Voroshilovgrad (24 page)

“Listen,” she said, not using my name, “as long as we're just touching each other we haven't crossed the line. You got that?”

“What line is that?” I asked.

“The red line. Everything is fine now, but if we start kissing, like, you know, making out . . . that'd mess it all up.”

“Mess it
all
up?” I asked.

“Yep, that'd mess it
all
up,” Olga confirmed, “so just try to sleep.”

Then she sprang off the bed and went outside.

But I couldn't fall asleep. I was just lying there, contemplating the spots on the ceiling, listening to the rain drumming on the walls, and sensing the trees encircling our little building. I didn't quite understand where Olga had gone, why she had stopped. I turned over so the sky and the ground switched places, and looked at the wall covered in children's pictures. They were dark and mysterious against the white wall. The Pioneers primarily used watercolors—their lines were heavy and thick, as though they were drawn in cow's blood or colored clay. Eventually I realized that the pictures had been hung in a deliberate order, because they formed stories, or parts of them, like on church walls, but, of course, in watercolor. Strange men, carrying weapons and wearing animal masks, were depicted in the top pictures. They were razing whole cities, cutting down tall trees, and hanging pets on balconies. They were cutting merchants' ears off and gouging their eyes out, goading heavy, fire-breathing elephants out of a wasteland—and those elephants had folded wings, like bats. The lower pictures showed women building fires and burning toys and dead people's clothing, and also branding each other with odd symbols that glowed in the
dark, attracting herons and owls. They chose the most beautiful woman among them, put her in a big cage, and lowered her into the river—newts and water demons gathered around to hear her sing and watch her do card tricks. In another picture, a woman was giving birth to a little, two-headed girl who started speaking right away—speaking two different languages nobody could make any sense of, and so she was sent to a faraway land to find people she could communicate with. When she got there, a terrible plague broke out—dead birds fell out of the sky, delirious snakes slithered out of their holes; her words drove men to insanity, and women hopped into the river, swimming downstream balancing bundles of clothing and scripture on their heads. The last picture showed some sort of funeral procession; children and old people were carrying open caskets, but there weren't any people in them. They were arguing about which coffin they were supposed to bury. Oxen and herons were standing next to them, and stars the stars above their heads were following unfamiliar routes. The children, unable to decide which coffin to bury, shoved a big, tired ox into the grave instead, and covered it with thick and pasty earth the consistency of peanut butter, like a buried German tank; unintelligible signs were pouring out of its mouth, but the children couldn't read them because they were illiterate. They simply stood there, holding their spades and listening to the animals that were trying to tell them something important and ominous.

What I'd seen there made me uneasy, so I got up and went looking
for Olga. Rain bombarded me as soon as I opened the outside door. I tried calling to Olga, but I threw in the towel right away. Where could she be? I turned the corner and ventured over to the next building. I headed toward the gate and saw Olga standing on the playground, getting soaked, her shoulders drooping oddly. She was letting the rain wash over her face, and then she was raising her hands into the air, as if trying to catch the raindrops. I called her name, but she didn't hear me. Then it hit me—she was actually trying to warm up. It was now a lot warmer outside than in the cold, metal Lenin room. She'd just stepped outside to get the chill out of her bones. She was letting the warm sheets of rain fall on her freezing skin. It seemed as though she couldn't see me at all; she was walking over the asphalt, wringing the shivers out of her body . . . an odd scene. Her eyes were still closed, as if she had been sleepwalking the whole time. I had to catch her before she wandered out through the gate and vanished into the woods. Good luck trying to find her out there, come morning. I walked up to her and touched her hand. She opened her eyes and gave me her full attention. In the dim light her eyes were a dark shade of blue, thick like the lines of the pioneers' paintings, thick like clay. She kept looking at me for some time. Eventually she let go of my hand and headed back toward the buildings.

“Are you going to try and get some sleep?” she asked, taking a last look at the rain-soaked forest.

“Yeah,
sure
,” I said, trying to hold her placid, clay gaze.

“And stop looking at me like that,” she added.

We slept poorly, obviously.

In the morning, the jubilant sun was driving rainy fog out along the line of pine trees; the puddles were steaming like open freezers, and the birds were drinking water out of the dark green leaves. Olga was wringing and shaking her shirt, trying not to make eye contact with me. I wasn't feeling too hot either, overwhelmed with doubt and pangs of conscience—I was blaming myself, thinking, “Maybe I did something wrong,” or “Maybe we should have had sex after all.” But why exactly? What for? Basically, I felt exactly like a young pioneer who hadn't gotten lucky last night, not that he was really expecting to.

“Herman,” Olga said dryly, “I hope you didn't think yesterday was weird or anything.”

“Nah,” I assured her. “I enjoyed those magazines, the pictures were great.”

“Glad to hear it,” she said, in flat, detached voice, “glad to hear it.”

Then she walked toward the door.

“You forgot your sunglasses,” I called after her.

“You can have them for now,” Olga didn't bother to turn around.

So I took them with me.

The pine forest ended a bit down the road, giving way to wide open landscapes where cold damp fog gathered at every low point, and beyond that a sunny haze, a light and deep emptiness
that unfolded all around us, sprawling out to the east and south, stretching out and soaking up the last drops of water and patches of greenery, grass filled with light, encompassing the earth and lakes, the skies and the gas shining under the earth like gold veins standing out on the Motherland's skin. Somewhere down south, beyond the pink sunrise, on the other side of the cloudy emptiness, the gates of Voroshilovgrad sliced cleanly through the sky, promising a welcome that was nowhere to be found.

Alarm and confusion prevailed in the gas station parking lot. Injured was sitting in his chair, apparently thinking something over, his head in his hands. Panic-stricken, Kocha was looking every which way, sprawling out on the catapult next to Injured. Some new, little guy, wearing a singed, battle-worn sailor's shirt, was curled up on the ground next to Kocha. This little guy was also looking around in terror, occasionally hiding his head under the blanket he'd wrapped around himself; it looked like the same one I was used to sleeping under. Katya, clearly petrified, stood off to the side, holding an equally petrified Pakhmutova by the collar. Pakhmutova was rubbing up against Katya's bare calves and jean shorts. Everyone looked pretty miserable. Evidently they had been waiting for me, although now that I'd finally shown up, they were avoiding eye contact and keeping quiet, waiting for me to say something.

“What's going on here?” I asked, genuinely concerned.

“Something real bad happened, buddy,” Kocha's voice screeched
like microphone feedback.

The little guy sitting on the ground gave a kind of aggrieved shudder, obviously recalling something unpleasant.

“I'm done with this fucking business!” Injured interjected abruptly. He got up out of his chair and disappeared into the garage.

“What's all this about?” I asked.

“Herman, they torched our tanker truck. Petrovich got a little burned, too.”

The little guy popped his head out from underneath the blanket and nodded readily.

“They pulled up right over there. Well, their guys got out and chucked two firebombs right in the truck. They almost killed our old pal here,” Kocha said, patting Petrovich on the back. “Good thing Katya saw them and called us over, otherwise they would have barbecued him.”

“I was taking Pakhmutova for a walk,” Katya explained.

“Have you called the cops?”

“Sure we did,” Kocha said, nodding. “But what do you expect? Like the fuckin' cops are going to do anything. Everyone already knows who did what. Try and prove it, though.”

“But didn't Petrovich see them?”

“Petrovich's too much of a pussy to talk to the cops,” Kocha declared genially. “Isn't that right, Petrovich?”

Petrovich gave a submissive nod and set off toward the booth, the blanket still wrapped around him like an army poncho.

“Kocha, how could they just burn the tanker?” I asked.

“We're not the first ones they've done this to. We're lucky they didn't
burn down the whole station along with it.”