Мария Кузнецова - Something Unbelievable

September turned to October, which was not the October I had known in Kiev. In Kiev, October was when the trees changed colors, when you could stroll through Mariinsky Park as the maples and chestnuts turned from green to majestic red and orange and gold. In Lower Turinsk, October meant the trees would change colors for a week or so before unceremoniously shedding their leaves. Papa and Uncle Konstantin rode to a neighboring village on horseback, returning with a sack of potatoes and two shubas, a white one for Polya, and a brown one for me, and by November, we lived within the confines of these thick coats. There was no use denying that we were in for a long stay by then, and the fathers’ late-night grumblings about the state of the Red Army brought no hope. Millions of soldiers had died or been captured already, and the Germans were only fifty kilometers away from Moscow, advancing toward our capital.

I lived for my reading sessions with Misha in his family alcove after dinner, while Bogdan horsed around with my sister and Licky or went off to his food expeditions. I was breathless to find myself alone with handsome Misha, though Mama would “check in” on us once in a while. Misha’s voice was firm and commanding, though his hands shook when he turned the pages, which pleased me because it suggested that I made him nervous. The shaking hands were his only weakness; since he started working at the factory, he seemed even more capable and grown-up, the soot behind his ears making him look like a true man.

And besides, reading with him gave me far more intellectual stimulation than I got from my new cruel teacher, Yana Nikolaevna, who was offended by the students who left class after the daily free lunch. “Filling your empty minds is more vital than filling your empty stomachs,” she had declared, and followed this charming comment up with the fact that she would not bother learning the names of the new students until she saw who was going to “stick around.”

By January, Misha and I were done with Demons and had moved to another favorite, Onegin. We had just finished the chapter where Tatyana dreams of being chased by a bear and entering a party where Onegin stabs Lensky and wakes up scared and confused. I recited my favorite part of the dream for good measure:

Misha gave me an unreadable smile. The weight he shed gave his face an older, more dignified look, which suited him.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said, shaking his head.

“What is it?”

“I just find dreams in literature to be a bit silly, don’t you? I mean, if it didn’t really happen, then why write about it?”

“None of it really happened. The dream is what makes Onegin Onegin . The rest of the book—the duel, the spurned love, none of that is so very unique, is it? Of course, the narrator has a sharp wit—but in this passage, he abandons that wit, and yes, perhaps he’s mocking Tatyana a bit, but he must believe in it on some level, or he wouldn’t describe it so vividly.”

“He can’t help himself. He’s a writer. I’m just saying—I find the dream a bit frivolous, far less interesting than the outcome of the duel between Onegin and Lensky.”

“Can’t it just be a beautiful interlude?”

“I didn’t know you were such a dreamer, Larissa.”

“Some occasions require it.”

Misha just shook his head. “Pure silliness.”

“It’s not silly at all,” I insisted, but there would be no changing his mind.

He gave me an intense look that made me uneasy. Did our argument stir some passion within him? Of course I had been trying to will him to kiss me for months, but I was uncomfortable, afraid. He looked at the book and back at me and his lips drew a straight line. Had he kissed girls before? He always seemed so competent and knowledgeable that until that moment, I never considered that perhaps he had not, that he was just as clueless as I was when it came to romantic matters. He kept looking at me, waiting for me to say something that would direct him, one way or another.

I looked down at my enormous shuba and recalled the bones and knobs and blue-green veins on the body inside it. Would anyone really want to kiss someone in my awful state? I hardly felt like a woman anymore. My womanly visitor had not returned since we arrived in the mountains. Mama had to stitch Polya’s and my pants to keep them on our waists. Hairs sprouted on my chest to keep me warm and my voice was so weak, I didn’t sound like myself. My clothes floundered on my body, reminding me of a happier time when Polya and I paraded around in Mama’s enormous dresses when she and Papa left us home alone.

Misha turned away, the intense look gone, and he was quiet, gazing out the one tiny frosted window in his alcove, where a light snow was falling. By then I understood that his staring fits were not a mere indication of his solemn, poetic soul. His stillness could be attributed to melancholy, not simple awe at the wonders of the world. I never knew what to do when he disappeared like this. Should I leave? Try to bring him back to Earth? Ask what was on his mind? I was relieved when I did not have to find a solution, because Bogdan entered the room. I could not help his brother, but I could ask for a second opinion.

“What do you think of Tatyana’s dream in Onegin ?” I asked.

As the smile curled on his wily face, I had a feeling that of course he would agree with me. How could he not? The boy was a bit of a dreamer, and he would have been taken by the imaginative interlude.

“It’s the best part,” he said. “Naturally.” I nearly gasped, putting a hand to my chest, and then he laughed wildly. “I tricked you, didn’t I? I don’t think I got that far in Onegin . There was a dream? I must have been playing hooky.”

“Don’t talk nonsense, brother. You must have read Onegin, ” said Misha, who seemed more annoyed by his brother’s cavalier declaration than was justified.

“Then I suppose I don’t remember,” Bogdan said with a complacent shrug.

It was time for bed. By then, we had all given up on our individual beds and slept on a blanketed pile by the stove in the center of my family’s room, any need for privacy trumped by the flames flickering near our thawing limbs. We hunkered down by the stove and I found my usual place, next to my parents. I put a blanket over my shuba and relished the warmth, knowing I would wake up sweating the next morning but that I wouldn’t care, that it was a pleasure to know my body was capable of producing sweat. Just as I closed my eyes, somebody poked me in the back. Bogdan was looking right at me. His brother was sound asleep to his left, and my sister was dozing on his other side, her head resting on Licky’s haunches.

“The dream was pretty wacky,” he said.

“So you did remember after all.”

“No. I just read it over. Some wild stuff.”

“Indeed,” I said, and I was more touched by the fact that he had read it over than I cared to admit.

“It wasn’t much of a burden. There isn’t exactly a lot to do,” he said, patting my hand, making certain that he had not made me feel too important.

I closed my eyes and shifted closer to Misha, who had already fallen asleep, and felt his breath on my neck as I tried to settle into a slumber as wild and beguiling as Tatyana’s. But I woke up in the cold light of morning, my stomach rumbling, not having remembered a single thing I dreamed about.