Shortly after four, the line surged forward. She felt someone’s chin prodding her back, and, looking up, saw a uniformed man unlocking the kiosk door. In the next moment her nose was driven into the back before her, her face flattened against a damp coat, her body trapped in a crush of other bodies.
“What’s happening, I can’t see,” she pleaded, her words muffled.
An exhalation brushed her ear: “The shutter’s been lifted!”
The world closed in on her, brown and hushed, warm with collectively held breath. The next minute stretched on, slowly, inexorably, spreading outward like a dense, viscous spill. A sharp heel grazed her foot; something hard and angular smashed painfully against her hip. She closed her eyes, let her whole being go still, settled into the faintly sour, furtive scents of wet wool and steaming whispers and anticipation.
The line sagged in a moan.
“Not another scribble!” a woman’s wail rose.
“A notice? What does it say?”
Someone read aloud: Out with flu. Will reopen in January.
The crowd slackened. Anna fought her way clear of coats, knees, and elbows just in time to see the shutter chomping down. The uniformed man emerged, manipulated the lock on the door. In the dejected silence, she could hear the muted screech of metal resisting metal, could smell the rust. As the man strolled away, she wanted terribly to follow, to ask, to demand, but she did not move.
No one did.
Then a polite voice called out: “Pardon me, but what might they be selling here, exactly?”
The uniformed man continued to walk away as if he had not heard.
“I don’t know about you,” said the bright-lipped woman, flying past in a blur of silk and fur, “but I’ve just about had enough of this!” People muttered, dispersing. Anna lingered for a while longer, even though it was clear to her that no one else was going to appear, nothing else was going to happen. At last she too turned toward home. She had, of course, resolved to be here on the first day of the new year. Surprisingly, she did not seem to mind all that much.
She felt purposeful and light, and strangely hopeful, as she moved along the darkening streets, chased by the dull rhythm of her flat heels slapping the frozen pavements.
3
A FEW DAYS LATER, Sergei woke up in a mood of suppressed anticipation. He tried to steel himself against disappointment, convinced that fate would do its best to cheat him yet again at the last possible moment: the director telephoning to inform him that his services for the evening were no longer required, or else his slipping in the street on the way and breaking an arm, or—or any number of scenarios on which he preferred not to dwell. He moved through his day with deliberation, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary awaited him. He ate an unhurried breakfast, perused the front page of a newspaper, then spent his customary two or three hours behind the closed bedroom door playing what his wife called his “songs.”
He knew, of course, that such rigorous practicing was excessive, since the music he was routinely called upon to perform was of a crude, simple nature—brass exclamations punctuating anthems and marches, not worth his time, not worth his breath, not worth the very air he sent vibrating. He despised it, in fact; despised, too, those of his fellow citizens who, uncoerced, attended his band’s performances or, year after year, meekly followed its hollow booming as the parades rolled through the streets. Despising it, he indulged in it daily all the same. The mere act of fleshing out a series of notes on his tuba always filled his chest with an expansive, cresting excitement, until, closing his eyes, he could imagine other instruments weaving into the phrase, swelling with a full orchestral glory, the melody in his mind moving farther and farther away from the threadbare score before him, sounding more and more like the brilliant, complex, unique symphony he had dreamed of hearing, and playing, for so long.
Tonight, he thought, he would get his chance at last.
He had not told his wife for fear of jinxing it.
At three o’clock, setting his tuba aside, he meticulously polished his special-occasion shoes, removed a few invisible dust motes from the lapels of his best suit, and started to get dressed; he chose not to notice that the jacket had grown somewhat tight in the armpits. At three-thirty, fully attired, he looked at his watch, picked up the tuba, and practiced some more. As the low, furry-clawed sounds resumed shuffling up and down invisible stairs like clumsy circus bears, the musically challenged downstairs neighbor again began to bang her broom against her ceiling; he did his best to ignore her. At four he laid the tuba down, looked at his watch, found a remnant of the morning newspaper, read an editorial. At three minutes past four, he sighed. At five minutes past, he looked at his watch. At seven minutes, he crumpled the newspaper, grabbed his tuba, threw the bedroom door open, and plunged into the corridor.
The corridor was hazy with smoke. He fought his way into the kitchen, coughing. Soft blue dusk was already rising in the solitary kitchen window like water poured slowly into a glass; beneath it, a splayed chicken corpse lay decomposing on the plastic tablecloth in a pool of oily lamplight. His wife stood at the stove, wagging a ladle in a pot.
“I’m afraid the onions will be a bit crisp,” she said with an apologetic smile, and glanced up, and paused in her stirring. “Oh, Serezha, you didn’t have to, it’s just the four of us, nothing fancy—but you do look really—”
He bent his head to adjust the knot of his tie.
“Yes, that,” he mumbled. “I meant to tell you, we have an important engagement in the city, sort of last-minute. Ivan Anatolievich asked me in person. I won’t be staying for supper.”
Emitting a little gasp, she splashed her hands. The ladle clunked onto the floor, and drops flew everywhere; a murky tear of some viscous substance trickled down the wall.