27
June 1998 turned out to be one of the hottest months ever recorded in Moscow. It got hotter with every passing day, and when he walked outside, Mitya felt his sneakers, bootleg Abibas, sink into the melting asphalt. He had a sallow city tan, and there was a pink rash around his testicles. Shops and metro trains were smothered with the stench of unwashed bodies, bad breath, liberally applied perfume, dust turning to moist grime. The air was so thick, Mitya expected it to detonate with any brisk movement. Watching the news became a family routine, and yet the meteorological center failed to promise rain, again and again, morning after morning. Mitya was still unsure if he’d made the right choice to depart with Marina, but he was sticking to it. He conceded that nothing was going to grow out of the money buried in the playground, and dug it up. He didn’t want to go to Donetsk and force himself upon Marina’s family; he needed a safety net.
He packed his things in secret, taking only those in which he would be able to be a girl, and leaving the rest behind. What he wanted to take he put into an empty duvet cover, which he would then tie on the top and carry. Sometimes he thought of the prospect of living as a girl with excitement; sometimes it filled him with claustrophobia. But the best way to approach this issue was not to think about it excessively. Instead, he concentrated on taking in everything that he would miss. He walked around the Old Arbat every day, and maybe because of his premature nostalgia, or because of the heat, the buildings around him seemed to blur in front of his eyes.
Though he wouldn’t be saying any goodbyes, Mitya still needed to have some closure with the people in his life. He didn’t want to tell Zhenya and Dasha he would be leaving, in case they spoke of it to their parents, so he bought them Hematogen and chocolate. He couldn’t go to a kvartirnik, not without Gleb’s involvement, but he recited Boris’s songs in his head.
Alyssa Vitalyevna and Yelena Viktorovna were the ones he’d be missing most. So each day after dinner, he lingered around them. Alyssa Vitalyevna liked to take her tea languidly. Yelena Viktorovna joined her most days, as they talked about different things and watched TV. Mitya joined them, too, instead of drawing in the corner. He realized that soon enough, he wouldn’t be able to see them again. However, because he could never bring up his plans, these teatimes became repetitive, anticathartic, and he almost wished to be gone already, so he could start missing his mother and grandmother for real.
Marina finally bought the tickets. They would leave on a Saturday, the train to Donetsk departing from the Paveletskaya station late in the evening. They calculated how much time it would take for Mitya to get there from home, so he could escape smoothly.
For dinner on the night of his departure, there were two packs of pelmeni with vinegar. After they’d eaten, Dmitriy Fyodorovich was drinking vodka in the kitchen. Alyssa Vitalyevna, Yelena Viktorovna, and Mitya sipped pale tea with sushki in the living room. All the windows were flung open, and yet there was no draft.
Mitya put the little bread rounds of sushki on each of his pinkies like rings and licked their surfaces. They were slick as if lacquered. He wondered if that was what lips felt like when you kissed someone. Then he took dainty bites of the crusty bread, which tasted like wood.
“Tea is good for you in the heat; that is what the Uzbeks say.” Alyssa Vitalyevna slurped the liquid from the saucer and bit on a sugar cube. “They drink tea all day, and sweat it out in their padded robes.”
She had been saying this every day of the heat wave, yet when Mitya asked if she had ever been to Uzbekistan, Alyssa Vitalyevna shook her head. She just knew it, and this made it right. She and Yelena Viktorovna were both wearing light, colorful robes instead of padded ones, and their heavy breasts hung down, unencumbered by bras. They were watching reruns of A Próxima Vítima, the Brazilian soap opera about the serial killer. They had already seen it the previous year and knew who the killer was, yet their interest did not diminish.
“Cleopatra is telling me that this time it will end differently,” Alyssa Vitalyevna said.
“Why would it end differently?” Yelena Viktorovna asked, more to continue the conversation than to argue.
“Because they filmed a new ending for the Russian audience. We are more sophisticated; we have different tastes, you know.”
Mitya wished they could talk about something else for a change. But he couldn’t think of anything to say to prompt a conversation. Besides, he was getting fidgety. His stomach started cramping, and he had to go to the bathroom. When he returned, the living room was empty. He heard voices coming from the kitchen. There was a strong draft down on the floor, as he approached, and it took a hard push to get the door open. Mama, Papa, and Babushka were all gathered in the kitchen in front of the window that opened to the front yard. It wasn’t that late, yet the sky had suddenly turned dark, and the wind outside was blowing in strong gusts.
“Look, Mitya, it’s colder,” Mama said as he approached them. She put an arm around his shoulder, and her fingers went through the loose strands of his hair.
“It’s going to rain any minute,” Papa said, holding down a belch. He had put too much vinegar on his pelmeni, which was now returning in acidic waves.
They heard the hollow sound of thunder in the distance.
Mitya wondered how the hell he was going to get to the metro in this wind.
“Count the time between thunder and lightning, multiply by the speed of light, and you’ll know how far away the lightning is,” Alyssa Vitalyevna said, shaking a finger. Her late husband had taught her that, although it wasn’t an exact method.
The lightning struck a second later. With the next peal of thunder, Mitya started counting.
“They’re three seconds apart, Ba.”
“Too near! We should close the windows to avoid balls of lightning.”
“What are balls of lightning?”
“It’s when electric currents form a ball that can, in turn, burn everything it encounters. If it gets in the room, we’ll all be dead.”
Dmitriy Fyodorovich always found fault with Alyssa Vitalyevna’s ideas, but this time, he reached for the handle on the window frame and pushed the window shut. Mitya remembered him telling about the time he was struck by lightning, during his army training, in the middle of a Kazakh steppe. The grown-ups then went to close all the windows in the other rooms in their apartment and turned off the TV so that the lightning couldn’t get through the power lines.
Mitya stood by the window and put his face against the glass to see better. The wind had gotten stronger and was now carrying a string of leaves, sticks, and empty chip bags in a whirl. Occasional droplets were falling from the sky. The glass was getting colder, and as he kept on breathing, he could smell his breath and the smell of glass, which he hadn’t realized existed. Maybe it was just the dust trapped on its surface, a cold, powdery smell.
“I wonder where that khuy is in this weather,” Dmitriy Fyodorovich said, as everyone returned to the kitchen, turned the lights off, and assumed their positions beside Mitya, looking out.
“Probably kosoy, as usual,” Alyssa Vitalyevna clucked. “Must be shlyaetsya with his drinking buddies.”
“Ah, bedniy, he might get soaked,” Yelena Viktorovna said, sadly. “One wouldn’t even let a dog go outside in such weather.”
And as soon as she said it, it started to rain.
“Oof, maybe that’ll teach him. He’s worse than a dog.” Papa scratched his belly beneath a white sleeveless shirt.
Yelena Viktorovna shrugged. Her fingers were back in Mitya’s hair, braiding it nervously. Usually, she didn’t dare touch his hair in front of Dmitriy Fyodorovich, since he did not approve of its length. But at that moment they were all united against the forces of nature.
And this was when Mitya knew that he wouldn’t be going to Donetsk that night. Not because it was impossible to get to the metro through the developing storm, but because it was the first time Mitya had ever felt a part of a larger unit, backed up by his family. It felt surprisingly good, and though they all merely stood there in silence and watched the weather unravel—they were together.
It took only five minutes for the rain to become a full-fledged thunderstorm. The wind got stronger and banged the open windows in the opposing building. It picked up random litter and carried it as high as their seventh floor. Mitya couldn’t peel his eyes away from the window. Papa asked him not to lean on the glass, as his nose was leaving oily marks on it. Mitya wiped the grease marks with a kitchen towel, and then took a step back and watched the power of nature, so dark, so menacing, so strangely beautiful.
The universe had given him a sign, and he had received it. He only hoped Marina would understand and forgive him. He would send her money to Donetsk. Mitya had gotten the Donbass address from her, which he was planning to leave for his parents to find after he was gone. Now he was glad that there was another use for that piece of paper.
There was a noise in the hallway, and the family went to investigate as if the storm had merged them into one unified entity. Vovka was standing next to the front door, with his keys lying on the floor next to him. He was drunk and held himself up against the wall with his only hand, barely upright, oscillating.
“Vmphmph,” he uttered.
“Moodak ebaniy,” Dmitriy Fyodorovich spat out and tried to shut the door, but Vovka stuck his arm out.
“Uncle Dmitriy, let me in,” Vovka said with an effort, his tongue heavy inside his mouth.
“Go to your friends and drink yourself stupid with them. Do you think I took your key away for nothing?”
How he wished he could give his nephew a beating. But he wasn’t even worth it anymore. Not like this.
“Uncle Dmitriy, strelyayut.” Vovka snatched Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s arm, afraid that he might not provide shelter from the hell outside. “They’re shooting.” His eyes were wide and crazy, welling with tears.
“You want me to push you down the stairs?”
“Dmitriy, come on.” Yelena Viktorovna tugged at her husband’s arm. “He must be so drunk; he thinks it’s gunshots, not thunder.”
She imagined how it must be, to be chased by visions of the horror he had seen in Chechnya. Vovka was, after all, a boy too, only a little older than Mitya.
Vovka stared at her with gratitude.
Dmitriy Fyodorovich banged the door open, picked the keys off the floor, and stormed off toward the kitchen. He wanted no part in this female charity. No one wanted to listen to the master of the house anymore.
“Mitya, help your mother,” he said without turning around and then began muttering under his breath. “Alkash. Baba.” Alcoholic. Woman.
Yelena Viktorovna and Mitya helped Vovka into the hallway and to the bathroom. Alyssa Vitalyevna stood to the side and observed them with unmasked disgust on her face. She didn’t even want to pretend to care. He wasn’t her relative.
Once they placed him in the bathtub, Vovka dozed off. They left him and switched off the light. Babushka and Papa were in the kitchen, looking at the storm. They both pointed at something outside.
“Yelena, Mitya, look, an enormous tree branch flew into a car; the wind is nightmarish.” Papa summoned them to the window, and they saw a car with a smashed roof. It was something expensive, a Saab or a Mercedes, and it made Dmitriy Fyodorovich feel good that someone rich was getting to suffer for a change.
“And Vovka’s friends have left their windows open.” Alyssa Vitalyevna pointed up, toward the top floor of the opposite building where that horrible woman lived with her son. “Probably passed-out drunk.”
Everyone was excited, mesmerized by the tempest. The family stood in front of the window for half an hour or so, pointing out objects that flew past them, cardboard boxes, plastic buckets, McDonald’s cups. Someone they didn’t recognize from above, a man with a shopping bag on his head, ran into the courtyard from the street. The wind was so strong that the man could barely keep himself from being pulled away. He was finally able to take shelter by entering their building, with a lot of effort. Throughout all this, the four of them exchanged observations. It was as if they were watching a sports competition between nature and the material world of humans, rooting for the latter.
Never had Mitya felt that he belonged to a family as much. Never had he felt such warmth. It was already past the train’s departure time. He knew that Marina was going back home to Ukraine at that moment, lulled by the clamor of the wheels. And he wasn’t with her, because he was already home.
But then it was over.
After the storm ended, Alyssa Vitalyevna went to her room to try and reach out to Dr. Khristofor Khristoforovich Kherentzis, to check if he was all right, and then call Cleopatra to compare their observations of the events that unfolded in their respective courtyards. Yelena Viktorovna started cleaning the dishes. The television had been switched on and reliably droned in the background. Mitya wanted to prolong the warmth and asked her if she wanted him to help.
“What are you, a baba?” Papa asked, knocking over a stopka of vodka. “Instead of doing women’s chores, better have some of this. If you learn how to handle your bukhlo with your father, you’ll never have problems like that cousin of yours.”
He poured vodka into the stopka and pushed it toward his son, prepared to hear some sorry excuse.
Mitya looked at him, not sure if he was serious. Papa seemed earnest. Mitya glanced at Mama over by the sink, but she was busy soaping dishes with Fairy. Mitya played along and pretended like he’d never had vodka. He brought the stopka to his lips, and gingerly turned it over into his mouth.
“Here, zakusi.” Papa gave him a piece of black bread. Mitya still looked like a girl, almost indiscernible from Yelena when Dmitriy Fyodorovich had met her. But even if he looked like a sissy, at least he was at home and tried to be helpful. It might have been the weather, or his nephew passed out in the bathtub, but Dmitriy Fyodorovich felt like his son hadn’t failed him as much for a change.
Mitya bit on the bread and let it absorb his bitter saliva.
“Muzhik,” Papa said in approval. A man. He patted Mitya on the back, then poured himself another stopka and drank it. “Now go to bed.”
Mitya came out of the kitchen with the happiness of vodka surging through his limbs. He felt a tingle in his thing: he had to pee. As he fumbled for the light switch next to the WC, he remembered that Vovka was still in the bathroom and decided to take a look. Vovka was sound asleep, his withered, bruised body in the bottom of the bathtub like a weird, misshapen fetus inside the womb. Mitya pitied him. And yet, he hated him, for all the hurt he had brought to Mitya. It felt like the boy that Vovka had abused in the nights was not the same Mitya but a smaller, weaker one. And Mitya, the new, grown-up, resolute Mitya, wanted to protect his past self, and to punish his aggressor.
Mitya unzipped his trousers and pissed all over Vovka. His cousin kept sleeping. Mitya shook off the remaining droplets, tucked himself back in, and turned to the sink to brush his teeth. They were white enough, like the teeth of an actress, and he grinned like a maniac. It was to see his teeth better, but mostly because he was enjoying himself.
Suddenly, and too quickly for his inebriated state, Vovka emerged from the bathtub and jumped at Mitya. He grabbed Mitya by the throat with his only hand and pushed him against the mirror.
“Suka, kak ty smeesh,” Vovka roared, as the smell of fresh urine, not pleasant, but not quite a stench either, reached Mitya.
But Mitya felt brave. “Do you know that it was me who saved you from jail?” he said to Vovka. “It was me, I did. If it weren’t for me, you’d still be there. Because I’m a good person, and you’re govno.” He spat in Vovka’s face.
Vovka bellowed and toppled him over. Mitya fell on the floor, almost hitting the edge of the sink with his head. Vovka landed on top of him. In a practiced gesture, Vovka unzipped his pants. Mitya let out a scream. Vovka must have been disoriented by the unexpected reaction, because Mitya was able to shake him off and run out of the room. He made his way past the WC and to the kitchen, and Vovka followed, slowly, wobbling, but with the determination of a wounded animal. Yelena Viktorovna and Dmitriy Fyodorovich had left the kitchen, but a bottle of vodka was still standing on the table. Mitya grasped it and froze with it in his hands in front of the same window where they had previously watched the storm as a family. Vovka approached, his penis still sticking out, his eyes mad. He wasn’t even saying anything anymore, just making weird bellowing sounds. When he reached Mitya and was close enough for him to smell the urine again, Mitya landed the blow. He did exactly what he’d seen Boris do, only his bottle was bigger, and had more liquid inside. It didn’t break but landed on the top of Vovka’s head with a dull thud. Stunned, Vovka fell to the floor. There was no blood.
Still holding the bottle, Mitya fell back on the windowsill and felt as if the curtain of the irreversible covered him. He had killed his cousin.
Dmitriy Fyodorovich was the first to enter the kitchen, followed by Yelena Viktorovna and Alyssa Vitalyevna.
“What happened?” Dmitriy Fyodorovich shouted. He approached Vovka and turned him over, recoiling first when he smelled the urine, and then when he saw his nephew’s penis hanging out.
“He attacked me,” Mitya heard himself say clearly. He would have expected to be crying hysterically by that moment, but he was oddly calm, clasping the bottle’s neck.
“Did he piss all over himself?” Dmitriy Fyodorovich winced.
Mitya did not answer. Alyssa Vitalyevna rushed through to him and took him in her arms. Mitya felt his hands and the bottle tremble against her, but the rest of him felt collected and cool.
Yelena Viktorovna took a small vial of ammonia from the kitchen cabinet and leaned with it in front of Vovka. As soon as Vovka inhaled it, he opened his eyes.
“What happened?” Dmitriy Fyodorovich boomed, and Mitya saw spittle land on Vovka’s face. “How the hell did you get the keys, and what did you do to my son?”
“Dmitriy, calm down.” Yelena Viktorovna was screwing the cap back on to the bottle. “I gave him the keys. I felt it was wrong that he had to be in the streets.”
“Suka, what is, blyad, wrong with you? You want him to kill our son?” Dmitriy Fyodorovich took Yelena Viktorovna by her wrists but immediately released her. “Mitya, what did he do to you?”
“He wanted to rape me,” Mitya said, simply. Just an hour ago it seemed like he would never be able to say that out loud to his family, but now he uttered it, and the world didn’t fall apart into small pieces. Instead, he felt good, unbearably light but also filled with a steely resolve. Mitya looked down at the bottle he was holding and felt the ring of aluminum around its neck. A sharp edge from where the cap was attached poked his finger. Like a needle, Mitya thought, and instantly felt the warm glimmer of protection from within, although he wasn’t sure he even needed it anymore: he’d learned to protect himself.
“You blyadskiy pervert,” Dmitriy Fyodorovich roared and began landing blows on Vovka, who stared around him, disoriented.
“Dmitriy, perestan, he might be hurt.” Yelena Viktorovna tugged at his arms. Dmitriy Fyodorovich backed away and sat down next to his nephew on the floor.
“He probably didn’t even feel it. You know how drunks are.”
“I’ll call the emergency brigade I know.” Alyssa Vitalyevna released Mitya from her grasp and reached for the kitchen phone.
Dmitriy Fyodorovich groaned: “What did we do to deserve this? Isn’t it enough that Seryozha is dead, now his offspring has to be this, too?”
Yelena Viktorovna briefly touched Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s shoulder and stood up to walk over to Mitya. She put an arm around him, and he felt her fingers playing with his hair again.
Mitya loosened his grip on the bottle, and it fell to the floor with a metal clink.
Once Alyssa Vitalyevna had called in the emergency, she reported: “We can leave him outside, next to the door. They’ll pick him up there. They know we don’t want him. I’ll help you, Dmitriy.” She approached her son-in-law and picked up Vovka’s legs. Dmitriy Fyodorovich grasped him under the armpits, and together they carried Vovka out of the kitchen.
“Uncle Dmitriy,” Vovka muttered, “Alyssa Vitalyevna!” But it was impossible to make out anything else he was saying.
When Yelena Viktorovna and Mitya were the only ones left in the room, she kissed her son’s temple.
“I thought you two were getting along fine,” she whispered.
Mitya stayed silent. He had no strength in him to protest, or to guilt his mother for not noticing enough.
Dmitriy Fyodorovich and Alyssa Vitalyevna returned to the room. They both looked somber.
“I have taken away the keys, and if you ever let him in again, Yelena, I swear I will kill you both,” Dmitriy Fyodorovich said to his wife with metal in his voice, and then turned to Mitya. This time his voice was almost tender: “If he ever comes home, if he, or anyone else, tries to do anything to you, tell me first, at any time of night or day. Don’t risk it.”
Alyssa Vitalyevna stood in the corner as if she was hugging herself. As Mitya looked around the room at the grown-ups in his family, each of them drained of emotion, in this moment, they all seemed to have aged by a decade.
All the next day’s news was about the tragic events of the previous night. They watched it as a family and were brought together again. No one mentioned Vovka, as if the storm had been the ultimate event of the previous night and there was nothing else to acknowledge. It was fine by Mitya; he had nothing to add.
Ten people were killed, and two hundred had been hurt in the storm. Tens of thousands of trees had fallen, and two thousand buildings had suffered irrevocable damage. Even the walls of the Kremlin were affected. Yelena Viktorovna gasped, thinking of all the poor people stranded in the storm. Dmitriy Fyodorovich exclaimed, angry with everyone and no one. Babushka was skeptical: she wasn’t sure there was anyone to trust. Everyone was blaming the country’s meteorological agency that had failed to warn the city government and the people of the upcoming catastrophe, in decay, like every other institution around them.
After breakfast, Mitya went for a walk. The air was crisp, cold; it was easy to breathe. Everywhere he went, he had to navigate fallen trees, debris, and in some cases, volunteer brigades equipped with saws and axes, hacking away at the blockades. Mitya stepped around them to stare and admire the precision with which tree trunks were sawed into chunks. Thoughts about Marina, and Vovka, and everything else, entered his mind every once in a while, but he preferred to keep it empty, unoccupied. There was nothing except for the neat circles of the trunk being cut in front of him.