All That Is Solid Melts into Air (28 page)

The tactic spread like wildfire. Most of the other factories in the region did the same thing within a day. The authorities cut the phone lines so word wouldn’t spread, but of course it did. Within a day or two, half the country knew what was going on. But not here. The Russian press didn’t cover it. Maria wrote some samizdat articles, tried to get the word out any way she could but, in retrospect, the conditions probably weren’t right for people to listen. Brezhnev was still in power, and he commanded a vast amount of authority. People lived in too much fear to contemplate such actions.

Maria still stays silent.

“I know about the recital at the end of the month. It would be quite a statement of intent to keep a high-ranking member of the ministry from leaving the building. That’s not even taking Yakov Sidorenko into account. Holding a world-renowned pianist would draw immense international interest. It has the potential to be a very significant moment.”

Maria doesn’t respond; she remains very calm. Eventually, she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Again, Danil nods his head.

“I understand. Go away and check out my credentials with whoever you need to talk to. Once you find out I can be trusted, have a think about it. This is an incredible opportunity. Pavel has told me about your leadership qualities. But I won’t put the boy in that situation without your permission. I will leave that decision up to you. All I ask is that you decide soon.”

Maria shakes his hand and leaves. Pavel stands to follow her, but she stops him. She wants to be alone.

Chapter 23

A
lina stands abreast of the ironing board, taking shirts from the basket, shaking them out, using an old bottle of window cleaner to spray water on the particularly creased areas.

She’s listening to the radio. It’s a documentary on the flora and fauna of Arkhangelsk Oblast. It’s the only thing on besides music and politics, and she’s had enough of both of those for the moment. The rural accents are a pleasant change; she finds she likes hearing the background noises, birds and wind. The sense of space they carry somehow expanding the dimensions of her home.

It’s a lovely evening, despite the cold. The sun spreads its colour over the canvas of the city, the white and grey walls soak in its warm hues; she shakes out the shirts and hangs them on the backs of her kitchen chairs, and the traffic weaves reassuringly below, cars and buses crisscrossing at a constant pace, and she feels contented, in her own way. Maybe it’s the gentle sway of the evening, but she can’t deny that something seems to be coming to an end. The forces that have pushed against her for so long are beginning to relent.

The iron has a compartment for water, but the nozzle has rusted and it sprays a russet-coloured residue onto the material, so she’s taken to using the plastic bottle. She needs a new iron, but this is not something to think about, not right now, not when they let her off from work early, told her to take an evening for herself, to go home and relax—not that this is a possibility. How little they know about her.

She irons and listens and follows the progress of the evening light smoothing itself slowly across the room. This, she supposes, is her own rehearsal of sorts. Soon the apartment will be empty. Not for a couple of years yet, but it’s coming. Zhenya, when he’s old enough, will have a live-in scholarship. Maria will find a man or will be able to put aside enough to bribe someone for a place of her own. Maria will always be okay. People are drawn to her. She has that gift.

Alina thinks it won’t be too much of a shock when it comes. It will take adjustment, but it’s not as if the place was filled with a bustling family, the neighbour’s kids crashing through the door, chasing each other around the table. Maria is gone all the time anyway, especially in the past few weeks—often to teach, often she doesn’t say—and Zhenya, of course, is practicing.

She spreads out the collar and irons the back and then the front, pressing down hard on the corners.

A recital with Yakov Sidorenko.

She had to sit down when Maria told her. Zhenya’s talent has never worried her—his temperament certainly, but never his talent. What really concerned her was the opportunity. It’s all very well being a genius, but people need to realize it too.
People like us don’t get those opportunities,
she’s often told herself, and this has always been her secret dread, that she wouldn’t be wealthy enough or connected enough to lay out a real opportunity for her child. That in twenty years he’d be working at some menial job and spend his cigarette breaks thinking of what he could have been and resenting her, what she couldn’t provide.

And so, even before the event, she can claim a certain degree of parental accomplishment. She has brought him to the cusp of achievement. She is the one who found him a mentor, paid for his lessons, demanded diligence. If the worst should happen, if the boy crumbles under the pressure, or they’ve overestimated his promise, well, such regrets are a burden she won’t have to bear alone. No one can point a finger at her, tell her she didn’t love enough, encourage enough, provide enough.

Shirts of beautiful light cotton, cross-stitched, double cuffs, sharp collars. People in their own building, living the same lives as they are. She would like to ask them some day where they get the money for such things, but that would probably mean they’d get their shirts laundered somewhere else, and it’s not as if she doesn’t need the business. Money is still, as she so often says, life and death.

The programme is comparing the feeding habits of rosefinches to rufous-tailed robins. They tweet freely in the background, uninterrupted for long stretches, and it’s not hard to think they could be sitting just outside on her balcony, talking their talk. When Zhenya goes to the Conservatory, things will open up for her; she may finally have some time for herself. The possibility unnerves her a little. She has no idea what her interests are, no idea what she’d do besides work. Perhaps she’ll get Maria to recommend a few books for her, expose herself to other lives. She’d like to make an effort to see more wildlife, to go and stand on the top of a mountain, sleep in a tent, turn her soon-to-be solitary life to her advantage. She’s been to the park, what, once a year, since Kirill died? This is a disgrace, obviously, but parks are for those who can afford the time.

She’s never had money, even when she was married. Kirill never had the kind of sly intellect that she sees in some of the men who come to the laundry, the casually indifferent way in which they sign their names on the return slip, slide over their roubles, the way they exude assurance, how apparent it is that they flow through life unobstructed by petty concerns.

Kirill was a different type of man, possessing a more temporary kind of effectiveness, a blunt simplicity in how he dealt with things, with people, never backing down, always ready to pounce on weakness, and of course this nature provided a shelter for her younger self. Beside him she was no longer the put-upon, the victim. Such a contrast to her father: his enclosed ways, his secrecies, the weight they all carried around with them—Maria too, wary of how people saw them—which was, of course, the point. There was also an attraction for her—this can’t be denied—in the threat he posed to other men, their hesitancy in his presence, how they could sense the force of his will. On the bus, all it needed was a stare from Kirill and other men would rise, offer their seats, stumbling out of her way, embarrassed, almost hypnotized, and she would feel a surge of power too, by association, by osmosis. This was a man who could take anything he wanted, including her, who was always ready to sweep aside anything in his way.

But her older self knows that such a nature is death to a marriage. A man who could think only of the immediate, whose range of needs was essentially the same as a dog’s—his fixation with dinner, those endlessly repetitive questions, not to mention his sniffing around other women—such stupidity on her part. Power is not about dominance. She really only realized it when she gave birth. Holding that helpless child in her arms. Strength is not as straightforward as she had thought. Of course, he wasn’t there to witness it, to stand by her bedside; he was off on a weekend hunt, his pregnant wife cooking her own dinners, barely able to move. Her giving birth while he killed something. A telling symmetry there, now that she can look at it afresh. And see what she produced. Yes, Zhenya shares his extraordinary stubbornness, but otherwise is unlike him in every possible way. They would have hated each other. Maybe not yet, but five years from now, without a doubt.

Yet Maria never judged, never criticized her in retrospect. For that she is grateful. Had it been the other way around, she knows she wouldn’t have been so lenient.

When Alina received word that her husband had been killed, there were no tears: a vague sadness, yes, but no more than that. By then she hadn’t seen him in eighteen months. And she wasn’t even surprised. Of course his macho vanity would get him killed. Of course showing his comrades how courageous he was would be more important than coming back to his wife and child. It’s easy to be courageous in a war. See what it’s like to work a seventy-hour week, see what kind of self-sacrifice that takes.

Flatten the sleeve out from the seams. Run the iron forward and back.

She doesn’t miss him, but she often misses the idea of him. Feels the absence of someone to fill that role. Someone to talk to Zhenya in the way that men do, that understanding they have. She’s a poor replacement, despite all her efforts.

Someone to fill that role for her too. A man to hand over a small stack of notes, let her do what she wants with them. Play money. He used to do this, on occasion, if he was feeling magnanimous. “Go and play,” he’d tell her. It wasn’t much, but the change was so satisfying: money being freed of necessity, becoming a thing of pleasure. She’d come home with a slightly damaged housecoat, or a hat that just needed a little stitching, or a pair of silky-smooth tights, and feel as fresh as a sixteen-year-old, and Kirill would smile that possessive grin of his that she couldn’t resist and say, “I should give you this present more often.” Such are the things that linger.

Finish with the cuffs.

She hangs the pressed shirts on the top of the door, the tips of the metal hangers digging into the wood. Even though she’s long since tired of ironing, she still finds pleasure in the smell, a richly satisfying odour, as comforting on the nostrils as baked bread.

She and Maria make two salaries, and she has this laundry money on the side, and Maria contributes with her teaching money, and still it’s not enough. It’s not as if they gamble it all away, or drink it all, or buy expensive creams and perfumes. They barely have enough to clothe and feed themselves. Nearly half their food they buy under the counter, because they have to; otherwise, they’d starve. She should open a shop, provide a service people really need, become a butcher.

Maria’s salary helps. The salary, if she’s honest, surprises her. Alina never thought her little sister would be able to stay with a dull job. She always lacked that kind of consistency. Things have always come so easy for her. Yes, her looks play a part, but she has a way, a kind of grace. Barriers open for Maria in a way that they don’t for her. Even now. Look at the teaching thing, dropping out of the blue. People would kill for that kind of work. It’s why she can be so fucking righteous about their father. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have to weigh up the options that are available. Maria has always had another way out. People, their father included, don’t compromise because they want to, they just run out of choices. What was he to do? Tell them no? Tell the KGB he considered them to be morally flawed? Please. The man had a family. Have a child, then she’ll understand.

Alina irons a shirt with yellowed stains at the armpits. She’s become used to these sights, she’s seen far worse. Don’t even get her started on underwear.

But yes, Maria’s recent consistency is impressive, and she’s wonderful with Zhenya and she’s her sister. Maria has helped bring them to this point, Zhenya’s future laid out in front of him. And Alina can take a satisfaction in knowing that all her struggles have, in the end, been worthwhile. She has a son and a sister, and the marriage at least brought them the apartment. This she regards as Kirill’s legacy, not Zhenya; the boy is all hers—laying him in a laundry basket for the first two years of his life, sleeping in the same bed as him all those years when she couldn’t afford an extra mattress, an abundance of reasons for her to lay full claim on the child—but his military service made their home possible. Without it, she can’t begin to imagine what they’d do.

A key rattles in the door.

She puts down the iron. Her arm hairs riffle with suspicion, a mother’s instinct. It’s Yevgeni. She hears him hanging up his jacket, the rasp of synthetic material, and this confirms it: Maria wears a good woolen coat that Grigory bought her years ago. She puts down the water squirter and takes a breath. She puts her hand on top of the iron. There might be a rational explanation for this.

He freezes at the open door, no idea she’d be here. He steps aside, a frantic rustle. Something different about him; she can’t place it. She’s left the ironing board, pacing towards the door, and he passes again, down the corridor to his bedroom. It strikes her then: only socks on his feet. He came in wearing a pair of running shoes, expensive, from the West.

“Zhenya!”

He makes a burst for his room; she follows, gaining; the boy disappears inside, slams his door. All of this taking maybe half a second.

“Zhenya!”

She works the handle. Locked, obviously. She’s been meaning to take the bolt out, he’s getting to that age.

She bangs her fist against it.

“Open this door at once. Why aren’t you at rehearsal? I have a right to know.”

“I didn’t go.”

If Kirill were here, as he should be, being a father, he’d break the door down. Another reason not to be a hero. She thinks about doing the same. It’s a flimsy door, it wouldn’t be difficult. But there’s something unsightly about a woman putting her shoulder to a door, even if it is her own son’s, even if he deserves it. She knows it would lessen her authority, in a way she couldn’t explain.

She paces back up the corridor. Reaches up to the shelf over the coats for the running shoes, takes them down. Light blue. Soft on the insides, lightweight, well stitched, a logo on the sides. She carries the evidence back to his door.

“I’m holding them in my hands, Zhenya. Tell me right now.”

Silence.

“The last thing . . .” She’s so angry she can barely get the words out. “Believe me, the last thing we need . . .”

Silence.

She bangs on the door again.

“I won’t have this conversation from behind a door.”

“Fine. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I am your mother. This isn’t a hotel.”

“I know. If it was they’d leave me alone.”

“He decides to be funny. He decides he’s a big enough man to be smart. Be smart, see where it gets you. Be smart, your recital two weeks away. You don’t know this yet, but believe me when I say—I am your mother, believe me—‘there’s nothing in life . . .’ ”

“ ‘ . . . so tragic as a wasted talent.’ ” His voice is muffled behind the door, but she can tell he’s saying it as if he’s reciting a nursery rhyme, a mockingly sing-song tone to his voice.

Her will beginning to break. “Zhenya, please. I only want what’s best for you. Open the door.” Her voice wavering.

Neighbours knocking on the wall. The superintendent will be up again. She can’t, on top of everything, afford to get an official warning. It won’t help anything if they’re homeless.