13.

They said to go to the ward. They said they’d bring Sasha there.

She got up and went. Ran, even. She had a head start on Tatyana Nikolayevna, but it was small and unreliable. A military hospital was a complicated machine, like a slot machine in a casino. Who the hell knew what was spinning around inside it; the display only showed the final result of all those gear-driven coincidences.

Today she hadn’t brought either her veil or the bubbly. The only bridal accessory she had was her passport. Everything else seemed like a clown act now. They just had to settle the question. They’d celebrate afterward, if there was anything to celebrate.

She made her way into the ward and found the doctor on duty. He looked at her strangely, apparently already aware of the situation. She asked how Sasha was, whether they’d heard anything. He said sepsis and intracranial. Ulyana sat outside Sasha’s room and googled what sepsis was and what it affected. The AI app warned her that it was serious, so Ulyana shut it down in case it jinxed things.

She decided to smoke on it. She got up and stood by the elevator on the landing, where everyone smoked, so she wouldn’t miss Sasha. She pulled out her cigs: melon wasn’t saving her from shit anymore.

Some other shaved-headed guy was lying on a gurney in the corridor by the elevator, waiting to find out where they’d assign him, watching her sideways. Sasha’s roommates came out of his room: Sery with a pirate patch over one eye and Leshy with an arm missing. They spotted Ulyana, greeted her with a half-hearted nod, and gave her crooked little smiles.

“Oh, hey, bridey. Your guy isn’t here. Got a cig?”

“I know,” she said, tapping a cigarette out of the pack for them. “I’ll wait for him here.”

“You might be waiting a while. They’ve dragged that kid in to take his place.”

“I’m Igor, by the way,” said the guy on the gurney. “Could I get a drag too?”

Leshy and Sery rolled him over to the landing so they wouldn’t smoke outside the residents’ room.

“Sasha’s fine,” Ulyana declared. “He’s not being replaced.”

“Well, God willing,” Leshy shrugged, his stump twitching comically.

“Wait, aren’t you pregnant?” Sery remembered. “Why the hell are you smoking?”

“Have to,” she explained. “It’s not us, it’s life.”

“So what’s with the wedding?” Sery wouldn’t let it go.

“Well, once they bring him in, we’ll have a wedding,” Ulyana took a drag. “Want to be a witness?”

“A witness? Maybe Leshy would be better?”

“I’ve got no objection,” Leshy rasped.

“So what are you doing here, Igorek?” Sery asked the guy on the gurney nasally, holding the cigarette for him. “What’s the deal? Where’d you come from?”

“What deal? Came from Volchansk. They sent me straight from training.”

“Sounds familiar. Which unit?”

“The 72nd Motor Rifle Brigade.”

“So, cannon fodder.”

“That’s what we are. It’s pure fucking hell there. The Ukrainians are dug in, they’re in every house, every basement, and FPVs are watching everything. No chance. They lined us up and said, ‘If you don’t go on an assault today, it’ll be a hundred.’ Well, a hundred guys. But a hundred’s better than two hundred. And they’re laughing.”

“Not a bad rate, actually,” Leshy judged. “A humane one.”

“And we were all green, me included. Felt sorry for the money, so… We took a chance.”

“Nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing,” Sery nodded. “And the money’s only any good when they’ve just paid you, while it’s still burning a hole in your pocket. People don’t get that there’s no chance out there. So?”

“So, yeah… Long story short, the first group went into the BZ, and they all got wiped out straight away. Then some guy’s yelling on the radio, ‘I’m a three-hundred, I’m a three-hundred, come get me.’ The commander just turned the radio off. Looks at us and says, ‘Now it’s a hundred and fifty.’”

“Inflation, what can you do?” Leshy joked.

“I gave all my cash to my folks so they wouldn’t rip me off in the unit. So he points at me: ‘Come on, you’re going.’ Long story short, no money. So either go, or they’d already zeroed out anyone who hesitated. We figured that out on the fly. So I went, what else could I do? And they were popping us one by one. Then I hear a buzzing. Well, that’s it, I think, I’m fucked. Once they pick a target, they’ve got you. I made it to some basement, jumped in, and they tossed a grenade after me. Good thing it went off a bit early, before it could roll inside. So only one fragment got me, in the spine, they said later. But when I came to, my legs didn’t feel like mine. And I was on the radio. I thought, I’ll fucking annoy the hell out of you, you won’t brush me off like you did that poor bastard. I kept yelling at them for two days, and finally, on the third night, they pulled me out. The guys were withdrawing from their positions, and somebody gave a shit enough to get me. Out of the forty they lined up there, five, maybe, crawled away. The rest were fucked.”

“Well, that’s normal, sending green guys on assaults,” Sery sniffed. “We did the same thing. What, were we supposed to go in ourselves? They’re fresh off the bus, so you send them in first. Otherwise they figure out what’s what, and then you’re in for a world of trouble. They start getting lippy, and we have to clean up the mess. The boss is yelling, ‘Either them or you. Get them in there however you like. If you want, go zero them yourselves; if not, go in their place.’”

“Well, they’ve got to show numbers,” Leshy raised his stump again. “They draw arrows on maps. Either give them results or at least some activity. They’ve got reports and all that shit. You can understand it too.”

“Numbers, for fuck’s sake,” Sery said in his nasal, toy-flute voice. “They get reports, we get the hard work.”

“So,” Igor on the gurney asked hesitantly, “did you ever have to zero anyone?”

“Well, if that’s the situation,” Sery piped, “it’s them or you. What do you think?”

“I don’t fucking know.”

“Well, you can see I’m here,” Sery giggled.

They snickered. Fell silent. They didn’t give a shit that Ulyana was standing there listening. Maybe they’d gotten used to her.

“So, is the surgery any good here?” Igor changed the subject.

“Don’t worry, they’ll fix you up. You’ll be good as new, then they’ll send you back.”

“I don’t want to go back,” Igor said. “I’d rather stay lying down, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’ll get discharged and go back,” Sery sniffed.

“Who’s going to take you with one eye?” Leshy rasped.

“Same place as before. Back with my guys. It’s all arranged there. They treat me well. And besides, what the fuck does it matter? It’s my right eye. I won’t have to squint, at least.”

He laughed again.

“Fuck that,” Leshy disagreed. “I’d give them every last bit of money I had, just so I didn’t end up back at zero. What the fuck for?”

“Oh, fuck off…” Sery waved him away, eyebrow dancing above his seeing eye. “Just because.”

“Explain.”

“What the fuck else is there to do here? There’s nothing here, and nothing to do.”

Leshy tilted his head to one side: Fair enough. Your call.

The nurse on duty came running in and yelled at them for wheeling Igorek off. They shoved him back inside. Then they went back to the room to lie around. And Sasha still hadn’t come. Still hadn’t come.

It was another hot, sluggish day. The fan swept around in circles, and the open book on the table rustled its pages every time the fan turned toward it. Maksim should have been thinking about tomorrow, but instead he was thinking about yesterday. Trying to make sense of it: how had it happened that he hadn’t cornered Ulyana, but she’d cornered him? Why had he run?

Because he was afraid for Kirill. That was why.

If Ulyana had threatened him, Maksim, he wouldn’t just have stayed—he would’ve yanked the goddamn TV right out of the wall too. In theory, he himself had been ready for arrest; he’d pictured many times how it might happen one day, if he got punished for standing by his principles. Maksim had gone to protests, too: in 2010, in 2012, in 2014; and when the war started, he and Marina had taken to the streets together—and every time he’d been mentally prepared to be detained: he took his documents and water, followed all the Meduza guidelines. But he’d never gone looking to get arrested on purpose; his survival instinct kicked in, and if he saw the riot police grabbing people somewhere at a protest, he wouldn’t let the crowd carry him over there.

But Maksim didn’t think of himself as a revolutionary; he thought of himself as someone with a sense of civic duty. He wasn’t doing it for the country: the country was doomed anyway, and all those public gatherings and liberal antics could do little more than slow its slide into the abyss. Maksim did it for himself, just so he’d know that when the fateful hour came, he hadn’t stood aside. So he could answer to his grandchildren for it later. To clear his conscience, if he was being completely honest. And what was wrong with that? Better than sitting it out on the couch. Well, that was him. “I cannot be silent,” and all that. But he very much wanted to shield Kirill from all of this, to keep him safe. Especially since the risks had been smaller in earlier years, and the hopes more naive. Back then you could put up a fight, or at least pretend to. But now the times had grown utterly bleak; there was no point risking your neck. He’d raised him to be a free man, unafraid—and look what he’d raised.

And then there was yesterday’s business, too.

It seemed the incident had been resolved; Maksim had no doubt Ulyana wouldn’t snitch on them now that he’d let her think she’d won their argument. Well, if a person needed a symbolic victory—fine, no skin off our backs. We understand that only people who absolutely have to prove something fight to the bitter end; people who were humiliated by someone once, long ago. They’d never think of showing generosity, because every battle they fought was an echo of that very first one they’d lost. And Maksim, all things considered, had lived a life free of humiliation—not only by chance, but thanks to his own moral compass (and his survival instinct, for that matter, too)—well, free of serious humiliation, let’s say. So even in yesterday’s ridiculous standoff, he could afford to show Ulyana some leniency. It was, as they say, a win-win: the situation remained under control, Kirill was taken out of the equation. And most importantly, the conversation about the million rubles that now had to be paid as a bribe—not to the doctors, but to Ulyana, for her silence—was over. It turned out that Maksim, by apparently yielding to Ulyana, had in fact outplayed her in this rather unusual game.

Maksim reached for the fan’s oscillation button and pressed it, and at last the thing stopped swiveling back and forth neurotically and started blowing in his face. The book, which God knew where it had been flipped to, stopped fluttering. Maksim leaned back in the director’s chair and smiled to himself.

Then Marina called.

“Maksim…” she said, for some reason whispering. “We need to talk.”

“We’re talking already,” he replied calmly, though something inside him went still.

“Just don’t start yelling, okay?”

“Okay. I did enough yelling yesterday.”

“I want you to go and withdraw that money. For Ulyana.”

Maksim rolled his eyes, though Marina couldn’t see him. Here we go again? He cleared his throat.

“Why? Has she brought it up again today? Couldn’t you get hold of Irina?”

“I got hold of Irina. She says Ulyana’s out of her mind, yelled at her. They had a fight. She’s asking us to understand her situation.”

“Understand her situation? Are you fucking kidding me? Wait, wait… I got the impression we parted on decent terms yesterday, each of us sticking to our position, didn’t we? She understood she wasn’t getting anything from us. That’s it, the incident is over.”

She fell silent. Then the phone beeped.

“Can you switch to video?” Marina asked.

“Okay, go ahead. Please.”

Marina’s face appeared on the screen—frozen, like a paralytic’s. She switched the camera, and Maksim realized she was in Ulyana’s room.

“Well, well. Very interesting,” he commented.

“I came in… to wipe the dust. And… there’s a notebook here on her desk. And in the notebook…”

She pointed the trembling camera at the squared pages, where the handwritten letters dissolved into little squares; apparently the phone wasn’t getting a good signal.

“I can’t see anything like that, Marin. The connection’s crap. What does it say?”

“I can read it to you,” she said, breaking off. “It says this: To the FSB Directorate for the City of Moscow, statement. From Ulyana Konstantinovna Tsareva, then her passport details—she got them mixed up and crossed them out.”

“And?” Maksim asked, though everything inside him had already clenched.

“And a few pages have been torn out.”

The fan buzzed terribly loudly, insistently, but it couldn’t move the air anymore.

“And?” he repeated like an idiot.

“I want you to go withdraw the money now. And I’ll write to her that we agree to help.”

Maksim said nothing.

“Are you listening to me, Maksim?” Marina switched to the front-facing camera.

“I’m listening.”

“Then why are you silent?”

“I’m not doing it.”

Cool little streams ran from his armpits beneath his shirt, tickling his sides. Maksim wiped his forehead. He wanted to scream. He wanted to hide. Where are you going to hide, you idiot? In a pillow fort? There’s nowhere to hide.

“Fine, then I’ll go withdraw the money myself. I have money in my account.”

“I’m against it. She’s breaking us down! Do you understand?”

“I don’t care whether you’re for it or against it, Maksim. This has nothing to do with you. You and your ego. We’re not talking about you here, we’re talking about Kirill.”

“We’re talking about all of us, Marina,” Maksim reminded her.

“Save your arguments for another time. If you don’t want to help me, just don’t get in my way, okay? Just don’t interfere. I called to give you a heads-up, that’s all. I’ve already made up my mind, and I’ll do what I think is right.”

That frozen face of hers. How many times had she reread that note before calling him, he wondered? She’d probably already turned the whole room upside down… That lifeless voice of hers.

For one brief instant—as quick as a crackle of static—Maksim felt Marina was right. But as soon as the charge faded, in a millisecond, he took that not even a thought but a tiny scratch on his soul and polished it away without a trace.

“Marina… You understand what you’re about to do, right? You want to help her get money for a murder.”

“Just be quiet, okay? Just shut up. I’m asking you. He’s not a murderer, he’s a victim. He’s just as much a victim as all of us. You know where the murderers are sitting. Up top. That’s it, Maksim. See you tonight. Thanks so much for your help.”

The screen went dark. Maksim put the phone down but kept staring at it, unable to tear his eyes away, until someone knocked on the door. Maksim nearly jumped in his director’s chair—it sounded so loud to him. Who knocks like that? What for?

“Maksim Pavlovich?”

A woman’s voice, pleading. Galina. Oh, for fuck’s sake, Galina Igorevna, honestly.

“I’m busy!” he shouted.

Galina rustled away and disappeared.

I just don’t have the strength to keep fighting Marina, Maksim told himself. He could dig in his heels now, forbid her to withdraw the money, go home and fight about it… But was he supposed to break her over his knee now, too? He had no strength left. For one thing, he’d made his position perfectly clear. He hadn’t hedged or dodged; he’d told Ulyana everything to her face, more than once or twice. And then… She’d turned the state, with its entire repressive apparatus, against them. This wasn’t a confrontation with her; it was with that whole behemoth. The odds weren’t just uneven; resistance was futile. You had to think differently here: pull back to save your troops. What the hell are you talking about? What troops? What do troops have to do with anything? Well, what about Ulyana? What was Ulyana going to prove to anyone? Let Marina throw her this bone already, and to hell with it. Let her; at least she’d disappear from their lives, vanish back to wherever she’d come from, and peace would return to their family, because, if he was going to be completely honest, Marina was right about this too: there was nothing more important in the imperfect life of a human being than peace in the family.

The first to appear was an inconspicuous civilian woman with the kind of short haircut people got when life had dealt them a bad hand; Ulyana’s teachers used to wear their hair like that at school. A real woman-mouse. She had a faux-leather folder and a tablet in her hands. She went into the residents’ room, made inquiries, and headed for Sasha’s room. Ulyana spotted her from a distance, at the other end of the corridor. Her heart gave a little jump; she guessed right away what kind of bird she was.

“You’re the bride?” the woman asked her.

“I am,” Ulyana answered.

“All right, then. I’m from the registry office. Your groom, they said—Artur Ivanovich—will be brought in now. Do you have all the documents with you?”

“What documents? I only have my passport. And this ultrasound.”

“I don’t need the ultrasound. Who has the groom’s documents?”

“The hospital, I guess,” Ulyana said, flustered.

“All right, we’ll check. You know about the fee for state registration?”

“I know.”

She gave Ulyana the kind of look cops give Tajiks, but said nothing more. She checked her watch, shook her head in annoyance, clicked her tongue, and right then a flurry of activity began by the elevators, as if on command.

“There they are, bringing him in.”

Only then did Ulyana truly believe she had won. That she’d broken them all—Artur Ivanovich, Alexey Alexeyevich, Uncle Maksim, and Sasha’s mom. Everything had been hanging by a thread; it could all have ended horribly, none of them might have fallen for her bluff, and then Ulyana would have been thrown into the ditch, and that would’ve been the end of her, fucked. But it had gone the other way: look at them scurrying around, all flustered; they’d all bought it, they were all running around, dancing to Ulyana’s tune. That’s how it is, bitches. Fortune favors the brave, and the meek get fucked every which way.

She rushed toward Sasha.

She reached him—and didn’t recognize him.

He was gray, beads of sweat dangling on his cheeks, eyes bulging, pupils pinpricked. A red bandage wrapped his head; a catheter was in his hand, and beside him, on a pole, hung a plastic bag of some kind of sludge. Two doctors wheeled the gurney, with Artur Ivanovich marching behind them. Ulyana joined the procession.

“Sasha! Sashenka…”

“Ulyash?” He rolled his bulging eyes toward Ulyana. He recognized her.

“How are you?”

“I’m the anesthesiologist. Hello. We gave him naloxone and flumazenil, reversed the anesthesia. You’ve got about twenty minutes, then he’ll drift off again, so I wouldn’t recommend dragging this out. Do what you came to do, and that’s it,” one of the doctors, a dark-haired man, answered her grimly.

“Let’s get him into a room, so people don’t gawk,” Artur Ivanovich ordered. He paid no attention to Ulyana.

“We’re getting married now, right, Sash?”

“Yeah? Let’s.” He blinked. “I just… Ulyash… I want… I only want you… I want to tell you…”

“You’ll tell me, yes. Let’s just do this quickly now… Then you can tell me everything, okay? Whatever you want.”

Sery and Leshy were waiting in the doorway. They stepped aside to let the gurney through, then squeezed in too.

“Hey,” Sasha said, squinting at them. “I’m getting married. Right now.”

“Fuck, you’re a king!” Sery nodded at him with respect.

“And I’m gonna be your best man,” Leshy rasped. “Cool?”

“Yeah… Let’s…”

The mouse-like woman turned to Artur Ivanovich and asked for the documents. He took out some kind of folder, with Sasha’s papers inside.

“These are copies. The young lady will bring you the originals later,” he explained. “Aleksey Alekseyevich asks you not to make things difficult; we have a situation here.”

“I understand.”

“Ulyash… I want to tell you something…”

“Yes, yes. In a minute. Soon, Sash…”

Someone’s phone started buzzing. Ulyana looked around to see whose it was, and who could be calling at such a bad time, but all she saw was Sery’s crooked grin. Then the phone’s vibration traveled through her bag, and she realized hers was ringing. She grabbed it—it was Tatyana Nikolayevna. She rejected the call. Tatyana called right back, and Ulyana just switched the damn phone off completely so it wouldn’t get in the way.

“All right, then, shall we, newlyweds?” the mouse-like woman said listlessly. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” Ulyana said.

Sasha was silent, swallowing, sweating. Sweat ran into his eyes and he squeezed them shut. Ulyana took his hand. His palm was just as wet and cold, but she couldn’t let go.

“Let’s go,” Leshy said. “Da-da-da-da… Da-da-da-da… Da-da da-da-da da-da, da da da, da-da-da, da-da…”

“What’s that?” Sery asked.

“It’s Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.”

“Thanks for explaining. Otherwise we’d never have fucking guessed.”

“All right! Quiet! Dear Ulyana and Alexander. I am delighted to welcome you here on this momentous and moving day, which will become one of the most important in your family life,” the registry-office woman launched into her well-practiced speech. “From this day forward, you will build your own special, beautiful, many-sided world, a world called family! Family is a union of love and fidelity…”

“You’ve got about fifteen minutes for the whole thing,” the anesthesiologist told her. “Give or take. Maybe we can skip the preliminaries?”

The mouse looked questioningly at Ulyana. She’d already understood that Sasha wasn’t exactly participating. Ulyana nodded.

Someone’s phone began blasting hard electronic music. Ulyana jumped and spun around. It was Sery’s, and he stepped forward.

“Hello? Yeah? Who?” He pulled a stupid face, as if surprised. “Sasha? Sash, it’s for you.”

“Who is it?” Ulyana shot back.

“It’s his mom,” Sery smiled at her. “Sash, your mom’s on the phone.”

“Mom? Really?” Sasha stopped squinting, relaxed for a second.

“What? Sash, wait…” Ulyana tried to dart over and grab the phone, but Sery wouldn’t let go of it and brought it right up to Sasha’s ear himself.

Sasha tilted his bandaged head toward the phone, rolling his eyes toward the speaker. He tried to smile at his mother.

“Mom… Hi. I’m getting married, yeah. To Ulyana.”

“No… No… Sasha… Noooo…” the phone squealed and shrieked like a rat being crushed under a boot.

Ulyana clenched her fists. Sery kept staring at her, laughing, the prick, the asshole. He’d done it all on purpose, set the whole thing up. Instead of clawing his insolent eyes out, Ulyana took Sasha’s hand again.

“Why, Mom? I want to. I want to myself. We… We’re having a baby. I’m fine… I’m not under anesthesia. Mom… I’ve decided…” Sasha argued with his mother with what little strength he had left. “Mom, this time I’m doing what I want. Yeah. Don’t be mad, Mom. Why are you yelling? Okay, anyway… Um… Come, Mom. All right. I’ll wait. That’s it. Bye.”

He looked at Ulyana—his eyes were shining, wet. In that little cap of bandages, swollen, he seemed beautiful to her for a second, because he’d stood up for her. Only for a second; then she remembered his legs and everything else.

“She wants to talk to you, Ul…”

Ulyana nodded. Sery gave her a nasty grin, spat, sucked the spit back in, shook his head, but handed her the phone: here, for fuck’s sake, take it. She put it to her ear, and the filth poured straight out.

“What are you doing?! What right do you have over him?! You’re nobody, nobody! When you have a son of your own, then! But now… I gave them everything, everything! I gave them my son! And what about you?! What have you got to do with this?! My whole life, my whole life I waited for something, anything! I gave them my boy! And you! I’m begging you, begging you…”

Was she crying over there? Trying to make Ulyana feel sorry for her? Ulyana had no pity, not a drop. She felt disgust.

“Well, it’s too late now, Tatyana Nikolayevna. Seems you missed your chance.” She hung up and kept the phone in her hand, waving Sery away. “I’ll give it back later.”

Everyone was staring at her—the registry-office mouse, Artur Ivanovich, the witnesses. Only Sasha was looking somewhere in the distance, at the wall.

“Can we just get this over with?” he asked. “It hurts like hell.”

“Dear Ulyana and Alexander,” the woman started up again. “In accordance with the solemn ceremony, before the state registration of your marriage, I am obliged to ask: is your desire to enter into this marriage mutual, free, and sincere? I ask the groom to answer.”

“Yes,” Sasha mumbled, clinging to Ulyana.

She squeezed his paw, damp and almost ice-cold.

“I ask the bride to answer—”

“Yes,” Ulyana said.

“I invite you to confirm your decision with your signatures in the state register…”

Sery’s phone started blaring again, but Ulyana choked it off at the second note.

“I invite you to confirm your decision with your signatures in the state marriage register. The bride has the right to sign first.”

She opened the tablet: there was a marriage certificate already printed out, all of Ulyana’s details entered neatly. There was no time to check Sasha’s. Ulyana picked up the pen, brought it to where that old bat pointed, and started to sign—but the pen wouldn’t write.

“Don’t be nervous,” the woman said. “You’ll tear the paper. Here, scribble on this.”

“I’m not nervous.”

She scribbled on her palm; the pen bled blue. Ulyana hurried, before it stopped writing again, and made what looked like her signature. She looked at it. Whose signature was that? It looked like someone else’s.

She gave the pen to Sasha. How could he manage it with his limp hand?

“Just make it pretty,” she asked him.

He tensed and scrawled something there.

“Right. And here, on the certificates… Yes. Well. In full accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, your marriage is hereby registered. I pronounce you husband and wife,” the mouse sang monotonously.

“She got it done,” Sery snorted. “What a woman.”

“I did it myself…” Sasha scowled.

“Yeah, yeah… You did it yourself. What a king,” Sery smiled, patted him on the shoulder, then shot Ulyana a look. “Give me my phone.”

Ulyana slapped his phone into his palm.

“You may kiss the bride,” the mouse-like woman gave permission.

Ulyana bent toward Sasha’s face. He smelled of medicine. She touched her lips to his. He tensed them, but it wasn’t a kiss; it was something else. Her cheek smeared against his cold sweat. It stung like alcohol. Ulyana waited like that for a second, then straightened up. She didn’t know what to do next.

“I wanted to tell you…” Sasha whispered.

“All right, then, I’ll leave the certificates here. And as for payment…”

“Can I talk to him?” Ulyana asked.

“Well, perhaps we should wait, Artur Ivanovich?” the anesthesiologist suggested. “Then we’ll take him back to intensive care.”

“You decide. We’ve done our part, so to speak. That’s it, congratulations.” The deputy chief physician finally deigned to look at Ulyana. “Well, Ulyana Konstantinovna, I hope you’re satisfied?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He went out, and his whole entourage followed. Only Sery lingered, as if afraid to leave Ulyana alone with Sasha. But his phone started hollering again, and he went to talk by the elevators.

Sasha gulped for air, searching for Ulyana with his eyes.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“My head hurts so bad… Ulyash… Don’t be mad… What do you think… If I die, where will I go? To hell?”

“You silly boy… What hell? There is no hell…” Ulyana promised him. “And why are you planning to die anyway? What for? Is this what you wanted to tell me, this nonsense?”

“Well…”

“I forbid you to think about it!” Ulyana said, like some heroine in some movie saying it to some hero, apparently in a similar situation.

“I saw… I saw things there… Well… At the zero line, and… And other stuff. I wasn’t there long, but things like that… We did them too. I didn’t want to, Ulyana. I didn’t want to…” He made a strange sound.

“Sash, stop. Sash, don’t.”

“No, I have to. I want to, I want to tell you. We did… I… It’s bad. You know what we did there… It hurts so much… It hurts.”

Ulyana took his hand firmly again.

“Don’t. I don’t care what you did there. You did the right thing. It’s war, and everyone does that there. It was an order. You followed it, and that’s that. End of story.”

“Those dreams… I see them all the time… I thought they were just dreams…” Sasha babbled. “That’s what I wanted… To tell you. They keep coming back… I thought maybe if I told you, it’d be easier somehow… You know… Like a weight off my soul…”

“Sasha!” she cut him off. “They’re dreams.”

“Those are dreams, but those weren’t dreams… Ulyash… Where are you?”

“Sash, you’re just delirious. Sash… Everything’s fine. Let me call the doctor, okay?”

Sasha was frightened of the doctor. His eyes wandered, as if searching the room for some other Ulyana, someone familiar who would listen to him all the way to the end.

“No, I haven’t had time… I want to tell you, you. We… Do you know what we did to them there? What we did…”

“What difference does it make? They’re enemies! You did to them what you do to enemies! So they wouldn’t come here, to us! They’re not even people, Sash! Forget it! You did what you did! You did it for us!”

“You’re pregnant, right? We’re going to have a little one… I want him to know, you understand… What it is, what it is… If I die. My head… It’s going to burst…”

He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again, but they were rolling back under his lids. His fingers unclasped and he let go of Ulyana. She caught him again, tried to hold him, but he was slipping away, floating off from her on his hospital gurney, out to sea.

“Yes. We’re going to have a little one. You’re not going to die on me, that’s one thing, okay? And if… Well, someday… He’ll know his father was a hero. That his father was a real hero. That he defended the Motherland. To the very end. That’s it. End of story. Understand? Got it?”

Sasha couldn’t answer anymore; the words wouldn’t come, he could only moan. Ulyana shook him, and he only moaned louder, then began to tremble. She realized something was wrong, shouted for the doctors, and they ran over from the smoking room, cursed, and wheeled Sasha toward the elevator without saying goodbye. Ulyana managed to keep up with them down the corridor, forcing herself to look at Sasha, but she couldn’t get into the elevator. The doors met and clanged shut; the shaft howled. She was left on the landing. Sery and Leshy were still standing there. Sery turned away; Leshy bummed a cigarette off her.

Ulyana stood with them for a little while, then realized she had nothing left to do there. She started down the stairs. She was swaying and terribly nauseous, but for some reason she felt she couldn’t throw up; she had to keep it all inside.

“So much for Schrödinger’s dick,” a voice droned from above, like a child’s toy whistle.

They managed to get Sasha on the phone when the train was already pulling up to the station.

Sasha’s voice had a whistle to it, like the voice of the neighbor Tatyana had as a child. He’d had throat cancer; they’d cut a hole in his neck, and he smoked through it, whistling as he did. When he spoke, the air went out through that hole, taking all the strength from his voice, so he had to plug it. That neighbor didn’t smoke for long. When she heard Sasha’s whistle, she felt a little embarrassed: there was something familiar about it. She recognized it, then forgot again.

Because all she could think about was Ulyana: she wanted her dead.

“Tanya… Tan. So, is it working?”

Good thing the train finally crawled into the station. The carriage doors opened, and some sort of air came into the car. The air helped her more than the Captopril. At least the room stopped spinning so much. She carefully got to her feet. Her legs seemed to hold.

The train attendant asked once more if she needed an ambulance, but Tatyana firmly told her she’d be all right. Vitalya took her by the elbow, and they slowly made their way along the platform. Then she got tired, leaned against a pillar, and again asked Vitalya to call Sasha’s neighbor. He answered and told her it had all happened already; there was nothing anyone could do now.

Vitalya looked at her with pity, but that look only made Tatyana furious. There was no need to pity anyone here; they had to keep fighting.

“So where to, then, Tanya?”

“There. To the hospital. I need to see Sashka. Visit him and knock some sense into him, at least. And I want to talk to her, to her. She thinks she can just hang up on me… We’ll see about that.”

They went down into the metro. Looked around, figured things out somehow. They set off. The train raced through the tunnel, whistling.