'Oh, Yuri,' Tanya flipped up the flight visor, 'what have you done to yourself?'
'I went fishing and I got into some trouble.' Yuri sat cautiously in Tanya's fold-down metal chair.
Tanya bit her lip. 'We're going to have to clean you up. Take off that silly helmet.'
'I can't.'
Tanya sighed.
Together, he pushing, she pulling, they worked the yoke of the helmet over Yuri's head, painful centimetre by painful centimetre. In the relative warmth of the museum basement Yuri felt the blood moving behind his skin, felt his face swelling and the cuts opening.
Tanya licked her finger and smoothed Yuri's eyebrow. The pain, definitely a seven now. Why does a woman's touch hurt as often as not? And then their words. Mother, for instance, some months ago speaking on the subject of Tanya, who was so close now he could kiss her if his lips weren't split and bleeding: 'Please do not disgrace yourself by falling in love with a Gentile. She's nice, but she's not one of us. If you marry her your grandmother Ilke will torment us in our dreams.'
No, Tanya really didn't have a chance with him. It wasn't right to let her believe that she ever would, either. And yet ... and yet no denying the small pleasure he felt at this very moment. Tanya chewing her gum close to his ear, cooing over him, grooming him, giving him soft womanly advice he in no way planned to heed.
'You might fish elsewhere, you know.' Tanya licked at a paper tissue and dabbed at a gash on the side of his face.
Yuri winced. He could feel the tissue cling to the cut. 'But it's my spot. I earned it.' It was further evidence of his self-loathing, a plague that he could only ascribe to having grown up without a father and to that hazy generational curse of growing up a Jew in Russia.
Tanya stepped back to examine her work. 'You can't take schoolchildren on tours looking like this. And we can't let Head Administrator Chumak see you, either. Let's get that helmet back on.' Tanya shoved the helmet over Yuri's head.
And just in time, too. Thump—slide. Thump.
Yuri crawled under the counter.
'Oh, Tanya! News! Big news!' Wedged as he was beneath the long hat/coat-check counter, Yuri could not see Head Administrator Chumak. But he could see the effect Head Administrator Chumak's words had on Tanya. Her hands shook and her knees literally knocked, setting the dimples on her rump in an uproar. No, for all her efforts, that cigarette and chewing gum diet wasn't helping her much. But she was kind, and though kindness didn't get girls like her very far, it ought to, Yuri decided. She deserved much better than what the bowels of the museum afforded.
'The Americans are coming! It's officially confirmed. They are buying their airline tickets even as we speak!'
'They're coming,' Tanya repeated, with what sounded to Yuri like disbelief and horror.
'In three weeks.'
'Three weeks. That's wonderful news, sir.'
'Wonderful? Wonderful?' Head Administrator Chumak's voice rolled through the corridor. 'This is better than wonderful. Do you know what this means?'
'No, sir.'
'If we get this grant I will buy a fence. I will buy my wife a car. And driving gloves. At last she will be happy and stop pecking at me. But of course, of course, there's so much to do in the meantime. This is such a delicate operation and there's so much.' Head Administrator Chumak peered over the counter. 'What is that unsightly protrusion? That cannot be a hat.'
'No, sir. It's Yuri. He is not feeling well.'
Yuri unfolded his body and straightened for Head Administrator Chumak's inspection.
Head Administrator Chumak's smile faded and his liver spots darkened. 'Well, young man, if you weren't feeling well, you shouldn't have come here. We have been charged with the honourable task of preserving and presenting fine art. It won't do to look like a bleeding tomato wearing a mushroom for a hat.'
'Preserving and protecting art is, of course, of vast importance and I have the utmost respect for art in all its configurations and manifestations—high, low and everywhere in between.' Yuri glanced at Venus' half-chewed ass.
Head Administrator Chumak turned to Tanya. 'What's he saying?'
'He says he's leaving this very moment.'
Outside the museum, the light had fallen to hips and knees. A three o'clock dusk, and the basement windowpanes reflected a lavender wash and the streetlights dispatched sullen arcs of hazy orange.
Yuri tied his rod to the frame of his bike and wheeled it through the narrow path shovelled through the snow. Winter was a dangerous time because the cold forced people closer together than nature intended. Not that Yuri didn't love his fellow man, but last week alone he'd been mugged twice on the same day. This very morning he'd nearly lost his sprocket and he'd most certainly lost his entire pike and five-eighths of his remaining pride. What next? Yuri wondered as he walked his bike around a corner, and then immediately wished he hadn't.
At the sound of his steps, two men leaning against a doorway straightened and approached Yuri. They had a sleek and sporty air to them Yuri had learned to recognize as Mafiya. Probably they had been like him once, vets of an unpopular military action, but unlike him, they had the broad shoulders of wrestlers or near-champion boxers. And unlike Yuri, they wore slick tracksuit trousers with long stripes up the leg and expensive sports shoes, the hallmarks of eager recruits who understood that violence was necessary for their career advancement. And cruelty was inexpensive entertainment. Experience had taught Yuri that the only hope for a guy like him was to stick himself to shadow and disappear. Or walk straight up to them, and get it over with. Yuri lifted his visor and smiled. He knew they were considering his suspicious features, the unusual length of his face, his jaw. His blaring cuts and bruises that advertised his victim status.
Yuri unstrapped the rod and tucked it behind his trouser leg. 'Please fellows, take the bike. It may not look like much, but part by part, it is of extreme value.'
'Bargaining already?' the leader, a tall man in an Adidas sports jacket said.
Yuri sighed. 'Please, fellows. I don't wish to be hit in the face. Or the knees either.'
'Life is full of hard decisions, isn't it?' Adidas ran his tongue over his gold tooth.
Where it started—with his ribs—he could recall, but where it ended, how many blows to the back and kidneys, Yuri lost count. That they'd found his fishing rod was not in doubt: he heard it whistle through air and land some distance away in the snow. Then came the pounding of fists. His head felt like a big empty box hit with a stick, but never the same way twice. The important thing was not to beg for mercy, or they'd kill him. Also, it was important not to appeal for help to any passersby. A street beating in Russia was purely a spectator sport. Possibly the next Olympic event. In no circumstances would anyone help out his fellow brother being thrashed within a micrometre of his life. That being said, when Yuri spotted Mircha, materializing from behind a lamp post, Yuri could not help himself: 'Do something.' Penny whistles between his cracked teeth.
'Me?' Mircha mouthed, thumping his own chest with a thumb.
His attackers took Yuri's words as a sign. That is, they fell to beating him even harder. Yuri lay still as a fish beneath ice. Because a man who doesn't moan, doesn't complain, must be dead.
At last, when they'd got their wind up, they quit. Yuri heard the ticking of his bike as they wheeled it around the corner and then Mircha reappeared, steam rising from his hands.
Mircha cradled Yuri's head in his lap, withdrew a bottle of vodka and administered the remedy, a capful at a time, into Yuri's mouth.
With a splutter, Yuri revived.
'Where is your backbone?' Steam rose from Mircha's palms. 'I've been studying you at the river, at the museum, here on the street. Everybody walks all over you, even the women! You have to stand up for yourself, fight like a man. Right now, it's like you're only half a man. Maybe only a quarter.'