Kseniya Melnik - Snow in May

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

First published in the United States by Henry Holt in 2014

Copyright © Kseniya Melnik 2014

Cover photograph © Diana Berlizeva/EyeEm

Kseniya Melnik asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Some of the stories in this collection have appeared elsewhere, in slightly different form: ‘The Witch’ in Granta ’s New Voices series on Granta.com, 2010; ‘Rumba’ in Epoch magazine, 2012 series, Volume 61, Number 3; ‘Love, Italian Style’ as ‘In the queue’ in Prospect magazine, May 2011; and ‘Closed Fracture’ in the Virginia Quarterly Review , fall 2011. Lines from ‘But could you?’ by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated by Dorian Rottenberg; lines from ‘To He BeTep’ (‘Kruchina’), music by A. Varlamov, lyrics by S. Stromilov; lines from ‘When Youth Leaves’, music by V. Sorokin, lyrics by A. Fatianov.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This collection is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007548705

Ebook Edition © May 2014 ISBN: 9780007548712

Version: 2015-05-22

In loving memory of my grandmothers, Olga and Irina, and my friend Allison Powell

Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

LOVE, ITALIAN STYLE, OR IN LINE FOR BANANAS

CLOSED FRACTURE

THE WITCH

STRAWBERRY LIPSTICK

THE UNCATCHABLE AVENGERS

RUMBA

SUMMER MEDICINE

KRUCHINA

OUR UPSTAIRS NEIGHBOR

GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

“ G razhdanka, it’s forbidden to sit here. Follow me.”

Tanya looked up from her shopping list. The stewardess’s curt demeanor was so incongruous with her childlike face, Tanya felt a swell of pity. Here was someone already kicked around by life, her defenses permanently raised.

Moments earlier, Tanya had sat in one of the open seats directly behind a group of men in identical blue T-shirts and track pants. On an otherwise full airplane, they were buffered both in front and behind by an empty row. Preoccupied with planning the most efficient shopping itinerary for Moscow, Tanya hadn’t given this much thought.

Now she wrestled her frayed carry-on from the overhead compartment and followed the stewardess. The empty rows were puzzling indeed. When she looked back, the blue-T-shirted men grinned at her over the tops of their seats. There was something glossy in their appearance, something one didn’t see in everyday people. With their smooth faces, shiny hair, and lime-white teeth, they looked freshly washed and wrung free of life’s problems.

Tanya’s assigned seat was in the last row, beside a middle-aged couple.

The husband turned to Tanya. “The Italian soccer team,” he said with enthusiasm. “They’re trying to keep us away from them. International security measures, you see. But if seriously, what secrets do they think we could give them? That the country’s short on soap and rope?” He snickered. “Soap and rope, yes.”

“Who thinks? The Italians?” Tanya said. She’d never seen a foreigner before, not even someone from the Eastern bloc—the so-called Soviet camp—although she’d heard they were easily spotted in the bigger cities. But these were real foreigners, real Westerners. There were separate hotels for them, and shops and restaurants. Separate seats at the Bolshoi Theatre. She felt embarrassed for having sat down behind them now.

“ Them . The—”

“Sasha, quiet,” his wife said, glaring at him as though the plane was bugged by the KGB. And who knew? Maybe it was.

The plane taxied for takeoff from Leningrad, where Tanya had spent five days slumped in a seminar room at the Hermitage. She curated the arts wing of the Regional Museum in her hometown in the northeast and every five years attended these educational programs, required and paid for by the countrywide arts board. During the day, she half listened to lectures on “the portrayal of socialist reality through painting and sculpture.” In the evenings, she strolled down the Neva embankment, its austere neoclassical buildings the color of cucumber flesh, omelet batter, sour-creamed borsch. What a shame it was that she had to travel so far to see real beauty.

She closed her eyes and thought of all the things she needed to get in Moscow to take back home to Magadan, where the grocery stores weren’t empty but also had no variety. Leningrad, with its theaters and museums, was Russia’s starving artist; the capital was the rich merchant, the pride of the country—a requisite stop for everyone on the way back to the provinces. She and Anton had saved all year for this shopping trip. Baby Pavlik needed a winter coat, and Borya needed a backpack, notebooks, and all the bright school accessories to get him excited about first grade.

Fruits and good vegetables. Avitominosis was common during spring in Magadan. Tanya loved cabbage for its excellent transportability. She’d have to get three or four heads. Juicy southern tomatoes, too, if she could find a sturdy box. Apples, oranges, pears. And maybe something exotic and a little magical to jolt their life, if only for a moment, out of its bread-and-potatoes doldrums. Pineapples or bananas if she was lucky, though even in Moscow they were a rarity. Anton had asked for color film and photo paper, preferably East German. He loved taking pictures on his geological expeditions. She wished she had time for the shopping bus tour that went to all the foreign import stores: Warsaw, Dresden, Budapest, and, of course, Belgrade.

Tanya pulled out Eugene Onegin and opened at the bookmark.

“Ehhhhh. Ciao, bellissima. ”

She looked up. It was one of the Italian soccer men. His right arm was propped on his hip; the other inched toward her with a piece of paper. He was mockingly handsome—his features oversized, his full lips shiny as though dabbed with olive oil. He stared at her with intensity, the way the blue-cloaked Zephyr looks at Venus in her favorite Botticelli.