15.

“Vologda! Vologda, we’re arriving!” the conductress called, peering into the compartment.

Ulyana tore herself away from the reels and looked out the sealed window, with no little vent: rows of concrete-block garages and five-story apartment buildings drifted past. The train slid into Vologda gently, like a scalpel. She checked her bag one more time to make sure her money hadn’t been stolen, then stood up.

They’d arrived.

The carriage stopped almost opposite the fairytale station, a sugary gift from the Kremlin. People spilled onto the platform, stretching their stiff limbs. Some were met by someone. Ulyana’s mother couldn’t leave the shop.

A little group of men of various ages in military uniform stood by the station. Ulyana glanced at them and understood: these were the ones they were still taking over there. For now, they were just ordinary men with camouflage thrown on them, not walking corpses.

It really was convenient, moving people around by train. You could fit a lot of them in at once.

The guys in uniform paid Ulyana no attention. There was nothing feminine coming off her now, nothing at all. That morning, when she’d brushed her teeth in the train toilet, she’d seen some old bag in the mirror. And she hadn’t even been frightened. Somehow she didn’t give a shit about anything.

How long had it been since she’d been in Vologda? A week?

But it felt like she hadn’t been here since childhood. After Moscow, it seemed dusty, quiet, empty, very calm. Ulyana liked the calm. She liked how slowly the cars drove, how sluggish the people were, how few voices there were on the street that she could listen to each one and make out what was being said, how they didn’t all meld into one mass. She liked the cracks in the asphalt with grass growing in them, liked the chubby guys with shoulder bags, liked the sweaty women with red faces, the skinny girls with boyish faces. The only ones she didn’t like were the shorn young men with transparent eyes—they reminded her of Sasha.

She went home, sat around. Then lay down and watched reels. Whenever a horoscope came up, Ulyana swiped straight past it. Not interested. The funny reels were all stupid, too; none of them made her smile. She only got up to throw up.

Then Kris messaged her and invited her for a beer. And only then did a little color get added to the day. She wanted to see Kristinka, wanted to hear her. Kristinka was like a puppy to Ulyana’s stray.

Ulyana pulled herself together and started putting on her face. Did her eyes, did her lips. Did her lashes. It looked like a mask. While she was putting it on, she forgot why she’d needed to. But she went to meet her all dressed up anyway.

She invited Kristinka to a café. Why not? She had money—she’d borrowed it from Sasha’s monument. They got a Baltika each. Kris looked at Ulyana as if she’d never gone anywhere, like before. Ulyana was fine with that.

“I feel so bad for him,” she gasped when Ulyana told her about Sasha.

“Yeah.”

“Well, then, no clinking glasses, right?”

So they’d held a little wake, then. But Kris couldn’t talk about death for long; she had too much life pouring out of her. And Ulyana didn’t know what to say. Besides, that wasn’t really what she’d come for.

“Anyway, enough about me. What about you?”

“Oh, me… Well, that’s done, obviously. There’s another one on the scene now, met him right on the street. Denis, anyway. He’s not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, either, a delivery guy, but he’s fit, nice to touch. I mean, I ask him about TV shows and he hasn’t seen a damn thing. Just one of those, you know, ‘dick-pussy-Dzhigurda’ types. But for the summer, he’ll do, hang out with, rather than sit around alone, which is kind of…”

Ulyana nodded, even smiled at her, so she wouldn’t give herself away and show that she barely understood what Kristinka was talking about. But just sitting beside Kristina was already healing. Kristinka fluttered her wings, rubbed her little paws together, looked around; she’d come round in three days, and everything interested her. Ulyana looked at her, petrified in her amber, and tried to remember how it felt, and why.

“The only thing is, there’s nothing to eat,” Kristinka sighed. “Otherwise, everything’s pretty fucking great. What are you going to do now?”

Ulyana didn’t have to do anything. She could just drift around now. But she pictured herself lying around all day, scrolling reels, and felt sick again.

“By the way, what’s happening with our salon?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing. I walked past it; there’s a sign saying it’s for sale, equipment included. But no one’s going to buy it in three days now.”

Three days ago, Ulyana had been excited, thrilled even, thinking about going to Anatoly Sergeyevich and throwing the money in his face, watching him freak out. If only she could feel that again. Here, asshole, go ahead and fire me now. I’ll be the boss here, and I’ll decide. And you—get your shit together and get the fuck out of the picture! Ulyana listened inwardly. Like the echo of “Hello?” coming back from the bottom of a well, her anticipation from the other day—of stomping Anatoly Sergeyevich into the ground—echoed faintly inside her. But it was still something, at least some kind of sound.

“I’ll buy it out,” she told Kristinka. “I’ll buy it out and hire you back. And I’ll pay you twice as much.”

Kristinka actually lit up, she was so happy.

“For real?!”

“Yeah.”

“Ulyanych! Can I kiss you? I can do it with tongue, if you want!”

They hugged.

Kristinka pressed her whole body against Ulyana’s, trembling with happiness. So the money could actually be put to some good use. Ulyana held on to her, warming herself.

At the funeral agency, Tatyana suddenly worried that they’d arrange Sasha so everyone could tell they were burying a man with no legs. She didn’t want people to see. Not because she was ashamed of Sasha, but just… She wanted to do one more nice thing for him, before the end. Have them bury him looking handsome.

So she started arguing with them, demanding two more pillows and that they position them as if they were legs, with some kind of blanket over the top. They said only one pillow was provided, for the head, and it was satin already; if she wanted, she could bring one from home. So Tatyana brought two good feather pillows from home, brand-new, and made Sasha a pair of legs under the blanket.

They tidied him up and combed his hair carefully so the scars on his head wouldn’t show, and hid his forehead under a paper wreath bearing Christ’s image. He was buried in dress uniform, the one she and his father had bought him, and Tatyana’s mother gave him her own icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker to hold.

He lay in the coffin with rouge on his cheeks, but his eyes had sunk so deep that he didn’t look asleep. Tatyana sat beside him, sitting there remembering everything: the mumps, the German measles, the slugs on the cabbage, getting lost in the woods, the failing grades in math, and “Uncle Styopa.” She gazed fondly at the plastic doll in the coffin, but that doll wasn’t Sasha. So where was her Sasha then?

Nowhere.

She straightened his medals again and stroked the stranger’s hand. Checked to see if the ugly brown seam was poking out from under the paper. No. Everything was beautiful, everything was proper. Decent.

She didn’t want to remember, but she remembered how Sasha had looked at her outside the draft office, by the bus she’d brought him to. He’d looked as if it were a prank, as if they were about to call it all off and let him go home for lunch.

Well, then everyone arrived, lifted the coffin onto their shoulders, loaded it onto the bus, and rumbled off to Kozitsino Cemetery. Once they turned off the main road, the bus rocked over the bumps, and the people sitting by the coffin swayed back and forth, but the coffin itself was securely fastened and stood straight.

They got to the cemetery, and there were so many graves! With white-blue-red flags. It hardly even looked like a cemetery, more like a parade. And wreaths, wreaths. And photographs, photographs. All male faces. And somewhere at the very end, by the trees, they’d made a place for Sasha. With everyone else, on the Heroes’ Alley. Sasha’s grave was ready; all that was left was to lower the coffin, and they were already digging another one farther along.

As they got off the bus, his mother burst into tears.

“Look, Sanechka, so many people have come to say goodbye to you. They all love you, and you can’t even see it,” she told him.

“Mom! At least walk behind the coffin, don’t get ahead of it!” Tatyana hissed at her.

She felt terrible for Sasha, too, but what Sasha needed most now was for everything to go properly. He was a fighter, after all, fallen in battle. They had to bury him with dignity, as was fitting. She’d done everything she could for that. Vitalya had started drinking as soon as he found out, and that was that. Who had to take care of all the preparations? Tatyana. Tatyana had to pay off the undertakers, confirm the plot, make arrangements with the priest, slip the gravediggers a bottle, and everything else. She wanted to cry, but stupid things kept coming into her head. She’d even sat down by the coffin early on purpose, to get in the mood, but what she remembered wasn’t right.

Well, they’d made it. She straightened Vitalya’s clothes, cuffed Tema on the back of the head, and told her mother off. Some man in uniform from the draft office had come; he approached for the burial along with the priest.

It was a good day for a funeral—not hot, little white clouds sometimes blocking the sun, leaves rustling in the trees planted all around the cemetery field to hide it from the road, birds chirping. A day like that was good for the dacha.

“Well, Sasha, this is where you’ll be now,” Vitalya said to his son when they brought the coffin over.

“Alexander Lazarenko was killed while fulfilling his military duty in the special military operation,” the serviceman said in a booming voice. “Defending our Motherland from the enemy. Eternal glory to the hero.”

He shook Vitalya’s hand, yielded the floor to the priest, then headed toward other people just like them, two hundred meters away.

“With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the soul of your servant Alexander,” the priest sang. “Where there is no sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting.”

The priest was young, fair-haired, bespectacled, with a very sparse little beard, as if he’d never shaved it, and a low, steady voice. He read the first part, then whispered to the people standing beside him:

“And now, together…” He showed them how to sing the notes. “Eternal memory!”

“Eternal memory! Eternal memory!”

It was only because Tatyana was keeping an eye on everyone that she spotted Ulyanka from far away. She recognized her by her height and her walk. Ulyanka hurried over, not walking like someone at a cemetery, not with any decorum, but as if she’d just gone out to buy bread. She ran up and stopped without saying hello. She was dressed in God knows what, almost jeans. Tatyana didn’t give her a dressing-down there, out of respect for the funeral. She let her stand there. Ulyanka wasn’t looking at Tatyana; she was looking at Sasha. Someone must have told her—Vitalya, probably.

They finished the prayer.

And while they were singing, Tatyana understood something. It began to prick and cut at her so badly from inside that she couldn’t keep it in, even though she’d promised herself not to spoil the funeral. She stood at Sasha’s head, and when Ulyanka came over to kiss Sasha on the forehead goodbye, she hissed at her:

“You lied to me, you know. You said you’d go another day. If you hadn’t lied to me, I could’ve seen him alive one more time. We could’ve talked to him, had time.”

“About what?” Ulyanka asked her without looking at her.

“About you. I’d have talked him out of it; he’d be alive now. If it weren’t for your wedding, our Sashenka would be alive!”

Ulyana shrugged.

And only then did Tatyana’s eyes open, and water poured out of them; she began to sob aloud.

They’d asked Kiryukha to come back early this time. Marina had roasted pork with garlic in the oven, the kind he’d loved since he was a child, and fried some potatoes. But he was still late, and the pork had gone cold.

He burst in, agitated, phone to his ear, purring into it ecstatically:

“Sorry, kitty, I’m staying in tonight. After last night, I’m just one dead pixel. But tomorrow I’ll rise from the dead, and I promise I’ll be at your set in the fan zone with glow sticks and porn star martinis! I’m your biggest fan, you know that! Yes, Madame Diana, you can punish me. Oh, please forgive me. I live for the dream of seeing you.”

At last, he washed his hands and dashed into the kitchen.

“Wow! Is this feast in my honor or something?”

“Of course!” Marina smiled at him. “Are you hungry?”

“Like a beast.”

He pounced on the pork he’d loved as a kid and practically growled with pleasure, while Maksim poured himself another whisky.

“Maybe that’s enough?” Marina asked.

He took another drink—a big, painful one—and said to his son:

“Kiryukh… Your mother and I wanted to talk to you.”

“Go ahead, talk!” Kirill gave them permission.

“We think you need to leave the country.”

“Oh, here we go again! What the hell for?”

“Because… The draft notice is posted. And with Ulyana… Who knows, Kirill. Who knows.”

Kirill stopped tearing at the meat with his teeth and put down his cutlery.

“Are you for real? For how long?”

“Well… Leave. For good.”

“I can’t, Dad!” Kiryukha laughed.

“Not for good,” Marina interjected. “Not for good! Just until this all dies down…”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Kirill protested. “Have you lost your minds? Where would I go?”

“I don’t know where. Anywhere you want. You could start with Georgia, take the well-trodden route…”

“I don’t want to go to Georgia!” His smile had frozen on his face. “What the hell would I do there?!”

“Well, not Georgia, then—Thailand! Bali. Look how many of our people are in Bali,” Maksim took another drink. “And they’re all perfectly happy!”

“I don’t want any fucking Bali! It’s dead there! They’re all turning into old geezers! I don’t want to turn into a mushroom!”

“Paris, New York, London… The whole world is open to you, Kirill! The whole world!”

“Who do I know there? I don’t know anyone there! What New York? Are you out of your mind?” His voice cracked.

“I just… I was giving an example…” Maksim said, flustered.

“They hired me! I wanted to tell you… I thought dinner was for that… I passed the third round, with the deputy general manager… They’re hiring me for two hundred and fifty grand! Me! They’re hiring me! And there are prospects…”

Maksim took another sip.

There are prospects everywhere, Kiryukh… You got through here; you’ll get through anywhere. You’re our brains…

“I’m not going anywhere,” his son said suddenly, in a completely different voice, firm and adult.

“You’re going,” Maksim answered in the same voice. “You’re going, whether you like it or not. Either you go, or you join the army.”

“This is crazy! How many times are we going to do this? I have a girlfriend here… I have everything here. Friends… Why are you trying to push me out?”

“Because it’s never going to be normal here again!”

“It’s fine here right now! I like everything!”

“Fine? We don’t want to sit here and shake with worry about you!” Maksim shouted at him.

“Then don’t! You don’t have to sit there, and you don’t have to worry! You’re the one who’s scared shitless! You, not me! I’ll be fine!”

“Diana will come to you. If she loves you. And anyway… Girls… Well, girls…” Marina said the word for the first time.

“Mom! What are you doing now?! Why are you butting into our conversation?!”

“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that!” Maksim barked. “Don’t you dare, do you hear me?!”

“Oh, fuck off, Dad! How do you talk to her yourself? And you’re going to lecture me! You sit there getting shitfaced and then you…”

He shoved the plate of pork slices away from him, jumped up, and made to run, but Marina spread her arms and caught him.

“Please!” she begged. “Please!”

“What do you mean, ‘please’?” Kirill roared in a bass voice. “What?!”

This was someone else, not Kiryusha; some stranger.

“Y-you little shit!” Maksim roared. “You haven’t smelled gunpowder, that’s why! What the fuck do you know? We have reflexes, that’s why! From birth! With our mothers’ milk… ‘You’re scared shitless!’ Your generation still has to acquire them! Well, you’ll acquire them… You won’t have a choice!”

“Boys…”

“W-what the fuck do you mean, boys? Look at him, he’s a grown man! And he doesn’t want to think for shit! All he wants is to fuck!”

Marina sobbed.

“It’s just a time like this… We just have to wait it out… It won’t last forever… It’ll be over soon. Soon, I can feel it. It can’t go on much longer… What’s happening is unnatural. And he can’t keep it up for long. He’ll leave, or he’ll die, and everything will come back, everything will be like before. We just have to sit it out… Wait it out. Keep ourselves safe. Keep each other safe. Boys… Please, I’m begging you.”

Kirill shuddered. He wriggled free of Marina’s embrace, disentangled himself, snorted. He broke out into the hall and slammed the front door. Maksim poured himself more whisky.

“W-what a piece of shit,” he said unsteadily.

Marina left too. Maksim got up, went to the window, and cracked it open. Warm summer air seeped in, sweet Moscow smog. In the dark glass he saw his reflection—Maksim, his face twisted out of shape.

“P-piece of shit,” Maksim repeated with hatred, and slapped himself across the cheek.

The line for gynecology was short: it was a small private clinic, and Ulyana had found one where she wouldn’t run into anyone she knew on the street, in a different part of town. There was some Tajik woman sitting there, or maybe Kazakh; some girl barely seventeen; and another woman with a belly.

While she waited her turn, Ulyana kept playing that diamond game on her phone—you had to match them by color and shape so they disappeared in rows. A good game: you couldn’t think about anything else or get distracted, not like with Reels. Ulyana had made it pretty far in the diamond game, even made it into the players’ top rankings.

Then they called her in.

Ulyana tugged her skirt straight and sniffed. What kind of doctor would it be? Dzagoyev Timur Mikhailovich.

He was an older man, with black hair in his mustache going gray, and glasses like an intellectual’s. Seemed pleasant enough, but he could just as easily have been sitting in some company director’s office; you wouldn’t have known at first glance that he was a doctor. His face wasn’t especially sympathetic. Maybe that was a good thing.

“I’m listening.”

“I want to terminate my pregnancy,” Ulyana said, looking him in the eye. “I read that you do vacuum abortions, in one day, right? As an outpatient. I need it done in one day.”

“Now, now, wait,” the doctor said, gently restraining Ulyana with his palm. “Let’s at least talk first. A vacuum abortion! You do understand there’s a little person in there. It has little arms, legs, eyes… And you want a vacuum abortion. It may even have a soul. How far along are you, if I may ask?”

“I’m thirteen weeks along.”

“How many?”

“Thirteen,” Ulyana repeated.

“Thirteen! Good heavens! No… At that stage we definitely can’t do anything for you anymore,” he fidgeted in his chair. “We only do it up to twelve weeks here; after that we’re not allowed. And there’s certainly no vacuum abortion at that point… That’s a full-on abortion! But, as I already told you, we have no right.”

Ulyana had prepared for this conversation. A bag rested on her knees; she clicked open the clasp.

“I’ll pay over the listed price,” she said quietly, but firmly.

“Over the listed price! You… Why did you even decide to do this?”

“The pregnancy’s been difficult,” Ulyana answered. “Morning sickness and everything.”

“Well, now! My dear… Morning sickness! So what if you have morning sickness? It’ll all pass, it’s temporary. That’s certainly no reason! And besides… Thirteen weeks. It already has little fingers on its hands and feet, and it looks just like a person. About this big…” He held up his fingers. “Eight centimeters by now.”

“I know. I read the internet.”

On the outside she was still keeping calm, though inside something was beating against her ribs, harder and faster by the second.

“After the twelfth week, in our country, it’s permitted only on social grounds…”

“I have social grounds,” Ulyana seized on the hint.

“Which ones?”

“I’m a single mother. There’s no father.”

“Do you know what counts as social grounds? They’ve cut the list down drastically,” Timur Mikhailovich said, studying Ulyana closely. “Now the only social ground is rape. I hope nothing like that happened to you?”

“No.”

“And where is the father? Of the child.”

“He died.”

“May I ask under what circumstances?”

“He was killed in the Special Military Operation,” Ulyana said, invoking the spell that had worked before.

The doctor’s expression changed.

“We can’t. I’m asking you, don’t even…”

Ulyana reached into her purse and pulled out a bundle: a hundred thousand rubles, bound with a bank’s paper strap. Uncle Maksim’s money, Sasha’s. She set it on the desk and read the writing on the band aloud:

“A hundred thousand.”

Timur Mikhailovich recoiled from the bundle.

“You probably don’t understand, do you, young lady? They summon us all to the governor and instruct us that we can’t do this anymore. We’re all told to talk women out of it. And especially when it’s a soldier in the Special Military Operation! What is wrong with you? Have you lost your mind?”

Ulyana rummaged in her purse and put another identical bundle on the desk.

“Two hundred.”

“I can’t. Don’t you hear me? We’re being inspected. They’ll shut us down for good if I perform an abortion on the widow of a soldier in the Special Military Operation!”

“Then don’t write it down anywhere. Just do it. Three hundred thousand. There. Is that enough?”

He jumped to his feet.

“I’m telling you, three hundred or not, this is about them showing up here with the prosecutor’s office and shutting me down. What are you trying to do, provoke me? The consultation is over. Thank you!”

Ulyana flung two more bundles at him. Timur Mikhailovich looked at them, at half a million rubles on his desk. He shook his head from side to side.

“Don’t you understand what time we’re living in? So many men are dying! Not just yours! The country needs to replenish its ranks… There are special programs, the president says so. And it’s un-Orthodox, too. Traditional values, family… And you? Are you a believer?”

Ulyana started to shake.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want him. How much do you need? Why are you doing this to me… Why? I’ve got more here, here’s more, that’s all, I don’t have anything else—what more do you want? I don’t want him, I don’t want to keep walking around with him inside me, I want you to get him out, what’s so hard to understand?! What?! Get this out of me! I don’t need the money, any of it! What the fuck are you staring at me for? Are you stupid or what?! It’s my body, I want it removed! Vacuum or no vacuum, is the money not enough?!”

The doctor swept all the scattered bundles of bills off the desk, took Ulyana’s bag from her, and stuffed everything inside. He grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet, and dragged her toward the door. She resisted, but he was stronger.

“Ma’am… Calm down! Neither I… nor you… We don’t get to decide anything anymore… Do you hear me? That’s it! Quiet! It’s out of our hands now!”

“I’ll do it anyway, whether it’s you or someone else. You think there aren’t any other doctors?! Look at Mr. Principled here! Or are you just scared shitless? You are, aren’t you?!”

“That’s it… That’s it. I’m sorry.”

He shoved her into the corridor, then stood in the doorway, red-faced, blocking Ulyana from coming back in, and shouted to the girl at reception:

“Katya, dear… Katya! Don’t take this one. Yes… She refused the consultation.”

Later, Moscow had become thoroughly drowsy; the streams of people had thinned, and everyone with nowhere to go on vacation wandered around listlessly. At the weekend, Maksim and Marina flopped about at the dacha, mired in idleness like over-sweetened jam, with no plans to go back to the city. But Galina Igorevna called from work and told him a letter with official stamps had arrived. It said they were due for a prosecutor’s inspection the next day, prompted by consumer complaints.

Maksim only told Marina that there’d been another little emergency at work, then packed up and headed into the city. It happened so quickly, almost reflexively, and only when he was stuck on the Simferopol Highway among the other dacha-goers did he briefly surface from the stream of consciousness in which he was already figuring out where to stash all the foreign-agent publications from the store, and look at the whole thing from the outside. He’d intended to go all the way, defending his stock; he’d practically invited this inspection down on himself, and seemed entirely prepared for it, morally speaking. And he still believed that he hadn’t broken any laws, that any inspector would inevitably reach the same conclusion and wouldn’t be able to charge Maksim with anything.

Where are you going, and why?

Thank God they gave us at least a day’s warning, his second voice muttered in parallel, low and discordant with the voice of reason. Just imagine if they’d turned up that very day, scared poor Galina Igorevna half to death, turned everything upside down, found Nevzorov, Bykov, Shulman—and what if there was a copy of Summer in a Pioneer Tie lying around in the stockroom somewhere, then what? Thank God they’d given him the chance to put things in order, stash away all the banned stuff, haul it somewhere, play dumb.

Just hide it for the duration of the inspection, one Maksim told the other, sternly. Well, yes, for the duration of the inspection, of course. Simply because there’s no particular reason to invite trouble; simply because there’s no need to draw undue attention to his business, himself, or his family right now. We don’t know for sure whether they’re studying us here under a microscope, so to speak, or whether this inspection is part of some bigger inspection, right? And why help them when our job is to make things as difficult for them as possible? Marina was right, after all—and she hadn’t come up with it herself; three generations of Soviet intelligentsia had lived this way and survived, and waited for happier times, even if they didn’t last long—the main thing is to preserve yourself. So what if they shut his shop down? Who would that help? Once things quiet down, he could still sell foreign-agent books under the counter; there was no need to flaunt them on the shelves. But first things had to quiet down, of course.

Of course, the law was on his side, but laws changed every day, and in this magic country they’d also learned to apply them retroactively—that was one thing. And two, the law here was only for enemies, as Franco had decreed; and if the inspectors wanted to, and they would want to, they’d certainly turn up with those activists, who would whisper in their ears, and they’d pin something else on him, something with nothing to do with books—discrediting the army, for instance. He was already in a vulnerable position; why tempt fate? And what did this have to do with fear? Fear was what drove people to irrational behavior, to impulsiveness, whereas this was the opposite: pure rational calculation, a careful weighing of risks. It was like a chess game Maksim was playing against a grandmaster. You could sacrifice pieces to avoid losing the game, and there were different strategies: you could drag it out, wait for the other players to wear the grandmaster down until he blundered, made a mistake. And in circumstances like these, even forcing a draw would already be an excellent result.

Then he stopped at a red light, already in the city, and came to his senses for a second. How could it not be fear, when that was exactly what it was? He could feel himself shrinking, could feel himself rushing, getting angry at the traffic light for staying red so long, for keeping him from his bookstore, as if it were holding him up so he wouldn’t have time to remove the wrong books from the shelves. What else could that be but fear?

We’ll wait it out, we’ll sit tight, we’ll outlast them; that one died, this one will die too, as the partisans of some half-assed underground had written in marker on city advertisements, Maksim nodded to himself. Only would the people who waited it out still be the same people who’d hoped to?

Then the light turned green, and Maksim drove on.

He parked crookedly, exchanged a brisk hello with Galina Igorevna, sent her off on her break, and carried a cardboard box from the stockroom. Then he began carefully, without rushing, keeping himself in check, to gather all the questionable books from the shelves. They were all good books; Maksim had always chosen the stock himself, relying first and foremost on his own taste. And he certainly wasn’t going to throw them away, just take them somewhere—out to the dacha, say—and hide them there, shield them from the prosecutor’s inspection, from reprisal. There was something almost poetic about it, if you thought about it. If you thought about it.

Ulyana was about to head back to Moscow—the gynecologists in Vologda were all too scared, while in Moscow you could buy anything if you had the money; searching for one had taken too long. Then she went to see her mother.

She waited until her mother closed the grocery store, and they set off for home. Her mother told her all about what she’d been doing in the garden and gave her the latest on the neighbors, and all the while—Ulyana could feel it—she kept looking at her like… like she was an orphan.

They got home and put the kettle on. Ulyana went into the room she’d grown up in. Everything was untouched, as if she were still a schoolgirl. Before this whole stupid life began. She lay down on her old bed. Then got up: it was cramped.

“Got anything stronger?” she asked her mother.

“What? Stronger, she says! Just look at you! And who’s going to give birth?”

“I don’t want to give birth. I won’t.”

“Ulyash… Well, there’s some cognac. How can you not want to?”

Ulyana poured a glass, drank it, and immediately poured another. Her mother shook her head but didn’t argue. She waited. Ulyana tossed back the second one. The nausea came again. Well, suck it up, bitch. Endure it.

“I don’t want to carry all this.”

“Carry what?”

“He’ll remind me.”

“Of Sasha?” her mother asked sympathetically.

“Of everything, Mom! Everything!”

“Well, what can you do now? It all happened.”

“Maybe I want none of it to have happened to me, Mom!”

“There, there… Quiet, quiet…” Her mother came over and hugged her. “Have him for me, then, and I’ll look after him. I’d love to fuss over a grandchild.”

“Mom, aren’t you listening? He’s inside me. It makes me sick.”

“I hear you, I hear everything. But that little baby isn’t made only from Sasha; half of him is made from you too, Ulyash. How can you… And he’s made from me, too.”

“So what? What’s good about that?”

She started to pour herself a third glass, but her mother stopped her. She shook her head and said:

“The child’s got nothing to do with it, Ulyana. What did he do to deserve punishment?”

On the first of September, Tatyana was invited to the school Sasha had attended. For the assembly. They’d come out of nowhere, called her up and invited her. They said it was a solemn occasion and she should dress up. They wanted, they said, to honor Sasha’s memory.

A week beforehand, she forbade Vitalya to drink, so he wouldn’t be quite so puffy by the assembly and would look halfway human. She went and got her hair cut and dyed it red again, like she’d had it when she was young. Then she and Svetka spent ages trying on dresses at the store until they picked a nice one. She’d never dressed up so much, not even for her wedding. It was an occasion, after all!

Vitalya went in trousers and a shirt; she’d ironed them for him. He hadn’t worn those trousers since the anniversary party, either. She combed his hair, and he looked decent enough. Then off they went.

It was the same school that Svetka and Tema had gone to before they moved to the new apartment. They’d known all the teachers by their first names and patronymics for years; they’d brought each one chocolates so they wouldn’t be quite so hard on their blockheads. Still, it felt awkward! Back then you came as the mother of a C student, asking for something, but now this was different!

The morning was warm, almost like summer; the leaves hadn’t even started falling yet. First-graders tottered along with bouquets almost as tall as they were: girls with white bows, boys with fringes; some were being tugged along by their mothers, some were crying. The older kids, all loose-limbed, smoked, swore, kissed after saying goodbye for the holidays. How long ago was it that Sasha had been an older kid like that, going into tenth grade? And first grade? That had been just yesterday, too.

The principal recognized Tatyana and came over to greet her herself—and she’d used to be so strict, you’d be scared to approach her!

“Well, hello. You’re…” She looked at her list. “Sasha Lazarenko’s mother, right? Tatyana Nikolayevna? And Vitaly…”

“Gennadyevich. We’re the Lazarenkos, yes.”

“Right. This way, please. These are all the parents whose sons were killed in the Special Military Operation… Would you perhaps say a few words? About your Sasha?”

“Oh, what can I say? All right, I’ll say something.”

There were several old men of various ages standing there, though some weren’t gray-haired yet. Some looked blackened with grief, while others seemed all right; people react differently. Tatyana had, of course, expected to be there alone with Vitaly; she’d misunderstood the invitation. But this was right, too, fair: Sasha hadn’t been the only one they’d killed.

A man in a tie came over, wearing a United Russia pin and a St. George ribbon too. He nodded at them; it looked like he’d been sent from the city administration.

They lined up the first-graders in a row. They stood there looking frightened, blinking their big eyes, searching the crowd for their moms. The principal opened the assembly, congratulated the little ones on the start of their new school lives, said that a new and important stage was beginning, that the school would become their new big family. Then the man with the pin spoke.

“Dear children! As you know, our country is living through a difficult time. So that you can study, develop, and grow in peace here, your fathers and older brothers are fighting the enemy as part of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. In other words, they’re repelling the enemy’s attack on our far-off frontiers, so that he doesn’t come to our homes. So that you can grow up in peace, become men, and in your turn become defenders of our Motherland! And we have here the parents of some, as I understand it, of your school’s graduates, who fell heroically fighting for all of us. Yevgeniya Borisovna,” he said to the principal, “please give the fathers and mothers of these heroes the floor.”

The principal looked over the parents and chose Tatyana and Vitaly, inviting them to stand with the school officials in front of the assembly. They felt shy, but stepped forward. As the man, Vitaly was given the floor first.

“Vitaly Gennadyevich Lazarenko! Father of Sasha Lazarenko, who heroically died this summer… Please. How did you manage to raise such a wonderful person, such a patriot, such a defender?”

Tatyana immediately tensed and braced herself. And rightly so. Vitaly shrugged, at first unsure what to say, but then he made up his mind.

“Well, it’s like this. About Sasha. There was this time, he was still a little boy then, like these kids standing here. I remember they were playing war in our courtyard, around the garages…” he began.

“Just move aside, will you!” Tatyana interrupted, pushing him out of the way. “That’s not what he wants to say. He wants to say that we’re very proud of our Sasha. That we raised him to be this way from childhood. He was always very brave and loved both his country and his family. And we’re very grateful to our president, to the city administration, and to the Ministry of Defense for their support. Because they didn’t abandon us. We have another son growing up, and when he’s old enough, he’ll go and serve too—there’s no getting around it, because that’s the kind of family we are. Because every man’s calling is to defend his motherland!”

Yevgeniya Borisovna was the first to clap. Then the man with the pin looked at Tatyana with respect and clapped too; all the other teachers joined in, and then the parents. And Tatyana felt so warm, so moved, so happy—she didn’t think she’d ever felt like that in her life.

They drove to Sheremetyevo in two cars: Maksim and Marina separately, and Kirill with Diana in a taxi. Kirill had insisted. He supposedly wanted to talk something else over with her, make some kind of arrangement, as if there hadn’t been enough time before. She’s a nice girl, Maksim thought: they’d been together less than a week, and here she was, coming to the airport to see his son off.

When they got there, all the flights were delayed—the skies had been closed because of Ukrainian drones. Well, what could they do? They parked the car, went into the terminal, said hello to Diana, then sat down in a café farther away so as not to make the young couple unnecessarily uncomfortable. Diana’s mascara had run, and she was embarrassed in front of them.

“What’s happening with your inspection? Any news?”

“Same as before, Marina. Nothing’s changed since yesterday.”

Marina sighed and touched his hand with her fingers. He caught them and stroked them. He glanced at Kirill; the boy wasn’t looking at his father. They weren’t speaking.

They spent three hours sitting around at the airport like that. They’d already had tom yum at Coffeemania. They’d examined the book kiosks’ stock down to the last detail… And the departures board kept saying only “delayed.” They’d booked a connecting flight with plenty of time between connections, but even that buffer was starting to look insufficient. Maksim began to panic that the tickets would be wasted altogether.

“Aren’t they fucking sick of this?!” he blurted out, for the umpteenth time praying at the departures board.

“Who?” Marina asked.

“Yeah, them, whoever they are. What’s civil aviation got to do with it? Hit military targets, for Christ’s sake—why should ordinary people suffer?”

She looked at him but said nothing. Then, at last, the all-clear came, and it was time to say goodbye. He went up to Kiryukha and opened his arms.

“Well?”

He shook his head. And there Maksim stood, arms spread wide, stuck like that. Marina whispered something to her son; he demurred. Fine, then. It was for his own good; he’d understand later. She kissed Kirill three times, Russian-style, crossed herself over him, and returned to Maksim, while Diana led Kiryukha right up to passport control, saw him through the line, and only let go after a long kiss, just before the booth.

Who the hell knew, Maksim thought. Maybe this was the real thing, the story of a lifetime? Every story of a lifetime starts with some kind of silly nonsense.

“Next,” the border guard barked at them from her booth.

Kirill turned to Marina one more time and waved at her, as if to say, That’s it, go on already! Then he handed over his passport. But Maksim didn’t want to leave.

And there Kirill stood, showing Diana something on his fingers, smiling, joking. But time kept passing, and they still hadn’t given him back his passport; a red light was glowing above the border booth. Then he was called over to the little window, bent down, and started answering the border guard in a deferential bow. The Border Guard Service was part of the FSB, Maksim remembered for some reason.

“Why’s she interrogating him?” Marina grew worried.

“Marin, how should I know? Want to go ask…?”

She kept him there, kept him there. Five minutes passed, six… Then she stood up and left the booth with Kirill’s passport. She was still just a slip of a girl, but the uniform made her look older.

“Wait here,” she ordered, suddenly iron-hard, and disappeared.

Kirill looked around in bewilderment, like someone falling through the ice, frantically searching for something to grab—and his eyes latched onto his father.

“Mom! The bank’s calling!” Sveta shouted.

“Probably scammers!”

But Tatyana came over anyway, though she suspected everyone; she’d forgotten how to trust people. And for once she was wrong. It really was the bank calling. They didn’t ask for anything; they said a sum from the Ministry of Defense had been deposited in the account—four million and some change. Tatyana was stunned, and they checked: it turned out there had been other payments too, which they hadn’t mentioned at first, and now their share as parents had come through—two-thirds.

While she checked, while she convinced herself it was real, she went looking for that magazine with the brick cottage in it. She thought they’d thrown it out, turned the whole house upside down, but found it in the car. At last she could breathe again.

She looked at the figures—now there’d be just enough, if they sold her mother’s house. And who was going to ask the old lady? So in the end it all worked out fine, really.