She gathered all her strength and walked on. Toward her building.
She moved past the chebureki and pirated-CD vans, past the crazy Gothic high-rise with the gargoyle faces. She gazed, sick at heart, at one of the faces, which looked down on her haughtily. Yulia sighed and plodded on. A frigid wind whistled down her jacket collar; her scratchy black sweater wasn’t keeping the cold out. She stopped next to the American consulate, but she didn’t have the strength to take another step forward, even though it was just a few more meters to her building. A dreary line stretched out from the consulate door. Jacob took the hacksaw and, panting, began sawing off his mama’s head. The hacksaw was hard to work, and the sweetish spurts made Jacob frown… The words raced through Yulia’s mind.
A guard with a badge bore his little piggy eyes into Yulia, and his muscles tensed to lunge. Yulia came to her senses and hurried on.
She tumbled like a sack into her apartment, having begun to slump in the elevator. Now she was sitting, drained, leaning against the doorjamb, moaning softly, and tears were pouring down of their own accord, dripping on her jacket.
Her Siamese cat ran up on his soft paws. His slanted blue eyes watched Yulia carefully.
“Barsik,” she moaned faintly. “Sweet Barsik… I got robbed. Barsik. We have nothing to eat and nothing to live on.”
Barsik rubbed his round head against Yulia’s leg. And meowed.
Her phone rang. Yulia took it out of her pocket with trembling hands and pushed the button.
“Yulia darling.” It was Oleg.
“Hi,” she answered, trying to buck up, wiping away her tears and getting up from the floor.
“How’re things, my dear?” Oleg sang sweetly.
“Kind of… strange.” Yulia tried to quash her sobbing. “Today they fired our second proofreader… Mikhail Ivanich… You don’t know him. And he… he left calmly enough. But when I went into the metro… I saw… imagine, Oleg, he took a running jump right… right in front of a train.”
“What?” Oleg gasped, though there was more curiosity in his voice than concern.
“He took a running jump… He was standing in the middle of the platform… and when the train started coming out of the tunnel… he jumped.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. Also… you know… when he jumped he knocked over a stroller… and he and the stroller… fell.”
“What was in the stroller?” Oleg’s curiosity was growing.
“A child,” Yulia sobbed. “And then… when the train pulled out… Mikhail Ivanich and the stroller were lying there on the track… Mikhail Ivanich was still twitching, but the child didn’t have a head… There was just the horrible scream of its mother.”
Yulia caught her breath. It must have been someone in the crowd that gathered who stole her wallet.
“What happened then?” Oleg asked.
Yulia felt like telling him how she’d been jostled in the crowd, how someone’s cold insolent hand had slipped into her pocket for her wallet. Not that Yulia knew exactly what kind of hand it was, hot or cold, but that was exactly how she thought of it: someone’s cold, bony, malicious hand.
Jacob started twisting her arm out of the shoulder socket but got nowhere; he hadn’t sawed all the way through the flesh…
Jacob again! Yulia was getting angry.
“Nothing,” she replied with a sigh, and got a grip on herself. “Nothing else. I feel sorry for Mikhail Ivanich. But everything else is fine.”
“Good,” Oleg said quickly. “You know, I’m hungry as a wolf! I’m on Paveletskaya right now. I’ve got some business to do. I’m selling a picture. But I’ll come right over after that.”
“All right.” Yulia nodded and ended the call. She thought sadly, So this is what we’ve come to. There was no food in the house. No money whatsoever. Yulia was one of those people who drags out the last three or four days before her paycheck and by payday has absolutely nothing left in the house.
Oleg, however, had one quirk: food. There always had to be some. And food always meant meat. Salad wasn’t food. When Yulia met Oleg Bekas at his gallery and got to talking to him over a cup of coffee with brandy, he immediately informed her of this quirk. That—dinner not being made—was why he’d left his wife (now his ex) and his infant child. The baby’s name was Sevochka Bekas and his wife’s was Marina. Oleg came home from the gallery one day and there was nothing on the table. Marina’s brown eyes stared at him guiltily as she held Sevochka, who was burning up with fever, to her breast. “Sevochka got sick,” she said. “I didn’t have time.” Oleg gnashed his teeth, turned on his heel, and left. Softened by the brandy, Yulia nodded, as if to say, Rightly so. What kind of a wife doesn’t cook for her husband? “You have to understand, I’m an artist,” Oleg explained. “I’m not some low-brow proletarian. I have the right to put myself first.” Yulia nodded.
A week later she learned from common acquaintances that on that fateful day Marina picked up Sevochka, who was still burning up with fever, wrapped him tightly in her robe, and went out to the balcony barefoot. It was snowing, and Sevochka quieted down and peeked out of her robe. Snowflakes were melting on his cheeks. “Pretty?” Marina asked. Sevochka goo-gooed approvingly. Marina climbed onto the railing, holding her son to her breast, and from there, from the sixteenth floor, to the dumbfounded looks of the group smoking on the next balcony over, she jumped.
When she first heard this, Yulia just shook her head. Foolish woman Marina. Who jumps off over men?
But right now she was ready to do the same thing. Pick up Barsik, hold him tight to her breast, and leap from her sixth floor, right in front of the dumbfounded visitors at the Metelitsa casino. Because she no longer had the emotional strength to be left not only walletless but also Oleg Bekasless.
Yulia worked as a proofreader in a publishing house. Her only connection to art was through grammar. For days on end Yulia read other people’s words very, very carefully. And corrected them. She felt like a worker who hammers a nail into a wall to hang a painting that gives off a divine light. But what kind of light does a nail give off? None whatsoever. Oleg was an artist, though, and canvases came to life in his hands. Even a sheet of notebook paper. Yulia couldn’t do that. She could only go word by word, like an infinite rosary, barely penetrating the meaning of what was written.
She fell in love with Oleg once and for all (though she had never believed in love at first sight and in her youth had often snickered at her more naïve girlfriends). With Yulia it was all very simple. Like him—hook up—go to a café—go to bed. Love? Who cared about love? As long as he had a fat wallet and a generous nature. Maybe that’s why Yulia hadn’t been through any emotional upheavals before Oleg. She hooked up and split up with a cold heart and a clear head. Like a chekist. But here was Oleg. An artist. A creator. Someone from another world where they don’t hammer nails but drink to Brüderschaft with God almighty… Yulia saw him in the gallery and fell hard. Her heart broke off and slowly dropped to the pit of her stomach.
Yulia went out on the balcony. The lights of New Arbat spread out right there in front of her. Here was a huge building with a web of lights like an open book. Here was a casino in the shape of a ship; here was another casino, and another. Expensive cars, lots of people. Sometimes Yulia dreamed of flying from her window and landing right on that ship burning with blue lights—and then sailing off to distant lands, where she and Oleg would live together in a cabin and have three children.
Jacob climbed onto the stepladder and tried to hang his mama’s head on the Christmas star, but the star was so fragile, and his mama’s head was so heavy, that… The words raced through her mind again and Yulia mechanically finished up: that the boy couldn’t hold it there and the head came crashing down, cracking loudly on the parquet floor. Yulia didn’t feel so good. Usually she didn’t remember all the words to the texts she proofread, and now there was this flood. I’ll ask them to give me a different novel, she thought. And I’ll give this one to Mikhail Ivanich… Damn, he’s gone… Everyone’s gone…