Expulsion

by Marina Sonkina

  “You’re thanking me? You don’t think that might be inappropriate given the seriousness of your situation? You do know how serious it is, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  VIP started to move toward the stairwell.

  “Please, take them, Vera Ivanovna! I simply wanted you to know . . . how much I appreciate what you . . . what you’ve done for me!”

  Popova put the bucket down and stared at Alex in astonishment.

  “First your father comes to try to persuade me to put you in a privileged position by giving you less homework than the others. And now, failing that, the family has decided to bribe me with flowers. And of all people, sent you on that mission! Do you know what that kind of behaviour is called?”

  “I didn’t . . . We didn’t mean to . . . ” Alex mumbled. VIP stared at her for a moment and then turned around and started to walk away. Alex ran after her: “Vera Ivanovna, my elder brother won first prize in the All-Soviet Mathematics Olympics. He was accepted into the Moscow State University math department when he was only 14! What I mean is that our whole family has always admired math.”

  VIP stopped and turned around. The mention of the Moscow State University math department, the unattainable dream of her youth, rankled. She gave Alex a sceptical look.

  “I’ve been on the Olympics Committee the last five years. I don’t remember anyone named Bolt.”

  “I’m not sure what year it was exactly.”

  “So now you’re counting on your elder brother to rescue you? Or is this another story you’ve made up?”

  “Vera Ivanovna, you can expel me. I know I deserve it. But all I care is that you believe me!” Alex dropped her eyes, trying holding back her tears. VIP tightened the belt of her robe.

  “How can I trust you, Bolt, if you lie as easily as you breathe? You say your brother won first prize, but don’t remember what year it was?”

  “My brother died before I was born, but if you want, I can bring his Olympics certificate. He made some mathematical discovery during the competition. That’s why they accepted him at the university at 14 without exams.”

  VIP removed her glasses and rubbed her forehead.

  “You’re a strange girl, Bolt, and of course I’m sorry about your brother if what you’re telling me is true.” She paused and put her glasses back on. “But you should understand that it doesn’t change anything.”

  “No, of course not, I understand. I just wanted you to know it was true . . .” Alex said, her lips starting to tremble.

  “Goodness, Bolt, get a hold of yourself! If you’re going to cry over every little thing, how on earth will you ever live your life? When I was your age, I wanted to study amphibians. You know what they are? Creatures that live both in water and on land. Take tree frogs, for example. They live mostly in the tropics. When the time comes, they have to drop their eggs from the trees into ponds. The tadpoles from the eggs are helpless. Water snakes love them, fish love them, even young crocodiles do, and they have very, very little chance of survival. Hundreds, even thousands of them die! But out of that number a few do survive. We have to be like those few surviving tadpoles. Do you understand?”

  And then VIP suddenly reached out and patted Alex on the shoulder and their eyes briefly met. Alex’s turned moist with gratitude. VIP had reached out to her, their souls had touched in mutual recognition. VIP then quickly turned away, picked up the trash bucket, and set off down the stairs.

  Alex remained standing where she was, holding the unwanted mimosas to her chest.

  14

  Alex watched the trees flickering past the window of the train carrying her on the Kazan line from point A, Moscow, to point B, Istra, and the Bolts’ abandoned dacha. The car was nearly empty, since for most people it was too early in the season to leave the city. She stepped onto the deserted Istra platform, crossed the tracks, and followed the familiar path through the woods to their dacha. It was colder than in the city, and pockets of partially melted snow remained in the deep shadows of the firs and spruces. The sudden silence of the woods following the train’s noisy departure was spooky. Soon Alex came to a familiar glade. Standing at its edge was an old birch on which Germans had incinerated a partisan during the war. If you squinted hard enough, the kids from the local village told her when she was a little girl, you could see the charred outline of the partisan’s body through the tree’s white bark. That made the glade dangerous, they said, for souls never leave the places where they part from their bodies. They hover invisibly, waiting for to take revenge. Alex began to sing quietly under her breath to overshadow the frightening thought.

  The dacha stood on the shelf formed by a steep bank of the Istra river, several meters away from where it made a sharp turn before falling into an artificial lake. Old firs stood in front of the dacha, and the shallows below were still covered with sedge from the previous year. The hand-carved gingerbread trim of dacha’s weathered grey porch was still intact — roosters intermingled with diamonds and squares — and the cache of firewood under the porch was still there too, untouched in many years, its pale logs adorned with spreading medallions of lichen.

  Alex found the front-door key still hidden in a metal box stuck between the logs. Using both hands, she forced it into the rusty lock and at last opened the door. The long neglected, grave-cold dacha reeked of mildew. She stood by the door for a while, at first not knowing where to start her search. Over years, her father had brought his dead son’s belongings to the dacha away from his wife’s sight, storing them in what they all called “Alexander’s room.” Anxiously, Alex decided to begin there. The furniture, unused for years, looked forlorn. The drawers of her brother’s wobbly desk wouldn’t open until, finally, she forced them to. They were filled with warped notebooks, drawing pads, old atlases, stamp albums, and rusted pen knives. She went through everything piece by piece, looking for the Olympics’ certificate. She opened several boxes in a corner of the room. They contained old cameras and compasses and two chess sets. She sat down on the floor and surveyed the chaos around her. She didn’t feel the cold any more, just hunger. A sheet of paper lay separated from the rest, as if it had been wafted from the pile by a discerning gust of air. She picked it up. “The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics” (Galileo Galilei). It was a loose page from her brother’s diary. Alex continued to read. “Chateaubriand believed that love is a terrible burden. I think I understand him. If you love, or become an object of love, you allow an intruder to enter your soul. Love takes possession of you, you give up your freedom, finally losing your own personality. I will avoid that at all costs. May 18, 1953.”

  How old was he when he wrote that? And who was Chateaubriand? A wave of self-pity passed over her. Her brother didn’t want to be loved, yet he was. It’s easy to love the dead. If she were dead like him, she would be loved too. But what if she weren’t, even then? She would never know. She shivered, recalling the incinerated partisan and his restless soul.

  It was starting to get dark. An old kerosene lamp covered with dust stood on the shelf in her brother’s room, but she didn’t know how to use it. If she started going through the things in the room now, she would miss the train back to Moscow. Better to come back again over the weekend to continue her search for the certificate. She felt VIP’s benevolent hand on her shoulder. A blessing. One tadpole out of thousands.

  Alex locked the front door, put the key back in its metal box, and returned it to its hiding place among the logs. The sky had partially cleared, revealing a streak of fading gold. Further downstream, at the bend in the river, the water reflected pearly-pink light like a gleaming shield. The path sloped down toward the bank, then up again. Alex climbed to the bluff to see the sunset better. Far in front lay the lake framed by the dark crowns of firs, with the river breaking into separate streams at its mouth and forming little sandbars. The sun had partly slipped behind a dark heavy cloud, and the water ha
d turned a menacing grey. As she watched the rapidly changing light on the water, Alex noticed a leaf floating past. She followed it with her eyes, fascinated by its agile zigzag, as if it were a living thing, until it was carried by the accelerating current into an eddy, where it disappeared and then suddenly emerged again. She bent down to better follow the leaf’s movement, but her right foot slipped from under her on the icy ground. As it did she reached back to grab the faded stalks of grass behind her, which immediately came loose in her hand. Her foot began to skate down the bare face of the cliff and she slid all the way down into the river, its icy chill of the water penetrating her as if she had been stabbed. She screamed in fear, and then the water filled her gaping mouth. She had never learned to swim, and frantically, helplessly she flailed her arms and legs, struggling to stay afloat. The silent river was in no hurry, however. It let her struggle for a while and then gently, indifferently, pulled her down into its depths and toward the waiting lake.

  The search for Alex was unavailing. Her mother took to her bed, inveighing against the injustice of a fate that had snatched one child and then another from her loving hands. Within days Professor Bolt turned completely grey and begun to mumble, the shaping of words requiring too much effort. Kerry refused to leave Alex’s bedroom and stopped eating. Cleaning Alex’s room, Katya found the bouquet of dry mimosas stuck without any water into the red Venetian vase. A small greeting card with the smiling face of a woman surrounded by a wreath of flowers fell out. Katya put on her glasses to read it.

  “Dear Vera Ivanovna! Happy International Women’s Day! I wish you health, happiness, and achievement in your noble work of educating new generations! With great respect, your student from grade 8B, Alexandra Bolt.”

  A bit of fluff fell out of the vase onto the kitchen floor.

  It was a dead moth.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A former professor of Russian Literature at Moscow State University, writer and scholar Marina Sonkina now lives in Vancouver. She divides her time between teaching, writing, tango dancing and taking her students on culture trips to Russia. Marina’s previous collection Lucia’s Eyes & Other Stories was also published by Guernica.

  Copyright © 2015, Marina Sonkina and Guernica Editions Inc.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise stored in a retrieval system, without the prior consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Michael Mirolla, editor

  David Moratto, cover and interior design

  Front cover image by Vladimir Osherov

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  First edition.

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  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2015940391

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Sonkina, Marina, 1952-, author

  Expulsion & other stories / Marina Sonkina.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55071-945-1 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-55071-946-8 (epub).--

  ISBN 978-1-55071-947-5 (mobi)

  I. Title. II. Title: Expulsion and other stories.

  PS8637.O537E96 2015 C813’.6 C2015-903516-3 C2015-903517-1

  Guernica Editions Inc. acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  Nous reconnaissons l'appui financier du gouvernement du Canada.