“But no,” said the man. “You’re Kasha but you’re not. Her tail always hung limp.”
This man knew Kasha’s mother, the original Kasha. He was a villager who survived. Leonid tried to recognize him, searching his face for a feature that matched one in his memory. The faces he remembered were blurry at best. The man looked up at Leonid, and the two inspected each other, faint recognition growing into certainty. The man spoke first.
He said Leonid’s brother’s real name, the one he had been born with before Tsiolkovski named them both Leonid.
Leonid felt himself smile. “Close, Mykola.”
Mykola said Leonid’s real name.
“I didn’t expect to see you,” said Leonid. “I didn’t expect to see anyone.”
“And yet you still returned.”
Hearing Mykola say it suddenly made it real. Leonid was home. He felt the valley around him, a swirling sensation, as if he were caught in a whirlpool that drained to the valley’s lowest point. Or he was the lowest point, the trees in orbit around him. He felt release, too, an old throbbing pain finally relieved, a pain he could only now identify by its absence.
Leonid pointed at the dog. “Meet Kasha, the daughter of the original.”
“She looks just the same! Except for the tail, of course.” Mykola sat back in the dirt and pulled Kasha onto his lap. His face, what could be seen of it behind the beard, lit up like a child’s. “And the original Kasha?”
“She grew old, Mykola. She might have been old already when you knew her. We never knew her age.”
“Her life was good, though, yes?” He tickled Kasha behind the ears.
“Very. She was loved and loved in return.” Leonid’s voice choked off at the end. It seemed he was still not immune to the topic of loss.
“Good. I hadn’t thought about her much in recent years. I used to wonder often, though.”
Kasha hopped off Mykola’s lap and trotted after Nadya. The two of them wandered through the brush at the edge of the road, Nadya picking leaves from saplings. There were no saplings in the village of Leonid’s memory.
“And you, Mykola?” asked Leonid. “How’ve you been?”
“Things got better not long after you and your brother left. The train started coming again, bringing supplies. Then the rains returned. We were able to grow our own food. People had babies again. A few people even moved here from outside the village. Apparently, there were places worse off.” Mykola rose and brushed the dirt from the back of his pants. “But how about you? You were the only ones to escape. What did you do?”
They did not know him here, not the adult version. The news of the space race, it seemed, declined to make the long trek to the valley. Mykola the boy had not understood the things Tsiolkovksi had said, and Mykola the man seemed not to remember them.
“I’m a soldier,” said Leonid.
“I thought so,” said Mykola. “There’s something about your posture. It’s the same as the men who returned from the war.”
“I’m not sure if that’s due to being a soldier or to coming home after a long time away.”
“And your brother?”
“He is…”
“I’m sorry.” Mykola strode forward and pulled Leonid into an embrace. He had grown a fat belly in the years Leonid had been away. It was hard to imagine anyone in the village being fat. Leonid wrapped one arm around Mykola’s back.
“God, it’s good to see you,” said Mykola. “Sometimes you don’t know what you miss until you see it again.”
THE HEART of the village was at once exactly as Leonid remembered and entirely different. The tree still grew in the center of the main square, and near it rose the gravestones, plus new ones he supposed. Which one was Oksana’s? He could not remember where it had been placed. No one had carved her name at the time. Did anyone come later to name the nameless? Even stillborn babies deserved that much, a name itself a sort of monument.
The arrangement of cottages was the same as in Leonid’s memory, but almost all of them looked rebuilt. The old style of construction, hand-hewn panels and roofs pinched into jagged peaks, had been replaced with manufactured boards and fresh black shingling. Glass windows filled the holes that had once been covered by shutters alone. Instead of dirt, the main path through the village was packed with crushed white stone that shifted beneath Leonid’s feet with every step. The gravelly sound bothered Leonid, as if he was walking on bones.
Villagers moved around like actors on a stage, miming the actions they were actually performing. Leonid had not seen a water pump since he left the village. He had not needed firewood for just as long. There was always someone to wash his clothes for him, prepare his meals. Indoor plumbing. The village was like stepping into the forgotten part of history, a collection of the little tasks that would never be included in textbooks, but that for almost everyone who had ever lived made up the bulk of their existence. Wars, after all, were the exception. Like the launching of rockets.
One question had plagued Leonid the whole time he waited with Mykola by the station, during the short ride down the mountain, and now as they walked. The words of the question felt too heavy. His Ukrainian had stopped developing when he left the village. He worried that he spoke it now only at the level of a child. The question required some small degree of eloquence, an arrangement of words that would give weight to it, endow it with the proper seriousness, respect. He forced himself to ask the question, but it came out as only a single word.
“Grandmother?”
Mykola stopped walking. The gravel crunched beneath his feet.
“She lived for many years after you left,” said Mykola. “When the train started coming again, she met it every time, even when her knees started to ache. She never complained about that, but anyone watching could see the way she favored them. She also never explained why she met the train, but anyone with a heart knew. She was hoping her boys would return. And you did!”
“Too late.”
“I visited her every day.”
“Thank you.”
“She wasn’t sad. She missed you, but she was absolutely convinced that things were better for you outside the valley, even after conditions here improved.”
They caught up with Nadya at the far side of the village. She crouched by the side of the stone path and pinched a fallen fir needle between her thumb and finger. Leonid introduced her. Nadya dropped the needle and stood.
“Forgive me for wandering off,” she said. “I’ve spent my whole life in cities, inside buildings. This place is like another planet. I get lost in places like this. The Chief… my uncle once said I have the heart of an explorer. That’s why… that’s why he always favored me over the others.”
Leonid wasn’t sure if Mykola would understand Nadya’s Russian, but he turned to Leonid and spoke in Russian himself. “I’m an uncle now! My first nephew was born just last month. By marriage, of course. I didn’t have any siblings. I guess I should start by saying I’m married. There’s too much history you’ve missed to share all at once.”
“Married!” said Leonid. “Who is she?”
“Lesya. You knew her, but she was only five or six when you left. Oksana’s little sister.”
“Of course I remember her, though I can’t recall her face.”
“I doubt the face is much at all like the one you would remember, anyway.” He turned back to Nadya. “So, you like our valley?”
“It’s glorious. I could imagine living here. Not that I ever plan to settle. The only life I’ve ever known is one of motion. I could linger here, though, most definitely.”