Moscow Noir

Translated by Marian Schwartz

Nikita dozes off holding my hand.

Such a handsome hand he has. Strong fingers, smooth oval nails, nicely defined tendons. Light hairs, almost imperceptible, but stiff to the touch.

He’s sleeping holding my hand, but I just can’t.

I’m afraid of dozing off. It’s like walking into cold water, slowly immersing yourself, diving headfirst and not knowing what you’ll see on the bottom.

That Crimean summer I dove alone while Nikita watched from shore. Only later did he admit he was afraid to swim.

I wasn’t afraid of anything. I was twenty-eight. Never before had I been as beautiful as I was that summer.

Nor will I ever be again.

Time has wrung me out like laundered linen and thrown me into the dryer like a crumpled rag. Back then I thought, Time spares no one, but now I know that’s not so.

Time changes everyone, but men are grazed by a touch of gray, a leisurely gait, a solidity of figure. At least Nikita has been. As for anyone else, to be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve cared.

His hands have barely changed. Except that seven years ago a wedding ring appeared.

My skin is tarnishing, withering, covered with a fine fishnet inside of which the years I’ve lived thrash around like caught fish. My hair is falling out and in the mornings I look at my pillow, fighting the temptation to count them.

Once I couldn’t stop myself. Now I know: 252 hairs, almost a handful.

I’m afraid of going bald. I’m afraid of my breasts disappearing in a few years, my belly sticking to my spine, my eyes sinking. Sometimes I feel like a living corpse.

Nine years ago I wasn’t afraid of anything. Now I can’t fall asleep out of fear.

But Nikita isn’t afraid of anything. In those years he’s lost all fear. Blind swap? as we used to say in kindergarten.

I didn’t want to go to kindergarten. I was still afraid then. I thought one day my mama wouldn’t come for me and would leave me there forever. Only later did I learn where that fear came from; it was the echo of my orphanage infancy, the first months of my life.

My mama told me the story herself. You see, sometimes children are mistakenly born to people who aren’t their parents. So they can take them to a special place where their real parents find them. The way we found you.

I was six years old and I didn’t know where children came from. I probably thought about a stork that might mix up his bundles, or a store where after a long line you could buy a child—and they might sell you the wrong one by mistake.

When I was ten, my papa explained: The ancient Hindus believed in the rebirth of souls. I believe you are the little girl your mama couldn’t give birth to.

I knew by then that children came out of the belly, but I didn’t really understand how you could not be able to give birth.

I no longer believed in the stork, or the store, but I believed in the rebirth of souls immediately. And I still do. I believe the soul travels back and forth through history, and can even be born several times in the same century, miraculously not meeting herself in a previous (subsequent?) guise.

I believe that. Or, rather, I know it. And that’s why I lie here sleepless, squeezing Nikita’s hand. I’m afraid to fall asleep.

In the filmy, viscous dimension between waking and sleep my past lives return. Men, women, children. They fill me until it seems like there’s no room left inside for me.

I squeeze into a ball and try to push the past out—it was mine, it wasn’t mine, it may not have existed at all.

No surprise I’m losing weight. I must think that if I shrivel up completely the ghosts will decamp and find themselves another receptacle.

Though I could get used to them. Ultimately, these are my past lives. I recognize them: the old lady twirling in front of a mirror; the man gazing at the river; the young woman hugging her pregnant belly; the man crushing out a cigarette butt; the soldier pulling a grenade pin; the naked man cooking breakfast; the little girl staring at the Black Sea; the man dropping to his knees in front of his lover.

They shout, laugh, cry, moan, and sigh … Sometimes I feel like throwing myself open, embracing them, and saying, Come in, it’s me, your unsafe haven, your future, reincarnation, rebirth. Don’t cry, everything worked out fine, look at me, I’m much happier than you. My life is wonderful: a loving husband, a home, a car, a household, a full cup. They didn’t beat me during their interrogations, my friends weren’t killed, radiation didn’t eat up my flesh, and I didn’t wait to be arrested. I don’t worry about money or survival, I don’t worry about where I’m going to sleep tomorrow or what I’m going to eat. I can’t remember the last time I was hungry.

But the incorporeal ghosts sway in the stratum of sleep and swirl in the murky corners of my huge apartment.

They’ve already lived their own lives; they’re not rushing, being sold off, drinking up the bitter water of earthly existence, or eating the bitter bread of posthumous exile anymore.

They’re always hungry.

They’re eating me from the inside out. My life is food for those I once was. They’re gnawing at my flesh—and every month blood flows out, attesting that the feast continues, the ghosts are not sated, they are still unhappy.

Every month, following the phases of the moon, plus or minus a day, I receive the same letter: You aren’t going to have a child.

Dozing off, we hold hands. My Kolya, Kolya-Nikolai. I want to sleep facing you, but every month that gets harder. You might even say we’re sleeping for three, right? Only two months to go—and our bunny will be born. I wonder whether it’ll be a boy or a girl. The old women in the countryside always guessed—based on your walk, the shape of your belly, and other signs.

Just think, it’s been five years and I still can’t get used to the idea that my Berezovka’s gone. True, old Georgich’s great nephew wrote last month saying they were planning to build a state farm in its place. I don’t even know … I guess that’s good. The cows will moo again and the chickens will run around, as if there’d been no war. You just look at it and it’s all so horrible what happened; how are people supposed to live there?

I told Kolya about it, and he said, So the fact that we’re living in a dead soldier’s apartment doesn’t bother you? That’s the way it should be. New people come to take the place of dead fighters.

Except that we didn’t have any fighters in Berezovka. Foolish Lushka hid two partisans—and that was it.

Nina looks at the street, lined with two-story wooden houses; an invalid on a bench is talking to two old women. The sound from a gramophone reaches her from a neighbor’s window.

This is Moscow, the capital of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the first worker and peasant state in the world. Marina Roshcha.

Nina gazes at her round belly and tries to persuade the boy or girl to hold on a little longer and not kick but lie quietly. The doctor said she could talk to him already. Or her?

Nina’s waiting for her husband. She sits home for days on end, afraid to go out. Even in the daytime they could attack her on the street, take her money away, or just strip her. They could jam a knife into her, or a bullet. There are an awful lot of thieves.

Kolya says it all started after the war. Before, Moscow was different. But now that people have been taught to kill, they just can’t stop.

Nina doesn’t know how to kill. She only knows how to hide so she won’t die.

For two months she hid in the forests, surviving on berries and occasionally digging up potatoes in Berezovka’s charred gardens. At the sound of an engine she would fall to the ground, perfectly still.

Nina loved walking in the forest before. Her mama would laugh and call her my little forest girl.

Her mother burned up along with the rest of the village.