I thought of how I spent my days at school, fighting to pay attention to my teachers and rushing to get out of the building as fast as I could. “Yes,” I said. “How about you? Have you been sleeping?”
“Some,” Papa said. “The hospital called. I’m going to Kiev for an operation next week.”
“Can I go?” I asked. How could it be that only a few days ago, I hated to be in the same room with him? Now I didn’t want to let him out of my sight.
“Aunt Olga is coming to stay with you.”
I wanted to see little Yuri and my other cousins, but I also felt grown-up enough to stay in our apartment alone. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
Papa sighed. “You’re still young. Besides, it’s all arranged.”
Since I didn’t want to start another argument, I forced myself to say, “I’ll do what you want.”
Papa nodded. “That’s my obedient daughter.”
This particular compliment grated. “What have you been doing?” I asked to avoid reacting.
“When you walked in, I was thinking about Granny Vera,” he said.
“What about her?” I asked.
“It’s so good to talk to you again,” Papa said. He reached over and patted my arm. “I’ve missed you.”
“Me, too, Papa.” Even though we had lived together in the same apartment, I knew what he meant.
Papa sighed. “Sometimes, I wish that I had paid more attention to your grandmother. Once I got to a certain age, I refused to listen to her stories anymore. Back then, I was young and fervent. I thought that the old ways were holding us back from becoming a modern nation.”
I knew that Papa adored Granny Vera, but I also remembered that Granny Vera had kept secrets from him. “Don’t tell your Papa,” she would warn me.
“Do you remember how she ended her stories?” Papa asked.
I nodded, and we both recited together, “And so it shall be until the end of the world.”
Papa stared at the blank wall. “Sometimes I wonder what she would think of all that has happened.” He sighed. “It goes against everything that I’ve been taught to believe, but I wonder if I’ll see her again.”
I leaned close to him. He didn’t smell like a thunderstorm, but remembering Boris and the statistics that I had read in the journals, I worried. “Papa, you’re not going to die.”
I guess my voice was jarring because Papa closed his eyes.
When he stretched, his arms draped over both sides of the bed. His feet dangled off the end. “I’m sorry, Katya. I think I want to sleep.” He pulled the blue blanket up. As he yawned, he looked as defenseless as the baby squirrels Noisy had once discovered. “Goodnight, donechka.”
He hadn’t called me “little girl” in so long. Although my thoughts spun uncontrollably, I leaned over quietly and kissed him on the forehead. I couldn’t imagine a world without this man.
A few minutes later, I knocked on the door of Margarita’s apartment.
“Come in,” Margarita called.
Except for the light above the table, the room was dark. She sat at the table which was crowded with little bowls. Absorbed in her task, she didn’t look towards the door. I squinted to make sure of what I saw. It looked as if she was dipping a medium-sized crystal in red dye, like an Easter egg.
Approaching the table, I called, “Hello, Margarita.”
Unembarrassed, Margarita removed the dripping crystal and laid it on a napkin. A pile of wet crystals in front of her formed a mound. “Why so late, Katya? Lyudmila’s already gone.”
I sat down in the chair across from her. Overhead, the smeared rainbow glowed in the electric light. “I came by to tell you some bad news.”
When Margarita sighed, her enormous chest heaved.
“My father’s sick,” I said.
“I know. Lyudmila told me,” Margarita said.
On her way out of the library the other night, Lyudmila had stopped by my desk, and I had shared the doctor’s terrible report with her.
“I’m so sorry,” Margarita continued. “It’s as you feared.”
This wasn’t the reaction that I had expected. “I didn’t know that Papa was going to be sick,” I protested. “He’s such a strong man. Why I thought he was going to live to be one hundred and…”
Margarita smiled gently as she interrupted, “But, Katya… Of course, this was why you have been so angry with him.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your father must have picked up a massive dose at the time of the explosion. By spending two weeks in the Zone each month, he’s been risking his life.” Margarita’s tone was matter-of-fact. “For what?” She shrugged her broad shoulders. “For money?”
For no reason, I thought about the jar of foreign coins that Papa always pointed to when he lectured me about saving for the future.
Margarita’s fingers quickly dropped another crystal into the red dye. “Why? Money’s not more important than a man’s life.”
How could I have been so stupid? Papa wasn’t an overzealous patriot. He worked at the station to pay for the Moped and jewelry he thought I liked so much.
Margarita dropped the wet crystal on the white napkin where it dripped pink tears.
I had come seeking comfort because I had felt so raw and scared about my father’s illness. Now I realized I had come for something else, too. My question burst out. “Do you believe in your crystals?”
Margarita thoughtfully stroked the large crystal that hung around her neck. “I believe in not giving up. If my crystals provide hope, they’re worth every kopeika.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. We were silent for a moment as her fingers nimbly finished the stack of red crystals. She pulled a bowl of yellow dye towards her. “Have I ever showed you how I use this leftover water for fortune-telling?” she asked.
“No.” I shook my head, uninterested in the tricks she played on people.
Margarita started twirling her finger around in the water.
Rainbows created by the crystals’ refraction of light danced around the white tablecloth. I reached out to catch one, but my fingers closed on air. “Margarita?”
“Yes,” she said. My tone must have alerted her to the importance of what I was going to say, because she pushed the bowl aside.
“Something happened when I was younger. I’ve never understood it.” Since I had failed to convince Angelika so long ago, I had never tried to describe my meeting with Vasyl to anyone else. “Just a month ago, I saw a boy in your apartment stairwell. He has really blond hair and round blue eyes. Have you seen a boy like this?”
“No,” Margarita said. But I could tell by the directness of her gaze that I had captured her attention.
I told her every detail of my first meeting with Vasyl. “It wasn’t a regular fire.” I searched for the words that would persuade her. “As the boy was talking, I smelled the smoke. I felt the heat from the flames.” I kept my eyes on her high-cheekboned face, trying to gauge her reaction, but her expression was inscrutable.
“What do you think?” I asked her when I had finished.
When Margarita smiled, her eyes lit up with excitement, and she looked much younger. “It sounds like you saw your domovyk.”
“My domovyk?” I asked, remembering the little figure in the corner of the mirror. I hadn’t thought of him since we left Yanov. Besides, Granny Vera said that domovyks were house elves. “I saw this boy by the stream, never in my house.”
“If he doesn’t feel welcome in his house, a domovyk can travel anywhere. He warns his people of danger or misfortune. His visits can be like nightmares,” Margarita shrugged, “or just interesting.”