Emily Rubin - Stalina

“Here, miss, your book.” I grabbed it before it fell to the floor.

She woke and said, “Oh, I must have fallen asleep. Thank you. I am very tired.”

“You are studying?”

“For nursing. It’s very hard.”

“You smell like peaches,” I said, hoping to make her feel more comfortable.

As I handed her back her book, she said, “Thank you, it’s my shower gel.”

“In Russia everyone goes to the local banyas. We love special smells, especially of flowers and fruit trees.”

“Banyas?”

Her straight brown hair was pulled back tightly in a ponytail, which exposed her high forehead. She was young but already had some fine lines surrounding the edges of her blue eyes.

“A bathhouse,” I told her.

“Men and women together?”

“No, separate. We use birch branches to take off the dead skin. It awakens the circulation and stimulates the spirits.”

“I use a loofah, and sometimes that’s a bit too rough.”

“I miss the banyas. Too bad there isn’t one here in Berlin.”

“Bathing with a bunch of other women—I don’t know if that would be considered a good time here. This is my stop, excuse me,” she said as she got up to stand by the back door.

“There is no other way to get as clean. In the heat and steam of the banya, you can feel your skin as a living, breathing part of you.”

“Whatever floats your boat,” she said as the door was about to open.

“ Do svidaniya ,” I said.

In Petersburg at the metro stop closest to my local banya, there was always a group of women singing in the tunnel during the busy commuting hours. People would toss money into a hat they placed by their feet. One of the women was well dressed; she probably worked in an office. Another was much older and walked with a cane. The third always wore a hodgepodge of ethnic clothing: a babushka scarf, an embroidered peasant shirt, and a batik wraparound skirt. She was the great harmonizer. Their voices resonated off the curved ceramic walls of the tunnel and made a river of sound flow under the canal. Strong, steady, and deep, the music was a caress when you walked by. When they had collected enough money, they would pack up and come to the banya for a steam and glasses of vodka. They would beat each other with the birch branches in the same rhythm as the folk songs in their repertoire. Everyone’s skin glistened from the repeated swipes with the softened branches foaming with eucalyptus soap. Every pore was stimulated. People here would benefit from such camaraderie and cleansing.

The bus driver kept wiping his brow. He looked agitated. Thinking about the banya soothed me, and I closed my eyes as a patch of sun coming through the clouds blinded me for a second or two. In the darkness I escaped this painful morning with a fitful dream.

“Garghhh…garghh…”

Strange noises from the bus driver.

“Excuse me sir, are you all right?” I asked.

His right arm had dropped to his side.

“Garghhh…garhh…”

He couldn’t speak; he was choking. He was turning around to look at me.

The bus was still moving. Everything else shifted to slow motion.

I saw the nursing student waiting at the rear door, and I saw myself sleeping. Suddenly, the driver slumped over the wheel, and jarred out of our early morning stupor, we all started clamoring over each other. Things started sliding and tipping over as the bus skidded. The world outside the bus streaked by as it spun and slid. The mist rising from the road turned into a belt of clouds around the bus. I saw the nursing student jump past me to the front of the bus. Suddenly everything stopped and there was silence. The rain had started to come down heavily again. I was on my hands and knees. The woman in the white uniform with the swollen ankles was clutching her knitting. The nursing student was under the feet of the driver holding down the brake.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“I think he’s dead,” she said.

We were all silent for a moment, and then the woman with the knitting started softly crying. Luckily, it was still early and the roads were not busy, but in just a few seconds, several cars coming in either direction stopped just short of hitting the bus. People came out of their cars and gathered around it.

“I’m afraid to take my hand off the brake,” said the nursing student.

There were beads of sweat on her upper lip. I approached her slowly. It was as if the bus was dangling off the edge of a cliff. The key to the ignition was on the floor just below the driver’s dropped hand.

“He’s dead,” I said.

The nurse and I stared at the key.

“Do you think he shut the bus off before he died?” she whispered.

“He must have been very well trained,” I added.

“The emergency brake, can you reach it?” she asked.

I leaned over the driver and pulled the lever on the brake.

I woke as the brakes screeched as we stopped for a red light. Startled out of my nightmare, I hit the window with the back of my head. The bus driver was just fine and steering his vehicle straight ahead. My fellow passengers were as they had been, sitting, staring, knitting, and sleeping. The next stop was mine.

The arch-shaped neon sign for the Liberty Motel glowed like a radon tube in a frozen centrifugal chamber, just like we had at the old lab. In the morning mist the motel looked otherworldly, like a good setting for a mystery. If I’d let my fantasy continue, the police and several ambulances would be arriving at the scene—a good opening for a gangster story. As the accident occurred, simultaneously a dark car would be disappearing through the mist up the motel’s driveway. Then the scene would shift to the inside of the bus. The nursing student would have the first line. “Is anyone hurt?” she would say. The other people on the bus would brush off, stand up, and start gathering their things from all over the bus. We would hear various comments from the passengers.

“I think I’m OK.”

“I lost my purse.”

“Where are we?”

“I can’t find my shoe.”

“I dropped a stitch.”

The character playing me would have bumped her head and suffered amnesia. She would not remember that her mother had died or why she was on the bus. A police officer with a crowbar would pry open the door of the bus. There would be a rush of activity, and the emergency medicals would pull the bus driver from his seat and lay him down to resuscitate him. They would pump his chest and throw an oxygen mask over his face.

“I need to get to my job at 27 Blodgett Hill Road,” the woman with the knitting would say.

The pumping and pushing on the driver would make it look as if some life was coming back to him. But when they stopped working on him, there would be only silence. My character would get off the bus, dazed from the event, and start to wander up the hill, mysteriously drawn to the motel. Her boss would be coming down the hill to see what all the commotion was about. Upon seeing her, he would run to greet her, and she would fall into his arms, not knowing who he was or why he had embraced her.

My fantasies run deep.

The doors of the bus opened. The bus driver was still wiping his brow.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Have a good day, ma’am,” he replied.

The scent of the pine trees on the sides of the driveway leading up to the motel mixed with the strong smell of bleach from the laundry room and made it feel as if I were walking through a sterilized forest. My eyes watered and the tears burned as they streamed down my face. These were chemically induced tears. They were not salty like the tears for my mother.