Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

I might have cried, if Boris wasn’t there. Instead, I went in the bathroom and vomited again and then after drinking some water from the tap came back with paper towels and cleaned up the mess I’d made even though my head hurt so much I could barely see. The vomit was an awful orange color from the barbecue chicken wings and hard to get up, it had left a stain, and while I scrubbed at it with dish detergent I tried hard to fasten on comforting thoughts of New York—the Barbours’ apartment with its Chinese porcelains and its friendly doormen, and also the timeless backwater of Hobie’s house, old books and loudly-ticking clocks, old furniture, velvet curtains, everywhere the sediment of the past, quiet rooms where things were calm and made sense. Often at night, when I was overwhelmed with the strangeness of where I was, I lulled myself to sleep by thinking of his workshop, rich smells of beeswax and rosewood shavings, and then the narrow stairs up to the parlor, where dusty sunbeams shone on oriental carpets.

I’ll call, I thought. Why not? I was still just drunk enough to think it was a good idea. But the telephone rang and rang. Finally—after two or three tries, and then a bleak half hour or so in front of the television—sick and sweating, my stomach killing me, staring at the Weather Channel, icy road conditions, cold fronts sweeping in over Montana—I decided to call Andy, going into the kitchen so I wouldn’t wake Boris. It was Kitsey who picked up the phone.

“We can’t talk,” she said in a rush when she realized it was me. “We’re late. We’re on the way out to dinner.”

“Where?” I said, blinking. My head still hurt so much I could hardly stand up.

“With the Van Nesses over on Fifth. Friends of Mum’s.”

In the background, I heard indistinct wails from Toddy, Platt roaring: “Get off me!”

“Can I say hi to Andy?” I said, staring fixedly at the kitchen floor.

“No, really, we’re—Mum, I’m coming!” I heard her yell. To me, she said, “Happy Thanksgiving.”

“You too,” I said, “tell everybody I said hi,” but she’d already hung up.

xxi.

MY APPREHENSIONS ABOUT BORIS’S father had been eased somewhat since he’d taken my hands and thanked me for looking after Boris. Though Mr. Pavlikovsky (“Mister!” cackled Boris) was a scary-looking guy, all right, I’d come to think he wasn’t quite as awful as he’d seemed. Twice the week after Thanksgiving, we came in after school to find him in the kitchen—mumbled pleasantries, nothing more, as he sat at the table throwing back vodka and blotting his damp forehead with a paper napkin, his fairish hair darkened with some sort of oily hair cream, listening to loud Russian news on his beat-up radio. But then one night we were downstairs with Popper (who I’d walked over from my house) and watching an old Peter Lorre movie called The Beast with Five Fingers when the front door slammed, hard.

Boris slapped his forehead. “Fuck.” Before I realized what he was doing he’d shoved Popper in my arms, seized me by the collar of the shirt, hauled me up, and pushed me in the back.

“What—?”

He flung out a hand— just go. “Dog,” he hissed. “My dad will kill him. Hurry.”

I ran through the kitchen, and—as quietly as I could—slipped out the back door. It was very dark outside. For once in his life, Popper didn’t make a sound. I put him down, knowing he would stick close, and circled around to the living room windows, which were uncurtained.

His dad was walking with a cane, something I hadn’t seen. Leaning on it heavily, he limped into the bright room like a character in a stage play. Boris stood, arms crossed over his scrawny chest, hugging himself.

He and his father were arguing—or, rather, his father was talking to him angrily. Boris stared at the floor. His hair hung in his face, so all I could see of him was the tip of his nose.

Abruptly, tossing his head, Boris said something sharp and turned to leave. Then—so viciously I almost didn’t have time to register it—Boris’s dad snapped out like a snake with the cane and whacked Boris across the back of the shoulders and knocked him to the ground. Before he could get up—he was on his hands and knees—Mr. Pavlikovsky kicked him down, then caught him by the back of the shirt and pulled him, stumbling, to his feet. Ranting and screaming in Russian, he slapped him across the face with his red, beringed hand, backwards and forwards. Then—throwing him staggering out into the middle of the room—he brought up the hooked end of the cane and cracked him square across the face.

Half in shock, I backed away from the window, so disoriented that I tripped and fell over a sack of garbage. Popper—alarmed at the noise—was running back and forth and crying in a high, keening tone. Just as I was clambering up again—panic-stricken, in a crash of cans and beer bottles—the door flew open and a square of yellow light spilled on the concrete. As quickly as I could I scrambled to my feet, snatched up Popper, and ran.

But it was only Boris. He caught up with me, grabbed me by the arm and dragged me down the street.

“Jesus,” I said—lagging a little, trying to look back. “What was that?”

Behind us, the front door of Boris’s house flew open. Mr. Pavlikovsky stood silhouetted in the light from the doorway and bracing himself with one hand, shaking his fist and shouting in Russian.

Boris pulled me along. “Come on. ” Down the dark street we ran, shoes slapping the asphalt, until at last his father’s voice died away.

“Fuck,” I said, slowing to a walk as we rounded the corner. My heart was pounding and my head swam; Popper was whining and struggling to get down, and I set him on the asphalt to dash in circles around us. “What happened?”

“Ah, nothing,” said Boris, sounding unaccountably cheerful, wiping his nose with a wet snuffling noise. “ ‘Storm in a glass of water’ is how we say it in Polish. He was just pissed.”

I bent over, hands on knees, to catch my breath. “Pissed angry or pissed drunk?”

“Both. Lucky he didn’t see Popchyk, though, or—don’t know what. He thinks animals are for outside. Here,” he said, holding up the vodka bottle, “look what I got! Nicked it on the way out.”

I smelled the blood on him before I saw it. There was a crescent moon—not much, but enough to see by—and when I stood and looked at him head-on, I realized that his nose was pouring and his shirt was dark with it.

“Gosh,” I said, still breathing hard, “are you all right?”

“Let’s go to the playground, catch our breath,” said Boris. His face, I saw, was a mess: swollen eye, and an ugly hook-shaped cut on his forehead that was also pouring blood.

“Boris! We should go home.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Home?”

“ My house. Whatever. You look bad.”

He grinned—exposing bloody teeth—and elbowed me in the ribs. “Nyah, I need a drink before I face Xandra. Come on, Potter. Couldn’t you use a wind-me-down? After all that?”

xxii.

AT THE ABANDONED COMMUNITY center, the playground slides gleamed silver in the moonlight. We sat on the side of the empty fountain, our feet dangling in the dry basin, and passed the bottle back and forth until we began to lose track of time.

“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The stars were spinning a bit.

Boris—leaning back on his hands, face turned to the sky—was singing to himself in Polish.