by Craig Nova
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Kohler said, “Would you like to have some of the new tea?”
She filled the kettle and put it on to boil, and she got out the cups and spoons and then they waited, hearing the subdued hiss of the gas in the stove and the ticking of the kettle as it heated up. The geese were honking again, so high up and so insistent.
She put the teapot on the table and they waited while it steeped. Then she poured it and picked her cup up and put it right next to her lips, sniffing it a little and then looking at Kohler through the mist that came off the surface. She couldn’t stand the smell, and her breasts had gotten sore again.
“Isn’t that something?” Kohler said. “And to think, you’ve only been here two weeks and you’ve found a way to get your tea from Russia.”
Katryna swallowed with her eyes closed. She put a hand to her head and stood up with a woozy stagger that looked as though she was afraid of fainting, and with a rush that was like running through the rain, bent at the waist, she went through the living room and into the bathroom, where she closed and locked the door. Kohler followed and leaned his head against the frame of the door.
“Please,” he said.
“Please what?” she said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Go away,” she said.
“Isn’t the tea any good?” he said.
“It was fine,” she said.
“Then what’s the problem?” he said. “Did it make you sick?”
She didn’t say anything, and he imagined her making a gesture toward the door, an open-palmed movement that suggested the impossibility of trying to speak. Hands open, empty. He waited, hearing her muffled sobs, leaning against the door frame, listening. When she stopped crying, he wished she would start again, since it was better than the silence.
“It’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll make it be all right.”
She was quiet in the bathroom for a while, and then he heard the sound of the water running. It sounded as though she was splashing water on her face, and when she was done, she said through the door, “Yes. It will be fine. I’m just not myself.”
She came out of the bathroom.
“Maybe I’m homesick,” she said.
“Well, that would make sense,” he said.
“Mmmmmm,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about my friends there, you know? Sometimes I miss them.”
“Well,” he said. “Sure. That’s only natural.”
“Maybe I could have one of them visit. Would you mind?”
“What’s her name?” said Kohler.
“Dimitry,” she said. She looked at his face. “He’s a cousin. Would that be all right?”
“A cousin?” he said.
“Yes. He’s about my age. A little older. He said he was going to come here on business.”
“Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”
“I could speak Russian to him,” said Katryna.
“All right,” said Frank. “Write to him.”
“Maybe I’ll call,” said Katryna.
At night Kohler sat at the table and read Caesar’s The War in Gaul. As far as Kohler could tell, Caesar was a reasonable man and meant no harm, and the only thing he was interested in was fairness, justice, and doing the right thing. Katryna sat down opposite him and read a copy of Vogue, stopping to look at those women with long legs and perfect skin and shiny hair. When the moon rose, Kohler waited for the coyotes to begin.
Katryna went into the bedroom, leaving the door open, and when Kohler glanced up he saw her taking off her skirt and her blouse and standing there in that innocent Russian underwear, which she slipped off and dropped into the hamper in the corner. Then she got into bed and turned off the lamp, which left her in shadows and light, her hair disappearing into those coal-colored shapes, her skin looking almost tattooed with the geometric patterns that the moonlight made when it came through the lace curtains.
He stretched out next to her in the black and white of the geometric shapes.
“You mean so much to me,” he said. “I never realized how much it would mean. ...”
“Frank,” she said. “I want to talk to you about something ...”
“I know,” he said. “You’re homesick ... You don’t have to explain.”
“But—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I love you. I really do. Everyone gets cranky now and then.”
“In Moscow ...” she said.
“Look,” he said. “You don’t have to say a word.”
RUSSELL BOYD
EACH TIME A CAR WENT BY ON THE HIGHWAY, IT left something behind, not enough for Russell to feel at the moment, but the sheer number of cars added up, each producing this small effect, and when it got to be a million, ten million, a hundred million, it was another matter. Then, when Russell watched the road, he detected an agitated quality in the air, like static electricity. This effect was even more pronounced at night when the wind throbbed against the window of the cruiser.
He decided to move from one turnout to another, and as he drove to the next one, he saw a car parked at the side of the road. Lights on, one man inside. The dispatcher told Russell that there were no outstanding warrants to go with the plates, no priors on the owner, nothing. Just a car stopped at the side of the road.
Russell stepped from the cruiser into that keening sound of the tires on the road and a pulse of air that was left by each passing car. A cool night, not bad really, but filled with the promise of January. Then he walked toward the car that was parked at the side of the road, a Buick, a couple of years old. Russell stopped behind the driver, right by the post between the front seat and the back. The window was rolled down.
The driver opened the door and vomited. There were no cars passing at this moment, and the sound was loud in the momentary hush of the road.
“Are you all right?” said Russell.
The man shook his head.
“I’m taking chemo,” the man said.
Russell went back to the cruiser and radioed the dispatcher, who said she’d get Rescue, and while Russell waited, seeing the Buick move a little in the pulse of a passing truck, he wondered if people died like this, at the side of the road, or was this man just having a reaction to the drugs? The dispatcher told him he’d have to wait. Rescue was busy on another call.
“It won’t be long,” Russell said to the man in the car.
“I should have stayed home,” said the man.
“Someone will be here soon,” he said.
“Do me a favor, will you?” the man said.
“What?” said Russell.
“Can you sit with me?”
“You’ll have to wait,” said Russell. “It won’t be long.”
“O.K.,” said the man, then he swallowed. “I’m sorry about the smell,” he said.
“It’s all right,” Russell said. “Don’t worry.”
“I guess you’re trained not to get in someone’s car?”
The stars shimmered at the end of the open place where the road had been cut through the hills, and when Russell looked back the other way, where the Rescue truck would be, it was dark, too. The Buick seemed all right, sitting on its springs the way it should, not scratched, no recently replaced panels, nothing to suggest that he was carrying anything.
“I’m pretty sick,” said the man.
“I’m sorry,” said Russell.
“It sneaks up on you,” said the man. “You think you can go on taking this stuff, but ...” The man made a gesture of resignation.
“You want a drink of water?” said Russell. “I’ve got some water.”
The man shook his head.
“No, I don’t want water. What gets to me is that I’m too tired to be scared.”
The air pulsed as another car went by, and Russell felt it as a shove out of the dark.
“But I’m still scared anyway,” he said. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense. You know how I feel the fear? As a kind of loneliness.�
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“It won’t be too much longer,” said Russell.
“Yeah,” said the man. “That’s why I asked you to sit in the car.”
Russell looked around. No lights from the south, where the ambulance would come from. Then he went around to the passenger’s side. But as he did, he unsnapped the leather strap that went over the pistol in his holster. Russell didn’t think the man could hear it, and then the holster was on his right, in the dark, so the man probably didn’t see it. Russell thought that it wouldn’t do anyone any good if he was scared, too. How can you help anybody that way? If you are scared, don’t you just bring fear into the car, and what good is that? He wished he had the energy to bring something with him that wasn’t tainted with fear. That is, if this man wasn’t full of shit, and if he didn’t have to kill him.
Russell opened the door and got in.
“Thanks,” the man said.
“It won’t be long,” Russell said.
The car smelled, too, and Russell guessed the man must have been sick on the floor. There was the possibility, Russell supposed, that he could be sick here, too.
“No one tells you that there are things like this,” the man said. “But I guess you see some of it out here.”
“If you work out here, you see a few things,” Russell said.
The cars went by at seventy miles an hour.
“There’s some stuff I am going to miss,” the driver said.
“Like what?”
“Oh,” he said. He swallowed. He had a film of sweat on his brow, which turned golden as the lights from the cars on the other side of the highway went by. “Wind. The sound of wind. You know, at night, in the winter when the wind whistles around the house.”
“Un-huh,” Russell said. “I like that.”
The night seemed to seep into the car, as though they were underwater and the black wet was leaking in, pushing the air out.
“Like what have you seen?” he said. “You know, out here, or on the job?”
“I don’t know,” Russell said.
“It might make me take my mind off of it,” the driver said. “Tell me.”
Russell thought about going up to a house a month ago where a boy, nineteen years old, had shot himself in the head. When Russell got there, the boy was still alive. He was on his bed and his mother was with him. The boy’s breath made a heavy, grating sound as he died, and his mother held his hand and said, “It’ll be all right, darling, it will be all right.”
“I think we’ve got enough problems,” Russell said.
“Have you ever shot anyone?” the driver said.
“No,” Russell said.
“Have you wanted to?” he said.
“Not really,” Russell said.
“That’s something. But things change ...” the driver said.
“Maybe not,” said Russell.
“You believe that?” said the man.
“Maybe believing isn’t what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s more like hope,” said Russell.
“Hope,” said the man. He seemed to hang there, between being sick and just giving up. For a moment Russell thought that the man could die right there. He was sweating and breathing hard, not quite rattling in his throat, but it didn’t sound good. The man looked at Russell. “Maybe,” he said. He swallowed. “I don’t know.”
They sat there until the ambulance came, and when Russell began to get out, the man just turned and looked at him. Of course, Russell wanted to think that there was something in this glance, an essential feeling that made this easier, and then he realized the driver wanted to thank him. When Russell looked around, he thought that this small bit of gratitude was useful against the scale of the night, the stars, those pulses of dark air.
“Take it easy,” the driver said.
“Yeah,” said Russell. “Good night.”
ZOFIA WIRA
ZOFIA LOOKED SICK WHEN SHE GLANCED AT THE horses and the roil of hounds through the crosshatching of bramble. Russell stopped running, but she shook her head, and said, “Don’t worry. I’m all right. Maybe I had too much to drink last night.”
“We didn’t drink anything last night,” said Russell.
“Well,” she said, “That’s what it feels like.” Her eyes were glassy with fear.
They passed the leaves of sumac, which were the color of the reddest lipstick. Every now and then a leaf fell, twirling and then hitting the ground with an impossibly delicate tick. In the distance there was the occasional yellow smear of a stand of poplar. Each time Russell tried to stop her, she shook her head and went on running, even though she was pale and her forehead was damp.
The hounds were excited. Mixed in with their baying and yapping, their scent-hitting yelps, came the otherworldly clink of the tack, and then the sleek shapes of the horses emerged from the wall of brush. Zofia’s skin was so white it looked powdered, and yet despite her blue lips she still sweated. She stopped and was mesmerized by the red jackets as they floated above the white horses, as though at sea, the motion so much like a boat riding on a swell. It seemed to make her sick, and she put her hands on her knees and retched with slow, deep contractions.
“I don’t want to make a scene,” she said. “So just ignore this. Can you do that for me?”
The clinking and yowling, the thudding of the horses on the bottomland sounded close, and from the cross-hatching of brambles Russell looked back, through the thorns and cane, and saw the hounds boiling into the edge of a field that was lined with cut corn. Zofia stood up and put the back of her hand to her mouth, her queasiness interrupted only by her nauseated panting.
“Stay here,” he said. “I can finish.”
She shook her head, her eyes looking backward.
“No,” she said. “Let’s keep going.”
A fox came out of the raspberry canes. It looked over its shoulder, its head turned toward the hounds and the hunters, which were in the next field. It was so still that it appeared to be a color photograph of a fox. Not even its fur moved in the breeze. After seeing which way the hunt was going, the fox slowly turned its head to Russell and Zofia. Its eyes were the color of black licorice.
The sound of the hunt faded into that frozen landscape, and then there were just the three of them, Zofia, that animal, and Russell. It obviously knew precisely what should be done when you didn’t have much time.
Zofia put her hand to the moisture on her forehead, as though surprised by it, but she still looked at the fox, which lingered there, moving its head once back to the hunt and then settling its eyes on her. It didn’t move when Zofia was sick again, in one liquid upheaval after another. The animal looked at both of them with the most piercing certainty, and then it ran along the cane and brush, the shape of it defined in long, red arcs as it jumped impossible distances and covered a couple of hundred yards in a few seconds.
They started again, Zofia’s face still white and her lips that alarming blue. Russell wanted to take her home and fill the tub with hot water, and then he would help her undress, pulling her T-shirt over her shoulders and arms, and then help her into the tub, where she could sit back in that steam and get warm. Then he would sit there, adjusting the water, seeing her legs waver under the silver water, as though she were dissolving into warmth and comfort.
On the way home she said, “Let’s stop at the Rite Aid.”
It was on the strip, not far from the indoor swimming pool where Zofia and Russell had gone whenever they could. Russell recalled the rubbery odor of her swimming suit, the taste of the chlorine on her skin, the rill of silver moisture on her neck when she got out of the water. The pool was covered with a transparent roof, like a greenhouse. The last time they had gone, Zofia had stood on the small platform, like one for races, and dove up and out, and for a moment she was suspended in the yellow light and the scent of chlorine, her arms out, toes together, the ankles just touching. When she had reached the height of the dive she appeared to hang there for one instant longer than seemed possible. Then she all
owed herself to sweep down to that glassine water, where she entered without a splash. She came up from the depths, pushing a wave ahead of her as she swam, one arm sleek with water as it reached out and cut into the surface, followed by the other arm. She made the water boil where she kicked.
In the Rite Aid parking lot, she said, “Wait here.” Then she went in and walked along the aisle until she came to the Coke syrup and Dramamine, Pepto-Bismol and Mylanta, all of it next to the section for pregnancy kits. At night, when Russell was asleep, she went into the bathroom and took the kit from under the sink where she had left it next to the Zud and Windex, and used it. Then she sat there, thinking about what she was going to do now that she was pregnant.
KATRYNA KOLYMOV
KATRYNA THOUGHT ABOUT THE FLAT WHERE SHE had grown up in Moscow, the stairwells of the building which were like those in a parking garage, the mishmash of sheds that people had put in the courtyard to store things because the apartments didn’t have enough closets, and the old women who climbed the stairs with plastic bags from the market. From the window of the flat’s living room she had been able to see a statue of the New Man and the New Woman, each a hundred feet high, muscled, sleek, and bold. One night the men in leather coats had pounded on the door for her father, at three in the morning, their appearance as bland and bureaucratic as that of deliverymen. Her father was disoriented at being woken up, humiliated and dizzy, his hair brushed up, his unshaven cheeks looking as though they had been sprinkled with salt and pepper. He had turned to look at Katryna, his expression one of love mixed with regret: What could he say to her now that would be useful? What fatherly advice could be compressed into one disoriented moment? She had been so afraid that she hadn’t even clung to him as he went out the door between the two men in leather coats.
In Kohler’s house, Katryna crossed her arms and felt the soreness of her breasts. Kohler sat at the kitchen table and signed the posters he had bought, which said, POSTED, NO HUNTING, NO FISHING, NO TRESPASSING. Each one had a place for the landowner to write his name, and he bore down on the dotted line, as though signing a lease. Then he picked up his nail apron and a hammer, and said, “You know the way to put up a posted sign? You do it like this.” He dog-eared a corner, and held a nail against it. “That way they can’t rip them down so easy.”