Stuart Kaminsky - The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

“You want me to drive all of you into Red Square so you can blow up Lenin’s Tomb,” Boris said. “We’ll all be killed.”

“Not necessarily, Boris,” Peotor continued. “We do not wish to die, though we are willing to do so if necessary. We, Vasily, you, I, will all die eventually. This day, a year from now, ten years from now. There are causes bigger than ourselves, Boris.”

“I’d like to choose my own causes,” said Boris, cautiously keeping an eye on Vasily.

“But you do not have that luxury in this case,” Peotor said. “You waited too long. Would you rather die with a bullet in your head here or die having changed history?”

“I don’t want to make the choice,” said Boris. “This is a nightmare.”

“Life is a nightmare, Boris,” Vasily whispered into his ear. “If you could enter my head for five minutes, you would know it.”

“You have another ten seconds to think about it, Boris,” Peotor said.

“No,” Boris whimpered. “There are no bus routes near the square. You take the Metro or a trolley. We’ll be stopped before we-”

“Eight seconds,” said Peotor. “You’re not even looking at your watch!” Boris cried. “Six seconds.”

“I need a toilet!” Boris pleaded. “Three seconds.”

Vasily raised his pistol and aimed it at Boris’s right eye. “I’ll do it!” Boris shouted.

Vasily put the gun at his side and said, “Welcome to our cause.”

“He’s just a man, a man at sunset,” the apparently male voice shrieked from the phonograph.

Elena Vostoyavek looked at her son across the room and considered telling him, asking him to turn down the screaming man or woman, but Yuri seemed lost in thought, on a distant planet. He sat slouched in the worn sofa in the corner, the sofa Elena’s husband had died on five years earlier. Yuri resembled him, was even sitting in the same position in which she had discovered Igor early that March morning. Elena wanted to tell Yuri that if he wouldn’t turn the music down or off maybe he could move to a different position, unfold his hands, take that look from his face.

The man on the record shrieked more words about someone going to a meeting. Drums beat, horns blared.

“Come and eat before you go to work!” she called, waiting for something that resembled a lull in the sound her son thought was music.

“I’m not hungry,” Yuri replied, closing his eyes as if any question she asked him, any comment she made, was a burden he could no longer bear.

Their apartment, two rooms, was in a block of 1960s ten-story white concrete squares near Vostochnaya Street. If an identical building did not block their view they would have been able to see the Palace of Culture of the Likhachev Auto Works.

“You’ll be late,” Elena said gently.

Yuri sighed deeply with the weight of the world upon him and stood up. He was, Elena tried to judge as objectively as possible, a handsome boy, blond, blue eyes, a bit slender, with a pouting mouth. She moved to his side to pull down his loose-fitting gray sweater, and he suffered her to do it for him.

“The music is loud, Yuri,” she said gently.

“It is supposed to be,” he whispered.

“But the neighbors …”

“… think nothing of getting drunk, fighting all night,” he went on, moving to the table to examine the bread his mother had put out. “If we are to hear every word of their banality through these walls of paper, then they can be entertained by my music. Besides, they’ve all left for work by now.”

“Mrs. Gruchin is an old woman. She’s …”

“… almost deaf,” Yuri said, moving to the record player as the singing man shouted as if warning him not to stop the concert, but Yuri did not heed. He pushed a button, and the noise ceased in midbeat. The arm of the phonograph rose and moved to the right, clicked off as the turntable stopped. And all was silence.

“He’s louder than the American.” Elena tried moving to the table to prepare him a thick slice of bread and a piece of cheese.

“The American is English,” Yuri explained, moving to the table and accepting the bread and cheese. “He used to be a Beatle.”

Elena worked at the Moyantka Carpet Store on the Arbat. She worked in the factory room and hardly ever saw customers, which suited her just fine. Elena and Vladimir Tsorkin cut remnants, trimmed rugs, kept the records, and supervised the cleaning and maintenance crews. Tsorkin was getting old and smelled musty like the old specials, the Oriental rugs in the locked room, but Elena liked him and looked forward to getting to work.

“I’ve got to leave, Yuri,” she said. “I’ll clean up when I come home. I’ll get something special for dinner.”

“I won’t be home for dinner,” he said between bites.

“Well, I would like to make you something special,” she said, moving to the rack in the corner, where she retrieved her coat. “It’s supposed to be cold and wet tonight. You could use the rest. You haven’t …”

He looked up at her, pausing in midbite of a piece of cheese.

“What are you so nervous about?” he asked.

“Me? I’m not nervous. I just don’t want you getting into … I don’t know,” she said.

Yuri shook his head, put down his bread, and moved to his mother at the door. He was about five inches taller than his mother and looked down at her.

“I worry about you, Yuri,” she said. “You’ve been … thinking.”

He smiled, put his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly, his head above her so she couldn’t see his face. “I’ve had a great deal to think about.”

“Don’t do anything silly, Yuri,” she said, pushing away from him and looking up into his face.

He grinned, the same grin he had grinned since he was a baby.

“I never do silly things, Mother,” he said.

“I mean … the girl,” Elena said. “You’re going to see her tonight. That’s why you won’t be home.”

Yuri didn’t answer. He continued to smile down at her like a parent at an ignorant but much-loved child.

“Bring her here,” Elena insisted.

Yuri shook his head no.

“Are you ashamed of me?”

Yuri shook his head no.

“She’s not trying to get you to … do bad things, is she?”

“No,” he said with a false laugh. “Where did you get such a crazy idea?”

“I’m late,” she said, pulling her coat around her, checking her pocketbook, counting her change, fidgeting, unwilling to go through the door and leave him.

“I’ll clean up and go to work, Maht. I’ll be fine. No more music.”

Elena smiled at him, a most unconvincing smile, and went out the door.

Yuri did as he said he would do. He put the bread, cheese, and tea away and cleaned the table with a damp rag. Then he washed his face, brushed his teeth with the last of the Czech tooth powder his mother had purchased almost a year ago, and combed his hair. He had much to do. He would go down to the phone in the People’s Room of the housing complex and call Comrade Sukov-Helmst at the Telegraph Building. He would cough, speak hoarsely, say that he was going to the clinic with a terrible chill and temperature. Comrade Sukov-Helmst would be very understanding. Yuri Vostoyavek was not only a good worker who never missed a day, he was also Comrade Sukov-Helmst’s favorite nephew.

Yuri moved to the phonograph, turned the screws holding it with his thumbnail, lifted the top of the turntable, and reached down to remove the small pistol wedged among the wires.

Lydia Tkach, much to her son’s surprise, had not taken badly the news of her forthcoming expulsion from the household. At first, this had filled Sasha with relief. After she had changed the baby, Maya had left the apartment claiming that she had promised to visit Olga Stashak on the floor below.