This was a downgrade for the Orlovs. Once, when my family visited their massive apartment in Kiev, Polya and I pretended to search for the restroom and wandered down their endless hallway, counting six different bedrooms, such a tremendous number of rooms that I could not even imagine what could be done in all of them. Polina had even jumped on the Orlovs’ bed and cried, “A whole family could sleep on this bed! An entire family!” We were much younger then.
Then, next to the bathroom, Ivan showed us another room that used to be a closet but which had a bunk bed in it, which we were welcome to use, if we needed it. Improbably, it had a tiny window. This was the room where Polina, Baba Tonya, and I would stay, it was decided. The brothers would sleep in an alcove in their family’s room.
“We thank you. It is more than suitable,” Uncle Konstantin said.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” Ivan said, bowing as he left us standing back in the main room. A mouse scurried past, and Polya and Baba Tonya shrieked while Aunt Tamara jumped.
“More roommates,” Bogdan said, trying to ease the tension, but nobody laughed.
“This is where I will meet my end—I just know it,” Aunt Tamara said.
“And I mine,” said Baba, who was not to be topped in her misery.
“Enough with the theatrics,” Uncle Konstantin told his wife. “This is home now. This is where we will serve our country, and there’s no use in fighting it.” He slammed a fist against the wooden coffee table by the stove and seemed almost human for a moment, capable of frustration. Even Misha jumped a little, at this. I had never heard Uncle Konstantin raise his voice.
His words lingered, but no one responded. We were all ready to collapse, too tired to think of Nazis or our strange new living arrangement. Mama paced around the main apartment, running her hands along the walls, kicking at the scant furniture with a strained, ferocious smile. “It is quite a nice apartment,” she said with desperate near-cheer. “Much larger than I expected. It just needs a bit of attention, that’s all.”
Mama began settling in, which meant placing the clothes she and Papa had packed in drawers, putting the finery she would sell under their bed, and taking out a single framed photograph she brought of herself and Papa and placing it on the bookshelf near the stove. In the photograph, she and Papa stand in the kitchen of their first apartment, holding a pot of dumplings, looking impossibly young and wildly proud of what they had made. This must have been before I was born, because I had never seen such unabashed joy in my weary parents’ eyes.
Papa ran a hand along the metal bunk bed in the corner and smiled grimly.
“Funny,” Papa said. “These are the same beds we had in the orphanage. The exact same beds, it’s like they’ve lifted them out of Kharkov and brought them here. Well, it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be there, and this will be more of the same. I made it through that and we will make it through this. If we stick together, we will do just fine here.”
Polya and I exchanged a rare sisterly glance. Papa never mentioned the orphanage, though it cast a shadow over our family that no present-day joy or sunshine could dispel. This showed how desperate he was to create order, though I knew it was a false comparison: his orphanage was in the center of a real city during peacetime, not in the steppe during an unknowable war. And perhaps the one-roomed orphanage was the reason he had insisted our family live in such close quarters in the past—it might have comforted him, to have everyone in such proximity, as it reassured him now to see the cozy space where we would live together, even if we all did have separate rooms. Or at least I hoped Papa was mentioning his orphan past to calm himself and us, instead of a more troubling alternative—that he was already losing his grip, that he no longer cared about what he did or did not say, because the rules we were accustomed to had been thrown out the window the moment we boarded the train.
How I dreamed of food during those early days! Flaky Napoleon. Airy meringues. Salty caviar on buttery blini. Herring sprinkled with pungent onions. I did not even particularly care for herring, but those early evenings I dreamed that my tongue had become a salty slice of fish, that I could soak in its rich juices with every swallow. Most of the foods I dreamed of, I must admit, were delicacies we were served at the Orlovs’ home, or even at my grandmother’s before her fall from grace, instead of the potatoes and salami my family had eaten in the communalka. I was not alone in my fantasies. All of us spent our time dreaming about food, making our meals last as long as possible, or scheming up ways to procure it.
The Sunday market was one source. This was all Baba Tonya lived for, linking arms with me and my sister on our way there like we were going to a ball, her head high in the air in spite of the smelly, dirt-stained boa trailing her, as if she were balancing a plate on the tip of her nose. Polina flirted with the aged radish brothers and got us a bit more food, but not enough to make a difference. Aunt Tamara was used to being waited on hand and foot and mostly sat around the house fanning herself while Mama bartered the few pieces of finery she had brought.
Bogdan made a heartier contribution than the market, becoming our savior early on. He would skulk away after dinner and return several hours later with a folded cloth napkin of goods without explanation—a few slices of bread here, a jar of jam there, which kept us from falling into complete starvation. Aunt Yulia began working for the government store of the aging but still mighty Madame Renata, which served a brick of black bread for each family every day, though everyone knew it was mixed with glue and sawdust. To her credit, though Aunt Yulia ignored us during the week, every Sunday morning she came to our door with a burlap sack of salvageable food. A few times, Polya and I had even rattled her doorknob out of desperation when she was out, hoping to find some extra fare, but she kept it firmly locked.
So it was only natural that when I spotted the interloper about a month into our stay, my first thought was that we could not afford another mouth to feed. He was a sight to behold. Just as the mothers were making dinner, the kitty entered the room with his tail high in the air and sauntered toward us like he was an invited guest, or even a visiting dignitary. He was an ugly-looking thing. A mangy gray-brown ball of fur, dirt all over his face, golden brown fluff around his belly. His eyes were huge, honey-colored, and he looked like he had never seen humans before. He was squinting a bit, as if blinded by the dim lights in the apartment.
Polya’s eyes lit up, but if she got any big ideas and tried to slip him any of our measly rations, I would yank all the hair off her head and stuff it in her mouth. Dinner consisted of what Mama managed to scrounge from the morning’s market, where she had bartered her last porcelain plate. What did one plate manage to get us? Three loaves of black bread, a handful of carrots, and a stack of dried fish to split among the nine of us—adding another stomach to the mix was out of the question. But my sister was already enraptured. She put a hand to her mouth and knelt to meet the creature at eye level.
“What a darling,” she said.
“A joy,” said Aunt Tamara.
“A mouser,” said Mama.
“A guard,” declared Uncle Konstantin.
“A comrade,” said Papa.
“A rascal,” said Bogdan.
“A brother,” said Misha.
“A toy,” said my grandmother.
I alone remained quiet, seeing no need in making a vapid declaration about the creature. I hardly had the strength to be cruel to my sister, which meant I was in a dire state.
Polya knelt down and crawled toward the abomination. Bogdan joined her in welcoming the beast, proving once more that he, too, was a simple creature. My sister reached out her hand while Mama told her to be careful, that this was a feral mountain kitty, that he was no Timofey from the courtyard and was liable to bite her nose off, but Polya giggled as the kitty came toward her and licked and licked her trembling hand. My sister had become the weakest of all of us, since she had so little weight to spare to begin with, and it almost felt good to see her happy.