by Jocelyn Parr
It isn’t serious, I said, and it wasn’t.
He was standing above me, holding my hand up to examine it. It’s a clean cut, he said, looking around, but what cut it?
I didn’t want him to know about the slide, so I said I didn’t know, but he persisted, eagle-eyed, spotting the glinting glass. Still holding my hand, he leaned over and picked up the slide, its pieces still glued together by the sample inside.
Where did this come from? he asked, turning it over in his hand. Is it yours? Were you carrying this around with you?
It was a mistake, I said, explaining that I had been moving things around lately and must have gotten distracted.
He dug around in his bag for a moment, pulling out a piece of paper that he folded around the slide. He placed it carefully in his bag, as if suggesting he would be responsible for it from now on, then leaned down to put his hand around my waist, as if that would help.
Up, he said.
I shifted out of his reach and stood up on my own.
We walked down the wooden steps towards the bank. At the shore, I crouched down to let the water run over my hand, cleaning it. I could see that there were more swimmers than I had thought, their bodies cut in half by the river, their heads, torsos, and arms doubled in the distortion mirror of the water’s surface. The water was crisp and refreshing. A boy was playing dead, allowing his body to be carried downstream, buoyed up only by the air in his belly. He and his bloated belly floated past, and I turned to where Luria was setting up a blanket.
At a bench in front of us, an old couple was getting ready to go for a swim as well. The husband was almost entirely bald, but in a way that conveyed strength or masculinity, not frailty. The wife flitted around him, stowing their things. The husband pushed himself up and together they walked towards the river, their steps slow and measured. I heard her say something about a drop-off. At first the only sense of feebleness in him was revealed by his shorts, which no longer fit.
When they were in the river, they found their lost agility. He splashed her and romped around. She tried to keep her hair dry by doing breaststroke out of his range, but he lunged towards her and his bulk caused small waves to nip at her chin, and then he swam towards her and, though she tried to escape him, she couldn’t, and he got to her and picked her up in his arms, almost lifting her out of the river, he was still that strong.
She said, No, don’t! I just had it set!
He pretended to drop her but didn’t, and they laughed, though she hit him on the arm like she had been doing her whole life.
On our blanket Luria had made a makeshift platter out of oiled paper, on which he’d placed some cheese, salami, bread, and a wedge of halvah.
Hungry? he asked.
I wasn’t, but I flaked off a piece of halvah and let it melt on my tongue.
We sat in silence. I was thinking about the missing specimens, about Sasha’s plans. The boy who had been floating down the river walked past us towards some older boys, but as he neared them they turned their backs to him, so he returned to the shore and slid back in.
I was waiting for Luria because I knew he wanted to tell me something, but knew also that he didn’t know how.
The wife was the first to come out of the water. Her husband followed her, stepping gingerly through the reeds on the shore. He cursed the silty bottom of the river whose depth was deceptive. She asked if he wanted help and offered her hand. He gruffly refused, though he kept his arms held out, as though he anticipated falling. Careful, she said. He pulled one leg out of the mucky bottom and onto the cement pathway, placing his long arms on either side of the one stabilized knee in readiness for the next step. She stood to his side, her hand hovering over her shoulders, in the posture of helpfulness, but she was watching something else up on the hill. He launched his other leg up, and the force of it threw him out of balance, lurching his bulky body forward. His arms didn’t have time to react as he would have liked them to, and so he plunged forward, as if in slow motion, his head leading the way towards the cement.
Watch! yelled someone, and the wife looked down, her husband now on his hands and knees, one hand pushed to his forehead which was bleeding, though not badly. Two men came from behind us and put their hands under his arms to help him to his feet and to the bench, but his wife, it seemed, was embarrassed and stood only to the side, feigning interest in whatever was happening on the hill. Once he was seated and the men had walked away, she joined him on the bench and chastised him before undoing her bag to find a small kerchief. She shook it vigorously, then pressed it to his forehead. His hands, knees, and elbows were covered in gravel, and his feet were still slicked with mud. He wanted to go back to the water to clean off.
No, she said, enough of the river.
But he didn’t listen and hoisted himself up. He was in front of me when he did this and so, when he lost his balance again and bent forward to steady himself on the bench, I saw that one of his balls had escaped the confines of his shorts. He balanced himself like that for a few moments and then, like a sea animal poorly equipped for movement on land, he pushed himself back into the river and was content and dominant once more. This was what happened when people got old. Maybe they were the same age as Bekhterev and Bogdanov had been, but somehow, in water, they seemed much younger. I’d always thought Sasha and I would end up like that old couple.
I started packing up the food because I wasn’t hungry at all and Luria wasn’t eating either, but just as I was about to stand up and head for the car, Luria used his sharp voice.
Sit down, he said.
Another life lesson? I asked in a tone that said I was tired of this. He didn’t answer and I could tell he was collecting his thoughts. It occurred to me that maybe he was to blame for our missing specimens, but before I had time to think on that more, he started talking about Bekhterev.
I don’t know if you thought it was normal the way he died, he said. You probably thought it was strange, like everyone did, but maybe you also justified it, like everyone else did, by saying to yourself that it was just old age. I don’t need to know what you made of it, but you should know what happened. Exactly.
I pulled my jacket around me. Why couldn’t it be old age compounded by something else and still have old age be the thing that mattered most? I wasn’t blind.
I looked into it, he said.
And?
He must have been poisoned when he was at the theatre.
I remembered delivering the tickets and shook my head, not wanting to be implicated, not wanting Luria’s questions and Luria’s truths.
He went on, saying that he’d heard from Bekhterev’s wife that Bekhterev had been offered cake at the theatre and he’d taken it greedily, since he’d not eaten all day. Since his wife was diabetic, she’d not eaten any of it, thus sparing her life. He was sick that night, attended to by doctors throughout the night; then the next day, according to her, he seemed to be improving. Some new doctors came to attend to him and they stayed with him until he died.
Which ones stayed? I asked.
No one remembers their names, said Luria.
Sarkisov told me their names, I protested, they were well-known.
Luria shook his head saying that everyone knew the names of the doctors who first attended to him, but the second shift, the ones who were there when he died, they were completely unknown.
How did you find all this out? I asked.
I told you I tell the truth, and this is the truth.
The question wasn’t whether or not it was true, the question was what do you do once you admit to yourself it is. The tickets, the sudden illness, the nameless doctors: all of these were facts. But, then, what was one to do with facts? What relation did those facts have to one’s interpretation of them? In other words, the question was whether to say to oneself that Bekhterev must have done something wrong, otherwise nothing would have happened to him, or to say that Bekhterev was blameless and his murder was arbitrary, that what had happened to him could h
appen to anyone. It could happen to me.
What Luria was saying was that Bekhterev had been killed.
That he’d been poisoned would have shown up in an autopsy if they’d done one, and even the brain would have provided some clues, if someone experienced had done the microtoming, he said, but obviously you didn’t see anything.
I thought of the jagged edge. I hadn’t told Luria what role I’d played in creating the Bekhterev exhibit and now didn’t seem the time.
Why are you telling me this? I asked.
Because I like stories that come to an end. And you still seemed to be in the middle.
So you thought I needed help?
Yes.
How does knowing this help you? I asked.
It makes me careful, he said.
On the drive back into the city, we were silent. My hand still smarted from the cut I’d given myself, but I pressed the wound into the folds of my dress, because the physical pain felt good. Were Luria and I closer now that he’d told me, or farther apart?
The road on the way back was empty, no evidence remained of the children who had trampled all over the road just hours before. By saying so little, I had let Luria think that he alone had been inquiring into Bekhterev’s death. On the drive back in, I stewed over his condescension and considered telling him about Asja, if only to point out that he wasn’t the only one to have discovered that there was more to Bekhterev’s life than we had previously known.
What would you do, I said to Luria as the city came into view, if I told you that I knew someone has been stealing some of our exhibits?
Has someone been stealing some of the exhibits? he asked.
This is hypothetical, I said.
Have you? he asked. I didn’t answer.
Don’t make a mistake here, he said finally. I won’t lie to you. But I won’t lie for you either.
He was silent for a while. We both were. I couldn’t decide if Luria had told me about Bekhterev because he was afraid or if he had told me because he thought I should be.
Give me one of your life lessons, I said.
Are we friends then? he asked.
Are you afraid of something? I asked.
We’d arrived at the institute.
No, he said as he parked the car, I know how things work.
And you think I don’t.
I know you don’t, he said, looking at me directly. That’s why I like you.
We walked into the institute together. My hand still smarted from the cut, and Luria was still performing care in his awkward way, which was, in fact, because of its awkwardness, endearing. We’d gone in the back and so, for the first time, he was the one putting the water on to boil. He lurched when he moved, like every movement was a beat of his heart, or a pulse in his veins. Nothing so smooth and graduated as breath, his movements came in beats. I would never know him, I decided. I realized I knew nothing about his personal life, nothing about where he had come from, apart from the occasional slip into his Leningradian accent, the way he pronounced milk with a longer k than any Muscovite ever would. I had known him for longer than anyone else in my life then, yet he remained a cipher, and it was probably this that allowed me to think I could trust him.
Down the street, at the government house, a few men were being arrested. So said Anushka. We speculated about what they must have done. They were talking about the men down the street. I was talking about Bekhterev.
Autumn passed in a blur. The leaves turned blazing red and gold one day, and the next day the trees were bare, their fire stolen away by winds I’d barely noticed. The parades came and went with less fanfare than the year previous; the one-year anniversary of the institute’s opening went unnoticed by all. At work, we were at a total loss, and yet we made ourselves look busy at all times for fear that our idleness would be reported to whomever our activities were being reported to then. Following his death, Bogdanov’s institute had been closed down, the rooms empty for a week, and then a secretary showed up with a typewriter and a bunch of files, and that was that, she sat there typing something for most of October and November. Then, more desks were brought in and more files, and with them, two more secretaries. The noise from that wing of the building was unbearable. The schools and workers’ clubs continued in their visits. Our collection of children’s drawings grew. I started to wonder if we were waiting for someone else to die.
By Christmas of 1928, Sasha and I were barely speaking. If he’d thought to visit his mother for the holidays, he said nothing of it to me. For all I knew, she’d been to the city and left without a word to me. The year was almost over and Sasha was marking it by pulling all of our books off the shelves, dispersing them into piles on the floor. I heard him pull the latch on every glass window and then heard it rattle when he let it close. By mid-morning, the entire apartment was covered in books.
What are you doing? I asked.
He didn’t answer.
I asked again.
No answer.
I walked through the piles of books, knocking them over as I did.
Tell me what the hell you are doing, I said slowly.
Putting books here, he said in a slow singsong voice as he straightened one of the piles I’d knocked over, putting books there.
Here, he sang, and there. Here and there.
That morning, because of the renewed cold, I’d put on my winter coat and slid my hands into the pockets only to find, sewn carefully into the seams he’d always tried to pry apart, the two silk buttons. I didn’t have to look at the pockets to know: the two perfect nubs of smoothest silk were unmistakable and their presence made me miss the life we’d lost so suddenly, perhaps the way a swimmer who has plunged too deep suddenly misses air. I missed the Sasha I used to know, the one who would have sewn the buttons into my coat in happy anticipation of how much I’d love discovering them once the seasons changed. That Sasha was gone now, and I had no idea how to get him back. I gave no sign of noticing the buttons, or at least no sign he could see, since the heart sinks imperceptibly and tears can be wiped away. I stood there staring at his back, watching him perform his lonely, angry singsong as he combed through our collection of books, looking for something, I didn’t know what.
On Christmas Day, I left the apartment and walked through the city. The streets were empty and I was alone.
The books were back in place by the time I returned.
1929
The new year came and went without any celebration, without a visit to the dacha, without much of anything at all. It had barely begun when I came home from the institute one night to find Sasha packing his things. He explained that he would be leaving on the night train and there wasn’t much time. This wasn’t a surprise. Ever since he’d rearranged the books on the shelf, I’d felt the shift, and of course before that there had been the long, darkening season of small and big arguments, and then the evening at Rima’s, where she’d thought I was pregnant but I knew I’d just realized what was wrong with everything and how people like Sasha were to blame.
He’d put a flower in a vase, just a single stem. The flower was yellow. A daisy, I guess it was called. I couldn’t imagine where he found it until I could — a restaurant somewhere, perhaps a place he’d gone to with his mother, the flower slipped into his jacket’s inner pocket while his mother was settling the bill.
The curtains were drawn. I took off my coat as he snapped the latch on his suitcase shut, a synchronicity that seemed appropriate to the moment.
I’m sorry, he said, turning to face me.
I’d settled on the arm of the chair, perched there, really, which made a spectacle of Sasha.
His suitcase was badly packed. A small piece of cotton had been caught in the latch, but I wasn’t his mother.
There’s something I need you to do, he said.
It occurred to me that we would never sleep together again, and it resonated as an ache somewhere inside of me — a real sensation inside my body — that I tried to ignore.
He sa
t down at the table, then stood up again, facing me. He altered the tone of his voice. It went from matter-of-fact to something kinder.
What I most want is for you to come with me. We could start a new life, he said.
I went the other way, from matter-of-fact to angry.
That’s the difference between us, I said.
Don’t yell, he said.
I’m not yelling, I said, taking a breath.
What is the difference? he asked.
The difference is that you always think life is something that will happen in the future, whereas I think that life is what is happening right now.
I agree with you that we are different, he said, but that isn’t the difference.
I slipped off the arm of the chair and onto the seat. He leaned against the table, crossed his arms. For him, the difference between us was that he was transparent and I kept everything hidden, which was funny in a not-good way because it was what I thought of him — he hid everything, and I was transparent. He said that he had been trying to understand me for years, that it had consumed him, his effort to understand me. But now he knew that there were rooms in me that had no keys, rooms he had tried to unlock, but that now he knew he’d have to give up if he ever wanted to be happy.
I said that he didn’t tell me anything anymore and he replied that he couldn’t, that he didn’t want to anger me or put me in a compromising position, that his silence had been for my benefit.
Just say you’ll think about joining me, he said.
I will think about it, I said, and I was serious and not serious. I thought of travel by boat and what the sea would look like, how it might be the same or different from the rivers I’d known my whole life. I thought about what I’d be leaving behind. We were quiet for a while.