Moscow but Dreaming (12 page)

She thought she could save just one, but even that is apparently too much for them.

“Yes,” she says out loud. “We need to talk. Let me just check on her.”

Helen squeezes her eyes shut and waits for the woman to close the door, cutting off the thick slab of light reaching in from the hallway. The light makes the monster retreat into its den somewhere between the bed and the floorboards, where its eyes glow with quiet red ferocity in the darkness. She wants to ask the woman—Janis, mom—to leave the door open, to put the lights on, but she cannot, and she cries silently, her salty tears sliding down her cheek and into her hair, soaking into the pillow.

The woman does not leave. Instead she comes in and sits on the bed, the white texture of her cable-knit sweater exaggerated by the light from the hallway and darkness inside the room. It is cold tonight—the cold has finally caught up with Helen. It chased her across the unfathomable chasm of the ocean and nine hours of flying through the air over the stationary clouds. The autumn is here now, and there are no more moths fluttering in the curtains.

Helen peeks between the tear-soaked eyelashes, and the beam of light twinkles and breaks into a myriad of tiny stars. The woman looks back at Helen but does not smile like she usually does when their eyes meet. Instead she sighs and strokes Helen’s hair. She feels the moisture under her fingertips, and she looks like she’s about to cry herself.

Helen considers opening her eyes completely but decides against it and squeezes them shut, feigning sleep. If she looks at her new mom directly, she will start talking, and then Helen would cry in earnest at her inability to understand, to explain about the monsters and shadows and fear.

Helen wants to talk about summers in Siberia—so short and so intense, so full of high-pitched whining of mosquitoes and the smell of pine trees oozing fresh sap, of spongy bogs studded with butter-yellow cloudberries. About the lake where the runaway boy drowned but which becomes transformed by a cloudless blue sky overhead into a swath of precious smooth silk surrounded by soft, succulent-green branches of firs.

But Helen cannot explain these things and she forces her eyelids tighter together, until her eyes burn.

Janis gives up and rises to her feet, the springs of the mattress squeaking in relief. The door closes behind her, cutting off the light.

In the darkness, there is shifting and stirring. Helen watches the sheet of wallpaper peel away, admitting a thin beam of bluish light into the room.

Helen sits up and peers into the widening gap—carefully at first, wary of the monsters. She sees a small man, no bigger than a cat, crouching on the other side of the wallpaper barrier. His withered narrow face looks at Helen over his shoulder, and then he turns away and draws on the inside of the wall—a chain of tiny cranes, dwarfed by the shadows of daisies and poppies. They seem paler on the other side but alive, nodding in the invisible breeze.

Helen pulls the sheets of the wallpaper apart, and she sees a bright blue lake surrounded by yellow-needled larches. The monster crawls from under the bed and stands beside her, panting like a dog, the black fur between its wing-like shoulder blades bristling. Helen is surprised to not be afraid of it anymore.

The monster leaps into the gap and Helen follows, timid at first. She turns to look back and watches the wallpaper fold back with a quiet rustling and grow together, fusing. She sees the ghostly flowers, and behind them—her room, a shadow image from a magic lantern.

The monster growls and bounds ahead, then stops and waits for her by the tiny man and his cranes, which are flying in place, their wings sweeping up and down in a graceful motion. She watches them for a while, never moving and yet flying south among the daisies and poppies which are still blooming despite the autumn and its cold fingers reaching even behind the wallpaper, where the monsters sleep during the day.

The monster barks and laughs and leaps to the right, then to the left; then it gallops toward the lake, looking over its shoulder, inviting Helen to follow. Helen sighs and walks through the fallen leaves, rubbery under her white socks, she walks to the lake where a blue boy with sharp teeth is waiting for her, the monster by his side like a hound.

Yakov is glad to see that the crow has come back. He watches it out of his office window, five stories up above a frozen Moscow street; just another window on the flat, uniform façade of the square building. They call places like this one “the box”—not just because of its shape, but also because no one really knows what goes on in there. Government buildings. Yakov knows, he works here. He proofreads blueprints. Now they pile on his desk, and Yakov watches the crow.

He has noticed it a few days back, when he cracked the window and took his lunch bag from the ledge just outside. Many did this—it saved a trip down to the refrigerator in the common room. Yakov noticed that the ham sandwich lacked ham, and the entire neat package has been eviscerated with surgical precision. He looked outside, as if hoping to glimpse a thief. He saw a crow.

The crow does its usual rounds—it flies level with the sixth story, from one end of the building to the other, inspecting every window for a paper bag. The crow disdains hardboiled eggs and laughs at bread, but savors meat and cheese. Yakov waits for it.

It alights on the ledge and looks at Yakov, its head tilted, one roguish eye studying him. The black of the crow’s head looks like a beret, and its body is of dull but somehow shiny grey. Black feathers on the tips of its wings are folded primly, like laced fingers. What a gypsy eye, Yakov thinks. How familiar. Maria used to have black gypsy eyes like that, until they closed, forever weighted by dull copper coins.

The crow watches him, the glimmer in its eye almost humorous. It seems indifferent to Yakov’s lunch bag. It moves closer, with short hops along the ledge, until its black rogue eye is aligned with Yakov’s blue. The crow shakes with suppressed laughter.

“Maria?” he says before he even realizes his lips are moving.

The crow flaps its wings and continues its solitary patrol. Yakov returns to his desk. There are three other desks in the room, covered with dust, empty since the budget cut last year, in 1989. They still keep Yakov.

Five o’clock rolls by, and he takes the subway home. It’s crowded, and he leans against the doors, thinking about the crow, as the train carries him away from the hateful wind-scourged outskirts, towards the center, the old city, where his home is.

It is dark as he walks down the frozen boulevard, past the sleeping bums and squeezing couples undeterred by the cold and the frigid iron of the benches. Streetlamps light his way with their wan mercury glow.

He ascends to the third story, and listens outside of the door. Young voices and music reach into the stony stairwell full of echoes. His son Mitya has some friends over. Yakov likes the music—one of the new bands, Aquarium it’s called. He listens to the lyrics from outside; they have nice imagery. Gold on blue, flame-maned lions, wolves and ravens. He turns the key.

Mitya and two of his friends, Andrey and Slava, greet him with fake moans of disappointment. Yakov smiles—he likes the kids, and they seem to like him back, despite their many differences.

“Yakov Mihailovich,” Slava says. “We did some nice business today. I just thought I’d tell you that.” He knows how much Yakov disapproves of all the recent wheelings and dealings, and never misses a chance to tease him.

Yakov bites. “There’s more to life than money, boys.” All three giggle.

“Dad,” Mitya says, grinning from ear to ear, his eyes as dark

and mischievous as those of the crow. “Don’t you want to know how?”

Yakov nods.

“This morning, we bought a case of beer at seven rubles a can. And this afternoon the prices went up, all the way to fifteen.”

“And you sold it,” Yakov guesses.

The three laugh.

“No,” Mitya says. “We’re drinking it. Want some?”

Yakov laughs too. They all think that the inflation is funny. “You call that business?”

“Life’s too short to drink cheap beer,” Andrey says.

Mitya notices that Yakov is preoccupied. “You want anything to eat?” he says.

Yakov shakes his head. “You go ahead. I’ll just read.”

“Want us to turn the music down?”

“No, I like it. Reminds me of the Akmeists.”

“Who?” Slava says.

Yakov sighs. These kids have their heads so full of money, they forgot everything else. “The school of poets in the early 20th century,” he says. “They wrote poetry centered around imagery. You heard of Gumilev, I presume.”

“Yeah,” Andrey says. “Wasn’t he executed by the firing squad in 1921?”

Yakov rolls his eyes. “Yes. And before that, he was a poet. A good one, too. There’s more to people than the way they died.”

He goes to his room, changes into his threadbare sweats and reads a Rex Stout novel. A few pages into it, he realizes that he has no idea of what he has just read—the crow is still on his mind. He doesn’t believe in reincarnation, but still, those eyes . . . 

Mitya’s friends leave, and he pokes his head in, concern on his sharp dark face, so unlike Yakov’s pale and placid one. “Dad, are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Yakov says.

“Everything all right at work?”

Yakov nods, looking into the book with emphasis.

Mitya comes in and sits on Yakov’s bed. “Did I do something?”

Yakov gives up and closes the book. “No, Mitya.” He starts to tell him about the crow, but feels silly and cuts himself off. “How was school?”

“Fine,” Mitya says. “I just wish I majored in computers, like Andrey.”

Yakov nods. Andrey will have an easier time finding work. “Still,” he says. “The world needs art history majors.”

“Only it’s not going to pay them,” Mitya says. “You know it and I know it. As soon as I graduate, I’ll be selling cigarettes in the kiosk across the street.”

Yakov wishes he had comfort to offer. This is really his biggest problem with the new times—money. So much time is spent thinking about it, people hardly pay attention to anything else anymore. “There’s more to life than money,” he says feebly.

“I know.” Mitya sighs. “I’m surprised that you’re so reactionary. I thought you hated the communists.”

Yakov nods. “Still do. But I like free education and healthcare, and guaranteed employment.”

Mitya has heard all this before. “I know. But the free healthcare didn’t save Mom.”

Yakov sits up. “Don’t say that. It was cancer, no one could have done anything for her.” He sighs. “At least, the doctors who cared for her were not there for the money, but because they wanted to help people.”

They sit in silence for a while. Yakov feels like a failure. All the things he dreamt of, all the hopes are dashed and ridiculed. He wanted freedom, he wanted the yoke off his neck. He didn’t want this soulless vacuum, he didn’t want fear.

“It’s all right, Mitya,” he answers his thoughts. “When I’m gone, you can sell this apartment. It costs a lot.”

“Dad, don’t say that.”

“Sorry.” It’s not fair, Yakov thinks. He just wants his son to be able to do what he loves. He wonders what the crow would think about that.

The next morning, Yakov sits on the windowsill, waiting for the crow. His heart skips a beat when it appears. But not alone— there’s a whole murder. He counts them. Twelve. They patrol the windows in formation. Every now and again, one breaks off to rummage through a paper bag and emerge with a hotdog or a slice of ham in its beak. Yakov watches his crow. He can tell it apart from all the others.

The crows arrive to his window. He’s waiting for them, holding out a plastic container full of beef chunks. The crows demur at first, but soon grow bold and eat. He talks to them. He tells them of all the things that bother him—that the politics have changed but the politicians are still the same exact people as back in the sixties, only balder and fatter; he tells them that nobody cares about anything important anymore. He tells them that freedom has nothing to do with money, or the McDonald’s restaurants. The crows stop eating and listen.

They leave, but come back the next day, a dozen of them. The blueprints are still piling up on his desk, but Yakov doesn’t care. He finally found someone who would listen to him.

One of the crows seems agitated, and flaps its wings. The others caw, and Yakov stops talking, perplexed. The crows gather around their discomfited fellow. They grow silent and watch, until the crow falls on its side, its wings beating, and its feet scraping the ledge. It twitches and becomes still, its upturned gypsy eye milking over with death.

Eleven crows look at Yakov for a moment, and take wing. “Wait,” he calls after them. “Come back!”

The door opens, and Luganov, his boss, looks in. “Yakov,” he

says. “Do you have a crow problem?”

“No,” Yakov says. “Why?”

“People were complaining they steal lunches,” Luganov says.

“I put rat poison in mine, and told everyone else to do the same. You need some?”

“No,” Yakov says, shaking. “Why would you do something like that?”

Luganov barks a laugh. “I figured, rat poison would work even on winged rats, no?”

The door closes, and Yakov sits on his chair, his face in his hands. Poisoned. No doubt, the crows blame him. He prays that they would come back tomorrow, so he can explain.

The crows come the next day, just eleven of them. They start their patrol.

“No,” Yakov screams from his window. “No! It’s poisoned!” They either do not hear, or choose to ignore him.

Yakov throws the window open and waves his arms. He makes so much noise that heads appear in the windows above and below him. He calls to the crows, imploring, warning, and apologizing. They don’t seem to care.

Yakov climbs onto the high windowsill and stands there for a moment, his knees trembling under him. “It’s poison,” he calls again in a breathless voice. “Leave it alone! They’re trying to kill you!”

He steps out on the ledge. The heads in the windows gape and gasp, and disappear. He hears footsteps in the hallway— his coworkers running to intercept him, to drag him inside, to silence him. Yakov will not submit to that; he has been silenced before, but he won’t let it happen again. He takes a step along the ledge, his arms still waving, his voice growing hoarse.