The Great Glass Sea (28 page)

“You didn’t drink,” Volodya said.

Fedya reached out and shook the thermos, shaking Dima’s hand with it. The liquid left made a small sloshing sound.

“You have to drink,” Vika said, “or it won’t come true.”

“I’m sorry,” Dima said, but Fedya was already lifting the thermos to Dima’s mouth and Volodya was saying, “Not just for you, for us, too” and Vika was reaching over the table, her smile widening, her hand hunting for Dima’s face while she asked, laughing, “Do you want me to hold your nose? Should I pinch your nose for you?” until he shook his head free of her fingers and the thermos free of Fedya’s pushing and drank it all down himself. It wasn’t until after he had swallowed, after the feeling of Vika’s fingers on his nose had evaporated with the steam against his face, in the fluttery rustle of the others all clapping quietly with their fingers on their palms, that he realized what the inside of the thermos smelled like. That was when the first cramp hit.

“I think,” Fedya said, “he’s starting to feel sick.”

“It’s OK,” Vika said.

“Why”—Dima’s stomach clenched—“would I be feeling sick?”

“We’re all feeling a little sick,” she said. Dima was surprised to find her hands on top of his again, and when he looked at their faces, she was right; they did look sick: Fedya was bent over the table, breathing slowly in and out; Volodya had shut his eyes.

Gently, Vika’s fingers stroked the back of his. “It’s just the mushrooms,” she told him. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

But a few minutes later he was lying on his back in the aisle between the booths, staring up at the three faces peering down. In their mouths the butts of cigarettes glowed. Smoke curled around, drifted above. He watched it crawl the curve of the ceiling, felt it cling to the inside of his throat, thought he was going to throw up. As if they thought so, too, their bodies unbent, their faces retreated. Except for Vika’s. She crouched down, held her cigarette out.

He shook his head. As he should have done, he knew, that first time she’d held the damp end of her stub up for him. Knew it and yet still wanted to take the paper between his lips, let the smoke soothe his churning stomach. She was right: it must just be the mushrooms. Making him feel strange, his insides unfamiliar, his thoughts cast loose. All his life he’d guarded against just this thing—her, them, the allure of friends, the female touch—all he’d known would only separate him from his brother.

Around him, Dima could hear the others rustling, the clanks of the cups, squeak of the thermos top being screwed on.
Just that,
he told himself again,
just the drink.
Except—one of those loosed thoughts floating in—hadn’t he felt it before he’d ever touched a drop?

Vika stood, blew out a cloud of smoke, squinted through it at the others. “I don’t think he’s gonna be able to walk.”

From over by the booth, he heard Volodya’s chuckle, Fedya’s
fuck
, tried to sit up. His head went woozy.

“Nope,” Vika said, “I don’t think he’s walking.”

“Where?” he managed to ask. “Where are you going?”

And Volodya’s hairy face was suddenly in his. “Why?” The blond beard bunched with the big man’s smile. “You want to go?”

“No.”

“You want to stay here?” Her face was blocked behind Volodya, but when Vika said, “I didn’t think so,” Dima could hear the smile. Then, the smile gone: “It’s time.”

“Time for what?” Dima asked her legs as they stepped by.

“Sorry, Mr. Boss-man,” she said, “I don’t wear a watch.”

“Time for what?” he asked the fat man.

“Time for you to hold on, you vagabond.” Volodya lifted Dima farther up, folded him over his shoulder, said, “And don’t barf down my butt.” And then Dima was in the air, legs dangling, head hanging behind the big man’s back. He tried to struggle, shoving weakly at the shoulders, using his knees, until Volodya simply turned a little and, swinging him against a booth, whacked his head. It was a soft booth, but not as soft as his head; Dima could feel the dent it made in his skull, could feel it filling back in like foam finding its shape. That seemed strange enough he just lay still, let Volodya adjust him on his wide shoulder, watched the aisle unwind as they went out.

Out into the cool air cleared of smoke. Dima could taste its cleanness. It went through him like a gulp of ice water—he could feel it cool his stomach, his innards—and he drank it in while Volodya, holding to the railings, stepped backwards down the small metal stairs. Facing the gravel below, Dima could see each sharp shape of each rock. He could feel their gravity pulling at him, pulling as the big man dropped. He shut his eyes, clenched his teeth against the jolt to his gut. But when it came, it felt good: the huge soft shoulder shoving into him, all the bad air gushing out. It occurred to him he should have thrown up. Then it occurred to him he no longer had to.

“Where are you taking me?” he said into the broad back.

“Shh,” Volodya said. And in a half-whisper, “You’re like a child.” He pinched his voice: “‘How much longer? How much longer?’”

Dima thought he heard, over the footsteps in the gravel, the big man chuckling.

“I should spank you,” Volodya said.

And Dima told himself it wasn’t funny, he knew it wasn’t funny, and yet he
felt
it was, and he knew that was bad, knew that
that
was what was replacing the sickness in his stomach.

“I should let Vika spank you,” Volodya said. “She would like that.”

Which was definitely not funny. Which was what was wrong with him in the first place. He tried to make himself feel it, bunched his brow, clenched his jaw, as if with the muscles of his face he could keep the resolve he’d found lying on the railcar’s floor from seeping out, but it was gone, evanesced alongside the nausea, smoothed out with the soothing of the cramps, and trying to fake it all he felt was silly. No: what he’d felt before was the truth.
This
was false. For the fact was he was being carried on the shoulder of a man who’d just a short while ago been choking him—that was the fact.

“Vika, come!” Volodya called in a whisper cranked up for distance. “I have his ass here waiting . . .”

And as the man’s words dissolved in giggles, Dima could feel them burbling off the shoulder like bubbles blown in water, could feel them against the skin of his stomach, rolling up it, tickling—and it felt good, that was a fact, too—and he lay there jouncing with each step, trying to keep his own laughter from shaking out of his nose.

“Mister Boss-man!” Volodya said, like it was a joke, and they both laughed like it was a joke, and it wasn’t, Dima knew that.

“It’s not funny,” he told the fat man.

“I know,” Volodya said. “You want to hear something funny?”

“No,” Dima told him.

“Then I’ll tell you something sad.”

“No,” Dima said again. “Tell me where we’re going.”

“Listen,” the fat man shushed him, “there once was a time when there weren’t any watches.” He giggled. “Sad,” he said, as if to scold himself. “Imagine: not in anybody’s pocket. Not dangling from any chain. Not even clocks. Nothing. A time before the time of time. Think about that.”

Dima told himself to keep his mind, instead, on where he was being carried. “Volodya—”

“Do you know when the first clock was made?”

“Vladimir Vyacheslavovich—”

“The fourteenth century. Do you know who made it?”

“Where are we—”

“Bosses,” Volodya said. “In the very first factories. You know what they called their new timekeeping things?”

Dima tried to not think about it, and in his trying not to began to, and suddenly it seemed important that he answer, but all he could think was
a time before the time of time, a time before the time of time
, the phrase afloat in his brain.

“
Werkglocken
,” Volodya said. “Made from—”

“A time,” Dima said, “before the time of time.”

The fat man puffed a wet laugh. “Nooo . . .” he said. “From bells.” And with one big hand he whapped at one of Dima’s dangling feet. “Bong! Time to get to work. Bong! To take a break. Bong! Better get home.”

They were giggling again. “This isn’t supposed to be funny,” Dima said.

“Listen!” Volodya scolded him. “Before the Werkglocken, there was just the sun—goes up, goes down—sometimes later, sometimes earlier, and everybody knows when it’s up and everybody knows when it’s down, and nobody can say it’s an inch past sunrise without it sure as hell being an inch past sunrise. Do you see?”

Dima nodded behind Volodya’s back.

“They couldn’t control the sun,” the fat man said, “so they replaced it. Made time something that wasn’t ours. Something that was spent. Not just passed, but
spent.
To spend time. That’s when they started saying it.”

“To spend time.” In Dima’s ears it sounded more sad than he could understand.

“Yes,” Volodya said. “And what can be spent can be bought. Owned. They made time into something they could
own
.”

A time before the end of time
, Dima thought, and it sounded even sadder. Hanging there, head flopping, he watched the gravel go by a meter below his face, and it struck him for the first time in years how strange the mirror-light was—the actual light, hazy and harsh, blanched and clear—and he thought,
A dark before the end of dark
. He thought,
An us before the end of us.
He shut his eyes.

Quietly, slowly, his words shaking with Volodya’s steps, he said, “Where are you taking me?”

And Volodya told him, “Home.”

He thought of Yarik, then, walking away from the tram earlier that day, burdened by the plastic bags, and he could feel their weight, feel each jolt in his own sack of a body, each step thudding against the inside of his skull. His head seemed impossibly heavy.

Into it came the sound of footsteps, and then the tips of the feet flicked into his sight, one canvas shoe, the other, the first again, mesmerizing. Until he tilted his neck up, looked behind, and saw her, saw himself bent over Volodya’s shoulder, butt in the air, and, shoving at the small of the man’s back, he grunted, “Let me down.”

It felt good to get on the ground again. His legs felt good, his stomach fine, his head wonderful.

“You feel OK to walk?” Vika asked him.

“I feel great,” he said.

“Then you’re about to start feeling a lot better.”

He glanced at her, and it was true, and that truth was so strange it scared him back to some sense, at last. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“You’ll see.” She tried to take his hand.

He pulled away. “You don’t like to reveal things, do you?”

“Come on,” she said.

“You know why?”

“The others are way ahead.”

“Because you’re wrong. If everyone wants what you say they want, then why haven’t we already made the world that way?” She was wearing her rucksack on her shoulders and his, too, slung over her chest, and he suddenly wanted it back. “Because,” he told her, reaching for it, “it wouldn’t work. It never has. It doesn’t—”

She pressed her palm to his mouth. He let her, let her fingers slip over his chin, through the hair at his throat, along the flat bone down the middle of his body onto the softer place above his waist, and when they got to his waistline they curled around the top of his pants. She tugged. “Come on,” she said again, “you’re still unsteady on your feet.”

Ahead, the tracks snaked out into the open, and beyond them there was the beginning of the access line, and, above, the sky was shaky with false stars, and in front of it all: Vika, walking backwards, pulling him.

If you could only see,
she said and,
imagine if
, and her voice felt the way her hand had on his lips, and he listened to her tell him how it
would
work, how it already
had
: Ireland in the Middle Ages, ancient Icelandic thorpes, medieval cities free of rule, governed only by groups of neighbors, no laws, no central control. She told him how serfs had taken refuge there, how, centuries later, cities had cropped up again, a brief boom in anarchist communes after the Spanish Civil War. But mostly she talked of Russia. Before the Bolsheviks, the Decembrists, the tsars, the Code of Law, even the existence of the serf, here when all there was were small farming villages, the world of the mir. That was what they called the lands around each village: the
mir
, the world. The dirt streets they shared, the icehouses, ovens, woodlands and pastures and wells, all shared. One household borrowing another’s horses to plow a patch of the communal fields, another bringing bread made from yet another’s rye, long lines of men and women sewing flaxseeds side by side, threshing it in communal barns, butchering communal livestock, stooking communal stacks of hay: the world, the mir. And outside the mir another mir
,
surrounded by other fields, enclosed by other woods, another and another, unknown to any sovereign, ungoverned by any hand, a Russia made up of thousands of little worlds.