4

When Mitya was ten years old, in the spring of 1997, Vovka, Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s nephew, came to live with the family after having served in the Chechen War. He was the son of Uncle Seryozha, Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s brother, who had died in the Afghan War.

When the First Chechen War started in late 1994, Vovka was eighteen. He had been conscripted into the army and undergoing training. He was stationed in the South of the Russian Federation, close enough to the war zone, and in the spring of 1995 their infantry regiment was dispatched to Grozny, which had been finally taken by the federal forces after two and a half months of intense fighting. The city looked exactly how one would imagine a war-torn city to look: with rotting corpses everywhere and no one to dispose of them. Even though Vovka was full of fervor to avenge his father’s death and fight the insurgents, the misery that surrounded him filled him with absolute terror. This terror permeated everything and everyone around him, even the seasoned fighters who had survived Afghanistan earlier and now tried their best to protect the newly arrived draftees from immediate danger. And it worked, Vovka made it through one whole year before his wartime was cut short by an unfortunate chain of events.

It was on a gray March day in 1996 that Vovka and some of the more experienced servicemen were crossing into a village in the Achkhoy-Martan region in a militsia car on a patrolling mission. As they approached, they saw a Chechen man praying on a rug, his feet in socks raised to the sky, his head facing Mecca. There was something suspicious about him to the seasoned fighters, and the men decided to investigate him. Vovka lost the coin toss, and he wanted to have a smoke anyway, so he got out of the car. It took no more than twenty seconds. Maybe thirty. As he lit his cigarette, the insurgents appeared out of nowhere and started shooting at them. It was later established that the three men inside the car were immediately struck and killed. However, when a bullet hit the almost-empty gas tank, the vehicle was engulfed in flames. Like in the Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, Vovka thought. He tried to save his comrades, not realizing that they were dead already. He was severely burned, lost his right arm, spent months in the hospital but pulled through, and was shipped back to Moscow. A few months after his demobilization, it was established that his mother, Aunt Sveta, could not take care of Vovka alone. At Mitya’s home, someone in the family could always be around when Vovka had screaming fits during the night or when he needed someone to blast him with ice water during the day to stop the agitation. Vovka stayed in the living room with Mitya, and they had to sleep on the same sofa, head to toe, which made Mitya feel sick because Vovka’s feet smelled notoriously bad. The ripe socks he changed only once a week always ended up in places where Mitya had to pick them up.

Mitya was not used to being around someone all the time, and so this intrusion made him nervous. Vovka barely slept, and whenever he did, he had terrible nightmares. So whenever Mitya woke up at night to go to the bathroom, Vovka was either going out or returning from a cigarette break on the staircase. He wore the same dirty pair of sweatpants and a white sleeveless shirt. The only thing that remained of Vovka’s arm was an awkward lump of flesh with stitching across, which was always in sight. It was always a curious sight to see Vovka smoke, as the end of his cigarette flickered red next to his scorched skin on the right side of his neck and face.

“Saved my life once,” Vovka always said about his habit. “Will save it again.”

Vovka didn’t have to go anywhere. He refused to apply to universities because everyone there would be “sissies and botaniks who would never understand him.” And unlike Dmitriy Fyodorovich, Vovka did not drink. So there was no hope that he would leave in the evening and return later, barely conscious.

It became problematic for Mitya to dress up and be Devchonka. With Vovka’s arrival, there was never a time when Mitya was alone. Each day was the same: Mitya came back home after school to find Vovka in his shirt and pants sitting on the sofa. Sometimes he saw him earlier, by the window on the stairs, smoking. His cousin greeted him with a dull nod.

Summer vacation came, school was over, and Vovka and Mitya didn’t spend a minute apart. Mitya had nowhere to go, and neither did Vovka. He didn’t notice Mitya. His eyes were glassy, his stare absent. When Mitya asked Mama and Babushka about the vacancy in him, they shushed him and replied, their voices lowered: “Chechnya.”

Vovka did not talk to Mitya outside of the scope of things related to his daily survival in their home, like when he needed his younger cousin to open up the sofa into a bed or heat some food on the stove.

“Vovka, tell me about Chechnya,” Mitya asked Vovka one day as they were eating milk noodle soup.

“What do you want to know?” Vovka asked without looking up, as he spooned the murky liquid from his bowl.

“Why are you always so quiet? Mama and Babushka say it’s because of Chechnya.”

Vovka snickered. It was not a good snicker, and Mitya thought that his cousin might punch him.

“This isn’t life here, Mitya. My comrades died, and I wish I died with them. I couldn’t save them and I can’t avenge them. Like I couldn’t avenge my father. The evil won.”

Mitya knew about the car fire, how his uncle Seryozha died in Afghanistan, how his and Vovka’s grandfather was a Great Patriotic War veteran. Dmitriy Fyodorovich had told him about Grandfather defeating Hitler, and how he fought the mujahideen in Afghanistan, but by the time the Chechen War started he had already pulled away and never explained anything to Mitya. Mitya wasn’t sure who the evil in question even was.

“Who killed your comrades, Vovka?” Mitya asked.

“The Chekhs,” Vovka answered. “The Chechen insurgents. Who else, Russians?”

Vovka thought that his little cousin was incredibly naive for ten years of age.

“Did they want to hurt you?”

“What do you think, Mitya? It’s war.”

“But why did you go to the war if it’s so dangerous? You could have died like your father.”

Mitya’s eyes were blue and innocent.

“Did I have a choice? Chechnya is part of our homeland. I had to protect it. That’s what men in our family do. Fight terrorists, fight fascists.”

Mitya knew that their grandfather was the only one of three brothers to return from the Great Patriotic War. The men in their family did not seem to be winning a lot.

“Do women fight in the war, Vovka?” Mitya asked his cousin before going to bed later that day.

“Not really, bratish, they’re usually too gentle,” Vovka answered, leaving for another smoke break.

Mitya resolved that he would stay out of the war along with the women, then.

That night he couldn’t sleep. He noticed that Vovka was moving in place, bending his legs, which seemed to be arrested by a tremor, breathing heavily and groaning. Mitya thought that he was dying, so he jumped up from the sofa and at his cousin, and started shaking him with all his might.

“Get off me, debil,” Vovka yelped. He had almost climaxed, thinking of his high school sweetheart, Mashka. He shook Mitya off to the floor with his healthy arm.

“Are you okay, Vovka?” Mitya asked from below.

“I’m all right,” Vovka spat through his teeth as he got up from beneath the duvet they shared. He took his pants off the armchair and walked out of the room. It was dark, but a large slice of moonlight fell upon the bookshelves. As Vovka passed through there, Mitya saw that something was bulging inside his briefs. A gun!

Mitya sat on their bed until Vovka came back. He smelled like cigarettes.

“Vovka, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Mitya told him.

Vovka did not respond; he took his pants off and lay down. He hadn’t washed his hand, and now the smell, eggy, thick, lulled him back to sleep.

Mitya couldn’t fall back asleep for a long time afterward and kept listening, but Vovka was silent and then started to snore loudly.

In June, some of Vovka’s school friends were on summer break from university and Vovka was invited to a gathering. He didn’t want to go and felt self-conscious about his arm. But Dmitriy Fyodorovich insisted that getting out of the apartment would do him good. The meetup was at a café on a sunny afternoon, and Vovka showered, shaved, drenched himself in cologne, and planned to get a haircut on his way. He put on Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s suit, which was a bit big and hung loosely where his right arm was supposed to be. The empty sleeve bothered him. Vovka didn’t want to look like someone who went around the metro trains begging for money. But if he turned around with the sleeve behind him, the way the striped fabric blended concealed his amputation. He almost looked handsome. He practiced his entrance and imagined how Mashka’s face would cheer up when she saw him.

When the front door closed behind Vovka, Mitya was deliriously happy for him to be leaving: finally, he had the apartment to himself and was able to dress up as Devchonka.

That day, he would be Madonna, the singer. He put on the tape of her songs that he had bought at the kiosk near their building and walked flailing his arms around to “Vogue.” He acted dramatically to “Take a Bow” and moved around like a sexy robot to “Human Nature.” Mitya used his grandmother’s curling iron on his hair, blackened his brows with mascara, and put on some red lipstick together with brown eye shadow to make his look more goth. He put on Mama’s bra and filled it with pieces of bread so that it looked like he had perky breasts. He finished off the look by putting on some dozhdik, long thin strands of tinfoil that he had preserved after the New Year’s celebration. It was exhilarating.

Way before Mitya had had enough with his dress-up and way before he had expected anyone to come home, the doorbell rang. Mitya sneaked closer to it, as softly as possible on bare feet, and crawled onto the stool nearby to look through the peephole. In it, he saw Vovka, disheveled and dirty. He was keeled over, holding himself against the wall with his left arm.

Mitya didn’t know what else to do, so he opened the door. Vovka entered, pivoting from wall to wall, and with him came in vodka vapors and the smell of throw-up. Dmitriy Fyodorovich’s suit was torn and covered in something yellow and disgusting, and from the top of Vovka’s head, a trickle of blood descended onto his white shirt.

“Vovka, what happened?” Mitya asked as he closed the door.

“Bratish, they’re sluts,” Vovka answered and plunged to the floor. “They’re dating Chekhs. My Mashka . . .”

Vovka had entered the café as he’d practiced, and Mashka’s face had indeed cheered up when she saw him. Her hair was shorter and more blond, and her eyeliner heavier, but she was still his Mashka. She fussed all around Vovka as if he were a hero, and it didn’t seem to matter that his arm was missing.

But then, her boyfriend showed up. He was a Chechen guy in expensive jeans and a T-shirt that hugged his two biceps. His skin was tanned, uncommon for a Chechen person, and he kept on talking about going on vacation to the Emirates with the family. His father must have been one of those city Chechens who do nothing and sell guns to the insurgents back home. As nausea came with the memory, Vovka tried to crawl toward the bathroom but instead painfully threw up into Alyssa Vitalyevna’s slippers.

Dmitriy Fyodorovich showed up drunk often enough for Mitya to know that the best thing to do was to put the drunk person in the bathtub and give him a cold shower. Besides, Papa did this to Vovka whenever he started raving soberly about the horrors of Chechnya. So Mitya grasped Vovka’s only hand and started pulling him to the bathroom. It wasn’t easy, but after a while, he was able to get his cousin through the corridor. Vovka threw up once more, in front of Mitya’s parents’ bedroom door. But once in the bathroom, he was easier to get into the bathtub.

Back in the café, Vovka had tried to stay patient. So, Mashka didn’t wait for him—they weren’t engaged or anything, that was fine by him. She’d decided to become an inkpot, to have a Chechen’s black khuy dip into her. Who could judge, Russia was a free country. But when her Chekh decided to pay for the whole table, in the end, Vovka lost it. There were four girls and four guys around the table, including the Chekh. The guys could pay for the girls. He didn’t have to treat them all like he was their benevolent master. Like they owed him something.

Vovka jumped him and hit him with his only arm. It was surprisingly easy, as if his body were whole again. But then Vovka realized that the ease of movement stemmed from the Chekh not defending himself. When the Chekh finally threw a punch, it was precise, masterful. Vovka spat out a tooth. With the next one, he felt his brow split. In the background, Mashka shrieked. “He is a boxer,” someone said.

Vovka did not remember leaving the café. Had anyone tried to go after him? Had Mashka cried? He recalled buying a bottle of vodka and walking home. He remembered buying a second bottle of vodka. It fell on the floor in the archway leading to their building’s courtyard and broke.

Mitya turned on the water and started pouring it down on Vovka. The gray suit gradually darkened as it became covered with water, and the vomit was washing off bit by bit. As Mitya poured, Vovka’s gaze became clearer. He asked Mitya to unbutton his shirt, then removed his clothes one by one until he was left in the bathtub wearing only his socks and his briefs.

Suddenly, Vovka’s eyes went from vacant to evil, concentrated.

He noticed that his cousin had colorful makeup smudged all over his face and that he was wearing a bra. He snatched Mitya by the hair.

“Why are you wearing makeup?” he asked.

Mitya did not know what to answer. Vovka’s stare, aimed at him, was horrifying.

“Do you want to look like a devchonka?”

Vovka felt the rage again. White-hot, scalding. Everything he loved, everything he fought for in the war had been spoiled, corrupted, taken away. He slid his arm behind Mitya’s back, and with all his might forced his little cousin into the bathtub. His back was against the drain, so the water was not going anywhere, and Mitya found himself touching the cold, stinky water beneath Vovka.

Vovka pushed Mitya off himself to where his feet were in the tub, and Mitya could smell the wet hair on his legs and his wet socks. Vovka raised his hips above the water while propping himself up on his shoulders against the edge of the bathtub, and pulled his briefs down with his one hand. His thing came out, large, pink, hard, and Mitya felt the smell of his body enter the air.

“You’ve seen this, bratish?” Vovka asked Mitya as he grabbed him by the neck and pushed Mitya down toward his pipiska. “So, you want to be a devchonka?”

Mitya’s face was a couple of centimeters away from the thing. The odor coming off it was unpleasant, and he tried to hold his breath.

“Mashka won’t have it, she’s got enough Chechen khuy,” Vovka groaned. “But you will, right, Mitya?”

It seemed to Vovka as if he were watching himself from above. He felt desire take over his every remaining limb, and though his little cousin was not an object worthy of such excitement, he was the only option available.

“Sosi, Mitya,” he said. “Suck it. Or I will tell your parents what you do. I’ll tell them you’re a rooster.”

The vodka fumes evaporated from Vovka’s blood and breath over the next day, as he slept until the afternoon. There was no yellow bile in the basin Alyssa Vitalyevna had put beneath the sofa where Mitya and Vovka both slept. Vovka’s dreams were, as usual, ridden with anxiety and claustrophobia. Mitya’s were worse.

Over the next few days, Vovka didn’t seem to notice his younger cousin. He tried to avoid looking at him, out of guilt, but also out of fear that the soft girlish face might look attractive to him now.

Mitya wanted to escape Vovka’s presence even more than before. His throat was sore, his jaw ached, and his body went numb whenever he smelled Vovka’s fetid warmth as he collapsed into shallow sleep each night. After Vovka had fallen asleep, Mitya took a book and went to read it in the bathroom, inside the empty bathtub, his bare feet against the hollow enamel. It was the same place where it all happened, and yet it was also the safest, somehow.

Vovka had not touched him again. He looked at Mitya rarely, and his stare was glazed, gray eyes clouded with something dissolute. Everything seemed to fall back into place, slowly but surely. At times, Mitya started wondering if the scene in the bathroom was a product of his imagination or a nightmare. The bruises inside his throat had healed, his jaw didn’t ache anymore, and nothing kept him connected to that night—except for the burning inside his rib cage that Mitya felt whenever Vovka’s leg rubbed against his in sleep.

Sometimes Mitya woke up in the night and noticed Vovka convulse beneath the sheets. He didn’t want to be kind to his cousin anymore or worry about him dying, so he watched him, pretending to be asleep. Vovka groaned and moaned and then, in a few minutes, went silent, wiping his hand on his thigh. Mitya recognized the noises and the stickiness of the liquid when he touched the spot on the sofa where Vovka’s hand had been. It was the same pearly whiteness from the bathroom. So it must have happened, Mitya thought. But his cousin didn’t mean it. He was drunk. He probably didn’t understand what he was doing.