All That Is Solid Melts into Air (12 page)

Chapter 9

I
n the buses they don’t talk. They are too shocked for words. Artyom sits with his mother and sister in a double seat, five rows from the back, each of them replaying the incident in their minds.

Artyom’s mother watches the backs of heads bounce and nod and shake.

She didn’t know the door mattered to him. He had never placed great importance on it, and part of her wondered if he had tried to bring it with them as an absurd act of protest: “How dare you try to take my home, watch me take a part of it with me.” Of course, the children were astonished. Of course, the listeners were intrigued. There were many angles to the man that were only revealed at intimate moments, in the smallest of ways. Oddly stubborn. Wildly stubborn. No one knew. The kids perhaps had a certain insight, but no one really knew the unfathomable depths of his stubbornness.

Andrei could slow everything down, all around her. He could bend time for her. When they made love in their bed, with his mother sleeping in the next room, a tough woman, full of harsh judgement, the slightest noise would bring tension—the old woman had sharp ears. So Andrei would be so careful, yet still so generous. They would make love while hardly moving. They would rock with mere whispers of motion, and she would bring him to release simply by the warmth of her hands on his waist.

“When we go I want to go first.” She had always told him this, when they were alone, and he would nod, agreeing, because they both knew that he was the one who would endure, that she was the one who would collapse, helpless, overwhelmed.

And now he is alone somewhere, in a truck or a cell, and she has two child adults to look after, to reassure and lead as best she can, though they’re smarter, more aware than she is.

He will be sent along tomorrow. There can be no other possibility.

He will be sent along tomorrow.

Kids are moaning and shuffling. Artyom is sitting by the aisle, hanging off the side of the seat. There are families sitting on each other’s laps, but Artyom doesn’t want to suggest this to Sofya; the intimacy would be too strange.

The lights are on in the bus. They give substance to the cigarette smoke, a cloud of stained light hovering resolutely over them. Some children are sleeping, tired limbs slumped over the armrests, dangling into the aisle, heads lolling. A stream of whimpering trickles along the seats. There are intermittent rustling sounds, when people check which belongings they’ve forgotten, or dig into a plastic bag for an extra sweater. People are saying they’re on their way to Minsk, but there has been no announcement. He’s assuming there are some on the bus who recognize the route. Artyom looks around and realizes there aren’t many men. Some old men, yes, but very few his father’s age or younger. He didn’t notice this while they were being shoved into the vehicles.

His limbs want to strike out, to destroy something, anything. There are enough nervous people around, though, so instead he clamps his teeth into his inner cheek and bites down hard, feeling warm blood nestle around his teeth. He’s never seen his father look bewildered, this man so durable, so assured, crushed by violence.

He’d like to look out of the windows, be distracted by the unfamiliar sights, but he can’t get a proper view past his mother and sister, through the smoke. Sofya takes a carrot from her pocket and eats it, and Artyom does the same. They crunch on the tasteless lumps. Their jaws sore from a day of unwittingly grinding their teeth.

Artyom wakes. The bus has stopped, and Sofya is punching his shoulder.

“We’re getting off.”

It’s nighttime. The windows are matted with dull streaks of condensation. Artyom’s brain feels the same way. He rubs his eyes with his fists, a gesture that reminds his mother of her boy at five years old, a naïve gesture that he will now surely carry through to adulthood. They gather their sacks, hug them to their chests, and wait until it’s their turn to step into the aisle and out of the bus, spilling into the great pool of dislocated people.

Artyom looks to his left and sees that they’re parked outside the train station. An abandoned car sits squat on its axle, people swarming around it, and Artyom walks over and stands on the bonnet to get a better view.

The main bulk of people are walking in a thick line away from the building, following hazard lights that have been laid like a trail.

Again he looks for men, fathers, but sees very few.

His mother has decided they’ll go to her sister Lilya’s apartment. She’s not sure where it is, but she’d recognize it on a map. So they need to get out of the crowd and find their bearings. Artyom turns back to the station. There are still a few lights on, and a station guard leans against a column of the portico. Artyom signals to his mother and sister to meet him by the main entrance and, when he sees them making progress against the tide, he pushes forward himself and eventually emerges into empty space and approaches the guard.

“Is there anywhere to get a map?”

The guard busies himself and walks away, answering as he does so, reluctant to make eye contact.

“Try the concourse, there might be some on the information stand.”

Sofya and his mother walk towards him, looking around for possibilities.

His mother puts her hand in her pocket, brings out some roubles, and puts them in his hand.

“See if you can find something hot.”

“To eat or to drink?”

“Either. I don’t care.”

Artyom pushes open the main door of the station, steps onto the concourse. The place is deserted. Artyom is surprised that some of the crowd haven’t filtered inside to get some respite from the chaos. He hears his footsteps reverberate around the empty space. It’s an otherworldly sensation, to be alone in this grand expanse, a single figure under the great, arching roof of the Minsk train station. The information booth is closed, but there’s a map of the city on the wall, behind a plastic pane. He digs his fingers beneath the frame and slides out the map, rolls it up.

He steps inside an empty waiting room, which houses a boy, asleep, alone, head on a table. The boy is almost embracing the tabletop, an empty packet of cigarettes beside his ear, a jar with some ash and old butts beside the empty packet. The boy’s head resting on his hand, a grubby finger laid on his eyelid. Light filters through the discoloured plastic sheeting of the roof in a cool aqua-green. Artyom touches the tabletop and rubs some ash between his fingers.

Someone has a radio on in the distance. Folk music finds its way into his ears.

He finds an arcade where small stalls sell trinkets, all closed up. More people in this section, also searching for food. Station guards are silhouetted against the light, their caps flattening their profiles, giving them the grandeur of chess figures. There are old men hunched in corners, lying on plastic bags containing books and old coats.

In the station shop there are empty, square glass cabinets. A crowd is pressed against the counter. An old woman on the fringes eats a blini from wax paper. There is no anger in the queuing, no aggression in the gathering. People slope and drift. There is no more food to be had here, but they wait anyway, in hope.

He returns to the portico and shows his mother the map.

“Did you steal it?”

“Of course I stole it. You think there’re shops selling maps for tourists?”

“I don’t like you stealing.”

“Fine.” He walks towards the door. “I’ll leave it back.”

He has his own mind now. She can’t scold him anymore.

“No. You’re right. It’s fine.”

They’ve been fighting more in the past year. She can tell from his eyes that he’s chalking up another victory. She’ll win very few arguments from now on—not that she wants a competition, just a recognition that she still has some authority, that she knows things.

He lays the map on the ground in front of her.

“Her place is near the bus station. Get us to the bus station and I’ll find it from there.”

Artyom runs his finger over the districts and finds it.

“Okay. It’s not far.”

“Did you get any food?” Sofya asks.

“No. All the shops have been cleared out. There were probably hundreds of buses before us. I’m sure people have stocked up.”

Artyom takes his mother’s sack. Sofya can carry her own.

“How do we know when Father gets in?” Sofya asks.

“He’ll find us at Lilya’s.”

They head out into the road in single file, Artyom leading. He stays close to the walls. A man passes by with his head down, looking at his shoes. There are women and children sitting in the middle of the tarmac, quaking through tears. Artyom’s mother approaches them and coaxes them into doorways, sheltering them from the pressing crowd. A woman in her forties walks backwards, screaming obscenities at the arrivals. She uses a term they don’t understand: “glowworms.”

They cross through the park, still keeping close. His arms are aching from the sacks, but he doesn’t want this to be known, otherwise his mother will insist on carrying her own. Eventually, though, he stops, places them on the pathway, and shakes out his shoulders.

His mother looks at him, concern weighing on her. Artyom sees her differently here, away from home, under the iron lamps of the pavement. She looks older than her age. The land, the work, has hardened her. Hardened her skin and face, but maybe also made her more determined. He thinks about how she works at harvest time, bent low over the straw, tying it together, gathering it into ricks. All day bent over, stopping only for the occasional drink of water. She’s determined to get them where they need to go. A different strength to his father’s.

“You’re tired.”

“Yes.”

“Let me take them.”

He leaves the sacks on the ground, and she heaves them over her shoulder and begins walking again. He’ll take them back in a few minutes, when his shoulders have had a rest.

At the bus station there are more people, more chaos. The confusion is relentless, but they are becoming accustomed to it. They move through the crowd more quickly now, spotting the gaps, less tentative in their steps. Artyom’s mother doesn’t hesitate in her direction, and he and Sofya know that she recognizes where she is.

They reach a tree-lined street of apartment blocks. It’s quieter here. They pass a group of men gathered around the opened bonnet of a car, drinking, one underneath with a torch, tinkering away. The men stare as they pass, carrying their belongings. The group don’t say anything, but Artyom can feel their eyes trailing him, aggression in their look. So this is what Minsk is like, he thinks.

“They don’t like us here, do they, Mama?” Sofya says.

“No. I suppose they don’t,” Artyom’s mother replies.

They find the building and, pushing open the door to the entrance, they see the lift doors are wide open with the lights off and wires hanging out where the buttons should be. Artyom’s mother lays the sacks on the ground and looks dolefully up the steps, and arches her back, stretches her neck from side to side.

“What floor is she on?” Artyom asks.

“The eighth.”

“I’ll take the bags from here.”

“Thank you, Artyom.”

The steps are crumbled at the edges, stones peeping through. So Artyom steps sideways, keeping the sacks at an even height to balance himself. There’s a smell of piss in the enclosed space, and it joins together with the scent of potatoes ingrained in the cloth, which rises up as he swings the sacks. The walls are covered in writing. Names in huge, black letters, connected in a fluid scrawl, a series of interlocked curls. On the fourth-floor landing there’s a kid’s disembowelled bear, its cotton insides greyed and trampled upon.

He pushes into the corridor and looks at his mother as she knocks on the fifth door down.

No answer. She waits and knocks again. No answer. She calls: “Lilya. It’s Tanya. We need your help.”

They wait. She looks at Sofya, who is staring at the ceiling, her fists curling around the opening of her sack. Sofya always looks upwards when she’s angry. Artyom’s mother leans against the wall and puts her ear to the door.

“You’re in there. Your light was on. I can hear you. I have Artyom and Sofya. We need to come in. Please, Lilya.”

Artyom stays at the end of the corridor. He understands there’s something private about the moment. He needs to let his mother go through this on her own.

His mother steps away from the door. Movement, a voice from inside.

“I can’t help. It’s too dangerous. You need to go to the shelter.”

His mother bangs on the door.

Some neighbours appear. Stripes of light cross the green tiled floor. A shirtless man stands in the corridor, his chest hair curled into dots. He fills the gap between the walls, hands on his hips, like a goalkeeper waiting for a penalty.

“Lilya. I’m your sister. Let us in.”

“You’re poison, don’t you know this? You can’t stay around other people.”

Artyom’s mother starts to cry. He hasn’t seen his mother cry since he was a child. Sofya kicks the door, but his mother brushes her aside. They both lean against the wall, hiding their faces.

The man with no shirt speaks.

“You heard. You’re fucking poison. Get out of here.”

This half-naked bastard shouting at them. Artyom drops the bags and runs towards him, arms wide, a slur of dense breath in his throat, but the man sidesteps him easily, and Artyom skids along the ground, tearing the knee of his trousers, skinning his flesh. The man steps into his doorway.

“If you’re not gone in five minutes, I’ll come out with my knife.”

He spits in Artyom’s direction, the blob landing near Artyom’s shoes.

“Five minutes.”

The man closes his door, and the three of them bunch on the floor in individual piles, beaten. After a few moments, Artyom’s mother walks over to him, cradles his neck in her hand, and kisses the top of his head.

“Let’s find a bed.”

They walk back towards the stairwell, their feet echoing in the corridor.

Chapter 10

I
n Pripyat, night has drawn in and Grigory walks through the town alone. He passes a small carnival with a Ferris wheel creaking in the breeze. The apartment blocks are dark, uninhabited now, looming.

Coloured paper still lies scattered around the town, mocking the tone of the day. Dead dogs littered everywhere, stagnant blood glistening through the darkness. Grigory occasionally catches the darting gait of wolves, drifted in from the forest, attracted by the scent of blood, courageous in the emptied streets.

He makes his way back to the operations centre in the main square, approaching from a side street, and as he enters the square he pauses in realization at the statue in the middle, the iron figure half kneeling, raising his open arms to the heavens, full of fury. He has passed it a dozen times in the last day, unaware of its subject: Prometheus, the Greek god who gave fire to the people.

This statue in this place.

Grigory slumps under the figure, spent. A young lieutenant approaches and sits beside him. He also is too tired to attend to his duties. He pulls out a cigarette and offers one to Grigory, who readily accepts, his first cigarette in ten years. And Grigory remembers how Prometheus was punished for his betrayal of godly secrets: Zeus had him chained to a rock and each day would begin with an eagle ripping his liver from his body, which grew back by evening, so that the suffering would be repeated to eternity.

They stay there, unspeaking, until Grigory says, “I’m a surgeon. I never expected to live through a day like this.”

The soldier dabs a loose strand of tobacco off his tongue and spits.

“You remember, my friend, what comrade Lenin told us: ‘Every cook has to learn how to govern the state.’ ”

They finish their cigarettes in silence.