Read All That Is Solid Melts into Air Online
Authors: Darragh McKeon
Artyom stayed with Sofya in the nurses’ quarters and roamed the city for fresh food, which they paid for with Maksim’s roubles and which they would bring back and make into soup, which their mother would take down when she came back to sleep for a few hours. She came back to sleep and to lie to her children, to pretend that their father wasn’t in any pain, just resting.
At the end she couldn’t lie anymore, not when his tongue fell out. Not when she’d hold a bedpan at the side of his bed to catch the blood which ran in rivulets from no particular place in his body. Not when he would cough and spit up pieces of his lungs, his liver, choking on his internal organs. She would never tell them that she’d look at him and see him crying out to her as though from the end of a long corridor. His eyes wailing their pain, like an infant when it can’t express its need, can’t make itself be understood. She couldn’t lie and couldn’t face her children, so she stayed there beside him, slept on the chair next to him, unable to touch him because it would bring too much pain. Her children brought the soup to the attendant at the reception desk, who would deliver it to a table at the entrance to the ward. They never asked to see their father. He belonged to their mother now.
IN THE CLEARING
Artyom waits for the air to return to stillness, leaves vibrating from the thudding hooves. Around him, the bushes are dappled in red. Kalyna berries.
Those nights by the wireless, when the music had quietened and they watched shadows from the candlelight wrap around the plates and saucepans, his father would tell him stories. In one that they returned to often, the living and the dead were connected by bridges made from kalyna wood. They crossed easily from one side to the other, doing this so readily that after some time they could no longer distinguish between the two realms.
Particles skimming through the air. Underneath what he sees and smells and hears. Snowflakes concealing their star-tipped patterns. Animals curled up under the ground seeing out the winter, their hearts beating with only the faintest of rhythms. His father is here: a shadow dancing, merged into the life around him. Inhabiting the cells of these things, just as radiation, displaced atoms, inhabited his own living cells, changing him.
He would listen to his father’s tales, drinking his glass of milk, resting like a sick calf in his father’s arms.
A
slight buzz bores through the air. If you look across Red Square at this particular moment, you can see several people twist their heads in sync, turning their faces towards the noise. A small white plane edges its way under the clouds, emerging strange and determined. A ripple of awareness, people nudging each other at the sight, anticipation building as the sound gains clarity, closing in on them. The plane banks and sweeps its way towards St. Basil’s cathedral, looking like a fixed-winged gnat in contrast to the grandeur of the iconic, bulbous domes. Everyone gazes at the same point. Hands are raised, the scattered gathering pointing at the sight, following its direction, the plane travelling along the flight path of their fingers as if they are guiding it downward, the autonomy of the small craft abandoned to the will of the collective. The plane circles once more, lower now, the propeller hum dominating everything until it dips from sight. Those closest can hear the short screech of a landing and a rattle of wheels on the cobbles along Vasilevsky Spusk, the plane bouncing and jolting as it taxis along parallel to the Kremlin walls and emerges into the expanse of Red Square. The crowds stream towards it, waiting for the solid figure of Gorbachev to emerge, the premier descending from on high, landing just outside his office, but the plane contains only a lone pilot, a tall, skinny, dark-haired young man wearing sunglasses and a red aviator’s suit.
They encircle him, curious. Tourists thrust notebooks towards him, asking for an autograph. Others place bread into his hands, and he chews it sidemouth and nonchalantly takes the pens and signs his name. Mathias Rust. Alighting from the heavens with a twenty-page plan to end the Cold War.
T
he bus stops in the Arbat, and Margarita, Vasily’s wife, gets off and takes two steps and feels a hand on the small of her back. She turns quickly, ready to strike, then stops, shocked.
“Come with me.”
Maria guides her through an alleyway crammed with street vendors selling nuts and dried fruit, and there’s a smell of spices in the air, mixed together, indistinct, and they take several turns left and right, slipping through the crowd, and end up in the Mololodjosh Café on Gorky Ulitsa. It’s a Saturday afternoon, which means there’s a jazz band playing. They sit side by side in the back, in the dark.
“I’m sorry for all this,” Maria says. “I called to your apartment this morning, but there was a white Volga parked outside with a good view of your window. I wasn’t sure if you were aware.”
“Don’t worry. I’m aware.” Margarita repeated the words, ruefully this time, letting her spite roll over the syllables, “I’m aware.”
Maria waited for her to continue.
“I don’t know why they’ve decided to pitch up on my doorstep. This is the worst of it. If there was something I could do or stop doing, it would be so much easier. Some kind of solution to this. But there isn’t. I’ve gone weeks without sleep, thinking over the possibilities. I’m sick with fear. What would the girls do without me?”
The waiter brings water and a glass of cognac for each of them.
Maria says, “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make things worse. I felt I had no choice but to follow you. I haven’t had any word. I just need to know something. The hospital won’t help. There’s no one else to turn to.”
“You look as tired as I do,” Margarita says. “How long is it since you’ve heard from him?”
“I haven’t. I only found out just over a week ago, from the doorman in his building. If I think of all that he’s been through all this time. I didn’t even get to say good-bye, not that a good-bye would have been any help.”
“I barely did myself—say good-bye—it happened so quickly. He was here, at home, then he wasn’t. No warning of what it would be. I had no idea of the seriousness.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, although he didn’t let on. But when I think back, the way he played with the kids, I could tell. Lifting them up, turning them upside down. Things he hadn’t done since they were much smaller. A need to touch them. I should have known then. But we find ways, don’t we, to deny what’s in front of us.”
Maria nods. Margarita checks her watch.
“I can’t stay too long. I came to town to get a break, leave it all behind for an hour. But now that I’m here, I feel I should be back there. I don’t want them to wonder about me.”
“The girls?”
“No, the girls know where I am. I mean the watchers. I can’t even tell how many of them there are—maybe just four, taking it in shifts. If I think about them filing their reports . . . How do you wake up in the morning and go to a job like that?”
“They enjoy it.”
“Of course they do. My Sasha waves at them on the way to school. They wave back, all smiles, shameless. I told her they’re friends of Vasily’s, told her they miss him as much as she does. Told her they’d get upset if she ever talked about her father to them, they’d start to cry. I don’t know if she believes me or if she’s just putting on a show. I find such things hard to distinguish now. She never asks about her father. Maybe because she knows I won’t tell her anything. But it’s also possible she knows more than I do. Not a single question in the past two or three months. As if we’re living in totally normal circumstances.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“If you can call it that. I can hardly recognize it’s him. He’s developed this mechanical way of speaking to me. I know he does this to let me know he’s not keeping things from me on purpose, to remind me that they’re listening, but it feels like having a conversation with the memory of your husband. It’s only at the end, when we talk about my day, when he asks about the girls, says his good-byes, it’s only then his voice warms. It’s only then I get a little of him through the phone line.”
“So you know nothing either?”
“Not anything more than we see on TV. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he says. ‘We’re making a lot of progress here,’ he says. ‘The men are very committed,’ he says. So, I worry.”
“This is what we do.”
“This is what we do. You haven’t been together for years, but of course you worry. How can you not?”
“Has he mentioned Grigory?”
“No. I’ve asked him, certainly. But whenever I ask, he says he has a meeting to go to. He obviously says this when there’s something he can’t discuss. I ask him why they’re having meetings at night. Can they not plan their days a little better? He doesn’t even laugh.”
Maria rakes her fingers across her forehead.
“Don’t read too much into it—or maybe do, I don’t know. He can’t talk about anything, believe me. He can only tell me about such mundane things. If he could talk about it, at least then I’d feel I’m helping. A voice he can turn to.”
“He hears your voice. I’m sure it’s helping more than you know.”
“At least they have each other, going through what they’re going through.”
“We can’t imagine.”
“You, maybe. You’ve been out there, seen the country. Me, I even forget what the Arbat looks like.” Margarita looks around. “It must be six months since I’ve been down here. My own city.”
A trumpet player blasts out a solo, and they wait for him to finish. Margarita puts her fingers in her ears, attracting looks of scorn. The piano temporarily takes over, and the trumpeter twists the mouthpiece off his instrument, jabs the corner of his shirt in there, whirls it around, dumps spit from the body of the thing, buying time. He waits again for his moment, like a schoolboy with his hand up, eager to show off his abilities. When he finishes there’s a ripple of applause and Maria leans in close again.
“I’ve been to the hospital every day. They pass me from one desk to another. Nothing.”
“The hospital, please. Vasily hasn’t been paid in months. They’re refusing to look into it; apparently it’s not their responsibility. I took Sasha in to them, got her to pull up her shirt, show off her ribs. I thought I could guilt them into handing over something. But no, the woman didn’t even flinch. Now they just direct me to the ministry. So much paperwork. Pink and blue and yellow forms. Still no payment. I tell Vasily this when we speak; he says he’s made calls, he’s had senior people approach the ministry. He says they’re snowed under with administrative matters. There’s a lot to deal with, he says.”
“Meanwhile . . .”
“Exactly. Meanwhile.”
A few couples get up to dance, and the women watch them turn and sway.
Margarita speaks softly now, not taking her eyes off the floor. “Vera had a headache the other night so I sent her to bed early. Maybe it’s worry—who knows? I don’t want to think about it. You remember Vera?”
“Of course.”
“Anyway, she sleeps through the night and in the morning she doesn’t have time to do her homework. So I give her a note. She’s a good girl, Vera, she doesn’t want to get in trouble, already has her mind set on university, wants to wear a white coat like her father.”
A woman in grey rests her head on her husband’s chest, closes her eyes, rubs her hand along the back of his shoulders as they move.
“She comes home shaking. I’m wondering if it’s a fever, but there’s no temperature. Finally I get it out of her. Two men stop her on the way back, ask for the note. How they even know she has one is beyond me.”
“Maybe she was reading it on the street.”
“This is what I asked her, but no. She’s certain about it, and I don’t doubt her. She’s smart enough not to attract attention. But they stop her and they let her know they’re around, tell her if there are any other notes they’d like to see them.”
“She’s not so old.”
“And I have to ask myself.”
“That’s frightening for a kid.”
“I have to ask myself: why, if Vasily is doing their work, are they watching, listening, denying his family a decent meal? I mean, is this what it means to be a good citizen? I mean, we’re hardly a threat. I just don’t understand why they’re giving us all this attention.”
Margarita shakes her head, looks at her watch again.
Maria says, “I have a little money saved—very little—but I want you to have it.”
“Of course I can’t do this, you have your own struggles.”
“Grigory would want me to.”
“You have no responsibility to us.”
“I do. We are responsible for each other now.”
Margarita holds the sides of her chair, closes her eyes. “You coming out of nowhere. You don’t know what this means.”
After a moment Maria stands and says, “Please, it’s nothing. This is for me. If I can’t help Grigory, I can at least help you.”
Margarita rises too, takes her hand, kisses her cheek. “Be careful.”
“I will. You too. I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll try to send word, let Grigory know you’re thinking of him.”
Maria doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She places them to her face, to her forehead, then takes them away. Hearing her say his name.
“Thank you. I didn’t want to ask. You have enough worries. Yes. Thank you.”
“Be careful. I mean it.”
“Yes. Of course, yes.”
They leave in separate directions and spend their return journeys looking around them, scrutinizing every face.
Y
evgeni is coming back from rehearsal, and he makes his way home through the yards. Everything here is at a loss, all of it clapped out or cracked or just plain ugly.
The carcasses of car seats, and a one-wheeled cart, and old speakers with their cone-shaped diaphragms dragged out, and mattresses with their springs shot through, and plastic crates, and the only cars are burnt-out shells with no doors or wheels or fittings of any kind, just pure black skeleton.
Everything of local lore happens here. Shooting games and card games, human fights and dog fights.
He doesn’t quite walk through it, more around it, skirting the periphery, sidling alongside its hazards, because he likes to look; there is always something to look at. The days here are not made up of the usual things. No homework or dinner or laundry or shoe polishing or pictures of Lenin. Different rules apply here. You can spit on the pavement, for one. You can put your hand down your pants, for another. There are always guys talking in groups with their belts slung low and a hand down their front, guys with scars and shaved heads. You walk in a slow drawl here, you drag your feet, scuff your sole off the concrete. Yevgeni doesn’t do this. He’s a kid. He doesn’t have the requisite experience to carry it off. Some things he isn’t so clever about, but this is something he knows.
If you look hard and are lucky, there’s the possibility of seeing sex in progress, the actual act. Two kids from his class once saw a couple doing it against the wall, trousers around their ankles. Yevgeni couldn’t understand why they didn’t just take their pants off, but this was another element of the great secret that everybody talked about but no one really understood. But the validity of these claims is not in doubt, because everybody who has passed through—and all those who claim to have passed through—have seen the shrivelled-up condoms lying in the afternoon light, spent balloons, which, if you looked hard enough, or went close enough, had clear jism weighing down their ends, and careful if you inspect one of these with another kid, because the custom is to pick it up and slug the other guy in the face, and there are stories, too, of kids running home with matted hair. And the joke is that you’d never go bald. And the prospect of seeing the act in action, seeing a man and a woman enacting the thing, intrigues Yevgeni, intrigues him and disturbs him in equal measure, because this place has the lure of these kinds of possibilities, but he also knows that if he actually witnessed something like that he’d run home terrified.
He hasn’t come here to see sex. He hasn’t even really come here to see anything. He just wants to be on his own, out of the reach of neighbours and his mother’s spies. He wants to be somewhere where nobody is watching.
The recital is a month away now. He’s been asked to play Prokofiev’s “Tarantella” from
Music for Children
. A folk dance. A kiddie tune. How cute.
The evening has been explained to him. Yakov Sidorenko will play Prokofiev’s first three piano sonatas. Then Yevgeni follows with the Tarantella. The Tarantella is for spoiled brats whose parents trot them out when they have guests over. Look how well my Leonid or Yasha plays. He’s said this to his aunt Maria, but she’s told him he has no choice. Her boss has decided, and that’s what he needs to do. Yevgeni could tell she felt bad about it, though. Her voice drops off at the end of her sentences when she’s feeling guilty.
Yakov Sidorenko won’t respect him if he just plays some kiddie tune. Yakov Sidorenko knows music. Yevgeni went last year with Maria to see him play a Liszt sonata in Tchaikovsky Hall. Sidorenko tiptoed through the notes, then he leaned back and played as if he were just hanging on, as if the music were a train that would come off its tracks at any moment, until, at the end, he crushed the keyboard, the music curled up into a corner, took its last breaths, and died all around them.
And they want him to play a kiddie tune in front of this man.
There are tables stacked on tables, great pyramids of them, and trolleys with wheels hanging in the air which turn merrily to a gust of wind. There’s grass coming up through the concrete, patches of it all around, and there’s a basketball hoop nailed to a wall through which many things are thrown but never a basketball; bottles and newspaper, cans and rocks, everyone at some point needing to test themselves against the challenge of the circle.
Yevgeni walks and looks and doesn’t stop and tries not to look like he’s looking.
A group of guys in fake leather jackets roast potatoes over a fire in an oil drum. There’s always an oil-drum fire going. Some of the older kids from school are there, the ones who don’t go to class but just walk in laps around the playground, or who smoke in the toilets. There’s one guy, Iakov, who plays in a rock band, so it is said, and he must be sixteen or seventeen, wise to so many things that Yevgeni can’t articulate or even imagine.
The barrel has burn holes in the side, which set free irregular bursts of sparks, but these never cause the guys to flinch. Even when a spark catches their jacket they just nonchalantly sweep it away with an open hand.
Iakov raises his head and spots Yevgeni, who has paused, staring at them, and Iakov slaps his friend on the arm and waves Yevgeni towards them, and Yevgeni puts his head down and keeps walking, even though they’ve probably seen him—of course they’ve seen him—but maybe there’s a chance that they’ll let it pass. Actually entering into the centre of things is not what he intended. He hears a whistle, shrill and piercing, which echoes around the buildings. There’s no way of ignoring it, a whistle means that you’ve been noticed, and don’t even think about running. He can whistle through the gap in his front teeth, a reedy sound, but this one is like the blast of a militia siren, two fingers wedged under the tongue. How they do it is beyond him. All those hours running arpeggios up and down the keyboard and still he can’t make the one sound that really matters. Get Mr. Leibniz to teach him this instead.
He looks up towards Iakov and looks behind him and points to himself—
You’re calling me?
—a dumb cover, and Yevgeni knows it and Iakov knows it, but he has to do something; he couldn’t just be open about the fact that he’d brazenly ignored him.
The only way to get through this is to show abject deference.
Iakov waves him over again, and they all turn to look, everyone giving a skulking look, a look that growls, and he runs towards them, his arms pumping, constricted by the straps of his schoolbag so that he can only really move his forearms up and down, which he knows makes him look ridiculous but better that than keep them waiting.
Iakov throws an arm around his shoulder and bends him forwards, rubbing his knuckles off Yevgeni’s head.
“This is the kid.”
“Which kid?”
He takes his arm from around Yevgeni’s head and stands him up, displaying him. Yevgeni’s face is by now the colour of the fire, a result of the run and the embarrassment and the jostling, all tinged with the element of dread.
“The gym kid.”
“Gym kid? What gym kid? He does cartwheels on top of moving buses?”
“Little fucking tomato muscles. Big fucking deal. He’s got superpowers or what?”
“Hey, kid, show us a handstand on this barrel.”
A quick wave of stunted laughter.
The guys are all older than Iakov. Even Yevgeni can see that Iakov is struggling in their company. They have bicycle spokes shoved into their potatoes, and they hold on to the end of the rod and slowly turn the potatoes over the flame, taking them off every now and again for inspection or to blow off any embers that look as if they have potential. Yevgeni can smell burnt oil and metal and rubber or whatever they are using for fuel, and a faint tint of crispy potato skin dancing over the stench.
“How many times do I need to tell you this story? Hanging on to the gym rope, his cock dangling in the wind, and Sukhanov down below with that crazy worm vein on the side of his head practically exploding he was so fucking mad.”
Illumination all round, rods going vertical so they can turn and get a look at him.
“Hey, you’re the kid.”
A few cuffs around the head, loose-wristed though, friendly.
“That Sukhanov used to make me sweat out the contents of my ball sack.”
“Sukhanov would make his own mother bleed.”
“Up there for three hours, I hear,” Iakov says.
Yevgeni knows he can’t have been up there for more than five minutes, but he lets the story develop its own pathways, lets them stretch it whatever way they want: it’s their story now, not his. He looks down and smiles. You don’t smile in front of them. Be respectful. Know your place. You’re only a hero so long as you don’t know it.
“Hey, kid, this one’s done. Take it.”
They flick him a potato, a short backhanded whip that makes it twirl through the air towards him. Yevgeni palms it and then bats it between hands, tapping and blowing, way too hot to hold.
Iakov gives Yevgeni a wink and a sideways nod: show’s over, time to go home.
Yevgeni walks off, still blowing the potato, scuffing his soles off the concrete, because he’s done good, kept his mouth shut, stuck one to the man.
“Fucking Sukhanov. Let him come round here, I’ll show him a fucking headstand.”