The Russian Word for Snow

by Janis Cooke Newman

  Volodya dragged out a round-bellied barbecue and began dropping black briquettes into it.

  "What's going on?" Ken asked Elena.

  "Is celebration."

  "A Russian holiday?"

  "For lawn furniture."

  I rested my chin on the top of Alex's head shut my eyes.

  Janis Cooke Newman 185

  "Do not worry," Elena said to me. "Yuri will get your child."

  I smiled into her large features.

  "And if not this one"—she raised a hand to point at Alex— "he will get you another one." Her raised hand flicked in the direction of some children playing on the swings.

  I didn't think I'd heard her correctly. Didn't think it was possible she could have held out this comfort and then taken it away so quickly.

  Elena opened her wide mouth in a smile. "Other family Yuri work with, there is trouble with papers. So Yuri say, 'Forget this child, I get you different little boy.' " She nodded her large head. "Yuri always get children for his families."

  I wrapped my arms around Alex's chest, pulling him so close the brim of his duck hat pressed against my throat. "I want you to leave," I said to Elena.

  She looked confused, and her gaze turned inward, as if searching for an alternate meaning for the English words. "But I tell you this story to help you. So you understand that Yuri will not let you leave without child."

  I stood and walked away from her, taking Alex into a wooden playhouse with a swan carved into the roofline. Through the playhouse window, I could see Elena talking to Ken, her hands pressed together as though begging him for something.

  "Don't you understand?" he was shouting at her. "This is the last thing we want to hear from you!"

  Ken turned away from her, and Elena walked across the weedy little yard toward Yuri and the white-coated women. She spoke to Yuri, pointing to Ken and me in the playhouse with her man-sized hands. Yuri did not seem to care that we were sending his translator away. He just shrugged at Elena and turned back to the little orphanage director.

  Elena trudged slowly up the gravel drive. She turned back once to look into the playhouse before going through the metal gate.

  Ken and I stayed in the playhouse until the woman in charge

  186 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  of the three-year-olds shouted at them, making them leap from the swings and scramble to be first, so they could hold onto one of her fingers. Then we knew it was time to bring Alex inside for his nap.

  When we left the orphanage, Volodya was spraying lighter fluid on the charcoal, making the flames rise up near the overhanging branches of a tree. Above the fire, the heat distortion made his face appear liquid, as if it were about to melt and change shape. The white-coated women still hovered around Yuri, pale planets circling a dark sun. He pretended to stick his hand in the fire, holding it just above the flames and making the orphanage director cover her mouth with alarm. Someone had brought out the radio from the tearoom and turned up the volume. Russian folk music blared across the little yard.

  As we walked past, Yuri held up his big gold watch, pointing to the face and nodding, as if to let us know he was keeping track of the time.

  Ken and I ate lunch at Patio Pizza next door to the Intourist, because the menu was in English and we'd given up on Russian restaurants. Then we took the Metro back to the orphanage, scrutinizing the shopping bags on the laps of the other passengers if they looked large enough to contain something the size and shape of a bomb.

  Near the orphanage, music and the smell of burning meat floated over the high stone wall. When we came through the metal gate, we saw Yuri stretched out on one of the new lounge chairs. He was drinking vodka from a bottle.

  "Son of a bitch," Ken said, making Volodya look up.

  Volodya was resting on the lounger beside Yuri. He'd kept the reclining back upright, I supposed to prove he was still on duty. The white-coated women sat around them, sipping what looked like vodka from the same porcelain teacups Alex took his juice in.

  When Yuri saw us, he sprang out of the chair and shoved the bottle at Volodya.

  "I go!" he shouted, giving Volodya a violent wave behind his back. "I go to check on your papers!"

  Volodya ran to the car, the vodka bottle still in his hand. Yuri stood in front of us, wiping his brow. There was a dark smear of burned meat at the corner of his mouth.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" Ken shouted at him.

  "Is plenty of time," Yuri said, once again showing us the face of his gold watch.

  Volodya backed his shiny car down the driveway, spraying gravel on the new lawn furniture.

  "Good-bye," Yuri yelled as he climbed into Volodya's car. "Good-bye," he shouted as they sped out the gate.

  "Son of a bitch," Ken repeated to the white-coated women. They stared back at him with baffled looks.

  That night we packed our things. We were leaving the Intourist. In the morning, we'd move into Anna's apartment behind the old KGB headquarters. Anna was leaving for Spain on vacation, and her daughter was studying in France. For half of what we were paying at the Intourist, we could stay in her apartment. "You will like it," she assured us. "It has been in my family from before the revolution."

  I threw a pair of jeans on the bed. Stitched inside the fly was the Cyrillic H the Intourist laundry had put there: H for the N in Newman. I packed the jeans on top of the child-sized overalls and T-shirts that had been moved from the Radisson to the Intourist, and were now going to Anna's prerevolutionary apartment. The small clothes looked flattened, as though they'd become a permanent part of the suitcase's lining.

  "I think we should tell Yuri that for every day he doesn't get our papers signed, we're taking $100 off the money we owe him," I told Ken.

  188 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  "Can we do that?"

  "What can he do to us? He wants his money."

  "But Yuri can't make anybody sign."

  "Not if he's at the orphanage drinking vodka."

  "You think it'll work?"

  "It's the only thing I can think of."

  Ken tugged on the sleeve of the linen shirt he'd been wearing every night to dinner. "OK."

  And he called the number we had for Yuri's wife.

  "This . . . is . . . Ken . . . Newman," Ken said into the phone, the space between each word making the information sound weighted and portentous.

  On the other end, I could hear a shrill voice repeating, "Da, da, da" —little bursts of assurance that the speaker knew who Ken was.

  "Yuri pazvanyet," he said, using the Russian for "to telephone." "Tonight," he said in English, because our phrase book didn't have a translation for that word.

  "Tell her it doesn't matter what time it is."

  "Even if it is late."

  Excited Russian poured out of the receiver.

  "What's she saying?"

  "How should I know?"

  Ken spoke into her stream of words. "Tell him to call us tonight. Pazvanyet."

  Yuri's wife was talking very fast, barely giving herself time to breathe.

  "OK?" Ken asked.

  Another string of "Da, da, da," flowed out of the phone.

  Spasebah, he said into it, and hung up.

  "Do you think he'll call us tonight?" I asked Ken.

  "If not tonight, then tomorrow."

  But tomorrow was Friday, the last day our papers could be signed before Sunday's election. And just today, the Moscow Times

  had said that Gennady Zyuganov, the Communist candidate, could become the next president.

  "Children who grow up in orphanages are put on the street at sixteen," Maggie had told me.

  "Then what happens to them?"

  "The girls become prostitutes."

  "And the boys?"

  "They wind up in jail or dead."

  I touched the small flattened clothes at the bottom of my suitcase.

  "How far are we from Finland?" I asked Ken.

  "Where?"

  "Didn't Yuri
say he drove there once to pick up a car?"

  I flipped through the pages of the guidebook, looking for a map. "We can take Alex there. Cross the border."

  "What're you talking about?"

  "Here it is. Just past St. Petersburg." I measured the mileage with my fingers. "Less than 200 kilometers."

  Ken stood beside the suitcase with the wrinkled shirts in his hand. "We can't just take Alex out of the orphanage."

  "We bring him outside every day and nobody watches us. If we left right away, we'd have two, maybe three hours before anyone would even know we were gone."

  "What about the guard at the gate?"

  "He's not there half the time."

  "But how are we going to get to Finland?"

  "We rent a car and park it around the corner from the orphanage."

  "But we don't have any papers for Alex. Who are we going to say he is?"

  "When we get to the border, we'll put him in the trunk."

  "Are you crazy?"

  "Just until we get across."

  "What if he cries?"

  190 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  "Why do I have to think of everything?" I threw a balled-up pile of underwear at him. "You could help, too."

  "I am. I'm thinking of what could go wrong."

  "Cough syrup," I said, suddenly remembering the bottle of children's cough syrup we'd brought to help Alex sleep on the flight home. "We'll give him cough syrup before we get to the border."

  "Then what?"

  "Then we go to the U.S. Embassy and get them to help us."

  Ken sank into the bed. "When are you thinking of doing this?"

  "The election's Sunday."

  "Do you really think it would work?"

  I sat beside him. Now that Ken had started to believe in the Finnish kidnapping plan, it sounded stupid and risky.

  "I think we could get to Finland," I said. "And I think there's a good chance we can get across the border. But I just don't know what the embassy will do once we get there."

  I started picking up the underwear.

  "Why don't we wait and see what happens on Sunday," he said.

  I nodded and tossed him some boxer shorts. But I was thinking, if adoptions were stopped, I knew it wouldn't matter how stupid and risky the Finnish kidnapping plan was.

  We'd finished packing and were just leaving the room to go to dinner when the phone rang.

  "It might be Yuri." I picked up the receiver.

  "This is Anna. There is good news for you."

  Who is it? Ken mouthed.

  "Yuri's wife has telephoned me. Your papers have been signed."

  "Is it Yuri?" Ken tapped his fingers on the base of the phone. "What's he saying?"

  I couldn't think what to tell him first.

  "It's Anna." I put my hand over the mouthpiece.

  "You have heard me?" Anna asked. "The umm . . . signature came today."

  "Tell her about the ultimatum," Ken said, "about the $100."

  "Our papers have been signed." I felt a shiver like an unexpected breeze blowing across wet skin.

  "What?" Ken yanked on the cord, almost pulling the receiver off my ear.

  "Yuri's wife, she try to tell Ken, earlier when he call."

  "Did you talk to Yuri?" I asked Anna.

  "No. Yuri is at party."

  "Tell him to call us tonight."

  "It will be late. After midnight, I think."

  "I don't care."

  "All right. So, now you are happy, yes?"

  I felt I was poised on the edge of being happy.

  "Just have Yuri call us." I hung up.

  "So our papers are really signed?" Ken asked.

  "That's what Yuri's wife said."

  He grabbed both my arms. "That means we could take him tomorrow. Bring him with us to Anna's."

  We smiled at each other with clenched teeth, the way you do when something is too good.

  "Do you think it's true?" I asked him.

  "It could be."

  "Anna didn't talk to Yuri, just his wife."

  "You think she doesn't really know?"

  I shrugged.

  "When is he supposed to call?"

  "Sometime after midnight."

  Ken looked out the dirty Intourist window to where it was still light over the Kremlin.

  We walked to a Spanish restaurant that was hot and noisy and full of foreigners. The restaurant had splashes of bright pink

  192 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  paint on the walls, like someone had thown Pepto-Bismol there, and served pitchers of sangria that cost thirty dollars.

  Gypsies with guitars played music and danced between the crowded tables. The men wore bright shirts with food stains on the bottoms of their full sleeves. The women had multicolored scarves tied around their hair, and smudges of mascara beneath their eyes.

  "Should we get the sangria?" Ken asked me. "To celebrate?"

  "I don't know."

  "Our papers could be signed. They probably are."

  "Then let's get it."

  And when the waiter came by, Ken ordered the sangria with a sweep of his arm that made it seem he was buying pitchers for the entire restaurant.

  The sangria was purple, like the wine we'd drunk in Boston the night my mother died.

  "Should we toast?" Ken held up his wine glass. It had slices of orange and lemon floating in it.

  I touched the stem of my glass. One of the gypsies pounded his feet behind my chair, and it sounded like bursts of machine-gun fire.

  "Do you think Yuri's wife would lie because she knows we're mad at him?" I asked.

  "It's possible."

  "And maybe tomorrow Yuri'll say it was a mistake, that his wife was wrong?"

  The gypsy circled our table. His stamping feet vibrated the slice of orange in my glass

  "That probably won't happen," Ken said.

  "You think we'll be able to take him tomorrow?"

  "I think so."

  The gypsy clapped his hands over our sangria. Sweat was dripping off his forehead. "Hey!" he shouted at us.

  "Let's toast," I said.

  Ken touched his glass to mine.

  I drank the purple wine, hoping that tomorrow I wouldn't have to think of myself in this hot. noisy restaurant, clapping along with a gypsy and toasting nothing with expensive sangria.

  We sat up in the room, waiting for Yuri to call. "He's not calling tonight," I said at 2:00. Tin taking a sleeping pill." And I fell asleep with the corner of the book on Buddhism pressed up against my cheek.

  When the phone rang, the ringing became part of my dream. I tried to listen to Ken's voice, make out the words, but it was like swimming through Jell-O.

  "That was Anna." He climbed into bed with me. "She talked to Yuri."

  I turned to face him.

  "We can get Alex tomorrow."

  For the first time in months, my chest felt warm. It was as if the cold, sharp-edged thing that had lodged itself there— the thing that had formed the frozen morning the first Volodya had driven us to the airport without Alex—had finally melted.

  "He's ours." Ken murmured the words into my neck, saying them over and over until they became the soft sound of his breathing.

  Later, in the colorless light of dawn, I woke to find Ken looking at me.

  "Let's talk about him." he whispered.

  "All right." And I described for him even- detail of what our life with Alex would be like. But I must have dreamed it, because all the while I was talking. I could hear Ken's voice, describing the very same thing to me.

  Detsky Mir (Children's World)

  We rushed into the room with the big playpen, Ken waving the piece of paper we'd gotten from the director's office like a flag.

  "Look," he said to Irina. He showed her the paper without letting go of it.

  She read the words and pressed her hand to her mouth.

  I scooped Alex out of the playpen, flying his legs over the railings. Laying him on the metal changing tab
le, I unzipped him from the terry-cloth pajamas he'd been dressed in for three days, the stitched-in bunny above his heart stained orange from something Irina had fed him. The cotton rag tied around his hips was soaked. I replaced it with a disposable diaper from a package we'd bought that morning in the pharmacy across from the Intourist.

  It was odd to be dressing Alex without the presence of Irina's broad body behind me. She was standing in a corner, folding and unfolding the same sheet.

  The overalls from the bottom of my suitcase were too big for Alex. They'd been sized by age, twelve to fifteen months. Alex would be fifteen months in a couple of days, yet I had to fold up the cuff of the overalls three times before I could find his feet.

  This will change now that he lives with me, I thought.

  Irina held out a teacup, showing me the purple juice inside. "Pazalsta?" she asked. Please?

  I nodded, granting her permission.

  196 THE RUSSIAN WORD FOR SNOW

  She tied a large cloth around Alex's neck to protect his new clothes and tilted the china cup to his lips. He drank, exhaling into the cup between each sip. When he finished, Irina untied the cloth and used it to wipe the purple from his mouth. Then she folded all the edges into a small square and held it against her side, making me believe she was intending to save it.

  Ken danced around us, videotaping Alex drinking, Irina preserving the cloth.

  Outside, Volodya was beeping the horn of his shiny car.

  I picked up Alex, turned toward the door.

  The other children were standing at the pink and white railings, lining up the way they did whenever Irina brought in the trays of their mashed-together food. But instead of crying and holding out their arms to be next, they were silent, staring at Alex in his bright new clothes.

  I looked into Olya's slightly crossed eyes. In a few weeks the couple from New Jersey would arrive for her with their own piece of paper from the director, their own collection of oversized American clothing.