by Josh Weil
He could feel the air compressed between her fingers and his lips. He could feel the slight shaking of her spread palm with each thump in his chest. He could feel the weight of her entire body hovering over him, her shock of bangs hanging down into the place between their eyes, her breasts filling in the space his bowed body left. He could feel that, too, how his own chest had gone concave, his whole self bent, as if afraid to let hers touch him. But mostly what he felt was how her whole self bent to make sure she did, how she twinned her shape with his.
“But”—he watched the word blow her bangs—“isn’t that the same thing that they do, that you’re against? The way we’re made to want something we didn’t know we wanted until they—”
She pressed the seed against his lips. “No.” She shook her head; her bangs brushed his skin; he let the seed slip in. “That’s making a new want where there wasn’t one before. This is just uncovering a want that was always there. Maybe forgotten, or burried, or blocked out, but there.” Her hand gave his breastbone a little push.
Looking away, he watched the far-off ring shimmering around them, the swarm of insects beneath the swirling birds, stared across the bog to where the wall of their glistering bodies shook. Beyond it: blackness. At first, when they’d come here and sat on the rock and seen the border between the long dusk and real night solidify before them, he’d wanted to wander out there, past it, beyond the verge. But now something about the idea scared him, seemed suddenly too huge. And he was afraid to look at her, to see the disappointment he knew would be in her black eyes. Instead, he thought, he’d give her what he could. He tried to remember the poem where he’d left off, the start to the second canto, the lines that spoke to the ways of warriors compared to poets compared to lovers, and, swallowing the seed, shaped his lips into the name Rogdai, tried to start the story of the rival suitor. . . . But couldn’t. It had been so many years since he and his brother had lain beneath that blanket of mushrooms, so long since they had filled the warren’s air with their renditions of the fable, and, still, it felt so real, so true, strong enough to make this now feel wrong.
“It’s OK,” she said. “You don’t have to. We don’t need to. Not anything.” And, taking her weight off his chest, telling him, “Not even touch,” she filled him with a worry that felt even worse: somehow she’d read him, known him, the way that, once, only Yarik could.
“In Mongolia,” she whispered, her face still close, “among the herders, they learn to recognize each other’s smell. That’s how they know their friends, their feelings. They say hello like this.” Smiling, she dipped her face beside his, sniffed a cheek, the other.
He felt his own smile break.
“Here,” she said, leaning down with her face turned so that her neck nearly grazed his nose. “What do I smell like?”
He breathed in. If there was a faint redolence of mushroom and cigarettes and something fresh and sharp as a radish newly bit, on her it still seemed unlike anything he’d ever known.
When he stayed silent, she returned her face to him. And leaning in to place her nose close to his neck, whispered, “You know what you smell like?” When he shook his head, he could feel the blood throb through the bruise in his jaw. He could feel her breath brush the tender spot of skin when she told him, “Me.”
Now, Dima was out under the zerkala again. It seemed to him the Consortium must have sent more up: they filled the sky, a city of lights above the city of none, as if the souls of all the disused streetlamps of Petroplavilsk had taken residence in the heavens. Beneath them, Dima walked the long walk to his brother’s home.
Again, he had returned to his own just before morning. Again, he’d slept through the day. And waking in the late afternoon across the room from Yarik’s old cot, in the same strings of sunlight coming through the window-hung kovyor, he’d felt the weave of them, him and his brother, the threads that all their lives had held them together, fraying—the day they’d sold their father’s boat, the evening Yarik first saw Zinaida, the hours Dima had spent with Vika last night: these were the moments that pulled the loose ends of life—and, rising, he had known they had to see each other, to talk, whether Yarik wanted to or not.
By the time he got to the building it was late enough Zina and the children would have already eaten supper, late enough Dima could be sure his brother would be there. He’d found a pair of peeling boots to replace his lost shoes, and the tape that he’d used to hold together the sole of one had come undone. The rubber slapped with every step on every stair. On the landing, he paused. Through the apartment door he could hear the baby crying, dishes banging in the sink, Yarik shouting at his wife that she was going to break something, her shouting back that he was one to talk.
When Dima knocked, all the noise but the baby stopped.
“Bratets,” he said, “it’s me.”
There was whispering before his brother came to the door. Yarik had on a bathrobe and slippers and his hair was wet. The hallway light showed the trails trickled down his temples, his neck.
“Hello, bratishka,” Yarik said.
“Hello, bratan.”
It seemed like such a long time since he had seen his brother. Now, standing so close, last night seemed even farther away than that. Or maybe just seemed smaller. Maybe, back beside his brother, he already felt a little less scared of it, a little more safe. Some neighbor below opened a door, shut it, started down the stairs. Dima reached out and took Yarik’s hand and lifted his arm and put his brother’s palm over the back of his neck. Footsteps down a second flight, a third.
Yarik squeezed a little. “Come in,” he said.
A color television flashed from the living room, flickering over Polya’s scattered toys, and there was Timofei, sitting crosslegged on the floor before a video game, nearly unrecognizable in the crazed light of the screen. The coatrack had been moved. Dima didn’t see why until he reached to it, ran his hand down the post their father carved, his palm slipping over the spirals, slowing, going still. There, at eye level: a second hole in the wall.
“It was like only having one shoe.” Yarik forced a smile. “I needed a pair.” And then he realized what he’d said and his smile twisted, as if trying, too late, to change the words. He looked away, opened the sideboard, turned back with a bottle in his fist.
The sound of his brother pouring the vodka into the glasses was the same, the show on the TV the same, the old oil scent from the kitchen, the way Zinaida sighed heavily over the dishes the same sound of forbearance that Dima had grown to know was her weighing the good and bad of the life she’d made with Yarik and deciding it was, in the end, OK.
His brother finished screwing the cap back on the bottle and matched her sigh. As if he had been listening to his wife and knew that it would go on as it did—his marriage, his kids, his day after day—and that that was, in the end, OK, too.
For the first time, Dima thought he understood why someone might want it, the ways it could seem nearly enough, how tempting it must have been for Yarik. Might even be someday for him.
“What are you smiling about?” Yarik said, the two glasses in his hands, his wet hair dripping.
“It’s just,” Dima said, “you look contented.”
Yarik’s eyebrows rose. “You look like you got attacked by a rooster.”
Dima felt his brow mimic his brother’s, saw Yarik see it, his brother unable to stop a real smile at the sight. And, watching that, Dima felt the same pull at his face. He winced: the pain in his jaw where the shoe had hit.
As if he hadn’t noticed, Yarik handed Dima the glass, made as if to put his arm around his brother’s back, but checked himself, unsure of what else might be hurt. “Come here,” Yarik said, instead. “Look.”
They stood in front of the hallway mirror, Yarik a little behind Dima, the glasses in their hands.
“Not at me,” Yarik told him.
Dima glanced at himself, then back to his brother.
“You don’t even see, do you?” Yarik said. “When
was the last time you got a haircut? It looks like Mama did it.”
Dima shrugged.
“Oh my God. I was joking.” Yarik tugged first one of Dima’s ears, then the next. “And you managed to keep both?” His hand slid around to Dima’s face and brushed his beard against his cheeks, all telltale gingerly when it should have been a squeeze. “Are you waiting for her to give you a shave, too? Or are you training to become a priest?”
How hard Vika’s hand had pressed his chest, how quickly she’d reached for his jaw, how strange the way whatever was in him pushed the comparison on his mind. “It’s OK,” Dima said, as if his voice might clear it away. “It’s just a little sore.”
But it was Yarik’s fingers that drew back. His brother wiped them on his robe. His eyes had left Dima’s face in the mirror, and he held Dima forward by the shoulder, as if to look at the whole of him, as if to hide behind his thin shape. “What are you eating?” he asked. “What is Mama making you for supper? What in God’s name are you bringing her to make?”
“We have enough,” Dima said.
“Enough? How long can rooster soup last?”
“I wouldn’t eat Ivan.”
“I bet your neighbors would. Is it still crowing?”
“Yarik,” Dima said, “when are you going to stop taking a different bus?”
Yarik took a sip from his glass. He looked like his whole face felt bruised as Dima’s jaw. “I can’t talk here,” he said. “I can’t think in here. Listen to that!” He motioned to the living room with the noise of the kids and swept his hand onward to the kitchen with the racket of the dishes, and the movement allowed him to turn away from Dima. He took another drink. “You named it Ivan?” he said. “Like the dog?”
“Yarik—”
“Let’s go up to the roof.” And, passing by the sideboard, he took the bottle. On the roof, he dragged the two deck chairs over, dropped himself into one, lay back against its low recline, the plastic footrest sagging with the weight of his heels, and, letting the bottle clank next to him, told Dima, “Sit.” They sat beneath the mirrors sliding across the dome of the sky, amid their reflections in the surrounding rooftop solar panes. From up there all of Petroplavilsk seemed to be drifting.
Sitting there, beside his brother again, Dima could feel it. Not only the way that life had tried to carry them apart, but how far he had begun to drift himself. For a moment he was afraid to look at Yarik. He had missed his brother so much.
“I know,” Yarik said.
And Dima turned to see: in his brother’s face there was the same thing his brother had seen in his.
But, clearing his throat, Yarik tried to turn it into something else. “I know,” he said again, “that it must be hard. You must need money.”
“No,” Dima told him.
“For my brother, my mother, I can find—”
“All your brother wants,” Dima said, “is that you save.” And, saying it, he knew it was true. All he wanted was to live life beside his brother. And all they needed to do it was the farm. “Save, bratan, so we can—”
“That’s what I don’t understand,” Yarik said. “By now, you must have gone through so much of what you’d saved. If you’d only kept working, if you still had your half . . .”
“I have it.” Dima set his glass down. He lifted his bony hips, reached into his back pocket, drew out a folded bit of cloth. “I haven’t touched it.” Inside there was a handful of half-smoked cigarettes sallow in the mirror-light. He picked through the pile for the longest stub, found it, put it to his lips, and, cupping the remaining butts in his palm, offered the clothful to Yarik.
His brother looked at it. Dima followed the glance. The stubs were shaking. Then Yarik’s hand cupped Dima’s fingers, folded them closed around the cloth.
Setting his glass on his belly, Yarik reached into the pocket of his robe. He brought out his own pack of cigarettes, drew out two, gave one to Dima. Lighting a match, steadying his glass, he reached over. In Yarik’s fingers the flame shivered. Watching it, Dima inhaled, let go of the first smoke.
“Bratets,” Yarik said, “what do you eat?”
“Food.”
“How do you get it?”
“Mama’s apartment is full of things we don’t need.”
“And when you’re down to the things you do need?”
“Each thing that I get in trade,” Dima said, “I ask the farmers about. How to plant it. How to grow it.” His brother swapped the cigarette for his glass, looked at him over the rim. “We already know most of it from when we were boys.”
“Dima,” Yarik said, “how long do you plan to survive on a dream?”
They sat with their cigarettes burning down in their fingers.
“I have a boy now,” Yarik told him. “A daughter. A wife. You think I can support them by trading things?”
“You don’t even have to trade for most of it,” Dima told him. “Most I just find.”
“Oh,” Yarik said, like the word had gone through him and cramped somewhere inside. He drew on the cigarette and sighed the smoke out and then reached down and ground the stub against the roof. “You’re feeding our mother off trash.” He handed the stub to Dima. “You want me to feed my family on trash?”
Dima took the stub and ground his own out and drew the cloth out of his pocket and wrapped the two in it and put the cloth back, and while he did his brother watched him, and while watching him Yarik drained his glass.
“Before the Oranzheria—” Dima started.
“We were kids,” Yarik cut him off. “Now we’re not.” He waited while Dima took a drink from his half-full glass. Then he reached to the bottle and unscrewed the top and poured it for himself. “It’s part of growing up, bratets.” He poured Dima’s glass full, too. “It’s the way the world—”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Dima said. “It didn’t used to be. It wasn’t the way the old mir worked.”
“The mir?”
“It wasn’t how Dyadya Avya worked.”
“The mir of the peasants from centuries ago?”
“On Dyadya Avya’s—”
“On Dyadya Avya’s we lived like animals. On the mir, they—”
“And why not?” Dima’s hand jerked with the words, the vodka spilling onto his fingers. “Animals like their work. A heron likes to fish.”
“What is this,” Yarik said, “something you picked up from the people you’ve been hanging around with?”
“A bear . . .”
“Dima . . .”
“. . . to hunt.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Squirrels—”
“Right,” Yarik said, “I’m sure squirrels fucking love to collect nuts. But we’re not squirrels, bratets.” He took a slug from his glass. “I mean, Dima, look at us. Look at fucking them.” He waved a hand at the zerkala above. “We’re not wild animals. We’re fucking house cats. And you know what a house cat wants? To sit on its ass and lap from a bowl of milk. A bowl someone else has brought for it. But if there’s nobody to bring the bowl? Until we make enough money to pay someone to bring it, bratets, we can’t just do what we want.” He set his glass down on his armrest with a dull clank.
Slowly Dima drank his empty, too. Then he reached down and unscrewed the cap on the bottle and refilled his brother’s glass, refilled his. “If we could just buy the farm,” he told Yarik, “we could work at what we want, we’d—”
“We’d what?” Yarik said. “Plow up the old fields? Grow some flax? Some turnips? Spend all day hunched over with a hoe like Dyadya Avya? Do you think he liked pulling turnips? Do you think those farmers you talk to, are they, with their backs bent from a life of it, do you think they’re happy?”
“I think they’re happier than us.”
“Not for long.”
Dima looked at his brother, the vodka stinging on his lip.
“These farmers,” Yarik went on. “They’re in the old market?”
“Yeah.”
&nb
sp; “And what do they sell? What do they have left that can grow? Who can grow it? A few so far out they’re not yet affected by the zerkala? A few who scratch together enough to buy their seeds from the Consortium? And the rest? A few cucumbers that don’t need the dark? A few onions? It’s not like Dyadya Avya’s anymore, Dima.”
“If they can—”
“How many? How many are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not as many as there used to be.”
“No.”
“Not nearly. Next year there will be none. Every month it pushes out another kilometer. I push it out another kilometer. Another hundred hectares of fields. How can they compete? Bratishka, how could you?”
“We—”
“No,” Yarik said. “No.” He drank, swallowed. “It has to stop.”
The glass on Dima’s thigh felt too heavy for him to lift it off. “What?” he said.
“What other people must think,” Yarik told him. “When they see you digging through the trash. When they see you riding the bus like a bum all day long.”
“I’m not a bum.”
“Like a beggar.”
“I don’t beg,” Dima told him.
“And you think that would keep you out of The Dachas?” Yarik slugged back the rest of his drink. “Do you ever wonder why you haven’t been put there yet?”
“Why would they put me there?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t think—”
“I do,” Yarik said. “Zina does. Because we know what would happen without the six thousand roubles I pay the police to keep you out.”
Dima sat silent.
“Each month,” Yarik said. He slid his gaze to Dima, his glass squeezed in his fist. “I know what you’re thinking now.”
“Six thousand roubles a month.”
“And it’s not ‘thank you.’”
“Yarik,” Dima nearly whispered, “have you managed to save anything at all?”
The glass banged down on the rooftop. “That”—Yarik let go, as if it had broken—“is what has to stop.”