16

Mitya did not know Marina’s telephone number, so the only way to get in touch with her was to go to the wall. And he went, almost every day for the next three weeks; however, he never saw her, nor did he see Sasha or Gleb. It was mid-November already, getting colder every day, and it was apparent to Mitya that no one wanted to hang out outside if they could do anything about it. Mitya also kept thinking about the boys in the market. It must have been terribly cold in the storage spaces beside it. He imagined Chervyak freezing, Zolotoy shivering, paler than he already was, and felt an urge to go and see them.

He went down to the place where he’d buried the money in Valerka’s memory and took some out to give to the homeless boys. It was clear that the tree wouldn’t grow out with the soil around it frozen. And Valerka would not mind him taking the money, either, Mitya was sure. Valerka knew full well how bad it was to be outside in the winter.

But when Mitya arrived at the market, it was unapproachable. The entrances were all blocked; there were militsia cars everywhere. Mitya asked one of the gawkers what happened, and it turned out that the militsia was raiding the market because of its connection to illicit trade. It was as if the militsia and Mitya coexisted side by side, with their crosshairs on the same people and places.

He wondered if Chervyak and Zolotoy were okay, if they had been able to hide or find a new place to sleep. Powerlessness once again descended upon him like a heavy blanket. He thought about the first time he visited the market and remembered the sample he’d received before Chervyak took Mitya to the warehouse dorm that he shared with the other boys. The bees. He had left them in his pocket and completely forgotten about them. When he arrived home, Mitya took his windbreaker out of the wardrobe, where he’d put it once the weather was too cold for him to wear it, and found the envelope with the dead bees inside. When he spilled them out, they had remained untouched, as far as he could tell: small hairy bodies with crunchy fragile limbs and wings that looked like the membranes inside sunflower seeds when you shelled them. He didn’t want to drink the bees, because the hot water would surely ruin the integrity of their well-preserved bodies, but he wanted to do something with them.

He took a piece of drawing paper from his old school pad, some glue and pencils, and had the idea to draw the market as he’d seen it, from memory. As he drew, he was amazed by how easy it was to re-create the details of the buildings, and how good his drawing was. He arranged a few bees next to the building as if to symbolize the boys sniffing glue. Mitya drew the carts around them, as well as smoke from the cigarettes, and then attached the bees with glue. When he finished, he still had bees left, so he made a drawing of the place where the boys slept, and arranged a small bee in a bed, and the bigger bees sitting in a circle as if they were playing cards. Though he had re-created everyone in the room, there was one extra bee, still. He thought about attaching it to the first drawing, along with the other bees, but there was no way to do it well. So he made another drawing, with a building, and trees, and crows, and made this bee Valerka.

It all looked funny, but also made him sad. He thought about how Valerka had died, and how the boys, including Zolotoy, had probably died too, just like insects.

One day Mitya decided to find out the truth about the pleshka place that Zolotoy had talked about. It was not as hard to find things out as it used to be because there was internet at the library, and Mitya was getting better at using it with every passing day. He put words into the search engine Rambler, and the results appeared.

When he searched for “pleshka,” he first saw a lot of references to the Plekhanov University that Gleb had mentioned. That couldn’t be it, so he kept looking. Then he struck gold. It was a slang term used to refer to a meeting place for homosexuals. As the website Gay.ru informed him, there were two pleshkas in Moscow: one right next to the Bolshoi Theater, which was then closed for renovation, and another one near Kitay-Gorod, currently open.

Mitya was confused by this information. Did it mean that Zolotoy was gay? Did it mean that he wanted to go there to have goluboy sex? And if Mitya could not stop thinking about Zolotoy, did it mean that he was gay too?

It was the end of November when Mitya finally saw Marina. After school, he went to the pet shop to stare at the puppies. It was right in front of Tsoi’s Wall, and even though looking at the pets for sale always made Mitya upset, he thought that at least being there for them could be helpful. Marina and Sasha were in the cat food aisle when Mitya saw them. Marina was happy to see him and immediately hugged him, a wave of her perfume washing over Mitya. It was familiar, and yet not having experienced it for a few weeks, Mitya felt it anew, fleshy, powdery, all woman. When she pulled away, Mitya saw Sasha staring at him with annoyance.

“I’m so happy we ran into you, Mitya! Here, take my number and call me tonight.” Marina took a notepad and a pen out of her purse and scribbled some numbers on one of the sheets. “We have to go feed Sasha’s cat, or it will eat us instead.” She joked, and Mitya was happy to see her smile.

There was still something sad about her, but at least she didn’t look as miserable as she had after the concert. Mitya wanted to ask whether Sasha had been able to inquire about the militsia, but thought that he could wait until the evening.

Mitya hated nothing more than making phone calls. He did not have to make them often, thankfully, which was a benefit that came with having no friends. When there was an unknown addressee, with the possibility of someone else picking up the phone, Mitya felt crippling anxiety and tried to avoid the call at all costs. This time he felt like he owed it to Marina to call her, and even when he had to ask her roommate to pass the phone to Marina, it didn’t seem quite as bad.

When they talked on the phone, Mitya noticed how prominent her accent was. Though they were speaking the same language, the way she said her soft g’s and rounded up her o’s made it seem as though they were speaking different ones. It was somehow enhanced on the phone line, and Mitya wanted to bathe in the warm sound of her voice. It was odd speaking to her without seeing her. Now that he had a blank canvas in his imagination, he imagined Marina not as a girl in a leather jacket and dark makeup but as a woman from one of his mother’s Krestyanka, Peasant Woman, magazine covers. He saw her hair in a heavy braid, barely any makeup on her face, a shawl modestly thrown over her shoulders.

Mitya did not want to be the one to bring up the subject of her fight with Gleb, so he hinted at it, pointedly asking how Gleb was doing, and let her choose whether she wanted to pick up the subject. She didn’t.

“I haven’t talked to Gleb since the concert,” she said.

“Is that good or not?” Mitya asked. He felt like it was more honest to ask her what he should think, rather than assume.

“I don’t know. Good, I think. Because I don’t have to choose between him and Sasha anymore. So that’s easy. Hey, I missed talking to you. It seems terrible that you’re the only one I can talk to about boy problems since you’re, tipa, an eleven-year-old boy . . .”

“What about your roommates? Do you like the one who passed the phone?”

“Oh, she hates me because I’m skinny. Or because I’m from Ukraine. I’m not sure. She’s Moscow born and bred, and she still has to share her room with a Gastarbeiter.”

“I thought Gastarbeiter could only be from Central Asia.”

“Who even knows. If I end up marrying Sasha and get a propiska in Moscow with an Old Arbat address, we’ll see who’s talking.”

“You think you might?”

“I don’t think I have another choice,” she said, quietly, and then abruptly changed the subject. “So what’s new with you? Any new leads?”

Mitya thought that this was as good a time as any to ask about Sasha’s potential help, especially since Marina was so close to him now.

“No, it doesn’t seem like I can find out anything from the outside. Did you have a chance to ask Sasha?”

“I asked him, but he must have forgotten. I will ask him again. Don’t worry. You’re my only friend, so that means not only boy talk but my eternal, unrelenting care. You’ll be asking me to get off your back soon!”

Her face was radiant. Mitya had no idea how could it be that such a beautiful, grown-up, self-reliant girl was, like him, friendless. Maybe it didn’t mean anything about him then, it wasn’t that he was somehow deficient. It was the way things worked in life. You didn’t have people, and then you found people.

Asking Marina about the inquiry into the militsia’s dealings for the second time did not prove fruitful either. A week passed, and there was still no news from Sasha. Mitya called Marina to find out how she was doing and discovered that she was sick with the flu. Though her voice sounded coarse and snotty, she said that she was having a fantastic time and did not have to go to work because her boss was afraid of infections. She suggested that to speed things up, Mitya talk to Sasha himself: she gave him the number. Mitya did not think it was a great idea, but he didn’t want to argue with Marina while she had the flu.

Sasha seemed to not understand what Mitya wanted from him but Mitya played nice and patiently relayed all the information to him, from Valerka’s disappearance to how he had thought Vovka killed him and to Vovka’s alibi. This made Sasha perk up a bit.

“Your cousin, he wants you to think he has an alibi, but I think he’s just ‘putting noodles on your ears.’”

“But my aunt seconded that . . .”

“Why wouldn’t she? So that her child would go to prison? Anyway, I will ask around some more, but beware, if it was indeed your cousin, Moscow’s noble militsia will make sure he gets what he deserves.”

That evening, Vovka dropped in at home. He was not yet completely drunk, and coherent enough to make it possible for Mitya to start questioning him, fueled by the suspicions instilled in him by Sasha.

“Vovka, did you know Valerka?”

“The homeless man with the birds who slept on the stairs?” Vovka asked.

Mitya nodded.

“I’ll miss that guy. He was a decent muzhik to drink with.”

It was a weird thing to hear. The way that Vovka said it, without any malice, and with a soft nostalgia, was surprising. Mitya could not imagine his cousin ever saying anything as sincere about someone around him. Mitya was immediately full of warmth and could not for another second think that it was Vovka who had murdered Valerka. The way Vovka showed his vulnerability allowed Mitya to let his guard down as well. So he felt brave enough to ask Vovka about the murder and hoped that he knew something.

“Vovka, you know he was murdered, da?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. I’ll miss him.”

“Do you maybe know what happened to him?”

“Menty did him in. Uncle Petya told me when the two of us baragozili. Said that Valerka arrived at the precinct badly injured by some high-up chuvak. There was an order to do Valerka in, and so they did. Then Uncle Petya started crying. I guess he was sad about Valerka. Or maybe because he didn’t get in on the action,” Vovka said, smirking.