In each class, Ilya was introduced as the EnerCo Exchange Student. The teachers were so careful to say “EnerCo” that Ilya knew the school must be getting some sort of payment for taking him on, just as the Masons were. In first-period math, Mr. Cammer trotted out some elementary Russian. In second-period biology, Mrs. Lareaux asked him to write his name on the board. He did so, using the Cyrillic alphabet, and when he stepped back and brushed the chalk dust off his palms, she had the look of someone lost in a maze.
“Oh, that’s right,” she said. “There’s a different alphabet. Would you mind writing it in English too, so that we can read it?”
So Ilya carefully chalked the roman letters under each Cyrillic one and listened as, behind him, a dozen voices sounded out his name.
His new backpack was soon full of syllabi and textbooks. There were course calendars, course expectations. That was all as overwhelming as he’d expected, but he hadn’t anticipated the force of attention: the questions, the smiles, the silences he was expected to fill. For fifteen years Ilya had lived with Vladimir, who lived for attention of any sort, and Ilya’s personality had been shaped by Vladimir’s need. Ilya was used to observing from the edges; he was used to going whole days without saying much of anything—except, of course, to Maria Mikhailovna or Michael and Stephanie—and now, when he entered a room, every face turned to look at him, and he wished that he’d brought his tape player, that he could listen to Michael and Stephanie and slip from this America into that other one.
It didn’t help that he had worn the wrong things: his jeans were too skinny, his sneakers not nearly large enough nor bright enough. Boys in America did not, it seemed, wear their T-shirts tight, and no one had a fringed haircut like his that tapered into spikes above his eyebrows.
By fourth-period history, he was desperate to see Sadie. He wanted to hear her say again that tomorrow they would have forgotten all about him. Luckily, the history classroom was next to his third-period class, so he was saved the embarrassment of asking some other straggler in the hallway for directions. When he walked in the door, he saw her almost immediately, in the far back corner, framed by an enormous poster of a nobleman in a wig that was the same color as her hair.
“Sadie,” he said, and he was halfway to her, nearly across the room, before he realized that the seat next to her was taken by a boy who looked more like a man. The sort of man in cologne commercials. The sort of man whose abs had bristled on the packet of boxers that Ilya had opened just that morning. He was looking at Ilya now, and so was Sadie. They had been talking, Ilya realized, and had stopped when he said her name.
“Hi,” Sadie said.
Ilya could feel himself flushing. Sadie was smiling, as was the man-boy next to her. All around Ilya the desks were filling up—and he could tell that he would be left standing, the odd man out, the perfect target—and he tried to remember where the closest bathroom was so that he could propel himself there and hide in a stall until the last bell had rung. And then he heard a voice say, “Before you take a seat, would you mind coming up here and telling us a little bit about Russia? About your city or town?”
Ilya turned to find a small, thin man with a beard to rival Father Frost’s and the sleepy smile of a lizard on a rock.
“Mr. Shilling,” the man said, “American history buff and, by necessity, teacher, at your service.” He led Ilya to the front of the room. “So, Russia, tell us about it,” he said, and a silence fell over the class, so thick that Ilya could almost feel it on his skin. They were all looking at him. He knew they wanted the dramatic things, the things that reaffirmed America: that his grandfather had died in the mine, that his father had died coughing it up, that his grandmother had spent a third of her life in lines; that after the currency collapse your life savings could buy you a pack of Optimas; that his brother was in prison for murder. Or maybe they wanted to know about the cultural tidbits: about Victory Day, and the ice sculptures, and the fact that they gave presents for New Year’s, not Christmas.
“Let’s start with where you live,” Shilling said. “Russia is a big place, right?”
“Yes,” Ilya said.
“What’s your town called?”
“Berlozhniki,” Ilya said.
“Where is that?”
“The northwest.”
“OK,” Mr. Shilling said, and when Ilya didn’t offer anything further, he said, “Maybe it’d be easier if we let the class ask some questions, things they’re curious about.”
Ilya nodded.
“Please remember,” Shilling said, turning to the class, “that your grades are partially based on participation.”
A few hands went up, but not Sadie’s. She was writing something in a tiny notebook. Actually, from the way her pen was moving it looked like she was drawing.
“What’s the population?” asked a boy with glasses and a splash of acne on each cheek. When Ilya told him, he wrote the answer down in a notebook, which prompted a girl in the front row to ask if they’d be tested on this information. Mr. Shilling shook his head, and said that he hoped they’d pay attention anyhow.
“Was it part of the gulag archipelago?” a girl in the front row asked. She said the phrase—gulag archipelago—like it was the Latin name for some rare, carnivorous plant, like she should be congratulated on her recall.
“Yes,” Ilya said.
“You ever meet a mail-order bride?” This came from the man-boy, who was leaning so far back in his chair that its feet lifted off the ground.
Sadie rolled her eyes, but a few other girls giggled.
“Ignore J.T., please,” Mr. Shilling said. “Let’s try not to sink to the lowest common denominator.”
Shilling pointed at a chubby girl with dark lipstick. “Chelsea,” he said.
“Is the refinery privately owned? Or does the state own it?” she said.
It was an easy question, easier than the gulag one in theory, but it felt somehow accusatory, as though it were Ilya’s fault that Yeltsin had dealt out the country’s resources to his friends like a hand of seka, but as she asked it, the sun came out from behind a cloud and half soaked the classroom, and the light was like melted butter, was like nothing he’d seen before, as if they orbited a different star here, and home suddenly felt so far.
As his silence grew, the class’s did too. They stopped moving in their desks, stopped cracking knuckles and chewing gum. Even J.T. had stopped fidgeting and was looking at him the way you look at a three-legged dog, with lots of pity and a little amazement. He thought of Aksinya saying, “Maybe over there you’ll grow a pair.” Of Vladimir saying that Ilya would be a boss, that he’d run shit. Of Vladimir asking Maria Mikhailovna to send him instead. He thought of Lana sleeping with Gabe Thompson, and he knew why she’d done it: she’d wanted to be here too, and Gabe had been as close as she could get.
“This oligarch owns most of it,” Ilya managed. His words were clipped, his voice terse. He sounded like some sort of demented robot. Vladimir, he knew, would be expansive. Vladimir would embellish, impress. He would not worry about the truth. “Fyodor Fetisov. An oligarch is someone who’s rich. Dirty rich.”
“Filthy rich,” Mr. Shilling said.
“Filthy rich,” Ilya said. “And this oligarch, once he filled a bathtub with caviar and two prostitutes.”
Sadie looked up from her drawing.
“Hell yes!” J.T. shouted.
“And these prostitutes, they’ve got diamonds for nipples and thongs made out of gold. These are women so fucking beautiful that they cost millions of rubles a day, and he has them for as long as he wants, forever. All thanks to oil. We have a joke at home, that the oligarch’s balls are filled with oil, instead of—I don’t know the word—and when he’s finished he takes a lighter—”