The Orphanage

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

  The world’s simple, and it makes sense. There’s just enough of it—no more than you can feel and your memory can encompass. It has a defined outline and steady borders. These borders lie somewhere nearby, behind the closest row of cold trees. Over there, farther off, beyond those visible borders, something different begins, something alien that doesn’t make much sense and therefore isn’t very interesting: people you don’t know, circumstances that don’t pertain to you, a country that seems vague to you. But here everything’s where it’s supposed to be: you can recognize it by touch, you can recognize its voice. Your house, filled with a thousand objects—it’s compact and committed to memory, down to the last button in the top drawer. Your family that you’ve gotten used to like someone gets used to their own body. Your parents, still alive and well, who you keep growing apart from, who understand you less and less. That doesn’t worry you one bit, though. It’s enough that they’re around somewhere, somewhere nearby, watching over the thousand familiar objects from your childhood and simply belonging to the thousand voices you’ve known ever since. Sure, you might be growing apart, sure, they might not understand you, but they’ll still have a place in this world. There’s enough time to fix everything, enough space so you aren’t getting in each other’s hair. There’s enough room for school, with its deathly scent of microwaved food, its resonant evening hallways, its intimacy and estrangement. There’s enough room for friends and casual acquaintances, inconsequential conversations, fleeting crushes, unconscious fear. There’s enough room for your enemies, too, for hurt feelings, for shame, for the last teenage tears shed into your pillow—no one will see them, yet you’ll never forget them. There’s room for everything, since that’s how everything was designed. Everything fits, nothing is superfluous. Just don’t go beyond the borders, hang on to this fragile March light that’s running out so quickly, peer into the station windows as if they’re glass boxes filled with monsters, and only take what life has prepared especially for you.

  His sister grew up, his peers matured, and high school receded into the past. For the first time, he had to leave that world for a longer stretch, head out—to the city, for college. And this step beyond the boundaries of his cocoon, beyond the boundaries of what made sense, wound up being the first catastrophe, a trauma that subsequently accompanied him for a long time. It wasn’t just his address or circumstances that had changed; his conception of the world, of its boundaries and capabilities, had changed too. Suddenly it turned out that the world was much bigger than you’d imagined, and much more dangerous. Suddenly, it turned out that it consisted of countless unfamiliar objects that didn’t make any sense, that its language consisted of a thousand unfamiliar words, and that you had to memorize all those words, memorize and use them, otherwise you wouldn’t survive, you wouldn’t be able to get back home. Extracted from his shell, his cocoon unraveled, he stands amidst an empty country that’s alien to him, and he can’t understand where to go from here, how to withstand the invisible pressure that’s thrusting him out of reality. Shock and despair overwhelm him; now what he wants more than anything is to go back about ten years, into his old clothes, to his childhood things, to his hiding spots. Well, fear passes all on its own when you’re seventeen; you overcome it due to your natural desire to survive, to devour your portion of justice. He gradually gets used to the big city, to strangers, to his new circumstances. The only thing is, as soon as he gets the chance, the moment the opportunity presents itself, he escapes back home, transferring multiple times along the way. It’s as if a cold metal spring is pushing him out of his new life—back to his cocoon, back to where he was at peace. He comes back and locks himself in his room, not saying anything to anyone, ignoring his parents and sister. He’s like a young kangaroo that’s grown a lot but is still trying to cram himself back into his mom’s pouch. He simply can’t fit, though, which is obviously making things a little tense at home.

  On the weekends, everything was just like it used to be: the same trees on the horizon, the same sky above the roofs, the same smell of the past. But the shell had been hopelessly cracked; the world had been cracked, and piecing it back together was impossible.

  He suffered through his college years, then came back to the Station and began teaching at the school. For a while, he couldn’t take the smell in the school cafeteria. Then he decided that from then on it would be his smell—the smell of bitter, overcooked food, the smell of apathy and detachment, the smell of someone else’s life that you’re trying to pass off as your own. The world shrank back to its familiar size. The door closed behind him. He was safe again. Don’t look beyond, don’t talk to strangers, know where all the objects you need are located. The sweet smell of gas in the morning kitchen, the rustle of rain outside the window, like the faint working of the ocean—in March, he always felt this odd draft, as if that cold metal spring was pricking his heart. There was a completely different, alien world nearby, as sublime as it was dangerous, and its unavoidable presence nearby, just around the corner, beyond the horizon, unnerved him, threw him off balance. Then Pasha would go out to the porch, walk over to the garden, and listen to the rain above the trees, listen to it surround him, cave in, snag on the thin apple branches, fall right at his feet—the way it can only fall in March.

  Pasha stands on the black platform and notices that the rain that started last night isn’t even thinking about letting up—it’s spilling onto the city, slanting down and hitting the metal freight trains, the busted tankers. Pasha puts his hood up and steps under the awning, pressing against the station wall. It’s 2 a.m. He doesn’t feel like going back inside, but the rain’s growing more persistent; it starts somewhere beyond the main avenue and stretches to the north, toward the Station, spilling out of the nippy nighttime sky. “It’s a good thing we can wait it out here until morning,” Pasha thinks, catching chilly drops with his lips. “Where could we even go? Nowhere. Just sit here, wait, and hope that you don’t drown, that you’ll pull through. What’s next?”

  The station doors squeak open; a passenger is squeezed out. Squeezed out like toothpaste. Bags first, followed by a peaked cap, then a foot holds the door. All of him wrings out; he pops outside, cowers from the rain, spots Pasha, plods toward him. An old officer’s peaked cap with the insignia ripped off, the dark overcoat of a train steward—more like stewardess, actually—grocery bags in his hands, it appears there are more bags inside, a bunch of empty bags, coiled up and twisted like intestines. And he’s wrapped see-through bags around his feet, over sneakers that are black with dust. Black nails, black teeth, a lingering smile. And deep wrinkles on his cheerful face. Oh, yeah, and his beard. Makes him look like Karl Marx. And little hairs poke out of it, rest on his shoulders, shed like needles off a Christmas tree that stands in a warm room until spring. He places his bags filled with bags on the ground, takes a cigarette butt out of his pocket, clamps it in his black teeth, and gets right in Pasha’s face.

  “Hey, Soldier boy!” he yells. “Gimme a light.”

  “I don’t smoke,” Pasha answers disdainfully, and backs up, pressing himself into the wall. “Gotta get going,” he thinks. “All right, gotta get going.”

  This old guy isn’t just going to roll over, though. He’s padded himself with his bags filled with bags; the rain shines coldly in his beard, like dew in September. He points a black nail at Pasha and shouts cheerfully:

  “Gimme a light, Soldier boy!”

  He says it with such confidence that Pasha involuntarily reaches into his pocket and finds the lighter he took away from the kid. The old guy is still right in Pasha’s face, like he wants to kiss him. Pasha leans in, catches a deathly whiff of rot and infirmity, and raises his hands, shielding the lighter. A brief, fiery flash snatches his face out of the nighttime expanse: chapped lips, bloated skin, like that of a dead man, and an insane yellow eye, watching him from under a lowered brow. But the wind blows out the flame in the next instant. Nevertheless, the old guy manages to take a deep drag, seemingly sucking
in all the surrounding warmth. He holds his breath, exhales laboriously, and then points his black nail at Pasha once again.

  “Our boys really are givin’ ’em hell!” he says with a laugh.

  “Yeah, they are,” Pasha answers inattentively. He doesn’t know how to ditch this crazy guy with the bags.

  “Really givin’ ’em hell,” the old guy says with satisfaction. “Our boys know what they’re doing.”

  “Yeah, they do.” Pasha doesn’t argue with him.

  “Yeah, they do.” The old guy laughs cheerfully.

  “Yep.” Pasha agrees again.

  “Why aren’t your boys hitting back?” the old guy suddenly asks him.

  Pasha shudders, looks at the old guy, and realizes that he’s perfectly sane, he knows exactly what’s going on, he has everything all figured out. And he can see right through Pasha. And the old guy can also see that Pasha knows exactly what’s going on, so he’s looking at him carefully, scrupulously, with yellow hatred in his eyes. Pasha grows anxious, not knowing what to do, fixes his glasses with his finger, and huddles against the wall. “I should pick something up and knock him out,” he thinks, looking at the old guy. “Just knock him right out.” And his gaze gradually gets heavier, cooler, like the earth soaked with winter rain, and he puts the lighter back in his pocket, slowly, very slowly, but the old guy catches that movement and notices the change in Pasha’s eyes, even in the dark, and when the silence between them becomes absolutely unbearable, he suddenly throws his head back and bursts into a hoarse laugh.

  “Yeah, Soldier boy!” he says, choking with laughter. “Just like that! Yep!”

  He laughs so desperately that Pasha breaks down and starts smiling. But then the old guy starts coughing—a deep-seated, poisonous cough—which makes Pasha huddle into the wall again. The old guy stops coughing, catches his breath, regains his composure.

  “It’s really pouring, isn’t it?” he asks, his tone still cheerful. “Where you headed?”

  “To the Station,” Pasha answers.

  “It’s over there.” The old guy resolutely points a fingernail into the darkness. “See that over there? That’s the North Star.”

  Pasha looks into the darkness. It’s moving, throbbing. And there aren’t any stars over there, obviously. Yet he can see all the murk that’s been hanging over the city for days now, weighing it down, filling it up. “How much more time needs to pass before all this ends?” Pasha thinks, contemplating the slanted streaks of water. “How much more time needs to pass before all of this disappears underwater? Time has stopped, nothing’s left, don’t feel sorry for anyone. I’ll never be able to get out of here, nobody’ll ever get out of here alive, everyone’ll stay here, everyone’ll lie down under this lethal water.” Pasha thinks of everything that he’s seen over the past two days: all the exhausted eyes and faces contorted with anger, all the voices hoarse from dehydration, all the silhouettes shaken by sleeplessness, all the cold and all the dampness, and he suddenly gets this queasy feeling—because he’s chilled to the core, because he’s really hungry, because of this old guy who smells like death and seems to be decomposing right here, in the streams of rain.

  “You see?” he asks. “Can you see it?”

  “No,” Pasha answers.

  “Exactly,” the old guy continues. “Exactly. There’s nothing over there.” And he’s speaking like he’s delirious, pointing into the darkness. “Two freight trains filled with bodies. Two whole cars, Soldier boy. I saw them. With my own eyes. There’s nothing over there. Don’t feel sorry for anyone.”

  He picks up his bags, pulls on the door, sticks his head out into the rain, and disappears around the corner.

  DAY THREE

  Looks like a fisherman who didn’t wind up catching anything all day: raincoat, camo underneath, rubber boots. His gut hangs down like a mailman’s bag. A Cossack whip sticks out of his bootleg, so everybody knows just who they’re dealing with. He shakes his large buzzed head, shouts, snaps orders. Nobody’s listening, though. The soldiers are scurrying all around—not to accomplish anything, just to keep warm. A field kitchen, black with smoke, rolls up to the station steps; they get it going and heat up the food. The rain hasn’t abated since last night. It persists, douses the flame. The soldiers haul over a large tent with an ad for a local beer on it, set it up above the kitchen, and cram themselves inside. Alexei stands under the cold January sky, not knowing where to go from here—step under the tent and sink to his subordinates’ level or keep waiting around out in the rain and get absolutely soaked. Cold heavy drops flow down his chubby, unshaven cheeks. He stands there and berates the soldiers. They berate him in response, and it becomes abundantly clear that that’s just the way they interact with each other, always getting too emotional or something, like a married couple that’s been living together for decades. They used up all their cordial words a long time ago, so they communicate with curses and maledictions. Well, it’s not like they’re going to sit there in silence.

  Pasha and the kid make their way to the waiting area, pushing through the crowd to get closer to the windows. Outside the windows, facing the soldiers, Alexei is hollering his head off. You can’t hear what he’s shouting, but he’s gesticulating so vigorously that you understand exactly what he’s getting at. The smoke from the kitchen, broken up by the rain, drifts over the ground. The last thing they want to do is leave the train station, go out into the rain. The women stand around, huddle against one another, draw closer to the windows. It’s as if they’re watching a movie with no sound. Starring Alexei. He’s big, silent, waving his arms, threatening someone with his fist, menacingly directing his gaze at something beyond the horizon. He suddenly turns around, falters for an instant when he spots a group of spectators, dozens of women’s frightened faces carefully tracking his every move and gesture, surveys them all with the severity of an ataman, focuses his eyes, and begins yelling again, invitingly, spiritedly. Apparently he hasn’t adjusted his language, yet he instantly sucks in his gut, and his cheeks, too. He’s a military man, through and through. Pasha watches him and finds himself thinking that Alexei’s expression is so piercing, so sincere that it seems like he’s directly addressing Pasha, sharing something remarkably intimate with him. “Damn, that’s because he is,” Pasha eventually realizes. “He’s yelling something at me.” Pasha shoves a couple of small women aside, forces his way toward the doors, and opens them.

  “Representative,” Alexei says, his voice discontented, “of the cocksucking citizenry.” Pasha walks down the steps, puts his hood up. The kid is at his heels, holding the bat. They approach. Pasha proffers his stiff hand. Alexei tenses up, yet shakes it. He mechanically shakes the kid’s hand, too. Apparently he doesn’t know how to talk to them. He has to strike the right tone. He clearly can’t talk to Pasha like he does to the soldiers. First off, Pasha is a representative of the citizenry. Second, there’s a child around. So he gathers his thoughts, wipes some raindrops off his face, and nods in the direction of the kitchen, making one chubby cheek flap.

  “So here’s the deal,” he says hoarsely, with the authority of a commander. “Just like we promised.” He points at the kitchen. “We’re providing . . . ,” he pauses, “food for the civilian population,” he concludes, businesslike. “So, you, Mister Esteemed Representative of the Citizenry, take care of this. So those were the instructions,” he says. “From the command center,” he adds.

  The soldiers look at Pasha with hatred in their eyes. If it weren’t for this asshole, we’d still be sleeping. Wouldn’t be getting soaked outside this godforsaken train station. Pasha can feel their eyes, filled with justified indignation, fixed on him, yet there’s nothing he can do about it. If you’re going to call yourself a representative of the citizenry, oversee the smooth delivery of their meals. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He goes back to the main hall, where a crowd of soaked and mistrustful women surround him, listen to him wordlessly, and Pasha can already hear their grievances in their silence. But he rais
es his hand resolutely and begins speaking.

  “So here’s the deal,” he says. “Instructions, just like they promised,” he says. “Meals,” he adds. “For the civilian population,” he explains. The women listen without interrupting. Pasha feels as if they don’t understand him, as if he’s not using the right words. He lowers his hand, fixes his glasses.

  “Listen,” he says wearily, “there’s food over there.” He points out the window. “Walk on over, put some on your plate.”

  “Are they going to send some buses?” a woman wearing a mournful black headscarf asks, just as wearily.

  “Promised they would,” Pasha answers.

  “That came from the command center?” a woman asks.

  “Yep.”

  The women slink outside, shielding themselves from the rain with whatever they can, surround the tent, and hold out empty plates. A soldier in a dirty white apron and rubber gloves is heaping on generous portions of porridge with pieces of dark-colored meat in it. Another guy is serving them tea in mugs and thermoses.

  “There’s enough to go around,” he says with a laugh. “There’s enough for all you little ladies.” The women don’t react; they don’t even cry. Cold, wet, hungry. They grab their rations and run back through the streams of water to the building. Pasha stands on the steps, pretending he’s overseeing the process. The kid runs through the crowd, somehow digs up a disposable plate, and runs over. He devours half of his meal quickly and greedily, like a duck, and hands the rest to Pasha. He declines at first, as if he’s not hungry, but then he breaks down, picks up a spoon, and quickly finishes what the kid’s left him. He immediately realizes just how long it’s been since he last ate, just how hungry he was. Pasha wearily rests his back against a column and surveys the crowd out in the rain. As the women pass, some of them nod at him like he’s an old friend. We’re good, thanks, we’re eating. They look at him like he’s in charge. They might think that he’s actually responsible for something. Moreover, Alexei makes a big point of talking only to him. He comes over, frostily rubbing his hands.