The Russian Dreambook Of Color and Flight

Yuri pulled on the helmet, stretched out on the stone bench, and sighed.

At the opposite end of the courtyard, in the one and only patch of mud completely thawed, stood Azade, a shovel resting on her shoulder. Behind her green bullet-shaped buds studded the limbs of the lime tree fore and aft. Above him the clouds converged overhead in the oddest of shapes. They were men and women kissing. Yuri closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them. Now the men and women had drifted so far apart, men westward, women eastward, no hint whatsoever remained that only moments before they were inextricably intertwined. Yuri blinked. In fact, there was no suggestion of the metaphoric in the sky whatsoever. The clouds were simply clouds gathering and stretching, and nothing more.

Yuri closed his eyes.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

'Mother, I feel fine. Not hot, not in the slightest,' he mumbled.

Tap. Tap.

Yuri opened his eyes. Mircha. On the bench. Sitting next to him and squeezing Yuri's shoulder. Hard.

'Brilliant!' Mircha said. 'What you were just muttering, that bit about women. Brilliant. I agree with you entirely. The world is far too full of women and not one of them is happy. It's beyond me, really it is.'

Yuri sat up and squinted at Mircha. He seemed different somehow. More unsteady. At a loss for breath.

'But your problem is that you don't know what it means to be a man.'

'Why is that, I wonder?' Yuri squinted at Mircha. He seemed smaller, shrunken inside his service coat.

'Russia is a country of boys coddled by their mamas and henpecked by their wives. Look at you, for example. Living with your ma and on the brink of marriage to a devil on ten ball bearings.'

'Well, what's the solution, then?'

Mircha raised his hand, closed it into a fist. 'A man shows a woman who's the boss.'

Yuri turned his hands over in his lap and studied his palms. He closed his hands into fists, opened then closed them again. Was there anything more beautiful than the architecture of a man's hands?

Mircha snorted. 'But you know, women do have their worth. They are more resilient, women. Built with twenty or more little motors inside of them, when life poses an insurmountable problem, they simply gear to another motor, turn their hands to another task, as it were. But men, they have just one big motor. All their self-worth is in the strength and power of that one motor. And once that motor is snuffed, men—they're finished. Because we only know one way.'

'Why are you telling me this?' Yuri squinted at Mircha.

'I have thoughts, insights, as it were. And no one to share them with. Now that I am dead I can see how better the rest of you should all live.'

Yuri watched Vitek emerge from behind the heap, the children in tow. 'You could tell him these things. He is your son, after all.'

Mircha worked his mouth in a circle and spat. 'Believe me, I've tried. Messages on mirrors, in dust, waking dreams, sleeping dreams. It's a lost cause. He can't hear a thing I have to say. He never could.'

Vitek approached the bench. He stretched his arms and inhaled deeply. 'The sun is shining. The birds are singing.' Vitek's chest swelled. 'It's enough to make you shit!' Vitek punched Yuri convivially in the arm. Thump.

Yuri rubbed his shoulder. 'That hurt.'

'Listen, the wind is whispering. Let's have a drink.' Vitek sat next to Yuri and uncapped a bottle. 'We're a team, you and I.'

'Who?' Yuri tipped his head.

'Who?' Lukeria hooted.

'Do you want to get out of this shit hole? D'you?' Vitek's dark face loomed in front of his visor.

I want...

'You want to make everyone happy, and by everyone I mean yours truly. Don't you?'

Yuri nodded and smiled obliquely.

'That's my boy.' Vitek smiled and withdrew a bottle from his coat.

'That's my boy,' Mircha echoed and hung his arm around Yuri's neck.

'So here's what you're going to do.' Vitek uncapped the bottle and took a generous swallow. 'Tomorrow you're going to get to the museum, early, and get washed. Use soap. And then go and see Kochubey.'

Yuri lifted the visor. 'Who's Kochubey?'

'The recruiter, stupid. Go and see him. At the old-new Caucasian bakery. Tell him I sent you.'

Yuri nodded. Uncomfortable it was, with a dead man's arm draped over his one shoulder, a semi-blind and semi-deaf man's arm draped over the other. He couldn't decide which arm bothered him most, Mircha's or Vitek's.

'Maybe you'll get lucky and get a cushy assignment. Mine-sweeping or something.' Vitek dug an index finger into first one nostril, then the other, then examined his fingernails. 'You have no idea how much a mine-sweeper makes.'

'What's the average life expectancy?'

Vitek wiped his fingernails against his trousers. 'Inconsequential. What matters is that we each of us have only one life to expend, so we each of us must make it count.'

Meanwhile Mircha kept talking. 'I really did want to be a good father. But nobody told me how.' Mircha leaned forward and poked Vitek with his crutch. 'So I am sorry, son!'

Vitek slapped his ear as if plagued by a pesky gnat. 'Be sure to take a pack of Marlboros. It's all Kochubey will smoke.'

'I was a terrible father. My father was a horrible father and his father before him. It has been a long and honoured family tradition. Our rage, our cruelty, and you must appreciate the importance of tradition, overrated as it may be. Which is not to say I am exonerated. Certainly not! So, I'm sorry—a hundred times sorry.'

'Speak for yourself! I am sorry for nothing!' Lukeria's voice wobbled from the heights.

'Crazy old harpy. Who does she think she's yelling at?' Vitek stared at Lukeria shaking her fist from her open window.

'Your father.' Yuri pointed to Mircha. 'He's here. Sitting next to me. Talking to me. Just as you are.'

'OK, OK. I know when a joke's being played on me,' Vitek frowned. 'Fun and games. I have a sense of humour, too. Ha! Just don't forget to get your ass over to Kochubey's tomorrow.'

'Yes,' Mircha echoed. 'Don't forget. This is just the kind of thing we men live for—to die gloriously in battle.'

Yuri pulled the helmet back over his head and the noise of the courtyard instantly went under water. It was fear that kept fish swimming. Instinct told a fish what to do, where to go. But for the right bait any creature will ignore instinct. At least this is what his commander told them in Stavropol, or maybe it was Beslan. This is why it was necessary to crawl on hips and elbows through the snow, crawling toward the heart of another village where they would kill people, some of them Russian. They were learning to replace their fear, their natural instincts to flee, which were just other names for common cowardice. All this the commander said while thrusting a knife upward into the torso of a cardboard man as he demonstrated how easy, how vulnerable the human body really is.

But a man is not a fish. A man is a thinking creature, a creature who can reason with and beyond pure instinct. His instinct? Easy. To survive. Isn't that what everybody wanted? But why should his survival come at the expense of someone else's? There were other ways to make money. He could sell a kidney. He could yodel on a street corner. He could keep out of Tanya's way so that she could get that grant thing. He could fish.