Mesopotamia Page 9

  “What are you doing out here?” she shouted at the kid. “What the hell? I’m sick of your crap!”

  The kid slouched against the wall, next to me—we looked like we were facing a firing squad together.

  “I’m talking to you! Aren’t you even listening?”

  “Don’t yell at him,” I said.

  “Butt out. What were you doing out here, huh? What the hell?”

  “I said don’t yell at him.”

  “Who do you think you are?” She turned toward me. “Since when do you tell me what to do?”

  “Hey, go back inside, keep partying with those guys if that’s what you’re into. Go fuck their brains out, every last one of them, for all I care. Just don’t yell at the kid, got it?”

  “What did you say to me?”

  She held a long pause, then splayed icy fingers whacked me right across the face. After that, she yanked the kid away and dragged him over to the bar. I darted after them, but the door was shut. I pulled it toward me, then rammed my shoulder into it, and finally pounded on it with my busted-­up fists for a while. Of course, I could have just gone to the other entrance, but what the hell would’ve been the point of that? “What the hell?” Dasha’s words echoed. I trudged home, went up to my apartment, threw my dirty clothes away, and packed my things, leaving my sunglasses on the table and walking back down the stairs. “I’ll spend the night at the train station,” I thought.

  Everything I knew about this city, I’d learned from her. She was the one who told me all those farfetched stories, talking loudly and with conviction, listing names and places, recalling dates, drawing pictures in the sand with the sharp tips of her high heels to show me where the rivers flow and where they dry up. She told me about the city’s fortifications and underground passageways, about the metal dragons that breathe fire in the dark caves of the trolley depots, and the impenetrable shells protecting the fierce animals that hide out in sandy burrows around the reservoir. She told me about the models of flying factories and engines of mass destruction manufactured by children at the Young Pioneer centers, mentioning something about fertile soccer fields and their strange plants that help you sleep and improve your memory, whispering jumbled rumors about the Polytechnic Institute’s secret labs that loom unreachably on the horizon, the research institutions that have been trying to produce an elixir of youth for a good hundred years now, and the shortest trolley lines of all, the ones that run right through the city’s apartment blocks. She mentioned something about the cold steel weapons cranked out by old factories, the trees plastering the sky in the summertime, and the fact that you couldn’t see the moon or stars at night. That’s why some people say there are witches living around here, and they’re right, she declared. Things are just dandy for them, because Kharkiv is a pretty livable city—that’s why people who have drowned or hanged themselves wind up here, floating down the rivers, penetrating the city through its train stations, multiplying, and improving the country’s demographic situation. But in the winter, the moon hangs right outside your window—just reach out and grab it—it looks like cheese molded from clay and grass. She said it was easy to endure the long winters in the city because the factories always warm up the morning air. Come spring, thaw water erodes the foundations of old health resorts in the suburbs, the rivers run red and smell like medicine, so the smell of spring is ammonium chloride. She said they were shooting people in the streets, that there was still a war going on, and nobody was planning on surrendering. It will all keep going as long as we keep loving one another, she explained, as if offering a hint she expected me to pick up. There’s enough love to go around. I didn’t get what she meant by that.

  JOHN

  The moment just before waking was long enough for Sonia to have a dream. It was short and unsettling. She saw a river and ships sailing up it—old and rusty, with yellow water-­stained sides and black ash-­stained funnels. They halted in the middle, their horns wailing despairingly. Sailors—tired and unshaven, which made them even more decisive and belligerent—were jumping over the side, swimming ashore, trudging onto the sand in their heavy clothes and worn-­out shoes, walking along a quay, glancing angrily at the ships whose horns were blaring so loudly that she finally woke up. “Well, all-­righty then,” she thought. “We’re gonna have a lot of guests today.”

  Everybody else in the house was still sleeping. She quietly slipped out from under the covers. The nights were warm, and they slept completely naked. She liked that, and she liked waking up and finding the room just the way it ought to be—everything felt light and exposed. He was a deep and still sleeper; his head faced east all night. “He sleeps like a Sunni,” Sonia thought, putting on a T-­shirt and stepping into the hallway. His relatives were sleeping in the living room. Yesterday she tried to learn all their names, but she couldn’t keep them straight, it was utterly hopeless; they all stuck together, sleeping side by side like pilgrims and upholding a defined family code and set of hierarchical principles. Three guys were squished together on the couch, and somebody’s nephew—a timid, chubby kid—was wedged hopelessly between his elders, like a bobsledder. The women were lying on camel-­wool rugs spread across the floor. The men hadn’t gotten undressed before bed; they were sleeping in their Sunday best—one of them hadn’t even bothered to undo his tie, probably to avoid the hassle of tying it again in the morning. The women slept in warm robes, with the slippers they’d brought along with them from home by their heads. They turned in early, slept soundly, and didn’t scream in their sleep. Sonia suddenly realized that she had nothing on but the T-­shirt, so she shut the door softly. Her uncle Hrysha was sleeping like a real champ on the pull-­out bed in one of the children’s rooms. Sheets in disarray, he was frozen in some ludicrous position, his head buried under a pillow, left arm crushed by his skinny hips and right arm dangling somewhere under the bed. His blanket was lying on the floor, like a paratrooper’s chute abandoned on the ground, the sheets were drooping like a flag torn off the enemy’s headquarters, and his dentures were suspended in a glass of water on a chair by the bed. At night, she’d heard Uncle Hrysha tossing and turning like a sinner on the devil’s roasting spit, moaning, whimpering, jerking to his feet occasionally to grab the glass with his dentures in it and gulping greedily, gargling, then spitting the water out again. He’d calmed down by the early morning, his blue lips whistling some obscure melody from the dreams of sleepwalkers. Sonia went into the bathroom and locked the door, took off her shirt, stepped into the tub, and turned on the hot water. “I have some time while they’re all still sleeping,” she thought.

  The water touched her skin, making it warm and receptive. “I could use some tenderness,” Sonia thought. “I could use sex and a nice cup of coffee, with milk.” She bumped into Senia as she was stepping into the hallway. He must have felt that she was gone and gotten up to search for her. He’d been standing outside the door, waiting for her to finish, and now he shoved her back into the bathroom as soon as the door opened, pulling at her shirt. “Perfect timing,” Sonia thought, giving him a hand with it. But as soon as he had gotten her propped up just right on the edge of the tub, holding her up with one hand and pulling his own shirt off with the other, somebody knocked tentatively on the door. They’d forgotten to lock it, so they stopped—Sonia listened hard, and he started grinding his teeth. Another knock.

  “Damn,” he hissed, releasing Sonia, tossing her the shirt, and opening the door. Looking even chubbier and more dazed after a good night’s sleep, the nephew stood there in a women’s nightshirt and blue sweatpants, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. Sonia had managed to cover up a bit by putting the T-­shirt on her lap. But Senia just had one hand over his private parts; the nephew stared intently at him, clearly frightened and anxiously tapping his feet. Nobody said a word for a little while, but then he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “The toilet’s next door, it’s just the tub in here,” he said forcefully, leaning out into the hallway, flipping on the li
ght for the other room, fading back into the darkness, and shutting the door.

  He tried grabbing her shirt again, but Sonia pushed his hand back firmly, pulled the shirt back on, and headed toward the kitchen. He stayed put. Sonia thought he’d been a little too rough with her when the kid started banging on the door, and he had thrown her the T-­shirt too hard, as though he was trying to get rid of her. None of this felt like it was supposed to, but did it really matter? Nope, not one bit. Her wedding dress hung from a light fixture in the kitchen. Sonia got started on the coffee. “It’s going to be a long day . . . and a fun one too,” she added.

  Their relatives seemed to all get up at the same time. Maybe his nephew had come back and spread the good news—the bride and groom were already up and about, so everyone should get moving and start this glorious day the Lord had given us. Or maybe Uncle Hrysha had struck a particularly high note and woken everybody up. Either way, no sooner had she slipped back into her room with her cup of coffee than stomps and voices started bouncing off the hallway walls. The men were shaving—all three at the same time, crammed into the bathroom, backing the boy up against the washing machine, not that he wanted to leave; male behavior is driven by the need for a sense of collectivity, so he just watched the grown-­ups nick their skin with disposable razors, shedding their first drops of morning blood, wincing but not griping about it. The women were raising a great commotion in the kitchen, circling around the dress, throwing up their hands in despair.

  “The dress is too short.”

  “We don’t have enough time.”

  “It just can’t be done. And what can be done just won’t do.”

  They started frying and chopping; the smell of meat and sun filled the apartment. Uncle Hrysha, wearing a pair of long boxer shorts adorned with all sorts of white flowers, slouched out of his room, holding an ironing board under his arm, looking like a surfer heading out to the beach in the morning to conquer some big waves. Sonia was sitting in her room, looking out the window and drinking her coffee, which was cooling off all too quickly. She hadn’t even gotten dressed by the time Senia came back.

  “Ya nervous?”

  “Sure am. It’s like the first time all over again.”

  His face turned sour, even though she was just telling it like it was. At thirty-­two, he was getting married for the first time, while she, at thirty-­four, suspected this was her last try.

  “Look, Senia,” she said, turning toward him, “maybe we should just bag the whole thing. I’ll make some omelets; we’ll feed your relatives, and we’ll send ’em on their way. Godspeed!”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me! They’ll disown me if we don’t get married. You think today’s about us? Come on, it’s like they’re the ones tying the knot.”

  “All right. Then let’s go tie it already.”

  They all got ready very quickly, taking just the essentials, pulling his nephew, who had got it in his head that he needed a bath, out of the tub, and spilling out of the apartment. Senia was wearing a black suit, and his hair was gelled back; his relatives hadn’t let him brush his teeth, so he stuck some gum in his mouth and started chewing angrily. She was in her wedding dress and white sneakers, carrying her light, high-­heeled sandals in her hand.

  “You’re gonna go like that?” Senia asked, surprised.

  “It’s not like I’m gonna wear heels all damn day,” Sonia answered.

  After she’d seen everyone out, she turned off the lights and locked the door. The apartment where they lived was hers. She paid the electric bill, too. They went outside and started cramming themselves into a taxi. Those who didn’t fit piled into a yellow Ford. Sonia put her heels in the trunk and sat down in the driver’s seat. The Ford was hers, too.

  She didn’t want to get married—they’d already been living together just fine for a while, she figured if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. But all of Senia’s many relations started getting on his case. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses who would ride into town every weekend to go to church with all their kids and grandkids, wearing their freshly laundered dresses and suits. They looked like people who had managed to grab their best clothes before fleeing from their burning house. Their church services were held at an old building in town that was originally supposed to be a kind of combination cinema and concert hall, but there hadn’t been any movies there for a while, let alone concerts. Senia would take his relations out to lunch afterward, just like the locals did. The men in town respected him and the women loved him. Everybody wanted the best for him. Everybody was constantly talking about Sonia, urging him to marry her. Senia lived in her apartment, she drove him to the metro every morning (just two blocks away, but it was uphill) and bought him cigarettes. Nevertheless, he started playing hardball with her, which really rubbed her the wrong way.

  “You know, we’ve been living together for almost a year,” Sonia said. “What else do you want from me? What’s getting married gonna change?”

  “Nothing at all, but my family’s getting all worked up over this.”

  “Well, tell ’em not to.”

  But Senia kept insisting, and she gave in eventually, much to her own surprise . . . and his.

  “All right, you’re gonna get your wedding,” she said. “But don’t push it, my love has limits.”

  She rented out the Uzbek restaurant down by the river from the Tatars who owned it and tracked down one of her old classmates who now worked as a master of ceremonies at wedding parties. He didn’t recognize her. “That’s probably for the best,” Sonia thought. She ordered a dress, gave her friends fair warning, and told them they were having an Italian-­style wedding—meaning everyone should come dressed like they were in the Sicilian mafia. “Let’s see them pull that off!” she thought, quite pleased with herself.

  An odd bunch of people showed up for the wedding. They stuck around, too, which made things even worse. Sonia stood in the middle of the crowd, still in her white sneakers and matching dress, trying to figure out which of them she knew. Or which of them knew her, at least. Her whole office was there, including Dasha from the legal department, teary-­eyed and exhausted, with her older and younger sons in tow. The little guy was probably the only one who was actually dressed for the occasion—he was wearing his school uniform and glaring at everything and everyone; yeah, he could pull off the role of a pint-­sized gangster—though the boss apparently wasn’t sending much money his way these days. He was wearing a heavy mechanical watch, which he’d probably stripped from the corpse of some debtor whose business the family had been “protecting.” Their neighbor John was there to offer his best wishes, looking subdued as always and a little older than before. He glanced at Senia’s hair scornfully, but refrained from making any comment. Some wacko in a cowboy costume had just crashed the party—from afar, he reminded her of Celentano—though that had more to do with his temperament than how he looked. Sonia didn’t know him, but that didn’t stop him from taking it upon himself to post up by the entrance and greet everyone as they arrived. Then a bunch of neighbors, school friends, and business partners started pouring in. Most of them knew what the bride liked and had a good idea of what to get her—after all, it wasn’t her first time getting hitched, so everybody had kinda gotten used to it by now. A pack of Senia’s grumpy relatives were walking around, not quite sure what to do with themselves. His nephew was the worst, he was really making a scene, knocking appetizer trays off the table and smoking with the Tatar guys. Then he crashed into the fountain, and who didn’t see that coming? “And he’s only ten,” Sonia thought, thoroughly impressed. “He’s barely gotten started and he’s already a terror.” The only relative she’d invited was her uncle Hrysha, who regarded himself as her godfather, for some reason, which helped give the festivities an Italian flair. “Whatever. Let him have it,” Sonia thought. “He’d better head home after the wedding, though, I can’t take him screaming in the middle of the night anymore.” The rest of her relatives were either dead or off the radar. Her godfat
her more than made up for their absence, though—he was hitting on the women from the legal department, putting his skinny, yellow hands on their soft, supple thighs, pounding champagne, and occasionally taking out his dentures to clean them with wet wipes. Senia had invited his whole soccer team, too, at least the regular roster. They’d spent the last three years defending the honor of a local chain of hardware stores. The team had been on a real roll. They were always near the top of the leaderboard, so the players kept dropping hints—“Come on, Mr. Abramovich (he was the owner), if you spend some real money on us we’ll win a corporate championship for you. It’s all in our hands—well, not our hands . . . you know what I mean!” But Mr. Abramovich had his own plans; in winter, at the start of the second half of the season, he announced that the team had been disbanded. He’d gotten into some tussle with city hall and had a falling out with his guys in Kyiv, so he sold all his stores, bought a hotel in Egypt, and left for Africa to spend his days by the pool, counting camels as they went by. This was a huge blow for the team—they weren’t interested in much of anything besides soccer, so they had no real skills. Nobody knew what to do next. Some of them got jobs, others went back to school, and a few of them, including Senia, were too down in the dumps to do anything. They all came to the wedding, though. Nobody adhered to the dress code, obviously (“Senia, don’t be a fuckin’ show off with that mafia shit”); however, they were all sporting sunglasses to go with their warm-­ups. They said that was the look down in Sicily. Sania, their right wing, went to Sicily last Christmas; that’s how all the Ukrainians there looked—Adidas gear, sandals, and black sunglasses. Just like the real mafia. They were apprehensive about all this wedding business, but they liked Sonia—her dark-­red hair, warm lips, icy fingers, tan skin, slight, athletic build, lean legs, and expensive sneakers. They wouldn’t have minded all banging her right there by the fountain, if they could. She wouldn’t have batted an eye if they’d gone for it, either.