“He picked the wrong time to come back,” someone said with grim satisfaction. “Let’s hope he hasn’t grown too tender among his orange groves and seaside resorts.”
“Oh, he’ll be all right in his foreign furs. Better to worry about yourself!”
“That’s what I keep saying, we’ll all get sick, this is inhumane! The kiosk closes at five o’clock, so what’s the use of our hanging about till—”
“What, I can’t hear you, that van is so noisy—”
“A van, what van?”
“There, look, it’s coming to a stop at the corner.”
Alexander glanced up. The headlights chug-chugged to a halt, damp slush mixing with the limp snow that tossed back and forth beneath the recently repaired streetlamp. The van’s door was kicked open from within; the driver emerged and, looking neither left nor right, proceeded to the kiosk. The line squirmed with cautious excitement. The man dug into a pocket; keys jingled. The line gasped and compressed forward, holding its three-hundred-headed breath. Alexander was watching closely now. The man disposed of the lock with astonishing efficiency and vanished inside. A woman squealed.
The grate over the kiosk window was being pushed up.
“Bet you your ticket,” whispered Nikolai, “it’ll be another notice—‘Seller out till the Second Coming,’ or ‘We ran out of trees to print tickets,’ or—”
The window now glowed from within, an egg of desirable light and warmth, from which hatched the van driver’s head. A uniformed official approached, and the two conversed briefly. Alexander craned his neck until it ached. The official was already walking back, switching on his flashlight, unfolding some papers. “Straighten up, straighten up!” he shouted. “The tickets will be distributed in strict accordance with the list, only one per person. When you hear your name read, produce your documents and step forward.”
The wildfire of voices ran up and down.
“The tickets, did you hear, did he really say—”
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Nikolai cried, slapping Alexander on the back.
Behind them, the line gave in like collapsed dough.
“Ah!” Viktor Pyetrovich sighed softly, sorrowfully, and Alexander half turned to catch his heavily settling body against his shoulder.
“Are you all right?” he asked, his eyes glued to the kiosk window. Viktor Pyetrovich did not reply, his weight crushing Alexander’s collarbone. Alexander glanced back.
The old man’s face was the shade of yesterday’s ash, his lips shaking in a pitiful attempt to assemble themselves in a smile; his gloved hands crawled unseeingly over his coat as if trying to ascertain the presence of something very important underneath its cheap fabric.
“Are you all right?” Alexander repeated, more urgently, gazing into Viktor Pyetrovich’s face through the increasingly frantic shadows; the line was trembling, jerking, leaping now, and the darkness darted here and there like a flock of maddened bats, trying to escape the agitated slicing of flashlights.
“I—” the old man mouthed. “I—”
The voice would not squeeze out of his throat, and Alexander had the sudden unpleasant image of old toothpaste congealed in a tube. With rising alarm, he pulled on Nikolai’s sleeve.
“He’s sick or something,” he said fiercely.
It was impossible to see what was happening at the kiosk window now; the backs had multiplied and grown violent, huffing, shoving, pressing.
Nikolai gathered the old man like a rag doll. “Damn it,” he spat out. “Might be a heart attack, he needs an ambulance. I’ll hold him, run!”
Alexander ran.
He ran slipping on snow, tripping over pavements, the icy wind stinging his face. Alleys crept out of the night with the drunken leers of unsteady, decaying streetlamps; the solitary silence of winter rang in his ears like the beating of blood, the rasping of breath, the tolling of bells long since fallen mute in the skies. Oh, the hateful city, where time is communal and worthless, where seasons follow one another like obedient comrades shuffling forward in line, where age erases identical, meaningless lives before they are even written…
His chest was tight with frenzied tears.
Two streets away, the phone booth shone dimly through the snow, a glass full of hazy, chilled milk. He dashed to it. A large man was inside, his back plastered against the door. The door was cracked, and out leaked the lived-in, soured warmth of a big body and the monotonous rumble of a low voice dictating to someone on the other end of the line. “And also one kilo of sausage,” Alexander heard, “and half a dozen eggs, and dried fish, not the kind you got last time, but the kind he likes, you know the kind—” Alexander knocked, then tore off his glove and knocked again. Slowly the man rotated, until his stomach was squashed flat against the side of the booth, and he peered from the milky light into the outside darkness with small eyes that glistened like fish scales. His voice continued to drone. “And half a kilo of cheese if you can get it, give her fifteen for it, and also—” Still talking, his face enormous and bare, he jerked the door toward himself, and the crack vanished, and the voice became a wordless hum.
Alexander started to pound the heel of his hand against the glass, shouting, “A man’s life, life and death, do you understand?”—but the fish scales only glimmered coldly; and suddenly lives no longer seemed to Alexander identical and meaningless, nor was time communal and worthless.
It was very particular, and very precious.
He flew farther, his toes numb in his inadequate shoes, and the park dragged at him with an oblivion of branches and benches and bottles, and there was that other phone booth he remembered across the road, but it was dark, and the light would not come on even when he pulled the door open. The receiver dangled heavy and dead, icy to the touch, and still he tried to push his coin into the slot, with shaking, treacherous hands, pleading with the silence for a whole minute, then, nearly crying, ran back to the first booth, and found the large man gone and the wires viciously torn out of the wall, a tangle of multicolored metallic bits and pieces spilling out like entrails.
He stared for a heartbeat, then stumbled back to the kiosk, sobbing under his breath, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” The line had not moved much—it was maybe ten or fifteen people shorter; the window was dripping with shrill sounds of indignation, but he had no time to stop and listen. Viktor Pyetrovich’s cheeks were flushed, yet his lips were deathly white, as though smudged with winter. “I’m fine, fine now,” he breathed, “but I fear I must leave, it might be better for me to lie down, I—”
Nikolai released him, and he collapsed against Alexander.
“You’re in no condition to walk by yourself,” Alexander snapped. “I’ll take you home.”
“Sasha, what are you doing, the tickets!” Nikolai protested hotly in his ear.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes, his place is nearby. And if my turn comes before I’m back… But I’ll be back, just—just hold them off somehow if you can.”
Viktor Pyetrovich had seemed skinny, insubstantial, but his weight was hard and unwieldy against Alexander, sharp angles bruising him—knees, shoulders. The old man’s feet kept catching each other, and Alexander weaved from left to right under his burden, leaving an unsteady braid of tripped, tipsy footsteps in the snow. His struggling heart would not stop, jumping from his chest to his throat and back. I have to, I can’t just leave him, I’ll manage, there will be time, plenty of time… His arms ached. On a corner he paused to rest, propping Viktor Pyetrovich against a lamppost, and at last clearly saw the old man’s face, deadened in the poisonous electric glare, glistening with two sleek ruts.