Mama Jamie had not come down into the basement since she’d given Ilya the tour of the house. Or at least she had not ventured into the basement while Ilya was home. When he returned from school each day, there was evidence of her presence: laundry folded and stacked on his bed, plump rolls of toilet paper pyramided on the back of the toilet, and, occasionally, the water inside the toilet bowl glowed a fluorescent blue. But now she was padding down the stairs in her slippers and her jeans and a magenta shirt that brought out the piggish undertones in her skin, but that he knew was her favorite because she wore it every other day. She was holding a white paper package in one hand. It was the shape of a small pillow and had torn in a few places to reveal its pulp.
“This came today,” she said, handing it to him.
His name was inked on the outside above the Masons’ address. It was his mother’s handwriting, and he could imagine her double-checking the Roman Fs in “Leffie,” the half-moon Ds in “Dumaine Drive,” and the simple slash of the I. The package felt like a book, and he didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but his heart sank a bit because a book was most likely from Maria Mikhailovna, some new text or translation that she’d wanted him to have.
“Are you excited for your trip?”
For a moment, Ilya stared at her, and then he remembered that he was supposed to be fishing with J.T. this weekend. He nodded.
“I’ll pack you guys a cooler,” she said. “Sandwiches and some chips.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“J.T. gets into trouble sometimes,” Mama Jamie said. “But I trust you to stay out of it.”
Ilya nodded.
“He has a phone—you can call me whenever. You know that?”
He nodded again, and she did too. “Get some sleep,” she said, “’cause I know you won’t be getting any tomorrow.”
Once she’d shut the door behind her, Ilya tore the top off the package. It was not a book at all, but a stack of papers, and he was still thinking that they were from Maria Mikhailovna, some stiff, formal English-with-a-capital-E exercises that would be entirely useless now that he was here and immersed in the disaster of the language itself, but as he pulled out the stack, he saw a picture of Jesus. His robe the color of butter, a halo flaring over his head. It was one of Gabe Thompson’s pamphlets. There were a half dozen in the package, with titles like The Plan of Salvation and The Restoration and Chastity. Some of the pages were hollow in the center, like empty frames, the pictures still pasted to the windows at home. Ilya didn’t need the pamphlets any longer—he knew where to find Gabe, and it was a good thing because they gave no trace of him: no address, no church name, but still Ilya’s heart thrummed as he flipped the pages. It wasn’t just that Gabe had touched them; it was the fact that his mother had sent them. He could imagine how terrified she’d been to bring them to the post office, to write that American address. She’d been too terrified to include a note, or a return address. She’d taken a risk, and there was desperation in it, and permission too. Permission to find Gabe, to help Vladimir. For the first time that Ilya could remember, she was putting Vladimir first.
Ilya collected the pamphlets in a neat stack and put them in his duffel along with the tape player, printouts of the photos from VKontakte, a change of clothes, and a pocketknife that Timofey had given him. The hinge was rusty, and the blade was not much larger than Ilya’s pinkie, but still it was better than nothing.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Vasili Vasilyevich was at the sink in the bathroom at the end of the hall, his face covered in shaving cream. The razor shook in his hand. “Takes me two hours to shave now,” he said.
“Oh,” Ilya said, because Vasili was a talker and Ilya did not want to encourage him. Ilya’s eyes were gritty, and he could still taste the Tower’s chemical haze in the back of his throat. He needed to talk to Maria Mikhailovna, but he needed a shower first. He’d spent the walk back to the kommunalkas imagining all of the terrible things Maria Mikhailovna would say to him. He’d blown his chance at America, but she might want to keep him out of university altogether. She might kick him out of School #17. Or maybe, he thought, his mind clenched around the hope, maybe, maybe Vladimir would somehow fix the situation, persuade Maria Mikhailovna to let him take a makeup test or go the next year.
“If you’re going to shit, give me some warning,” Vasili said. “I may be old, but I can still smell.” When Ilya didn’t laugh, he said, “You’re a bit sour, aren’t you?”
“No,” Ilya said, sourly.
Ilya peed, and Vasili listened and then lamented his own flow, which was, he said, more like a leaky faucet. Ilya brushed his teeth, and Vasili asked him if it hurt to hold such a terrible expression for so long.
“Does it hurt your tongue to talk so much?” Ilya said.
He looked at Vasili in the mirror, straight into his dull blue eyes. Normally he wouldn’t have had the nerve to make eye contact, let alone to insult the man, but he felt a new sort of recklessness that came, he guessed, from not having much of a future. Vasili paused, the razor trembling by his wattle. Ilya expected him to be stung, but he said, “Molodoy chelovyek,” which meant “little man,” and his voice was warm, familial even, as though Ilya were a grandson whose attitude was a source of gentle amusement. “Whatever it is that has you so upset, it will pass. Trust me. I’m ancient. I’ve lost two women that I love, and each time I thought I wouldn’t survive, and yet here I am, shaving my beard because my third wife doesn’t like stubble scratching her pussy.”
Ilya blushed and mumbled something about a stomachache, and after his shower, he walked to Maria Mikhailovna’s apartment so slowly that his toes tingled and went leaden in his boots. He pressed the buzzer. No response. He pressed it again. No response, and he was about to press it a third time when the custodian—old now and stooped, but the same one who used to kick them off the elevator all those years ago—told him to fuck off. Halfway across the square Ilya looked back. He had the sense that the custodian might be following him, might want to keep scolding him just for the sheer pleasure of it. The old man was watching him from the lobby, with an expression of grim determination. Seven floors above him, Maria Mikhailovna’s apartment was dark, but way up at the top of the building, the penthouse was ablaze. Ilya could see a figure inside, silhouetted against the glass. It was Fyodor Fetisov, he guessed, and for a moment it seemed as though Fetisov were watching him, but then he stepped away from the glass, and Ilya told himself that he couldn’t be seen anyway. He was invisible in the darkness of the square, just another patch of shadow on the snow.
Ilya trudged on to the school, not really expecting to find Maria Mikhailovna there. It was a Saturday, after all. But he could see the light on in her classroom from a block away. She was at her desk, as always, with a stack of graded papers on her right and a stack of ungraded papers on her left.