Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

If she had had more time, if the conversation had taken place in his office, perhaps she would have fled, found Grigory, told him everything. He would, of course, have confronted Kuznetsov, paying no attention to how well connected the man was. It would have meant the destruction of a fine career, another skilled doctor disregarded. Grigory would have been deprived of the very thing that defined him.

But of course, Kuznetsov knew that too. His standing there, so close to her apartment, meant that she couldn’t defer the decision. And once that determination was made, she couldn’t turn back. As she lay with Grigory later that night, afterwards, her deception expanded into the millimetres that separated their bodies. Lying there on the freshly changed sheets, another man’s body heat still contained in the core of their mattress.

The only influence she could bring to bear was her lack of willingness. When Kuznetsov prised her apart, her body proved itself resistant to his touch. The lips of her opening as stiff and dry as cardboard, causing them both to burn as he propelled himself into his rhythm.

She looks away from the spot where Kuznetsov once stood, his presence still palpable, and gazes down into the cold heart of the city. Leninsky Prospekt is straddled by neon-lit billboards, all of them proclaiming the superstitions of her leaders. Their weaknesses, the tensions, the conflicts, the secrets that give the Party a reason to exist, the fears that make their hearts flurry in the quiet of the night:

Sentences swathed in vanity. This rhetoric surging through their institutions and overflowing into the minds and actions of individuals. Surging through Kuznetsov as he surged into her: creating, eventually, her unwanted child, her unwanted life.

And when she rid herself of the child, it compounded her guilt. All she wanted then was to turn away from the world, from Grigory. Not revealing it all to him then—now that she can reflect upon that time—was a wilful act of self-destruction. When it was all over with Kuznetsov and he reported her anyway, she was glad. She welcomed the punishment, she told herself she deserved to toil away at a job she hated. To lose herself in menial tasks, to shut down her mind, close off her personality.

She makes a pact with herself, a promise, as she walks down the broad avenue, traffic whipping past as she disappears into the pavement underneath Gagarin’s steel monument, as she descends on the narrow escalator: she will no longer be just another shadowed form in this city built on whispers.

The snow is coming in force now, these past two weeks, dropping its full weight from the sky. Huge, feathery flakes clump on Artyom’s lashes, small drifts gather in the nape of his hood. All around, the resettlement camp is silent, not much moving other than the trucks that come and go.

The snow sits evenly both on the ground and on the flat roofs of all the prefabricated huts, so they look as if they’ve been driven upwards from the earth, their yellow walls the only color for kilometres around, a colour that was probably intended to elicit cheer but instead serves only to emphasize the cheap, inhospitable nature of the constructions. They would look cartoonish but for their dilapidated state. Already, in many, windows have fallen from their frames and the residents have taped up cardboard or nailed up the doors ripped from their kitchen presses to keep the wind out.

In every hut there’s a fuel-burning stove. So much of the day spent poking and prodding. They get their fuel allowance from the supply store: a wheelbarrow of logs for each home, delivered by a young soldier with red-raw features and a permanently runny nose.

Batyr is improving. After three weeks, Artyom can see how his coat is beginning to regain its lustre; he’s starting to put on weight. Artyom visits him at mealtimes and, more recently, takes him for walks. He’s built a small cart for the dog, big enough to rest his haunches on but small enough so that he can put his front legs on the ground. There’s a handle on the back of the cart that Artyom uses to push the dog forward, and Artyom is aware that it must look strange, but there are many stranger sights here.

He gives Batyr food which he scavenges from the sacks of waste piled up at the back of the storehouse. There are always soldiers guarding the building, but Artyom made a point of introducing them to his two-legged friend. They knelt and rubbed Batyr behind the ears, patted him, ran their hands vigorously up and down his flanks, and when they did this Artyom saw a brightness in their eyes, the animal taking them away from routine, and he saw them then as brothers and sons, laughing at the dinner table, feeding scraps to their own dog as it looked at them pitifully with its head on their knee, imploring. Now they let Artyom poke away at the rubbish, as long as he promises he’ll tie the bags up afterwards, they need to keep the rats away.

At first Artyom was feeding Batyr from the clinic’s leftovers—the doctor arranged it that way—but after about a week the kitchen staff told him to look somewhere else. He could have gone back to the doctor, but the man is busy, he has more on his mind than where to get scraps for a dog.

Because Sofya is sick, she has a room to herself. Artyom sleeps in the same bed as his mother. His mother changes in this room, so he sees her naked from behind. Neither of them cares. What was important before is no longer important here. They sleep side by side, and his mother rises three or four times in the night to check on Sofya.

There are some mornings he wakes to find his mother has curled into him in her sleep. Such a thing doesn’t feel unnatural to him. He understands how the body seeks reassurance; he doesn’t resist because he needs it too.

Their hut doesn’t leak like a lot of the others. The adults hardly talk about anything else, a constant exchange and comparison of the physical status of their homes. Artyom thinks that this is maybe because they can do something about it, do some repairs; the huts can be fixed, the sickness can’t. Artyom’s thankful that their place doesn’t leak, at least not yet. If Sofya had to lie there in the cold, it would be worse.

Every hut has a kitchen-cum–living room and two bedrooms. There is no toilet or running water of any kind. They have an electric hob and the stove and an electric radiator in each bedroom. Some people have TVs or radio sets; their relatives have dropped them off at the reception hut, leaving nothing else but their names. No note. No one enters further than the reception hut. Artyom understands why.

Artyom is one of the oldest boys in the settlement. He’s seen a couple of others his age, but they were weaker than he is and who knows what kind of state they’re in now. He feels strong. His mother keeps asking if he’s getting enough rest, but he likes the air, he needs to be outside. It gives him a purpose.

He walks to the forest almost every day collecting wood, handing it around to their new neighbours. He never expects anything for it—it didn’t cost him anything—and from time to time his mother receives a kindness in recognition for his help. Last week a woman in sector 3A gave her a pair of her son’s boots for Artyom’s walks. The boy had died a few months before. And so now Artyom finds himself trudging along between the trees in a dead boy’s boots. But it doesn’t concern him in any way.

“I’m lucky to have a son like you, Artyom.”

“You’re not lucky, Mama.”

“There are people worse off.”