Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  “No,” Polya said, truly horrified, looking at all of us. Bogdan, too, stared at the ground, Misha pretended to read, the Orlovs were preparing for bed, and I was left staring at my sister. This was my big chance. I had been waiting since the day she told me Bogdan had serviced the neighborhood ladies like a know-it-all. I was, after all, the older sister. It was my place to if not deliver, then to confirm the bad news.

  “Licky did a good thing for all of us,” I told her. “He saved us from starvation. You should be proud of him.”

  I thought I would have some joy in telling her this, but I only felt defeated. For a long time, I had been waiting for this grand revelation to dawn on Polya, to show her that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was. But now her bottom lip trembled, and she looked so weak that I was surprised by the volume of her cries.

  “No!” she shrieked. “You couldn’t! You didn’t! How could you let me—”

  “Foolish girl,” Mama said. “You needed to eat something. Take a look at yourself.”

  “Your sister is right,” Papa tried, putting his other hand on her shoulder, but she flung him away. “Licky was a true patriot. He served his country.”

  “All of you are disgusting!” Polya said, putting a hand to her throat and making a retching noise. “Disgusting pigs. I don’t know how you can live like this.”

  “We live however we can,” Aunt Tamara said. “You think it makes us happy to slurp up the meat of a bobcat? You don’t have to be so vulgar. This is undignified enough as it is.”

  Baba Tonya observed the scene with her hands on her lap as if she were listening to the radio or hearing a story, genuinely curious to see what would happen next.

  “I, for one, feel quite dignified,” Mama said. “There is dignity in honesty, is there not?”

  “I will never forgive any of you,” Polya said, and then she clutched her stomach and ran out to the balcony, shrieking like a harlot. I watched her heaving right over the rail and almost felt bad for her, but I was too content with my dinner portion, in spite of its source. Bogdan gave me a mean little nod. He considered going out there and so did I, halfheartedly, but in the end it was my father who went after Polya, my dear father who rubbed her back and kissed her hair, and when they returned to the apartment, my father who promised her that he would do everything in his power to make her happy again, even if he’d have to risk his life to do it.

  We were all silent as he promised her that he would send a letter to Uncle Pasha saying he was ready to venture out to a neighboring village to bring back food for everybody; Uncle Konstantin was too weak to go, and it was high time he saw his dear brother.

  “We’ll leave as soon as possible, kitten,” Papa said.

  “Whatever you think is best,” she said, though she didn’t care where he went or how much food he brought back. He held her gaze, willing her to care, and she managed a smile for him after all. And I’m convinced that this smile was it, the thing that tipped him over the edge and made him decide to venture out into the vast nothingness.

  I was alarmed by his proposition. Papa had been particularly weak lately, though I was of course intrigued by what he could find out there. What did my father think he could bring back that would resuscitate the girl? Dainty cakes or watermelon or roasted pigs? Polya seemed unlikely to be brought back by anything other than the sight of her deceased cat, yet Papa was convinced the trip would save her. I thought of him breaking down at his factory again, weeping over his inability to take care of his family. This was more about settling something within himself than making up for what he did to Polya.

  It was merely symbolic. Polya was beyond caring about food. Papa felt guilty for his daughter’s suffering and was determined to redeem himself. I watched Mama’s face as Papa and Polya finished this exchange and she did not seem too pleased about Papa’s offer, but she did not stop him, either, though I trusted that tomorrow, she would tell him it was not a good idea. But she did no such thing. The next morning, Papa got up to mail a letter to Uncle Pasha, and nobody did a thing to stop him.

  * * *

  —

  I sigh and stare into the computer, where Natasha is rocking her baby and Stas still looks as if I have not given him the story he is after. Well, why should I care for him? I didn’t even notice when he returned to the scene. But Natasha is my guiding light, my savior. I want to reach through the computer and hug her, to erase my foul memories. She is my everything, though in this moment she looks forlorn, caught up in the dismal scene of my ailing sister, acting as dramatic as Polina herself, all because of a dumb dead cat, not even caring that my father had to put his life on the line for the girl.

  She wipes her face one more time to emphasize how much my story has touched her. Always such a sensitive girl! When she was a child, she cried at everything, everything. Homeless people on Kiev park benches. Cartoon rabbits dying on television. Rain spoiling a good walk. I should have known my story would undo her, but she was the one who asked for it, and how could I deny her?

  She and Stas are touching shoulders, leaning closer to the screen. Their long hair mingles and they resemble a two-headed beast. Yes, this Stas is a typical homosexual, looking nearly as feminine as my Natasha, with his slick long hair and thick lashes.

  “Eating her poor cat,” Natasha says. “That’s so awful.” She looks around for nasty old Sharik, but he is nowhere to be found. Honestly, I would not mind if someone put that boy in a stew.

  “Of course it was awful. But we had to survive somehow. If only my sister could have understood that, everything would be different. Stupid, spoiled Polina!” I say, a bit surprised to feel such anger unfurling from me. Though my outburst was alarming enough that it sent Stas running off to the balcony, and good riddance.

  “She wasn’t all bad,” says Natasha.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your sister.”

  “Easy for you to say. You never met her.”

  “She just wasn’t as tough as you, Baba. Most people aren’t.”

  “I suppose that is true,” I say. Of course she would defend Polina when she has so much of the girl in her. Any room she steps in is filled with light. Anywhere she goes, men turn their heads. All that time wasted, crying for pitiful beasts. And though Natasha is not a full redhead like Polina, she does have that auburn tint to her hair. If things had gone differently, perhaps Polina would have tried to pursue acting herself, who knows? But I do not intend to spend so much time thinking about Polina.

  “Plus,” Natasha goes on, “she defended you when Grandpa Misha didn’t.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling my stomach tighten. “That was nothing.”

  This was not the first time I revisited the day my sister and I stole that chocolate, when my dear Misha had said, “The best course of action was not to act, so I followed it.” Over the years, as he never brought up the topic of my loyalty, I wondered if this had become his mantra.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” says Natasha, but she is comforting her baby gremlin, not yours truly. For a moment, I think it might be nice to give in to Natasha’s requests, to come out to visit my new great-granddaughter, perhaps even to help her mother find her former spirit. But no one can help a new mother, not truly—and she does look a bit less disheveled than she did a week ago, when I began my story, and that is the most I can hope for. After all, even the thought of resettling in Sevastopol wears at my bones, especially since I refused to let Misha’s driver take me, insisting on taking the train like a good soldier. How could I possibly cross the ocean—all for the sake of a little nothing who won’t even remember me? Yet the girl smiles right then, and I can’t help but smile back.

  “I have changed my mind about the girl,” I say. “She is not so ugly.”

  Natasha laughs. “That’s very generous of you, Baba.”

  “Of course, she does not hold a candle to you as a child,” I
say, but I see her making a face, that her patience on this subject is wearing thin. Still, I see her as the beautiful young girl dancing by the water, reciting lines from her latest school production. “How’s work, darling? How was your audition?” I say.

  She laughs a mean, dark laugh. “It was pointless,” she says. “But I have another one in a few days—kind of.”

  “Oh? Something interesting?”

  “Sure, Baba. Something interesting,” she says.

  “Good for you, darling,” I say, but I sign off feeling uneasy, like there’s something she isn’t telling me. Then again, why should I be surprised? There are plenty of things I have kept from her.

  My screen is frozen on the image of my exhausted granddaughter blowing me a kiss, and for a moment, stuck in place, she resembles her former gorgeous self, it is something unbelievable. In all my years I have never seen such beauty, and it nearly gives me enough pride to die on, even if we share few physical characteristics. My poor, darling granddaughter. The girl deserves so much more than the world is giving her, even based on looks alone. It must be said that I speak with the utmost objectivity. Anyone who saw Natasha in her former glory would agree. Not even my idiot sister was so beautiful.

  Natasha

  “So are you a prostitute this time, or a spy?” Stas says as I check my hair in the mirror once more.

  “Actually, neither.”

  “Making moves, Sterling.”

  Though I didn’t get called back for the Pen & Sword role, my agent sent me a consolation: an audition for a horror movie called Sinister Sister about a girl who was separated at birth from her twin sister when her sister was adopted by Americans, leaving her behind to be abused at a Ukrainian orphanage. When Ukrainian twin me grows up, her now-American sister tracks her down and gets her to come to the States, but when the girl arrives, it becomes clear that something is wrong with her. She’s out for blood, on a mission to kill or maim all the creepy men in L.A.,where her sister lives, and there are plenty of them. In the end, she realizes her sister’s husband is abusing her and decides to kill him and leave her sister for good.

  I knew it wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane, but the important thing was just to keep going, and besides, all I had to do for this one was send in a video of myself. Stas would film me while Tally slept in her crib, which she has been getting better at, thanks to Baba’s recommendation. Baba who traveled halfway to Siberia on a train and nearly starved to death—whose problems make my disaster of a career seem like a hangnail. And how about old Tonya, whose sad story is coming into focus, who seems to be smirking at me from her photo today, what would she say if she knew her great-great-granddaughter made it to America, where she spent her days trying to book a role as a hooker or murderer to solve her problems? When I try to explain the role to Stas, he just laughs at me.

  “So you’re still playing someone from Ukraine, but you’re a killer now?”

  “I only kill the men who deserve to die. It’s empowering!”

  “If you say so,” he says, snorting. “Have you ever tried to audition for a role for something that wasn’t Russian or Jewish?”

  “With this nose?”

  “Your nose is fine.”

  “I was on three episodes of My Husband the Mobster, until I got strangled. And I got close to a speaking role in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, but that’s about it. Look, my agent mostly sends me to auditions for Russian parts because that’s where I have the best chance. I can’t just make up the parts I want to play. I mean, look at the Borsch Babies, putting on a play about fucking Chernobyl, as if anyone would give a shit about that! It was, like, thirty years ago. Where is that going to get them, exactly?”

  “That depends on where you want to go, I suppose.”

  Now he’s just pissing me off, acting like a naïve idiot. “I’m tired of playing all those suffering Jews. I mean, my grandmother wasn’t Jewish but she fucking suffered, and if I’m going to play some old Soviet person who suffered, then I might as well play her.”

  He claps his hands. “That’s not such a terrible idea, Sterling.”

  I nearly trip over the cat when I see he’s being serious. “You’re crazy,” I tell him.

  “Why not go for it? It’s a good story. So far anyway.”

  I roll my eyes. I need to get ready to be this killer instead of talking nonsense. “And who would play all the other parts, genius? Where would I put it on?”

  He shrugs. “That would be for you to figure out.”

  “Can we not? I need to focus.”

  “Fair enough. And so, Sinister Sister.”

  I don’t like the little smirk on his face. “What?” I say.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  Stas acts all pure about his supposed writing, but it’s hard to take him seriously. Like most artist-waiters, he seems more waiter than poet, and he never shows me a word of whatever he’s been furtively scribbling in his little notebook, reminding me of how I would rant in my diary about Mama only to slam the book in her face when she walked by. When I asked if I could see a poem of his the other day, he just said, “I don’t share my work until it’s ready. And it’s never ready.”

  “I’d rather die having lived purely than having whored myself out,” he says.

  “Good for you. You’re a coward.”

  “For not putting my work out there? I’m not like you. I want to improve as a poet for myself, not so the world—or let’s face it, with poetry, so the eighty people who still read—give a shit. I don’t think there’s anything cowardly about that.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Don’t mind if I do. You ready to be this killer?”

  “Of course I am.” I settle in my chair, feeling all frazzled, but try to shake it off.

  He picks up his phone to start filming, but then it rings.

  “Shit,” he says, turning it off. “Sorry.”

  “Your—sister?” I say, nearly asking if it’s his mysterious ex.

  “Yeah.”

  I don’t think he’s lying, but I’m getting more and more curious about the woman he left in Boston. Yuri claims to know nothing about it. I’ll get it out of him eventually, but not today.

  He’s furiously tapping into his phone, and old Sharik jumps on my lap and I scratch him under his chin. The big guy is twenty years old, the last of all my pets—I had two other cats, Elvis and Yanina, along with a parakeet, seven tropical fish, a guinea pig, two rabbits, and a snake named Igor, all my treasured beauties from over the years that I took to the vet and sang to and fed lovingly and mourned when the time came. Only Sharik remains, and though I love my sweet boy, he does have a defect: he loves sucking his own dick more than anything. I knew he was that way when I found him at the pound—I was told his mother died in childbirth and he was found sucking on the dead thing’s teats and never recovered from the need to suck for comfort. Who could turn down such a pathetic creature? Though today he’s being a good boy, and I am grateful for that.

  Stas puts his phone down and meets my gaze and I can tell he doesn’t want to talk about the sister anymore, but I can’t help myself.

  “Why don’t you talk to your sister, then?”

  “I’ll catch her later.”

  “If you love her so much, why don’t you go back to Boston to see her?”

  He sighs and looks at the phone again. “Because I’d rather die than see my mom.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she just spends all her time in bed, taking pills.”

  “She getting help?”

  “That is the help she’s getting. She sees doctors, and the best they can do is put her on a bunch of antidepressants. My sister just sits in front of the TV, doing her homework or drawing. Usually she makes dinner for them both. It’s not dangerous, I mean she can take care of
herself, she has her act together enough to go to work, but it’s just depressing as fuck in there. It smells like death. I can’t stand it.”

  “You must miss your sister.”

  “Of course I fucking miss her. But I can’t see her in that house. It’s too much. My sister and I used to hang out at my place across the city, but that’s not an option anymore,” he says. I wait for him to elaborate, to explain why he moved out and what this mystery girl did to him, but I can see he wants to move on. He starts tapping his foot and running a hand through his hair.

  He starts acting all agitated, so I feel like it’s my turn to talk. “My mom had her problems too,” I tell him, though I never talk about my mom.

  “A depressed addict?”

  “She barely drank—a glass of wine or two might have helped her to loosen the fuck up, actually. No, she was just a hardass. But I didn’t really even know who she was, up to the day she died. I thought she hated anything artistic. I didn’t know she wanted to sing. She only sang in front of me once.”

  “Oh?” he says, raising his idiot eyebrow.

  “One time I caught her singing, in the middle of the night, not long before she died. I had no idea she sang,” I say. And then I sing a few bars: “My heart bleeds and bleeds for you, darling, my heart bleeds rivers of the darkest blood….”

  “Ah,” he says. “Heartsongs for the Drowned.”

  “You know it?”

  “Mishkin wasn’t exactly Viktor Tsoi, but he was pretty famous.”

  “Were you even born when Tsoi died?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he says, getting defensive. “I got into Soviet rock because of my dad. Or, at least, his rock CDs were some of the things he left behind when he left us, and I got this idea that I would get to know him just by listening. Anyway, it’s stupid.”

  “That isn’t stupid. I wish my mom left behind something like that. I didn’t know her at all,” I say, and suddenly I feel too exposed, wondering how we got on this topic anyway. What the fuck is wrong with me?