Мария Кузнецова - Something Unbelievable

“You will be lost without me, boy,” I tell him, and he brushes more furiously in response. He has been sleeping at my feet every night, and I will miss his warm and smelly presence in my sleeping quarters, even if he has some nasty habits. I put out my cigarette, drain my glass, and leave the balcony. Sharik follows me out and jumps on the couch as if to encourage me to rest along with him on the sad piece of furniture that is nearly as old and saggy as yours truly.

Though Natasha and Yuri had insisted I take their bed, I took the couch so they would have some privacy in their tiny bedroom. Besides, the living room is quite cozy, with its lampshades draped in scarves, holiday lights framing the windows, coffee table adorned by the stubs of purple candles and glass bowls of rocks, with a photograph of my nasty grandmother lording over it all. Natasha has tried to give the little place some character, reminding me how few are the things that truly belong to us, no matter how we try to dress them up. This is the kind of life I had pictured for her all those years when I did not send along vast swathes of money, the same way my father did not spoil me. In some ways, her big, open living room reminds me of my childhood apartment. And yet, the girl has found a way to get in trouble without extravagance. A girl who I hope is on her way home now, to her husband, avoiding an interloper’s charms.

The bedroom door is slightly open, practically beckoning me, and I approach, though I know it is a transgression. I rarely enter the room where Natasha, Yuri, and little Talia sleep, and it is neater in there than I expected, relatively spare compared to the cheerful chaos of the rest of their home. Talia’s crib is by the door, blocked off by a Japanese curtain as an attempt for some privacy for the happy couple. Yuri snores gently, a tempered man even in repose, one arm splayed out, as if to fill the gap where Natasha’s body should be. I lean over my great-granddaughter’s crib and stare at her sleeping form. Toward the end of Natasha’s pregnancy, she would cry out during our Skype sessions, her eyes large as she placed a hand on her belly, telling me how hard the girl was kicking her, and I was glad the child had some fight in her already. Though it should not seem like such a miracle at this point, the girl traveling from Natasha’s womb to this crib, it still fills me with wonder.

The girl has come a long way from the rat-faced thing she was the first time I laid eyes on her over the computer screen. She has hair now, little brown-red ringlets, and her eyes are big like her mother’s, dare I say a bit like her great-grandmother’s, and she is gaining a semblance of silly personality, a mischief around the eyes, even when they are closed. Perhaps this was why I was so repulsed when I first laid eyes on her. I knew I would never see her grow into a young woman or find her way in the mystifying universe, so I decided not to bother. And then, out of nowhere, her eyes pop open—I am caught! I hold my breath and wait for her to cry and rat me out, but she does no such thing. She simply holds my gaze. We are co-conspirators.

I reach into my pocket, pull out the velvet pouch, and, from that, the ruby necklace. I dangle it in front of the child. Imagine, a necklace belonging to the Empress Maria, passed on to my great-grandmother, in the reach of this American-born child, light-years ahead of the first known necklace owner, a serf-owning woman married to the second-to-last tsar of Russia, the mother of Nicholas, Russia’s final monarch. The baby girl I see is a universe away from serfs or tsars, and good riddance, and yet, her eyes light up as she reaches for the necklace. It is a heavy object, one that must have weighed down my grandmother considerably during the war, when her form shrunk from plumpness to skin and bones, and now it is the perfect bauble for a baby. The child’s face is flooded with so much delight I worry she might laugh.

I know there will be no more visits, that this is the last time we will see each other. What will the world hold for this tiny creature after I am gone? What ties her to me? What will she take from her mother, and what has her mother taken from me? All of the wrong things, I am afraid, but it is too late to do anything about it. Oh, what difference does it make? Dust is a must. I have reached the edge of my grave and am gazing into the abyss with longing. The infant will have to fend for herself, just as I did. I stroke her delicate hair and take the necklace away, and then I sneak out of the room and prepare to rest.

As I climb under my covers on the couch, next to Sharik, I picture Natasha onstage as my grandmother, feeling the silliness of seeing my life play out before my eyes. It was fine that she had changed the story, mind you, that she had simplified it, which is something I wish someone had done to my actual life. Though the story was even more complicated than I had let on—I had not told Natasha everything. She would not have known what to do with it. I did not want to overwhelm my poor granddaughter, or to make her think less of me.

I see myself onstage again, before the gullible audience, except this time it is truly me, a young Lara, and instead of Babushka Natasha, I see long-dead Babushka Tonya, the genuine article. The audience fades, and so does the auditorium, the stage. We are back in the mountains.

I have been seething ever since my grandmother not only failed to praise my father during his funeral but also had the gall to say that going to the orphanage was the best thing that ever happened to him. My anger reaches a fever pitch when she begins speaking to him during her mad rants, telling him he once had the rosiest cheeks. How could she dare to address my poor dead father as a boy—a boy she had treated so poorly? No, no—she had taken things too far. Once I hear her speak to him, I decide she needs to be punished.

That night, I wait until my sister’s restless body settles above me, and I confirm that my grandmother is sound asleep as well. Then I slither out of bed. I hover over my grandmother, take a deep breath, and reach under her filthy boa to unclasp her necklace. Her thick, snakelike skin brushes against mine and nearly makes me leap—I have never truly touched her before. I stuff her necklace into my underwear. And then I sleep the sleep of the dead.

In the morning, I wake up to my grandmother’s cries.

“Where is it? Where is it?”

I watch her go on with her wild accusations, watch her mind completely dissolve, watch Polya and Bogdan become as fused as the welded components of a steel bridge, watch Mama become even more immobilized by heartache. I keep the necklace in my underwear during the first day of the search and the next night, once everyone is asleep once again, I go outside to dig up the portrait of Papa and Mama and bury the necklace underneath it.

“I know you never cared for riches, Papachka,” I say. “But I hope you can keep this safe.”

I did not and do not believe in God or an afterlife, did not think Papa was prancing around with the angels while waving the ruby necklace in the air, or using it to buy himself endless Champagne and caviar, or that it made a lick of a difference, as if dead wasn’t dead. As if putting a portrait in the ground meant any speck of my father resided there. No, he was but a corpse in the mountains in a place I would never see, a mean wind whistling above his cold bones. Still, taking the necklace away from my grandmother and giving it to Papa makes me feel better for a while.

I do not feel sorry for my grandmother, not even when she starts wandering outside and babbling to her long-dead relatives, it only fills me with a sharp joy.

But after a few weeks, even this pleasure fades, and I want to dig my claws in even more.

I hear a rustling in the middle of the night and watch my grandmother rise in her nightgown and wander outside to where Papa is buried. I follow her, while Polya sleeps on. For a moment, I worry that she has discovered the location of the necklace, but once I hear her mad babbling addressed at her daughter, I realize the jewels are safe.