A bottle of Coca-Cola awaited in the trunk of Volk’s burgundy Volvo. It was practically steaming. From a vest pocket, Volk retrieved a stack of Dixie cups. Sveta Russian-dolled out the cups on the sun-blazed hood of the car, pouring until the brim caught the froth. They toasted in the parking lot. It was a superb parking lot. There was no painted grid delineating individual spaces, and the cars were strewn about as if abandoned by a giant child called to tea. Frida squinted into the distance, gulping her strange drink. It was a syrup made from the fur of an old grizzly, cooked up in a cauldron on the outskirts of town by a lady who mixed cat food into everything she touched and blotted the sores on her ankles with cotton balls that got stuck under her fingernails only to fall into the cauldron that had to stand on the open flame for many a day and be constantly stirred, the last ingredient being a mysterious powder responsible for the torturous effect: With the first sip, Frida almost choked and quit drinking, but a moment later the papillae of her devastated tongue were pleading for another wash of nuance murder.
An alley of lindens led away from the airport like a stitch closing a seam. Volk steered the automobile as if it were half spaceship, half wild bull (it was a stick shift), while Sveta bounced alongside, enumerating the cultural possibilities on offer. In the backseat Frida lay half asleep, clutching the empty bottle and belching in varying volumes and intensities, the loudest of which roused her for a fraction of a second, enough to catch that the Opera House was closed for the season and last week Odessa’s only Caravaggio had been stolen. This suited her fine. Ideally all must-see treasures would be stolen, monuments defaced, cultural sights shut down for the season or for renovations or for good. They were distractions from the essential. Where or what the essential was, Frida knew not, but it certainly wasn’t an opera house or a Caravaggio.
They were dropped off on a corner that, if a complaint must be made, was a bit too central, open, unencumbered. A large, lively intersection. Discount shoe stores and a fruit stand, determined pedestrians, briefcase collisions, traffic ruckus. It could’ve been an intersection in any respectable metropolis. Nothing thwarted, secretive, particular. Lest it seem too benign, a three-legged mutt hobbled into the road just as a tram was rounding the corner. There was screeching, a yelp tapered off abruptly. They entered a courtyard that proved soundproof. The street turned off. A faucet turned on. Snores emanated from a shattered window.
On a tucked-away porch, in a low canvas chair, Pasha was hidden behind globular hirsute knees and a laptop. The image struck Frida as ridiculous, and she laughed. Pasha laughed, too, as if something inherent in their reunion, and not in him, was funny, which made Frida stop laughing and cross her arms. There was no outpouring of affection, no messy reunion scene here. For a reunion Pasha would’ve had to register a separation. His greeting, after his giggle, was brief and casual, as if Frida were a fixture in his life, rather like the floor lamp. Taking her niece in anew, Sveta said, Look how big she’s grown! Can you believe how the years passed? Though she’d never seen Frida before today, the lack of a reference point wasn’t about to keep her from marveling. If this was an attempt to elicit a proper response from Pasha, it didn’t work. He wasn’t even capable of tagging on to Sveta’s absurd sentiments. Yet with nobody to feel these things, she seemed to really feel them. She was truly overcome by Frida’s presumed transformation.
Frida snuck off to the bathroom to investigate whether she hadn’t actually undergone one. Perhaps stepping onto native soil had activated, on a cellular level, some dormant capacity, unlocked hidden potential. Or maybe she’d just missed it the last time she looked: Airplane mirrors were too harsh to trust. Here she encountered the opposite problem. Two of the bulbs had burned out, and the amber remainder was moody but insufficient for an appraisal. What she found in the mirror were under-eye bags and an inflamed chin pimple, what she found behind it were pills, pills, and more pills, prescribed for Svetlana Muser and Svetlana Nasmertov. For the weak/sickly/always dying one, there wasn’t a single bottle.
He was seated at the tiny kitchen table (a converted sewing table), twirling a matchbook in his fingers. Frida had to stop herself from running out of the house. Grown woman, she said to herself, and took a seat opposite. Gravitas, unkempt leonine facial hair, an aura of solemnity encompassing all past wars, pogroms, exiles, and oppressions, a mild odor of stagnation, a high forehead — oh, very high and very steep and just a bit wrinkled — an intimidating stare, silence. This man didn’t apologize. Of course, he had no cause for apology, but this hardly mattered, since under no circumstance would he have apologized. He didn’t deal in the petty intricacies of personal relationships. In comparison to the panoramic sphere Pasha was out wandering, Frida was pinned to the present moment.
Do you like chocolate? asked Sveta, hovering over them.
The question was a trick. There was a right answer and a wrong answer, but it wasn’t nearly as obvious as it would seem. If secret code, did it have to do with their being female? Frida stared at Sveta, fierce intensity, zero comprehension.
The freezer was open, Sveta climbing inside. Her arms and head were gone, shoulders squeezing. Spit back out holding two cartons like frozen tonsils. Ice cream, she explained. You’re welcome to have.
Oh, no, said Frida very categorically, but thank you. Heat tore her cheeks. I’m not really a dessert type of person.
Sveta wished she could say the same for herself. Two happy bowls were plucked from the dish rack. She scooped vigorously with a soupspoon until one bowl contained a mountain of gooey rich chocolate, and into the other a half spoonful was gently tapped. The mountain was placed under Pasha’s nostrils, the anthill Sveta kept for herself, retreating with it into a corner.
Pasha didn’t stir. Seconds passed slowly and laboriously. The mountain began to lose height. A puddle formed at the base, particularly around the soupspoon. In the meantime he attended an itch under his beard. Frida gulped, trying to keep back a shameful surge of saliva. Not a dessert type of person? A pure and utter lie! Did Pasha notice her frequent swallowing? Did he notice the ice-cream mountain awaiting him below?
A poet, of course, noticed everything. In addition to five senses sharpened to perfection like test-ready No. 2s, he (in this case) had recourse to a mode of perception that made a mockery of any exam: the sixth poet sense. If the Russian people had to agree on one thing, it would have to be on the existence of this sense — that they themselves lacked it but that someone rare and special possessed it. Into this chosen being they could place their trust. A fatidic capacity was implied, accurate future prediction regarded as the culmination of the cosmic poet powers. But from observing Pasha, Frida would’ve surmised that he noticed nothing at all, not the pooling ice cream, not the cockroach disappearing into the sugar bowl, not even his own fingers with deep vertical grooves on the nails.
Pasha gave an openmouthed squeak and began to cough, all sorts of mysterious things loosening in his chest. The rings around his eyes went from pale green to lilac to bruise blue and back to pale green. The matchbook dropped to the table and disappeared. The soupspoon was brought to life. The corners of Pasha’s mouth were crammed with brown residue.
Don’t look so disturbed, he said. I ate my vegetables thirty years ago.