by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
“No,” he says. “There won’t be. And there won’t be tomorrow either,” he adds. “Or the day after that,” he says, getting all riled up. “There won’t be one going there, or one coming from there, either. Nothing’s running.” He paints a pretty sad picture. “He’s gone,” he declares. “Him, too. They’re gone. Everyone’s gone!” he exclaims, robbing the passengers on the other side of the window of any hope. But they aren’t retreating, aren’t giving up. They keep trying to squeeze something out of him, anything at all. But he isn’t about to reveal his railroad secrets just like that. “Where?” he asks, surprised. “Fucked if I know.” Viewing that as an exhaustive answer, he shuts the embrasure, and turns toward Pasha and Stocky. There’s a timid knock on the window. He slams his fist against the glass without even turning around. Silence falls on the other side.
“So are you station attendants or something?” Pasha asks, flustered.
“Yep,” Stocky answers him. “Hey, Teach, hope you’re not mad at us for twisting your arm and dragging you on the floor like that. There’s all kinds of shady types floating around in here with our people. You know what it’s like. Our bosses just fuckin’ took off. They left us in charge. No hard feelings, right?”
Pasha’s not mad anymore. He just kind of loosened up after “Teach.” He fixes his glasses with his pointer finger and hates himself for doing it.
“Where do ya need to go?” Stocky asks him.
“I just wanted to duck in here and wait it out. Then I’ll get going,” Pasha replies.
He finishes talking and hears a trembling outside. You might think it’s about to rain—that is, if you don’t look out the window. Stocky hears the rumbling, too; he hears the rumbling coming closer and closer, so he’s in no hurry to pump Pasha for answers. He simply says: “All right then, you can go. Just don’t step on any mines.”
“Where are they?” Pasha asks, flustered.
“All over the place,” Stocky shouts cheerfully, and starts laughing, giving the young guy a playful punch on the arm. But the young guy isn’t laughing; he’s moving his jaw muscles up and down, his expression malicious.
“I gotta get to the orphanage,” Pasha interrupts him eventually.
Silence sets in immediately. Stocky exchanges a meaningful glance with his colleague, who just whistles in reply.
“Oh man, for real?” Stocky asks.
“What’s the big deal?” Pasha answers anxiously. “My nephew’s over there.”
“Wow.” Stocky nods. “Wow.”
“Yeah, what’s the big deal?” Pasha asks in a slightly combative tone.
But they just nod, still not saying anything. The young guy stops moving his jaw muscles; he sits there, sullenly examining his green sneakers. One might think that for him those sneakers are the problem—if he had different sneakers he’d be in a much better mood.
“So?” Pasha cracks first.
“All right,” Stocky finally ventures to say something. “All right, Pasha,” he says, calling Pasha by his name for the first time. “So in about an hour, Alyosha,” he starts, pointing at the young guy, “is going to take a group past the retention basin and out to the edge of town. He’ll take you to the fork in the road, by the meat-packing plant. You know the spot, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Head out with the group. You’ll just peel off by the plant. Go down into the gully and then up the other side. The orphanage’s over there. Got it?”
“Got it. Where’s he taking them?”
“Out of the city,” Stocky explains. “How are you planning on getting out, huh?”
“Getting out of where?”
“Out of here.”
Pasha doesn’t say anything, and they let it go—the answer’s obvious. “I’m trapped,” Pasha thinks frantically. “God, I’m trapped.”
“So? Are you in?” Stocky asks him. Pasha weighs his options.
“Yeah,” he agrees, his voice tense. “Yeah,” he repeats with more conviction.
“Well, come back here over to the window in an hour,” Stocky replies.
“Okay. Will do.”
He wants to leave, but Stocky isn’t opening the door. He gives Pasha an inquisitive look, seemingly waiting for a specific response.
“How much?” Pasha asks, when he figures out what it is.
“Nothing at all.” Stocky flashes a kind smile. Then he pulls the calculator out from under his ass, presses some buttons, and adds in a confiding tone. “Well, what do you got on you? You probably got a hundred, right? I’ll just take that.”
Pasha pays what they tell him to pay. Stocky takes out some keys, opens the door, warily peers out into the hallway, quickly lets Pasha out, and locks the door from the inside. “Feels like I just went to confession,” Pasha thinks as he walks back to the waiting area.
It hits somewhere close by. Thing is, you can’t ever tell where the next one will hit. There are explosions all over the place—behind the tracks, behind the main avenue in town. Everyone huddles by the walls; muffled howling follows the blast and then it gets quiet again. After that, the silence outside snaps and wailing follows.
“It’s on fire!” someone suddenly yells by the entrance, and everyone runs over to look out the window. Pasha peers out, too; he stands next to the crowd that nearly ripped him to shreds with its gold teeth just half an hour ago and sees greasy black smoke behind some high-rises—so greasy and so black that it looks like they’ve been burning corpses back there. “Where’s the fire? Where?” asks a short little woman in a black coat. Her red, frozen hands keep fixing her hair as it spills out from underneath her beret. Where? Eventually, she realizes where and she releases a wild, full-throated scream, frightening the already frightened birds and children. “What? What’s over there?” the women standing behind her ask one another, and the petrified children ask, “What? What’s going on?” And everyone realizes what’s going on over there—clearly she lives in one of those high-rises, and clearly there’s a fire somewhere over there. So let her yell, let her yell it all out. There’s nothing you can do. Pasha turns around, walks across the main hall, turns down a corridor, passes black bodies lying by the wall, huddled by the radiators—it’s safer by the radiators—and ducks in response to every flash in the sky, to every sound outside. He squats down when a blast goes off nearby, right behind the train cars, and he scurries over to the luggage room, hunched over, squeezes between some bodies, finds a little crevice by a column, plops down, curls up, shuts up.
Somebody’s nestling against his shoulder, slipping under his arm. “That lady,” Pasha figures. “That lady with the gold under her tongue.” She sits there, afraid to move a muscle. “Let ’er snuggle,” he thinks. “Let ’er warm up. When’s the last time I lay next to a woman like this?” He thinks and thinks, trying to recall, and thinks some more, but then gives up. “It’ll come to me later,” he thinks. “It’s nice and warm. I’m safe here and it smells like a woman.” Granted, the woman smells kind of funny, like someone who walked around in the rain in a fur coat and then slipped under the covers next to you. Now there’s this canine smell—something living, something from the street, something stray. Pasha casts a sideways glance—yep, it’s a dog. Just how on earth did he get in here? Wet, gray fur, dark, frightened eyes. Pasha wants to nudge him over; he touches the dog’s spine and feels him tremble resignedly. C’mon, get outta here. But the dog resists, turns his muzzle toward Pasha, and looks him in the eye, hinting that he doesn’t have anywhere to go. Just like Pasha. “This just isn’t right,” Pasha thinks. “Dogs should be protective, dogs should snarl. This one’s lying here, burying his head under my arm, like he doesn’t want to see anyone.”
He’s just like the rest of the bunch here—averting their eyes, wrapping themselves in blankets, burrowing into their clothes like fish in silt. An old guy’s sitting on a chair in the far corner. Old woman’s coat, soggy fur hat. He clearly brought the chair from home. He’s holding some taped-up pillows. Everyone who ran away took s
omething; they’re lugging whatever it was around now. Apparently he decided that there was no point in setting off without his pillows. Pasha looks around, studying the crowd. People sleeping on blankets or on the bare floor. People who’ve hung their bags all over themselves so not a single one gets stolen. Some people have even rolled their suitcases all the way here. But generally, their belongings are sparse. Makes sense—they were in a rush, so they grabbed whatever was at hand. Documents and valuables, mostly. Now they’re sitting here and suspiciously surveying their surroundings—when you have gold earrings in your pocket you’re a bit reluctant to make friends with strangers down by the luggage room. Pasha catches those glances, the glances of people who might be about to have something taken away from them, which makes them so vulnerable, defenseless. There’s no finding their bracelets and cash in their homes. Just try it. But here, just root around in their pockets or under their shirts—you’ll find everything, you’ll take everything away. They realize that, so they have this hounded look about them; their eyes slide down other people’s bodies, and when their eyes rest on you, fear and animosity immediately appear in those eyes. The dog can sense that, too—nobody wants him here, nobody’s keeping him here, and the most he can count on is someone’s weakness, not their magnanimity. Maybe that’s why he unerringly chose Pasha.
This time, the impact is right over his head. So close the lights go out. In the darkness, the women start wailing again. The dog buries himself even deeper under Pasha’s arm. Pasha would be more than glad to hide under someone’s arm, too, but there’s no arm like that in the station. After a while, the lights come back on—the lamps flicker, faintly illuminating the hallway. The women immediately regain their composure—they take out their food, root around in their bags, check their pockets. Pasha can’t stand it anymore; he gets up and heads for the exit. The dog slinks after him, obviously. They pass through the dark waiting area and look out the windows. The smoke behind the high-rises has settled in the rain. It’s quiet outside; seems like the shelling is over. Now it’s even harder to breathe in the main hall. Outside the window the dark silver of the January sky has spilled all over. Pasha pushes his way toward the window. The women track his every move discontentedly. Pasha feels like a criminal who’s come back to the scene of the crime. “What am I standing here for?” he thinks. “What am I waiting for? Something’s gonna come flying in here and knock all the tiles off these walls, and I’ll get smacked right in the head, and nobody’ll ever dig me out. When’s Alyosha gonna take us outta here?” Pasha produces his phone and checks the time. Another half hour. “Where’s he going to take us? Traipsing down the railroad tracks through an industrial park with a bunch of women—what kind of idea is that? Don’t see us getting far. C’mon, get the hell out of here,” Pasha says to himself and walks decisively toward the door. He freezes in front of it, feeling weakness and indecisiveness sweep through his body, starting from his lungs. But he exhales deeply, pushes the door, and steps outside. The door shuts behind him immediately. But the dog manages to slip through first.
So Pasha’s standing in the doorway; once again, he hears the pigeons breathing overhead and contemplates the sky as dark threads of intermittent smoke float by. “I’ll run across the street,” he figures. “Go past those houses and get to the high-rises that way. Seems like they’re done shelling this place. If I get stopped, I’ll tell ’em I’m going home.” He runs his hands through his pockets—papers, wallet, keys, phone. He can leave now, but he isn’t leaving. He’s just standing there. Something’s wrong, but he can’t put his finger on it. It’s too quiet. Incredibly quiet. Unfamiliarly quiet. Over the past few months, he’s grown so accustomed to the air quivering. It was quivering just an hour ago. The lights disappeared just half an hour ago. But now it’s quiet. And empty. And smoke flows across the sky quietly and sorrowfully. In this silence Pasha suddenly starts to discern a rumbling of sorts. Something’s moving by the main avenue, moving in his direction. That something isn’t visible, but the rumbling’s becoming more expressive, more threatening. And it’d be nice to hide somewhere from that rumbling, curl up under someone’s arm, and wait it out in the corner, eyes shut in fear. Panic overcomes Pasha. “What should I do?” he thinks. “Where should I run?” And the pigeons overhead begin rustling their wings anxiously. And the women behind him are glued to the windows, peering outside, yet not understanding what’s going on—what’s that rumbling? Where’s it coming from? Pasha’s standing, turned to stone on the empty, soggy steps, and he feels all these eyes on him: the tense eyes of the women, the mistrustful eyes of the birds, and another set of eyes—the eyes of something unknown that’s staring at him from nowhere. And when there’s too much anticipation, so much that his heart starts to ache, a tank—dirty, green, logs attached to the back, three passengers on top—barrels around the corner and into the square. It turns sharply and careens toward the train station. It pulls right up to the steps with the columns, releases some menacing smoke, and comes to a sudden stop. “A T-64,” Pasha thinks automatically, connecting the dots. The turret’s moving slowly, very slowly, aiming the gun right at Pasha. “It’s gonna fire,” Pasha thinks, too afraid to even swallow. “It’s gonna nail me.” He feels cold sweat soaking his T-shirt, feels like he can’t feel his feet, and feels like he can’t feel anything at all. He’s watching the gun, mesmerized. And the three guys sitting on top are watching Pasha with genuine interest—where the hell’d you come from, Four Eyes? They’re yelling back and forth cheerfully; Pasha can’t hear what they’re saying, but it’s obvious they’re talking about him, and it’s obvious that they don’t have anything nice to say. Dirty uniforms, smoke-stained faces, heavy, crusty deposits of earth on their shoes. And the flag hanging over the turret—dark and soiled, like a bandage that’s been pressed against an open wound for a long time. Pasha can’t even make out the color, but it’s not the same flag hanging over his school. “Just don’t move,” Pasha cautions himself. “Stay put.”
And then the tank stalls, and it gets really quiet. And the birds nestle against one another. And the women on the other side of the windows watch, quiet. And the dog hides between Pasha’s legs, timidly scanning the strangers. One of the soldiers, the guy sitting right by the turret and hugging the gun, yells:
“Hey, c’mon, c’mon!”
Pasha looks around, not knowing what to do.
“Come over here, c’mon!” the soldier yells cheerfully.
At this point, Pasha realizes that the soldier’s not yelling to him. He’s yelling to the dog. “He’s mine,” Pasha decides. “I’m not gonna give him up, no matter what.” The soldier’s already rooting through his pockets, though. He produces a mushed-up Snickers, rips it open, takes a bite, and tosses the rest onto the asphalt, right in front of the tank. The dog immediately springs to his feet and walks down the hill, tail between his legs. He grabs the Snickers, greedily devours it, and lies down next to the tank, trying not to look at Pasha. The soldiers laugh, and Pasha gives them a flustered smile. What’s so funny, though?
Then the guy who yelled stands up and jumps down onto the asphalt. Chunks of dirt fly off his heels every which way. He fixes his rifle sling and pulls a gray keffiyeh off his face. Tall, well-built, athletic. The left half of his head is gray, which makes him look like an arctic fox. His gaze is foxlike, too—predatory and mistrustful. Black kneepads, shabby bulletproof vest, fingerless leather gloves. The two other guys jump down after him. They’re dirty, too; one of them is in a warm coat, the other in a leather jacket, camo underneath. They go up a few steps, stop in front of Pasha, and look up at him from below, but he doesn’t forget, even for an instant, who’s in charge.
“Who are you?” asks the guy with the keffiyeh, the Arctic Fox. He’s speaking Russian, but he has a strange accent, like he’s only heard the language spoken on television. The sun emerges from the fog for an instant, gleaming on his gray hair.
Pasha delivers his usual spiel: school, winter break, orphanage, nephew. He tak
es out his papers.
“Local guy?” the Arctic Fox asks, surprised. “Why aren’t you fighting?”
“Health problems,” Pasha replies and looks at his papers in the soldier’s hands—is he gonna give them back?
He toys with Pasha’s papers, flips through the shabby pages again, fixes his keffiyeh again, shuts Pasha’s passport, pauses briefly, and hands everything back.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks.
Pasha shows him his right hand, desperately trying to spread his fingers.
“What?” The soldier’s confused.
“He’s got a problem with his fingers,” the guy in the leather jacket says behind him. “See?”
Pasha keeps showing him his hand, just in case, seemingly to confirm what the other man said—yeah, I got a problem. The Arctic Fox scrutinizes Pasha’s hand mistrustfully and then quickly loses interest in Pasha and in his problem.
“Who’s in there?” He nods at the train station.
“Women and children,” Pasha says, tucking his papers into the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Any soldiers?”
“I didn’t see any.”
“Are you armed?”
Pasha doesn’t reply.
“You gotta be kidding me. Him?” says the guy in the leather jacket, laughing. “Let’s get going.”
The Arctic Fox turns around and whistles for the dog to come over. He runs over obediently, not raising his eyes to Pasha, and tags along with the soldiers. The Arctic Fox walks up to the door and pulls on it resolutely. All four of them, including the dog, disappear into the building.
“You can all go to hell,” Pasha says, and shuffles off to the first platform.
In the winter, he always remembers his childhood. Black trees buried in the snow, a line of workers trudging away from the station like hunters coming home. The golden commuter train, the blue shadows at dusk. It’s winter now, too, and the holiday season has yet to come to a close. Rain and fog fill the ground with water, and the sheer abundance of moisture makes the sky look like a drowned man brought ashore—bloated body, blue tint on a gray backdrop. You don’t even want to look at a sky like that. And Pasha isn’t looking; he’s sitting on a bench and incredulously examining last year’s grass—it’s poking through the sidewalk tiles, shivering in the fresh air. Pasha lifts his hood; his coat is nice and thick, and his bag warms his back. You can just sit here like this for an eternity, experiencing the early, January twilight descending from the sky, seeping through the surrounding area like purple dye, eroding objects away, and blurring lines. “Why’d the dog leave me?” Pasha thinks. “Why didn’t he stay with me? It’s a strange time—can’t hold on to anyone, can’t hang on to anyone.” He felt this for the first time several months ago, in the spring, when the vise started tightening around the city. The trains stopped running, the Station grew calm. The younger students weren’t talking about that—they were afraid, they didn’t have the vocabulary. The older kids didn’t either, but they weren’t afraid of anything. They argued, yelling over each other and paying little attention to Pasha. He didn’t get involved when the students asked him to settle their disputes. He’d laugh everything off and start talking about their homework assignments. “That’s not your job,” he said. “Being good students, now that’s your job.” But they were bad students. And they behaved badly. And they simply ignored whatever Pasha said. One time, when the rumbling started particularly close by, Pasha tried taking them out of the classroom, to what he called the shelter. The kids laughed in his face; they were glued to the windows, searching intently for traces of smoke in the sky. Pasha stood there, waited around a little while longer, and then headed to the shelter. In the hallway, he bumped into the principal—thick layer of makeup, drawn-on eyebrows. She looked like a clown that’d been drinking hard for a long time.