Mama acted as if she were fine without Polya, but I knew she missed her inconsequential banter about her dogs, as if they were the boys who used to walk her to school. My Tolik seemed to help a little bit. The first time she held him, she mentioned my father, for once. “Other fathers were so scared, thinking they would drop their new babies,” she had said. “But not yours. He was never afraid of holding you.” She still lived in the big room all by herself. The only person she socialized with was Aunt Mila for the occasional tea. She was the one who told me Mama had passed away just after my son’s third birthday. “The apartment has been vacated,” she told me, and then she asked after several pieces of furniture, and I said she could have all of them, even the divan. I sent news of her death to Polina, but Bogdan wrote back with his condolences, saying they were too tied up to return for the funeral. Only then did I understand that they were gone for good. If Mama’s death would not bring Polina back, then nothing would.
Though I should not have taken their stubbornness too personally: when Bogdan’s parents passed away when my son was seven—Uncle Konstantin, who I was amazed lasted as long as he did after the war, of a heart attack, his wife of grief a few months later—Bogdan and Polina did not return to Kiev for that either. But my hands were too full to brood over them: the Orlovs had passed on their lavish six-bedroom apartment to us, and Misha and I set about moving into the cavernous, porcelain-filled place that made me feel ill at ease. It reminded me of my grandmother’s luxurious apartment outside Postal Square, which was only a five-minute jaunt from our new home, a place I went out of my way to avoid when I walked home from work. Recalling my grandmother’s apartment and its pointless excess, my first act as woman of the house was to fire the maids and the cooks, conceding that my husband could keep his driver. Did he like the life of luxury, my husband? I believe he could have done without it, but he needed to keep up appearances as the new head of the Institute.
When my boy was in his eighth year, a letter from Bogdan arrived. It was addressed to me instead of his brother, and only for a moment did my heart flutter before I understood bad news was coming. Polina has passed away after a battle with cancer. She was in agony and is better off now. I plan to return to the Motherland—to nurse my broken heart in Kiev. If possible, I would love to stay with my favorite brother and sister. I took the letter to the gilded balcony outside our dining room, which offered a stunning view of the Dnieper in the distance, and turned it over in my hands. I told myself that my sister had been effectively dead since she chose to leave the country the month before my son was born, so this should not have changed anything for me. And yet—
Tolik played with his train set at my feet, taking in the fresh air. I recalled the day when Polina and I ran down the halls of what was then the vast Orlov apartment, wondering what could possibly be done in so many rooms. After my sister rolled around on the Orlov bed, she and I ran to the balcony I stood on now, and my sister did a dance, the ruffles on her dress bouncing up and down as she cried, “I am queen! I am queen of the city!” I got caught up in her hysteria, though I was at least ten, too old for such antics, and we danced until we got winded, and then my sister sat down. “Look at this thing,” she had said, spreading her arms wide to indicate the balcony. “It’s the size of a small country.”
I was on edge when Misha left to pick up his brother at the station two weeks later. Nearly a decade had passed since I saw Bogdan, when my heart churned with terrible confusion and longing. Now I would know whether my feelings had been genuine. I grew more anxious, not just about what I would think of Bogdan but over what he would think of me playing house in the cavernous government bastion I called home. I was still growing accustomed to it, yet there we lived, with high ceilings, arched windows, and a fireplace in the parlor with a piano in it, one Misha refused to get rid of though neither of us could play. What would Bogdan, with his proletarian beliefs and hatred for all things fancy, have to say about my new lifestyle?
When he arrived, I felt ridiculous for considering that Bogdan would care that we had replaced his parents as heads of his former household. “Larissa,” he whispered, and I gave him a quick hug. I could hardly look into his weary eyes, which hid under his disheveled sandy hair. The broken man who walked through our door did not seem like someone who could care that he was returning to his gilded childhood home. He was utterly defeated, nothing like the mischievous boy I remembered. He was in mourning, of course, and in a way, so was I, but still, I was relieved to feel no attraction to him, only pity. He spent his first week in our cabinet, studying an old atlas from before the Great War, tracing the outlines of countries where he had never been, as if to form an escape route from his hopeless existence. Though he did seem to turn the corner after a while, and I believe my son was responsible. Bogdan would take my serious child to the park behind our apartment, and it cheered him greatly.
My husband was a man of action. He had a barber trim Bogdan’s hair and face, and he did shed about ten years, touching his face periodically as if he, too, could not believe it was really his. Though he still moped, he gained weight and looked presentable enough that Misha made him a courier for the Institute’s laboratory. His task was to carry boxes of chemicals from various laboratories all over the city to the Institute. He took to the job, though he still believed everyone at the Institute was a Fascist, his brother included. He must have put his rebellious thoughts aside because he realized that getting out of the house was more important than sticking to his principles at that juncture.
He enjoyed the fresh air, the walks punctuated by bus rides, the interactions with the scientists, as if he, too, were a learned man. After several months of stability, he moved into a small apartment of his own, four floors above ours. His final goodbye was sitting down at our untouched piano and playing a perfectly competent rendition of “Für Elise”—this was just one of the many things he must have learned to do while he was gone. Misha was relieved, not only because his brother was thriving but also because we would get some relief from his dark, manic energy. How quiet the house was in the evenings, without Bogdan and his brooding and tales from Rome, his smirking criticism of our acidic red wine!
I still felt it, after all—the improbable pull toward this broken man. I loved my husband, but he worked such long hours and, well, most of our conversations were centered on our boy. I loved my boy, too, but he was such a serious, solemn creature, preferring his toys to people, not as interested in reading with his mama as I had hoped, though he did have a soft spot for his playful uncle Bogdan, who was still more comfortable with children than his fellow man, ever since he joked around with young Yaroslava. Again, I could not help but wonder why he and my sister had not reproduced.
I was bold enough to ask one afternoon, when Bogdan and I took Tolik to the park. He ran ahead of us to the swings and we watched him from a bench.
“I’m sorry you—could not have children,” I said. Bogdan narrowed his eyes and I bumbled on. “That, you two weren’t able…”
I didn’t think anything had the power to truly stun him until I saw the look on his face. He had made it through the war without being shocked. And even though my sister’s death had devastated him, he still bore it like a fact of life, something to be expected. But now he jumped from the bench like it was smoldering. I had hardly mentioned my sister to him, and he had likely imagined I would say something tender about her, if I said anything at all.