The Orphanage

by Serhiy Zhadan; Reilly Costigan-Humes; Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler

  “Are we going down?” Pasha’s mostly asking himself.

  The kid gives him a barely perceptible nod, yet keeps standing still, not moving at all. Then Pasha grabs his hand as firmly as he can. The kid grasps his hand back, latches on to his dead fingers like they’re the only thing in this world he can trust, and the two of them head out. First fifty steps. The wind blows the smell of stagnant water, the smell of pharmaceuticals, out of the valley. Another fifty. Under their feet, the steps crumble. They must’ve taken a real beating last night—chunks tumble down the hill, cracking right under the soles of their shoes. Another fifty. A tree trimmed by shrapnel, a neat imprint from a shell on the asphalt. Another fifty. And another. The city is coming closer. The smell of smoke is coming closer. Fear is coming closer, helplessness is coming closer. Another. And another fifty, the last fifty.

  They go across the grounds to the street, walk crouched over along a row of linden trees and get to the tram circle, run in little spurts out to the main road, trying not to stop when they’re out in the open, and reach the square. They stand under some spruces and hide. On the other side of the square is the Palace of Culture. Black, burned out. A shockwave broke all the windows. It looks like a television with a missing kinescope. There are clusters of apartment buildings behind it. They can slip through the neighborhood and get to the main avenue. Just have to run across the square first. Pasha looks all around. Coast is clear. The square’s empty and quiet. Running across it shouldn’t take longer than a minute. It’s still scary, though. Nobody can see you, but you can’t see anyone either. The moon hangs right above the Palace of Culture, seemingly prompting them. C’mon, don’t waste any more time, run straight at my dead light.

  “Let’s go,” Pasha whispers, still not releasing the kid’s hand, and they charge forward. And as soon as they move away from the merciful spruces, the ones they were hiding behind, they hear this sound coming from somewhere behind the square, from off to the side, from the road—the irreversible clatter of treads on asphalt. It isn’t that close—a block away—but Pasha identifies a T-64. There’s no mistaking it. “Is it following me or something?” Pasha thinks in a panic, and desperately runs forward, dragging the kid along with him. Fifty yards. The tank is very close, behind the building closest to the square. Another fifty. It’s going to pop out any second now. Pasha can already feel it. Another fifty and another. It’s already here, it’s already barreled around the corner. Another few yards and it’ll be rolling right at them. Pasha speeds up, the kid’s starting to whimper. Another fifty. His boots are heavy and hot, the kind of boots that are only good for drowning in. The moon draws things closer, outlines them clearly, adding a yellowish tint and otherworldly shadows. The rumble of the T-64 is already behind them. “Don’t look back,” Pasha yells to himself. “Just don’t look back, don’t look back.” Several more steps, and they fly around the corner, fall onto the asphalt, onto crushed bricks, onto the empty plastic of bottles, onto dog shit and ripped playbills, tumbling and skinning their palms on sharp stones. Pasha immediately shields the kid with his body, as if that will help, as if to make sure they don’t spot him. Actually, they don’t spot him. The T-64 rolls toward the tram circle, toward the place they just came from, without even stopping. “Just missed each other,” Pasha thinks. “Got lucky.” He stands up, lifts the kid, who rubs his aching elbow. His jacket is ripped at his shoulder and his left sneaker is coming apart. His tears have dried, though. Just like that.

  “Now where are we going?” The kid’s embarrassed about crying. He’s trying to speak calmly. But it’s obvious that he’s still scared—his voice is quivering, and he wants to find some crevice to hide in.

  Pasha’s scared for him, too. “Will he make it or not?” he thinks, with a tinge of doubt. “Maybe we should go right to the doctor. Well, the vet.”

  “There’s a basement close by.” Pasha’s thinking out loud. “We can run over there and spend the night. It’s close by.”

  “Sure you can find it?” the kid asks skeptically.

  “It’s about fifteen minutes away,” Pasha reassures him. “We’ll go through the neighborhoods. Two blocks that way, then there’s a construction site, and some high-rises. They’re camping out in the third one from the road. Or the fourth one,” Pasha adds hesitantly. “We’ll find it,” he says confidently.

  “Well, all right.”

  Pasha takes out his phone. It’s only eight. It feels like they’ve been running around for days already. The thing is, his phone’s dying. That’s the thing.

  There’s an open area running between two long, looming rows of five-story buildings that stretch from south to north. Old, run-down workers’ dormitories. The local factories built them for their people, but nobody has ever repaired them. Their people clearly haven’t gone anywhere; they’re clinging to their burrows, not letting any outsiders in. At any rate, they aren’t a wealthy bunch—most of the windows have wooden frames, only a few apartments have insulated glazing. No intercoms, only every other balcony is glazed. A lot of satellite dishes, though. Basically, it isn’t high-end housing. A mangled playground, detached swings. Pasha and the kid are walking, trying not to make any noise and apprehensively glancing at the empty windows in the steady moonlight. They’re in plain view. Like targets on a shooting range. They pass one dormitory. Another one follows and then a few more. Pasha exhales with relief when they get to the next street over. They reach an intersection, look all around, run across the road, and walk another block. Everything’s going according to plan so far. Up ahead there’s an empty lot with traces of construction work: a pit, a fence, concrete slabs. They feel sand under their feet; they have to take the path the locals made straight through the construction site so they wouldn’t have to go around. They come to a row of nine-story buildings.

  “Everything’s fine,” Pasha says. “We made it.”

  It’s mostly quiet. There are some shells hitting behind them, coming from where they were half an hour ago. First building, second one. They approach the third one. Pasha can tell that something’s wrong, something’s out of place. But he can’t pinpoint what it is. They turn a corner and bump into a crowd. About twenty people. They’re standing outside an apartment building. Pasha wants to duck back behind the corner, into the darkness, but he realizes that it’s too late for that—the crowd has already noticed them. The crowd may have noticed them, but nobody’s paying any attention to them; everyone’s standing there, tensely watching the door to the apartment block, seemingly expecting something terrible to come out. Pasha and the kid approach the group and stop, standing off to the side.

  “This it?” the kid asks quietly.

  Pasha takes a closer look. Nine stories. Dark holes instead of windows. Bashed-up bench. Something looms by the bench. Looks like a dead dog. Pasha shudders but stands there, doesn’t step back.

  “This is it . . . I think,” he says tentatively. “What are you standing around for?” he asks the guy in front of him.

  He turns around—wide, peaked cap, shabby, girly jacket, track bottoms, fake leather shoes with wing tips. He’s about fifty or so, but you can tell he has some health problems, which makes him look even older.

  “We want to get home,” he says angrily. He’s speaking Russian, but every third word is in Ukrainian. “They liberated the city, the new guys,” he says, pointing at the apartment block. “They’re already here. Now we can go back home.”

  “So?” Pasha asks, confused.

  “They said there’s mines in there,” the guy says, spitting on the asphalt.

  “Who said that?” Pasha asks, still confused.

  “Well, they did, the new guys,” he explains, pointing at a group of soldiers standing by the door. “Why the fuck would you plant mines here?”

  Pasha surveys the crowd and finally realizes that they’re locals, from this building. They all scattered when the shelling started in their neighborhood. Now these new guys have taken the city, and they’ve come back like nothing eve
r happened. They’re standing here wearing autumn jackets, winter coats, holding sacks, one guy with a television set. They clearly grabbed their most valuable things when they were leaving. Soldiers—these new guys—are standing by the bashed-in door to the apartment block: astrakhan hats, strange uniforms, unfamiliar insignias. Pasha’s never seen ones like that. There’s a good chance they were riding in the column Pasha and the kid saw earlier today.

  “Who are you?” The guy suddenly addresses Pasha. “Do you live here?”

  “My brother does,” Pasha answers. “The vet.”

  “Ah, I know him. Lives on the third floor.”

  “Fourth floor,” his neighbor contests. Lanky, wet hat, ravaged leather jacket, enormous, oversized felt boots.

  “You’re full of shit,” the guy argues. “He lives on the third floor.”

  “Yeah, third floor.” Pasha tries mediating.

  “Yep,” the guy says with satisfaction.

  “So,” Pasha ventures, “some people from this building have been camping out in the basement, right?”

  “In the basement?” the guy asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Our basement’s been flooded since before New Year’s,” the guy says.

  “Those cocksuckers broke the water pipe, flooded everything,” Lanky seconds him. “Fuckin’ bastards,” he adds firmly.

  “Wait a sec. It’s all flooded?” Pasha can’t believe it. “But there are people down there.”

  “You got the wrong place,” the guy replies. “There’s nobody down there.”

  “Yeah,” Lanky seconds him, coming over. “There’s nobody’s down there.”

  Hearing their conversation, a few more men turn around and come closer, looking at them mistrustfully, listening in, studying them.

  “You hear that?” Lanky addresses a young guy—about twenty years old, down blanket on his back. “He says there’s some people in the basement.”

  “There’s nobody down there,” the young guy replies hoarsely.

  “Nobody,” the others second him.

  “Nope, nobody,” somebody in the darkness says hollowly. “Who are you?” he asks Pasha.

  “The vet’s brother,” Lanky explains. “Know him? He lives on the fourth floor.”

  “I know him,” comes a reply from the darkness. “He lives on the third floor.”

  “Gotta get out of here,” Pasha thinks. “Right now. Go somewhere, anywhere.” But how are you supposed to leave when twenty pairs of eyes are watching you, watching you intently, watching you with suspicion?

  “Coast is clear!” someone shouts.

  Everyone forgets about Pasha and turns toward the voice. Two guys come out of the building. One of them looks like a teenager: skinny, a high schooler’s busted stride. Kuban Cossack hat on his head, AK across his chest, hands ostentatiously resting on the barrel and stock. The second guy is obviously in charge: Kuban Cossack hat, too, AK, too, but he’s got all kinds of daggers and pistols hanging all over him, like in the movies.

  “Coast is clear!” the young guy repeats and makes a big show of taking out a cigarette, tossing it in his mouth, whipping out a lighter, and flicking it.

  It won’t catch, though. Sparks merely fly into the blue evening gloom. He’s getting anxious; everyone’s watching him with unconcealed aggression, seemingly saying, “Quit showing off.”

  “Go on inside, c’mon,” the guy in charge adds, and steps aside.

  The locals are in no rush to go inside, though. They stand there, thinking, waiting. Pasha inconspicuously pulls the kid to the side. But something’s been set in motion, something’s restraining him; he turns around, walks over to the bench, and probes what’s on the ground—the thing that looks like a dead dog—by giving it a little kick. Turns out it’s a fur coat. A woman’s fur coat. It’s wet and stained with clay. One sleeve’s been ripped off, lying nearby. For an instant, Pasha thinks he recognizes the coat. But does he? How can he be sure out here?

  “Hey,” he calls to the guy. “Whose coat is that?”

  “Fucked if I know.” The guy turns around and gives Pasha a heavy, unfriendly look.

  Pasha puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder; they walk down an asphalt path, pass the second apartment block, the third one, the fourth one. “No pity for anyone,” Pasha says. “Anyone at all.”

  They get to a day care center that’s behind the row of linden trees, crawl through a hole in the fence, walk up onto the front steps, and sit down.

  “You hungry?” Pasha asks.

  The kid shakes his head.

  “Now where are we gonna go?” he asks.

  “We’ll try to get out,” Pasha suggests.

  “In the dark?” the kid asks skeptically.

  “Looks like things have calmed down. No more shelling.”

  “They wiped everyone out, that’s why the shelling stopped.”

  Pasha’s frantically considering something.

  “Stay here,” he says suddenly. “Wait for me.”

  “Where are you going?” The kid’s scared.

  “Just stay here,” Pasha yells to him.

  He gets up, sheds both backpacks—first the kid’s, then his own—picks up the bat, and approaches the door. Push. The door gives easily, opens with a squeak. It smells like a cafeteria and several days’ worth of moisture. Pasha takes out his phone, goes to turn on the flashlight, and remembers that his battery is almost dead. There’s enough light in here as it is—the windows in the hallway have been smashed, a heavy moon hangs low beyond their frames. “It’s as bright as day in here,” Pasha thinks and walks down the hallway. There’s a threadbare rug on the floor; it’s been torn in several places. Pots with frozen flowers in them on the walls, cast-iron radiators painted white under the windows. Pasha feels like he’s gone back to his childhood, which immediately makes him want to hang himself. He opens the door to the next room. Toys are scattered across the floor: cars, planes, teddy bears with their extremities ripped off. The toys look like they died recently. And not of natural causes. The next door’s already open. Pasha warily stares into the dark hallway—no windows, the moonlight can’t get in here, can’t tell what’s farther down. Suddenly, something under his foot lets out a high-pitched shriek, which terrifies Pasha. He lurches to the side and holds the bat out in front of him. Silence. Stare. He sees a squeaky toy—just stepped on it. He curses, quickly walks down a dark hallway, and gropes his way forward, holding his dead fingers out. Next he reaches a sleeping area. Two dozen beds with shredded mattresses, torn pillows, and dirty sheets. It looks as though someone performed a long, thorough search. But didn’t find anything. “Where are they going to sleep?” Pasha thinks. Yes, like that’s the most important thing right now—“where are the kids going to sleep when they come back? Where are they going to sleep? They can’t sleep on shredded mattresses, can they? And they can’t sleep on empty pillowcases either. And these gray, trampled sheets—they won’t do. Where are they going to sleep? Where?” Pasha realizes that he has to leave, has to grab the kid—he’s waiting for him down there, on the steps—and get going, that there’s nothing for him here, that sleeping here on these contorted mattresses just isn’t safe, that he has to get out of here, get out of here as quickly as possible, as far away from here as possible, but he keeps standing there, looking at the wrecked room, unable to move an inch. He’s just staring at the black aperture of the door that leads to the next room and saying to himself, “Don’t go in there, no matter what, just don’t.” And slowly, like a dead man in a movie, he heads toward the door. He walks, his boots crushing the torn pillows, trampling the sheets, leaving footprints on squashed sketch pads. “No matter what,” he says to himself. “Just don’t.” And he keeps walking, stepping over tiny blankets and sharp pieces from a construction set. “Don’t go in there, don’t go in there,” he repeats, holding his hand out, and his hand plunges into the darkness—up to his wrist, up to his elbow, up to his shoulder. “Just don’t,” he says to himself for the last time, and plu
nges into blackness. And he comes out the other side, in the next room; it’s probably the cafeteria’s storage room: empty shelves that clearly once held canned goods line the walls, empty cookie boxes are piled up on the windowsill, salt is strewn across the floor. An industrial-size refrigerator looms gray in the corner. Pasha approaches the refrigerator and listens to it intently, as if it’s a gigantic dead heart. And it, as befits a dead heart, is showing no signs of life. Then Pasha grasps the handle—don’t open it, just don’t open it!—and pulls it toward himself. And such an unbearable, heavy, lethal stench hits him right in the face. Something so finely chopped, so shredded, and so rotten, something so finely cut, cleaved, and amputated that Pasha doubles over abruptly so he doesn’t puke his guts out, and then he dashes off headlong. Empty pillowcases, displaced beds, black hallway, dead toys, open doors, cast-iron radiators, the moon out the window—unbearably close, so close that Pasha practically feels the stench coming right at him, feels that the moon hovering over the crushed city is spreading the smell of a body chopped to pieces. He bursts outside, exhales deeply, gasps for fresh air, coughing violently and frightening the kid, who runs over, not knowing what happened, but clearly knowing that something terrible happened, something that he’d better not ask about. He can ask, but he’d better not listen to the answer. Pasha thrusts his hand out, his fingers frozen stiff. Don’t ask, don’t ask, just don’t. The kid nods wordlessly in reply. I won’t, okay, I won’t.

  And suddenly it turns out that they’re trapped. And they’ve backed themselves into the trap. No telling how they get out now. “Why didn’t I pick him up earlier?” Pasha asks himself in despair. “Why didn’t I leave the city last night? Should’ve grabbed the kid and gotten the hell out of here while I had the chance. Why’d I stay there for the night? Where should I go now? Heaven forbid something happens to him—what would I tell his mom? What would I tell my old man?” The kid isn’t asking any questions, but him not saying anything makes Pasha want to justify himself. But what can he say in his defense? That he’s an asshole who waited until the last minute, until the door of the trap opened, and then he guilelessly strolled right on in, and dragged the kid along with him to boot. But now that the city’s fully besieged, now that all the possible openings and cracks have been closed up, all he and the kid can do is dart from corner to corner, like two rats that can’t flee their ship.