Moscow but Dreaming

by Ekaterina Sedia

  “Some would say you are lucky to have the parents you do. They give you everything you want.”

  She nods. She knows she is being ungrateful—always has been, even back in the orphanage where she was lucky to have a roof over her head and a bed to sleep in, where she did not have to freeze to death in the streets. “I know.”

  “Then what?” The kindness in the doctor’s voice cracks, about to let something else through. “What’s the problem?”

  “There is a monster under my bed,” she says. “It wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom.”

  “Is this why you wet your bed?” the doctor asks.

  Helen feels her cheeks grow hot—she cannot believe Janis has told on her. Her eyes flash indignation, but the doctor does not notice.

  “What kind of monster is it?” he asks.

  Helen hikes up her trouser leg and shows him deep bruises the color of plums, the wide gashes barely healed over, running from her kneecap to the top of her white sock. She hears Janis gasp on her ottoman.

  Then the doctor starts asking Janis questions Helen does not understand. She only hears fear in Janis’s voice, and feels guilty. Now she knows about the monster too, and probably worries.

  Janis looks at the newspaper clipping the doctor has photocopied for her. Some are printouts of the internet articles, and Janis wonders if he collects this stuff and why. But she knows the answer—there are enough of these adopted children and their anxious parents to pay for his office and the mahogany desk and the red plush chairs. Of course he collects the clippings about child murders.

  Janis reads the small, too dark print of a poor photocopy, she looks at the photograph that doesn’t look like a child’s face—just a Rorschach of black and white planes; it’s such a bad copy of the picture. Could be a little boy with black pools where his eyes should have been.

  She reads the articles—they all say the same thing. An adopted child beaten to death by his parents in Switzerland. Countries and names change from one article to the next, but the story is the same—beaten, dismembered, thrown out of windows, moving vehicles, off bridges. She flips through the clippings, face after face after face in severe black and white. Janis cries then, not for them but for Helen.

  The monster growls so softly it sounds like a purr. Its claws tap on the floorboards like castanets. Helen sits on her bed hugging the bruised knees to her chest.

  The doctor did not seem to believe the story of the monster, and instead seemed to think that her mom and dad were the ones who hurt Helen. He even said that if they beat her, she should tell him that now and the police would find her new parents. While the proposal seemed tempting, Helen decided that lying was still wrong. The monster growls louder, reminding her of her mistake.

  Helen cannot sleep and she thinks back, to what she can remember of the orphanage—so much of it is fading from her memory already. But the monsters she remembers, their long shadows stretching across the chipping walls. The nannies tell her that these are not shadows, just stains from the age-old plumbing leaks. Just blemishes of an unknown origin. They rumble in the pipes, they spread in the puddles of gray light that move across the floor of the classroom as the day wears on. They hide under desks and chairs in the common room, they follow the children outside to the swings and the monkey bars.

  The monsters look out of the eyes of the parents who come to take away children; they all speak unfamiliar languages. They look out of the eyes of the nannies and especially the older boys, all teeth and clawed fingers. Helen avoided them and kept her head down, dreading the day she would be tall enough to push against the lockers.

  She dangles her foot off the bed and pulls it back up right away, teasing the monster. She hears it lunge and miss and dig its claws into the floorboards. Its breathing is heavy now, upset. If she weren’t so afraid, she would’ve descended to the floor and let the monster devour her—every bone, every morsel—and lick the floor clean of blood with its red tongue, rough enough to strip the paint and varnish off wood. Her parents would find no trace of her, as if she simply vanished from the world.

  It would be a good death, she thinks, not at all like the girl they’ve found hanging off the curtain rod, her red tights wrapped around her neck. Helen remembers her purple tongue teasing between white sharp teeth; she remembers the missing incisor and the swollen tissue squeezing through the gap. Or like the boy who snuck off to go swimming in the lake a few kilometers away. They brought him back, blue and naked and wet like a creature from a horror movie. Like a monster.

  She dangles the edge of the blanket and hears the tearing of fabric. She pulls back the long twisting shreds. She hears the footfalls on the staircase, and hides the torn blanket from sight. She pretends to sleep as the door squeals open and Janis stands in the doorway. Helen feels her worried look with the back of her neck.

  “This is ridiculous,” Tom says, and turns off the TV to illustrate his seriousness on the matter. “They think that we are hurting her?”

  Janis nods and shows him the clippings. They do not say it out loud, but they both are thinking the same thing: these children are impossible, they are messed up and they cannot be fixed. They do not speak English, and yet they demand, they want things, they require tutors and psychiatrists, and their medical bills are piling up. The orphanages have the secret policy of adopting the most damaged children abroad, and Janis cannot decide if it is out of kindness, trying to get them help they cannot get at home, or cynicism, getting rid of the defectives and the unwanted.

  She thinks of the people in the adoption agency and the orphanage staff, and she does not know if those people even know their own motives. She only knows that the doctors at the orphanage give all the children a clean bill of health, afraid to spook the potential parents. In any case, they find out soon enough.

  Helen came with a heart murmur and bed wetting; the latter does not seem too bad compared to the congenital heart defect that is too late to fix. But even that fades in comparison to her acting out and scratching, to her fears, to her reluctance let them touch her. Even that fades in comparison to the unexplained bruises and cuts.

  “I think she did it to herself,” Tom says. “The doctors checked her out before—there wasn’t a problem then. Maybe she fell or banged against something in the playground?”

  Janis shakes her head. “I don’t know. But those bruises… they look like fingerprints. Adult fingerprints, and nail scratches.” She draws a deep breath, dreading the question she has to ask. “Tom… You wouldn’t…”

  He looks at her open-mouthed, not indignant, just surprised. “No. Of course not.” Of course not, Janis scolds herself. How could she even think that?

  He stares at her, clears his throat. “Janis, we really need to talk.”

  She knows what it’s about—the child is a problem, like the children in the clippings. The problem. They never fought before, never suspected one another of anything unsavory. They used to have leisure and spare cash, they never used to argue like that. Janis just cannot bear to think about admitting defeat, to tolerate the smug I-told-you-sos from family and friends. “It’s different when it’s your own,” they will say. “What did you expect? She’s too old, too mixed up. It’s not the same as having your own baby. It’s sad, but you can’t save them, Janis, you can’t save them all.”

  She thought she could save just one, but even that is apparently too much for them.

  “Yes,” she says out loud. “We need to talk. Let me just check on her.”

  Helen squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the woman to close the door, cutting off the thick slab of light reaching in from the hallway. The light makes the monster retreat into its den somewhere between the bed and the floorboards, where its eyes glow with quiet red ferocity in the darkness. She wants to ask the woman—Janis, mom—to leave the door open, to put the lights on, but she cannot, and she cries silently, her salty tears sliding down her cheek and into her hair, soaking into the pillow.

  The woman does not leave. Inste
ad she comes in and sits on the bed, the white texture of her cable-knit sweater exaggerated by the light from the hallway and darkness inside the room. It is cold tonight—the cold has finally caught up with Helen. It chased her across the unfathomable chasm of the ocean and nine hours of flying through the air over the stationary clouds. The autumn is here now, and there are no more moths fluttering in the curtains.

  Helen peeks between the tear-soaked eyelashes, and the beam of light twinkles and breaks into a myriad of tiny stars. The woman looks back at Helen but does not smile like she usually does when their eyes meet. Instead she sighs and strokes Helen’s hair. She feels the moisture under her fingertips, and she looks like she’s about to cry herself.

  Helen considers opening her eyes completely but decides against it and squeezes them shut, feigning sleep. If she looks at her new mom directly, she will start talking, and then Helen would cry in earnest at her inability to understand, to explain about the monsters and shadows and fear.

  Helen wants to talk about summers in Siberia—so short and so intense, so full of high-pitched whining of mosquitoes and the smell of pine trees oozing fresh sap, of spongy bogs studded with butter-yellow cloudberries. About the lake where the runaway boy drowned but which becomes transformed by a cloudless blue sky overhead into a swath of precious smooth silk surrounded by soft, succulent-green branches of firs.

  But Helen cannot explain these things and she forces her eyelids tighter together, until her eyes burn.

  Janis gives up and rises to her feet, the springs of the mattress squeaking in relief. The door closes behind her, cutting off the light.

  In the darkness, there is shifting and stirring. Helen watches the sheet of wallpaper peel away, admitting a thin beam of bluish light into the room.

  Helen sits up and peers into the widening gap—carefully at first, wary of the monsters. She sees a small man, no bigger than a cat, crouching on the other side of the wallpaper barrier. His withered narrow face looks at Helen over his shoulder, and then he turns away and draws on the inside of the wall—a chain of tiny cranes, dwarfed by the shadows of daisies and poppies. They seem paler on the other side but alive, nodding in the invisible breeze.

  Helen pulls the sheets of the wallpaper apart, and she sees a bright blue lake surrounded by yellow-needled larches. The monster crawls from under the bed and stands beside her, panting like a dog, the black fur between its wing-like shoulder blades bristling. Helen is surprised to not be afraid of it anymore.

  The monster leaps into the gap and Helen follows, timid at first. She turns to look back and watches the wallpaper fold back with a quiet rustling and grow together, fusing. She sees the ghostly flowers, and behind them—her room, a shadow image from a magic lantern.

  The monster growls and bounds ahead, then stops and waits for her by the tiny man and his cranes, which are flying in place, their wings sweeping up and down in a graceful motion. She watches them for a while, never moving and yet flying south among the daisies and poppies which are still blooming despite the autumn and its cold fingers reaching even behind the wallpaper, where the monsters sleep during the day.

  The monster barks and laughs and leaps to the right, then to the left; then it gallops toward the lake, looking over its shoulder, inviting Helen to follow. Helen sighs and walks through the fallen leaves, rubbery under her white socks, she walks to the lake where a blue boy with sharp teeth is waiting for her, the monster by his side like a hound.

  YAKOV AND THE CROWS

  Yakov is glad to see that the crow has come back. He watches it out of his office window, five stories up above a frozen Moscow street; just another window on the flat, uniform façade of the square building. They call places like this one “the box”—not just because of its shape, but also because no one really knows what goes on in there. Government buildings. Yakov knows, he works here. He proofreads blueprints. Now they pile on his desk, and Yakov watches the crow.

  He has noticed it a few days back, when he cracked the window and took his lunch bag from the ledge just outside. Many did this—it saved a trip down to the refrigerator in the common room. Yakov noticed that the ham sandwich lacked ham, and the entire neat package has been eviscerated with surgical precision. He looked outside, as if hoping to glimpse a thief. He saw a crow.

  The crow does its usual rounds—it flies level with the sixth story, from one end of the building to the other, inspecting every window for a paper bag. The crow disdains hardboiled eggs and laughs at bread, but savors meat and cheese. Yakov waits for it.

  It alights on the ledge and looks at Yakov, its head tilted, one roguish eye studying him. The black of the crow’s head looks like a beret, and its body is of dull but somehow shiny grey. Black feathers on the tips of its wings are folded primly, like laced fingers. What a gypsy eye, Yakov thinks. How familiar. Maria used to have black gypsy eyes like that, until they closed, forever weighted by dull copper coins.

  The crow watches him, the glimmer in its eye almost humorous. It seems indifferent to Yakov’s lunch bag. It moves closer, with short hops along the ledge, until its black rogue eye is aligned with Yakov’s blue. The crow shakes with suppressed laughter.

  “Maria?” he says before he even realizes his lips are moving.

  The crow flaps its wings and continues its solitary patrol. Yakov returns to his desk. There are three other desks in the room, covered with dust, empty since the budget cut last year, in 1989. They still keep Yakov.

  Five o’clock rolls by, and he takes the subway home. It’s crowded, and he leans against the doors, thinking about the crow, as the train carries him away from the hateful wind-scourged outskirts, towards the center, the old city, where his home is.

  It is dark as he walks down the frozen boulevard, past the sleeping bums and squeezing couples undeterred by the cold and the frigid iron of the benches. Streetlamps light his way with their wan mercury glow.

  He ascends to the third story, and listens outside of the door. Young voices and music reach into the stony stairwell full of echoes. His son Mitya has some friends over. Yakov likes the music—one of the new bands, Aquarium it’s called. He listens to the lyrics from outside; they have nice imagery. Gold on blue, flame-maned lions, wolves and ravens. He turns the key.

  Mitya and two of his friends, Andrey and Slava, greet him with fake moans of disappointment. Yakov smiles—he likes the kids, and they seem to like him back, despite their many differences.

  “Yakov Mihailovich,” Slava says. “We did some nice business today. I just thought I’d tell you that.” He knows how much Yakov disapproves of all the recent wheelings and dealings, and never misses a chance to tease him.

  Yakov bites. “There’s more to life than money, boys.” All three giggle.

  “Dad,” Mitya says, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes as dark

  and mischievous as those of the crow. “Don’t you want to know how?”

  Yakov nods.

  “This morning, we bought a case of beer at seven rubles a can. And this afternoon the prices went up, all the way to fifteen.”

  “And you sold it,” Yakov guesses.

  The three laugh.

  “No,” Mitya says. “We’re drinking it. Want some?”

  Yakov laughs too. They all think that the inflation is funny. “You call that business?”

  “Life’s too short to drink cheap beer,” Andrey says.

  Mitya notices that Yakov is preoccupied. “You want anything to eat?” he says.

  Yakov shakes his head. “You go ahead. I’ll just read.”

  “Want us to turn the music down?”

  “No, I like it. Reminds me of the Akmeists.”

  “Who?” Slava says.

  Yakov sighs. These kids have their heads so full of money, they forgot everything else. “The school of poets in the early 20th century,” he says. “They wrote poetry centered around imagery. You heard of Gumilev, I presume.”

  “Yeah,” Andrey says. “Wasn’t he executed by the firing squad in 1921?�
��

  Yakov rolls his eyes. “Yes. And before that, he was a poet. A good one, too. There’s more to people than the way they died.”

  He goes to his room, changes into his threadbare sweats and reads a Rex Stout novel. A few pages into it, he realizes that he has no idea of what he has just read—the crow is still on his mind. He doesn’t believe in reincarnation, but still, those eyes…

  Mitya’s friends leave, and he pokes his head in, concern on his sharp dark face, so unlike Yakov’s pale and placid one. “Dad, are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” Yakov says.

  “Everything all right at work?”

  Yakov nods, looking into the book with emphasis.

  Mitya comes in and sits on Yakov’s bed. “Did I do something?”

  Yakov gives up and closes the book. “No, Mitya.” He starts to tell him about the crow, but feels silly and cuts himself off. “How was school?”

  “Fine,” Mitya says. “I just wish I majored in computers, like Andrey.”

  Yakov nods. Andrey will have an easier time finding work. “Still,” he says. “The world needs art history majors.”

  “Only it’s not going to pay them,” Mitya says. “You know it and I know it. As soon as I graduate, I’ll be selling cigarettes in the kiosk across the street.”

  Yakov wishes he had comfort to offer. This is really his biggest problem with the new times—money. So much time is spent thinking about it, people hardly pay attention to anything else anymore. “There’s more to life than money,” he says feebly.

  “I know.” Mitya sighs. “I’m surprised that you’re so reactionary. I thought you hated the communists.”

  Yakov nods. “Still do. But I like free education and healthcare, and guaranteed employment.”

  Mitya has heard all this before. “I know. But the free healthcare didn’t save Mom.”

  Yakov sits up. “Don’t say that. It was cancer, no one could have done anything for her.” He sighs. “At least, the doctors who cared for her were not there for the money, but because they wanted to help people.”