“Everything will be fine, right, Luka?” I had to ask.
The Matryoshka doll wobbled slightly as he leaned over to look me in the eye. Behind his head, the tethered figurine spun like some truth hidden inside another truth and another truth.
“I promise.”
1.50
When I got home, there was cabbage soup. I told Old Nelya I tripped and she changed my plaster. As we ate, she talked about how Alexei Vavilov, the painter, had impregnated the butcher’s daughter, how the Tajik construction workers were suspected of eating stray dogs so there’s talk of a neighborhood watch committee being formed although nobody wanted to lead, how the price of pork was up again, as if the pigs had learnt to fly.
The cabbage soup was reassuringly bland. She had forgotten to add salt.
Then, she mentioned that Grigory had taken a switch to Anna earlier in the day, and all the neighbors had cracked their windows open to hear the commotion.
“That drunkard accused her of being a shame to their family, a slut like her mother, oh, his mouth is as black as his heart, but that mother is just as bad as him. She said nothing when that man shamed her and her daughter, no one did. Only I stood up to him! I threatened to call the police, but I didn’t dare do it…Andryushka?”
I started tearing.
Old Nelya stood up hurriedly, bent and bewildered. “Is my Andryushka alright? Of course you’re alright. Whatever it is, I’m here.”
I’m not crying, I’m just tired.
She shuffled over and stroked my back. Her hand was bony and light, like a frail wing too small to cover me.
Later, after she went back downstairs, I hid in my room, on my bed, the sheets over my head. I pretended the room, Moscow, the world, didn’t exist, especially the events that happened today.
It didn’t work.
So I went online. I found the latest puzzle, a zero-day hack attempt others were collaborating on for lulz. I downloaded a piece and tackled it. As I worked, I felt like I was gradually regaining control. After I finished, I was about to upload the piece, when something made me delete it. Who are these faceless people to ask anything of me? Why should I give anything away? Who are they? Who am I? What did it matter? What did anything matter?
I looked at my laptop screen, seeking the girl who lived in one of the windows, wishing we could chat. A woman with an acid-etched frown stared at me. I had seen her before. She had a long thin nose and her cheekbones resembled the girl—her mother, I assumed. She was sifting through the latter’s emails again. I felt disgusted by her, then myself, because I was spying on the girl too. What is right? What is wrong? Does God ever wonder about that? Does He care, that Great Programmer upstairs?
I had a few of Luka’s books piled near my bed, so I picked through them until I found one I liked. Crime and Punishment, the embossed title promised, but a few pages later, I took a break by the window, wishing I had a cigarette. Something to burn. I thought of Anton. He had an elegant way of smoking, this trick he has of making the smoke curl around each finger. Nothing ever gets to him. Could I be like that some day? Or would I be like Luka? An unbidden thought of Boris. He was evil—which means we’re the good guys, Luka, Anton, and me. We’ll punish him some day, some way. It’s a comforting thought.
Below me, someone hummed, a muffled sound.
“Anna?” I whispered into the dry, still night. There was a tremulous pause. “Anna, is that you?”
“Andrei?” Her reply was tentative, mistrustful.
“You sound… Are you alright?” I began, then felt dizzy. I wasn’t sure what I’d do or say if she told me she told me she wasn’t alright. My hands tightened on the window sill and I wanted to rip it out. My knuckles cracked, I was squeezing so hard, but the wood didn’t yield. I felt helpless.
Then, she spoke. “I caught a cold. Don’t worry about me. I’m strong. I’m fine.” She laughed softly and the anger sieved through me. “I saw you coming back. You looked…in a bad way.”
“I’m alright too.” I didn’t want her to worry.
“Are you? I feel like we’re becoming strangers these days. What have you been up to?”
“Birds,” I said. “It’s something I do. It’s work.”
“You’ve never been the talkative kind. You’ve never told me where you work.”
I didn’t know how to explain my life—it was becoming something I barely comprehended myself. “I write about birds. I can tell you everything about them.”
“Birds,” she said. “Birds,” she repeated, then giggled. “Birds,” she repeated a third time, like some spell. “Have you ever dreamed of flying? Sometimes, I wish I had wings.”
“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” I opened my mouth to tell her she could go anywhere, except I’d never been outside Moscow myself. It’s a city so big one can’t walk its length, nor breadth. A big cage. A boundless dungeon. She continued, “It doesn’t matter. I’m not a bird. I’ll never be one. I’m going to sleep now. May you have good dreams, Andrei.”
After she closed her window, I looked outside, feeling the breeze cool my thoughts. Outside, there was no moon, only a gray concrete wall, like an insurmountable bluff that would always be there. Below, the weak copper crown around the street lamps revealed layers of gray piled on black.
I went back to bed and picked up the book again. I didn’t want to sleep, not yet.
1.55
Whenever I need to think, I go to the park near the Moskva River. Father used to bring me here all the time. Today, by the river, I saw a family picnicking on a paisley blanket. Beside them, a woman sunbathed on the grass. It’s late Spring and the weather had turned warm. As I walked, the afternoon sun nuzzled against me like a cat. Last night, I dreamt I was atop Boris, my knees pinning his shrunken chest, sawing his throat with a bread knife. I’d thrown the blade away and woken up, but each time I went back to sleep, I held the knife again until Dostoyevsky walked by, in a studded leather jacket. “Get it over with,” he told me.
In the daytime, nightmares like that almost seem comical.
Don’t come in today. Luka messaged earlier. A few minutes later, he added, You ok???
I didn’t respond.
I walked by two grandfathers playing chess on a stone table, each move drawing the next, the yellow ivory pieces clacking on the board to some invisible shot-clock. I thought of another chess board, its pieces scattered.
“Check,” one of the clockwork chess players called out.
“You’re blind, Vladimir Bolshakov,” his partner grumbled, “That’s a rook, not a queen.”
“Eh? My bad, my bad.”
Father used to say his best ideas came when he walked. The botanical gardens outside Moscow State University in the evening hush, before the groundkeepers harry stragglers out. Izmailovsky Park where the city stopped, barred from the dark grove. His favorite was here, within sight of Novospassky Monastery. Decaying stone walls, seven blue and gold domes. He was the one who told me about the old tale, how a princess was trapped in one of the towers, waiting to be saved. It had amused me no end when I was young, to imagine that something like that was true.
Grow up, grow up, a flock of crows cawed overhead. They were looking for shelter. I looked at the birch beside my bench, as bald as it was in winter. Trees killed by frostbite take months to die as the decay hollows out the inside.