by Lara Vapnyar
Mike’s car wasn’t in the driveway, though. They knocked on the door of the house, but there was no answer. There wasn’t anybody in the shed either, but they saw a big box on the ground with a slit on the top and a handwritten sign: “Be back soon—leave your orders here.”
Ben groaned. “I told him I was coming. He said he’d be here all day.”
He took out his phone to try Mike’s number, but of course there was no service. “We’ll have to wait,” he said.
They walked behind the shed along the little path that led to the thin birch grove.
Ben took his jacket off, spread it on the grass and sat down, leaving a space for her. Lena sat down next to him. The setting sun lent a rosy glow to Mike’s house, to all the wooden moose and bunnies, to Ben’s face. She wanted to touch him, which shouldn’t have been difficult considering what they had already done, but for some reason she couldn’t. She wondered if Ben felt the same.
“Time for the next installment of your story,” he said.
“Okay. Where was I?”
“You were talking about the heat wave and how it made everyone engage in some sort of pornodance.”
“Oh, yes. Lambada! Okay, so, the next day it was even hotter in the camp. We could barely get up in the morning. Throughout the day everybody talked about the heat wave, how stuffy it was at night, and how sweaty we were, and how stinky our clothes were, and what were the best foods to eat when it was hot, and how awful the soldiers must feel in their uniforms, and all the possible ways to stay cool—actually there was just one—to stay in the shade and splash yourself with cold water from time to time.
“The cafeteria smelled of burning fat that day. The first course was already on the tables—steaming bowls of lamb soup, dark brown with gleaming yellow circles of fat. The kids started to make gagging sounds. All those ‘Yucks!’ and ‘Blehs!’ and ‘Urgghs.’ They were so good at it that we missed the moment when Sasha Simonov started to throw up for real. Inka dragged him outside, but it was too late, and Yanina’s aunt came and mopped up the vomit, cursing and looking at me as if I’d been the one to make the mess.
“ ‘Are they kidding?’ Inka said when we saw that they were serving meat dumplings as the second course. I don’t know if this was Sasha’s fault or not, but nobody wanted dumplings. Most of the kids sat breaking them up with their forks, until Alesha Pevtcov discovered that dumplings were just perfect for tossing, especially if you put them on the tip of a fork, and hit on the dumpling-free end of the fork. Other kids followed suit, and it caught on with the kids from the other units. I exchanged panicky glances with Inka—we had absolutely no strength to deal with a food fight, and then, by a stroke of luck, Alesha hit Sveta on the face. She charged forward, grabbed Alesha by the collar and said that if he threw one more dumpling, she would take the whole pile of them from the kitchen and shove them down his throat, one by one, until he died. Alesha turned red and started to cry. Other kids froze. Even the kids at the adjacent table grew silent and stopped throwing dumplings. I couldn’t think of anything to say or do, but Inka could. ‘Shut up and stand up!’ she yelled. ‘We’re going back to the unit.’ Her face glowed with power. Or maybe her face just glowed because of the heat, but I still admired her.”
Ben yawned and lay down on the grass.
Lena fell silent.
“No, no, don’t stop,” he said. “I love listening to you.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Listening?”
“Of course! Do you mind if I close my eyes, though?”
Lena smiled.
“When they got back to their units, Myshka asked Inka what she did when she went on a date.
“ ‘Not much,’ Inka said. ‘We walk, we talk.’
“ ‘Do the boys kiss you?’
“ ‘Shut up, Myshka.’
“ ‘So they do. And what do they do then?’
“ ‘Nothing.’
“ ‘Nothing? Really? Don’t they fuck you? Not even a little?’ ”
Ben stirred and mumbled, “Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.”
“And then there was the performance of Sveta Kozlova.
“I was in the girls’ bedroom stripping the beds, when Inka ran in choking with laughter. ‘Open the window, quick, you’ve got to see this, Sveta is doing Yanina!’
“There was a circle of kids by the porch. Sveta was in the center apparently waiting for a cue. Then, Alesha opened his mouth very wide and began to sing the lambada. Just ‘A . . . Aaaa . . . ’Aaa . . . a’aa . . . aa’a’ like this, but he carried the tune well. And Sveta pressed her hand to her chest and sighed deeply, exactly like Yanina did. Then she began to move. The resemblance was simply amazing. She even looked like Yanina a little. The same beefy little body, the same flush on her plump cheeks. At the end she raised her arms up just like Yanina did, only Sveta didn’t pretend that she did it to snap her fingers. She put her arms in a circle and moved them up and down as if she was hugging somebody.
“ ‘Yasha, my darling, kiss me, kiss me,’ she said, and made some loud smooching sounds to the delight of the kids.
“ ‘Who is Yasha?’ I asked Inka.
“ ‘Don’t you get it?’
“ ‘No.’
“ ‘Yasha . . . Yakov . . . Ring a bell?’
“ ‘No! It can’t be!’
“But Inka gave me a meaningful nod.
“There was only one Yasha at our camp. The camp director. Yakov Petrovich Vedeneev. I started to laugh. Yanina and Vedenej? No, this couldn’t be true.
“ ‘Oh, Yasha! I love you so much,’ Sveta continued. ‘Fuck me. Fuck me, please. Just a little bit.’ ‘Wait, Yanina Ivanovna, wait, let me get it out of my pants, it must be stuck.’ ”
Lena looked at Ben. She expected him to laugh, but he only smiled without opening his eyes.
“Inka flung the window open and yelled that Sveta must stop and shut up. Amazingly, Sveta stopped right away. She must have felt satisfied that she had done enough damage.
“Later that day, when we went to the laundry room with the pile of dirty sheets, we asked Galina if there was any truth to Sveta’s playacting.
“ ‘Come on, girls,’ Galina said, ‘Vedenej and Yanina? They are husband and wife. They don’t exactly publicize it, but everybody knows that.’
“Nadezhda peeked from behind the shelves.
“ ‘Vedenej and Yanina? I can’t believe you didn’t know!’
“More counselors were coming in with their laundry and joining in the discussion. It turned out that everybody who had been to this camp before knew the story. Some knew just parts of the story, but others eagerly supplied missing links, as well as their opinions on the story. It went like this: a new pile of laundry unloaded onto the floor, a fresh bit of info added to the story. But the counselors didn’t leave after they dumped their laundry, they stayed to listen to what the others would say, and to correct them in case their info or their opinion was wrong. It seemed like the story expanded along with the pile of laundry on the floor. And the voices got louder and louder trying to outshout the drone of washing machines and each other.
“The story went like this.
“ ‘They met here six or seven years ago. Vedenej was married then. You should’ve seen how Yanina was throwing herself at him! Well, Vedenej used to be very into her as well. Must be the sex stuff. Yanina must have done something—you know—that a decent woman wouldn’t do.’ (Last Tango in Paris! Butter! flashed through my mind.)
“ ‘But when the summer was over, Vedenej called it quits and went back to Moscow to his wife. He thought he got off easy. Right! Yanina looked up his home address—pulled some serious strings at the Ministry—and went straight to his apartment. Nobody knows what she did, whether she enticed him or threatened him, but the fact is that he divorced his wife and married Yanina. The main problem is that Vedenej is getting sick of Yanina now. He comes to the camp, he wants to fuck somebody else—
there are so many temptations, Yanina watches him all the time.’
“And then one woman said: ‘I think he still loves Yanina. If he cheats on her, it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love her.’ And then she started to cry.
“Inka and I exchanged glances.
“Love seemed to be this grim, hard, confusing thing.”
Lena looked down at Ben, apprehensive of his reaction. He was fast asleep. She lay down next to him. There was a little leaf stuck to his forehead. She gently removed it and closed her eyes.
That night at the camp, the counselors’ room got so hot that Inka and Lena could barely breathe.
Finally, Lena got up and opened the window, letting in a feeble trickle of warm air and a swarm of mosquitoes revived and seemingly refreshed after their day of rest. “You idiot!” Inka yelled. Lena shut the window, but it was too late, mosquitoes buzzed and zoomed in on them, and they swatted at the annoying insects with the Art of Cinema until most of them were dead.
“I’m taking off my nightgown,” Inka said. Lena took off hers too.
“You have a nice body,” Inka said, “I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“You too,” Lena said.
She couldn’t help but look at Inka’s breasts. Discreetly, she hoped. They were large and low-slung, and looked like a woman’s breasts rather than a young girl’s breasts. They looked serious. Lena liked Inka’s nipples, though. They were small and pale-yellow. She imagined that they were extremely tender and sensitive to touch. Not that she wanted to touch them. She did think about touching Inka’s stomach—she thought it was okay to want to touch a person’s stomach as opposed to a person’s breasts. Inka had squashy folds over her panty line. Lena wondered what it would be like to press her face into her stomach and sink into its soft warmth. She never dared to imagine what was below Inka’s panty line.
“So, do you think they really do it?” she asked Inka.
“Who?”
“Yanina and Vedenej?”
“They are married. They must be doing it.”
“Can you even visualize it? I can’t. How do they go about it?”
“I think they come to his office at night.”
“No, I mean what does she do? How does she make him want it?”
“Don’t men want it all the time?”
“Well, they work close by in the headquarters. She probably comes into his office and unbuttons her blouse and says: ‘Oh, oh, isn’t it hot today, my dear Yasha.’ ”
“Uh-huh. And he stares at her tits and says: ‘Oh, yes, Yanina Ivanovna, it’s certainly hot today.’ ”
“And she says:
“ ‘Oh, give me the kisses of your mouth,’
(How does it go in the Song of Songs?)
‘For your sweet loving . . .’
(Yeah, yeah, sweet loving!)
‘For your sweet loving is better than wine,
Your juices are fragrant,
Your essence pours out like oil,
This is why all the young women want you.’
“And he says:
“ ‘Your lips, my bride, drip honey,
Honey and milk are under your tongue,
And your clothes hold the scent of Lebanon.’ ”
“What’s the scent of Lebanon?”
“I don’t know, some kind of rose water?”
“Rose water? Yanina smelling like rose water? No, no, it should go like this:
“ ‘Your lips, my bride, drip borscht,
Beets and cabbage are under your tongue,
And your clothes hold the scent of salami.’
“And she says:
“ ‘And your cock is like a tower of Babel!’ ”
“And he says, ‘Hm, Yanina Ivanovna, really?’
“And she says: ‘Oh, yes, yes. In fact, it’s even bigger than the tower of Babel. I love it more than anything in the world! I love it more than that salami we’ve been stealing from the kids.’
“ ‘More than salami? Really? All right, Yanina Ivanovna, just you wait!’ And then he jumps over his desk.”
And the next thing Lena knew, Inka was on her bed on top of her, and they were rolling around laughing and squealing. Inka was so soft all over. Her breasts pushed against Lena’s ribcage and they were really soft. Lena grabbed her on the back and her back was kind of soft too. Inka was soft, but so very strong. Heavier and stronger than Lena. Lena felt that Inka could do whatever she wanted with her. And she was pressing too hard and it became hard to breathe, and Lena squealed “Inka, let me go!” If she had said “Yanina Ivanovna, let me go,” she probably wouldn’t have. But she called her Inka and that brought them back to reality. Inka moved away from Lena and surveyed the scene. The two of them on the bed. Two girls. One chubby and one skinny. One wearing light blue panties. The other one wearing white panties with small flowers on them. Both topless, red-faced, and disheveled. Inka jumped off the bed and went to put on her nightgown. Lena put on her nightgown too.
They went to sleep facing in opposite directions.
In twenty minutes or so, Ben shifted and opened his eyes. Lena smiled at him. The rosy glow around them had faded, and the thin gray dusk settled in, not yet ready to get really dark.
“Did I sleep?” he asked.
Lena nodded.
“Did I fall asleep in the middle of your story?”
“Yes, you did.”
“Oh, that’s bad.”
“I was just about to tell you how Inka and I almost had sex.”
He sat up and stared at Lena. “You and Inka had sex?”
“We came close, yes, but we got scared at the last moment.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“We fooled around. That was it.”
“You fooled around, huh?”
Ben rubbed his forehead and looked away.
“What?” Lena asked.
“Has it ever occurred to you that it could’ve been Inka?” Ben asked.
“What could’ve been Inka?”
“The one who made the soldiers disappear?”
“How? Why?”
“Suppose she was in love with you?”
“Inka? No!”
“No, no. Don’t dismiss my idea. Let’s go back to the beginning. She wanted that double date with you and the first guy, right?”
“Kostik.”
“And you couldn’t understand why, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“No, wait, listen. And she tried to ruin the date for you, right? She said that you looked like a squirrel or ate like a squirrel or something?”
Lena was surprised that he even remembered the squirrel.
“And she tried to drag you into the woods with her every chance she got.”
“We went with the kids!”
“And you were spending every free minute you got just lying around and reading dirty books.”
“Those books were classics!”
“And she tried to give you a hint about your secret admirer!”
The secret admirer? Could Inka possibly mean herself? No, that was ridiculous. Or was it? Anyway, Lena didn’t want to get into it with Ben. She needed some time to think this new angle over on her own.
“Come on, stop it,” she said to Ben. “What about you, by the way?”
“What?”
“Have you been with a man?”
“No. It just doesn’t interest me at all.”
“Not even when you were a boy?”
“No. Well, once, when I was thirteen. We spent a weekend with my parents’ friends down in Cape May. I had to share a room with their son—he was about my age. I don’t know how it happened. We were in his room. We started to fight—not for real—just, you know, pushing each other. And then our dicks were out—I honestly don’t remember who was the first to get his dick out. They were stiff like rolling sticks, and pointing straight up, and we kept touching each other and laughing like crazy. But that was it. We didn’t have sex.”
A rustle in the tre
e above them made Lena scream.
“What’s wrong?”
“There was a squirrel. I’m sorry! I’m terrified of squirrels. When I look at a squirrel, I always imagine that it will jump on me and start clawing at my face. It’s insane.”
“Oh, don’t worry, you’re perfectly sane, and your fear isn’t irrational at all.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“Squirrels are vicious. Not many people know that, but they do attack humans. But only if you disturb them during mating.”
“Really?” She peered at the top of the tree and moved away from the trunk and closer to Ben.
“Yeah.”
“How do we know if they’re mating?”
“Oh, they make a very specific sound, it’s easy to hear. The male and the female climb to the top of two different trees and stare at each other, screeching and shaking like crazy. Imagine a clothes dryer gone wild. Then they leap toward each other and the male has to penetrate the female in midair. The whole act lasts less than a second.”
“In midair? But how—”
“Takes a lot of training. I heard that younger squirrels miss a lot.”
She stared at him. He looked completely serious except for those tiny crinkles at the corners of his eyes. After a moment, she laughed. “I can’t believe I bought it!”
“You see,” he said, smiling and stroking her leg with a blade of grass. “I was a scrawny sickly teenager, not particularly good at sports, so I spent most of my childhood reading books about faraway countries and rare animals. I especially enjoyed them if there was a description of how animals fucked.”
“And if there wasn’t any description, you would make it up?”
“No, I just tried to guess how it was for them. I would imagine myself in their place and think what I would’ve done.”
“You would’ve leapt from the top of a tree?”
“Try me!”
“No!”
And the next second he was on top of her. Bearing down on her, squashing her, pressing into her stomach.
By the time a pickup pulled into the driveway, it had gotten chilly and dark. A short plump messy-haired woman wearing white sweatpants and a blue jean shirt got out of the car.