warmth of their touch.
THEY’VE BEEN WALKING for five minutes. The fireworks still flare, but there are longer pauses between them now. Rubbish bins are being set alight. Yevgeni sees bursts of fire whenever they emerge from the alleyways to cross a main street. He’s stopped believing there’s a car, but what is he to do? He can’t just run off, wander alone through the streets. He has no idea where he is, for one. His toes are cold though, his shoes too flimsy. He should have bought boots instead of running shoes. A pair of boots and his mother wouldn’t have asked questions, just accepted whatever he said, so relieved that he had a new pair.
He tells Iakov his feet are cold, careful to keep his tone steady; he doesn’t want to moan. Iakov keeps walking but looks at him, punches him on the shoulder, and hands over a small bottle that he takes from his jacket pocket, telling him to drink.
Yevgeni has never dared to taste vodka till now, but Iakov is looking at him, measuring him up, and there is no choice involved in this: he is here with these men, under their protection. He can’t risk being abandoned.
The bottle isn’t much bigger than his hand and has a curved body that fits snugly in the palm, and Yevgeni takes a deep breath and downs a mouthful, and coughs as the liquid sears the inside of his throat. Iakov laughs, and the three men in front look back and laugh too. Yevgeni can feel a surge of vomit reach the back of his tongue, but he manages to quell it. He takes another breath and lets the sensation subside. The men don’t wait for him, and he has to run to catch up, their strides are so long, eating up the ground in front of them.
A figure walks down the alleyway in the opposite direction, a rectangular shape crossing his chest and, as they near, Yevgeni can make out that the shape is a TV. The group of four, Iakov included, stop in front, blocking the man’s way. Yevgeni hangs back a few paces, wary.
“You moving house?”
The man looks from side to side and considers turning around, but there are four of them and one of him and, besides, he’s carrying a TV. Really, how far can he run?
“Something like that.”
“It’s a good idea. No traffic at this time. No one to bother you.”
“Except of course you ran into us. Are we bothering you?”
The man stays admirably nonchalant in the circumstances. “No. No bother.”
Yevgeni can make out that the rabbit ears for the TV are slung around the man’s neck and rest on his chest, the two metal prongs sticking out, making it look as if his chest has been pierced from behind by an archer.
The oldest of the men, the one who was winning at cards, is the one who leads the exchange. Iakov and the others take their cues from him.
“It’s better at night, you know, because if people see you, they can get the wrong idea.”
The guy with the TV grins dumbly, no idea how to stack the odds in his favour.
The oldest guy looks to Iakov, who is standing to his right, then back to their temporary prisoner.
“Drop the TV,” says Iakov.
“What?”
Iakov takes a step forward and punches him on the head, a hard, short hit on the temple as the man tries to duck. The TV bounces to the ground, its screen imploding with the impact.
The older guy takes the cord for the rabbit ears and wraps it around the man’s neck, and they plant punches on his face, his head bobbling from side to side, at the mercy of their blows.
The sound of effort, heavy breathing, pleasure mixed in, delight, thrill. The men are enjoying their work. Yevgeni can hear a strangled noise coming from the man’s mouth and can see blood and saliva dripping, and he takes another swing of vodka to numb the shock, and Iakov approaches him and grabs him and pushes him in front of the man, who is kneeling on the ground by now, beside the shattered TV, arms covering his head.
This is what men do too, Yevgeni thinks. Even as they get older, this is what they do. He didn’t know such a thing. How could he? What men does he know apart from Mr. Leibniz and a couple of male teachers; the gym instructor? He has no recollections of being in the company of grown men. He has never been taken anywhere by his father: no films or poolrooms, no games of football in the park. No one has ever shown him that this is what it is to be grown up, hanging around poker tables and burning barrels, fighting and drinking. There are things his aunt and mother couldn’t provide. Maybe he has been raised as a little girl all along. He needs to accept this opportunity.
He stands there looking at the man, cowering. They shove him forward. He can hear Iakov say, “Kick him in the head.” It sounds to Yevgeni like he’s calling it out from a hundred metres away.
The other men snicker.
“Do it.”
This is what men do. This is what it means to be one of them. Yevgeni lets fly a kick into the man’s neck and there follows a rumbling cheer from the others, and he swings out again and again, the man’s neck soft and doughy at his foot, and the man looks up at him, eyes burning in indignity, and Yevgeni draws back and makes contact with the man’s chin, which sends him sprawling backwards. The contact feels as solid as kicking a wall, something dense, not muscle and fat, hard bone. His foot is ringing with the impact. One more into the body of the man. Another one. He’s not the helpless one anymore, the one with dainty fingers. It’s his fists and his feet that will carry him through.
He stops, panting, satiated.
The others walk on, and Yevgeni stays and looks at what he’s done.
The man groans in a basso rumble and takes on the same form as the TV: shattered, slumped.
Yevgeni runs to catch up.
Chaos is building. Crowds are tearing through the streets now, cars parked at any angle, dumped in the middle of the road. People are running in all directions. A line of militia vans snakes its way towards them, their roof lights pulsing colour into the air. They cross the road and wait for the militia to pass, and the oldest of the men approaches a car. He shatters the driver’s window with his elbow and unlocks all the doors, and they pile inside. Yevgeni squeezes into the middle of the backseat, his shoulders almost around his ears. The man in front takes a screwdriver from his pocket and jams it into the ignition, and the car stammers into life and the back wheels screech, and they pull out into the road, the back end fishtailing from side to side, and Yevgeni can feel the heat of the two men pressed beside him, Iakov in the front seat whooping with excitement, and where the hell are they going, taking up the middle of the road, fireworks in front of them, still blossoming blue.