Still keyed up, I looked out the window. Thick yellow rays of the sun only partly illuminated an alley, igniting the dust into luminescence.
Then, I spotted him. With my face pressed against the glass, I caught a glimpse of a small figure. As he hurried away from the apartment building into the alley, one moment he was standing in the sunlight and the next he was in shadow. I saw only his back but he was dressed in dark pants and an embroidered shirt. As always his blond hair was too blond. I knew what his eyes would look like if he turned. I felt the need to follow him.
“Katya. Katya,” Lyudmila shook my arm. “What are you staring at? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine, Lyudmila,” I said. The doors to the bus were still closed, and now the alley was empty again. Trapped inside, I had lost Vasyl again.
“Listen carefully, kids,” Comrade Mokhoyida raised her voice. “We need to stay together. You are only permitted inside apartments 102, 104 and 109. In about thirty minutes, we’ll all gather in the lobby.”
She turned her back on us and exited the bus.
Since the first bus had already unloaded, I could hear voices wafting from the lobby of the apartment complex. I passed a line of mailboxes, open and empty like rusty mouths.
I spotted Angelika and Sergei ahead of me as I followed Mokhoyida into apartment 102. Inside the apartment, everything was covered with a layer of dust as thick and wooly as a blanket. The mold and mildew tickled my nostrils.
Comrade Mokhoyida looked around the room. “The looters have been everywhere.”
The apartment was empty, without furniture or lamps. Holes gaped where the appliances should have been. Cracked paint peeled off the walls. Glass, magazines, papers and small objects littered the floor. I spotted a Coke bottle, a gas mask, some shoes, a pair of broken eyeglasses and a dead potted plant. Outside the room’s open window, a lush green forest blocked the light.
The ravages made me grateful that our cottage had been buried. Although I knew the liquidators had crushed its walls, I hoped nothing had been stolen. For some reason, I wanted to believe that my home had been buried with my teen room still intact.
“The apartment has two bedrooms and one bathroom,” Comrade Mokhoyida continued.
Lyudmila and I began examining the trash on the floor.
Mikhail walked up to us. “She sounds just like a regular real estate broker,” he joked. “Buy an apartment in hell. Very reasonable.”
A group of kids trailed after Mokhoyida into the bedroom. I noticed that Angelika and Sergei were among them. They were walking side by side, and Angelika’s hand brushed against his.
“When’s your next soccer game?” I overheard Angelika say to Sergei.
“Friday night,” he said.
Angelika grinned. “I’ll be there.”
I thought I saw a shadow cross Sergei’s face. “Yeah, sure,” he said. As Angelika and he waited for the throng of students to enter the room, I could have sworn that he was looking at me. It must be my imagination, I told myself, and then I realized that it wasn’t. Sergei Rudko was definitely gazing directly at me.
To hide my blush, I quickly turned my attention to the floor. I spotted a yellowed copy of Izvestia. I leaned closer and read the date, January 29, 1985. Just like a time capsule, everything in this apartment was old.
“Ooohhhh,” Lyudmila cooed. “I found a souvenir I want to keep.” She held up a little tennis shoe. With its laces hanging down, the dirty shoe looked as if it were weeping.
“Lyudmila, that’s radioactive,” I warned her.
“Oooh,” Lyudmila squealed and dropped the shoe on the floor.
Without any warning, Mikhail appeared from nowhere. He swaggered up to Lyudmila. “I have something I want, too.”
“Oh, yeah.” She grinned at him.
Mikhail grabbed her face in his hands. “A radioactive kiss.” He roughly pressed his mouth to hers and began pushing her towards the wall.
“Quit!” Lyudmila ducked underneath his arms. She stopped running a few feet from him. She smoothed her hair and brushed off her clothes as if to rid herself of his touch.
“You know you’re hot for me,” Mikhail said as he lunged for her again.
Lyudmila was almost able to escape, but Mikhail slapped her bottom.
She called to him, “I was just flirting.”
I turned to Mikhail. “Leave her alone,” I hissed.
“I’ll meet you in the lobby, Katya,” Lyudmila called.
“O.K.,” I said.
Mikhail, who had a smirk on his face, was leaning against the wall. “She’s been coming onto me all morning.”
“Lyudmila plays around. But it’s just an act,” I explained to Mikhail.
“Oh, so she’s really an unfriendly outcast like you,” Mikhail said. “That’s just an act, too,” I said.
Mikhail snorted. “You both fooled me.” He bit his lips to keep himself from coughing, but a hacking cough burst out anyway.
“You should quit smoking,” I told him.
“I have,” he called over his shoulder as he walked away. He knew I could see the pack of cigarettes bulging from his back pocket.
Mokhoyida reentered the room, surrounded by a group of students. She examined her dosimeter. “Thirty-five microroentgens. This reading is lower than you would get on a round-trip flight from New York City to Paris.”
“Why are radiation levels high on airplanes?” Angelika asked. She had that eager, good-student expression on her face.
“The higher the altitude, the thinner the atmosphere and the greater the exposure to cosmic rays,”[37] Mokhoyida said. “How many of you have ever been on an airplane?” she asked.
No one in her group raised a hand.
Mokhoyida’s face broke into a broad grin. She seemed to be endlessly cheerful. “Well, I promise you that you don’t notice the higher radiation at all.”
Although Mikhail had claimed that our guide sounded like a real estate broker, I found her upbeat tone almost deranged.
To get away from her grating voice, I walked out of the apartment into the lobby. It was as wrecked as the apartment. Handprints spotted the walls. The sheetrock was peeling. Algae and mold blackened the foundation.
How long had it taken to build this apartment complex? One year? How much time would pass before nature had completely reclaimed it? Twenty or thirty years?
A giant spider had made its home in the corner of the room. For a few minutes, I stopped and gazed at the cobweb so huge and intricate that it looked like it had taken months to build. No one was likely to disturb it. Lucky spider.
Unlucky people…. Poor Papa!
Although this morning I had heard Papa tell Mama that he was going to run some errands, he was probably already back home, lying on the bed in his dark room, all alone.
Lyudmila and Sergei passed through a door to the lobby. She must have recovered from her encounter with Mikhail because giggling and batting her eyes, she was already flirting again. With Sergei! I watched them nervously.
Sergei’s blond hair was the only bright thing in the dark room. I was surprised that Angelika was nowhere to be seen. She was probably still buttering up the guide.
“Lyudmila,” I called.
“What?” she turned, but didn’t make a move toward me.
“I have to talk to you,” I insisted.
Lyudmila whispered something to Sergei. I took a step toward the entrance, and she followed me.
“Don’t be angry,” Lyudmila looked into my eyes and pleaded. “I don’t like Sergei. I’m trying to help you.”
“I’m not worried about you flirting with Sergei,” I said, relieved.