by Gina Ochsner
As a boy he wore that helmet from the moment school let out in afternoons to the moment it began again in mornings. He even wore the helmet the day his father left them to go to the war. He and his mother, along with the entire city, had turned out to watch the motorized rifle unit leave in a line of transports for the Bakharevka base. And while others waved their paper flags, their eyes covered with handkerchiefs, Yuri, his eyes shielded by the plastic visor, trained his gaze on his father. He watched without blinking as they disappeared behind that thick veil of dust.
And he wore the helmet now. All this to return to a world of diminished illumination. A world discerned only through the cracked visor that weakened light to wavering bands. All this to woo water for its own sake. All this to return to a place where that extra inner padding of the helmet pressed against his ears, and all noise dampened to the language of water and Yuri could be, once again, a fish.
Yuri leaned the bike against a frozen birch and stepped cautiously over the shore-fast crusts of river ice. The sound of gunshot thundered through the ice. Yuri dropped to his knees, held his breath, counted the ticking in his head. Not gunfire, just ice compressing. Yuri stretched flat over the ice and peered at the darkness below. They were his brothers and sisters huddled down there, whispering secrets about the rest of them and their clumsy paddling over their glass ceiling. Tell your dream to a fish and he'll carry it for you. This was another bit of advice that Mircha once gave him. Yuri cupped his hands to his eyes and squinted at the fish below, his mouth moving silently. His dream: if he couldn't be a fish, then he wanted to spend his every waking moment in the company of fish. He was with Mircha and Vitek ten years ago when he first said this. They'd been ice fishing, a first for Yuri, something he had hoped his father would show him when he returned from the war.
'It's an exercise in patience, what we're doing here,' Mircha said that day. 'Patience is what you get when you divide the number of days you've gone without eating by the temperature outdoors.' Though he was only ten years old at the time and had a poor grasp of integers, by Yuri's reckoning, they were all becoming very patient people.
'Do you know what they're doing down there?' Mircha pointed to the ice, to the fish beneath the sheer layer. The ice was so thick and it was such hard work for Yuri to drill through it with the auger that Yuri had figured the fish simply froze like everything else in wintertime, and had said so.
'No, not frozen,' Mircha explained, helping the hole along by sprinkling vodka at the edges. 'They're just sleeping. And dreaming. Do you know what they're dreaming of?'
Yuri looked at Vitek, who was lobbing small rocks at the power lines. Yuri shook his head no.
'Wings for fins, blue sky for water.' Mircha steered Yuri back to shore. 'You see, fish are just like us. They dream of flight. They look at birds and long for all the same things we do. Do you know what the difference between them and us is?'
'They taste better fried in oil?' Vitek called hopefully.
Mircha glared at Vitek. Then Mircha draped his arm over Yuri's shoulder and spoke in confidential tones. 'The difference is that we—that is, you and I—can do something about our dreams. That's something they don't teach you in school and you won't read it in any book, but it's true all the same.' Mircha said this with a jerk of his shoulder, as if earmarking with his entire body the veracity of his words. 'Yes, fish have dreams, just like you and me. But they've lost their piss and fire. They've forgotten how to fight.'
It was a cold day in March, and windy. Mircha's coat gaped open, wide enough for Yuri to see that Mircha was wearing his beloved T-shirt, 'Make a Splash!'—the one given to him by a portable commode salesman from Canada. Yuri stared at the T-shirt. He knew that Mircha sincerely believed that it was a man's duty to make his mark in this world. That is, all men should piss in the wilds and the cultivated places, too. The wind whipped up and Mircha's coat sailed out at a crisp ninety degrees. Yuri could not help noticing Mircha's empty sleeve.
Mircha followed Yuri's gaze. 'Over it went. Blown clean off. The captain said he watched it drop four hundred feet or more into the Amu Darya. Ever seen the Amu Darya?'
'No,' Yuri shook his head.
'No,' Vitek called out, lobbing a rock at Yuri's head.
What Yuri wanted to know, what he wanted to ask, was if Mircha in all his comings and goings along the front had ever seen or heard any news of Yuri's father. But even then Yuri understood that you don't interrupt a veteran telling his story. And Mircha's stories, once started, were like the old T-64 tanks that knew only one direction: forward, no matter what the cost.
'Glistening and sharp like the metal of a trap. Like a silver chain and there we were pinned on the road, wounded and dying. Russians and Georgians and even a handful of Lithuanians. And then a sound you don't ever want to hear, Afghan rebels. We heard them baying and calling, "Here we come! The wild Mujahideen, the wild jackals, coming to kill the intruders!"' And then Mircha threw his head back and howled, just like a dog whose ribs wanted to climb out of its throat.
'And then what?' Yuri asked. A small rock whizzed past his ear.
'And then what?' Vitek mimicked in a shrill voice, then threw another rock. Yes, even then Vitek was a bully.
'The Georgians!' Mircha snorted. 'Honestly, they are the world's crappiest fighters. It's no wonder they get their asses kicked so often. All this to say, we tucked our tails between our legs and we ran, those of us who still could. And then a whirlwind of noise filled the air. And what came whistling over the rise?' Mircha leaned towards Yuri as if waiting for the right answer. And when Yuri didn't say anything, Mircha shouted, 'Black Tulips! Those helicopters of death, that's what we were hearing. The sound of the turbine rotors of these big cargo helicopters carrying the bodies of the dead. And something else you should know.' Mircha touched his stump. 'It was the way then to airlift bodies and dump them in the mountain lakes. You can just imagine what it did to those fish—may they all croak!'
Fish. Always the stories ended with fish. Now, as he had done that day, Yuri secured his helmet. It completely obliterated peripheral vision, but some days, that was a true blessing. And people may say what they want about luck and habit and superstition, may laugh at a grown man in a flight helmet, but when it came to fishing, nothing was more important than maintaining rituals, no matter how silly they may seem. This was another bit of wisdom gleaned from Mircha.
Yuri leaned over the sheer ice. The fish were as dark as stones and he loved them for their dodgy and quiet ways. Whatever their secret desires, if it were truly wings for fins, he'd never know. And somehow in Yuri's mind that made fish more noble than man, put them above the petty designs of people like him, standing on frozen ice or on muddy banks, their long shadows looming over them.
They were so splendid, these fish in their shiny coat of armour, impervious to the injustices of the day. And when he thought of them like this, he was almost glad when the wily eel or tricky pike sloughed a hook, freed itself, and swam away triumphant. Almost. Because he needed the food, after all. That was the real reason he and other veterans like him were all standing or crouching over the ice, freezing their hands and feet off. Because fish meant food or fish meant money. A deficit item like fresh fish could bring as much as fifty roubles if the right person arranged it with the right people. Sure Yuri knew about a practice in the West called catch and release. And in his heart he agreed with it completely. But these days his stomach held fewer philosophical inclinations. Besides, people in the West could afford to be more enlightened and environmentally responsible. They ate better over there and had the fat asses to prove it. Which is not to say he didn't believe in being sporting about the whole matter. He used baited hooks. Once he'd tried spinners. Today he was using his mother's ornamental spoon. Never—not even once—had he pulled any of Vitek's low tricks like rubbing slime on his arm and luring the pike or carp to swallow the arm up to the elbow, while punching them between the eyes as hard as he could with his free hand. Even so, Yuri felt a little anx
ious, couldn't help counting the veterans up and down the ice and wondering if any of them might be police. Nobody had a licence to fish here. Every one of the dark shapes over the ice was in actual fact a poacher. But as long as poachers shared their catch with the right people, life moved along like this river, without a snag, and everybody was happy. Everybody except the fish, that is.
Yuri set the auger, and started drilling.
'You! Prick on a stick! Hey!'
Yuri sat on his heels and squinted. He could not see who was yelling, but assumed they were yelling at him. Yuri pointed to the helmet, waved good-naturedly, and maintained air silence. Then he went back to drilling his hole. After all, as a veteran he had a right to fish here, at Mircha's spot.
'Bugger off, bottom feeder!' Crazy Volodya hollered at him from down river.
The rule of the river dictated that younger vets paid a fishing fee to the oldest and craziest vet. This morning, the oldest and—by far—the craziest vet on the river was Volodya, who lost his legs in the big war. Even without his legs, Volodya could beat Yuri to a pulp any day of his choosing. And Volodya would be well within his rights to do so: Yuri was only twenty-one, had fought in an unpopular war, had come home broken. Not like the old timers, not like Crazy Volodya who had in his day brought down German Junders, had the medals and decorations to prove it. Now Crazy Volodya sat in his wheelchair attended by two muscle-bound vets and fished anywhere he wanted. If you wanted to trade fishing spots with someone or move up or down river or dump bleach into the water or fish with Chinese firecrackers, then you had to work it out with Crazy Volodya. This always involved a complicated negotiation of favours and bribes or, at the very least, a simple beating. That was the hierarchy. And everywhere he went, no matter what he did, Yuri was at the bottom of the ladder.
Yuri packed up his gear and moved to a much less prestigious spot on the ice, close to the bank where plastic bottles and other bits of trash lay frozen in the ice. He leaned on the auger. The bit bucked just as it punched through to water.
'Yu—ri!' A voice, harsh as a crow's, sliced through the morning calm. It was Zoya, there on the bank wearing her most fashionable winter boots. She put her hands on her hips, shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again. He read in those subtle movements her mood tipping from gorgeous wrath to toxic indignation and back to wrath.
'What are you doing?' she demanded. Even through the flight helmet, he could hear her slow-boiling anger. She was ovulating. He could hear it in her voice. The fuel behind her wrath. How dare he fish when her window of baby-making opportunity was so slim and narrow?
'Ice fishing.'
Zoya tapped her watch, a cheap Raketa, but he knew she considered it extremely fashionable. 'It's Sunday,' she reminded him.
Yuri inhaled deeply, waited for his lungs to burn. 'So, it's Sunday.'
'You're supposed to be at work. At the museum. With me.'
'I am working,' Yuri said. 'I'm fishing.'
Zoya sighed. 'Are you planning to have your head up your ass all your life?'
Yuri thought for a moment. 'No,' he said at last. 'Just through the holidays, I think.'
Zoya threw her hands up into the air. 'You'll lose the only job you're fit for. Nobody else will hire you, you know.'
Yuri hung his head. A muted flash of a tail fin caught his eye. When he looked towards shore a few moments later, Zoya had gone.
Yuri threaded his bait to the hook, a flashy silver chewing-gum wrapper, and bobbed it in the hole.
He supposed it was his good luck that there was a shortage of eligible bachelors. His luck that Zoya needed a place to live. Because, he was beginning to see, he needed a woman. And as his mother had been slow to object, Zoya simply remained, until asking her to go someplace else was almost unthinkable. He just didn't have it in him to make the big decisions by himself. For the most part, this situation, strained as it was at times, didn't seem to offend his mother's sensibilities as long as he and Zoya conducted their trysts at the museum or on the rooftop of the apartment building where his mother didn't have to see or hear them.
And living with Zoya, though an unconventional arrangement, sure, seemed natural, logical even given his long-established habit of letting God, fate or other women decide the course his life would take. And it seemed, always, somebody else—his teachers at school, his commanding officers, his friends and girlfriends—wanted to make these decisions for him. So let them, was his motto. Oh sure, every now and then, he'd make a token attempt, like refusing to work in favour of fishing, to suggest the illusion that he was an active participant in his own life. But the truth was he felt grateful and relieved when events or people conspired to take matters into their own hands.
All this to say that when Zoya arrived a few months before at the museum five minutes early and descended to the hat/coat-check corridor, a suitcase in each hand, he did not protest, and was, in fact, secretly glad. But even in that small action, her carrying her suitcases, her broadcasting her intent to live with him, there was trouble. He knew that as Tanya quietly exchanged the suitcases for claim disks, Tanya did not understand what the suitcases meant. By the time they all three left work for crumbling apartment building, Yuri carrying the suitcases, he knew Tanya had figured it out: her gaze never once lifted from the tops of her shoes. As Zoya chattered about this thing and that, delighted and taking delight in even the smallest things as people do when they have found love or convinced themselves that love has found them, Tanya did not say a word. And Yuri had wanted to comfort her somehow, to explain. After all, they had always been such close friends. And Yuri would have just as happily allowed himself to wind up with a girl like Tanya, if only Tanya had made her wishes more clearly known. He wasn't a mind-reader, for heaven's sake.
But somehow he knew saying these things would not make Tanya feel any better. She was a sensitive soul. One look at that overstuffed notebook told him that. And he knew some things people should keep to themselves. He could never tell Zoya, for instance, that they were an item only because Zoya had insisted upon it and his mother hadn't protested. Nor could he ever reveal that another reason he'd gone along with it all was (God help him, it's such a stupid reason, but true) because Zoya's eyes were the same dark shade of purple and blue that spotted the Balik Lake trout. Tanya's eyes were more of a nicotine-stain-coloured brown-yellow like the underside of a Caspian Sea trout of the Kura River. A big-boned fish, the Caspian Sea trout—not his favourite, really. And when a man weighs the benefits of waking up to one face over another for the rest of his life, well, frankly, appearances do make a difference, though he knew it was unwise to say so in the presence of mixed company.
Just then, through the sheer ice, Yuri glimpsed the dark body of a pike. Hope inflated his veins and he felt his blood moving clean and bright. Scavengers and not overly smart, pike will eat anything—even in these temperatures. And they were greedy. Yuri yanked the line and quickly re-baited, this time with a ball of chicken lard, soft from being in his pocket, warmed by his thigh. Further up the line, Yuri tied his mother's tiny souvenir spoon. On the handle was a bright enamel picture of the Matterhorn, a mountain they'd never seen but which inspired the fish to bite. Yuri blew on his hands and dropped the line.
Not two minutes later the rod bowed sharp. Yuri hauled the line and pulled up the pike. It thrashed and twisted, its jaws snapping the air, its eyes consumed with rage. Yuri threw it on the ice and held it there under his knees. With a pocket knife, he made a horizontal slit below the jaw and retrieved his mother's ornamental spoon. He hovered there, waiting for a bellow from upriver. When it didn't come, Yuri tucked the spoon into his boot and the pike into a plastic shopping bag, and he pedalled home as fast as he could, the ticking in his head keeping time with the pedalling of his feet.
As Yuri coasted beneath the arch and into the dvor, Vitek's voice sailed caustic and brisk from behind the scrap heap. Even through the padding of the flight helmet, Vitek's voice was a slap against the ears: 'Queue up, you l
ittle creeps!'
Yuri dismounted, wheeled his bike to the lime tree, looped a chain and lock around the trunk and watched the children line up oldest to youngest: a yellow-haired girl, a red-haired boy with cracked glasses, two boys, identical twins with white hair and sallow skin, and a small dark-skinned child, whose sex Yuri could not determine.
'Now when you pick a pocket, you must remember: teamwork! Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to produce uncommon results.' Vitek waved his arms at the stone archway. 'Now go out there and work as a team.'
The children didn't move.
Vitek picked up a piece of rusted cable and swung it through the air. 'Go on! Get lost!' he shouted, and the children trudged towards the arch.
Vitek stuffed his hands in his pockets and strolled towards Yuri. 'What's in the bag?'
'Pike,' Yuri said, opening the bag and peering inside. Vitek took the bag and bobbed it as if his arm were an imaginary scale. 'Feels like four kilos, maybe even five.'
Yuri handed over the pocket knife and Vitek laid the fish on the stone bench, where he began cutting the pike in two. Well, it was Vitek's way to nose in and take a portion of anything other people had. It was all part of his Mafiya-wannabe protocol. In short, it was Vitek's only goal in life to convince everyone that he had connections and knew things that he didn't and that he should be paid for cultivating his great reservoir of useless knowledge. Always it had been this way, for as long as Yuri could remember. Vitek, the little scabby-kneed apartment bully who grew up to be the big apartment bully claiming equal parts Mongol and Gypsy but establishing himself around the apartments as a full-blooded asshole. Vitek, who liked to wear his cracked leather jacket and slouch in the stairwells and doorways. Even worse, these days Vitek considered himself nouveau intelligentsia because he knew a man who completed computer school and could take a photo of any ordinary woman and superimpose her face over the body of known porn stars. All of which was to say, how people used their know-how left Yuri in a severe state of bafflement.