Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

“I really don’t know. A West German kid lands a plane in Red Square—who would have believed that one if there weren’t so many around to see it?”

“Anything else?”

“A colleague of mine, his cousin works as a night porter in one of the hospitals in Kiev. They’ve been bringing the cleanup workers there. There are sections of the hospital that even the doctors refuse to enter.”

“And? A porter has more than one story.”

“Well, he talked about a girl in Belarus who was brushing her hair. Eleven years old with beautiful, long pigtails, and she’s preparing for bed, running a wide brush through her hair, holding it with one hand and brushing with the other, and the whole handful just dislodges from her head. She’s bald within thirty seconds. This is what they’re saying.”

Pavel raises his eyebrows in conclusion, takes another drink. “But if you ask me, a porter is a job with plenty of gossip time.”

Maria transfers her glass to her other hand. “Grigory’s there.”

Pavel’s eyes widen. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“I called to him after we met at Lenin Hills. I hadn’t seen him in months. He was gone.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No. I can’t find out where he is. I’ve spoken to anyone who might know. Nothing.”

She says this and her face buckles.

Pavel draws her to his shoulder. She stays there, forehead pressed against his collarbone. Breathing deeply.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll ask around, I have some medical friends who have sway in the Ministry of Health. I’ll get them to find some details.”

Maria steps back. Nothing to wipe her eyes with, so she uses her hands.

“Be careful about it. I don’t want anyone to draw attention to him.”

“Okay. I will.”

The crowd clusters in again and the second reel of the film is loaded and plays, but Maria can’t pay attention anymore. Her eyes stray from the screen. Instead she looks at the beam coming from the projector, dust swirling through it, the past floating everywhere.

When the film finishes, people stand and stretch, unrolling their vertebrae, cigarettes still dangling from their lips. Maria’s eyes itch from the smoke.

Pavel takes her elbow. “There’s someone I want you to meet. If you’re up to it?”

She nods.

They enter a room further down the corridor. This one is filled with portable steel racks, about two metres high, presumably the cooling room for the baked bread.

A man in his early forties is standing alone, inspecting the employee notices, still pinned to the walls.

He turns. His clothes are well cut, hair swept back from his forehead, an impressive bearing, a firm handshake.

“Danil is a lawyer who looks for honest ways of practicing the law. If a writer needs to arrange an exit visa or begin the rehabilitation process to get his name cleared, Danil is the one we turn to for advice.”

“I see.”

Danil has assured, intelligent eyes.

“I’m presuming you’re not here for the film, Danil.”

“No, I’m not.”

He draws a flyer from his pocket, a small white rectangle of paper, clumsy block print.

Maria reads it. It’s a strike-appeal leaflet for the plant Maria works in, requesting that workers meet at the main gates in ten days’ time, just before the morning shift begins. They intend to march through the factory and on to the main road, which they’ll follow all the way into the city.

Maria has seen hundreds of these already. They’ve been leaving them on streetcars and trains on the way into the plant. Workers pass them around on their walk home. Nestor, in particular, is very excited. He’s expecting that at the very least the factory board will appoint a new set of union officials. He claims they may even reinstate Zinaida Volkova. Maria has stopped arguing with him.

“What do you think?” Danil asks.

Maria looks at Pavel, asking if she can trust this man. Pavel nods.

“If they want to strike, then let them,” she says.

“Is there much support among the workers?”

“Yes. I think so. People seem enthusiastic about it.”

“But you aren’t.”

“No.”

“Because you think it’s futile.”

She answers reluctantly. “Yes.”

“You think it’s futile because you have background knowledge. You’ve studied the developments in Poland. You know that the strikes there were toothless until Solidarity came up with a new tactic.”

Maria stays silent.

This was true. Maria had a source in Poland who reported developments to her of a strike in the shipyards of Gdańsk six years ago. A few hundred workers entrenched themselves inside a factory. They held the machinery hostage, and the factory chairman could no longer bring in unemployed workers. It was a much different prospect for the militia; they couldn’t just chop down the strikers on the streets. To clear them from the factory would need a full-blooded military operation, and the chairman didn’t have the stomach for that. It had the added advantage of holding their morale together, reminding each other that they had a claim on their own workplace.

The tactic spread like wildfire. Most of the other factories in the region did the same thing within a day. The authorities cut the phone lines so word wouldn’t spread, but of course it did. Within a day or two, half the country knew what was going on. But not here. The Russian press didn’t cover it. Maria wrote some samizdat articles, tried to get the word out any way she could but, in retrospect, the conditions probably weren’t right for people to listen. Brezhnev was still in power, and he commanded a vast amount of authority. People lived in too much fear to contemplate such actions.

Maria still stays silent.

“I know about the recital at the end of the month. It would be quite a statement of intent to keep a high-ranking member of the ministry from leaving the building. That’s not even taking Yakov Sidorenko into account. Holding a world-renowned pianist would draw immense international interest. It has the potential to be a very significant moment.”

Maria doesn’t respond; she remains very calm. Eventually, she says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Again, Danil nods his head.

“I understand. Go away and check out my credentials with whoever you need to talk to. Once you find out I can be trusted, have a think about it. This is an incredible opportunity. Pavel has told me about your leadership qualities. But I won’t put the boy in that situation without your permission. I will leave that decision up to you. All I ask is that you decide soon.”

Maria shakes his hand and leaves. Pavel stands to follow her, but she stops him. She wants to be alone.

Alina stands abreast of the ironing board, taking shirts from the basket, shaking them out, using an old bottle of window cleaner to spray water on the particularly creased areas.

She’s listening to the radio. It’s a documentary on the flora and fauna of Arkhangelsk Oblast. It’s the only thing on besides music and politics, and she’s had enough of both of those for the moment. The rural accents are a pleasant change; she finds she likes hearing the background noises, birds and wind. The sense of space they carry somehow expanding the dimensions of her home.

It’s a lovely evening, despite the cold. The sun spreads its colour over the canvas of the city, the white and grey walls soak in its warm hues; she shakes out the shirts and hangs them on the backs of her kitchen chairs, and the traffic weaves reassuringly below, cars and buses crisscrossing at a constant pace, and she feels contented, in her own way. Maybe it’s the gentle sway of the evening, but she can’t deny that something seems to be coming to an end. The forces that have pushed against her for so long are beginning to relent.