Finally the grandmother slid down the window.
'I can see that you are disappointed, and I don't blame you, dear girl. You are a victim of circumstances. We don't think any less of you than we did before.'
'You could try again in two years. Perhaps with changes in the museum and, er, elsewhere, you'd have a stronger chance,' said the mother, warmth and hope curling the ends of her words.
'I don't believe in chance or luck. Not anymore.' Tanya wagged her head balefully from side to side. 'I've been told that this is a great lack in my repertoire of social conversation and quite possibly an indicator of moral and imaginative failings as well.'
The grandmother squinted at Tanya. 'How old are you?'
'Twenty-four.'
'Oh.' Her voice dampened. 'You have plenty of time for moral failure, dear.'
The train jolted, then slowly began to glide away. Tanya lifted her hand in a limp wave, but the women had already turned their faces eastward towards the tracks. In the set of the grandmother's jaw Tanya could see the recalibration of her charitable vigilance narrowing on new sights. In the mother's face Tanya saw exhaustion. In the girl's face, soft as dough still rising, and fringed now with fallen hair, Tanya could not read a thing.
The mother Tanya would miss, her motherly hand on hers. She would miss her open honest eyes, would miss a woman calling her 'dear' and meaning it. But Tanya could read how already in their bodies, in their forward gazes, they had moved on and she knew they could not see her there on the platform, standing on tiptoe, craning her head in their direction, and holding the sky by the handle of her umbrella.
***
Not far from the lime tree, Yuri lay half-dozing in his mother's claw-footed bath. The lead of his fishing line drifted over the watery skin of the enormous mud swamp that had overtaken the courtyard. The rain had stopped. The clouds, pushed hard by God's invisible hand, hovered now over the Kama River where the rain, tap dancing on the water, would bring out the fish. If only he had a little motivation, he might be there, now, fishing. Instead, Yuri watched Vitek emerge from a bank of smoke within the darkened stairwell. He observed how the kids squatting heapside were also watching Vitek's approach. The canine manner with which they licked their lips put Yuri's teeth on edge.
Vitek paused at the latrine, jostled the latch, then urinated at the base of the lime tree, not more than three metres from Azade's feet. Beside her sat Yuri's own mother, Olga, her gaze resolutely trained on the building which seemed to Yuri not to be sinking so much as it was pushing dark mud from the depth to the light, dredging from an unseen world. Displacement. A principle of physical science, but also of history, love, time and of anything else elemental and elementally tied to physical existence.
Vitek shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Where are the Americans?'
'Gone,' Azade said.
Lukeria coughed and coughed, her chest bent to her knees. 'They were getting on my nerves,' she managed at last.
'I liked the girl,' Vitek said. 'A little snooty, funny hair, but still.'
'What about their money?' Zoya exited the stairwell with a field chair tucked under her arm and a halo of magnesium red toxicity framing her head. Yes, her passions had been stirred and now she would sit and paint her nails with the angriest varnish she could find.
'Gone,' Yuri sang out.
'Who wanted their greasy hard-currency dollars anyway?' Olga asked.
'We did,' Zoya said, unfolding the chair.
Vitek withdrew a bottle of vodka from his waistband. As he drank, he grimaced as if he were taking in an ocean of pain one swallow at a time. When he'd had enough, he strolled towards Yuri and handed him the bottle.
'Drink,' Vitek said.
Yuri drank. Did he swallow a bomb? Or was it a stopwatch he was hearing? Because with that drink came that ticking again, this time from the pit of his stomach.
'I talked to Kochubey this morning. He said you never showed up.' Vitek's body threw a long shadow over Yuri. 'Survival demands that the individual sacrifice his sense of self for the communal group to which he belongs.' Vitek retrieved the bottle. 'I could drain this bottle in a single swallow, if I wanted to. Right now. But that would be selfish. Therefore, I abandon my selfish inclination and consider the group at large. The benefits of this action are manifold.' Vitek took another long drink.
'What benefits are those?' Yuri squinted at Vitek.
Vitek smiled. 'Who's talking here, me or you?'
'You.'
'So, OK. You'd rather not do certain things. I understand. But survival demands that at times we do things that are contrary to our wishes or liking.' Vitek handed back the bottle.
Yuri drank silently.
'Do you see what I'm getting at?' Vitek's voice held an edge.
Yuri blinked. It was so hard to think around all the noise within and without.
'What?'
'You should have gone to see Kochubey when I told you to.' As he spoke, Vitek's gold-capped teeth caught the last of the afternoon light.
Yuri took another drink from the bottle. 'I'm not going.'
'What?'
'I'm not going to see Kochubey. I'm not going to re-up. I don't care how much money I could get.'
Vitek's smile vanished. 'Maybe you should think about what you're saying. It's the hasty word that gets a man into trouble.'
'I have thought about it.' Yuri squinted at the kids approaching now on hands and knees. They had a mangy rabid look about them. In school, which one? Number 130? Yuri had learned from his science instructor that the human mouth is the source of all contagion. One bite, a wayward finger caught between overambitious canines, say, and your whole hand would be infected with bacteria. The hand would swell until the fingers split. You could even die from it.
'This isn't about you. This is about the group.' Vitek nodded at Zoya in the field chair. 'Let's face facts. Your net worth is limited to certain profit-producing enterprises. Fishing isn't one of them. The least, the very least you can do for your mother, for your beautiful girlfriend, for everyone in any way associated with you is to go and fight. Now. For Mother Russia.'
Tick. 'But I could die.'
Zoya blew on her slick fingernails. 'You would die a hero. Wouldn't it be wonderful?' Her smile, a kind of ovation, a glorious but terminal shining just before the open door shut.
Vitek winked at Yuri. 'You see, she understands sacrifice.'
Tick.
'Maybe,' Yuri conceded. Certainly she understood leanness of affection. Also she knew how to catch crayfish in winter. That is to say, she was clever. She recognized the appalling shortage of age-appropriate men who were intact in the essential ways a man must be in order to start and maintain a family. Hey, he may be an idiot, but he wasn't a fool. Hers was a practical love forced from necessity and desperation. But, Yuri wondered as he took another drink, was that real love or merely pragmatism wearing an affectionate face? Yuri sat up in the bath and reached for his helmet.
'This is the only way, Spaceboy.' Vitek helped Yuri out of the bath, then pressed his forehead to Yuri's.
'I've racked my brains thinking it through. I even almost managed to have one of your kidneys harvested—for the greater good, of course—but there were certain equipment shortages to consider. So believe me when I say this war is the only way to realize your full potential.'
It may have been his imagination, but whereas the building once had five storeys, Yuri could now only count four. The unoccupied ground floor had disappeared entirely. Yuri tipped his head, recounted. Yes, it was gone. Sunk, he decided, under the weight of its many contradictions. And then there were the kids, bless them. Hunkered behind Vitek and looking long of tooth.
Yuri pulled free from Vitek's arm. 'I told you. I'm not going. I don't want to come home in a zinc coffin with a red star.'
Vitek paled. 'Listen, you stupid zhid. Who do you think you are? Who gives a shit what you want? I'm in up to my ass with Kochubey. You have to go. I'll kill you myself if you don't.'