Actually, they’d be going into the army soon. Let them look.
Happy Starts was just for first graders. That’s why I sat so no one could see me. With my back turned. I had to root for Slavka by ear. I listened to them shriek when someone was running in last. They were trying to help. They hollered like madmen.
“Come over here,” a woman’s voice spoke behind my back. “No one’s here. Just some man.”
Two little boys sat down on the bench opposite me. I leaned over so I wouldn’t scare them. As if I were retying my shoelaces.
But they weren’t interested in me.
“What do you think you’re wearing?” their mama whispered. “I left everything out for you. And you put on I don’t know what. Now everyone’s going to think we’re poor.”
“Papa dressed us,” one of the boys whispered. “I told him it was wrong, but he said to cut it out, we were already late.”
“Now everyone’s going to think you have nothing to put on. I left everything on the armchair.”
“Papa said we shouldn’t dress like that for Happy Starts.”
“All right,” the mama whispered. “Ira’s running over now, and you can put on her sneakers. Only don’t step in a puddle. They’re brand-new.”
“Then he’ll come in last, if he has to run around the puddles,” whispered the younger boy. “He’ll lose.”
“Oh, I’ll jump over them.”
“What if they’re big?”
“I’ll take a running start.”
“All right, stop it,” their mama’s whisper cut them short. “You’re making my head spin.”
I listened to them, trying to be unobtrusive and thinking about how children are. What they say, how they push, how they jump with one leg tucked behind the other, how they pull off their boots, spit from the balcony, draw on the wallpaper, and fish the onions out of their soup.
Especially when they’re yours.
Arriving at the Black Sea with the whole gang. In the summer, when the heat is incredible. Renting a one-room apartment. It’s the second floor, so you’re afraid to leave the balcony door open at night. Every hour the TV news reports about Georgians escaping from prison. Several of them. After half a bottle it’s hard to remember how many. Or you don’t feel like it. Especially in that heat. You have a sticky back and your thoughts are running in all directions. On the other hand, there aren’t any flies. They buzz at the balcony door, but you can barely hear them in the room. Because the children are so noisy. They’re shoving one another and giggling on the floor. They like being in the same room with us. You can’t put them to bed. We sit on the couch and say, It’s nearly two in the morning. Not that they care. They don’t hear us. Their hair is wet from the heat. They grab each other’s shoulders. We say, It’s two o’clock. On the third day we figure out we can make our bed in the kitchen. Just on a blanket. So it doesn’t hurt the knees. And so the linoleum doesn’t stick to the back. The radio on the stool right over your head plays nothing but Joe Dassin every night. You have to be careful when you get up. Gasping for air, it’s easy to knock it off the stool. And you’ll have to find her lips in silence. As if you’ve gone deaf. And there’s a steady roar in your head, like when you press a shell to your ear.
“Kostya! Hey, Kostya!” my father shouted to me. “Come here! Are you deaf or something? I’ve been calling and calling and you don’t hear.”
“It’s noisy there on the balcony,” I said, walking into the room. “Too many cars below.”
“What did you expect? It’s Moscow! Practically city center. Let’s go have supper. Marina’s home from work.”
“So, didn’t your friends come?” Marina said in the kitchen.
“No. They had complications. They may not come tomorrow either.”
“Listen, for some reason I started using the formal ‘you’ with you again. What are you more comfortable with?”
“I don’t care.”
“Then let’s use the informal. If I forget, be sure to remind me. OK? How did our Slavka do running at Happy Starts?”
She stabbed a piece of meat with a fork and knocked my father with her knee. The meat fell back on the plate and she started laughing. My father couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“Fine. Their class won. Slavka got a certificate.”
“I see.” She smiled. “Now he’ll come inside and brag till the cows come home. He absolutely has to win.”
We ate in silence for probably a minute. My father wasn’t eating.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she finally said to my father.
Her voice had changed.
“You cut your hair,” he said.
“And so? Now I’m not allowed to cut my hair?”
“It’s a new hairstyle.”
“Listen, let’s not do this in front of your son. Reporters from the States come to see us at the office, and you want me to look like a scarecrow.”
“It was a pretty hairstyle.”
“It aged me. Don’t you understand? I looked forty. But I’m thirty-two. I’m only thirty-two!”
“What about the reporters?”
“What?” she stammered and gave him a bewildered look.
“How old are the journalists from America? Are they young?”
Marina looked at him without saying a word. Then she pushed her plate away and rose abruptly.
“I am so fed up with this obsession of yours! We can’t even eat a decent meal.”
She slammed the door, and we were left sitting at the table. The meat on my father’s plate was untouched.
“I apologize, Kostya,” Marina said later that night, coming to see me in my room. “We spoiled your supper. This happens with us. Your father is very sensitive about the difference in our ages. And nothing I say can convince him otherwise.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “Everyone has their problems.”
“But I have absolutely no idea how to help him. I have to weigh my every step to make sure I don’t say or do something. He flies off the handle at the drop of a hat. You know, I’m tired of it. Can I smoke in your room?”
“Smoke away. It’s your apartment.”
“Listen, what’s this you have?” She leaned over the desk by the window.
“A drawing.”
“This is wonderful! The children were making my ears buzz today over how you were drawing here this morning. You used up all my paper.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll buy some for you tomorrow.”
“Oh please! That’s not what I mean. This came out marvelously!”
“It’s the Black Sea,” I said. “There’s this one great guy living there.”
“Have you been there?”
“No. But I can imagine it.”
“You’ve never seen the Black Sea?”
“No.”
“Then how did you draw it?”
“I can imagine it.”
“I see.” She nodded warily. “But whose children are these?”
“Children?” I said, and I coughed a little.
“Is the smoke bothering you?” She fanned it away and leaned toward the open window.
“No, no, it’s all right. All’s well.”
“For some reason they have identical faces. Look, the same face. Was that on purpose? Or are they twins?”
“Twins,” I said, coughing a little more.
“So many?”
“I like it when there are lots of children.”
In the summer at the beach there are always lots of them. Running and shouting. Their bellies are so round. Some wear straw hats and some have no pants on. Because their parents like to watch them naked. They run and run, and then—boom!—their little bottoms land softly in the sand. But only to a certain age.
They weren’t taking my pants off anymore when Mama and I hid from the sun under our umbrella and my father played volleyball. Evidently neither one was interested in me anymore. With or without pants. It didn’t matter.
Because those young women
were there. And my father was playing with them.
The ball sails over our heads. Smack! A ringing blow. My eyes follow its flight. I hear them laughing. Once more—smack! Again I look up. The ball is turning into the sun, and I have tears streaming from my eyes. I can’t see a thing. Smack! Next to me someone screams, “Get out of the water! Come here this instant! What is that you have?” Smack! “Throw that filth out this minute! You’re going to get it!” Smack! “Catch it, catch it!” Smack! “Come on, come on, one more time!” Smack! And then two times quickly—smack! smack! But the sound is a little different and very close. “Did you get that?” And in reply a child’s cry. “Don’t cry or you’ll get it again.” Smack! “Look! Look! It’s going into the water.” Smack! Smack! “What, you haven’t had enough?” Smack! “Excellent! You did it! Now let me!” Smack! Smack! Smack! “Stop your wailing. My hand’s sore from all this hitting!” Smack! “It’s going into the water again! She’s hitting it there on purpose!” Smack! “Got it!” My father’s voice.
Not at all like the voice he uses at home.
I open my eyes, turn, and look at the water. So as not to look where my mother is looking. Because she is watching them constantly. And next to us that little guy just can’t quiet down. “Let me put cream on your face.” She doesn’t even turn her head in my direction. “I don’t want it. It’s stinky.”
At the water’s edge a dog is running behind some kids. First one way, then the other. Like a wind-up toy. She crouches on her front paws and howls. They throw sand at her.
Behind me—smack! And then it stops.
“Kostya!” My father’s voice again. “Throw the ball!”
I’m sitting watching the dog. Except my back’s a little tense.
“Are you deaf or something? Hey, Konstantin!”
Behind me, soft steps across the sand. My mother raises her head higher and higher. She stops. She looks somewhere behind me and straight up. It’s not my father. She looks at him differently.
Next to me on the sand is a shadow.
“I’ll bring it right over.” A woman’s voice. “All’s well. The boy just got distracted.” I look at the shadow.
Long hair. Not at all like Mama’s. The shadow contracted and got big again immediately. “Catch!”
Smack!
“Why don’t you ever play with us? Last time you sat there like that, too. And the time before that.”
My mother looks at her but doesn’t answer. The sun has turned her pupils to black dots.
“Where have you run off to?” My father’s voice. “Let’s hurry this up!”
Smack!
The shadow sways and vanishes. My mother starts lowering her head. Her pupils shudder and start to enlarge. And around them are these bright specks.
I probably should have stood up and thrown them the ball. Then she wouldn’t have come over and my father wouldn’t have said later, in the car, that my mother was a jealous ninny. Or even better, I should have stabbed this ball with a knife. A nice sharp one. My father had cut his finger when he was treating everyone to watermelon. And the woman with the long hair had watched him and laughed. As if she were being tickled. The juice ran down her fingers.
“Why aren’t you eating?” my father said. “Distracted again, are you?”
She was standing there and laughing. And my mother was sitting under her umbrella. Looking at the water.
I should have thrown them the ball.
Although, whether I had or not wouldn’t have made anyone have a better time. My father would have kept on playing his volleyball on the beach. When fall came, we started taking outings to the forest. Each Saturday morning he started pacing around the apartment and whistling something. My mother always told him not to whistle in the house, but he sat down in the kitchen and whistled even louder. “Do you like soccer, Kostya?” I said I did. “Then get your things. We’re going to the forest.”
It was better in the forest than at home. You could find hawberries and spit the seeds at that girl with the long hair. From the bushes. Where no one could see you. Or snarl burdock in her hair. But I chickened out when it came to the burdock. I just imagined her cutting it out with scissors. Imagined it and spat hawberry seeds. Until they dragged me out of the bushes.
“Quit horsing around. Let’s play soccer.”
But I wasn’t horsing around. I was trying to hit her in the head.
“You play offense. And I’ll stand in the goal,” my father said. “We’ll play to ten.”
Except that he didn’t stand in the goal. He made stupid faces and started whistling again. But Mama wasn’t saying anything to him anymore. She was sitting by a tree watching us. Probably it only mattered to her that he not whistle at home. I don’t know. At the time I didn’t understand it. I just ran toward the other goal and kicked. But we still let more by. Because he let that girl score on purpose.
“They’re girls. What are you so upset about? We’re not going to play them seriously.”
But I was hurt. Because I’d been trying. I really wanted to beat them. And he let them score in the beginning on purpose so that the score ended up five to nine. And when there was just one goal left for them to win, he suddenly started trapping them. I thought, now we might pull it off. I started running faster and equalized. Something hurt in my stomach, but we were just one goal behind. And that girl with the long hair was running around me and laughing. But I wasn’t laughing. Because I only had to kick in one goal. And I thought now we would pull it off. But my stomach hurt bad. And that was when he caught the ball and threw it right at her feet. I saw him throw it to her on purpose, but I still took off. Because I thought I’d make it. But I tripped and hit my head. And when I looked up they were hugging. And she was shouting, We won! I stood up and went into the bushes. Because I didn’t want them to see me crying. And because my stomach hurt so bad.
That evening the doctor came and said it was appendicitis. He pressed slowly on my belly and then released very abruptly. I bounced up from the pain. Like that ball I’d wanted to stab.
We sat on a stretcher in the ambulance, and my father stroked my head. I told him that if I died he shouldn’t take that girl with the long hair into the forest anymore. He laughed and said I was a ninny. An appendectomy was a very simple operation.
Jealousy is the kind of thing you just can’t beat. Ever. No matter how hard you try. There are strong people who can beat anything—enemies, friends, loneliness. But jealousy is a whole different thing. You just have to go and cut out your heart. Because that’s where it lives. Otherwise, every movement you make is going to be aimed at you. It’s like drowning in quicksand. The harder you try to get out, the faster you sink into the quagmire. Pretty soon only your eyes are left on the surface. Your burning eyes. All kinds of crap have already washed into your nose. Go ahead, breathe in. Either way you’ve got less than a minute left. Bye-bye, wide world. It’s been swell.
Until that bitch showed up.
“When I get home I’m going to kill her, damn it,” one sergeant in the hospital told me after they had evacuated us from Chechnya.
“You’re nuts. What for?” I said. “She doesn’t even know you lost your leg.”
“She’ll find out. And then there’s no fucking way I’ll hold on to her. You know how many guys are running around there, at home, with legs? Running around all over town, the bastards, and each one of them has two damn legs poking out.”
I looked at him but didn’t say anything.
“If I catch the bastard who stretched that trip-wire next to the checkpoint, I’ll show him what legs are for. The way they taught us in school. With feeling.”
A special forces guy hung suspended in the ward next to me. He was brought in after they did my second operation. He hung there in a sling made out of sheets, because he’d been run over by the back wheel of a truck and he had no pelvis left. All his bones were broken, jumbled up in a heap. Like children’s toys you’re sick of so you dump them in a corner.
They s
ewed a rubber hose into his belly and attached a bottle to the hose. That’s how he went to the toilet. I mean, he didn’t actually go anywhere, he just hung there in his sling, and occasionally they changed the bottle. Emptied it and brought it back.
Twice he managed to accumulate enough pills. But doctors being doctors, they pumped out his stomach. They didn’t care what his life was going to be like. True, later the head doctor gave him his word that everything would be set right so he stopped hiding pills in his pillowcase. Everything being set right was important to him.
“So what about you?” he asked me. “Do you have a girl back home?”
I said I didn’t.
“That’s good. Otherwise she’d leave you. Have you seen what you’ve got under the bandages?”
“No. There’s no mirror in the bandaging room.”
I was lying. There was a mirror in the bandaging room. For the nurses. In a military hospital where it’s all guys lying there, girls have to keep up with those things. “L’Oreal. Paris. After all, I’m worth it.” Who knows where you’re going to meet your destiny? Though we weren’t much to write home about. If you really tried, you might make one normal guy out of three of us.
But I didn’t tell the special ops guy about the mirror. First of all, I’d been too chicken to approach it. And secondly, he would never learn the truth anyway. How much longer could he hang there like that?
“Still, you’ve got everything working down below there,” he said. “The equipment’s working.”
And I said, yes, that was all fine.
“But I don’t know what to tell my wife, damn it. She’ll probably leave me. What do you think, was the head doctor lying to me?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s a good guy generally.”
But the worst part of the hospital was the dreams. Because at first, after I woke up, I wouldn’t remember what had happened to us. Like it had been cut off. I’d even forget climbing into the APC. I’d lie there in my bandages, moaning, unable to remember a thing. It hurt, so I’d just wait for the nurse. And her cool hands. Even through the bandages I could feel them. At first I didn’t know what they called that, but then I heard. Someone said, “Promedol.” And they also said, “Why are you using so much on him? You’ve still got two whole wards to go.” Then, her cool hands, the shot in my upper arm—right through the scab, which crackled a little—and the darkness began to rock. It waltzed and kept retreating. And her voice. “Do you know how much this hurts him? Let him get a little sleep.” Her voice swayed with the darkness, turned into a white ribbon, and melted. “Do you know what he was like when they brought him in?”
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