The Nesting Dolls

by Alina Adams

  Daria talked to Adam, too. She apologized for the way she’d treated him in Odessa. He pointed out she’d hardly been the only one. She apologized for the way she’d treated him here. He pointed out they had greater concerns than maintaining good manners. She apologized for what she’d thought about him opportunistically turning in his mother.

  Adam said, “She would be happy to know her plan worked.”

  Daria asked Adam to tell her about his mother. She started by telling him about hers. They agreed the pair wouldn’t have gotten along. Daria’s mother would have found Adam’s common; Adam’s mother would have deemed Daria’s pretentious.

  They talked about her daughters, too. Adam, Daria realized, was one of the few people who was familiar with her girls, the way they’d once been. Adam filled Daria in on instances she hadn’t known about, like the time Alyssa, with Anya obediently tagging along, sneaked into the rubbish bins. They’d begged Adam for scraps they could use to play buried treasure. He’d given them an old herring tin and a wedge of a broken plate, which they buried in a shallow hole in the courtyard and swore Adam to secrecy. With memories all she had now, this new one proved as precious to Daria as the booty her daughters once hoarded.

  Daria never tired of talking about them. She even invited Adam to Anya’s grave. So many of the exiles had buried their loved ones there that it had turned into a de facto formal cemetery. A few of the German speakers had attempted to erect makeshift markers, using two sticks tied with twine to form a cross. Daria certainly hadn’t wanted that, yet she was at a loss for what might prove appropriate. It was Adam who’d dredged up a stone wedged into the foundation of his home—he swore he could replace it. Using a sharpened nail, he scratched in Anya’s name alongside the years of her truncated life. After a guard, without warning, mowed down the illegal crosses, the rest of the survivors followed suit, etching their own stones, this time with Communist-approved symbols.

  “My Anya,” Daria had chuckled. “A trendsetter.”

  The one subject that she and Adam never broached, however, was Edward.

  Edward had become, like so many others in the USSR, an unperson. Talking about Alyssa and even Anya brought the girls to some version of life as happy, thriving children whom Daria could pretend were in the next room, giggling and plotting mischief, waiting for their mother. Edward lived in Daria’s head. She didn’t try to guess his life in Odessa or imagine his growing older, as she did with her girls. The Edward Daria had fallen in love with existed in the past and the present, superseding any other, including the version she’d last spied guiding Alyssa up the departing train’s steps. Edward was a chimera. Adam was real.

  His presence was everywhere, lingering in the air, not quite a sight, not quite a sound, not quite a smell, but rather a heaviness she breathed in and out whenever Adam left the room. Daria found herself watching him, never head-on, always out of the corner of her eye, hoping to disguise the compulsion. She walked by him more than she needed to. She asked him questions to which she knew the answers. At first, she’d told herself, it was her way of making him acknowledge her, her way of fighting becoming invisible, her way of remembering that, despite the daily humiliations, she was still alive, she still existed, she hadn’t been erased like so many others. But eventually, Daria was forced to concede that she was doing it because Adam’s ongoing sexual rejection frustrated and confounded her to no end.

  Daria was not used to being overlooked. The guard who’d stripped her that first morning—she’d been able to understand his actions then better than Adam’s now. Daria remembered Mama schooling her that men were to be tortured by leaving them constantly wanting. She finally understood what that meant. And why it proved so effective. Daria felt like Adam was torturing her daily. Every time he ignored the purportedly accidental brush of Daria’s hand along his arm, every time he failed to notice that she was standing as close to him as she had when they’d kissed, every time he climbed into their bed and turned his back on her, Daria boiled with a sensation she refused to call desire, yet one that stirred a hunger even stronger than the endless craving for food or warmth or safety. Perhaps it was because Adam was the nexus of all three. Or perhaps it was something else.

  She couldn’t wait for him any longer. She couldn’t spend another night watching the rise and fall of Adam’s back, listening to his breathing, feeling the heat radiating from his body, and continue keeping her distance.

  She whispered his name. She’d never done that before. Adam startled fiercely enough for the bed to jolt along with him. But that was the extent of his response. He didn’t answer. He didn’t budge. She wondered if he’d heard or if his reaction was just a coincidence. There was no way he could not have heard. She wondered if he intended to act as if he hadn’t, nonetheless.

  Adam slowly rolled over, shifting his weight along the mattress so Daria almost slid into him. They were lying face-to-face in the darkness, Adam’s features coming gradually into focus. The shaggy beard first, then the jut of his nose, the ridge of his brows, and, finally, the query in his eyes.

  Daria raised her arm and gently stroked Adam’s beard with the backs of her fingers. As her hand brushed past Adam’s mouth, he fleetingly kissed it, sending a shiver through Daria she couldn’t have denied even if she’d wanted to. She didn’t want to.

  He kissed every one of her fingers, then up Daria’s palm, inside her wrist, past the crook of her elbow, and to her neck. She whimpered, and he abruptly halted, terrified he’d hurt her.

  Daria rested her free hand on the back of his head, caressing his hair, urging him to go on.

  Chapter 12

  Their son was born less than a year later, in the spring of 1939. Daria hadn’t believed it. The idea that her wasted body was capable of producing life felt as far-fetched as the deception that she’d ever had another existence outside the misery of Kyril—or ever could again. This was Daria’s life now. She accepted it would never change. She preferred it that way. The serfs had a saying: Never ask for a better czar. The devil Daria knew was preferable to the one she didn’t. She’d be content for matters to remain as they were and never to experience another upheaval.

  So Daria had ignored the swelling in her abdomen, telling herself that chronic hunger produced a variety of unpredictable changes, and going about her daily routine with near-ritualistic fervor to maintain the status quo. Finally, it was Adam who—over a dinner of stewed bear meat that Daria had managed to tenderize and, she hoped, also purify, by boiling it for several days—tilted his tin bowl and poured half of his allotment into Daria’s. He said, “I can hollow out a log for a cradle. Put it on runners, so it rocks. We should keep it in the central room, next to the fire. Warmer, there.”

  He was looking at her expectantly, so Daria had no choice but to nod in agreement.

  Adam visibly relaxed, as if a critical question had been settled.

  They continued eating in silence, which was a habit they’d broken over the past few months but now reverted to instinctively. At the end of the meal, Adam was the first to stand. He picked up their bowls and their spoons and carried them toward the hand pump that Daria used to wash dishes. Water had frozen in the basin below. Adam proceeded to crack the surface, using the same knife with which he’d skinned the bear. His back to Daria, Adam said, “I know a child of mine can’t replace the one you lost.”

  “No,” Daria agreed.

  And yet, a part of her was terrified that it might. Which was why she was so pleased, when the doctor who’d endeavored to help with Anya’s illness handed Daria her cleaned-off newborn, first to recognize she held a boy, and second to see that he looked nothing like his lost sisters. Alyssa and Anya had been dark-haired and green-eyed. This child was pale, with pupils as murky as a summer swamp, and a sprinkle of ginger fuzz along his scalp. He was smaller than either of her girls had been. But while their weight had felt ethereal to Daria, as if a light breeze might blow them out of her arms, this baby felt substantial, intractable. Her daughters’
bones were filled with seltzer water. Her son’s with cement.

  Adam waited to see her and the child until after Daria had rested, the air still reeking of blood. He’d provided the doctor with alcohol to sterilize her hands—no medical equipment was available even if she’d wanted to use it—and they’d boiled the sheet Daria labored over, as well as the fresh one they slipped underneath her afterward. Nevertheless, the threat of infection, namely puerperal fever, remained. Adam was loath to get too near either Daria or the baby, lest he endanger them.

  So it was Daria who turned his sleeping son toward Adam, hovering above them, and inquired, almost teasing, “Well? What do you think?”

  While Adam was often silent, it wasn’t the same as being lost for words. This time, he appeared to be the latter. “So . . . small.”

  “He’ll grow,” Daria responded with confidence a woman who’d already buried one child, not to mention seen dozens of others go into the ground beside her, had no right to harbor. Yet the sheer solidity of this infant buoyed a euphoria Daria couldn’t recall feeling following either girl’s birth.

  Adam nodded, unconvinced.

  “We should name him.” Another vote of confidence. Several babies born in Kyril over the past few months had gone unnamed, their parents waiting to see if they would survive first.

  “Yes,” Adam agreed. But he declined to offer any suggestions.

  Of the babies who had lived to receive names, their cautious parents had chosen the most prudent options, two boys named Vladimir, after Comrade Lenin; a girl named Stalina. One couple wanted to call their son Josef, hoping they’d be safe adopting Comrade Stalin’s first name. But when attempting to register it, they were advised it sounded German. They quickly changed it to the more patriotic Ruslan.

  “What was your mother’s name?” Daria asked Adam.

  The question took him by surprise, and the name popped out like a bubble. “Ita.”

  “Then we should choose a name starting with the same letter.” It was the rare Jewish superstition Daria’s mother had been able to stomach; both of her girls had been named for Edward’s late mother, Ada, and, coincidentally, Daria’s father, Abraham.

  “Israel,” Adam said, and they both laughed. That would be ridiculous for so many reasons. “Ivan,” Adam offered next, with less enthusiasm. It was the political choice. No one could claim Ivan wasn’t a Russian or Soviet name.

  “Like the village idiot?” Daria referenced the Tolstoy children’s story. “No.”

  Adam breathed a sigh of relief.

  And then she suggested, “Igor.”

  Russian enough. Prince Igor was the name of an opera by Alexander Borodin. Based on unexpurgated, if vague, historical events, it had yet to be outlawed. On the other hand, the moniker wasn’t so Russian that they’d end up raising a son with the name of a Cossack.

  “Igor,” Adam repeated, and Daria took it as assent.

  He proved a hearty baby, making due with the meager breast milk Daria was able to produce and the cow’s milk Adam was able to procure. Remembering Anya, Daria lived in terror of his falling ill, but, true to his word, Adam kept the fire by the cradle kindled twenty-four hours a day. Between that, and a fur bunting they had to wrap him in, the infant stayed warm and managed to survive the first year of his life with nothing worse than a handful of colds. Daria and Adam realized that Igor was too adult of an address for such a small baby and, within weeks, he’d become Gosha.

  With Gosha around, Adam and Daria now had much more to talk about. They either talked about the baby, or they talked around the baby, using him as a conduit for sentiments otherwise never expressed.

  “Give your mama a kiss,” Adam would say, lifting the squirming tot to Daria’s cheek long before he could have been expected to speak. “Tell her how beautiful she is.”

  “What a wonderful papa you have,” Daria cooed to Gosha after Adam came home with a duck-shaped pull toy. The red paint had chipped off its beak and one of the wheels rattled on its axle, but Gosha, who had never seen anything like it, was mesmerized, laughing and clapping every time he was able to make the duck move across their uneven wooden floor. “The best papa in the world! You must love him so much!”

  It was a flicker, but Daria saw it nonetheless, the way Adam flinched. They both knew it was the first time Daria had uttered that word in conjunction with either Adam or Gosha.

  She loved her son; of course Daria loved him. But it wasn’t the fearless love she’d had with her girls. Daria’s love for Gosha was cautious, measured, tempered by the fatalism that she could lose him in the blink of an eye to forces outside her control. As well as by the suspicion that every drop of love she spared his way was a crumb lost from Alyssa and Anya. Daria understood her younger daughter had no more use of it, and her elder had no way of knowing what she was missing. But all the same, each quiver of Daria’s heart whenever she looked at her beautiful, healthy, precious boy was followed by a spasm of guilt toward his absent sisters.

  It was different with Adam. Adam wasn’t like Gosha. Gosha was as much Daria’s child as Anya and Alyssa. But Adam wasn’t Daria’s husband. Edward was her husband. She loved Edward, not Adam; there could never be any confusion over that. She was grateful to Adam. He had saved her family; he had saved her. He treated her kindly, if not always warmly. But her years in Siberia taught Daria that the warmth you drew from a fire or boots was of more value than that which might sporadically eke from a fellow human being. Adam had provided for her and Gosha in that regard. It was what they’d agreed on, no less, and definitely no more.

  She shouldn’t have said anything about love. She’d been so careful for so long. Weighing every word was second nature to her now. The consequences of uttering the wrong ones were too grave to do otherwise. And yet she’d slipped. Granted, it wasn’t as dire as if she’d criticized the Party, or the USSR, or Comrade Stalin. It wasn’t as bad as if she’d expressed sympathy for the prisoners quartered in the adjacent gulag, or questioned the wisdom of planting crops unfit for growing in this climate. So why did Daria feel as if it might prove even worse?

  It was a flicker, a momentary shadow. Perhaps Daria imagined it. Maybe Adam hadn’t even noticed. He didn’t say anything afterward. Then again, when did he ever?

  Daria told herself it would be fine. There would be no negative consequences from her blunder. She kept telling herself that for several days. Right up until she was summoned to meet with the village administrator.

  The order came in the middle of the day, while Daria and Adam were at their posts. Daria had returned to work a few days after Gosha’s birth to prove that she was a productive citizen and not a parasite living off the labor of others. She arranged for a village woman, a mother of seven, to watch Gosha during the day. Adam’s home was larger and warmer than her own, and she was grateful for the opportunity to get her brood out of the cold. Adam was aware that their nanny also helped herself to a bottle or two from his still, but he knew it wasn’t to sell—it was for her husband, to keep his temper in check—so Adam looked the other way after each instance.

  “The administrator wishes to see you. Come now.”

  Daria sprang from her desk, then froze, terrified of the implications. She looked around desperately for some clue as to what was about to happen. Surely, someone knew. They processed different papers. Nothing happened in Kyril without proper papers. Yet, of the two-dozen workers packed into this particular office, not a single one dared glance Daria’s way. All eyes were fastened on the documents before them. Even their breathing, not to mention the steady hum of ongoing chatter, had stilled.

  Adam! Adam would know! Adam dealt with everyone! Adam knew everything!

  Daria spun to face him, only to encounter his expression of mystification and dread to match her own. If Adam didn’t know . . .

  Daria’s knees buckled even as she forced herself to lock them and obey the command to report to the administrator’s office in the adjoining bungalow. The head of their settlement inhabited a jer
ry-rigged wooden shack not much different from the one where Daria spent her days, except he and an assistant were the lone occupants. And the view from his window was of the admittedly lovely woods and not the privies the rest of them toiled downwind from. Plus, he had his own Primus stove for warmth, and the teakettle that sat atop it.

  Daria deliberately had little contact with the director. Her status as Adam’s woman kept her safe from guards who considered grabbing any female—from schoolgirls to grandmothers, knocking them down with the butts of their rifles, and raping them, often in view of their helpless families—as an entitlement due their profession. But a director was different. A director needn’t be afraid of Adam, even if he was one of Adam’s best customers, as evidenced by the bulging, ruddy veins obscuring his nose and cheeks: a drunk’s suntan in the land of no sun.

  Planted behind his desk, he looked up at Daria, looked down at a file of papers before him, then back up at her. He said, “You believe you have friends in high places?”

  Daria wasn’t sure what the right answer might be in this instance. The only thing she was sure of was that, whether or not she managed to produce it, her fate had already been decided.

  “Your husband and daughter were sent home, weren’t they?”

  Daria nodded.

  “Would you like to go home?”

  Another irrelevant question with no proper answer. “Yes.”

  “Then you are fortunate.” The director stood, rounded his desk, and approached. Daria braced herself, attempting to disguise her disgust and her simultaneous resignation. She remembered yet another of her mother’s admonitions: No matter how bad you think something is, it can always get worse.

  The director smiled and extended his arm, but, instead of lunging for Daria’s face, or her breasts, or even for her crotch, as she had expected and had watched him do with others he employed, he stuffed several sheets of paper into Daria’s hands and, enjoying her terror and confusion, grandly pronounced, “There has been a change. Your sentence has been commuted. You have been rehabilitated. You may return to Odessa.”