Алексей Никитин - Y.T.

‘Of course,’ nodded Sinevusov. ‘So you’ve said.’

I said this to him every day. No less than five times a day.

We were leaving Greater Apple—faces well fed, in fine health and with horticultural theory tucked under our belts—but we hadn’t picked a single fruit. September was drawing to a close, and the rains were beginning. And the denizens of Greater Apple were making ready for the advance on the Simirenkos.

A dull sugary syrup; a cloudy, cloying swill; a sweet dross like that bottled and sold by my current employer—that’s what my memory now dredges up. As different from what really happened as a glass of brown cola named for an apple is different from the apple itself—from the firm, fragrant, fresh apple, its yellow skin shot through with red. This Greater Apple tale harbored masses of nuances, inconsequential subtleties only just perceptible and all but indescribable. It was chock full of details that were insignificant but no less vivid for that. Such as the cottages we stayed in. We didn’t stay in a school or together in a dormitory where we would have been supervised but scattered around the village. Antonovs with Antonovs, Simirenkovs with Simirenkovs. Kurochkin and I got a big room and an old man in a green velvet tunic as our host. I think his name was Petro. He had a wife and children long grown-up whom he regarded with such contempt that they just tried to ignore him. Which wasn’t easy. Petro loafed around the village for days on end in a pair of ossified trousers, a Tyrolean hat so soiled it shone and the green velvet tunic with a pipe in the breast pocket. In the evening we played him at Preference for kopecks while drinking something vile and guffawing at his tall stories. His distant pre-Apple past crept repeatedly into his views and observations. Although his past was his own business. We only listened to the old man and didn’t try to catch him out. Why ruin a good story? A little later, after the Greater Apple Accord had been signed, the countries parceled out and the game under way, Korostishevski and Kanyuka started dropping by. They were Antonovs. Petro didn’t like Antonovs. And he took a dislike to Korostishevski and Kanyuka. Kanyuka interfered in his yarns—clarifying, correcting, asking questions big and small. Just to show what was obvious. The thoroughly embittered Petro managed to sit them down for a game of Preference and stripped them of their shirts—Korostishevski lost seven roubles, and the impudent Kanyuka lost nearly fifteen, all he had. Petro cheated, that was clear, but how he did it we couldn’t figure out. Of all of his children only his youngest daughter didn’t sneer and turn away when he came into the house. She spent the evenings with him in our room, listening to his fables and silently watching Mishka Reingarten. She watched Mishka, and Mishka, like the rest of us, watched Natasha Belokrinitskaya. Was I really supposed to tell Sinevusov about Natasha? How much a trifling, fleeting morning conversation with her meant to each of us, and her attention, and her indifference? Surely without Natasha there never would have been a game. Rather, the game would have ended in Greater Apple. There, that’s enough about Greater Apple, or I’ll never finish the story.

‘So when did you figure out they were playing along?’

‘Almost immediately. We’d explained the rules—’

‘And they got interested?’

‘Sure. What else were they going to do? Interrogate us? Bang on for two months about the same thing? They understood perfectly well without our help. I mean, really, was someone suddenly going to blurt out that he got the rules to the game from a cousin who’d moved to Boston five years ago? Just as an example.’

‘No one could have said that.’

‘I said it was just an example. That would have given them something to root around in. But as it was… Well, I suppose they could have manufactured a trail leading to the Mossad and given us mind-altering drugs so we’d have told them any old crap… only they didn’t want to.’

They let us go at the end of May. Already the lilacs were in bloom and the chestnuts had nearly finished flowering. It was a lush Kiev summer. Kurochkin and I sat on Castle Hill, the oldest of the hills overlooking the Dnieper. In the authoritative opinion of the academic Peter Tolochko, this is where it had all begun—Olga, Vladimir, Yaroslav, Yuri Dolgoruki, Muscovy and the Tsardom of Muscovy, Russia and the Soviet Union—although the cautious Tolochko did not look as far ahead as the present day. He contented himself with Vladimir and Yaroslav.

We were sitting in the high grass of Castle Hill. The sky above us, not yet leached of color by the summer heat, was like a weightless sail full of wind; while down below bulldozers were excavating the ancient potters’ and tanners’ district of Gonchari-Kozhumyaki, turning entire streets into heaps of broken brick. Some of the brick and debris was carted away, the rest simply mashed into the boggy, shaky soil of the historical terrain, adding yet another cultural layer. Whatever the culture, there was the layer. But at the time we weren’t up to Gonchari-Kozhumyaki. We’d been set free exactly the way we had been arrested—suddenly and unexpectedly. It was all we could talk about or think about. What had happened and what would happen next.

‘So, then, Alexander…’ Sinevusov had begun the evening before, his forehead dry and smooth. The Bakin air conditioner drove a powerful stream of cold air into Sinevusov’s office. ‘Don’t you think you’ve outstayed your welcome?’

He’d been calling me Alex for a long time, but he slipped in an Alexander now to emphasize the importance of the moment. I shrugged. ‘You know better than I do.’

‘Ho-ho,’ he chortled in agreement and pointed up at the ceiling. ‘We can see everything upstairs. Here’s your pass.’ He took a piece of cardboard from a folder and put it down in front of him. ‘You’re going home today. You’d like to go home, wouldn’t you? We’ve had quite a few conversations with your mama. She’s a lovely lady.’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said, nodding my head. He’d never said he was talking to my mother. There’s a right bloody swine for you. ‘You mean she’s been here?’

‘Sure she has, and more than once,’ he let slip. He realized he had gone too far with his gossip and immediately steered the conversation in another direction. ‘Let’s get down to business. Alexander, for two whole months you and I have got to know each other quite well. We’ve grown close. We have nothing against you here. Go back to university, back to your studies, and make up for lost time.’

‘Right. And just what am I supposed to say to the rector? “Sorry, I’ve been detained by the KGB for the past two months. Please record my unavoidable absence as sickness. Here’s my certificate.” ’

For two months I had controlled myself, but suddenly I lost it. If only I’d known my mother was coming here, to this building, registering for passes and waiting hours to be admitted, begging for favors—she had probably wanted to give me some parcels. It was just like a slow fan being turned on behind my back, its propellers slowly beginning to knock, ratcheting up the rotations, flashing grey shadows. I realized acutely just how much I hated Sinevusov. Apparently he sensed something.

‘Alex, Alex… What’s the matter? Everything has turned out so well. You and I have understood each other perfectly.’ His brow glistened faintly with oil. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief, but it only became oily again. ‘You have nothing to worry about. All the right people in the chancellor’s office and the rector’s office have been advised. Nobody’s going to ask you any awkward questions. So? Better now?’