2016
Over the years you’ve probably heard every possible explanation, supplication, and lie that people can invent to try to keep themselves alive. Tears would be an old joke to you. If I had time for three words, I would tell you that I was expecting your child. Would that help? Would that make you hesitate, even for a moment? Would it make you believe that I never would have endangered our future by moving against your boss’s son?
I’ve tried to force myself to contact you so many times over the past six years. Every morning I remember how we always used to call each other after we woke up if we had slept at different addresses. I couldn’t get out of bed without your voice. I wanted to tell you everything. The thought that you would never know how things had really happened was unbearable. But all I could do was stare at the straight grout lines in my kitchen and the table with only my coffee cup. I couldn’t dial your number.
Last night I woke up feeling a familiar nibble at my lower lip. The way you used to when you were pampering me or waking me up. I was sure that you had already come. My racing pulse raged in my ears, and I could still feel your bite on my lip as I sneaked into the hallway to listen to the sounds of the stairwell, sure that if you weren’t outside the door, I would find you in my kitchen, and the flowers on my kimono would stick to my thighs, and the candles would flicker, and outside my bedroom window I would see plane trees, their trunks shiny, oily from the rain.
I pressed the switch. The lights turned on. The electricity was working. The stairway was empty. There were no coils of wire hanging from the low ceilings, the top of it was not decorated with rosettes, there were no decorative motifs along the walls, and it wasn’t the staircase of a tsarist palace. The squeaking coming from the bedroom wasn’t coming from you but instead from my mother sleeping in the guest bed. I didn’t find you in the kitchen or in the bathroom, and I didn’t know whether I’d feared or hoped to hear your breathing in the dark and the creak of the parquet under your feet like that night in Odesa, the first of our nights, after which I began to understand the true cost of my innocent arrangements.
Daria woke up groaning. She didn’t seem surprised to see me in her hotel room, where I’d been waiting for a while by then. Maybe she remembered that I’d brought her here and imagined that I’d spent the night.
“Give me some painkillers.”
From my pocket I took a package of Analgin and threw it onto the bed.
“Bring me water.”
Curbing my anger at these commands, I went into the bathroom. The air-conditioning was effective, but not so effective that it could eliminate the stench that Daria had managed to create in there: a potpourri of pharmacy, Ukraine, and stomach acid. I held my breath to try to prevent the past from being absorbed into my system. It didn’t help that the lights burned steadily, that the tile grout was clean, that the plugs were installed in the walls with Scandinavian precision or that there wasn’t any filth on them, unlike the items Daria had hung here and there, which I’d inspected while she slept, without finding anything useful. For a moment I leaned my head against the cool tile wall and felt for the phone in my pocket. Ivan would have known what to do. Before, I’d always trusted in his help in difficult situations. But I didn’t have Ivan’s number anymore. I hadn’t talked to him since I left, and he didn’t know that my mother visited me or where I was. My stomach lurched. I couldn’t think of Mom, not now. Or of Olezhko. Or of them in my unprotected home. I had to concentrate.
“Where are you?” Daria shouted.
After washing a glass with soap, I filled it and drank first before refilling it for Daria. At the bathroom door I remembered to remove the Zarya watch from my wrist and slipped it into my pocket. I couldn’t deal with Daria’s mockery.
“What are we doing today?”
“I need to go to work.”
“And after that? Let’s go to the dog park together.”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“Yes, it is. I want to see the girl.”
This thought reinvigorated Daria enough that she sat up, repeating the girl’s name, Aino, savoring it as if she were sucking on honeycomb. All around her mouth there was dried drool, which crumbled in flakes to the bedspread as she spoke. The room needed cleaning as badly as Daria did, but I had put out the “Do Not Disturb” sign. The mess was such that the cleaners would notice it. I would have to handle it myself.
“What time do you get off work?”
“Late.”
“You’re going to leave early enough that we can get to the dog park,” Daria said. “We should have gone out more often together before.”
Despite her hangover, Daria seemed pleased with our cut brandy–soaked evening. I hoped that tonight wouldn’t require the same outlay of cash. A knock came at the door, and I went to accept the breakfast I’d ordered from room service. After signing for the order with Daria’s name, I closed the door in the boy’s face. As I arranged the plates and poured the coffee, I tried to build up my courage. I hadn’t been able to think of any way to get Daria under control, other than to remind her of her own family, though I truly didn’t want to talk about the Sokolovs.
“How are things at home? Is your mother still in Snizhne?”
Daria slowly placed her fingers on the handle of the coffee cup and kept them there in a stiff position like a tin soldier’s hand on the stock of a rifle. I had to keep going. This was working. That morning I’d tried to ask my mother whether she knew anything about the Sokolovs. My inquiry had puzzled her. We hadn’t talked about the Sokolovs for years. I responded to her confusion by taking offense. I could handle things that I hadn’t been able to talk about before. Wasn’t that evidence that I was doing better? Couldn’t she support my progress by taking Oleh’s urn with her, by taking him to the country, preferably right away? I put emphasis on the word “urn.” I could say it out loud. But my mother wasn’t any help. It had been years since she’d heard anything about the Sokolovs. She didn’t know whether Daria’s brothers were at the front, and if they were, on which side, and so I had to proceed with caution. I didn’t want to further complicate my relationship with Daria by arguing about Russia.
“And your brother, Pavel?” I asked.
“Working.”
“Of course. How is Pavel’s family? Didn’t he have a child?”
I set the napkin, damp from my palms, on the table. I didn’t have an amount I could write on it so that, after handing the paper to Daria, the problem would be solved. I couldn’t comprehend how I had been so stupid that I hadn’t skimmed anything back in the day. Everyone did it, except me, and now I was sitting here next to Daria, at her mercy. And now Mom and Olezhko were in danger. And now the idyllic life the boy from the dog park lived was in danger of being shattered. I glanced at Daria. A familiar enamel sheen had appeared in her eyes.
“And your little brother? Did he finish high school?”
Daria did not reply. I would have to continue grilling her, even though here I wouldn’t be able to get her onto the hotel roof, and I couldn’t remind her of the money she would lose. I didn’t have any bonuses to offer her or any free vacations. I didn’t have any means of intimidation. No Ivan. No Aleksey. No you. I didn’t have relationships I could use to cause problems for the Sokolovs, not with the tax office, not with the police, not with the state security service, not with the people in power. But it had been family trouble that had brought Daria into my stable. She wouldn’t do anything to cause them harm. At least not the Daria I’d known. Didn’t she understand that through her actions she was also putting her loved ones at risk?
Daria’s breathing interrupted my reverie.
“Mom is in Dnipro. The agency gave us an apartment after you left. They thought it was better if I had company.”
“So that happened at a good time. Before the war.”
“Pavel and his family moved in with us. He developed kidney problems in Kryvyi Rih.”
I’d expected Daria to express more emotion on this subject. I remembered her calling her mother every day and the way she’d showed me pictures of her niece. Now she didn’t pull out photographs of anyone. She didn’t even have any with her, as I’d seen when I searched her things. I realized that the woman sitting next to me was speaking about her relatives distantly, as if they were only a memory. I shivered. Our conversation wasn’t reminding her why she had applied for work with the agency: to benefit her family. When I left the hotel, I would call my mother and emphasize how essential it was that she take Olezhko home as soon as possible. That every evening and night with Olezhko would make my healing more difficult, and that I might change my mind at any moment. I pressed my nails into my palms. I had to focus on Daria’s family, not my own.
“Have you spoken with your mother recently? Is she well?” I asked.
“Why wouldn’t she be?”
“Does she know where you are?”
“On a job.”
As blind as mothers were about their children, there was no way I could believe that Valentina Sokolova still thought her daughter was capable of working. But I didn’t object.
“And Pavel, when did you last hear from him?”
“Why all this sudden interest in my family?”
“If the dog park family recognizes you, they’ll notify the agency immediately. Have you forgotten what happened to the girls who didn’t follow their contracts? Or to their families? What if something has already happened to your mother? Or to your brothers? Or to your niece?”
Daria snorted and threw her crumbled roll at me. It fell on the floor. She was hungry, and what she wanted was wine, not a boring hotel breakfast, and she ordered me to bring her more to drink. This could all end right here, today. Squeezing the corkscrew in my hand, I reminded myself about the hotel security cameras. Sweat had made my shirt damp, and I had a hard time getting a grip on the wine bottle.
“It’s almost like you care about my family.”
I swallowed. I’d been afraid of this.
“Every time we visited my father’s grave, we cursed the day you people came to Snizhne. Why couldn’t you have stayed where you came from?”
After placing the bottle and the cork on the nightstand, I began to leave. Daria was provoking me, and I wasn’t going to rise to it. Not today. I didn’t make it to the door. Darting in front of me, Daria poked me in the chest. I stepped back. Daria followed. I let her hiss. I let her words whish past me without hearing them, and I thought of my Good Things List until she said, “You didn’t come to my father’s funeral.”
Daria had only been a child then. She couldn’t remember a detail like that. Maybe her mother did. Were these the kinds of things they’d been brooding over together?
“I had a fever.”
“You didn’t the day before.”
That was when I’d buried my own father.
“You didn’t bother to show up even though we paid our respects at your father’s passing. We brought wreaths, we walked in the procession, and I placed carnations on your dad’s coffin. Our fathers were friends. Our families were friends,” Daria said. “But that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
Our parents’ relationship hadn’t been recorded in my memory exactly that way. But arguing was useless.
“You are toxic. Everything you touch turns poisonous, and I hope a mortar hits your father’s grave,” Daria hissed. “Although it already looks that way.”
I ran out of the room.
I hadn’t once brought my father flowers since the funeral, unlike my mother. Once my aunt mentioned my mother traveling on the night train to Snizhne with a basket full of Easter bread blessed by a priest and eggs dyed with red onion. I was working as a model then, and Mom didn’t tell me about it. When the war came, the graveyard ended up on the wrong side of the front line, and we no longer had any relatives in the area who could care for our family graves. I wasn’t sorry. Even so, Daria’s words hurt, since criticizing my father’s grave was none of her business.
My mother had chosen a picture for the grave marker that she wanted to see when she visited but which my father never would have approved. The stone was small, only what we could afford, and the portrait immortalized on it was no larger than my palm, with the shirt and collar only just distinguishable. The etching was based on an old passport photo, and in the end, Dad looked like he could have been anyone: a man with no car, a man with no honor, a man with no power, a man who had died in his own bed, under his own blanket, in a house where the wallpaper had been the same for decades.
But that wasn’t what happened to my father.