9.

She dried her hair, combed it, and put on a pink lounge set. The “good girl” look. She went to the kitchen to Aunt Marina, as instructed.

“What can I help with?”

“Here, put the fish on the baking tray and drizzle olive oil over it. We’ll bake it now; the oven’s already hot.”

“Why are there only three? Kirill isn’t having any?”

“Oh, he called to say he’s going to the bar with his friends again. It’s summer, you know how young men are.”

“Oh, we know.”

Ulyana rubbed oil into the perch and squeezed a little lemon over them, too. Aunt Marina opened the oven—a blast of two-hundred-degree heat—and, wearing quilted oven mitts, slid the tray inside.

“There we are. Now we set the timer for twenty minutes.”

“Anything else I can do?”

“Nothing for now. The rice is nearly done; we’ll take it off the heat. Sit down, though. Maybe I could pour you a little cognac?”

“No, I won’t. Thanks.”

Aunt Marina nodded kindly, as if to say she wouldn’t force her. She sat on the edge of a chair and touched Ulyana’s fingers. Startled, Ulyana curled them into a fist.

“How’s Sasha?”

She said it to her so gently, envelopingly. Ulyana glanced at her, sizing her up: no, it probably wasn’t tenderness, it was caution. Aunt Marina had handled her with those quilted oven mitts because Ulyana, too, was giving off a two-hundred-degree blast.

“Sasha’s not doing too well. Well, he puts on a brave face, I mean… But still.”

“It’s all so awful…” Aunt Marina shook her head.

Her voice was usually deep and pleasant—but now it creaked like a well pulley. Was she acting? No, to act about this would be too much. Strange.

“I wanted to ask you… Don’t be mad at Max for acting like that. He does like you, you know.”

Yeah, sure.

Aunt Marina stroked her again, along the back of her hand, as if taming some wild little animal. This time Ulyana didn’t flinch; she waited to see what came next.

“Okay.”

“This is the hardest thing, you know? These are such anxious times.”

“You can say that,” Ulyana agreed. “No argument there.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to knock back a little shot? While he’s out?” Her aunt looked at Ulyana searchingly, almost pleadingly.

“I’m sure. But you go ahead and drink, Aunt Marina.”

“I can’t. If I were having one with you, I’d make an exception, but otherwise… Never mind.”

“Why can’t you?” Ulyana asked.

“Well… It doesn’t mix well with antidepressants.” Aunt Marina smiled. “There can be all sorts of side effects.”

“Oh.”

Now Aunt Marina’s slackness, her brittleness, the creak in her voice all made sense; and because Aunt Marina had confided in her, Ulyana softened, let her guard down.

“I wanted to finish what I was saying… These are anxious times, but the main thing… The main thing is, none of this is our fault, understand? We’re all hostages here. You in your own way, me in mine, Maxik… And the one to blame is a force so powerful we’re just fluff, nothing. Germs. We’re not really angry at each other, but at it. But there’s nothing we can do about it, and we’re even afraid to say so. And being afraid makes everything worse. So we turn on each other… Set the dogs on one another. On family, on friends. You can take it out on your own people; you’re not afraid of them. Right? Nobody thinks that this is how you can lose the last people close to you… And if you just push your family, your friends away in an argument? At a time like this, especially. You couldn’t come up with anything worse than being left alone.”

Ulyana nodded. Yeah. The nod came on its own.

She had no complaints about Aunt Marina, really. Every time the woman had seen her niece—which was maybe once and a half in Ulyana’s whole life—she’d been kind to her. Apparently she’d loved Ulyana’s mother, Ira; they were sisters, though cousins, and some of that love had passed down the maternal line to Ulyanka, too.

“I keep trying to get Max to understand all this. But he’s, you know… like a tank.”

“I can see that,” Ulyana snorted; for a second she relaxed and put a hand on her stomach.

“You’re not pregnant, by any chance?” Aunt Marina asked suddenly.

She’d caught her off guard, hit the soft spot. Ulyana gave a little yelp and shrank back. She tried to turn the corners of her mouth up, but they turned down instead.

Aunt Marina understood without a word, moved closer, and put her arms around her.

“Who else would he have gone to get sparkling wine for?” she whispered.

Ulyana only shrugged. Aunt Marina held her a little longer, then let go. Inhale—exhale. The oven timer clicked.

“But aren’t you scared?”

“What can you do?” Ulyana said.

The minute her mother found out Sashka was now legless—that was it.

“I call him, you know, and I say, Sasha, what wonderful news, you’ve been found. And he says, Mom, just don’t get upset, you know, they cut my legs off. I say, what do you mean, cut them off? Well, one to the knee, and the other almost right up to his ass. Gangrene, he says. The doctor wouldn’t let them leave it.”

“Oh, what a tragedy… A tragedy… My Sanechka… My Sanechka… Oh… Oh…”

“Don’t wail like that. He’s alive, that’s what matters. Yesterday we still thought he was dead, and today he’s alive.”

“Oh, Sanya, my Sanechka!”

“Mom! I asked you not to!”

“All right… All right… Oh…”

If you carry on wailing like that, you’ll have another heart attack. Don’t wail, I’m telling you.”

“But how can I not?”

“I’m not wailing!”

“Well, look at you, Tanyka. You’ve got such a thick hide. Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“That’s enough, Mom! Go take some Valocordin, and that’s that!”

That was how the conversation went. Tatyana hung up and sat in silence. She was hurt by her mother’s words about her thick hide. It wasn’t fair to say that to her now.

But as for Tatyana herself, the moment she heard about Sashka and his legs, she understood one thing: from now on, things wouldn’t happen the way she wanted; they’d happen the way they had to. Well, she had to go to Moscow. She had to be there with her son. She had to get him through this. For the rest of her life, there’d always be something she had to do.

She asked Svetka to look into compensation. If you had no legs, that meant disability, and straight into the first group. Loss of earning capacity. Svetka dug around, dug around, and found on her phone that there could be presidential payments of three million for a serious wound, another million for disability, and then nearly three more if he left the service. When all those millions piled up—even if they were only imaginary—Tatyana immediately felt better. That was different. It would be enough to pay off the mortgage, with some left over. It came to more than they’d have managed to save if Sashka had served three years.

She took some Valocordin herself and started calling Ulyanka. She had to, since she’d promised. She’d thought of going alone, not having Ulyanka beside her in the same train compartment, but, well, never mind. That was one more reason: it would be better to keep her close when she went to see Sashka. Otherwise, God forbid, Ulyanka might start whining to him that his mother had been urging her to get an abortion, and Sashka was impressionable. She might drive a wedge between him and Sashka, God forbid. And look at him, wounded—is that what he needs? No, they could ride together in the compartment and sort it all out woman to woman, make peace.

Or maybe she’d already had the abortion?

At first she’d wanted her to have it over with. Wanted Ulyanka off their backs, not lusting after Sashka, not making claims on him. Then Tatyana remembered he was legless now. It wouldn’t be easy for a legless man to find himself another fiancée. And here the question was more or less settled. Someone they knew, one of their own. And if they got married, well, they’d get another pile of presidential money for a legless man, about as much as she’d thought she could save from his soldier’s pay. There’d be enough for them and for her. They just had to get their relationship back on track now. Rein Ulyanka in.

But would she stay with him? From the first time Tatyana saw Ulyanka, from the moment she found out about the massage parlor, she’d known she was unreliable. Massage parlor or whorehouse, not much difference. Once you find out how easy it is to make money with your cunt, try going back to the poultry farm and doing the hard slog, breathing in bird shit. Bet you wouldn’t want to. Did they need a daughter-in-law like that in their house?

And yet…

Well, let things be as they may.

The phone kept beeping and beeping, long, mosquito-like tones. Tatyana was about to give up when Ulyanka finally came to.

“Yes, Tatyana Nikolayevna. Good evening.”

Took you long enough! Am I interrupting?

“No, no. How are you? Any news?”

“What news could there be… You know yourself. Listen, I’ve been thinking I’ll go. Are you going? You were planning to.”

“When were you thinking of going?”

“Well, tomorrow morning, if you like.”

Ulyanka seemed to be thinking something over. Tatyana waited and waited, then couldn’t take it anymore: well, if you don’t want to, suit yourself. I’ve done my part by offering.

“Or what, do you have work?”

She perked up.

“Work, yes, Tatyana Nikolayevna! I can’t just get the day off at the last minute. Maybe we could go tomorrow evening, at least? There are overnight trains to Moscow, aren’t there?”

“There are? I haven’t looked yet.”

“There always used to be.”

Evening? Hand on heart, evening suited Tatyana better, too. They could calmly finish the nursery, she could at least make them some cabbage soup to last two days, so they wouldn’t be eating cold leftovers straight out of the fridge, and then they could take the overnight train, actually. They’d have to find somewhere to stay, too—you weren’t likely to find anything at this point.

“All right, then. Let’s go in the evening.”

Sashka could wait. It wouldn’t hurt him.

Ulyana came back to the table wound up tight. She’d managed to buy herself a delay, more or less, but still. It was all picking up speed, faster than she wanted, and up ahead was a time when she wouldn’t be able to spare herself or anyone else.

She put her hands on the table, but they were shaking. She moved them into her lap.

Uncle Maksim came back from outside with the useless champagne; he seemed to have caught his breath and cooled off, but conversation still wouldn’t get going. You could hear knives clattering against porcelain. At home, when there was a fight, Ulyana ate in front of the TV so the silence wouldn’t press so hard into her ears, but here the TV was off-limits, too. What the hell had they even bought it for?

Aunt Marina just kept glancing meaningfully at Ulyana and smiling quietly, as if to say, well, this is the secret the two of us share about him. But after that conversation with Sasha’s mother, the string inside Ulyana—the one you could pluck and make sing softly—had been pulled far too tight, and now it rang too high and threateningly. Ulyana could already hear it in herself, but Aunt Marina couldn’t yet.

They chopped up and chewed through the whole salad; then it was the fish’s turn. On went the mitts again; out of the oven came another blast like the breath of hell. Aunt Marina carefully laid out the perch, and the smell of rosemary filled the air. They began picking the fish apart, separating bones from flesh. The two flutes of bubbly stood untouched; only Uncle Maksim kept topping himself up. The more he poured, the more some kind of shit bubbled up inside him. You could see it—the tic gave him away. First he wrinkled his nose, then twisted his mouth, then narrowed his eyes. No, he wasn’t done putting on a show yet, Ulyana realized.

“What haven’t we drunk to yet?” he said.

“To Sasha’s health,” she answered firmly.

“Well, then, let’s drink to Sasha’s health.”

Ulyana raised her glass and took a sip. Aunt Marina did too, cautiously—and shot her husband a warning glance from the corner of her eye. Uncle Maksim took a big gulp, not sparing himself. Then he tapped the glass with his fingernail: it rang, very high and thin.

“You’ve been to see him, right? What does he say?”

“What’s he supposed to say? He’s getting used to it. Thinking about what comes next. That’s already good.”

“Good?”

“Well, yeah. In his situation.”

“And does he… Well… Reflect on it at all? Think about how he ended up in that situation?”

“Maksim,” Aunt Marina cut in.

“No, it’s fine, Aunt Marina.”

“Maksim, the man got a draft notice. What is there to reflect on? He had no choice; he got up and went. There you go again, looking down from your own bell tower…”

Uncle Maksim took an even bigger gulp, choked on the bubbles, and grimaced. He didn’t want to pay attention to his wife. He wanted to keep picking at Ulyana, wanted to break her down, too—into bones and fibers.

“And how did we all end up in this situation? Okay, him, but what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Well, do you ever think about how and why we’re all here, at this point?”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Maksim.”

“We means you, him, me, Marina. All of us. How did we end up like this?”

“Could you just say what you mean?”

Ulyana put down her knife and moved away from the fish, of which she’d only managed to eat a little.

“Ulyash, don’t. You don’t need to…”

“So, no reflection whatsoever.”

“Zero, absolutely,” Ulyana said, staring Uncle Maksim brazenly in the eyes.

If she had to eat your fish along with your lectures, then fuck that. All the paperwork was ready; tomorrow she’d be getting married in a secondhand veil, they’d register the relationship, and everything would be different after that. No one would be lecturing her or telling her how to think—and she’d no longer be a guest in life; she’d be the mistress of her own.

Uncle put down his cutlery, too.

“I’m just amazed, honestly. They take your boyfriend away from you. Take him, possibly to his death, on some completely idiotic, delusional pretext.”

“Maksim! Stop it, don’t ruin dinner for everyone!”

“Marinochka, do you really think this magnificent dinner could be ruined so easily?”

“I’m asking you…”

“And I’m asking you! Can I at least call black black and white white in my own home? At work—keep quiet, on the street—keep quiet! Can’t I at least stop being afraid to speak the truth at home? Can I call it a war at home, not an ‘SMO’?”

Ulyana smirked.

“And why do you keep quiet out on the street? You don’t keep quiet.”

“And why are you keeping quiet? They took your boyfriend away! Just grabbed him like a serf, and that was that! They’re wrecking both your lives. They just take a person and run him through a meat grinder. And not only do they put him through it themselves, they turn him into a weapon… All right. No, not all right! A weapon for killing. And how can none of this have become clear to you yet? You’re not stupid, are you, Ulyanochka!”

Maybe that was what finally did her in. The red film had swallowed Uncle Maksim. The old Ulyana might have lowered her eyes and gone on eating perch, stocking up on protein and fish oil. What difference did it make? There was only a little longer to endure. Until tomorrow. But the Ulyana who had come to Moscow by train with those fucked-up soldiers, who had visited Sasha in the hospital, was already someone else—somehow more nervous.

Well, okay, whatever. She’d been a guest long enough. She tilted her head to one side and said firmly:

“Why is he a serf, then? Sasha went of his own accord.”

Her uncle hadn’t expected that at all. His stern, teacherly expression deflated and slid away, all that puffing himself up for nothing. Take that, and sign for it.

“What do you mean?..”

“What do I mean, what do I mean? I mean exactly what I said. He signed a contract.”

“As a volunteer? One of those who do it for money?”

He glanced at his wife, stunned. She just smacked her lips, mute as a fish. She shook her head—“I didn’t know, I didn’t know,” she seemed to say. Well, now she knew. How long was Ulyana supposed to keep this bottled up? Swallow that.

“But you told us he’d been called up… You told me he’d been called up, mobilized!”

Ulyana blinked, but she didn’t stay flustered for long.

“What’s money got to do with it?”

Uncle Maksim was still trying to get his face under control, but his jowls were trembling, and his eyes had reddened and watered with barely suppressed fury.

“Money has everything to do with it! Don’t start playing the innocent little fool with us now! How many millions is he supposed to get? Five? Seven?”

“Why are you counting it, Uncle Maksim? Is it yours, or what?”

“Thank God it isn’t…”

“Ulyana! I’m begging you! You mustn’t get worked up…”

But she didn’t want them making allowances for her, treating her with indulgence. That was it—she’d stepped into the arena. Khabib had woken up inside her, the bastard.

“And what do you think, Ulyanochka, he gets all that money for? Five million rubles! You couldn’t earn that much in a lifetime!”

“Because he risked his life. That’s exactly what it comes down to.”

“Plenty of people take risks! Look at construction workers, climbing around up high, risking their lives! They don’t get paid that much, do they? No, that’s not what it’s for.”

“Then what is it for?”

“It’s for this, Ulyanochka: he went there to kill other people who’d done nothing bad to him. Other living people, who were living their lives in their own country, in their own homes—he went to kill and torture them. He knows it’s wrong to kill people, that it’s a sin. That’s how he was brought up, wasn’t he? And the people over there are just like us! Ukrainians. They speak our language, they have the same first names, the same last names as we do. Their homes are the same, their furniture, their carpets. And they give him all that money so he won’t think about it, so he won’t be afraid to kill them, so he won’t feel ashamed. Five million! People at Gazprom don’t get that much! And do you know who does?”

“Who? Who?”

“Hit men! Contract killers!”

And then Ulyana completely exploded: she jumped up and glared down into her uncle’s eyes. The chair toppled, the glass fell, and the flat champagne spread across the floor.

“That’s not why he went there!” she shouted. “You don’t know him, but I do! Sasha isn’t a murderer! He’s kind! He’s compassionate! He went there because our people were being mistreated! He went there for them!”

“For whom? What people?”

“For Russian people, who else! Do you even know who they’re fighting over there? They aren’t fighting Ukrainians! They’re fighting the whole West! You were talking about the meat grinder—well, it’s them who are being thrown into the meat grinder! Ordinary Ukrainians! They’re sending them after our boys! Do you know the conditions they’re in? They cut off his legs, and what good are your millions to him now?!”

Aunt Marina hid her face in her hands and stayed silent. Uncle Maksim stood up too—shook off all that goddamned learning of his, which had split at the seams on him anyway—and simply yelled.

“It’s his own fault they cut them off, if he went there! If he went for the money, he’s an idiot; if he went because he’s stupid, he’s still an idiot! Enough! I can’t listen to this shit anymore!”

“He was doing his duty! His duty! You can’t understand, can you? Of course. What would you know! Fine. Enjoy your meal.”

She bolted out like a bullet and threw herself onto the bed. She lay there trembling, her pulse probably at two hundred, her heart hammering against her ribs. She knew she could have had the decisive last word in that argument, and barely stopped herself from saying it aloud. Because then everything would have become absolutely irreversible.

Marina closed the door quietly, carefully, firmly. Then she sat back down, placed her hands on the table, and stared at them. Perhaps like an engineer giving up when he realizes the complicated mechanism he’s been trying to fix will never work again, and the months spent on it have been wasted. He knew that detached look: Marina never shouted at Maksim, but she had an incomparable way of expressing her utter disappointment in him with the barest means.

Sometimes that silence hit him in the gut much harder than an open quarrel or a hysterical outburst would have. But this time Maksim knew he was one hundred percent right, so he held his tongue.

“She’s pregnant by him,” Marina whispered.

“Even worse!”

He barked, but lost his balance for a moment. The women’s exchanged glances, all that secrecy and meaningfulness, Ulyana’s hysteria—everything suddenly made sense. Shame washed over him, but he pushed it away: what did her pregnancy have to do with the point of their argument? Nothing!

“You can understand her, Maksim.”

“No! No, you can’t understand her!” He stubbornly shook his head. “What is there to understand, Marina?! How is that connected? One person went to kill for money, and another got pregnant by him… Let’s keep the flies separate from the cutlets!”

“Understand her as a woman. When you’re pregnant by a man, when you love him, of course you’ll always make excuses for him…” Marina pleaded. “He’s yours! He can’t be bad. You’re a sensitive man, Maksik—how can you not feel that?”

“No, no. No, no, no. Hold on a second! This isn’t ‘Mom, I love a crook,’ Marish! Something else is going on here! They’re plastering every pole with ads for killing people for money! They’re calling it heroism on every fucking TV and radio! The whole situation has been turned completely, completely upside down! And this is murder! It’s genocide, essentially! And yes, we’ve gotten out of the habit of talking about it, you and I; we don’t notice those posters anymore, but right now they’re shoving it in our faces. And telling us: this is normal. Killing is normal. Tomorrow, concentration camps will be normal! And then you’ll say, ‘Well, she got pregnant by a guard, you can understand her’?! Marina… You know I don’t like swearing, but this is fucked up. I don’t want to understand it. If you understand this, soon you’ll start agreeing with it. That’s just one step away.”

“She’s just a girl…”

“She’s thirty! What girl?! And he’s just a little boy, is he? No. Listen, I feel sorry for her as a person, for ending up in this situation. Being pregnant. Okay, I feel sorry for her! But I don’t feel sorry for him. I refuse to feel sorry for him. He took the money… That’s it! And I’m not going to play this idiotic game of giving pregnant women a handicap. Can I?”

“Well, they gave in to temptation… They both come from poor families… Ulyasha for sure. They were lured into this trap. He took the money, yes. So what? People are starving… And then they’re offered something like that… You can understand, if you try… They’re not told, ‘Go kill.’ They’re told, ‘Go defend your homeland.’ Their homeland!”

“No. You can’t! There’s Telegram, there are channels. If you don’t want to read independent media, look it up on Telegram, and it’ll all be clear straight away, what they’re being paid for… No! They don’t deserve understanding, they don’t deserve sympathy! No!”

Maksim slammed his fist on the table; the dishes jumped and rang in fright. He could feel his boiling blood pumping through him. And he wanted to hit somebody with that fist, too. Who? Sasha, maybe, if he had legs.

“And what do we have besides sympathy?” Marina looked at him stubbornly. “What do we have left? What makes us human at all?”

“No. No, that’s not it! What do we have left besides certainty? How else can I explain it to you? We’re inside the monster’s belly, do you understand? Boiling in its stomach acid. And that acid is ambiguity. It’s eating away at us. And if we don’t hold on to the simplest thing—that there’s clear good and evil in the world, black and white, what’s permissible and what isn’t—if we accept their Jesuitical arguments, if we start seeing the world in fifty shades of gray, then we’re done, we’re finished, we’ll be scalded and turned into shapeless little scraps, just like everything drifting past us in this stinking sludge. That’s exactly how they get us: by forcing us, if not by one means then another, to accept it; offering one perspective, then another, until they find a point of view from which murder somehow doesn’t look like murder anymore, but like something else, something acceptable. And that’s inhuman!”

Maksim paced the kitchen; the spilled champagne made it stink sour, and half-eaten fish lay strewn about, as if he and Marina really were splashing around in some creature’s stomach acid. He stared out the window so he wouldn’t have to look at his wife; then he looked closer—and instead of a window there was a dark aquarium, in which the two of them were trapped, bumping into the glass; and nothing remained of Moscow.

“Inhuman is not forgiving, Maksim. Judging people like this, like an inquisitor—that’s inhuman. With no right to repent.”

“That’s all demagoguery, Marina! Nobody there intends to repent, haven’t you heard? I don’t understand why you’re on her side. Why aren’t you on mine? Will you wipe up that champagne already? Why are we living in a pigsty?!”

“You wipe it up. Wipe it up, Maksim. Wipe up the champagne. Why are you always ordering me around? What do you call a pigsty? I’m the one keeping things in order here, by the way. All this time. And here”—she pressed a finger to her temple. “You know that. And I’m not on her side. It’s just, do you know how many people I know have had terrible falling-outs with their children, their parents, their husbands? I’ve lost count! Because of the whole situation, because of the war! What do you think is more important—that whole rhetoric, or keeping a family together? Forgive me, but family matters more to me. Because family is real; it is life. And for that, whether you like it or not, you have to compromise.”

Maksim went to the sink, grabbed a rag, and began furiously scrubbing the sticky sour mess.

“Please. I’ll wipe it up. It’s no trouble. Well, look at that—apparently she’s the only one keeping things in order around here… Compromises… Tell me, is that the same kind of compromise as putting up portraits of ‘SVO heroes’ at bus stops for May Ninth so you can keep your job? Or is it different? Since we’ve started talking about it. I wasn’t going to, but you brought it up…”

“Maksim…”

“And telling schoolchildren about liberated Mariupol at jam festivals, when you know what happened to so many of those children there… Is that the same kind of compromise?”

“That’s not fair!”

“Not fair? Or maybe fair? At home, we recite all these mantras: war is evil, war is bad, the country is going to hell—and somehow we’ve remained decent people, as if we’ve stayed on the right side of history. But at work—and strictly as part of the job!—we feed schoolchildren this story that the children in Mariupol are happy! We sweeten it with jam and stuff it into them, and they don’t understand anything; they just eat it up. We know what was written on the asphalt right in front of the Mariupol Drama Theater when our air force blew it apart, but the schoolchildren don’t know—and they never will. From now on, they’ll associate Mariupol with jam. Right? When you think about it. That’s why they made jam with the city budget. But let’s not think in that direction. Let’s make up a different story for ourselves: that these are difficult times, people are depressed, we have to comfort them somehow, and holidays and festivals are a good thing. Let’s eat the jam ourselves, too. We turned Moscow into a garden city; we brought in ten thousand trees in tubs! And what’s happening in the basements of this garden city—or, as people say these days, on the basements… Well, we won’t look down there! We’ll look at the flowers, at the pretty things! Those are your compromises, Marin! And at the same time we won’t lose our contract with the mayor’s office—hell, the next one will be even fatter, since we did such a great job this time! That’s what’s honest. Come on, let’s be honest with ourselves?”

Marina had listened to his whole tirade, from beginning to end. She turned away, then got up and began clearing the table. She scraped the mangled fish into the bucket, clattered the dishes, broke a wineglass. She started crying. He’d managed to make her cry after all. That thing churning and bubbling inside him had demanded that he push her to the edge, break her down until she sobbed, because without her tears he couldn’t release the pressure; a million volts of static would have remained in him, and the stuffiness might have made him lose consciousness. But then it thundered, flashed, poured down, and he could breathe easily at once. As soon as she finally broke down, Maksim sobered up and came to his senses.

“Forgive me,” he said in a different voice, his own again. “I didn’t mean to.”

“You did mean to. You’ve wanted to say this to me for a long time, I know. What, do you think I don’t notice anything, don’t understand anything? And I deserve it. But what can I do? Soon there won’t be a single thing left that politics hasn’t gotten into. Where am I supposed to go? It’s this or no job. Do you think I don’t ask myself every time: have I crossed the line now, or not yet? And they make it all seem so harmless, you understand? There are people there, too, who aren’t exactly in favor of it; it’s just their job. Normal people. Everyone has a job like that, and they all nudge each other along, little by little. That’s how cleverly it’s set up. There’s nothing wrong with putting trees in tubs, is there? Taken by themselves. The city gets prettier, pardon the expression—what’s criminal about that? And there’s nothing wrong with jam in itself.”

“At Auschwitz, only one person directly poisoned thousands of others with Zyklon B, you know? And he was a Jewish prisoner. Everyone else just organized the process…” Maksim told her. “Don’t think I’m saying this only to you… I’m saying it to myself, too.”

“Then say it to yourself. Why do you keep bringing up that poor Jew to me? And where will you go soon, yourself? Yes, Maksim, compromise. And you know what that compromise costs me… You know I can’t function anymore without pills… Why do you interrogate everyone?”

Maksim caught hold of her. She struggled to get away; he tried to kiss her, and she resisted. Then he wrapped his arms around her tightly, like a wrestler gripping an opponent.

“Please, forgive me… Really, I’m sorry. I’m just so tired. I’m tired.”

Then Marina grew quiet—but the moment he let her go, she pulled away from him.

“You can’t go on like this, Maksim. We have to keep living. We just have to live! Do you understand?”

Of course, there was no way she could fall asleep, and she couldn’t leave the room either. Ulyana had huddled in the farthest corner of the bed, as far from the door as possible, curled up as if the special forces were about to burst in after her. But no one came. They didn’t want to make peace with her; they weren’t going to apologize.

Why had he latched onto the money right away? What did the money matter to him? Was he jealous? They lived in a mansion like that, went out to restaurants every other day, and the first thing he said was millions, millions. Even before Sasha explained everything to her, Ulyana knew he hadn’t gone for the money. He was clueless about money, the fool.

Ulyana stretched out and closed her eyes, hoping darkness would come, but the kitchen kept dancing before her eyes, along with Uncle Maksim’s twisted face as he lied to her. He’d gone completely feral when he heard about the contract. Ulyana knew his fuses would blow, and let them, because she didn’t want to hide it from the Moscow people; she didn’t want to be ashamed of it.

For killing! And who had he even killed over there? His hands were like little asses—he couldn’t even land a decent punch on anyone. Every time he walked Ulyana home after dark, he’d hunch up all over; the local guys would say hello to her, and his hands would be sweating with fear afterward. Millions… How much does it cost, Uncle Maksim, when you go to the SVO, where people get killed, in a war, and you can’t do anything else, you know you have no right to stay home, you’re standing up for your country because that’s what you have to do, because somebody has to? Like those boys on the train, for instance—you believe that if you don’t go there now, they’ll come here, whether they’re Americans or not, it doesn’t matter, and so you sign a contract. And what about the state? Is the state supposed to leave wives and children without bread afterward? What kind of state would that be? They pay, yes, they pay—they pay so that those who are fighting know their family won’t have to beg if anything happens, that there’ll be enough to raise the kids, at least until they’re grown. And those millions aren’t even that much, not with everything getting more expensive and money getting cheaper; today it seems like, “Whoa, fuck! Five million!”—but tomorrow you won’t be able to buy a home or a car with it, or any damn thing. So what? No, it’s fair that they pay, and it’s good they don’t abandon people. What’s worse, that people get money from all that oil, or would it be better to let them keep building their palaces with it? It’s fair that the money is finally going to the people. That’s right. People have never seen that kind of money in their lives, unlike you here in Moscow. How dare you judge us by your own standards? What do you and your Kirillushka know about any of it? He went to Vologda once, to a village, to gawk at a real live rooster, of course he doesn’t need that money—his dad works in Moscow, has his own shop, and his mom has a proper job. And what kind of salaries do people get in Moscow? You should be thankful I didn’t hit you where it hurts most. One prosecutor’s wife in Vologda was enough for me; now you’re going to come at me too. You raised yourself a great big lummox, a blockhead who’s out clubbing every night without missing one. Bet you paid the draft officer off so he’d forget whether there was a call-up notice or not. And what am I supposed to do—raise my little one on cream, is that it?”

Tomorrow I’ll show Sasha the picture; he’ll freak out. The veil is fucking wild, sure, but it’s kind of hilarious, really. I need champagne; that’s another hundred and fifty rubles. I’ll go first thing in the morning, and get him some candy, too—he probably can’t have alcohol. And I’ll tell him that funny story about how the little guy inside tried the candy.

She lay there. Well, was that it? And yet something still tugged in her belly. Not a fish, not a fish…

She picked up her phone and poked around on it, but she didn’t feel any calmer. Reels and TikToks irritated her; she had no laughter left for them, no interest either. Her soul was like an empty udder: squeeze all you want, it only hurt. No, there had to be something else in there, in the phone. Anything and everything was in there if you looked. She started searching for the name he’d mentioned. What was it? Meduza? She hadn’t wanted to remember it, but she had—even the name was slimy. She couldn’t find it. She thought for a moment, turned on the VPN, searched through the AI thing, through the chat thing.

The chat thing pointed her here.

Right at the top it said WAR, DAY ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE, all in letters a mile high, all red. And the news: anniversary of the Russian missile strike on the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital. Photos of the hospital burning, rescuers among the rubble, columns of thick smoke; something clenched inside Ulyana, a wave of dread rising up. Wait, but that was ages ago. What about something fresh? Here: FAB bombings hit the cities of Bilytske and Rodynske, two women killed, seven wounded… Oh, come on… Then she clicked some more links, and there it was again—Russia bombing, Kyiv burning, apartment blocks, unfamiliar district names, but the buildings looked just like the ones in some town in Odintsovo, like the housing estates on Moscow’s outskirts. Missiles hit a residential high-rise, burning again, smoke again, rescuers again. Full-on drama! And why is it always Russia, Russia bombing? Is only one side fighting, or what? Then—another link took her to a story about Mariupol, about how Russia was rebuilding something there. Well, that was good, wasn’t it! But then they started comparing it with how everything had been bombed to pieces during the assault—a black, dead city, whole blocks reduced to skeletons. That blackness seemed to crawl right out of the screen into Ulyana’s eyes, pool there, drip into her solar plexus, rise up to her throat. And there was another link about what life was like on the front line, and she hadn’t wanted to read it, but she did. About the wounded they don’t evacuate, Ukrainian prisoners of war being shot, the shakedowns soldiers are subjected to by their commanders. Sure, and they don’t shake people down over there, do they?

Of course, it wasn’t all about bombing over there. There was also something about someone arrested for treason, someone reported to the FSB, someone picked up for reposting something in opposition to the SMO, practically for likes. God, it was so scary to live here, you could barely breathe.

She read and read, read and read—and spat it out. Go on, just collect news about what a piece of shit we, Russia, are. But where’d you hide the article about Ukrainian drones hitting our factory? They’re bombing us too—are we supposed to sit here with our mouths shut? Are we just suckers? It’s all clear with your “Meduza”; no need to look at the rest, really. Sure, we started it, we’re carrying on, we’re bombing, we’re Satan, we’re Hitler, we shoot prisoners and rape civilians, and you get life for a repost! Well, what can you say? That’s just the kind of beasts we are by nature! Is this what you call sensible news, Uncle Maksim? This is exactly what deranged propaganda is—dumping a pile of crap like that on people! Don’t you want to say anything about the reasons for the SMO? You just want to smear all of us with shit. Well, aren’t you clever, aren’t you good!

She closed “Meduza” so it wouldn’t stink up the place. Right to ban the hell out of you, because this isn’t information at all, it’s called manipulation. Got it, all of you. Case closed. You want to sit there, Uncle Maksim, looking smart, acting like you know the whole truth—go ahead, sit there. Meanwhile, your brains are worm-eaten. “The truth!” Yeah, right, fuck.

She let all the blackness that had built up drain out into the void, emptied it away—and somehow she felt a little better.

All right. Fuck them all. Why should Ulyana let all this inside her? Tomorrow was a big day; she needed to get herself in the right frame of mind, think positive instead. She’d got everything ready, sent the scan to the deputy chief doctor, they’d confirmed for twelve… One more thorn in her side: Sasha’s mother. How was she going to lie to her tomorrow? But that was tomorrow’s problem. And what was there to lie about? Maybe she wouldn’t have to lie at all. She could just say it straight: I’m sorry, Tatyana Nikolayevna, after the way you spoke to me last time, what was I supposed to think? Was I supposed to take a chance? Here’s the picture—would you like to see your grandson? This is the one you suggested I scrape out, by the way. Was I right not to listen to you? Or was I wrong? Go on, look, don’t turn away. He likes candy, just like your son. Was I supposed to risk him? If you’d treated me differently, if you’d spoken to me like a normal person, I wouldn’t have had to do that then, I wouldn’t even have thought of dealing with you like this. And when you finally deign to toss us a few crumbs from your lordly table—a little Mercedes—it’s too late, we don’t need it anymore. That’s life: everyone’s on their own, and there are no second chances. So get the fuck off my beach with your complaints. Whatever I’m entitled to so I can raise this baby, that’s what I’m entitled to. I didn’t decide it; the state did. And anyway, why not? We’re all grown-ups. We decided to get married, so we’re getting married. I’m not seducing a schoolboy. Ask permission? What century are we in? Besides, we already asked, and you told us to get lost, Tatyana Nikolayevna—you remember where. And now here’s this little gambit. Go ahead, hold out your hat.

She wound herself up in the sheet, unwound, cold one moment, stifling the next. For some reason she sent her mom the ultrasound. Less than five minutes later, her mother called back.

“Is that yours?”

“Whose else, Mom?”

“Would you look how cute he is!” Her mother fussed, almost crying.

“Mom… What if… You’ll help me with him, right? In case I’m on my own.”

Her mother thought it over and said:

“You absolutely have to keep him, Ulyasha. If it comes to it, the two of us will raise him together. You know, sweetheart, how long I’ve wanted a grandchild. Just have the baby for me, and I’ll take it from there.”

“Okay, Ma.”

That made her feel a little calmer.

Already drifting in and out, she heard Kirill come back from his nights out, murmuring and cooing something into his phone again as he paced the hallway. Aunt Marina was feeding him in there too, it seemed. It took ages for everyone to settle down. She wanted so badly to lose consciousness already, so it would be tomorrow—how much longer could this go on?

She’s giving birth, or so it seems, and she can actually feel the pain, real childbirth pain—she knows it from somewhere. Everyone’s gathered around: Red Kolka from school, Denchik, Stas—well, basically the whole list—and Sasha too, both his legs intact, healed. And the delivery is being handled by that creepy guy, the client from the salon who got Ulyana fired. The baby takes a long time coming, it’s hard, and it’s indecent, having so many men around, everyone watching. There’s only supposed to be one person present at a birth—the father—so what are all the others doing here? This client, and he’s naked, just like when he came out to them and Kristinka in the hallway, announces that the head is crowning. A baby cries; thank God, she bears down again, and then they say, “That’s it, congratulations!” They hand her the baby. She wants to look—who is it? A boy, after all? Will Sasha have a son? She looks—and he has no legs. One is cut off at the knee, the other almost completely.

She’d overslept.

She’d set the alarm for eight, but at eight, in a sticky haze, she’d mechanically jabbed at her phone to shut it up. She’d drifted around in that stew for another hour, and then, as she was waking, she’d seen this. It was like being doused with ice water; she sprang up at once.

She ran to wash up.

In the kitchen, as if they’d never left, Kirill and Uncle Maksim were sitting and cooing away. She mumbled something to them and locked herself in the bathroom. She cleared her throat and called Lesha on his cell: to wish Sasha good morning, say she was on her way.

“Hey, bridey. He’s not here.”

“What do you mean, he’s not there? Where is he?” Ulyana blurted out.

“They took him in for surgery. First thing this morning.”

“What?! His surgery was scheduled for Thursday!”

“Why’re you yelling at me? What can I do? They moved it, that’s all.”