Lights All Night Long

by Lydia Fitzpatrick

  When his mother was at work, Ilya sassed Babushka instead. Babushka who, it seemed, could never keep her fingers still, could never just do nothing. Babushka who saw portent in everything, who, one day, when she was making gogol-mogol, cracked open an egg and saw that it was yolkless.

  “It could be good,” she said. “Or it could be very bad.”

  “So it could be anything,” Ilya said, without looking up from his book. He was reviewing advanced algebra because a quadratic equation had been the only thing to trip him up on his last practice test.

  “No yolk.” Babushka thrust the bowl under his nose, and he looked down at the egg white. It was perfectly clear except for a few milky particles. “Maybe he’ll come home.”

  “I doubt it,” Ilya said. His voice came out sour, exactly as he’d wanted it to.

  “You don’t miss your brother?” she said, and when Ilya shrugged, she said, “Maybe you’re missing your yolk.”

  That winter, his mind was like a fire heap, doused and fumy with gasoline. He lived for any insult, any slight or spark. He slammed his book shut so that the table wobbled and his chair wobbled and the egg white wobbled in its bowl. His coat and scarf and hat were bundled on the couch, still thawing from his walk home from school, and he grabbed them, shoved his feet into his boots and stomped out of the apartment. Halfway down the endless stairs, he paused. He had nowhere to go. Five flights above him, three below. It was freezing. Here, and everywhere else in Berlozhniki. He’d forgotten his mittens, and his fingers were already tingling, halfway to numb. His breath stung with the cold. He’d have to be gone for an hour at least. If he went home any sooner, Babushka’s smugness would be unbearable. He’d skip dinner. He’d stay silent for the rest of the night. Maybe he’d stay silent through the winter, through the summer, until he said good-bye and left for America.

  He was on the korichnevy floor, the brown floor, the worst floor, and it smelled of onions and cat piss. Every time Ilya climbed past this floor, babies were wailing and women were yelling and men were slamming doors—it had the general feel of humanity at war—but the long hallway was silent now. Across from Ilya, a door opened. A dumpy woman emerged from the bathroom in a robe with damp spots in terrible places.

  “What are you lurking around for? Thought you’d sneak a peek?” She said it like she wouldn’t mind if he had snuck a peek, and he was terrified that she might whip open her robe and make him look at her.

  “I wasn’t,” he said. According to Vladimir, middle-aged women—especially ugly ones—could be aggressive. “But you could do worse,” Vladimir had told him once, “if you’re in need of an education.”

  “Which floor is . . . ” He stalled.

  She rolled her eyes, and her mouth stiffened with impatience. “All your life you’ve been living here and you don’t know the floors. I thought you were the big brain.”

  Ilya backed away from her and ran down the stairs.

  “Seems like your brain’s shrinking!” she yelled after him.

  He tucked his hands up inside his jacket sleeves and walked fast to the Internet Kebab on the square, where Vladimir had shown him his first porno over a stuttering, stalling connection. All those pauses, the endless buffering had been both painful and delicious.

  “It’s tantric porn,” Vladimir had said. “A Berlozhniki special.”

  Ilya gave Kirill, the horny Chechen who ran the place, thirty kopeks. He wanted to see if he could find out a little more about his host family, or the town at least, which Maria Mikhailovna had told him was in the south, in the state of Louisiana. First he had to wait for the homepage—the Vecherniye Berlozhniki—to load, and as it did, he felt Kirill hovering behind him.

  By the time a third of the page had loaded, Ilya recognized the picture on the screen. It was Olga Nadiova. Everyone in Berlozhniki knew her. When she was little, she’d been an ice-skating phenomenon. She’d gone to an athletics compound in Sochi at seven. She’d been an Olympic hopeful. For years her likeness had been carved in ice at the Winter Festival. She was put on a pedestal right next to Father Frost and Yeltsin. She’d been headed for the Goodwill Games, but then at twelve, in the second spin of a triple jump, she’d sliced through her Achilles tendon with the toe pick of her other skate, and that was it. She moved back to Berlozhniki. She taught skating at the rink, started drinking, and gave impassioned, nonsensical speeches at the House of Culture, and now here she was on the screen, a child again, in full skating regalia. The headline said she was dead. She’d been murdered two nights earlier. Stabbed, just as Yulia Podtochina had been.

  “Fuck me,” Kirill said, and Ilya knew it wasn’t out of sympathy. Olga Nadiova had split her salary between booze and the Kebab. Ilya had seen her here, plenty of times, watching videos of her best performances.

  * * *

  —

  Panic set in after Olga’s murder, and it became hard to separate facts from rumors, to untangle the truth from the articles that ran in the Vecherniye Berlozhniki—which, after all, was edited by the mayor’s brother. The Vecherniye didn’t bring up any connection between Olga’s and Yulia’s deaths. Instead, it printed picture after picture of Olga in her red and yellow spangles, ice spraying off her skates. Olga midair, midaxel. The Pride of Berlozhniki, they called her, and they dredged up details of her skating career, her eleven medals in the Russian Youth Olympiads, her tragic injury. The articles always closed with a brief line about how her body had been found: “at 4 a.m. by a vagrant next to one of the trash bins behind the bazaar,” and there was an accusation implicit in this description that wasn’t lost on anyone. The trash bins. The vagrant. What had she been doing behind the bazaar at four a.m.? Nothing good.

  Olga’s parents lived in the kommunalkas, across the courtyard from Ilya’s flat, and everyone brought candles and visited them, everyone listened to them insist that Olga had not done drugs—she had been a drinker, yes, of course, but never drugs—just as everyone had listened to them brag when Olga left Berlozhniki for the athletics compound in 1987. Olga’s parents said that she had been stabbed, just like Yulia. They had seen her body in the morgue and said that each cheek had been slashed, just like Yulia’s. They said that Olga had managed to call her mother while she was dying, but that her mother had been asleep and hadn’t answered. The message was nothing but static broken by two thumps. They said that she had been about to turn her life around.

  Late at night, people gathered in the kitchens, poured shots of vodka, and talked about the details. Some said that Yulia and Olga had the same number of stab wounds. Some said that the killer had taken each of their ring fingers. Some said that both had been raped and others said that neither had been. There was talk of a serial killer, and a few even speculated about his identity: Anton Solomin, who’d been caught masturbating outside the school a decade earlier; Maxim Grinkov, who never made eye contact; Roman Rochev, who had come back from Chechnya with this shattered look in his eye, who could no longer even manage to lift a hand and say, “Privyet.”

  Police cars appeared, sharking around the kommunalkas and the square. They trolled up and down the refinery road, where Yulia’s body had been found. Occasionally, walking home from school, Ilya saw Dmitri in his patrol car, his eyes scanning the horizon like he might happen upon a murder-in-progress, and if Dmitri saw Ilya, he would lift a hand and smile so heartily that it was easy to forget the few minutes Ilya had spent in his car.

  The Minutka stocked pepper spray and knives and bullets and padlocks. Those who could afford to had iron bars installed over their wooden doors. Women walked everywhere in pairs. And of course some said that Olga and Yulia were to blame. That they had not been smart, that they had not been sensible. As though of course men with knives were lurking at the fringes of life, waiting for any woman foolish enough to step out of bounds. Even the grown-ups knew, now, of the new drug. It’s called krokodil, they said, because it makes you vicious, makes you violent. Krokodi
l, because it turns your skin to scales.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The boards were on a Saturday, and the day before, Maria Mikhailovna sent Ilya home early with pelmeni wrapped in foil. It was January, the clouds so low and heavy that the flag outside the school disappeared atop its pole.

  Vladimir was leaning against a trash can, in the same spot where he used to meet Ilya for the walk home. He was waiting for Ilya as though it were the most natural thing in the world, as though the last four months had not happened.

  Vladimir pointed at the pelmeni. “A present,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “They’re not for you,” Ilya said. He’d meant to sound cutting, but he sounded childish. “Maria Mikhailovna made them.” He didn’t want to look at Vladimir, so he looked toward the school, hoping that Maria Mikhailovna might come out, but her classroom was aglow. She was still at her desk, grading papers, her fingertips turning white from holding her pen so tightly.

  “Of course she did. She still have a thing for you?” Vladimir said.

  Ilya shrugged.

  “So, America?” Vladimir said. “Were you gonna leave without saying good-bye?” His voice was soft, and when Ilya did look at him, his face was full of some emotion that Ilya had never seen on him before—whether sadness or envy or regret, Ilya wasn’t sure.

  “I don’t go until August. If I pass the boards,” Ilya mumbled, and then, because he would hate himself if he didn’t say anything at all, he said, “I thought you’d left.”

  “Left where? Berlozhniki? Where the fuck would I go?” Vladimir laughed, which was what he did to break awkward moments and make them better. “Plus I’ve got my hot-ass girlfriend here. I’ve got my man, Ilya. And I’ve got this new place,” he said. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Ilya closed his eyes and tried to find the anger that had been so huge in him all winter. It was there, but it was small compared to his relief. You’ve been waiting for this, he thought. You’ve wanted this. He looked up at his brother and smiled. “You still want me to hide you in my suitcase?”

  “America is not fucking ready for this!” Vladimir flicked both hands against his chest. “This cannot fit in a suitcase!” He was grinning, and Ilya found himself grinning back. That was Vladimir’s charm: to make you feel like you’d been living in a dark corner, unseen, until his light swept over you.

  “Let’s go,” he said. Ilya smiled, feeling a rush inside himself, a melting sort of happiness that stung the back of his eyes and made his throat go narrow. He thought of what Babushka had said about his missing yolk. See, he thought, as he followed Vladimir down the street toward the square. See, he wanted to tell her, nothing’s missing.

  Aksinya was waiting in her car outside the Minutka, the beams of her headlights giving up against the snow.

  “You found him,” she said to Vladimir. As Ilya climbed in the backseat, she said, “What’s up,” in that dry, angry way of hers that Ilya had learned over time did not actually mean she was angry.

  “I have your coat. The one with the fur.” He’d stuffed the coat in the back of his mother’s and Babushka’s closet, and now he saw that it was creepy to have taken it in the first place and to have been imagining ways he might get it back to her. “Maria Mikhailovna was going to throw it out,” he added.

  “She’s the worst. She’s hated me since Basic.”

  Ilya almost told her that Maria Mikhailovna didn’t hate her and that she’d called her smart, but Aksinya was smiling grimly, like Maria Mikhailovna’s hatred was hard-earned and worth preserving. She had a black stocking hat pulled down over her ears and eyebrows, and it made what was left of her face look stark. It was the first time he’d looked at her and not thought her beautiful. With the dome light shining down, he saw that Vladimir looked like her in the way old people look alike, as if they’ve all shrunk down to fit one final mold. His chin had gone sharp. His arms like birch branches. And he’d rolled the elastic of his warm-up pants at the waist.

  Aksinya pressed the gas and the car sprang forward. The snow was dry and thick, the sort of flakes that lived long enough to be examined on your palm. Vladimir produced some Imperia from the footwell and handed it to Ilya, and the rim of the bottle was so cold that it numbed Ilya’s tongue before he could taste the vodka. He took a small sip, thinking of the boards the next day. He had planned nothing for this evening but to go to bed early after a final practice test that he did not need to take. The car sped out of town, shaking to the Kolyan that Vladimir had cranked. At home, Babushka would be beginning dinner while Timofey read aloud to her from the paper. His mother would be waiting for her turn in the shower. Neither knew the boards were the next day. He had not told them, had not wanted them hovering, worrying, feeding him excessively and making him nervous.

  Ilya took another small sip and handed Vladimir the bottle. Soon they were past the kommunalkas and across the Pechora, which was nothing but a dip in the snow. The refinery was big and bright, its lights cast long. Looking at it, Ilya felt the same wash of wonder that comes with a spectacular sunset or a moon, huge and full. Like the refinery could trip some primal recognition of beauty, like it could convince him that it had its own gravity.

  Vladimir said, “How’s Mama?”

  “She’s crazy. She’s on a diet competition with Nadya Radeyeva and they’ve both gained a kilo and gotten bitchy.”

  “Typical.”

  Aksinya pushed the gas through a patch of ice, and Ilya felt the tires twist under them, then straighten. “You two don’t know a thing about being a woman,” she said.

  “I know my way around a woman,” Vladimir said.

  “Asshole,” she murmured. She had the bottle between her thighs, and she took a swig. She thrust the bottle toward Ilya again and said, “Cheers.”

  This far out of town there wasn’t much except for the refinery. A lumber mill. Some old, wooden houses that had belonged to the heads of the camp when it had been operational. The camp itself, whose buildings were clustered to the right, just the same gray as the sky, and beyond them the Tower, which marked the northern end of the prison yard. Somewhere along this stretch the plow driver had found Yulia Podtochina, and Ilya scanned the snowbanks for the pink flash of a bare foot.

  Ice curled around the corners of the windows like filigree. In the passenger seat, Vladimir scraped at it with a fingernail. His giant gold watch drooped almost to his elbow. It was supposed to look like a Rolex, like the one Michael Douglas wore in Wall Street, and when Aksinya had given it to him, it had fit his wrist perfectly.

  “Are you coming back to school?” Ilya said.

  As soon as he’d said it, he knew that it was a terrible question. He was sure that school was the last thing these two thought about, but Aksinya answered evenly, “Yeah. Eventually.”

  “A lot of people are gone.”

  She looked over at Vladimir, and Ilya felt them agreeing not to talk, then her phone bleated and lit up in the cup holder. Vladimir flipped it open. “Lana’s there,” he said. “She’s on board.”

  Ilya hadn’t seen Lana in months, not since the morning he’d run into her and Sergey outside the school. Lana with the pink hair, who wasn’t as pretty as Aksinya, but wasn’t as brittle either. Lana bit her nails sometimes. Sometimes Lana didn’t know what to say. “On board with what?”

  Vladimir turned to Ilya. “Congratulations, tovarishch. This is a big night for you.”

  Aksinya cackled.

  “A big night?” Ilya said, wondering if it was a coincidence that the boards were the next day, whether this big night was Vladimir’s way of forgiving him for America, and at the thought, Ilya felt himself forgive Vladimir everything: his jealousy, his absence, the robbery. Everything.

  Aksinya slowed, parked on the side of the road and looked back at him. “What’s that?” she said.

  Ilya looked down and realized that he was still clutchin
g the packet of pelmeni from Maria Mikhailovna.

  “Pelmeni,” he said.

  “Perfect. We don’t have anything for dinner,” she said, and she took the pelmeni from him and handed him the vodka bottle.

  * * *

  —

  The Tower was a square, concrete building not any different in shape from the kommunalkas or the school or the old office buildings that framed the arbat. Each floor was a string of a dozen rooms. A few had rusted stoves and cots with sagging springs. Other rooms were totally bare: four walls, a drain in the center of the floor, and the feel of a cell. On the roof there was a crow’s nest, where the guards had stood, eyes narrowed, scanning the horizon for escapees. When they were young, in the summer, Ilya and Vladimir and Sergey would come out to the Tower, pry loose tiles from the showers, pitch them off the roof, and watch them shatter on the ground.