by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
“Yep,” Pasha thinks. “All right now, just climb this hill and then you’re there.” It’s past nine already. At home, Pasha is usually sitting in his room by this time and his dad’s watching the news. Pasha adjusts his backpack and starts walking up some stone steps. There are a lot of them. Pasha’s struggling—he’s worn out from running around all day and chilled to the core. The fog grows thicker at the top. It looks like he’s going up into a raincloud. He counts the first fifty steps, stops, catches his breath. Then keeps going. His shoes get heavier and heavier, his movements slower and slower. Another fifty. The steps are all cracked. Have to be careful, have to watch where you’re going. Don’t listen to the explosions, don’t pay them any mind. Something bursts somewhere far behind him. Another fifty. Here, up on the hill, it’s calm, not scary. Don’t have anything to be afraid of. Another fifty. He can hardly breathe—doesn’t exercise, rarely walks anywhere, used to run. Running just isn’t safe anymore. They might think you’re trying to escape. Another fifty, and another, and another, and he finally crawls to the top of the hill, stops, turns around, and sees the whole city laid out below. The rain’s let up, fog’s settled in the valley, like milk that’s been boiled for too long. Pasha looks at the city, yet can’t see it. All he can see is a black pit. Hovering above it is thick black smoke with long tails, like the strings on kites. And it’s as though somebody’s pumping souls out of the city. And those souls are black and bitter, snagging on trees and taking root in basements—you just can’t rip them out. And over there, far away, on the other side of the city, something’s blazing, sprawling across the horizon, like scalding lava coming out of the ground. There’s the sound of automatic gunfire coming from the city itself. The bursts aren’t that frequent, though. Seems like that’s it for today, time to sleep. That’s if you have someplace to sleep. Pasha calms down a little. “Just had a tough day,” he says to himself. “No big deal. Good thing it’s all over.” And he spots some grocery bags in the grass, something neatly folded. He walks over, kicks it with the tip of his shoe. Something supple, yet springy. Feels like chopped meat. Pasha lurches back and runs away. One more black kite rises behind him.
There’s a new lock on a long chain attached to the metal gate. Children is painted on the gate. Pasha looks for an intercom, but there isn’t one, so he has to hop the fence. He lands on some wet grass, twists his ankle, hisses in pain, but gets up and goes to look for a living, breathing person. There aren’t any living, breathing people in sight, though. The main building’s surrounded by small apple trees, as dark and crooked as the back of a woman who’s toiled in the fields her whole life. No lights, no voices. The sign is still intact, but the flag over the front steps is gone. “Yeah, makes sense,” Pasha thinks. “Why provoke them?” He suddenly realizes that he didn’t see a single flag in the city today. Except for the one on the tank. A tank is a movable object, though—here today, gone tomorrow. But the train stations and schools stand still—until they get blown up. And there they stand: no lights, no heat, no flags.
Sheets of plywood cover the windows. Chairs from the auditorium are blocking the main entrance. “Where is everyone?” Pasha thinks, growing anxious. “Did they all up and leave or something?” He climbs the steps, approaches the door, peers through the cracks. He can’t see anything, though. His fists pound on the windows, but the plywood muffles the sound. Down the steps, around the building, over to the gymnasium—big, white, with broken windows and a caved-in wall, like someone’s taken a bite out of a burnt sugar cube—up to the door. He tries it. Locked. But there’s someone on the other side, someone over there who’s shuffling their feet, blowing warm breath through the cracked door, but not opening it. “I’m so sick of all this,” Pasha thinks, getting angry at God knows who. “Traipsing around in the rain all day, having to explain myself, being afraid. I’m so damn sick of this.”
“Open up,” he says in a commanding tone, surprising himself.
“Who’s there?” asks a woman’s voice, frightened, yet still firm. She’d stand in front of a tank before letting him in, if it came to that.
“I’m here for Sasha,” Pasha explains. “My nephew.”
The door opens. Standing behind the door is Nina, the director: about thirty, pointy nose, attentive eyes, skinny, sickly, discontented. Warm, knitted leggings, black sweater, gray vest, also knitted. She looks like a gray crow. She’s known Pasha for a long time, so she isn’t surprised.
“Pasha?” she asks discontentedly. “Is that you?”
“I’m here for Sasha,” he explains.
“Are you alone?”
“Huh?”
“It’s just you, no soldiers, right?”
“No,” Pasha answers. “Just me.”
“Come on in,” Nina says, and takes a step back.
She lets Pasha in, locks the door, nods for him to follow her. In the wall behind the basketball hoop, there’s a hole from a mortar shell. Drafts seep in and out through the hole. There are unwieldy plastic jugs of water along the wall.
“Haven’t had water for a while,” Nina explains, without stopping. “The lights come on in the morning, for an hour or two. Why didn’t you call ahead of time?”
“Didn’t have service,” Pasha answers.
“Really? We still do.”
“You’re up higher. How’re things here? Been much shelling?”
“Not in the past few days. The gym got hit before that, though. There was smoke everywhere, enough to cover a whole city. Everyone probably thinks we got cooked.”
“Where’s Sasha? Is he sleeping?”
“Sleeping?” Nina asks, stopping. “Nobody’s slept in a while, Pasha. Well, they do during the day,” she adds. “When it isn’t so scary.”
They leave the gym, walk down a dark hallway. Nina turns on a heavy-duty flashlight, shines it ahead of her. The windows on the first floor are covered with blankets and political posters that have been ripped off the walls. It’s cold and damp. Frozen flowers. Dirty footprints in the hallway—guess there’s nothing to wash the floors with. Besides all that, it’s just like any other educational institution. Visual aids, pictures of the local flora and fauna. Pasha catches a glimpse of wolves’ silhouettes in the snow and a fossilized fern. “Ferns,” he thinks. “What do ferns have to do with this?” Sheets of plywood with dust-caked national symbols on them. Fairy-tale characters on the walls, looking like straight-A students. Smells like something’s burning.
“We haven’t run out of food yet,” Nina explains. “Have to cook it over an open fire, though. Like we’re camping,” she adds. “Yeah, here, take a look. You’ll find this interesting.”
The door to the far room is resting against the wall. The sign on the door reads, “Library.” Pasha peeks inside. A blast knocked out a window, the roof’s sagging. Books lie in the middle of the room in a big, wet pile. They just lie there, getting all mushy, like food left out in the sun.
“Good thing the kids don’t like reading,” Nina says. “Nobody was in here when it got hit. Everyone was in the kitchen.”
“Any of the teachers still around?” Pasha asks, bewildered.
“The gym teacher, Valera,” Nina answers. “And me. Everyone else took off. Same for the kids—the ones who could, left. The locals bring us groceries. They used to help us get water, too. Now they’ve stopped coming around—they’re afraid.”
“They have reason to be.”
“Yeah.”
They go downstairs and reach a long, dead-end hallway. There are old Soviet civil defense posters on the walls. Gas masks that look like the heads of anteaters are scattered across the floor. It’s warmer and cozier down here. The only thing is, there are just a few too many pictures of nuclear explosions on the walls.
“We’re lucky the basement was designed as a bomb shelter,” Nina says. “Especially for us. Well, and for World War III.”
They peer into the first compartment.
“Is Sasha in here?” Nina asks quietly, turning off the flashl
ight so as not to wake anyone. Nobody’s actually asleep, though. Quiet voices start coming from every direction.
“He’s in the third one,” a voice says eventually. “A little girl,” Pasha notes to himself. “He was in here,” the invisible girl says. “He started scaring us. We kicked him out.”
“Uh-huh,” Nina replies. “Well, his uncle’s here. Pasha.”
Then she shines her flashlight right in Pasha’s face.
“Take him away,” the girl pleads in the darkness. “He keeps scaring us.”
“Will do,” Pasha promises, flustered.
They leave, close the door, walk over to the third compartment. It’s locked from the inside.
“Damn,” Nina curses quietly, and begins delicately knocking on the door. It’s made of heavy metal. Apparently, you really could wait out WWIII in there.
“Sasha, open up,” Nina requests.
“Does he give you a hard time?” Pasha asks—his way of encouraging her.
“They all do,” Nina answers. “And he does, too. Sasha, your uncle’s here. Uncle Pasha,” she adds, just in case.
At first, nobody responds. Then the door trembles heavily and opens. Sasha’s standing there: boxers, warm sweater, baseball bat in his hands. “He’s grown,” Pasha notes to himself.
“Pasha?” he asks, surprised.
“Been practicing?” Pasha answers a question with a question. “Where’d you get it?” He points at the bat.
“The locals brought it here,” Nina explains. “And he took it. Sasha, I asked you not to lock the door.”
“What are you doing here?” Sasha asks, ignoring her.
“Came to pick you up,” Pasha says.
“Ah, what took you so long?”
He turns around and goes back into his room.
“I’ll go get you a sleeping bag,” Nina says in a tired voice, leaving Pasha alone with his nephew. “Spend the night, then go.”
“Yep, that’s what we’ll do, yep,” Pasha says.
He steps into the compartment. Dry, dark basement, bare pipes along the walls. Concrete floor, concrete ceiling. You could live through a nuclear attack down here, all right, though you wouldn’t live all that long or all that happily. The kid’s set up his own little nest in the corner: mats tossed on the floor, a down blanket on top, and then a sleeping bag. Several pillows, pots, plates, bottles, crusty leftover ramen. Books. Pasha walks over, takes a closer look. Mayne Reid, Conan Doyle. All of them have library stamps on them. There’s a pack of filtered cigarettes on Mayne Reid. Pasha looks at the cigarettes in surprise, the kid sees where he’s looking, even jerks to grab them, but then he restrains himself and sizes Pasha up with an air of independence.
“You’ve put on weight,” he comments.
“That’s just my jacket,” Pasha says defensively.
“It’s a crappy jacket.”
“Been reading?” Pasha tries changing the subject.
“They’re for rolling paper.” The kid’s mocking him.
“Gotcha. I read those books when I was a kid, too. Read them out loud to my sister. To your mom, I mean,” he adds, just in case.
“How’s she doing?” the kid asks, his tone growing more serious, yet softer.
“All right,” Pasha replies tentatively. “Working.”
“How’d you get here?” the kid inquires.
“Took a taxi,” Pasha answers. “Then walked.”
“How you gonna get back?” the boy inquires. “A taxi?”
“We’ll see.”
“OK. We’ll see. You should get to bed.”
“What about you?”
“I’m gonna stay up a little longer,” he says, chuckling. “And have a smoke.”
Nina comes in with the sleeping bag, little girl in tow: about twelve, tar-black hair falling in her eyes, curious, yet mistrustful gaze. She’s carrying a pillow and a blanket.
“You should sleep here,” Nina says. “That’ll put us all at ease. You’ll help bring in the water tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Pasha agrees.
“Good night.” Nina leaves, not even looking at him or Sasha. It’s as if they’ve offended her somehow. The girl, though, looks at both Pasha and the kid with genuine interest. But she has to leave, too.
Pasha sheds his backpack, takes off his shoes and coat. His shoes are as heavy as corpses. And they smell like corpses, too. Pasha takes some sandwiches out of his backpack.
“Want one?” he asks the kid.
“You make them yourself?”
“It’s all fresh,” Pasha says, aggrieved.
“No, thanks,” the kid says in a conciliatory tone. “They feed us. Get some sleep.”
“Where do you go to the bathroom?” Pasha asks, crawling into the sleeping bag.
“See those?” The kid points at a row of empty bottles. “Pick the biggest one. Make sure it’s empty, though.”
“They aren’t all empty?” Pasha asks, surprised.
“Get some sleep,” the kid replies.
“He’s angry with me,” Pasha thinks. “He’s mad. Mad that we didn’t come for him earlier, that we don’t call him often enough, that we don’t visit. Most of all, he’s mad that he’s here.” Pasha didn’t want his sister to send him away. Why? Let him live with us, I’ll keep an eye on him at school. His sister and his old man haven’t talked in two years, though. They started fighting when she was still living with that guy, Aram, away from Pasha and his old man. After that, when Aram took off and it was just the two of them in their one-room apartment in that prefab building, she and her old man entered a state of trench warfare. The kid was a bad student, but his behavior was even worse. He was bound to run into some trouble with the law—his dad was on the run, his mom was a train stewardess, always on the road, she hardly ever saw him, and the world was filled with temptation and challenges. How could he restrain himself? It’s not like he really tried to, though. He didn’t heed Pasha’s advice, and he flat-out ignored his grandpa. Just the way it ought to be, basically. Well, and he was sick, too. Pasha immediately regrets thinking of that. Best not to think about that. But it is what it is. What is it? It feels like the sign of death has been hanging over the kid for a while now. And his death is just a matter of time. Then his sister just sent him here, to live with orphans and the children of drug addicts, without warning Pasha or her father. That’s when her dad stopped talking to her altogether. Pasha took some serious flak from him, too, even though Pasha had nothing to do with any of this—he, too, was against the idea of the orphanage. He argued with his sister, paid the director a visit, talked to the kid. But then he eased up, gave up, retreated. The kid could see that. He probably held it against Pasha. That wimp couldn’t get me out of here, he didn’t have my back. Pasha couldn’t really say anything to that. Well, yeah, I am a wimp. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have enough patience to take on the whole world. That’s just how it goes sometimes. I’ll take him home tomorrow, make sure he’s fed and bathed. Won’t send him back. He can read Mayne Reid at home. And urinate in bottles, too.
There’s one more thing, though. Pasha remembers it well. Last year, in the spring, when all of this was just getting started, when nobody understood anything, he and the kid got into a really intense fight. The kid kept grilling Pasha, asking him whose side he was on, what he was going to do, who he was going to shoot at. Pasha reluctantly replied, like always, that none of this had anything to do with him, that he couldn’t get behind anyone, that he wasn’t on anyone’s side. Then, completely out of the blue, the kid came back with something about not wanting anything to do with him, about being ashamed, about his uncle being a one-of-a-kind douchebag. At first, Pasha didn’t know what was going on. Later on, he found out that one of the kid’s classmates lost his dad—he was tortured to death a few weeks after it all started. Pasha hadn’t known about that. He should have, though. Then he tried to explain what he’d meant, but the kid was set on seeing things his way. And Pasha couldn’t seem to find the right teaching method to
change his nephew’s mind. That’s how they left things. They still talked and all, but it was obvious that the kid had distanced himself, stepped away, stopped trusting his uncle. Pasha was worried about this, obviously, but what could he do? “What could I have actually done?” he thinks as he’s falling asleep. “What could I have done? What?”
Where’d she leave her clothes? Where’s her house? When’s she going to get there? Half of them don’t have homes—they’ve dispersed across the nearby cities, escaped from here, riding in an endless line of rail cars, drifted all over the world. How much time must pass before they return? And when they do return, will they recognize their homes? After all, everything used to look completely different. Nowadays, it’s hard to recognize anything at all here: dwellings with no voices, streets with no lights, squares with no birds. A heavy gray building sits atop a hill. The windows are all boarded up. There are some signs and warnings written on the boards—about what’s already been done and about what will be done. And about what will be done to everyone who lives here for what has happened and what will happen. And about what will be done to those who’ve never been here before. The foggy sky hangs low over the building, like the fog’s getting sucked right out of the windows. It rises, twists into knots and loops, lets the wind carry it south, to the sea. Black apple trees stand around the building; they keep standing where they were put, even though they went barren a long time ago. Wet yellow grass, dark sticky clay, damp air that smells faintly of burnt rubber. Creeping from the trees to the building are stray dogs, three skinny and wary dogs, their eyes so desperate and so hopeless, as if they’ve been feeding on corpses for the past few days. And they know that it can’t get any worse, that it won’t be any worse, that it just won’t be anything really. So all they can do is hide in the grass and rocks and warm themselves, hoping that everything will end quickly and painlessly. They drag themselves through the grass to the patch of broken asphalt in front of the building, sniff out the voices inside, sniff out the smell of helplessness. They come even closer, sticking their canine snouts into the holes between the boards. Suddenly, they detect another smell, a new, unusual one. The smell of an outsider. They detect that this smell is completely different, that something is seeping through the fatigue and apathy, something menacing that truly frightens them. The smell of strength? The smell of love? And the longer this smell persists, the more uneasy they become. They even begin to howl, taking in wet air and exhaling warm breath out of their mouths. Then they crack, turn around, and run back into the grass between the rocks.