Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

“We got some fish. In the bedroom. Go and have a look.”

Yevgeni bounds off the couch. Maria waits until he closes the door.

“I’m worried about him. We still haven’t found a place for him to rehearse. An audition for the Conservatory in the spring—there’s also the possibility of a recital at my work—and the child practices on a keyboard with the volume turned down.”

“He can’t practice at his music teacher’s?”

“The man’s old, his wife is senile, we can’t ask more of him than we already do. You don’t happen to know of anyone with a piano?”

“Of course not. What kind of circles do you think we move in?”

Maria lowers her eyes. Valentina softens her tone, refills Maria’s glass.

“I’ll ask Varlam to keep an ear out.”

“Thanks. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to bring my problems here.”

“Don’t worry. I need something to keep my mind occupied. It’s a relief to hear about something practical. I’ve been worrying about the strangest things lately.”

“What type of things?”

“I don’t know. Just things. I’ve too much time on my hands.”

Maria waits patiently. This is always the nature of conversation with Valentina: she approaches the topic in waves, the tide of information coming gradually. Maria, being Maria, listens while someone talks themselves into understanding, or revelation.

“I don’t know. I’m forgetting things. My keys. My purse. I forgot my coat a few weeks ago. I was at a play at the Hermitage, on my own, and, afterwards, I walked for twenty minutes in the pounding snow before realizing I had left my coat behind.”

“Must have been a good play.”

“I’d tell you, but of course I can’t remember.”

“Are you worried? Do you need to see someone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. There are people who’d kill to be in my position, you know. Just forgetting. Having no memory makes you innocent. You can’t obscure things.”

“Has something happened that’s made you want to forget?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Silence.

“There’s something. What is it?”

“I saw something the other day—a few weeks ago, actually. The strangest thing.”

More silence. “Well, I don’t know how to put it. The strangest thing. I was in the Lefortovo—you know how sometimes it’s good for meat, the lines that sometimes spring up.”

“Yes.”

“It was Varlam’s birthday and I wanted to cook him something special, some pork maybe, and I hung around, went to the places where I had queued before, and eventually I came across a line and I got a shoulder of pork, a beautiful slab, let me tell you.”

Valentina is slightly bug-eyed, with hair chopped under her ears, which further emphasizes the oval shape of her face. Maria could see her standing at the door of the memory, wondering if she should step inside it, wondering if this was doing any good.

“Then I walked back to Kurskaya station. I was really pleased with myself. He works so hard, Varlam. You know how it is, Alina works hard too. I wanted to make him a meal to celebrate him. I know Varlam hasn’t done amazing things in his life. He’s feeling, at the moment… what’s the word?… unaccomplished. So I wanted to cook him a meal that recognizes what he means to me. A meal fit for a good man.”

She swats the air again, scattering away irrelevant information.

“Anyway, with this package of meat in my bag, I’m proud of myself. I’m a good wife. And I’m walking those backstreets—you know where I’m talking about, there’s a steelworks building and it’s near all those railway lines.”

Maria nods. “Yes.”

“The evening is coming down and I feel like the only person in the city—there’s no one else around, not even any footsteps to be heard—and I turn a corner and see something hanging from a lamppost.”

She pauses, looking up, and her voice turns lighter.

“And right away I feel like it’s going to be something strange. I don’t know why. The weight of it maybe, the way it swung on its own weight. And I look up and it’s a dead cat, hanging from a short piece of rope, its eyes gleaming from the streetlight. And I feel it’s looking right at me.”

“My God.”

“I know. Its mouth is open, fangs bared, snarling, spitting, the way cats do. I tell myself I need to get out of there, so I start to walk faster—I’m nearly running, in fact. My shoes have a thick heel, so I’m staggering and I slip but regain my footing and look up, and there’s another one. I kept my head down all the way back to the station, but I could still tell, from the corner of my eye, that there were more—maybe twenty. I don’t know. I was so worried someone would come around the corner, some militia guys, and I’d be the only one around with these fucking animals strung up, and they’d start asking me questions.”

“Of course.”

“I couldn’t even cook that dinner later. I just couldn’t bear the sight of raw meat. I had to dump the package near the station. The blood was leaking through the paper and getting onto my hands. I wanted to puke.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well since.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’ve been forgetting things.”

“Yes.”

“So I’m glad you came today. I would have called over anyway. I wanted to ask if you’d heard anything like this before. When you wrote for the newspaper, maybe people talked about such things.”

“No. I’m sorry. They didn’t.”

“I’m sitting here wondering why cats are hanging from lampposts.”

“I don’t know. It seems like a statement of some kind.”

“Who would make a statement there? In Lefortovo?”

“I know. But what else could it be?”

“You don’t know. I don’t know. Such an odd fucking thing.”

Yevgeni pushes open the door again. It’s a little too neatly timed for comfort. Maria hopes he’s just bored with the fish.

“Did you see them?”

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“Their colours are beautiful.”

“Varlam loves them. He wakes sometimes in the middle of the night and he says that if he just watches the fish, he falls asleep again.”

“He can see them in the dark?”

“The bottom of the tank lights up.”

Yevgeni definitely wants one now.

They say their good-byes and Maria hugs Valentina, offering reassurance, and Valentina mimes that she doesn’t want what she’s said to fall on other ears, and Maria nods and Valentina knows she can trust Maria. This is a woman who’s never in her life passed on a secret.

They carry the empty laundry bags and feel the release of the weight.

“Thanks for helping me.”

“It’s fine, Zhenya. You’re good to do it all on your own.”

They walk, listening to the sound of their own footsteps.

“I suppose you want some fish now.”

He shrugs his shoulders. “No, not really.”

“Did you hear what we were talking about?”

“No.”

A pause.

“What were you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

Maria is leaning against the perimeter wall at the viewing point for Lenin Hills: the Moscow River below; a ski jump and slalom course to her right; the star of the main Lomonosov tower rises high into the night sky behind her.

This location was a favoured meeting place in her student days, with its beautiful view of the city. Men would wait here for her and take her ski jumping, a tactic, she now suspects, to get her adrenaline running, her blood pumping, desires racing. She hasn’t stood here in years. It’s the opposite side of the university from the Metro stop, and there’s always somewhere else she needs to be, even tonight. She’s resolved to make her way to Grigory’s later, a relatively short walk by the river. She needs to ask about a rehearsal place for Yevgeni. Although his offer of a piano had been several months ago, Grigory is not the type to go back on his word. He might well be agreeable to letting the boy come over a few days a week, even if he has ignored her phone calls.