Darragh McKeon - All That Is Solid Melts into Air

He sits beside Yevgeni, and Yevgeni folds his arms, an action that seems to age the boy by fifty years, drawing him into the bitter circumference of the luckless gambler. They watch a few hands, and then Anatoly leans in closer.

“You hungry? You want something to eat?”

“No, I’m fine, thank you.”

“I’m hungry. I have some ham blinchiki in the fridge. You want some?”

“Okay then. Thank you.”

“Okay then.”

Anatoly puts a hand on Yevgeni’s head to punctuate the end of their exchange. He leaves the room, and a couple of minutes later the lights go out. The men at the table curse and someone flicks a cigarette lighter and they are caught in tiny intimacy, the flame dancing shadows around the room. They call to Anatoly for some candles, and he calls back that he’s looking already and emerges a few minutes later holding a plate of steaming blinchiki in one hand and a candle in the other. He offers the plate to Yevgeni, who takes one of the blinchiki, and then Anatoly places the plate on the table and rummages in his pockets, drawing out some extra candles, and the men murmur their gratitude and continue their game as if nothing has happened. Anatoly, still holding his own candle, tilts his head to Yevgeni, gesturing towards the corridor.

“Come with me.”

Yevgeni follows him, touching the walls to guide himself, until Anatoly opens the door onto the street, where the city is shrouded in black, hiding from itself, betraying nothing. There’s a rich, syrupy darkness. A car turns a corner, and its lights reveal corners of buildings, stalks of lampposts, as though the street is being rediscovered, someone stumbling upon it after many years, blowing away the dust, smelling the musty air. The darkness turns all sound to a whisper. And then a floop and crackle. Yevgeni thinks for a fleeting second that the city is cracking, breaking into fragments, but there is colour now, a flash of blue coming from his left, and he turns to see blue bursts of fireworks light up the dark velvet air. He’s seen fireworks before, of course, but not without any surrounding light. Not when they’re the only colour to be seen in the whole city. There’s a line of people leaning against the opposing walls, and the blue wash clings to their features, a look of delight flaring across their faces. As his eyes adjust, Yevgeni can see others walking now, coming from the cusp of the hill, heads bobbing in the slope of their walk, edging slowly along the pavement, all points of orientation obliterated. Others in doorways become defined, old men on canes and women with mufflers and buckled boots watch the night. They gaze up and down the street and sometimes bend over to take it in from other angles. A large bird beats its wings above them, and Yevgeni looks up to see it gliding over, its span almost connecting the rooftops.

He feels a shove from behind. The men from the poker game pour onto the street, full of hurried purpose. Iakov grabs Yevgeni’s neck and steers him in their direction.

“Come on.”

“Where are you going?”

“We have some things to do.”

“I need to go home. I said I’d be home soon. My mother will be worried.”

Iakov stops, looks at him. Slaps him on the back.

“Of course. We’ll give you a ride. Besides, it’s too dangerous to walk.”

A swell of blue light propels them forwards.

MARIA BOLTS DOWN the stairs, two at a time, feeding the banister rail through her right hand. She’ll find a phone box, maybe down near the Metro stop. She doesn’t want to call from too near her building in case they trace it back. She may trust Danil by now, but she doesn’t know how prominent he is, how much attention he attracts.

She’s careful where she steps. Can’t take a tumble now. Watch out for needles, broken glass. There’s a wad of toilet paper here and there, and she doesn’t want to know.

Mr. Leibniz was right, they’ve mollycoddled the boy. Apart from everything else, this is his moment. Where is his ambition? Does he want to be like all the other kids? Does he see the lives around him and think he wants one of those, wants to dull his imagination, spend all his evenings watching TV, or drinking and talking about inanities with no end in sight? All these weeks she’d been thinking that he didn’t like the pressure, but maybe it was the possibility of success that scared him, that he may have to stand apart in this world. Be something other than average. She knows that if she sees him outside she’ll grab him by the shoulders and shake him. Tell him there are only so many opportunities in life, even fewer if you come from where he comes from.

She bounds down the last flight and comes to a stop beside the lifts. She needs to hurry but not look as if she’s hurried. She doesn’t want people asking why she’s running to a phone box. Word will get back to Alina, or others. She’ll be asked why she didn’t make the call from home.

She hands around some cigarettes, asks the men drinking meths if they’ve seen a boy wandering around. They look at her, trying to figure out what she wants to hear before answering. She doesn’t wait to listen to their replies: she should know better than to ask.

The faces of dead soldiers leer down at her, the pages almost transparent with the lights on behind them, phantoms all of them.

She finds herself scanning cars, trying to make out if there are figures in the front seats waiting for her to pass, whispering into radios while heaters on the dashboard trickle out streams of warm air. She heads towards the phone box near the school. She waits at the traffic lights, and ranks of cars pass slowly by, ploughing through black sludge, causing it to fan out from their tyres.

They’d be leaving now, Anna and Nestor and the rest of her colleagues, no doubt resenting her, having to give up their evening to hear some spoiled brat. The lights turn red but she doesn’t cross. She wonders what happens if tonight doesn’t go ahead. Will she need to flee? Word will surely get out. You can’t have a plan as extensive as theirs and keep it a secret for too long. The supplies alone will give them away. Danil may have been able to get them into the building without any fuss, but try getting them out again. Her fate is being played out without her. She has no control over the next few hours. Why did she not pick Zhenya up herself? Too much faith, that’s why. All of this turning on the fulcrum of a nine-year-old boy. Of course it was bound to go wrong. She crosses the road at the next opportunity and passes the school, graffiti tainting the lower part of its façade, crawling up past the window ledges, coming to an abrupt end at the height of an outstretched arm. People pass, returning late from their shifts, many with dust or dirt on their shoes and jackets, determined to get home, their bellies cavernous. A twist of her shoulders to avoid a collision. It’s not just manual workers though, unskilled production drudges like herself; men walk by in suits as rumpled and baggy as their skin, looking downwards, too weary to face the horizon, their only wish to be alone.

She reaches the phone box, saying a silent prayer that the thing still works. She doesn’t grab the handset, she clutches the cord instead, pulls on it, and it doesn’t come away in her hand. Miracle of miracles. She pushes some kopecks into the slot, takes the number from her pocket, and dials. Even in this, a phone call, she’s taking an enormous risk, the possibility of a recorder automatically spooling in some dark room, her voice transferred to tape. The call connects and she hears a single beep, a machine; it could be Danil’s, it could be someone else’s. There should be a code, she thinks, some prearranged, ambiguous phrase, but there isn’t one. She thinks quickly and says enough to get the message across: “He isn’t back. We can’t go ahead,” and then hangs up.