Outside, the sun’s a bright balloon. No matter the weather though, this street is always gray. Six-story apartment buildings loom on each side, darkening the pavement between. In my reprogrammed world, I’d brighten the street’s palette.
The Stalin-era apartments have blocky and concrete facades. Prospect Mira, the main street here, is a fifteen minute stroll from the Metro Alexeyevskay and its green-striped marble pylons. On this lane, each block is numbered, and so is each unit. Comrades, stand up and be counted!, someone had sprayed on the sidewall in a thick, cheerful font. Inside the blocks, the walls are thin. I heard that people were encouraged to snitch on each other in the bad old days. Now, in the bad new days, when the toilet’s flush croaks down the pipes, people ignore the sounds. That is, unless you’re Grigory, who pounds the ceiling with a broomstick. There’s a popular song that goes, Knock once to let me know you’re there. I’ll knock back so you know I’m listening. The composer must have lived here before.
On the street, a massive pit bull dragged a man behind him. A few windows forward, a babushka fluttered her carpet out, beating a counterpoint to a tinkled melody. Anna, Grigory’s daughter, was on the piano again. For a moment, the dust motes danced like scattered tinsel. Rumor has it Grigory is shopping his daughter around to the conservatories. He thinks he’d get paid if she’s accepted. “I told him the system is different now.” Old Nelya had sniffed when she brought it up. “The way he forces her to train. And that mother of hers does nothing for her. Nothing.”
Anna and I went to the same school when we were little. I still remember how she tugged my hand as we walked the two blocks to the bus stop. When she was young, she used to come to my place. We would sit on the floor, knees to our chins, as we set Father’s gramophone and let the composers regale us: Mussorgsky is a folklorist, Borodin’s a court gossip, while Chopin is a chatterbox accompanying us on a stately barge down the Vistula.
Anna and I seldom talk now because Grigory always shoos me; ever since Father passed away, he thinks I’m cursed.
The music stopped. “Andrei.” I heard Anna’s voice. I looked up. Her elbows were propped against the second-story window and her gray-white blouse blended in with the concrete windowsill. The red ribbons in her blonde hair flickered as her long fingers tapped nervously on the ledge. She can’t stop practicing even when she’s off the piano. When she leaned forward, her blouse cupped her curves. I felt heat on my face.
“Andrei, where are you going?” Her lips swelled like pixels, her shoulders rounded. “You don’t call, you don’t talk,” she said, smiling slightly, “have you forgotten me?”
She’s teasing me, but there’s a bass note of sadness she couldn’t quite conceal.
Before I could answer, another window opened. “Andryushka, you there?” Old Nelya’s shrunken head peered down from the fourth floor. “The cabbage soup will be in the fridge. Remember to finish it,” she shrilled.
Time freezes.
The street wraps me in its powdery silence. Ribbons bounce on Anna’s hair. “Andryushka, my boy, my boy,” she sang, then stuck out her tongue.
The heat on my cheeks and the rushing in my ear faded when I saw Grigory staggering down the street, one hand groping the wall for balance. Drunk again. Anna saw him as well, and quickly ducked back in, sleek as a mink. As I walked on, the piano restarted, a dirge she played friskily, a joke only we understood. It felt good to make her laugh, hear her laugh, even for a minute. Then the melody slowed. The dirge was just a dirge again.
Two streets later, I remembered Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet and a childish promise made. A long time ago, Anna and I had agreed we’d fly away to a palace of music, a place with an unending supply of ice cream and McDonalds. How easily children make promises! How easily children break promises!
Three streets later, there was a buzz on my phone. It’s Luka’s usual warning—Be careful.
Just another day in my life.
1.15
“Let’s not exchange names for now, eh?” Those were Luka’s first words when we first met two years ago.
“Why do we have to meet face to face?” I asked as he sat down. We had arranged to meet at The Mad Lark, a café near Patryarshy Ponds, the area where expatriates like to stay. Luka had a square hairline, which resembled the Kremlin parade ground. He kept his sunglasses on while we talked.
“I can’t do business with people I don’t know. Who are these anonymous people online? There are computers so smart they can hold a conversation. Am I talking to a God or a dog? Anyone can hide behind a nickname. Most importantly, I need to be sure you’re not with them.”
“Who?”
His voice dropped a register. “The F.S.B.” The government’s spy agency? My eyebrows shot up and he smiled knowingly. “You have to be careful if you want to do what I do. Last year, one of my acquaintances was caught.”
“What happened?”
He threw a hand into the air as if to say, who knows? “Technically, there are few laws against what we do. But there are unofficial rules. Never touch Russian companies, that’s the big one. Also, I never destroy anything, I only copy stuff. You have to be careful, because if the F.S.B. catches you… See, they don’t care about the law. There’s irony for you, eh? If they catch you, they shoot first and ask questions later. Assuming you’re alive then.” His tone was light, but he looked serious.
I was hooked. “How do you know I’m not with them?”
“That’s what these are for.” He pushed his sunglasses up and tapped the corner of an eye. “I know their type. You’re too young. You’re what, fourteen? Fifteen?”
I was thirteen then—almost—and not about to admit my age, so I didn’t answer him. “Why should I trust you?”
“Excellent question.” Luka leaned forward, and I noticed his teeth—brown with addiction, coffee, cigarettes, or both. “You can’t trust anyone. Especially those who claim they can be trusted. I’m not trying to scare you.” He shifted his bulk. “If you work for me, I can teach you how to stay safe. Unless”—he raised an eyebrow—“there’s a reward on your head I don’t know about? No? There you go.” He spread his fleshy palms wide. “You’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain. You need work. You need money, right?” Father’s insurance money was running out. “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. The only people who should be ashamed are people who can’t earn their keep. Now, show me what you can do.”
From my backpack, I pulled out my laptop. Around me, people were on their computers, phones, or tablets. They looked dull, their eyes cast downwards.
Moscow is an urban sprawl girded by ring roads. The Third Rome, the White Throne—the city has many names and even more people, twelve million of them, breathing, walking, sitting, working, dreaming, dying. It’s the heart of a country that has been invaded from East to West: the Mongolian hordes, the Polish, the Swedish, Napoleon and his Grand Army, the Germans and their Panzers; all were defeated. We’re good at fighting the enemies outside yet we hide from the ones within, Father used to sigh. I’m one of the masses, people tell themselves, nobody cares what I do as long as I stay quiet and trouble-free. People become complacent in their anonymity, trusting the crowd to hide them.
Sometimes, they are wrong.
I spun up Crackjammer. 1 0wnz U, the splash screen of my favorite hacking tool declared as it loaded, its programmer’s ego writ in ghoulish-green pixels. It took less than a minute for my computer to slide between the café’s Wi-Fi router and its users. Streams of data started flowing through my computer.