All That Is Solid Melts into Air (14 page)

“That sounds very interesting, Mrs. Brovkina. This was in your work as a journalist.”

“Yes.”

“It sounds like you’ve cultivated an interest in engineering processes.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So why not attend our lectures? Do you feel your knowledge is too advanced?”

“No, sir. I had other commitments.”

“Oh, yes. I see this. Yes, right here. It says you’re teaching English at the Lomonosov?”

“Yes, sir. Two nights a week.”

“A former journalist who spends two nights a week teaching English at the university. I read these facts side by side and they say something to me. Tell me, Mrs. Brovkina, do you think this work is beneath you?”

“No, sir. Of course not. It’s honorable work. I’m very proud of it.”

“Good. So why are you revisiting your former territories? Surely that life is past you now.”

She takes time to consider her answer; she can’t leave herself vulnerable to the criticism that she’s not placing enough emphasis on the progress of the plant.

“There is a shortage of English scholars. A former professor of mine requested that I help out in this area. I feel that it is my duty to aid our collective efforts in any way I can.”

“Mrs. Brovkina, as I say, your work cannot be faulted. But there are some who would question your commitment to this particular field.”

She says nothing. She waits to hear his conclusions. She knows he can’t ask her to revoke a job where they need her skills, even if it’s only a couple of classes a week. The name of the Lomonosov carries some weight in higher circles. Mr. Shalamov will no doubt be reluctant to get into an administrative spat with figures who may have more authority than he has.

“I have never asked about your activities previous to joining us here.”

The thing that every sanctimonious pen pusher will always be able to hang over her.

“No, sir.”

“I would be wary, Mrs. Brovkina. It may appear to some that you’re treading old ground, reigniting old contacts. Some would say you’re inclined to venture into areas you have been encouraged to ignore.”

“I wasn’t aware of how it may appear, sir.”

“No. Of course. If you had given it some thought you would have refused their offer of work.”

“As I mentioned, sir, there is a shortage of specialists.”

“Did you know, Mrs. Brovkina, that there’s a shortage of highly skilled engineering instructors? Perhaps your time might be better served pursuing, say, a degree in precision engineering. I understand that you have scant family commitments.”

Scant? Yes. If you call queuing for food for four hours every weekend scant. If you call cleaning the communal bathroom or the stairwells or delivering laundry to Alina’s clients scant. Then, yes, she doesn’t have any commitments.

Don’t argue, though. The way to deal with this is to agree and work out a strategy later.

“Yes, Mr. Shalamov. These are possibilities I hadn’t taken into account. Thank you for bringing them to my attention.”

His tone softens.

“Think of this as an opportunity, Maria Nikolaevna. A position as an engineering instructor is highly valued. In this plant we have a history of supporting those who have made mistakes in their past. They are often hungrier, more loyal. You are intelligent and possess an excellent work ethic. Perhaps it’s time to ask yourself: ‘What are my ambitions?’ ”

She stays silent. It’s already been decided. They’ll take away the one thing in her life that provides any interest. The one activity that reminds her who she is. Next spring she’ll be studying for an engineering degree; there’ll be years of night classes ahead of her, dredging through stultifying textbooks.

He writes a note on a piece of paper, then very deliberately attaches it inside her file. He nods.

“Fine. You can return to your station.”

“Thank you, sir.”

At her workbench she releases the emergency stop, turns on the machine, and switches her mind to neutral.

Chapter 12

W
hen she removes her glove to open the door, her hand always sticks. Just for the briefest of seconds. The heat leaves an imprint that recedes back into the brass.

Hunched men sit in the stairwells flipping cards into a bucket. They use an effeminate gesture, squeezing the card between two middle fingers then flicking the wrist outwards, displaying an open palm to the world. The cards twist in their high arcs, producing a crisply satisfying note on landing.

Maria opens the door to Alina’s place.

“What is one hundred and fifty-three divided by seven?”

“Again?”

“What is one hundred and fifty-three divided by seven?”

She’s been here for two years, even though it was supposed to be temporary, a couple of months to get herself settled after she split with Grigory. But she’s still coming home to the folding bed in the living room, always attempting to inhabit as little space as possible, storing her few possessions in a cupboard under the window.

Yevgeni still considers her to be the origin of all knowledge.

“Well, let’s find out. Give me your pencil.”

There’s a communal toilet in the hallway, with mould slowly edging its way down from the corner of the ceiling and the tiles peeling off. The light flickers on when you twist the door lock.

What are my ambitions?

His question has played in her head all the way home. She’s having difficulty reconciling herself to an honest answer and is glad of the consolation in her nephew’s struggle with an abstract problem.

Yevgeni works the pencil round his copybook, numbers bursting from their appointed squares. His flaccid scrawl sinks diagonally down the page, rotating towards the end so the figures lie almost horizontally. 2 resting on its arched back. 7 leaning on its elbow, legs pointed outward.

She missed most of his early years, too busy travelling around the country reporting the small victories of working life, writing them up as though the workers were living sainted existences, achieving the greatest deeds, when all she saw was squalor and cynicism.

The newspaper sent her on journeys to faraway places, hidden corners of the Union where life continued in the most extraordinary circumstances, often barely any heat or light, toughened people who understood how to subsist with the most meagre of resources, reminding her of deep-sea urchins adapting to an almost extraterrestrial environment.

She had acted as a priest of sorts. There were times on those trips when people would tell her their most delicate intimacies, staring deep into the embers of a dying fire. Of course, they all thought initially that she was with the KGB, there to draw truths from them. But a few hours in her company and they realized she was too real to be truly invested in the system. She was too loose with her talk, too self-deprecating, telling little stories on herself, dropping small comments that could be interpreted as criticisms; though they would also hold up as factual statements if she was ever reported.

Salt miners in Solikamsk, grinding out a day’s work in those crystalline tunnels. Or the sovkhozy—the state farms—in Uzbekistan, where the summer crops spread out past the curve of the earth, where she interviewed averagely built men with enormous, hoary hands, hands so roughened by the weather that the skin was separated into pads, like a dog’s paw. The grain silos, military in their bearing, gigantic cylindrical tanks from which biblical quantities of grain would pour into the bellies of vast trucks.

Everything enormous. That was the overriding sense that remained with her. The utter, mind-melting scale of the Union.

And how, in the wake of such experiences, could she not write of the reality of the lives she met? She sees now that she always knew, at least on some level, that such words would lead to a revoking of her privileges, a banishment from her profession.

Maria considers her nephew as he sits on her knee, warmth flowing from him, seeping through her overcoat, which she has not yet taken off.

His finger has healed, which is a relief to all. Though there’s a swelling around the area of the fracture, like a huge, dormant boil. A physiotherapist in the next building showed them some finger-strengthening exercises, a series of bends and waggles which Yevgeni performed with religious devotion before bedtime.

They bought him a keyboard in the summer, one that sits on two metal trestles. A man that Alina does laundry for, a truck driver, smuggled it back from Berlin. Alina gave him two months free laundry for it, in addition to three months of Maria’s wages, most of what she had saved up since she arrived. But when he brought it in the door and set it up and Yevgeni sat down to play for the three of them, Maria couldn’t but feel a swelling pride, couldn’t think of anything else she’d like to spend her money on, a satisfaction that lasted for perhaps five minutes, until the neighbours started banging on the door, threatening to call the building superintendent, have them kicked out. It hasn’t made a sound in four months. They tried various strategies to appease the neighbours. They brought vodka and sausages around to those closest, but when others heard about the windfall, they wanted their share. People at the far end of the building started to complain, even though they’d have to strain to hear even the faintest traces of a note. So they stopped giving out gifts. They would not be blackmailed. Such behaviour from grown adults.

So the genius plays with no sound, which, at first, she thought a picture of impotence. Now, even though it no doubt hinders his advancement, she thinks it’s glorious. Sometimes Maria arrives home and sees him in the living room, her bedroom, and he’s flowing to the music, doing all the dips and turns of head and drops of delicate hands that she sees in the concert pianists, and at first she thought he was copying them, emulating them in the same way that kids take on the celebrations of footballers. After watching him though, on separate occasions, watching him when he doesn’t know anybody is looking, she realizes he’s doing it of his own accord, dancing internally as he presses down on the dull plastic keys.

But all has not been so smooth recently. His tempo is beginning to drift. It’s a slight quirk that seems to be growing exponentially. The auditions for the central school of the Conservatory are next April, and Yevgeni’s training has come unstuck. There’s a tautness in the household. Mr. Leibniz has asserted that the boy would either grow out of his musical difficulties or fall deeply into the disordered void; there’s no way to train it out of him. “Music is a sensual medium,” he says, “his style cannot be counted back to purity.” Maria passed the bathroom the other night and saw Alina gripping the taps, leaning back on her heels, head on the sink rim. Of course, if he doesn’t get in the first time he can always reapply the next year, but the boy doesn’t deal well with failure. Maria thinks that if he doesn’t succeed initially, he won’t get in. He has a fiery will. He blazes in his pursuit of the music. He’s not one of those vapid automatons she sees when they go to a recital there, when they sit in that pale-green room and watch stooped men with silver-tipped canes greet each other and assess the performer’s pedigree as if they were a racehorse. Afterwards each musician receives their applause utterly devoid of appreciation, bending as though their body has finally refused to carry itself upright.

They look at their audience and see only judgement. They proclaim in silence to the room that they’re talentless, worthless.
If only you knew the paltry depths of my ability. How painful it is even to stand here and receive such graciousness, how utterly unworthy I am
. So excruciating that they can barely keep their eyes open. It’s all such bullshit. Every one of them has an ego the size of that barge of an instrument they play. Maria always feels the urge to walk up to the podium, grab them by the shoulders, and shake them till their teeth rattle. Precious little orchids.

Her favourite thing about the Conservatory is to stand outside it, especially on weekdays—though she hasn’t done this since she moved to the outskirts of the city—when the students are practising and the windows over the courtyard are all thrown open and a great clatter emerges. All these styles and tempos and tones competing with each other. All that sweat being expended. You feel as if you’re standing in front of a great cauldron of creativity. All that discordance so full of life, so utterly at odds with the translucent figures that sit up on the rostrum at the recitals.

No, Yevgeni is definitely not of that mold, and it’s another thing she loves about him. There are tantrums. Sometimes after lessons he locks himself into the bathroom and refuses to come out. He throws things at walls. He bites his keyboard, bites his knuckles, pulls at his hair, kicks doorframes and lampposts, a tumult of rage inside the kid.

And yet there’s a joy to his playing; she delights in his fingers. Yevgeni has the lightest fingers. They skip along his knee while he watches TV. He often eats dinner with one hand, drumming into the tablecloth with the other. Sometimes they brush their teeth in the bathroom together and he hums scales as he does so. He jumps from foot to foot, singing each note in an almost perfect pitch, at least to Maria’s untrained ears. Occasionally he even sits at her old typewriter, working the keys to a hammered frenzy, and she likes the sound of this too, the rhythm of who she used to be, given voice to the wider world once more.

Symphonies are running on the record player every waking moment. Debussy accompanies her as she clips her toenails, Mendelssohn guides the spoon as she heats beans.

There’s a small tuxedo in Alina’s closet and a bow tie with a tiny circumference. They attend competitions in regional halls in the sleet and hail, Mr. Leibniz in the back row swaying his stick from side to side in a disciplined rhythm. The child at a piano bringing them there. A child in a mini-tuxedo.

Maria keeps him on her knee and guides his path through long division, adjusting his deviant numerals, reminding him how to fit the figures into their blue-ruled boxes. She lays out the numbers in neat columns and double-rules the answer line at the bottom. She double-rules it because this is what she’s always done. An unthinking practice passed down through the generations.

Yevgeni has a jar of pencils on the table, which she finds immensely comforting. Bunched pencils bring reassurance. The rubber at the top is often bitten off. She can see where he has made indentations in the metal bracket with his teeth. He sits on her knee and finishes his homework, and then Maria flicks his hair back from his forehead, kisses the peak of his skull, sends him to wash his teeth, and looks at him as he goes out the door.

There was a child of her own once, or the early configuration of a child or a potential child. But she couldn’t bring herself to have it. She didn’t want it in this world. And its departure was followed a few months later by the departure of her husband. After the procedure, Maria believed that if they had taken an X-ray of her, there would be a single line denoting her outer shell, and nothing else. The doctors would see her as she was, just a thin film of skin, no organs or intestines or blood flow. A single, contoured line. She often still thinks these thoughts, feels these feelings: her child’s absence, her husband’s absence. So many empty spaces in her life. And perhaps, she thinks, that’s why she feels such delight when she watches Yevgeni sway along a soundless keyboard. It dignifies that which is not there. It reminds her that life can be experienced in ways that she has never contemplated.

Maria and Alina grew up in Togliatti, an industrial town in the Samara region, in an apartment similar to the one in which they live now. Her father worked the ticket booth in the train station, playing chess round the clock with a small cadre of friends who would drop by at appointed times. As she got older, she realized that when her father was referred to by people outside the family it was in a hushed, strained, maybe sour, way. Stray comments leaked through the cracks of winter-planed doors. People cast glances over downturned shoulders. She was exposed to it from the earliest age, and it took some time to realize—by watching how the same adults treated her few childhood friends—that this was not the norm.

He disappeared one day, a few months short of her twentieth birthday. It was Alina who finally told her that the notebook their father kept in his small booth didn’t contain records of chess matches but a detailed account of the movements of the city. Who went where and when. Who bought what, talked to whom. What someone wore on a particular day, who they welcomed off the platform. Their father was the gatekeeper for the town, the all-seeing eye, passing the information along a chain of connections, resulting in actions which Maria couldn’t help imagining.

Then he too disappeared, and this was something they couldn’t account for. There were no answers to this development. A Saturday afternoon when he went to the hippodrome to lay a little money on the horses and never returned. They questioned everyone. Everyone they asked gave no reply. She accompanied her mother to the buildings of the men he played chess with, and they stood at their doors while a mother and wife broke down under the gaze of her daughters, physically knelt before these men, wrapping her arms around their legs in an action of abject desperation, and they looked into the middistance, viewing the ordinary motions of their street, her wretched family oblivious to them.

Alina is ironing shirts. Alina is always ironing.

“Now he’s having trouble with his maths.”

“I know, I gave him some help.”

“First his timing goes. Now the little genius can’t even count.”

“You can’t worry it away. It’s not like one of your creases.”

“Oh, and he’s your child. You’re right, of course. The past nine years I’ve been thinking he’s mine.”

“Be sarcastic. I’m trying to be supportive.”

“The kid doesn’t even listen to me, he listens to you. Since when did I become the enemy?”

“He doesn’t want to disappoint you. Just give him some time.”