Mesopotamia Read online

  Marat’s mom and his dad, Alec, sat on opposite sides of the table, as if they were strangers. His dad kept quiet, while his mom was going on about the salads, making everybody wish she’d keep quiet, too. I sat there, only occasionally contributing to the conversation, trying to remember the good times. I put on a mournful face whenever I turned to talk to the mother of the departed, and I could feel moisture rising from the river, high enough to reach our old neighborhoods, thickly planted with trees and densely covered with gates, towers, and communal apartments. Sem and Marat’s uncle Sasha had hung some heavy lamps on the apple branches, running long cords across the yard from the garage, and the yellow electricity mixed with the white blossoms and blanketed us in shadows. Once the sun had set, all the guests started saying their goodbyes, planning their next get-­togethers, sighing, exchanging kisses and promises to be there for one another and lend a helping hand, then stepping through the gate, back to life.

  The neighbors—the two women between whose wide hips I was nestled and the skinny one that Kostyk had been edging off her seat—were the first to leave, carrying their stools like Christmas presents. Blind-­as-­a-­bat Zurab was next. Nobody had invited him in the first place, and he obviously wasn’t in any hurry to get home; he lived in a metal shoe-­repair shack on Revolution Street, packed with soles and boot leather. It was pitch black in there, not that he needed any light. He had some freakish talent for fixing shoes. Clearly, nobody was waiting up for him, but he decided to call it a night anyway. Maria, somebody’s distant relative who had a deep voice and a once-­elaborate hairdo that was now a frizzy mess, left after him. She sold vegetables at a stand on top of the hill, by the Revenue Service building. She was close to Marat’s family; she had cried openly—hers had probably been the only genuine tears shed at his funeral. Her son Mark accompanied her in his white overalls with yellow paint stains. He left because he had to get back to the furniture-­repair shop on Darwin Street to repaint a set of plywood shelves a couple of Armenians had brought in, to make them look brand-­new . . . and Polish-­made. Zhora, who was doing a trainee program at a pharmacy, was the next to go. He worked the night shift; when he got off, he’d raid the beer kiosks on Pushkin Street, pulling the clerks out of their murky morning slumber and demanding their attention and sympathy. The terror of our neighborhood’s 24-­hour convenience stores left, telling everyone to enjoy the rest of their night—he sure would. Tamara, our exhausted yet unstoppable homeroom teacher, left after him, taking a piece of pie with her, wrapped up in tabloid journalism. We were all tired of engaging her, so we just had to listen to her rambling, nodding in agreement and not bothering to interject with anything. Clearly bored by this one-­sided conversation, she thanked Marat’s parents curtly and disappeared, floating through the gate like a ghost. Then Pasha Chingachgook and his lady, Margarita, headed out. Marat had called them his brother and sister-­in-­law, but his wife didn’t have any siblings, so it wasn’t clear how they could be related. Pasha walked with a limp due to an old motocross injury; i.e., he stole someone’s scooter and crashed it. Sometimes it seemed as though Margarita had a limp, too. Maybe it was because she was always walking arm-­in-­arm with Pasha, trying to adjust to his wobbly gait. They went on their way, like two merry sailors who had been discharged as unfit for service. Bob Koshkin and Sasha Tsoy, two guys who were part of our neighborhood gang despite being a bit younger than us, rose to their feet laboriously and slipped into the darkness. Koshkin had been weeping and pouring himself drink after drink because he was about to leave for Philadelphia. His dad’s relatives, who had gotten stuck there back in the nineties, hadn’t been responding to any of his family’s letters, so Koshkin’s dad, who went to synagogue regularly, decided he’d had enough of their nonsense. He figured he would send his only son to find out where the hell they got off ignoring him. Koshkin had even bought a cowboy hat with Hutsul embroidery patterns running around the band, which he figured would help him blend in with the locals. This was pretty much going to be his first time venturing out of his parents’ home, if you don’t count Pioneer camp—­Koshkin’s dad worked there, so when the summer session rolled around, Koshkin Jr. would feel like a repeat offender doing some more time in the can, where he would be greeted by the guards’ friendly, familiar faces. Sasha had been itching to leave for quite a while; he was planning on going to a poetry group at some hip café, but he didn’t want to admit he was into poetry, so he just sat there anxiously. Sasha was the son of a Korean student who washed up in Kharkiv in the early eighties. He didn’t really get along with his father, so he kept his distance, living on his own and writing lofty philosophical poems. He rubbed some people the wrong way, so he was always getting into fights with poets he didn’t know; he usually got his ass kicked, but that never seemed to get to him. Alla the Alligator took off after a while—we just didn’t want to let her go; she wasn’t dying to get out of there or anything, but she had to get up early, punch in at the TB clinic, check up on her patients—all that stuff. She was probably the one who was happiest to see all of us; she kept reminiscing—telling old stories and improvising when she got to the parts nobody could remember anymore. She shared her plans for the future with us, assuring everyone that her wild days were over now that Maria had gotten her a nursing job. Now she had a new and exciting life—the only problem was that patients kept dying on her. The electric light made the soft wrinkles under her eyes quiver; her dyed blond hair seemed bright with sparks in the twilight, and when she hovered over the table to whisper warm words of gratitude into someone’s ear it would hang down into their wineglasses, turning it pink and damp. She was bouncing off the walls, blabbing away all evening, acting like this was her birthday party, and demanding everyone mark the occasion by drinking deeply and speaking kindly. She eventually had to get going, though. The closer she got to the gate and the deeper she stepped into the darkness pooling in the yard, the thicker the gloom hanging above her head became—it was as if, over there, out of reach of the yellow lamps, where the light dropped off, she had to breathe ash and clay and speak with the dead souls hiding out inside that clay. I watched her slide out the gate and suddenly remembered that she was the first woman Marat slept with—that’s just how it played out. Well, she was Benia’s first, too. And Kostyk’s, obviously. And Sem’s, for those keeping score. And if you really need to know, she was mine, too.

  Then Rustam’s lady friends headed out, holding hands—Kira, the older one, was annoyed at Olia, because she’d drunk too much, yet again. Olia was patting Kira on the back, giving her goose bumps, and making her shoulder blades ring in the cold. She was tearing up. We were all tearing up; frigid laughter was smashing up against our teeth, and we suddenly realized that everybody else had left. It was just Marat’s family and us, like back in the good old days, when we’d all get together at Marat’s place for birthdays or family gatherings. I thought about how we’d mostly come together on holidays, which might account for my oddly festive mood—I had this feeling that any moment now fireworks would soar over the neighbors’ roofs, tinted gold and lilac by the evening sun that was still shining brightly atop the hill. But down in Marat’s neighborhood, everything had burned out and the May air had cooled off. We started getting ready to leave, but Sasha asked us to stick around. He’d made the long haul out here just for Marat’s wake, so he was planning on spending the night. He didn’t feel like going to bed yet, and he felt even less like letting us leave.

  “This won’t do,” he said in a serious tone. “This isn’t how it’s done. We can’t just up and leave. We have to sit together and remember the departed. Otherwise his soul won’t be at peace.”

  Sasha’s words grounded us and we all started chattering at the same time.

  “Well, obviously, come on. We’ll stick around, Sasha . . .”

  “We’re not going anywhere . . .”

  “It’s not like we have anywhere to go.”

  “Nobody’s waiting up for us . . .”

  Marat’s
parents sighed heavily, but didn’t object. They just said they’d be turning in for the night, because Alec’s kidneys had been aching all day and his wife had to catch the evening news—it was as though she was expecting something big to happen. So they let us stay outside, asking Alina, Marat’s wife, to bring us some food from the kitchen. Alina got right to it without saying a word. It was only now, after everyone else had gone home and the neighborhood had grown quiet and empty, that we became aware of her presence. Only now did we start paying any attention to her, even though she’d been floating around all evening—carrying things in and out of the house, putting up with the neighbors’ weeping, writing down their baked carp recipes, calling Pasha and Margarita a taxi, and kissing everyone goodbye. Yet she seemed somehow solitary, displaced from the conversation, out there in the dark, on the other side of the perimeter of light the lamps threw on the ground. I had just noticed that she had a different haircut; it was short now. She kept trying to tuck her hair back, out of habit, because it always used to fall in front of her eyes. She was wearing a short black dress, black stockings, and sandals. All the people around here dressed casually, like they were heading out to the beach. The dress made the lines of her body slimmer, and the sandals made her footsteps inaudible. She hadn’t taken off her wedding ring, and she never wore any other jewelry. Her hair was dark, as was her skin; it seemed that she would dissolve into the evening air any moment now. I felt bad about how we were acting. We were always nice to her, despite all the stuff Marat had told us; nobody treated her with disrespect, and I have to say that she returned the favor by being patient with us and putting up with our antics, even though we didn’t always deserve it. Back in the day, when Marat introduced us to her, he was very firm with her, saying that we were his friends and she needed to be nice to us. She remembered that. She remembered every little thing Marat said. We’d forgotten all about her, though. Now our crew had finally started paying attention to Alina—probably a little too much attention, I realized. Benia darted after her into the kitchen, carrying some plates and dropping them along the way. Kostyk bolted to clear the table, mercilessly knocking the dirty dishes to the ground; Sem even pulled Rustam under the lamplight, though that didn’t stop him from shouting threats about some fixed-­rate mortgage plan or other into his phone. After everyone regrouped, Sasha tried to restore order.

  He said something strange. He said that this was Marat’s last night with us, so we absolutely had to say all kinds of nice things about him. Otherwise he would stick around. We went along with it—we even worked ourselves into a kind of frenzy when we started trying to remember some stories, but we couldn’t produce anything coherent—we just kept on interrupting each other, yelling and arguing. Then Sasha told everyone to pipe down. Silence ensued, and I saw cold, sticky fog crawling through the gate into the yard. It was rising up from a black riverbed that the sun hadn’t managed to scorch dry yet, as it does in summer. This weird feeling crept up on me—and everyone else too. It was beginning to dawn on us what Sasha had been warning us about as he sat hunched over the table, using his phone as a flashlight every time another round was called for—he was warning us that Marat was somewhere nearby, standing behind our backs, and that he wouldn’t be leaving until we spoke the words he needed to hear. It wasn’t a very pleasant feeling—­straining to hear your dead friend’s breath right behind you in the dark. Death had interrupted him in the middle of a sentence, and I knew so many unflattering stories about him that it’d be much easier for him to choke me to death than trust me to keep his secrets to myself. Somebody touched my shoulder softly. I shuddered and whipped around—Alina was standing there, smiling sheepishly and handing me some napkins. I cracked a smile too and grabbed at those damn napkins, but they slipped between my nervous fingers. I cursed and bent over to grab them, banging my head on the table on the way back up, which brought everyone out of whatever trance they’d fallen into. Once again, everyone started jabbering at the same time; Benia was the loudest, so everybody started listening to him. Alina stopped dead in her tracks behind me, listening hard, which clearly threw Benia for a loop—he tensed up. He was struggling, trying not to say anything that might offend the widow. He was looking us all straight in the eye, as though he was asking for our support and sympathy. He seemed to be saying, “Well, you know what I mean, back me up here, guys. You were there, you know that’s how it went down, you can vouch for me.” We backed him up. We vouched for him. Alina stood there for a bit, leaned against the table, picked up some empty, lipstick-­stained glasses; it seemed like she wanted to head to the house, but something was holding her back. Something was compelling her to keep listening to Benia’s story, which kept breaking off and starting from somewhere else. The fog was closing in on us, quietly and inexorably approaching her warm, dusky body.

  “Lemme tell ya,” Benia said, standing there under the lamp, holding a shot glass in his hand like he was proposing a toast. His speech was primarily directed at Sasha, whom the twilight was making ever more dark, sharp-­nosed, and opaque. “The thing I liked the most about Marat was his manly ways.”

  His eyes shifted from person to person, waiting for our approval. But we didn’t really see what he was getting at, so Benia turned to Sasha once again.

  “I just wanted to say that Marat was always mature and responsible, just like a real man oughta be.”

  Everyone agreed with him, and Benia continued, “We all went to the same school, didn’t we? We were all in the same class, weren’t we? When Marat went out for the boxing team, I went along with him.”

  “Me too,” Kostyk added.

  “So did I,” Sem and I chimed in together.

  “Yeah, but we got cut. I know that down in the Caucasus, where you’re from, every other guy is a boxer,” he said, turning to Sasha. “Or a sambo wrestler.”

  “Or a mountaineer,” Kostyk interjected, apropos of nothing.

  “But Marat was a real fighter,” Benia said, moving on and paying no mind to Kostyk. “No drugs or partying for him. He never missed a practice, even after he started dating Alina,” he stated, now turning to her.

  “Yep, that’s right!” We all shouted to verify his claim.

  Alina tensed up, the empty wineglasses in her hands clinking together. Everyone got quiet all of a sudden.

  “Now I’m gonna tell you a story. You might not know this one,” Benia said, pausing to catch his breath.

  Then he started. According to Benia, Marat got his first pair of boxing gloves from his dad, before he could even stand up straight. In other words, Marat learned to honor his father and his mother, then to box, and only then did he get around to taking his first steps. He was an inspired and determined athlete, ready to box anytime, anywhere. The way Benia told it, Marat’s fists knocked his rivals into oblivion, bringing his athletic club victory and glory. The coaches recognized his talent immediately, recruiting him without asking how old he was, where he went to school, or what his religious affiliation was. But they really should have, Benia stated gravely, because Marat’s religion was a matter of great pride for him. He always had the holy relics which Benia had gotten for him in Sinai on his person, though nobody had ever actually seen them, since bringing relics into the ring during a match is strictly prohibited by the Olympic Committee. Moreover, Marat said namaz without fail, observed the Sabbath on Fridays, abstained from eating meat, and paid the tithe to the church. Benia didn’t specify which church, deciding to stick to cold, hard, verifiable facts. Obviously, Marat’s coaches realized they had a genuine prodigy moving up through their program, a boy who lit up their drab, pointless existence. They’d gotten really lucky with Marat, so they clung to him like he was all they had left, which made perfect sense. Who wouldn’t want to mold a future Olympic champion? They all did, so they were going to make him a champion, whatever it took. Marat knew they wanted the best for him, so every time the clubs from his native Caucasus tried to lure him back there, he’d always say that he was trained here in Kharkiv and
this was where he’d make a name for himself. Ambition gives you strength and stamina. Marat’s painstaking efforts and grueling workouts, combined with setting clear goals, simply had to produce top results. Marat made the transformation from some unremarkable Chechen boy into Kharkiv’s most promising sports star.