The snow had stopped falling and we had to rescue the least soaked branches from the white morass. But the wind was fierce and it blew large chunks of snow out of the surrounding trees, which fell on our heads periodically. We stepped across the small frozen river to get to the forest, Licky leading the way with his wagging bushy tail. Bogdan walked ahead and only then did I notice how much he had grown in the past year. I had never really stopped to take a look at his figure. He was truly becoming a man, though I remembered what my sister told me about him being an “almost man” and my eyes smarted. And since he had recently turned fifteen, he was following the other men to the factory, though it seemed he found excuses to leave his post.
I felt shaky before him, and he moved slowly, like he was waiting for me to say something. I could not come up with much.
“Winter is endless,” I said.
“I have a feeling we’ll make it through,” he said, winking at me. “We’re a hearty lot.”
“Some are heartier than others,” I said, again baffled by the stupidity of my comments, or the fact that I was nervous before Bogdan, babbling like a dimwit.
I can’t explain what happened next. Maybe it was because the moon was full. Maybe it was because a little boy from school had died that week and my feelings about mortality and the senseless brevity of life were eating away at my weakened brain. Whatever the case may have been, as if driven by an external force, some kind of madness out of Dostoevsky, we dropped our wood in the snow and regarded one another. A smirk rose on Bogdan’s face.
He was not, I reasoned, more handsome than his brother. He was not nearly as hardworking or kind or sophisticated. He fit in more with my sister’s frivolous nature than with my own. And yet, I felt myself moving toward him in a way I had never felt compelled to move toward Misha, in spite of the comfort I felt in his presence during our late-night reading sessions. Under the moonlight, Bogdan’s blue-tinged skin seemed particularly blue, but that did not deter me either. I wondered what would. I knew I was being ridiculous, that he was not at all my type, but I let the feeling overtake me.
Licky meowed again, knocking me back to reality. Reminding me of his own fate and of Polya and the things she had told me about Bogdan. I did not want my first kiss to be with a man who had slept with half the women in town—I wanted to be wanted singularly. I ignored the breeze, the glowing sky, the strange energy between us, the snow that kept sputtering out of the pine branches. I took a step back.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the eggs. They saved us.”
He smiled a disappointed smile and took a step back as well. “It is my pleasure to serve,” he said, saluting me like a cadet, and it was clear that there would be no more romantic opportunities.
“Naturally,” I said. “We all do what we can.”
He bent down and scratched Licky behind the ears. “And soon, this one will play his part, unless our luck turns.”
His words were more shocking than the electricity between us. I tried not to look like I had been run over by a Black Maria. As my breath settled around me like a fog, I understood everything. Why Mama did not forbid Polya from playing with her pet, or why, when Licky wandered into our apartment, Papa mentioned how big he would be, one day. The meat on his haunches. How Mama was more worried about Polya than ever, and what it meant when she looked from Polya to the cat and back to Polya again. This was yet another truth that had been lost on me, like Bogdan’s escapades, and I wondered if everyone but me, and in this case, Polya, also knew the score. The cat was not just useful as a mouser and a soother of Polya. He was also an emergency food supply, and we had far surpassed emergency status. I aggressively patted the cat on the head and tried to maintain my calm.
I recalled helpless Polya resting in a snowbank in her white coat, her face placid until I shook her awake, keeping myself from yelling at her for being so weak, wandering out with only her dumb animals for company when she was feeling so dizzy already. Mama sat beside her as she recovered by the stove, telling her that there would be more food soon, that it would make her big and strong, though what grounds did she have for these words, unless she was thinking of the family pet? Likely it wouldn’t be long before Licky met his fate.
I met Bogdan’s gaze evenly. I was not going to let him see how clueless I was.
“A shame what has to happen,” he said quietly, as if the cat could understand us. “Your sister will be devastated.”
“We have no choice in the matter,” I said. I tried to hide my surprise that he knew about the cat all along. What didn’t he know?
“It can still be a shame, can’t it?” he said.
I threw our wood on the pile and agreed, feeling like I had lost something I could never get back. Licky was nuzzling the side of my leg, as if he were begging me to reverse his fate. He didn’t seem to want to go back inside the stuffy apartment and neither did I, in spite of the windy bluster. Another blast of snow fell from the branches, landing at our feet. And then, I began to feel a sudden pull toward Licky, which felt as unexpected as my attraction to Bogdan.
“I think I’ll stay out with Licky for a little while,” I said, stroking the cat behind his ears. “He wants to roam.”
“We all want to roam,” Bogdan muttered, and then he grabbed his pile of wood and walked away with purpose, as if to make it clear how little I mattered to him, and how whether or not we kissed was of supreme indifference to him, a man who had certainly done more than kissing.
He left a stick behind and I kicked at it. It was hard to believe that not that long ago, Bogdan, Misha, Polya, and I had played at swordfighting with those same sticks. That had turned into a fun and frivolous afternoon, even when everything felt so serious here. What did he expect from me now? To break all decorum and embrace him in the moonlight, with the ill-fated cat as our witness?
Licky was oblivious to my struggles and that was why I loved him, right then. He nuzzled my leg until I moved and found he was happy to follow me. He had never followed me before the way he followed after Bogdan or Polya, and I was moved to tears. I pulled him into my waist and stroked either side of his mangy face. I met his gaze and his white-blue eyes seemed to contain all the sorrows of humanity, I don’t know how they fit in there.
“Come, now,” I said to the doomed kitty. “Let’s walk along the river.”
The market had finally opened for spring and Mama managed to get Polya to leave the apartment with me and Baba. My sister had already quit school and spent much of her day in bed with the cat, but the unexpectedly mild weather had lured her out. She had given up her arm twine for aesthetic reasons, and the stray skin clumped around her wrists, but she didn’t care. I knew why we were taking her away. It wasn’t because we expected the market’s sad wares to save us. Licky was resting on the balcony, in a lake of sunlight, and did not seem inclined to move anytime soon. He rolled around on his back, collecting dirt as his belly wiggled in the sun. I was tempted to stroke him one last time, but I did not want my sister to get suspicious. As soon as we were gone, Mama would open the balcony and strike.
The market had already sprung to action when we arrived, the weather-buoyed townspeople milling about even though the selections were as spare as ever. Onion Man Oleg was faithfully stationed at his post in the middle of the rows of blankets; he gave me a wink and threw an onion the size of a large grape at me, which I gladly accepted. Polya did not flirt with anyone besides Bogdan anymore, except she perked up a bit when she chatted with her favorite ancient radish brothers, two of the three of whom were present, which suggested that the third did not make it through the winter.