by Maria Reva
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Maria Reva
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
www.doubleday.com
DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Several stories originally appeared, some in slightly different form, in the following publications: “Novostroïka” in The Atlantic (December 2016); “Little Rabbit” as “Unsound” in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (August 2018); “Letter of Apology” in Granta (November 2018); and “The Ermine Coat” published by the Writers’ Trust of Canada and winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award in 2018.
Cover illustration by Shout
Cover design by Emily Mahon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Reva, Maria, author.
Title: Good citizens need not fear / by Maria Reva.
Description: First edition. | New York : Doubleday, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019018630 (print) | LCCN 2019019398 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3618.E876 (ebook) | LCC PS3618.E876 A6 2020 (print) |
DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018630
ISBN 9780385545297 (hardcover)
Ebook ISBN 9780385545303
v5.4
ep
To my family
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
PART ONE
Before the Fall
Novostroïka
Little Rabbit
Letter of Apology
Bone Music
Miss USSR
PART TWO
After the Fall
Lucky Toss
Roach Brooch
The Ermine Coat
Homecoming
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PART
ONE
Before
the
Fall
NOVOSTROÏKA
The statue of Grandfather Lenin, just like the one in Moscow, 900 kilometers away, squinted into the smoggy distance. Winter’s first snowflakes settled on its iron shoulders like dandruff. Even as Daniil Petrovich Blinov passed the statue and climbed the crumbling steps of the town council behind it, he felt the Grandfather’s 360-degree gaze on the back of his head, burning through his fur-flap hat.
Inside the town council hall, a line of hunched figures pressed against the walls, warming their hands on the radiators. Men, women, entire families progressed toward a wall of glass partitions. Daniil entered the line. He rocked back and forth on the sides of his feet. When his heels grew numb, he flexed his calves to promote circulation.
“Next!”
Daniil took a step forward. He bent down to the hole in the partition and looked at the bespectacled woman sitting behind it. “I’m here to report a heating problem in our building.”
“What’s the problem?”
“We have no heat.” He explained that the building was a new one, this winter was its first, someone seemed to have forgotten to connect it to the district furnace, and the toilet water froze at night.
The clerk heaved a thick directory onto her counter. “Building address?”
“Ivansk Street, Number 1933.”
She flipped through the book, licking her finger every few pages. She flipped and flipped, consulted an index, flipped once more, shut the book, and folded her arms across it. “That building does not exist, Citizen.”
Daniil stared at the woman. “What do you mean? I live there.”
“According to the documentation, you do not.” The clerk looked over Daniil’s shoulder at the young couple in line behind him.
Daniil leaned closer, too quickly, banging his forehead against the partition. “Nineteen thirty-three Ivansk Street,” he repeated, enunciating each syllable.
“Never heard of it.”
“I have thirteen, no, fourteen people living in my suite alone, who can come here and tell you all about it,” Daniil said. “Fourteen angry citizens bundled up to twice their size.”
The clerk shook her head, tapped the book. “The documentation, Citizen.”
“We’ll keep using the gas, then. We’ll leave the stove on day and night.” The stove offered little in the way of heating, but Daniil hoped the wanton waste of a government-subsidized resource would stir a response.
The woman raised her eyebrows; Daniil appeared to have rematerialized in front of her. “Address again?”
“Nineteen thirty-three Ivansk Street, Kirovka, Ukraine, USSR. Mother Earth.”
“Yes, yes. We’ll have the gas-engineering department look into it. Next!”
* * *
—
Was it fourteen now? Had he included himself in the count? Carefully avoiding the ice patches on the sidewalk on his way home, Daniil wondered when he had let the numbers elude him. Last month twelve people had been living in his suite, including himself. He counted on his fingers, stiff from the cold. In the bedroom, first corner, Baba Ola slept on the foldout armchair; second corner, on the foldout cot, were Aunt Inaya and Uncle Timko and their three small children (but Uncle Timko promised they’d be assigned their own place soon because of his job superintending the municipal square’s public restroom—a government position); third corner, Daniil’s niece and her friend, but they hardly counted, since they ate little and spent most of their time at the institute; fourth corner, Daniil himself, bunking under Uncle Timko’s mother, (Great) Aunt Nika; in the hallway, someone’s mother-in-law or second cousin or who really knew, the connection was patchy; on the balcony camped Second Cousin Glebik and his fiancée and six hens, which were not included in the count but who could forget the damn noisy birds? That made thirteen. He must have missed someone.
Daniil’s name had bounced from wait list to wait list for three years before he’d been assigned to his apartment by the Kirovka Canning Combine, where he worked as a packaging specialist. The ten-story paneled novostroïka was newly built and still smelled of mortar. His fifth-floor suite was no larger than the single room he had shared with his parents in a communal apartment, but he could call it his own. The day he’d moved in had been nothing short of sublime: he’d walked to his sink, filled a glass of water, guzzled it down, then lay on the kitchen floor with his legs squeezed into the gap between the stove and table. Home was where one could lie in peace, on any surface. He felt fresh and full of hope. Then came a knock at the door. Daniil’s grandmother burst into the apartment, four mildewy sacks of grain and a cage full of hens strapped to her back. She spoke Ukrainian, which Daniil barely understood, having been raised and educated in Russian. She cursed her neighbor, who either was in love with her or had it in for her and had threatened to poison himself, or her, or perhaps both. Daniil simply nodded, ashamed to ask for clarification. And so Baba Ola stayed.
Two. Two had been fine. Until two became fourteen.
* * *
—
Minimum Dimensions of Space Necessary for Human Functioning, 85 processes: Sleeping (based on average Moscow m
ale, head to toe) = 175 cm. Standing (gravitational effect included) = 174.5 cm. Opening oven (based on average Moscow female, buttocks to baking tray) = 63.5 cm. Washing face (elbow to elbow) = 52 cm. Opening refrigerator (door span area) = π(55 cm)2 ÷ 4. Lacing up boots (floor space) = 63.5 cm x 43 cm. Pulling out dining chair (floor space) = 40 cm x 40 cm. Mending clothing, shoes, other (floor space) = 40 cm x 40 cm. Child rearing (floor space for corner time) = 30 cm x 30 cm. Watching educational television programs = 64.5 cm x 40 cm. Listening to educational radio programs = 64.5 cm x 40 cm. Evacuating bladder (volume) = 400 ml. Mental training (based on average Moscow male, brain volume) = 1260 cm3. Dreaming = 1260 cm3…or ∞? Breathing (torso expansion) = 1.5 cm. Yawning (torso expansion) = 3 cm. Sneezing (torso retraction) = 3–4 cm. Stretching (limb extension) = n/a. Etc. Etc. Minimum dimensions necessary for human functioning (TOTAL) = 9 m2.
* * *
—
Daniil stuffed his hands back into the damp warmth of his pockets as he climbed the narrow set of stairs to his floor.
Suite 56 greeted him with its familiar smell, boiled potatoes and fermenting cabbage. “Daniil, is that you?” Aunt Nika hollered from the kitchen. At sixty-five, her voice retained its cutting timbre, perfectly suited for her job hawking seed oils at the bazaar. “Come look, we get barely any gas.”
Daniil cringed. He had wanted to remain unnoticed by his relatives for a few seconds longer. When he opened the closet to hang his coat, a pair of gray eyes stared back at him, round and unblinking. Daniil started. He had forgotten Grandfather Grishko, who slept standing, as he used to do while guarding a military museum in Kiev. This was the fourteenth member of the Blinov residence. Daniil closed the door softly.
“Took me three hours to boil potatoes,” Aunt Nika told Daniil when he stepped into the kitchen. She wore a stained apron over a floor-length mink coat inherited from her grandmother. Its massive hood obscured her face. She turned the knobs to maximum; the burner heads quivered with a faint blue. “Did you go to the town council? They should look into it.”
“It seems they already have,” Daniil said. “But they’re better at turning things off than on.”
A pigtailed girl, Aunt Inaya and Uncle Timko’s, jumped out from under the kitchen table singing, “May there always be sunshine / May there always be blue skies.” She air-fired at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Aunt Nika gently scratched the nape of the girl’s neck, and the child retreated back under the table.
“What did they tell you at the council?” Aunt Nika asked.
“The building doesn’t exist, and we don’t live here.”
Aunt Nika’s mittened hand brushed a strand of dyed red hair off her forehead. “Makes sense.”
“How so?”
“I had a talk with the benchers last week.” She meant the group of pensioners who sat at the main entrance of the building, ever vigilant, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and cracking sunflower seeds day and night. “They told me this block was supposed to have only two towers, but enough construction material had been discarded to cobble together a third—ours.”
A series of barks blasted through the thin walls of the bedroom. Daniil glanced in alarm at Aunt Nika. He hadn’t approved of the hens, but they were at least useful—now a dog?
Aunt Nika cast her eyes down. “Vovik. Bronchitis again, poor boy. What are you going to do about the gas?”
Aunt Nika’s granddaughter bellowed from under the table, “May there always be mother / May there always be me!”
“I don’t know,” said Daniil.
Uncle Timko appeared in the doorway to announce that he needed a glass of milk. Daniil and Aunt Nika evacuated the kitchen and waited in the hallway while he opened the refrigerator.
The human shuffle complete, Daniil resumed inspecting the stove. Aunt Nika followed, her fur hood falling over her eyes until she flung it off, releasing a cloud of dust.
“Grandfather Grishko’s telling everyone he hasn’t seen his own testicles in weeks,” she said. “We’re tired of the cold, Daniil.”
As if in agreement, Vovik’s coughing started up again, deeper in pitch, as though it came not from the bedroom but from beneath the floor. Daniil couldn’t imagine the dainty four-year-old producing such sounds. He stroked the smooth enamel of the stove, never having felt so useless.
“And we’re tired of hearing about the testicles.”
* * *
—
The memo on Daniil’s desk the next morning unsettled him. It was addressed from Moscow:
In accordance with General Assembly No. 3556 of the Ministry of Food Industry, Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry, and Ministry of Fish Industry on January 21, 1985, the Kirovka Canning Combine has been ordered to economize 2.5 tons of tinplate per month, due to shortages. Effective immediately.
At the bottom of the memo, his superior’s blockish handwriting:
THIS MEANS YOU, BLINOV.
The telephone on his desk rang.
“You’ve read the memo?” It was Sergei Igorovich, his superior, calling. Daniil turned to look across many rows of desks. Sergei Igorovich stood in the doorway of his office, receiver pressed to his ear, watching Daniil.
“I have, Sergei Igorovich.”
Daniil went on to inquire about testing alternative tin-to-steel ratios for containers.
“None of that, Blinov. Just stuff more food into fewer cans. Use every cubic millimeter you have,” his superior said. “I see that you’re not writing this down.”
Daniil pulled up an old facsimile and set about doodling big-eared Cheburashka, a popular cartoon creature unknown to science.
“Good, very good,” Sergei Igorovich said. “But don’t think of pureeing anything.”
“No?”
“The puree machine’s on its way to Moscow. Commissar’s wife just had twins.”
Daniil examined the diameter of Cheburashka’s head, making sure the ears matched its size. “Sergei Igorovich? May I ask you something?”
“If it’s quick.”
“I was looking over the impressive list of goods our combine produces, and couldn’t help wondering—where does it all go?”
“Is that a philosophical question, Blinov?”
“All I see in stores is sea cabbage.”
Sergei Igorovich let out a long sigh. “It’s like that joke about the American, the Frenchman, and the Soviet guy.”
“I haven’t heard that one, Sergei Igorovich.”
“A shame,” Sergei Igorovich said. “When I have time to paint my nails and twiddle my thumbs, I’ll tell you the joke.”
Daniil resisted the temptation to roll himself into a defensive ball under his desk, like a hedgehog. He straightened his shoulders. “Sergei Igorovich? May I also ask about the pay.”
Daniil watched his superior retreat into his office, mumbling into his phone about the shortages. Surely the pay would come through next month, Sergei Igorovich said, and if not then, the month after, and in the meantime don’t ask too many questions. He hung up.
Daniil reached into his desk drawer, extracting a new sheet of graph paper and a T-square. He ran his fingers over the instrument, rich red, made of wild pearwood. When he was a child, his parents had awarded him the T-square for top marks in school. At the time, he’d thought the pearwood held some magical property, a secret promise.
He set to work drawing diagrams of food products in 400-milliliter cylinders. Chains of equations filled his graph paper. Some foods posed more of a packing problem than others: pickles held their shape, for instance, while tomatoes had near-infinite squeezability. Soups could be thickened and condensed milk condensed further, into a mortar-like substance. String beans proved the most difficult: Even when arranged like a honeycomb, they could reach only 91 percent packing efficiency. In the middle of every three string beans hid an unfillable space. By lunchtime, Dan
iil had submitted a report titled “The Problematics of the String-Bean Triangular Void” to Sergei Igorovich’s secretary.
For the rest of the day, Daniil pretended to work while the combine pretended to pay him. He drew Gena the Crocodile, Cheburashka’s sidekick. He pondered the properties of dandruff, specifically Grandfather Lenin’s dandruff. Could a bald man have dandruff? Unlikely. What, then, about the goatee?
* * *
—
Canning for civilian consumption: sausages in pork fat sausages in tomato sauce kidneys in tomato sauce hearts in tomato sauce roast brains roast pork and rice pressed meat liver paste tongue in jelly fried meat macaroni with beef pork or mutton beans peas with beef pork or mutton meat pies sweet and sour meat mixed offals udder liver heart kidneys head cheek tail ends and trimmings fat salt onions plus one bay leaf whitefish in vegetable oil sturgeon in vegetable oil with the occasional bone to be retracted from esophagus in one of many district clinics available to citizens mackerel in vegetable oil fried red mullet in vegetable oil sheatfish in vegetable oil sprats in vegetable oil pike perch in vegetable oil plaice in vegetable oil sardines in vegetable oil bream in vegetable oil goby in vegetable oil sturgeon in natural juice of the fish salmon in natural juice of the fish Caspian roach in natural juice of the fish whale meat in natural juice of the mammal anchovies in vinegar sprats in vinegar sardines in vinegar also in fish cakes ground or mixed in vegetables tuna cod crab carp caviar sliced eggplant vegetable marrow sliced vegetables tomato puree tomato paste tomato catsup pureed sorrel pureed beet plus one bay leaf green peas in natural juice of the legume asparagus in natural juice of the vegetable cauliflower in natural juice of the vegetable beets in natural juice of the vegetable carrots in natural juice of the vegetable sliced eggplant in tomato sauce with vegetable oil eggplant paste in tomato sauce with vegetable oil pepper and tomato in tomato sauce with vegetable oil eggplant and squash in tomato sauce with vegetable oil vegetable marrow in tomato sauce with vegetable oil sliced vegetables in tomato sauce with vegetable oil tomato puree tomato paste tomato catsup spinach puree sorrel puree red pepper puree green pea puree beet puree carrot puree vegetable soup puree vegetable marrow vegetable marrow stuffed with rice vegetable marrow in tomato to lower national risk of gastrointestinal disease sliced apricots in natural juice of the fruit sliced apples in natural juice of the fruit apricots in sugar syrup quince in sugar syrup grapes in sugar syrup cherries in sugar syrup pears in sugar syrup raisins in sugar syrup apricots pureed pears pureed peaches pureed plums pureed apples pureed for the toothless young and old condensed and dried milk constitute the most common canned milk products cylindrical oval rectangular pyramidal cans are packed in wooden boxes made of dry wood with a water content of not over 18 percent and if one or all of the above food products is unavailable: potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes potatoes