Something Unbelievable

by Maria Kuznetsova

  I said, “Your timing is lacking.”

  “I say what I feel when I feel it.”

  “So you didn’t feel it earlier?”

  “Of course I did. But you didn’t notice because you were occupied with your reading companion.”

  “I don’t need your pity,” I said.

  He sighed and put his head in his hands. “For heaven’s sake, Larissa, I read all of Karamazov to impress you. What more could a man do?”

  I laughed, feeling truly flattered, not understanding that this had been his motive. But I quickly righted myself.

  “I don’t feel—close to you like that,” I said slowly.

  “Are you certain?” he said.

  I felt ridiculous. Of course I had always preferred his brother to him—so why did I feel so short of breath, right then?

  “I’m not certain of anything right now,” I said.

  He gave me a triumphant smile, but I stepped away from him, signaling that our conversation was over. We turned away from the woods, toward the path through the apartment buildings to the center of town, the path Papa and Uncle Pasha had taken to get to the village, and one from which I knew they would not emerge. I knew that none of us would emerge from this place unbroken. And that I would never open myself up to a person like Bogdan. It was too risky. I waved him off and sank against the base of the linden tree.

  “Go on, now,” I told him. “I’ve had enough. Please go to sleep.”

  * * *

  —

  I stayed up every night, staring into the woods from my tiny window, as if I could summon what? Papa and Uncle Pasha riding out of the dark abyss? Licky resurrected, crawling back to me like nothing had happened, lapping the dirt off my hands? My former meaty body, the heft in my haunches I had once hated? The curve of my sister’s buttocks? A hearty summer meal? Misha and I plowed through Quiet Flows the Don but I could hardly read a word; all those fighting, violent Cossacks and the poor women, who were either raped or beaten or both, did not suit my mood or level of concentration. I tried to picture my former kind teacher, Marina Igorevna, patiently sitting beside me as I read to help me focus, but I could not summon her.

  I tried not to think of Bogdan’s ill-timed declaration. Surely he just felt sorry for me. He continued to favor Polina and I kept reading with his brother like nothing happened. School was the only suitable distraction. At that point, only a handful of students remained, and I began helping Yana Nikolaevna in the classroom, delivering lessons when she was too weak to stand. “Spring can be just as brutal as winter!” my teacher would cry during these spells, though she did not explain how. Nights were harder. My sister started climbing out of bed in the late hours. When I followed her, I found that she would go to Mama’s balcony, to stare into the woods during the brisk nights, awaiting our Papa in her own way.

  About two weeks after Papa and Uncle Pasha had left, a figure appeared on the horizon one morning. I spotted him first because I left the building early, to help my teacher clean the schoolhouse. For a few precious moments in the pink near-darkness I hoped and believed I was looking at my father. But as the figure continued his approach, there was no mistaking my father for his brother, whose frame was slighter, and whose careful gait could only mean one thing. His crooked-nosed face and clothes were dark, covered in soot, as if he were already preparing to mourn. He saw me approaching, nodded, and took his cap off his head and held it to his chest, and I howled and sank to the ground.

  Mama came running out next, trailed by Polya and the Orlovs, all four of them still thick with slumber, because it was a Sunday and they did not have to report to work. By the time Baba Tonya lumbered out in her nightgown, so disoriented she did not remember to cover her ruby necklace with her boa, Uncle Pasha was convulsing before us, as if he were caught in a windstorm.

  “Papa,” Polya kept saying. “What happened to Papa?”

  I wanted to smack the girl. Did I have to explain this to her too? I thought the death of Licky had hardened her, but here she was, innocent all over again. Her eyes were wilder than ever, though they had retreated deep into the caverns of her face. Even Baba Tonya understood what Uncle Pasha’s solitary arrival meant, and she grabbed Polya and pulled her into her dirty skirts, and my sister was the first of the group to sob. She whispered that she was her princess, her angel, all the useless epithets, but they fell on deaf ears.

  Misha put an arm around me, and Bogdan kept looking at me, waiting for a reaction. But I turned to Mama for inspiration. Mama was a statue, and I tried to mimic her.

  “Out with it, already,” Mama told Uncle Pasha.

  “I am so sorry,” said Uncle Pasha. “So profoundly sorry.”

  “Come inside,” Mama said. “I will make tea.”

  He nodded and followed us in like a sleepwalker, and Aunt Tamara even took over making tea and let Mama sit down. We sat around Uncle Pasha and he began to speak once he clutched the warm cup in his hands, which had stopped shaking quite so much.

  He told us what happened. They spent a day just getting to the village because they had to stop so often to rest their tired horses. At last, they arrived in the village, but something was off. An eerie quiet hung in the air, followed by a massive noise in the distance that made them fall to their knees. Finally, an old woman emerged from her hut and told them they were crazy, they needed to run away. She said some of the villagers had caught the plague and the Soviet soldiers were going to burn down the place. “You’re still healthy,” she said. “You get out while you can, find a way to escape!” They tried to turn away, but at that point the flamethrowers had the village surrounded, and they would burn down with the sick ones if they did not find another way out. They dropped their horses and followed a path on the outskirts of the village until they found a cave.

  “It was filled with young, healthy boys,” Uncle Pasha told us. “Their parents had caught the sickness but told them to run off before they caught it too. We had no choice. We had to stay with them and hope they were not infected.” The boys were hardly teenagers, he said, and did not know how to fend for themselves. There was one young boy named Slavik who reminded my father of a friend from the orphanage, a helpless, scrawny child for whom he quickly developed an inordinate fondness. As the village went up in flames, they searched for mushrooms in the woods and even cooked a few squirrels, waiting for the soldiers on their side of the village to beg off. “Finally, we found an opening. It was the dead of night. The tank that had blocked our path had disappeared. Slowly, we crept away, holding hands in a chain. Fedya was in the back, making sure everyone got out. But then the shots were fired. The soldiers were shooting at us. The boys were screaming and shouting for mercy and running as fast as they could, but the young boy tripped and fell.”

  Mama put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Fedya,” she said.

  “Fedya couldn’t help himself,” said my uncle. “He ran back for the boy, and they were both shot at once.”

  “Of course they were,” Mama said, her head in her hands.

  “You know Fedya. He could not let an innocent boy die,” said Uncle Pasha.

  I stared at my lap and wished I, too, were holding a cup of tea. I understood that I should not have heard this story, that Polya, my grandmother, Aunt Tamara, and everyone but Uncle Konstantin and my mother should have been removed from the scene. But we were too weary to sort this out. I couldn’t believe it. My poor father, killed by his own people.

  “He could not let the boy die,” Uncle Pasha said again, crying into his hands, and I could see him as the small, weak child he once was, back at the orphanage with Papa, who did everything for him, no doubt, who tied his shoes and sliced his bread and tucked him in and helped him navigate the cruel, dark world. When my father and Uncle Pasha visited their mother’s fancy home, my uncle tripped over the polished parquet and broke his nose. My dear father was too sturdy to slip in the same shin
ed shoes. And yet—

  “Fool!” Mama said again. “My darling fool,” she said more quietly, and then she began to cry the only tears I would ever see her shed in her life. Misha put an arm around me, while Bogdan put an arm around Polya, where it belonged. I wanted to touch and comfort Mama, but I was too scared to move toward her. But I finally did. I hugged her and so did my sister, and as the three of us embraced I thought of the long-ago time Mama had given us the buttered bread in the middle of the night, when I thought she could solve everything. My grandmother stood at our periphery, clutching her necklace. My sister opened her arms to welcome her into our circle, and together, all of us wept. I didn’t even care when her filthy boa fell over my face.

  “I am exhausted,” my grandmother said.

  * * *

  —

  The days after my father’s death were hideous and long. We dragged about our apartment without purpose, like bugs trapped in a jar. Even Uncle Konstantin was diminished by the news, and paced around on the balcony, though he was prone to dizziness. I was fairly certain I even saw him wiping his face, at one point. Aunt Yulia and Madame Renata came by with a sack of food a few days early. “You look awful, the lot of you, you need to eat,” said Madame Renata, and we thanked her while I held my tongue and did not point out that we had looked awful for a while now and she didn’t care until one of us died. Aunt Yulia even held out a handful of chocolate, but Polya and I said we didn’t want it, agreeing on something at last. “Suit yourselves,” she had said, pivoting away on her heel.

  Since there was no body, we couldn’t hold a proper funeral, but something needed to be done. I couldn’t take much more of our collective anguish. I came up with the idea of burying the framed portrait of Mama and Papa under his favorite linden tree behind our building. Mama was in no state to make decisions, but she did not protest. In the photograph, where my parents held a ridiculously large pot of dumplings, laughing at some private joke, my father looked nothing like himself. He was young and smooth-skinned and full of hope, and so was my mother.

  I did not want to bury the man in the photograph. I wanted to bury the tired man who spoke about the importance of family the last night I saw him alive under that tree, so a newer, more energetic Papa could be resurrected, though this plan was as likely to work as Aunt Tamara’s failed scheme to grow potatoes from the sliced seeds. And so it was that all of us and Uncle Ivan and Snowball stood over the small pit where we had buried the portrait on a cool, breezy morning, the grass just starting to sprout from the earth. It was difficult to get started.

  “A brilliant mind,” Uncle Konstantin managed at last.

  “A loyal friend,” said Aunt Tamara.

  “Commander,” Misha said.

  “Guide,” Bogdan said.

  “Dearest brother,” said Uncle Pasha.

  “Sweet husband,” said Mama.

  “Kind father,” I said, speaking for me and Polya.

  My sister wouldn’t look at the Papa pit, or anything else besides her feet. She stood with one arm around Mama and the other on Snowball. She and my mother had been fused in their sorrow, while I was left out, standing with Misha’s dutiful arm around me. During the days, my sister either cuddled with Mama or my grandmother or roughhoused with Bogdan and the stupid dog; at night, she wandered the balcony in the main room to stare at the dark pines, as if she could summon Papa that way. I sensed that she no longer looked for Licky out there, that at least she had forgiven us for that. But I had failed to take care of her as I promised Papa I would do. I tried hovering around her, even hugging her on one occasion, but she didn’t seem interested. Besides, she had enough people caring for her already.

  Since I had spoken for me and my sister, we all turned to Baba Tonya, waiting for her to complete our recitation by stating what kind of son Papa was. We hoped to hear just one kind word bestowed upon our patriarch, but what did Baba Tonya do? She watched a flock of birds flutter through the cloudless sky.

  I couldn’t believe her. Of course she was in shock, but her silence made me livid, for some reason, while Polya’s did not. She was the elder, after all, batty or not, and it was her turn to dredge the corners of her mind for a scrap of kindness toward her firstborn boy. But this was just the kind of thing she got away with because she was weak, like my sister. I would never be able to pull off such a thing. Aunt Tamara even put an arm around her in sympathy, as if it were a badge of honor that she was so troubled that she could not speak. No, the honor came in being maddeningly overwhelmed with sadness and standing upright and saying something in spite of it.

  “Caring neighbor,” said Ivan at last, just to fill the silence. “Comrade.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder when our ceremony ended. “Is the war over yet?” I asked him, and he just shook his head, unable to find a clever retort.

  As we walked away, my grandmother began to speak at last. But she did not intend to be heard, no. She was muttering to my father. “Oh, Fedya,” she said. “You used to have the rosiest cheeks! You were such a beautiful, healthy boy! Who would have thought I would outlive you?”

  “What right do you have to speak to my father?” I said, but she barely seemed to hear me. I expected one of the adults to admonish me for causing a scene, but they did not, not even Mama. Misha stood at my side in solidarity but did not touch me.

  “A healthy, beautiful boy,” my grandmother muttered again, but I was not impressed.

  “If he was so healthy and beautiful, then why did you let your husband send him away?” I said.

  She laughed a frightening laugh. “Silly girl,” she said, even putting a hand on my shoulder. “Going to that orphanage was the best thing that ever happened to your father.”

  I pulled away from her. She was talking utter nonsense, and there was no use in trying to reason with a madwoman. Perhaps I should have felt sorry for her, but how I hated her then! Spouting those lies when she couldn’t even bother to speak at Papa’s grave, when she was the one who sent him to the orphanage, a place where he became so selfless that he died over a stranger. Though I had not paid her much attention as of late, in that moment, I became utterly convinced that everything that had gone wrong in the mountains was my idiot grandmother’s fault: Papa’s death, our hunger, Licky’s demise, Polya and Bogdan’s long embrace, the dead villagers, Hitler invading Russia, and all the injustice in the wild, cruel world.

  * * *

  —

  My grandmother’s extreme eccentricity had tipped toward downright insanity by the time summer arrived. I reminded myself that my father had been her son, after all, no matter how poorly she had treated him. Even though she did not care for him much when he was alive, his death must have meant something to her, something I could not understand as daughter instead of mother. After I berated her about talking to my father directly, she turned to the other dead.

  “Shura,” she would tell her sister, “your hat is all wrong for the occasion, all wrong!” Or, “Husband Dimitrev, why so much red caviar and so little black, people will think we’re slipping!” And to her first husband: “Arkady, I need my back rubbed, and soon!” Once, I even heard her talking to Emperor Nikolai. “You are a dignified leader,” she had said. “Not without your flaws, of course, but so much more civilized than Comrade Lenin!” Sometimes, she would wander out in the middle of the night to Papa’s linden tree to have these conversations, until my sister escorted her home. These were disturbing developments, yes, but with all of us barreling forward after Papa left us, who had time to notice?

  The only time any of us truly paid attention to my grandmother was one morning when she woke up to find that her necklace was gone.

  Her cries knocked me out of a dream about my father I could not quite grasp, and I woke up thoroughly perturbed.

  “Where is it? Where is it?”

  My grandmother stood upright beside her bed like a soldier. Sunlight was s
treaking in through the window of our tiny room. It was a Sunday, the only day when everyone was allowed to sleep in, when even Uncle Konstantin afforded himself a bit of rest. Or we all would have been allowed to sleep in, anyhow, if my grandmother did not fill the apartment with her hideous cries.

  “Where is it?” she said again. “Who has it? Where did it go?”

  It took me a moment to understand what she was raving about. At first, I thought she was referring to her boa, but the black thing was in a heap on the ground below her like a vanquished cobra. But she was pawing at her neck, which was bare: the necklace, the ruby necklace given to her by her mother, a supposed gift from the wife of Alexander III, was nowhere to be found. She ransacked our bedroom and then pounded on all our doors until everyone was reluctantly awake.

  Aunt Tamara was first to respond. “Calm down, Antonina Nikolaevna,” she muttered, still groggy, as we all convened in Mama’s big room. “It must be here somewhere. If we all search, we shall find it in no time at all….”

  Misha and I dutifully searched the ground on our knees, while Polya and Bogdan combed through the furniture. Since Bogdan’s declaration, he hardly looked at me, but I did not believe it was because he felt rejected. He probably forgot all about it and had moved on to my sister for good. Mama searched every cabinet and drawer. Aunt Tamara and Uncle Konstantin searched the other rooms, the bathroom, and the hallways, as if the necklace could have ended up there.

  Once we had all given up on finding the necklace, we returned to the main apartment, where Polya settled next to my grandmother and stroked her back. My grandmother looked truly crazed. Her face was as pale as death and her temples were soaked with sweat.

  “We’ll find it,” Polya said. “You probably just set it down and forgot where you put it….”

  “Impossible. Everyone here knows I never take the damn thing off.”