Ekaterina Sedia - The Secret History of Moscow

The sun stretched over him, touching the tops of dunes in a sizzling white flash, and sank behind them. The shadows of the dunes grew blue and touched his face; the sand chilled him, and the strawberries grew indiscernible in the dark. He hated the gypsies then, for scorning him as defective merchandise. It was time to return home, to look into the stepfather's smug face and admit that he was right-there was no value inherent in Fyodor, and even gypsies knew that.

Fyodor's family moved when it was time for him to go to school. Like pilgrims, they took trains north and west until they arrived at Zvenigorod. Fyodor did not sleep on the train and just repeated the word-Zve-ni-go-rod-in rhythm with clanging of the wheels. A twinkling city, a happy city, he imagined, animated by the merry ringing of a thousand church bells, a city promising happiness and sunshine. It turned out to be covered in asphalt, and even the trees were dusty. Seven-year-old Fyodor felt the familiar sting of disappointment as he discovered that the name was a lie.

However, there were gypsies here. They were just leaving the train station as his mother and the stepfather bickered about whether the trucker they paid to transport their belongings to the new residence had arrived yet, when his stepfather paused and spat. “Fucking gypsies,” he said. “I don't believe this."

Young Fyodor traced the direction of his gaze and stared at the colorful group-men and women, brightly dressed, sat on sacks and rolled-up blankets, talking loudly in a language Fyodor didn't understand-a secret Gypsy language, he surmised. A few half-naked toddlers played in the dust. All of these people had dark skin and shining black eyes, and the women wore long flowered skirts and jangling earrings and necklaces. The men's teeth shone white in their bearded faces. It was the first time he'd seen real gypsies, and he stood entranced until his mother tugged his hand and dragged him along.

"Don't stare,” she said, irritably, and turned to Fyodor's stepfather. “Both of you. They'll see you looking at them."

It was too late-one of the women rose from the bundle she sat on and approached them calling out in a smoky accented voice, “Wait up, beautiful, I'll tell you your fortune if you gild my hand."

"No, thank you,” Fyodor's mother said firmly, and turned away to leave. “We don't believe in this stuff."

The gypsy woman was not so easily discouraged. Her dark fingers grabbed Fyodor's mother's wrist, and she spoke so quickly her words blended into a threatening chant, “If you don't gild my hand, your eyes will burst, your womb will wither, your child will suffer…” All the while, she held her other hand palm-up, as if offering something invisible.

Fyodor's mother stopped and rifled through her handbag. “Here,” she said, and put the money-not coins, real paper money-into the woman's open hand. “Just leave us be."

"Tell me it wasn't our grocery money,” the stepfather said. “I can't believe you just did that."

Fyodor's mother did not answer but shot him a fierce look and pulled Fyodor closer to her in a protective gesture. Even though she did not believe in hexes, she preferred to pay them off rather than dare to prove them wrong. Fyodor was too young to verbalize his new knowledge, but he was now dimly aware that even the most remote threat is too much when it is directed against someone one cares about. His suffering was worth actual paper money. He had never forgotten that.

Young Fyodor's life was quiet, and as the result his formative experiences were few. Later in life he marveled that he could count them all on one hand. First, there were gypsies, a vague threat, and his mother's protectiveness and the stepfather's indifferent malice; then there were watercolors his mother brought for him as a gift for his first day of school. He remembered the first of September, he in his new school uniform-a blue jacket with matching pants-in file with the multitude of other children in the schoolyard. The girls were wearing white ribbons in their hair, and brown dresses with white aprons. All children carried flowers to present to their teachers; gladioli predominated. He did not remember the rest of the school day, but he remembered the set of twenty-four paints, neatly arranged in tiny wells sunk in the ornate wooden case, which his mother presented to him when he got home. She also gave him an album of porous, fibrous paper, which drank the paint thirstily, absorbing it.

He painted so much that he ran out of colors, and only the black well retained a sliver of paint, like a curving strip of dirt under a fingernail. He went through a brief black period, until his mother grew worried and bought him another set. He dreamt of painting and daydreamed about it during the interminable school days. When the winter came, he left the pages blank to depict snow that covered everything, and punctuated it with sets of lonely footprints, of birds and humans. He wanted to draw the gypsies but resisted, fearful that the act of art was magical enough to attract their dark attention. But they hid in the edges of his paintings, hinted at by shadows and an occasional flash of white teeth and gold jewelry. He struggled to keep them out but still they found their way in.

During the summer, students descended upon Zvenigorod, coming from Moscow for their summer practice. They were future biologists, and Fyodor watched them shyly as they marched from the train station to the bus stop, where the bus took them to the mysterious Field Station. They carried knapsacks, laughed loudly, and smoked, and acted as if they owned the city. The stepfather disapproved of them. “Look at those kids,” he would say. “Damn Muscovites. Act as if they own the place, like their shit smells of lilacs."

"Are Muscovites worse than gypsies?” Fyodor dared to ask.

The stepfather spat, his rough face furrowing. “Thieves are thieves, however you paint them."

Fyodor watched the receding backs with knapsacks, jeans, canvas sneakers. They didn't look like thieves, and he shared the observation.

"Moscow is privileged,” the stepfather said. “See this?” He pointed at the cracking asphalt and stray dogs sleeping in the shade of the storefront that hadn't ever sold anything worthwhile. “We don't have anything so all the party bosses in Moscow can eat and drink and do what they want. They rob the rest of the country and take it to Moscow. Whoever lives there is a thief, plain and simple. Just like those gypsy pickpockets, God help us."

As Fyodor grew, he continued to paint, and he also started to see his stepfather's point. At the same time, he wanted to go to Moscow, to the land of plenty and the carefree students who came every year, like migratory swallows, and left again before the summer was over. Fyodor wanted that freedom to pass through as he pleased, and when he finished school, he applied to the Moscow State University, biology department, even though he had little interest in the subject. He just wanted to return to the town he lived in for the past ten years as a visitor, just passing through.

He failed the entrance exams, but delayed returning home. He called his mother and lied about unexpected complications, and spent the night at the train station. The next morning, he left his suitcase in the locker and went sightseeing-he visited the requisite Red Square and the Mausoleum, and gawked a bit at St Basil's Cathedral. He meandered through the streets and stood on bridges, watching the green-brown river below. Everywhere he went, he carried his album and watercolors, and took quick sketches, mostly just blurs of colors with only hints of shapes of everything that caught his fancy.

"You're pretty good,” a girl said next to him.

He looked up and realized that she was a gypsy-long skirt, black as soot hair, soft eyes and mouth. A panic struck him, and he babbled. “Please don't hex me,” he begged. “I don't have any money, honest. I'm out of town."