Separate Kingdoms
Stories
Valerie Laken
Once they left me alone I decided to occupy myself with the affairs of state. I discovered that Spain and China are one and the same country, and it is only through ignorance that they are considered to be separate kingdoms. I recommend everyone try to write Spain on a bit of paper and see, it will always turn out China.
—Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Diary of a Madman”
Being who you are is not a disorder.
—Franz Wright, “Pediatric Suicide”
from Wheeling Motel (Knopf, 2009)
Contents
Epigraph
Before Long
Spectators
Scavengers
Family Planning
God of Fire
Map of the City
Remedies
Separate Kingdoms
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Valerie Laken
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
BEFORE LONG
IN THE DAYS that summer when his mother had to work cleaning the cottages in Drezna and Rudino, Anton was being watched by the Shurins. He was twelve and blind, and his mother feared leaving him alone. In the mornings he worked with Oleg Shurin in the tomato patches along the bluff, and when they finished they took long walks on the dirt paths of the fields and forests around their village. Anton would follow Oleg’s voice or the crackle of his steps through the grass and do his best to map their course in his mind, counting paces and turns, charting sounds and directions and angles of descent or ascent. Beyond the tomato patches and the bluff was a deep ravine leading down to the river, which ran shallow and calm that year because of the drought.
They had finished watering the plants, and the sun was high but there was still time before lunch, so Anton and Oleg were down in the ravine near a clump of bushes where Oleg kept his magazines hidden in a metal box. Oleg was three years older and was teaching Anton about women. He had seen and touched and kissed them. The two of them lay in the weedy undergrowth and Oleg described the pictures.
“—on her knees with her hand down against—”
“Wait, where?”
“There.” Oleg took Anton’s finger and touched it to the flimsy paper, tracing out a vague pattern. “Her crotch, like.”
“She’s naked?”
“She has a scarf. An orange scarf, thin, kind of twisted around her.”
“Like a snake?”
“No, you idiot.” Oleg sighed. “Well, OK, sort of like a snake.”
Anton lay back again in the dry, scratchy grass, feeling gravity pull harder as he relaxed. He trailed a few fingers from his neck down to his breastplate. Along the ridges of his rib cage to his stomach and hip.
“And then what?” he said.
“That’s all.” Oleg rustled the magazines back into their box.
“Wait. What issue is it?”
“May 1991.”
Two years old. Oleg got them used for cheap. “What about her legs? What kind of legs?”
“We’re done, Anton. Go on.” The metal box clicked shut. “Go on, go.”
Anton got up and walked down toward the river to give Oleg his privacy. He slipped off his sandals and felt his way down the bank with his hands close to the ground, then waded several steps into the water. It was only knee-deep this summer, but still he was forbidden to go near it.
He stood up to his calves and felt the water swerve in circles around his feet. Something soft, a leaf maybe, drifted between his legs. The tug and push of the water affirmed his bearings. He was still facing east, still perpendicular to the bank. He turned downstream, unzipped his pants, and relieved himself.
“Zzzzzzzz,” Oleg called from the ravine when he was finished. That was the sound of Dr. Nicholson’s drill. Anton made his way out of the water. From across the river he could hear hammers striking and echoing where workers were building more summer cottages for the New Russians from Moscow, who weren’t Communists.
“He’s going to rip them right out. Pop!” Oleg splashed some water at him.
Anton was going to the dentist tomorrow. Neither of them had ever been, but a year ago Anton’s mother had started cleaning house for an American dentist, Dr. Nicholson, and he was giving them a special rate. Anton felt for his sandals along the bank where he had left them.
“Looking for these?” Oleg tapped him on the head with the sandals.
“Give me them.”
“Just kidding.” Oleg put the sandals into his hand.
Anton tried to clear the distress from his face. “I know.” Oleg was only teaching him to be tough.
“Got something for you.” Oleg pressed some bills into Anton’s palm. “Tomorrow, if you get a chance, see if you can get me a copy of Pentxaus. My cousin says he finds them in the metro.”
Anton shuffled the bills through his fingers. “Well. I won’t be alone, you know?”
“Ah, of course. Your mother by your side. I can see how that poses a problem.” Oleg had started talking this way lately. He was getting ready for tenth grade.
“Not that I don’t want to.” Anton held out the rubles for him to take back.
“Of course.” Oleg started up the ravine. “Me, if I were going, it’d be a different situation.”
Oleg’s grandmother called for them from the top of the bluff.
Anton fastened the last buckle of his sandals and hurried after him. “Maybe you could come with us.”
“To the American sadist? No thanks.”
Anton pushed the fistful of bills at Oleg’s back. “Ah, just keep the money,” Oleg said. “In case. Just see what you can do.”
“I could buy some gum for you.”
“And some candies?” Oleg said in a little girl’s voice.
“Maybe your mom will run off to the bathroom,” Oleg said after a while. “Leave you waiting next to a newsstand.”
Anton turned the idea over in his mind. It could happen.
“Maybe some girl will pick you up at the station, show you something.”
Anton could feel his face starting to flush. “Maybe Dr. Nicholson has a nurse.”
“Exactly. She’s going to lean all over you. Because you’re so irresistible.”
They were halfway up the ravine by now. “Wait.” Oleg turned suddenly and grabbed him by the shoulders. Anton steadied himself and took a breath. “This secret dies with me,” Oleg chanted three times, spinning him around and around on the uneven soil. Then they stood still, waiting for the dizziness to subside, and Anton repeated the chant himself. It was an empty ritual left over from the days before they’d really become friends. Who would he tell? Why? No one had ever shown him as much as Oleg had.
The spinning had no effect anymore anyway. Anton was pretty sure he could make his way to Oleg’s secret stash alone, in the rain, even in the snow, if he wanted. It was sixty-five paces west of the railway bridge, and with the noise of the stream as a guide there was almost no way to get lost. Anton had memorized the entire village by following in Oleg’s footsteps. Now he scrambled up the ravine in the path Oleg snapped through the brush, keeping low to the ground and using his hands for balance.
“Where have you been?” Oleg’s grandmother approached them after they crossed the field and neared her house. She jingled a little for some reason as she walked.
“We caught that rabbit eating at the plants again,” Oleg said. “We were chasing it down.”
“My boys. Did you catch it?”
Oleg nudged him. “Not yet. Maybe after lunch.”
Oleg’s grandmother put a hand on Anton’s back and patted it. “I bet you’ll get it next
time. Can you catch a rabbit, Anton?”
He leaned into her hand. She had a pleasant berry smell.
“Well, come on now. I’ve got lunch waiting.” She took his elbow and led him in slow, careful steps toward the house. They jingled together, but he still couldn’t figure out the source.
“There’s the gate now.” She guided him into the side yard and paused to pat the little dog. “Privet, Mishul.” The table would be twelve steps forward, then three right. Anton could find it all very well on his own, but he liked the feel of her, large and soft, against his side. “Here’s our table. You take this seat right here.” She placed his hand against the chair and he sat down to their usual lunch in the shade of the root shed. On the table he could smell fried potatoes and tomato salad with vinegar. Oleg got close behind him and hummed “zzzzzzzzz” in his ear.
“Oleg, stop that. What is that?” she said.
“Nothing.”
When she went into the house for more bread, Anton whispered, “What’s the jingling?”
“Earrings,” Oleg said with a mouthful. “She’s trying to impress Sasha next door now that his wife’s dead.”
Oleg’s grandmother returned. “I hear you’re going to the dentist tomorrow.”
Anton nodded.
“They have these long metal picks they stick right into your teeth.” Oleg hammered his fork against his plate.
“Be quiet, Oleg,” she said.
“It’s true,” he went on. “I saw it on television. They drill big holes in your teeth.”
Anton put down his bread and ran his tongue along his molars.
“See what a coward Oleg is? But you’re not afraid, are you, Anton?”
“No,” he said, pushing his chin up, hoping his face wouldn’t give him away.
Dr. Nicholson worked at a practice for the new rich and the foreigners, and it was supposed to be painless, but Anton had his doubts. It was some kind of exchange program for introducing new tactics to the Russian dentists, and his schedule was full all the time. Anton’s mother had been working as the cleaning lady at his summer house for almost a year now, and he paid her in dollars, not rubles. He had an apartment in the city and a place back in America probably, and a two-story cottage in Drezna that he visited only one or two weekends a month. Anton’s mother took care of the garden, which was hard in this dry summer, and she cleaned up before and after him when he visited. The pay was outrageous; she made more in one month than Anton’s father, before he left them, had ever made in a year. Sometimes Dr. Nicholson paid her extra just to go there in the evenings and turn lights on and off as if someone were living there.
Anton’s mother came home with fresh stories all the time. Dr. Nicholson has a computer at his cottage. Dr. Nicholson has a new car. Dr. Nicholson is learning Russian, really talking, using the right cases and everything. Today we sat down for tea together. She hummed songs all evening after that day.
The most remarkable thing about Dr. Nicholson was his teeth. “So white and perfect they’re almost…unnatural. No wonder they brought him all this way. It makes me almost afraid to smile.”
One night she came home and taught Anton how to smile without opening his lips, and how not to leave his mouth hanging open all the time. They sat together with their fingers on each other’s mouths, practicing. “That’s pretty good, Anton,” she said in the end. “Before long you’ll be turning heads yourself.” Anton had gaps between his teeth.
By early spring his mother had saved enough for an appointment of her own. The Herbalife diet was over and she was thin and, as everyone said, lovely, and she wanted her teeth to be as good as she was. Dr. Nicholson fit her into his schedule and gave her 25 percent off. Americans are known for their generosity. And though she came home that night saying, “Truly it was almost painless,” her voice seemed constricted, and she kept getting up in the night, popping open the aspirin bottle. But the neighbors said she had a Hollywood smile.
Now she had saved enough again to give Anton a turn. She had already told everyone they knew.
“Just wait till you meet Dr. Nicholson,” she said when she put Anton to bed that night. “I think you’ll really like him.”
Anton lay very still.
“You’ll be nice to him, won’t you, druzhok?”
Anton wanted to tell her that his teeth were just fine, that they never bothered or hurt him at all. They were hard and clicked together when he chewed; there was nothing rotten or soft about them. A dentist was unnecessary. Dr. Nicholson in general could go back from where he came.
But she leaned, thin and new, over him in the bed and brushed his hair back. “Just think how handsome you’ll be for all the girls.”
She stroked her thumbs along his eyelids to make him sleepy. Anton could tell she was smiling. He could just feel it.
They had to start out early in the morning and with good clothes on. Anton’s ironed shirt pinched at his wrists, and his pants felt tight against his thighs and groin when he walked. But by the time they’d made it halfway to the train station on the dusty, rutted road, the sun was warm on their necks, and his clothes seemed to stretch out a little with the perspiration.
“This is the big day, right?” she said.
He didn’t want to talk about it.
“You’ll see. It won’t even hurt a bit.”
He ran his tongue between his lip and his upper teeth, letting it slip in and out between the gaps. They might be gone by the end of the day. There was no telling what could happen. His breath was fresh, his teeth just brushed and slick.
“Think how handsome you’ll be,” she said, then stumbled and put a hand on his shoulder to steady herself in the ruts.
When they reached the train platform they stood on the cement with the morning commuters, shuffling their feet.
“Lucky we don’t have to do this every day, right? We are truly lucky people.”
“Do you go this way to Dr. Nicholson’s cottage?”
“I go the other direction. I go southeast, which is that way.” She held out his arm a little forward and to the left.
“So the city is that way?” Anton pointed his other hand in the opposite direction.
“Good. And show me south.”
He pointed.
“Umnik moi. Such a smart boy.” The platform started to quiver, and his mother moved in close behind him and held his shoulders with both hands to protect him. The elektrichka rumbled in; it was quieter but seemed to move faster than the regular trains. Soon Anton’s mother was guiding him forward in the shuffle of bodies, and he was pushed up against the backs of the commuters. “Watch out,” said an old woman as he stumbled on something she was carrying. Then she paused and said, “Oh, sorry.”
“Here, quick.” His mother tried to guide him to a seat before they filled up. The train was already thick with the breath and newspaper scent of people from towns farther out. “Oh, here we go.” She patted his hand to a seat. He sat down and felt the thigh of a woman next to him on the bench. She seemed to scoot away from him. He could feel his mother still standing next to him on the aisle, shuffling forward each time someone passed by.
“No, you sit, Mama.” He stood up.
“I’m fine, dear.” She pressed down on his shoulder.
“Really.” He stood up, spread his legs for balance, locked his knees.
“Well, all right. Here.” She sat down and shifted behind him, then pulled him down by the hips to sit on her lap the way children do. He lost his balance and landed on her, sitting there for a moment as she wished. But she had grown smaller, or he had gotten bigger. He felt ridiculous, too big, and he pushed away from her, standing back up.
“No.”
And so they stayed like this, she on the seat, he clutching the seat back with one hand and her shoulder with the other, swaying with the motion of the train for over an hour in the morning odors of the passengers. Aftershave, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee. The freshness of his own breath started to make him feel separate at first, and t
hen a little nauseated, and his mouth began to water. They passed the stops for Nazarevo, Kazanskoe, and Esino, and the humming and screeching of the train accelerating and braking each time filled his thoughts with drills and strange metal pokers and instruments. He started to sweat at the brow and under his arms.
He closed his eyes and tried to breathe deeply for a while, thinking of Oleg’s picture girls and the stream and the sun and the tomatoes and dust that would be there when he returned. He touched the folded bills in his pocket. There were nine of them. It would be nice to be able to help Oleg for a change. It would be nice to be the one who held the treasure.
The closer they got to the city the more crowded the train became, until finally he didn’t have to hold on to his mother’s shoulder because it was too crowded for him to fall down. When the doors opened at Kurskii Vokzal in Moscow the warm, damp bodies in the aisle pushed forward with such force that Anton’s mother lost her grip on him, bruising his wrist in one last attempt to snatch him, and she had to call after the babushka next to him, “Help my boy off. He’s blind. Hold my boy.” Anton cringed, and the woman grabbed his arm so that her bag banged hard against his thigh. When they reached the steps the woman called out, “Hold still for a minute, thugs, we’ve got a blind boy here.”
“There’s the step. There you go. There’s another one, little guy.” She held tightly to his arm on the platform until his mother arrived. “Thank you.”
Anton blinked his eyes against the insult of this woman’s hand on his arm. But the air of the open station yard felt cool on his skin and contained a hundred unfamiliar smells.
Separate Kingdoms (P.S.) Page 1