Purge

sound, her hands were in her lap, and Zara saw that her eyes were dry.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Zara said quickly. “How disappointing for you.”

Aliide sighed, Zara sighed, put on a sympathetic expression, but at the same time set her thoughts in motion- there was no time for guessing. Could Aliide still help her? Did she still have any cards up her sleeve? If she did, Zara would have to be pleasant to her; she couldn’t allude to the picture or her grandmother-it made Aliide hostile. She didn’t see the photograph anywhere and didn’t dare ask about it. Or should she give up the whole idea of escaping and resign herself to waiting for whatever was coming?

Grandmother would have already received the pictures that Pasha sent, of course. He wouldn’t have waited around to do that. Maybe Sasha had got some, too. And maybe her mother, and who knows who else. Pasha might even have done more than that-was everyone at home all right? No, she shouldn’t think about that. She had to concentrate on making a new plan. Aliide leaned on her cane, although she was sitting, and said, “Talvi claims she’s too busy, but what does she have to keep her busy? She sits around being a housewife, like she always wanted to. What do you want to be?”

“A doctor.”

Aliide seemed surprised. Zara explained that the reason she went to the West was to get some money for school. She was hoping to come back as soon as she had saved enough, but then Pasha came along, and a lot of things went wrong. Aliide furrowed her brow and asked Zara to tell her something about Vladivostok. Zara was startled. Was this the time for everybody to reminisce? Aliide seemed to have forgotten that Zara had men chasing her. Maybe she didn’t want to show any emotion, or maybe she was wiser than Zara. Maybe there was nothing more to do but sit and chat. Maybe it was the most sensible thing to do-enjoy this moment, when she could finally reminisce about Vladivostok. Zara forced herself to sit down calmly at the table, to hold out her coffee cup when Aliide offered her some coffee substitute, and take a piece of sour-cream pie, Talvi’s favorite, apparently. Aliide had made it the night before.

“You must not have gotten any sleep.”

“What does an old person need with sleep?”

Maybe that accounted for Aliide’s faraway look. She stood next to the table with the percolator in her hand and didn’t seem to know where to put it. Aliide Truu looked lonely. Zara cleared her throat.

“Vladivostok.”

Aliide startled, put the percolator on the floor, and sat down in a chair.

“Tell me about it.”

Zara started by telling her about the statue with the flag in honor of those who fought on the Eastern front, the harbors, the way you could smell the Sea of Japan in the paneling, the wooden decorations on the houses, her mother’s girlfriend who made the world’s best Armenian delicacies: dolmas, pickles, fried eggplant that was so delicious, and shakarishee cookies so heavenly that when they touched the roof of your mouth they made the driving snow outside look like sugar for the whole day and into the next. They could knock the pitch out of a board! And they used to listen to Zara Doluhanova on the record player, singing Armenian folk songs in Armenian, and Puccini in Italian-all sorts of languages. Zara had been named after her. Her mother had just been crazy about Doluhanova’s voice; she was always looking for news of Doluhanova’s trips to the West, all the places she went, all the cities and countries. With such an amazing voice, she could go anywhere! For some reason, Doluhanova’s voice was the only thing that her mother got excited about. Zara got tired of not being able to talk when Doluhanova was singing, and preferred to go to her friend’s house and listen to her Mumi Troll cassette-Novaya luna aprelya-Ilya Lagutenko, the singer, was wonderful, and he had gone to the same school as Zara. Sometimes Zara’s grandmother had taken her to look at the ships on their way to Japan; it was the only place besides the botanical gardens that she was allowed to go, just to watch the ships, and the wind from the sea would strike her forehead as it pushed inland. It was nine thousand kilometers to Moscow by train, but they had never been there, although Zara would like to visit some day. And the summer. The Vladikki summer. All the Vladikki summers! One time someone figured out that if you put aluminum powder in your nail polish it would make your fingernails glitter, and pretty soon every girl in town had fingernails that shone like the summer sun.

Once she got started, Zara got carried away with her story. The words tasted good. She even missed Zara Doluhanova. And Mumi Troll.

Katia had wanted to hear about Vladivostok, too, but no matter how she tried, Zara hadn’t been able to tell her anything about the place. Only occasional images of Vladikki passed through her mind, and they were always the ones that came to mind when Katia talked, but she didn’t want to mention them to Katia-like how Grandmother had started drying hardtack around the time of Chernobyl, in case of war, and how after the accident they watched television and had no idea what was happening, and how people on television were dancing in the streets in Kiev. Chernobyl was a troubling subject, because that’s where Katia was from, and that’s why she wanted to marry a foreigner, and why she was interested in Vladivostok. She wanted to have children. If the right man came along, she planned to tell him she was from someplace else, not from Chernobyl. Zara thought it was a good idea, too. She would have liked to ask more-Katia didn’t glow in the dark, and she didn’t look any different than any other girl. Nevertheless, she had said that the less people talked about Chernobyl and the less they wrote about it and the less they knew about it the better. She was right. Even Zara didn’t want to hug Katia, not even when she cried about missing her family or after she’d had a bad customer. She preferred to comfort her by talking with her about something else, anything else but Vladikki. Thoughts of her hometown had seemed strangely wrong in that place. Like she wasn’t worthy of remembering her hometown. Like all her beautiful memories would be tainted if she let herself even think about them in that place, that situation-let alone talk about them. She had only touched the photograph hidden in her clothes once in a while, through the fabric, to make sure it was still there. Pasha didn’t know that Katia was from Chernobyl, of course, because he had picked her up near Kiev, but he had told her to say she was from Russia if any customer asked her, because no one was going to want to shove his dick into death.

Zara tried to shake Katia out of her head. She didn’t want to tell Aliide about Katia. She should stick to Vladivostok. Her chatter had almost got Aliide smiling, and she urged Zara to have another piece of pie. Zara accepted it and felt brazen. She had simply forgotten how she had been used to asking Pasha’s permission for everything. She felt brazen because she had some more pie without Pasha’s permission. She felt brazen because she was telling stories to someone that she didn’t have Pasha’s permission to talk to. She was brazen because she wasn’t supposed to be here, in a place where she didn’t need to ask Pasha’s permission to take a pee. If her head started to ache, Aliide would probably offer her some medicine, without even asking. If she started her period, Aliide would give her something, make her a bath, bring her a hot water bottle, and she wouldn’t owe her anything. At any moment this unreality could disappear, and Zara could fall back to reality, customers, debts. At any moment Pasha and Lavrenti could pull into the yard-at any moment-and she wouldn’t be able to think about Vladikki anymore, and tarnish her memories of home with that world. But she could think about it now.

“You were happy there,” Aliide said. She sounded surprised.

“Of course.”

“What do you mean, of course?”

Aliide seemed delighted all of a sudden, as if she’d just thought of something entirely new.

“Well, that’s fantastic!” she said.

Zara cocked her head.

“Yes, it is. And it was fun being in the Pioneers.”

She had never been in the best row for the marching or anything like that, but it was nice to sit around the campfire and sing. And she was proud of her Pioneer badge. She loved the red background and she used to stroke Lenin’s shining gold forehead and his golden ears.

But when Zara talked about Vladivostok, Katia kept bubbling up in her mind. She could never tell Katia about Vladikki now. She was too late when it came to Katia, and Katia hadn’t asked for much. Zara had thought that the day would come when she would make Katia a Vladivostok girl, but that day never came. Should she risk telling Aliide these secrets, even if it might mean that Aliide wouldn’t help her get away from Pasha?

1991