by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler
Pasha sits down, picks up a mug with coffee in it, thinks about where to dump it, gives up on that idea, sprinkles some black tea right into the coffee, and tops it off with boiling water.
“Nina asked us to go get some water,” Pasha says.
“Uh-huh,” Valera answers skeptically, as if he wants to say, “She didn’t have to remind me.”
Pasha doesn’t like that. Nina doesn’t exactly elicit warm feelings, but this gym teacher guy in the black coat doesn’t really elicit any feelings except disgust, maybe. Valera cracks, averts his eyes. He sits there drinking his tea with an air of independence. Pasha swallows his swill, burning the roof of his mouth, and decisively sets his mug aside.
“Let’s go,” he says, standing up.
“Lemme finish my tea.” Valera’s trying to speak calmly.
“C’mon, let’s go.” Pasha ignores him.
“Like I’m gonna wait for this asshole,” he thinks, heading toward the gym.
Valera grabs his hat discontentedly, gets up, starts walking, keeping his distance, asserting his independence. Something about him pisses Pasha off. Maybe it’s his showy superiority. Maybe it’s his helplessness.
They pick up empty water jugs in the gym. The jugs are tied together with a rope, looking like a bunch of exotic plastic fruit. Pasha picks up one bunch, slings it over his shoulder. Four barely seaworthy six-quart vessels in front, four on his back. Valera tosses some jugs over his shoulder, too, and steps outside first.
They pass the main building, get to an open area. Fog instantly encompasses the black coat, the blue plastic. Pasha walks toward the sound of the empty jugs resonantly bumping together; he’s like a shepherd who’s more concerned about sticking by his animals than anything, more than rounding them up, even, a shepherd afraid of getting lost in the thick, compacted air. They eventually reach the gate. The gym teacher takes a key out of his coat pocket, opens the lock, and uncoils the chain. They leave the gate open, keep going. The cracked asphalt has been split here and there by mortar shells. The grass on the side of the road is faded, burnt rebar lies nearby. Something suddenly emerges out of the fog—a bus stop. Or what’s left of it. A black, charred wall, a heap of fallen bricks. The national flag—also charred—has been painted on the wall. A sign, white on blue, peers out from underneath the bricks—ORPHANAGE. Valera stops, puts the jugs down, takes out his cigarettes.
“Want a smoke?” He proffers one to Pasha.
“No, thanks.”
“It got taken out a month ago,” the gym teacher says. “Nina was heading to the city that day. I don’t let them out anymore. And I have the key to the gate,” he reminds Pasha.
“Gotcha,” Pasha replies, his tone somewhat mistrustful.
The gym teacher finishes his cigarette. They pick up the jugs, push on. Soon some houses appear. Through the fog, they can discern gray roofs, dark fireplaces. The sliced slate of the fences, the black hollows of the windows, the tree trunks trimmed by mortar shells. There’s a store—a large, one-story building with a metal door—at the fork in the road. And in front of that a well. A well meticulously covered with blankets and old padded jackets so nothing gets inside. They approach, look around. In the fog, the houses are nearly invisible, like they’re taking shape on photographic paper. Valera removes the blankets with practiced yet cautious movements, and begins retrieving the water. Pasha holds the jugs, while the gym teacher pours from the bucket. Holding the jugs is awkward; they keep slipping out of Pasha’s hands. He keeps holding on to them—doesn’t want Valera to notice his crippled hand—and occasionally blows on his stiff fingers. They fill up the last jug, wrap the blankets around the well again. They stand there, breathing on their clenched fists. The water’s freezing, burning their skin, deadening it, numbing it. Valera tries to knock a cigarette out of the pack, but his fingers won’t cooperate. Cigarettes spill out, fly into the black water at their feet, sink to the bottom like torpedoes. Valera curses, tucks the pack into his coat pocket, picks up the jugs. Pasha slings the jugs over his shoulder and turns around to head out but bumps into the gym teacher, who’s standing completely still. His back has tensed up—it doesn’t seem to be from the heavy load, though. Pasha looks around him impatiently. There’s something in the fog, a few steps away from them—three men. Or maybe four even. They’re standing there, not coming any closer, so you can’t make out who they are. Valera slowly lowers the jugs onto the ground.
“Listen, pal! What’d we fuckin’ tell you about taking water?” one of them says. He’s speaking Russian, emphasizing the curse to sound more convincing.
“You fuckin’ listen, pal.” Valera gives him attitude right back. “You need a whole well to yourselves?”
“Who the fuck are you? Could be anybody,” one of them persists.
“I’m from the orphanage,” Valera explains.
“Fucked if I care. Should’ve blown you to hell ages ago.”
“Fucked if I care,” Valera replies coldly, picks up the jugs, and heads right at the voices.
Pasha rushes after him, following the heavy bunches of water jugs dangling from his back. The guys in the fog step aside, oddly enough. As Pasha slips past them, he catches a whiff of tobacco and a whiff of fuel oil. It’s as if they ate the oil and rubbed the tobacco into their hair. No time to pick up any more smells. Or catch a glimpse of anything else. Then, as they’re walking away, once the store and the well have dissolved in the fog, someone yells:
“Hey you, from the orphanage!”
Valera hesitates, stops. Pasha runs into him again.
“You’re fuckin’ . . . uh . . . dead meat!”
Valera isn’t listening, though. All you can hear in the fog are his high boots stomping through the cold puddle water.
They walk in silence. The fog has blanketed everything on the orphanage grounds—feels like you’re walking through a wall, leaving behind the world of the living and groping ahead until you run into something horrible. Pasha’s walking along, just listening to the jugs softly knocking against each other, and he suddenly realizes that he hasn’t felt this good in a while. Well, no, not exactly good. What’s so good about trudging through some place where, in all likelihood, they’ve been burying corpses for the past several months, where, in all likelihood, they’ll keep doing so for the next several months? Anyway, you’re walking through the fog, carrying water, and at least there’s something to keep you busy, at least something in all this has meaning. You don’t have any doubts while you’re walking—you know you have to carry the water back. And then you’ll have to make the walk again, with empty jugs, to fetch more water.
Valera plods along, all hunched over. You can hear his stride, his coughing. But you can’t actually see him. It’s like a dead man’s walking alongside you. Pasha speeds up, pulls even with him.
“You know them?” Pasha asks, nodding, even though Valera can’t see him.
“Yep,” the gym teacher answers without stopping.
“Local guys?”
“Yep.”
“What do they want?”
“They don’t want anything.” The gym teacher spits angrily, puts the jugs on the ground, and takes out his cigarettes. Pasha puts his jugs on the soggy earth. His shoulders are aching. He sighs heavily, taking in a mouthful of thick fog. “Everyone around here’s mad at Nina. Last summer, when it all started, they wanted to hand her over to the commandant. I stopped ’em.”
“How’d you do that?” Pasha asks.
“I just up and stopped ’em,” the gym teacher explains. “Well, and then the army came. And then all of this started.” Valera waves, as if he’s referring to the fog. “All right, let’s go.” He tosses his cigarette butt into the water, picks up the jugs, starts moving.
“He’s a good guy,” Pasha thinks as he’s picking up his jugs. “What the hell’s my problem?”
The kid’s already waiting for Pasha in the gym.
“Where’ve you been?” he exclaims. “Let’s get going already.” His backpack a
nd things are on the floor in the corner. “I’m all packed. How much longer are you gonna make me wait?”
“All right, all right. We’ll get going soon.”
And then Nina walks up to him.
“Are you really leaving?” she asks.
“Yes, we are.” Pasha fixes his glasses and immediately adopts a stilted tone, the same tone he uses with the kids at school.
“You’re going out there now?” Nina asks anxiously. “Can’t you hear the explosions? You should at least wait until after lunch. It generally quiets down after noon.”
The kid’s standing next to them, listening intently to their conversation.
“What?” he yells impatiently. “C’mon, let’s go, already!”
Pasha hesitates. On one hand, he wants to get as far away from here as possible; on the other, he remembers what it was like walking here from the train station yesterday, so he isn’t too eager to leave.
“Wait,” he tells the kid. “Let me call your mom.”
“What for?”
“To see what the situation is like down there, at home,” Pasha explains.
“Whatever,” the kid drawls, clearly disappointed. “See what the situation is like . . .”
But Pasha’s stopped listening. He walks over to the corner, takes out his phone. The kid and Nina stand nearby, waiting and occasionally glancing at each other. Nina looks at the kid with concern, and he looks at her with hostility and unconcealed irritation.
The phone keeps ringing and ringing. Pasha’s just about to hang up.
“Hello,” he suddenly hears his sister saying. Well, yelling, actually. She’s used to yelling. She yells at work and at home, too. She thinks people understand her better that way.
“Yeah, Zhenya,” Pasha says. “Are you home? How are things down there?”
“Yeah, I’m home! It’s a fuckin’ shitshow. The army’s attempting a breakout. The Station’s packed. Everyone’s leaving. They’re afraid the Station’s gonna get attacked.”
“I’m here with Sasha,” Pasha interrupts. “I want to take him home.”
“With Sasha?” his sister yells, surprised. “How’d you get there?”
“I want to take him home,” Pasha explains. He can hardly hear her, so he, too, starts yelling.
“How ya gonna do that?” his sister shouts indignantly. “There’s no getting through. There are soldiers everywhere. Just sit tight at the orphanage. At least they’ll feed him there.”
“He’s sitting tight down in the basement,” Pasha yells in reply.
“In the basement? Why’s he down there?”
“There’s been fighting over here,” Pasha explains.
“Well, just sit tight then. At least he won’t go hungry!”
The call drops, but Pasha doesn’t want to call her back. What can I even say to her? He’s standing there with his back to Nina and the kid, tensely looking at his black phone, stalling, pretending he’s waiting for her reply.
“Well?” The kid cracks first. “Get ready, c’mon.”
“Pasha?” Nina tries to pull him out of his trance.
“Here’s the deal.” Pasha turns around abruptly and starts talking, looking between Nina and the kid, not making eye contact with anyone. “So, what’s the deal? They aren’t letting anyone into the Station, the checkpoints are blocked off. The army left.” He nods at the window. “Those guys,” he says, nodding again, “are just coming in.”
“Well, let’s roll then!” the kid interrupts him. “Or are you planning on hanging out here, like the gym teacher?”
“Sasha!” Nina yells at him.
“Go to hell, both of you!” The kid turns around furiously and runs down the hallway.
Pasha stands there for a bit, not knowing what to do, then dashes after the kid. He runs down the hallway, turns the corner, sprints past classrooms as empty as hotel fridges, reaches the end of the hallway, runs down the stairs, and stomps along the cement basement floor. He runs to the compartment, pulls on the door. The kid’s locked himself inside, obviously. Pasha starts pounding on the metal door. “Just so long as he’s okay,” he thinks. “Just so long as that hasn’t started. Just not now.” A group runs out of the first compartment to see what all the commotion is about. Pasha’s anxious, worried about the kid; he wants him to open up, so he keeps banging on the metal door, pounding and jolting loose ten-year-old rust that settles in the hallway twilight. “Go to hell,” he thinks, repeating after the kid. “All of you. Why’d you crawl out of your burrows? Haven’t you ever seen how big, happy families settle disputes? Yeah, how would you know? When’s the last time you even saw your parents? You’re sitting around here like rats in the hold of a ship, waiting for them to smoke you out with poisonous fumes. What do you know about a normal family that’s trying to live a normal life? What do you even know about living a normal life?” Pasha’s yelling to himself, then he turns around, and suddenly sees all of them. All three of them. He saw the oldest girl, around twelve, yesterday—she came by with Nina last night, carrying the sleeping bag. Her hair that keeps falling in her eyes—that’s how he recognized her. And that mistrustful glare. It seems to have filled up with even more mistrust overnight. And more fear, too. She’s standing there in her faded pink down jacket, hiding her hands in her pockets. Knitted socks and warm slippers. The slippers are too big—they probably belong to someone else. The girl who’s peering out from behind her shoulder looks younger, about ten or so. She’s mistrustful, too, and frightened: fair hair gathered in a ponytail, several boys’ sweaters, one on top of the other, dull jeans, worn sneakers. She’s holding a plastic mug with something hot in it—guess she didn’t want to leave it in her room. Who knows when she’ll be back. Hot things get cold, so it’s best to keep them at hand, just in case. And there’s a third girl. She’s peering out from the doorway, not venturing out. Buzz cut—looks like she just got home from the hospital. But she’s afraid they’re going to send her back. And all of them have this heavy look in their eyes, and the shadows under them are so black, so deep. And at first Pasha doesn’t realize what’s going on. Then suddenly, it hits him—all three of them are wearing makeup. Thick, showy makeup, just like the older women around here wear. At first Pasha’s surprised, but then he starts to understand—well, what else are they supposed to do all day down here in the basement? They sit around and do each other’s makeup so things won’t be so scary. But they still are. “I scared them,” Pasha thinks. “I was the one who scared them.” But he looks at them, looks at the makeup under their eyes, at the fear they’re trying to cover up, and he realizes that he has nothing to do with this—their fear runs too deep, it’s constant, it’s part of their lives. And Pasha wasn’t the one who scared them. They were scared before he came along. Down here in the basement, Pasha’s probably just like all the other assholes around them, like their parents, who abandoned them like rabbits locked up in cages—you’re on your own, let’s see how long you live. Do whatever you have to. They’re standing there, looking at Pasha wordlessly. The girl with the ponytail lets slow tears trickle down her face, washing away the makeup, forming distinct grooves. And all of this looks so strange here in the basement hallway: Pasha with his dead fingers, the kid hiding from the whole world in a bomb shelter, these girls with unnatural, clownlike makeup standing here and whimpering like young clowns who’ve come to see an old clown and gripe about the struggles of their profession. The old clown’s on the verge of tears, only holding it together because he’s too embarrassed to cry in front of these painted children. So he just sits down on the cement floor, rests his back against the metal door, takes off his glasses, and starts wearily rubbing his eyes, which are tearing up from all the dust, sleeplessness, and despair.
Then Nina comes downstairs. She sees all this, but she doesn’t say anything. She immediately ushers the girls back to their compartment yet doesn’t close the door all the way, so Pasha can hear everything. He can hear Nina wiping someone’s tears away, washing the mascara off her
face, giving someone sugar for her tea, asking someone to bring her some wet wipes. She’s talking about her sister—younger, more confident, more successful—about how she’d always wear hand-me-downs from her older sisters, friends, and cousins. And Nina’s hand-me-downs, too. She just had so many clothes; they looked so good on her—everyone, even the girls who’d given her their clothes, was jealous of her. “Because it’s not about the clothes you wear, it’s about your sense of dignity,” Nina says. “And about not being afraid.” Well, she didn’t actually say all that, obviously, but Pasha knows that’s what she meant. “Yeah, that’s it,” he thinks. “That’s right. It’s not about the clothes you wear, not about how you look. If you think about it, it’s like we’re all living in an orphanage. Abandoned by everyone, wearing too much makeup and whatever clothes we come by. Thing is, that makes no difference. You can wear clothes stolen from the thrift store and feel like the king of the world or you can have a nice warm jacket and be a fat prick nobody wants anything to do with,” he thinks. “And why don’t I ever talk to my kids about stuff like that? I give them all those dumb-ass dictations, make them do difficult and confusing exercises, teach them grammar rules that they’ll never need. I teach them to speak properly. But just speaking, speaking so people hear and understand you—I don’t teach them that. Well, I don’t know how to do it myself.”
“Yeah,” Pasha thinks. “Why do they listen to her? Why do they stop crying? Why does their fear recede when she’s talking to them? Maybe it’s because she has a calm, quiet voice. You don’t make threats in a voice like that. You don’t even defend yourself in a voice like that. You say that there’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just that everyone else around here yells. Constantly. At home. On the street. In public places. In public recreational areas. Just like my sister. Yeah, my sister.” Pasha thinks back to their telephone conversation, and he gets this bitter taste in his mouth, as if he’s swallowed a metal spoon. He thinks back to his last train ride with her—two winters ago, before all this started. It turns out that it isn’t all that great when your sister’s a train stewardess. Especially when she’s the stewardess on your train. When she’s checking your ticket, bringing you your sheets, locking the bathroom door right in front of your nose—I’m sorry, sir, but the restroom is closed when the train is approaching a major station. Well, she didn’t check his ticket, obviously. He didn’t even have one—he rode in her compartment. That was nice, but overall the trip was endless and exhausting. His sister started yelling on the platform, back at the Station. And she kept yelling the whole way: at Pasha, at the stewardess from the next car over, at the policemen assigned to the train, at the trainmaster. Not to mention the passengers, who didn’t even put up any resistance. In fact, some of them even liked it. Some people like women who yell a lot. They view their outbursts as them being feisty. She even burst out yelling a few times throughout the night, seemingly frightened by her own protracted silence. They slept sitting up, on the lower bunk—his sister let some guy without a ticket hop onto the top bunk and made herself some extra cash on the side. They sat there until the early morning, watching snow flashing gold in the station lights that flew past the window. Exhausted, she’d occasionally doze off, resting her head on her brother’s soft shoulder. Pasha sat there, trying not to disturb her, but whenever the train jolted, his sister would shriek and wail in her sleep, scaring the sick passenger on the top bunk. Come morning, when they were crossing over to Kyiv’s right bank approaching the station, Pasha was sound asleep, curled up on some blankets. His sister, who’d already torn all the passengers out of bed and chased the sick traveler from the top bunk out of their compartment, came back, leaned in toward her brother, and gave his shoulder a gentle, sisterly touch. And when Pasha opened his eyes and recognized her, she calmly said: