Moscow but Dreaming

by Ekaterina Sedia

  We all know how these stories go. Coconut Girl was the original Giving Tree, Rainbow Fish, and whatever other propaganda they’re feeding the kids nowadays. In her case, however, the story is truthful—after all her giving, she was killed, since we do not like those who make us feel grateful, and there’s no greater contempt than that for someone whom we owe a debt of gratitude. The Indonesian version tells it right.

  I of course don’t tell this to my mom, because she would only get upset at my negativity. She thinks I’m cynical, but I am not. I’m normal. It is her who is abnormally naïve, and after all the crap she had to go through it is a small miracle that she manages to be happy, bouncy, and wanting to see New Zealand. “Will you walk the path to Mordor?” I ask her.

  “A path to what, dear?” she asks, sweetly.

  “Never mind,” I say. “Listen, I have to go.”

  “Save your money,” she says. “International phone calls are expensive.”

  I want to tell her that money has nothing to do with it, it’s just that I have to go to work, but change my mind. It doesn’t matter and she will never remember anyway. And as dad says, there’s just no point in arguing—I can stand being wrong as long as it makes her happy. I hope it does.

  I take the subway to work, and while riding I consider the rest of the tale. Its sad sad end, especially.

  So what did the villagers do to the girl who gave everything to them, the precious things she made come out of her own body? They dug a pit and pushed her into it, and then they danced and trampled the dirt over her. I can imagine a death like that— suffocation and lungs filled with mud, a broken sternum and ribs bristling with white shattered edges. Loss of consciousness and its black relief. Being buried alive not accidentally but intentionally. Hands grasping and failing, nails breaking.

  Ameta found her body and cut it into pieces and buried it all over the place. Mom didn’t tell me why would he do such a thing—I can understand exhumation, but not dismemberment, but I’m sure he had his reasons and I’m just blinded by my own prejudices. Whatever the case, he dismembered her and buried her parts all over, and then they grew into various tuberous plants, yams etcetera. Mom is hazy on what exact plants they are, and she also said something about goddess and how people started having sex only after Hainuwele died. If I were in the mood, I would think how cool it is that the story manages to conflate the Eve’s apple with Jesus and throw in some creation to boot, but today I’m uninterested in Westernizing folklore and reducing everything to Christianity. Instead I sit and stare at my own reflection in the window across, as the subway train sways and hurtles itself closer and closer to MIT, my station, while thinking about how Chapaev fits into it and what would he do. He is an indispensable part of the Revolution—and as such, a creation mythology. The world he belonged to was forged in a celestial fire, a new world to which a very bloody creation myth was entirely appropriate, and heroes of the revolution were its sacrifices.

  The mythology of the Red Cavalry is a pervasive one—no matter how many post-Communist years we accumulate, his image is always there, saved in the collective un- and semiconscioius, in jokes, old movies, books some of us had to read. They are the heroes, the martyrs, the creators. They are our Coconut Girl—without the fertility.

  Why do I want to save Chapaev so badly? Two reasons: first, ambiguity of his death. If someone’s body is never found, you cannot really be sure that they are dead. Second, I want him to be alive so that he doesn’t end up like the stupid giving tree. We hate those who help us, and the only way to deal with that guilt is to kill them—like they did with the Coconut Girl, Hainuwele. Better yet if the benefactors kill themselves (we call it selfsacrifice, and this is our favorite) sparing us the mess. In my mind, heroes that live are a vindication, a heartfelt slap in the face of our collective greed. So I make him live, and I make him settle in Indonesia.

  “So you made him an immigrant.” I don’t have many friends, except Veronica and Cecilia, two Brazilian grad students who are way too much fun for me, and I’m not even sure how to deal with them. But I just follow them around, awkwardly, and buy them drinks in any of Boston’s pubs if the opportunity presents itself. It presents itself after work today, and we all drink in the Bow and Arrow. Cecilia is downing fuzzy navels and Veronica is sticking with sweet wine; I drink Sam Adams, out of some guilty obligation of someone who knows they don’t really belong in Boston but appreciates the opportunity anyway. After a few, I tell them about Chapaev and Indonesia. They seem amused.

  “So you made him an immigrant,” Cecilia says and laughs.

  Veronica, who has a cold, laughs too in a sexy deep throaty way that makes me insanely jealous. “Everyone’s an immigrant somewhere. Except the people who stay home.”

  “And who would want that?” Cecilia laughs and laughs. I’m jealous of how lanky and long she is, how her neck elongates and strains as she tosses back her head and finishes her drink. This is something about these two that I want so desperately and yet have no prospects of achieving: being in the center of attention, attracting people no matter where they go, having seemingly hundreds of friends. I always feel so honored when they choose to hang out with my own insignificant self.

  “ What are you working on now, Elena?” Veronica asks. “Besides rewriting history, of course.”

  “Still cockroaches,” I say and sigh. The AI lab I work in, the Minsky lab, is world famous for our research. I get to be a nameless collaborator, the one who equips our robotic cockroaches with sensors and simple programming, little chips that allow them to teach themselves to avoid light and scatter at the sound of footsteps. So they scatter and are a huge pain in my ass to catch and fix. “I’m doing vibration sensitivity programming now.”

  Cecilia nods, politely. Or maybe she is genuinely interested. “They act like real ones?”

  “Yeah,” I say and drink my beer. “It’s not much, and I’ve been in the lab for five years now, and I still do cockroaches. It’s something, I guess.”

  They agree.

  “What’s next for you?” Veronica asks. “Rats?”

  I’m not sure if she’s mocking or not. “Probably more cockroaches. I want to make something that can learn more things, you know? More patterns. Like, not just light and sound and vibration, but the time of day, something that can make decisions. And not just react but to anticipate, to affect…” I stumble over my words and fall silent, afraid to bore, to take up too much of their valuable attention. Besides, they are training to become neuroscientists, and I expect them to have some contempt for those of us who try to replicate a great complexity of a brain via computer chips and switches linked together, the artificial neural networks that are not at all neural.

  “It sounds pretty cool,” Veronica says, her white teeth gleaming, her skin the color of an ominous sunset. “This is the problem I have with much of the neurosience—it always interprets living beings as reactive, and you can’t really make a breakthrough within those constraints.”

  I nod and hold my breath—it is not often that Veronica (or Cecilia, for that matter) want to geek out with me. Normally, they just try to give me advice, because apparently to them I look especially helpless and awkward. And I am grateful, I really am, and I hope to learn their effortless laugh and ability to not become tongue-tied when faced with people, and managing to not dress as a dork. Not mangling every English idiom I learn with such effort would also be nice, but I’m not setting the bar high here. At least, in terms of personal social achievement.

  “I think most of us are reactive though,” I tell Veronica. “It takes a hero to be able to shape the circumstance rather than follow them. You know how only main characters in books manage to shape their own destiny and the rest just follow? I think it’s the same in human history.”

  “I was thinking more about my animals,” Veronica says, and mercifully doesn’t laugh. With a blistering wave of shame, I remember that she works with bats. “But I take your point. Bats are always scanning their environment
for clues, so they are searching for their own shape of being… of their spaces. It’s one thing to merely perceive the surroundings, and yet quite another to send out the signal to find out what those surroundings are; by choosing direction, they create the reality they want to interact with.”

  I nod. “This makes sense. Maybe I should equip my cockroaches with a sonar or some echolocation device. This way I can teach them to make decisions about what to explore.”

  “Let me know how it goes,” Veronica says.

  Cecilia smoothly interjects, “And meanwhile, we’re having a party this Saturday. Our friend Todd will be bringing his band.”

  “You have something to wear, right?” Veronica says, and their concern with my lack of a cohesive wardrobe forces away all other thoughts, and I bask in their attention and consider highlights. We finish our drinks and Cecilia skips, to prepare the place for the party. Veronica stays with me, and before I can get over the prospect of a one-on-one conversation, she informs me that we have to go to Filene’s Basement. “You absolutely cannot wear those palazzo pants again,” she tells me firmly. “They’re too synthetic, there’re sparks flying off the cuffs when you walk.”

  I want to debate whether it is even possible for something to be too synthetic, isn’t it an either-or situation? But Veronica grabs my hand and it makes me melt a little, and we’re off to scour the expanse of Mass Ave for proper party outfits.

  But before we reach Filene’s Basement, something in a store window catches my eye and I freeze despite Veronica’s impatient tugging and pulling, and I stare. It looks like some local gallery, one of those shops with hardwood floors polished so even the most modest heel clacks too loudly and the fronts of which are nothing but thick glass. In this window display I see: coral beads, copper gongs, dishes, wonderful objects. This place has Hainuwele all over it, and I go inside, suddenly conquering my fear of these posh and severe places.

  Veronica follows, her perfect eyebrows drawn like Scythian bows, and her nose, reddened by the cold, sniffling with irritation. “What gives?”

  “I have to see this,” I say. Our shoes clack on the parquet, blond and polished, and there’s no one but us in there. I look around for clues, for some sign that I’m in the right place. Finally, I see a dinner plate, carved out of soapstone, heavy and perfect, with a bunch of smaller knickknacks piled on it. “Take one,” the handwritten sign over the plate invites. I sort through— mostly single earrings (my ears aren’t pierced), coral beads, tiny statuettes, until finally I find a tin five-splayed star, painted red. The star Chapaev wore over his helm, I have to assume. I clasp it in my fist and tell Veronica, “Okay, we can go.”

  At the party, I feel unusually at ease—perhaps because there’s a red star hastily sewn onto the bill of the hat I picked up while shopping. It is gray and has copper buttons on the sides, and gives a vaguely military impression. I’m wearing it with my new dress despite Veronica’s suggestions. I am at ease.

  Cecilia and Veronica went for a tropical theme, and there are piña coladas and pineapples and papayas everywhere. The place is a loft, and they moved most of the furniture into the kitchen, and there’s a vast expanse of hardwood floor, like the gallery, but the sounds of heels are muffled by so many bodies packed into the space, their soft heat dissipating any too-clear sounds. The sideboard with drinks and fruit and strong cheeses is stretched along the far wall, by the window, which shows an incredible molten sunset, streaked bronze and pink and red, and soon it is violated and abandoned, cheeses crumbled and left undone on the bamboo cutting boards, the dull flat knives crusted over with white film like murder. I make my way over to the sideboard and pick on crumbs of camambert and smoked gouda, and sneak a grape or two. I would’ve liked some pineapple, but I know it would only make the corners of my mouth turn red and hurt for days, so I wisely stay away and sip a piña colada. The band is tuning up in the corner and the party surges toward them, leaving me and the cheeseboard in a contented solitude.

  Our silent communion is interrupted when someone above me says, “Cecilia tells me you’re in Minsky lab.”

  “Yeah,” I say through a mouthful of cheese and give the intruder a hostile look. “What of it?”

  He stares down at me through his thick glasses, his face expressing sincere concern. “So do you think AI is really possible?”

  I swallow my cheese, and don’t enjoy it anymore. “It depends on how you define AI. It probably isn’t going to be cute or sexy if that’s what you’re asking.”

  He frowns and takes a step back. My mom always tells me that I’m too abrupt; she gave up on the honey and vinegar analogy some years ago, ever since I asked why would I want to catch flies in the first place. I knew, of course, what she meant.

  “I’m just being curious,” he says, frowning. “You don’t have to be… like that.” He of course means to say “such a bitch,” but to his credit doesn’t.

  I shrug and scope the board for more stray cheese bits. “You don’t have to ask inane questions. You asked Cecilia what I did so you could talk to me, but you don’t really care. So don’t expect a thoughtful well-reasoned answer while making small talk.”

  “Nothing wrong with small talk.”

  “Of course not. Just try not to trivialize shit other people care about.”

  At this point, I expect him to make an exit, but he just shakes his head. “Would asking you about your hat also qualify as trivializing?”

  “Depends on why you ask.”

  He heaves an exaggerated sigh, and it is almost drowned by the first twangs of the garage band guitar. He wrinkles his nose. “I ask because it’s an interesting hat, and I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you because all you do is glower and eat cheese, and stare daggers and wear weird hats with a really pretty dress.”

  Funny, and I thought I was being friendly. “Fair enough.”

  “Do you hate this music as much as I do?”

  “More.”

  “Want to get coffee?”

  I shake my head. “I really don’t want to hang out. It’s nothing personal, it’s just I’m not looking for more friends.” It’s better that way; at least so early on he has a chance of believing me. After a few conversations people usually assume that this is just a posture, that I really do want friends and am merely shy. But this is not the case: besides the Brazilian neuroscientists, I don’t want anyone.

  He sighs again. “Tell me about your hat then.”

  Iconography is a tricky business. So there’s a hat and a star, but how do you explain the depth of its meaning, the sheer cultural weight to a stranger, a foreigner who had never heard of Chapaev, has a very vague notion of the Red Cavalry, and overall perceived the epithet “red” as somewhat derogatory. He just sees a tin star and cannot smell the steppes and the galloping horses, the aroma of their sweat mixing with the sun and dust and wormwood in the air. The light carts the horses are dragging behind them, the backward-facing machine guns, the ringing of hooves. Tarragon and salt and summer, victory and heroism and the heart-aching infatuation with this imagined history, so much more beautiful and clear and taut than the real one, the icons instead of dirt and fleas and lice, the famine, the death. How do you explain something like that? This is why I’ve given up trying to be friends with the Americans. So instead I befriend Brazilians and other foreigners, and find some measure of cold comfort in the fact that we share the impossibility of proper communication, united in our isolation. At least, Cecilia and Veronica have each other.

  And now I have the guy who attached himself to me at the party, and the party is over and I’m still struggling to explain. We’re standing outside, in front of the brownstone where Cecilia and Veronica live, and there’re no lights in their windows. And it is hopeless, hopeless, and I hear my voice give out and feel my eyelids grow hot, and I feel like crying from the futility. “I have to go,” I say.

  “Wait—”

  But already I flee, my heels striking the convex cobbles, and curse myself for even tr
ying. Communication is only possible with a quick ta-ta-ta of the mounted machine gun, of the ta-ta-ta of feet striking in unison over the tamped down soil, the beating of the heart, the slow bleeding out of Hainuwele buried alive and danced over to death. With the rapid drumming of my running heels, short and stout, made for such running-drumming across the old part of the city, where streets are lined with cobbles and wind up and down invisible hills. And this is all I want to say to this guy as he recedes invisibly behind me, my only message. Let him think what he will.

  And yet, the seed is planted. It wasn’t anything that he said or I said or the two of us stumbled over, some secretly discovered meaning. Rather, the thought crystallized from the entire muddled day, and as I fall asleep that night, I think of things I could do. Should do. Fuck the cockroaches and their stupid sensors, fuck the Turing and his tests. The lab complex certainly has enough shit lying around, and certainly it’ll be all right for me to do a little side project. Building a hero of the revolution will be a better use of my time, not to mention, tons more interesting than the cockroaches.

  In the morning, I stop by the store-gallery where I found my star. It is still closed, but I lift the doormat, as if hoping to find a spare key a thoughtful relative may or may not have left for me, and instead I find a small silver fish dangling on a long small gauge chain. I take it with me. Fish means water, and surely there was fish in the Ural River and the ocean surrounding Indonesia.

  At work, I am greeted by the familiar skittering of electronic cockroaches who all live in my office. Instead of making me want to slice my wrists as usual, they make me giddy instead. I sit at my desk without moving and watch their flat round bodies cautiously crawl from under the radiators and filing cabinets, and resume their usual blind wanderings around my desk; they will do it until I move. I sit still and plot in my head how to make a hero of the revolution.