Kseniya Melnik - Snow in May - Stories

Every few weeks Olya received a thick envelope from home. Her mother’s letters were full of recipes and stories from Olya’s childhood, stories Olya had heard a hundred times before. Her stepfather wrote about the vegetables he and her sisters were planning to plant on the plots. Dasha’s pages about the new school year, her last one, were streaked with tears. She already missed her classmates and she missed Olya even more. From Zoya, Olya expected lecturing. Instead Zoya sent proverbs.

To marry is not to put on a bast shoe. Bride has an axe, groom is barefoot .

Olya didn’t know what to make of it, though she didn’t think about it too hard. Her pregnancy was going well. She felt strong; she could haul water from the pump by herself when Alek and his soldiers were gone on training assignment or to inspect and repair the radio towers.

The winter dragged along. After the first blinding snowstorm in December, she understood the purpose of the ropes that had appeared stretched between buildings at certain strategic crossings. You couldn’t make any progress in the sudden whiteout without holding on to something solid, a wall or a rope. You could freeze to death meters from home. There were days in the perpetual twilight of January and February when Olya didn’t leave their room at all, relying on Alek’s soldiers for sustenance, water, and wood. She had her own small army to take care of her, she wrote in her letters. Alek, too, stayed home more often, his passion for cards having gone into winter hibernation. Some snowy evenings, Olya looked away from her knitting of baby socks and watched contentedly as he read a newspaper in the yellow glow of the floor lamp, his brows drawn in concentration but his mouth bunched to one side in a smirk, as though, as entertained as he was by all the lies, he could see through to the truth. One day she might even admire him, she thought — when he rose through the ranks and stopped gambling. One day.

The baby was born in mid-April. The labor was short and easy, the only thing that came easy to her, Olya would say in the years to come. The girl — they named her Marina — had eyes of indeterminate color, chipmunk cheeks, and a full head of chestnut hair. Olya spent hours staring at her small face, hardly believing that Marina was real and hers. Sometimes, she wondered what her child with Kostya might have looked like, but the only image that rose in her exhausted mind was that of her new daughter.

In a recent letter from home, Olya was shocked to learn of the romantic developments in both of her sisters’ lives. Zoya was seeing a Party functionary fifteen years her senior, her mother wrote with palpable glee. Dasha, meanwhile, confessed on her own that she’d met an engineering student. They had danced at the Palace of Youth and gone on long walks around the melting city together. She wrote with so little of her habitual shyness about how much she adored her suitor that Olya became suspicious. Her little sister was changing in her absence. She tried hard to be happy for Dasha and Zoya, and for her mother.

Husband with fire, wife with water, Zoya wrote in her letter without mentioning her new boyfriend.

* * *

One rainy Saturday night in May, Alek stumbled home late from a card game, the drunkest Olya had ever seen him. Marina had been screaming for hours, and Olya, in her delirium, was ready to throw the baby out the window. Her arms were sore. Her headache had wiped out all the emotions besides anger and frustration. Vasily Petrovich, the army doctor, had already come twice to their room to complain about the noise and attempted to calm the baby. Marina’s silky face was scrunched like a soiled handkerchief as she continued to screech.

Alek took several uncertain steps toward Olya. The corners of his eyes still flickered with his usual impishness, but the pupils were black holes of fear. He stretched his arms to the baby, and Marina stopped crying. Olya gave the stunned baby to her father. Alek and Marina stared at each other for a moment, as if confused who the other one was and what had brought them to this cramped, cold room. Then Alek began to cry, soundlessly but with a boyish abandon. His daughter resumed wailing. He returned her to Olya and shuffled to their lumpy little couch, where he continued to cry with his eyes closed. Soon he passed out in his coat.

Olya worried all night. Had his mother died? Was another war about to begin?

She found out in the morning. Several exceptionally good players, new to the group, had ganged up to squeeze Alek down to the last ruble. A month’s salary in one night.

“I don’t understand. What are we going to live on? And the baby.” It was both a relief and worse than she thought.

Alek was sitting at the table in their room, eating a piece of buttered black bread with tea. His hair was dirty and matted.

“I’ll quit as soon as I pay off my debt,” he said, not looking at her.

“And what are we going to live on, Alek?” Olya heard herself say again. “Meanwhile.”

“They can’t just come over here and raid your wallet. Although, they’re such dogs, they could. We’ll hide it under the mattress in Marina’s crib.”

“I don’t keep our savings in my wallet.”

“We have savings? Where?”

“In the birch-bark box, in the bureau,” Olya said. His cluelessness shocked her. But she was also moved by his neediness, his complete, childish trust in her.

“How much?” Alek said into his tea.

“For food, another two weeks, maybe. Please don’t play anymore. Or maybe without betting so much. Can you?” She put her arms around him from behind, like a good wife would do.

Alek turned back, clasped her hips, and pressed his head to her stomach, which he was no longer afraid of.

“Such a shame,” he said through his teeth. “I’m a good player, I am. If my mother found out…”

One less girl, one more broad .

“Are you deranged? You can’t bet on winning. You’re an officer, for God’s sake. You’re educated. How can you be so stupid? If you don’t stop playing, I’ll leave you. I’ll take Marina and go.”

“I’m doing this for Marina and you.”

She slammed the table with her fist. Alek’s cup of tea jingled in its saucer. He lifted his head and stretched his lips, as though getting ready to smile. Did he think this was a joke? She struck the table again; she didn’t know what else to do. Marina began to cry and Olya ran to her. Alek followed and stood close without touching either Olya or the baby. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes and acrid male sweat was making her sick. She was afraid he wanted to sleep with her.

“Wash yourself,” she said.

“We don’t have any water.”

“Bring it then!” The echo of Zoya’s righteousness in her voice made her shudder, but the results were swift. In a few moments Alek was clunking with the buckets in the kitchen. Before going out to the pump, he came up to her.

“I will stop, Olya, I promise. I promise this time,” he repeated until she told him not to talk to her for the rest of the day.

She cleaned up the dirt in the hallway while Alek heated up the water and splashed in the bathroom. She wished she could complain to someone. She knew that her mother, despite teaching her girls to count only on themselves, was relieved that Olya got married. One less mouth to feed, one less body to clothe. A village girl, she had married Olya’s father at sixteen and found out at the civil registry office on their wedding day that he was twenty-five years her senior, when she saw his passport for the first time. She had said nothing. She was grateful to him for pulling her out of the peasants and into the intelligentsia. Olya wished that they could have talked heart to heart about those early days of her mother’s marriage — and about everything. Her mother had worked around the clock when the girls were growing up and never had time for much more than a good thrashing or an occasional saying. One of her favorites was: Live with your husband for a century but never show your backside . But how could she not? Olya was at a loss. She wanted to be a good and honest wife.