The Great Glass Sea

by Josh Weil

  It was a man who had never set foot in the fields who saw it first; a man from Moscow who moved so fast that by the time one farmer knew the oligarch had bought a neighbor’s share he had sold his share as well; a billionaire who spent so furiously he held 51 percent of nearly 100 percent of the farms that surrounded the city by the time the decade crumbled into collapse; a man who, when all the money nearly everyone else had saved lost nearly all its value overnight, had his in foreign markets, in Swiss banks, and most of all in land.

  In Moscow they called him The She Bear. Businessmen said it out of envy, politicians out of respect, cartoonists with their pens: jaws gaping, claws raised, guarding cubs in bibs that read ZERKALA or ORANZHERIA, LAND or LAKE or LIGHT. In Petroplavilsk the people called him The Baron, spoke of how he had turned all the city, all the land around it, into his personal estate, how someday he would own the rest of Karelia, too: an entire vast region of vast Russia ruled over by him. By Borya, as his mother had called him. His friends still called him Baz. But his name was Boris Romanovich Bazarov, and, when they said it, the farmers from whom he’d taken the land let their spit fly.

  Dyadya Avya hadn’t even bothered with the name at all: he just spat. His had been the last kooperativ still holding out—no money for pesticides or feed corn or food for families, just Bazarov, having already bought off a third of the old kolkhozniki, offering the only way for the rest to eat. I don’t care if I have to make borscht out of my nephews—their uncle had shoved a finger at Yarik and Dima for all to see—I wouldn’t sell to that—in place of the man’s name, he hawked up phlegm and gobbed it at the ground—wouldn’t sell him the hole under my shithouse. But one farmer mumbled, Your nephews won’t feed all of us, and another called out, You’ll sell when you’ve got nothing to eat but the shit and Avya, beating his fist on the side of the barn, shouted them all down. Did I say we shouldn’t sell? he bellowed. Sell! We have to sell! But we don’t have to sell to that—he hawked another, spat a smaller stream. The shouts went up: Then to who? Avya shouted back: To one of us! Laughter, snorts, jeers. If you’ve got that kind of money, one said, you must be storing it up your ass. Another heckled, No wonder he won’t sell his shithouse. And Avya roared over the laughing, Not to me, you fools! And sure as hell not to any of you! But men clamped under fear don’t have it in them to laugh long, and by the time his shout was done it rang out over an already quieting barn. The farmers shifted in their boots, their eyes serious. To who? they asked again. And the brothers’ uncle had to look away when he said the name: Kartashkin.

  Stepan Fyodorovich Kartashkin was hated almost as much as the billionaire. A district manager in the kolkhozy days, he had been one of the string pullers, the top-scrapers, a skimmer of profit and black market trader who had managed in those first lawless days of the early nineties to make for himself what in a small village had been a small fortune. Everyone knew he had gotten it at the expense of all the others and everyone resented him for it, but he was the son of the son of a villager; he gave more than anyone to the cripples at church gates; he came to the cultural house for every dance; he had been a farmer, was still a farmer; was, at least, one of them.

  We all pool our shares, Avery Leonidovich explained, land and everything, and sell it to Kartashkin.

  They shook their heads: even Stepan Fyodorovich didn’t have enough to match what the billionaire was offering.

  So we sell for less, Avya told them.

  More head shaking, more grumbling, more questioning of why, why take a loss, What would we get for it in return?

  It stays in the village, Avya said. It stays out of the hands of that—he hawked again, but couldn’t mouth more than a dribble.

  And what, one of the farmers asked, is to keep Kartashkin from turning around and selling it all to The Baron for a profit?

  That, Avery Leonidovich told them, is what we get for it. We put it in the contract. It has to stay a farm.

  The billionaire—

  And, their uncle rode over the objections, it can’t be sold to anyone but one of us. Or of our kin. We put it in the contract.

  Which was how the old kolkhoz, Avya’s izba and outbuildings, and all the hectares around, had become the only swath of land within forty kilometers of Petroplavilsk to stay out of The She Bear’s paws. And still within the reach of the brothers’ dreams. Now, into the hollow of Yarik’s neck, Dima whispered what he’d been wanting to say all afternoon: “Bratan, I have it.”

  Yarik’s fingers quit shaking his head, let go.

  “My half,” Dima said. “I have it now.”

  Somewhere down the street one of the parade stragglers dropped a bottle. Yarik looked towards the crash, watched the half-smashed bottle roll. Reaching in his jacket pocket, he drew out a pack of cigarettes, tapped it and shook one out, and reached in the same pocket and brought out a matchbook and lit it. “Half of what?” Yarik said, exhaling. “Of what we thought the land was worth four years ago?”

  “Just this winter—” Dima started.

  “Or even six months ago? Because, bratets”—with his free hand, Yarik picked a fleck of tobacco from his lip—“anything you’ve saved with this goddamn deflation has gone down in value and”—he spat—“everything out there”—he swept his hand at the skyline of the city—“has gained in it. Before we do anything, we have to have enough between us so we can go to Kartashkin while we’re still working, and find out his price, and meet it, and be able to keep up with . . .” He trailed off, drew on the cigarette, held it out to Dima.

  If it hadn’t been for the small strip of white shivering at the tip of his fingers Dima wouldn’t have been able to tell that his brother’s hand was shaking. He left the cigarette there to show it, said, “How far are you?”

  Yarik finally looked at him.

  “How far,” Dima said, “from your half?”

  The bottle had stopped rolling. “We said we’d try.” Yarik brought his hand back. “We didn’t say we’d have it by now. We didn’t set a date that you—”

  “I saw Kartashkin.”

  Yarik held the cigarette a centimeter from his mouth.

  “When I was out at Dyadya Avya’s,” Dima told him. “Guess what he charged me for the rooster?”

  Yarik moved his hand to his lips, drew in.

  “Nothing,” Dima said.

  Through the smoke, Yarik looked at him.

  “He gave the bird to me for free. He’s buttering everybody up. I talked to some of the others. He’s offering to give them a cut of whatever he makes from the sale of the farm. He’s going to sell, Yarik. He’s going to find a way to get out of the contract, and he’s going to sell.”

  Yarik shook his head. “Not yet.” He tossed the cigarette down at his feet. “Not until the old kulak knows exactly how high he can go.”

  “What if one of the others—”

  “He’ll wait, Dima. So long as the Oranzheria is still being built, he’ll wait. He’ll wait to see how much the Consortium is willing to bid.”

  In Dima’s arms, one of the rooster’s legs worked free, jutted out, scrambling at the air. “But the contract—”

  “You said it yourself. He’ll find a way. Or more likely their lawyers will. Some clause, some bribe. One of the old kolkhozniki who used to farm with Dyadya Avya, one of their kids . . .”

  “That’s why,” Dima said, “we have to go to him now.”

  Again, the pack of cigarettes; again, the two quick smacks against Yarik’s palm. “You don’t think someone else already has?” One of the rooster’s talons snagged in his brother’s shirt, yanked the fabric. Yarik clenched the fresh cigarette in his mouth and with his free hands reached to work the bird’s claw loose. “But he won’t sell to them. Just like he won’t sell to us.” He freed the rooster’s foot and held it for Dima to take. “Not till the Oranzheria is at his goddamn door. Then he’ll sell. And that, bratets, is when we’ll know how much is half of what we need.”

  Dima squeezed the knotty foot in his hand. “But the Oranzhe
ria won’t go that far.” The day was as dim as it would get, the mirrorglow not yet enough to lift his brother’s face out of the almost-dusk. “It can’t just keep going,” Dima said.

  Yarik drew in, a red flare at the end of his cigarette. “Of course not.”

  “It’s too far.”

  “I know that.”

  “It—”

  “You know that. Because we work there.” Yarik smiled just enough to let the smoke leak out. “But the old kulak doesn’t. He won’t know it till the work on the Oranzheria stops. Till it stops growing. Till it’s done.”

  “And then . . .”

  “Then we’ll go to him.” Yarik drew again on the cigarette. “And that is why it can’t be now, bratets, why we have to keep at it until the minute the last pane of glass is laid on the last hectare of the Oranzheria. So that we have enough, so that our halves—your half—keeps growing with the value of the land, so that we can go that day, that exact day, and bring it to him, bring him more than the others in the village have, before the others in the village know.”

  Pressed against the skin of his arm, Dima could feel the Golden Phoenix’s warmth, the softness of its feathers, its small heart working. “How long do you think it will be?”

  Yarik shrugged. He took the cigarette from his mouth, looked at the half-spent stub. “Longer than it takes me to go through one of these.”

  “Bratan . . .”

  “I don’t know, maybe in five hundred packs? Maybe a thousand?” Yarik tried to make his mouth smile.

  “Bratan,” Dima said again, and his brother looked away, up the street, as if he already knew what Dima was going to say. “How much have you been—”

  “There’s the tram.”

  “Yarik, how much have you been able to save?” Dima watched the back of his brother’s turned head. “When it comes time . . .”

  “You don’t have a wife,” Yarik said. “You don’t have kids.”

  Above the tram, the contactors stuck up like two antennae, feelers that worked their way along the web of wires woven over the street. They hit a switch, clattered, came on.

  With his free hand, Dima reached over, into his brother’s shirt pocket, drew out the pack. He nudged its top open with his thumb and, beneath the rooster’s ruffled neck, worked his fingers after a cigarette.

  Yarik leaned close to light it. “What was it like? Out in the village?”

  “Out there,” Dima told him, “the mirrors’ beams still haven’t reached.”

  “You were there at night?”

  “Out there”—Dima drew in, let the smoke out—“the roosters crow.”

  Over his last word, the tram’s brakes began their long slow squeal. The Golden Phoenix struggled. Dima pressed the bird against his chest.

  “I’ll have it,” Yarik said. “By the time we need it, I’ll have it.” Then he turned and shouted back towards the playground,”Mama! Mama, the trolleybus!”

  And Dima turned, too, and joined him in calling for her.

  She was on her knees in a patch of new growing grass, the tiny bright green blades thin as hairs, a few last golden feathers scattered around her, shining more dully now in the semblance of sunlight the zerkala threw down. Above the trolley stop the wires had begun to hum.

  From all the way across the water he can hear the chattering of the birds. Their wind-prick calls coming through the slap of the waves, the smack of the oars, borne on the wind that gusts over Nizhi, across the lake, to them. What wind! What blast of it! He can see the whipping grasses, the stands of bent-necked spruces shaking like the manes of huddled horses, the churches alive with a flock of storm petrels gathered in the leeward, clinging to lintels carved centuries ago, to wooden shingles set in place by long-dead monks, small birds taking shelter behind the dozens of delicate onion domes, half a thousand dark whifflings waiting out the wind.

  Looking over their shoulders, their red scarves flapping, the brothers watch it come. It grabs the lake and shakes, makes sails of their jackets, shoves their rowboat back. They hack faster, thrash their oars against it. The wind holds them in place.

  And while they row the sun sinks, and the birds rise to spread across a sky gone red, and the wind comes on. The boat drives backwards against their struggling. They grip the handles harder, heave the paddles splash by splash, brother matching brother, one keeping pace with the other who rocks faster to keep pace with him until their backs burst into flame, their grunts to shouts, their fingers burning, their palms rubbed raw . . . And the oar jerks loose from Yarik’s hands. Just leaps free. How the boy lunges for it! How his fingers rake the air!

  And Dima can see it: the pale sliver of wet wood rising and dipping on a wind-chopped wave, winking as it slips away. He can see the back of his brother’s head, so still and stiff against the seething lake, can see such mortification in that frozen neck, knows the way his brother’s eyes will look when Yarik has hidden the shame and fear, tried to pack it deep in his pupils, to keep it somehow from his twin. But Dima feels it, feels it like the splintery handle of the oar still gripped in his rubbed-raw palm. And then his fingers are free. Cold air kissing the torn skin.

  One, two, three, four . . .

  In his dream, he reaches down into the jars and soothes his blisters with the yolks of the eggs.

  . . . five, six . . .

  And with his dripping hands reaches up again and holds his brother’s. And soothes them.

  . . . seven . . .

  “Kukareku!” the boys shout.

  . . . vosyem . . .

  Such a long call! So drawn out and furious!

  . . . devyat . . .

  Wavery as a hurdy-gurdy’s wail! Listen: a kolyosnaya lira keening!

  . . . desyat . . .

  Hear the whooping of the crowd!

  Dima woke to a sound in his throat like a bow striking a fiddle string, some strand of joy reverberating in his chest. Music. For a moment, he thought it came from out on the street—how many years had it been since he’d seen musicians play?—and then the chorus burst in, breaking with static, and he knew his mother had finally found her folk songs on the radio. That morning, after working his twelve-hour shift, he’d returned home to find her still dressed in her Red Army uniform, her cap replaced by a flowered scarf, turning the dials, confounded by the absence of her favorite evening show. Now, from the kitchen, he could hear her accompany it with clapping.

  He lay on his cot, his eyes still shut, coming back into the world as slowly as he could. Outside his bedroom, the song wound down. The radio crackled with heavy gongs: the clock bells in the country’s capital keeping everyone on track. One, two, three . . . Each peal shook the daylight against his eyelids. He knew he should go back to sleep—in a couple hours he’d wolf a bowl of soup, catch the tram, get back on the glass, maybe pass Yarik returning from work—but he was watching windows in the distance: the lights of the cultural house pulsing, a celebration shaking the dom kultura’s walls. When he’d gone out to get the rooster, he hadn’t had time to travel farther down the road. Now, he was seeing it as it used to be: crammed with trucks and tractors, the fields to each side flickering with flashlight beams of farmers coming, the bonfire lighting all the faces of the kolkhozniki that swarmed the yard, clambered through the doorway into the hall. On his breastbone, he could feel their boot clomps, the beat of the double bass, and he kept his eyes closed, his breath quiet, tried not to leak out any of the air inside.

  In the hall, it was thick with cigarette smoke, the waft of wet wool, alive with thuds of mud-matted boots as the crowd surged onto the dance floor, laughter in their eyes, vodka in their cheeks, whoops and cries and the guitar’s sudden strumming, the plucking of the gusli, the fiddler bending to his bow. Hands on hips and waists, boots banging down, the crowd began to dance. Barinyas and troikas, kamarinskayas and khorovods. The brothers wading in. Dima with his high-kneed stomps, Yarik’s horse-in-harness prancing. Until the musicians broke, the crowd cleared, the clapping began: the Cossack competition. Alwa
ys, if the twins were there, they danced it. And if they danced it, they won.

  At the bandleader’s call, the floor full of dancers would go still: crouched low, hovering on haunches, one leg stretched straight, the other bent beneath. The rules were simple: everyone at the same low squat, the same single kick per beat, the beats quickening, the legs tiring, the dancers collapsing until only one remained. There came the balalaika trill. The singer’s voice: long vowel swooping up and up. And the first beat would boom from the band, the second drowned beneath the crash of half a hundred heels hitting the floor as one, another hundred hands coming together in the rhythm-keeping clapping of the crowd. Everyone had their strategies: barefooters hitched heavy skirts high up their thighs; boot wearers padded their heels with hay; collaborators circled up, held shoulders for balance; singles crossed their arms, or pumped them, or flapped at the air as if hoping for lift. But Dima and Yarik would simply face each other, grip each other’s hands and, leaning back, lash their right legs out, their left, kicks so synchronized the muscles of one seemed to move the other’s, locked eyes blinking simultaneously at sweat, grins tighter and tighter until their jaws bulged, their thighs shook, the floor around them shook, the shaking floor emptier and emptier, and then just them, the thunderous clapping, the frenzied music, the brothers holding on.

  Yarik sat by himself behind the dark windows in the backseat of the sedan. In his lap, one hand lay palm up, holding the mint the driver had made him take, the red and white cellophaned swirl shaking like a pinwheel on the edge of starting to turn. His other hand held tight to the rim of his hard hat, upturned on the seat beside him and shaking, too. He was still wearing his work gloves. When the foreman had called him over, told him to brush off his coveralled ass, shoved him towards the car—some new model of some non-Russian make, all gleaming black and glinting chrome—he had been too surprised to do anything but walk. When the driver had stepped out of the car to open the rear door, Yarik had waited for whoever was inside to climb out. But the backseat was empty. Gospodin . . . the driver said. Yarik couldn’t recall another time in his life when he’d been called “sir.” Ducking in, he had clanked his hard hat on the car’s roof, and by the time he’d yanked the hat off and shoved it down on the seat beside him, the driver was sitting in front, turned to face him, a smirk barely hidden in his eyes. The man held out a small silver box. For the ride, he said and flipped open the top. Inside: a dozen candies in shiny foils—rubies, sapphires, small squares of gold. The pinwheel mint was the only one with a wrapper clear enough to see through. Too late, he realized his fingers were still bulky with gloves. The driver, smirk slipping over his entire face, fished the mint out for him, held it until Yarik turned up his palm.