Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

“Like what?”

“That things here are almost as good?”

“Oh, yeah. All the time. The good woods are especially hard to find. And snow. How I love snow.”

“Dad loved snow too. I guess he loved snow more than I did. There were things that I positively hated about snow. It would stick to my skis on the way back, and make them heavier and heavier with each step, how I was cold and hot and sweaty at the same time. And how Dad’s back would get smaller and smaller ahead of me, farther and farther away, and how he’d turn and yell ‘What a sissy!’ By the time we drove back to New Jersey, Dad would act like he was sick of me, he wouldn’t speak, except to yell at me not to touch the water because he wasn’t going to do a bathroom break every five seconds. I used to think that this was all my fault, because I’d been such a disappointment. But now I think he was that way because he loathed the idea of going back home.”

“Is your mother still alive?”

“Yes. She lives in Florida. She seems to be happy there. Does your mom live here or in Russia?”

“She died a few years ago.”

“Do you miss her?”

“I do. A lot. Do you miss your dad?”

“I do.”

Lena thought how strange it was that when she’d first seen this man two days ago, he had been just a half-naked stranger. All she knew about him was that he could swim and had blue swimming trunks with a rather large whale on them. Now he was swiftly and irrevocably accumulating peculiarities, stories, details of the past. Only within this past day Ben acquired a car filled with all sorts of baggage such as an old juicer and his high school notebook, a thorny relationship with his dad, a powerful fear of death, and a crimped muscle in his neck. He was shedding his strangeness whether she wanted him to or not. As was she. The thought was both scary and exhilarating.

Ben touched her hand, then moved his hand away and put it back onto the wheel.

“Will you continue with your story?” he asked.

She smiled and reached for the water bottle.

“So Kostik was the first guy that disappeared. Who is next?”

“Danya. Danya is the next guy I met, but he wasn’t the next guy that disappeared. I met him at the clubhouse.

“Yanina caught me one day after lunch and said, ‘Lena, you’re neat enough, follow me.’ She led me to the clubhouse, where she showed me a few pairs of shoulder straps made of paper. ‘The kids will be singing the Pilots’ Song at the concert, so we need pilot uniforms for them,’ Yanina explained. ‘Their own white shirts and dark pants will do; all we need is shoulder straps. Sixty of them. But make sure to make them neat. The last girl wasn’t very good, as you can see.’

“The task seemed simple enough. I studied the straps on the table. A blue rectangle. Two golden stripes in the middle. Three golden stars forming a triangle.

“Cutting out rectangles was boring but easy. Making one hundred and twenty narrow stripes was manageable too. It was hard to keep them parallel, but I persuaded myself that Yanina wouldn’t care if they were parallel or not. The stars were the real problem. After long and painful practice, I did learn how to draw a star that was almost perfect. But no matter what I did, I could not cut it out. All my stars came out misshapen and missing points. It got even worse when I tried to glue them on. They would stick to anything—the table, the floor, my fingertips, my hair, my T-shirt, my knees—but the straps. And so I sat with scissors in my hands, smeared with glue, covered with tiny golden stars.

“There were only two rooms in our clubhouse. A bigger one with a stage and a wobbly piano, and a smaller one with all the art supplies, paints, chisels, big slabs of gray modeling clay, and even a workbench table. There was a strong smell of paint, glue, and freshly sawed wood. A ray of sunlight went from the window straight to my table, as if to mock me. It was nap time. So the kids were napping or at least caged and quiet, and Inka could do whatever she wanted. I imagined her outside, on the blanket, with a book, or with my Art of Cinema, trying to read, pushing the book aside, turning onto her stomach, dozing off. And I was stuck here in the back room of the clubhouse, with scissors in my hands, with all these sheaves of blue and golden paper spread in front of me.

“ ‘Hi,’ somebody said. A guy in a soldier’s uniform stood in the doorway with a paintbrush in his hand. I was so engrossed in my misery that I hadn’t heard him walk in. His eyes were dark blue. I recognized him right away. He was the wooden-faced guy I saw at the disco.

“I said ‘Hi’ back.”

Danya. Lena was talking about Danya now. Danya of twenty years ago. She felt a painful constriction in her throat. She mentally begged Ben not to interrupt her, and he didn’t. He just sat there silently. Staring ahead.

She continued: “He went to the storage room and returned with a half-finished painting on a large canvas, and a box with oil paints.

“ ‘What are these?’ he asked, pointing at the straps.

“ ‘Just this thing I’m making for the concert.’

“I didn’t want him to see all the ugly stars or the ruined glue-smeared rectangles. I grabbed an old newspaper and put it on top of the pile, but a few straps fell to the floor. Danya picked one up. It had one stripe in the middle and two stars of slightly different sizes and shapes.

“ ‘Is that a shoulder strap?’ he asked. ‘Which rank?’

“ ‘I don’t know,’ I said, taking the strap from him.

“I wanted him to stop staring at my hideous straps, and so I asked about the painting he was working on.

“ ‘The letter D ,’ he said and headed to a worktable opposite mine. ‘I am supposed to write “Dobro Pozhalovat” to welcome the visitors, and Avadeniy said that the letter D should represent camp life. I don’t know why. Vedenej’s idea.’

“We continued to work in silence.

“ ‘Come look, if you want,’ he said after a while.

“I walked over.

“The letter D was about three by two feet.

“I peered closer and saw that the D was drawn as two pines forming a triangle with their tops touching. On the bottom of the D was grass with berries and mushrooms. A bunny was peeking out from behind one of the tree trunks, and a squirrel was climbing up the other.

“ ‘Wild strawberries don’t grow under pines,’ I said.

“ ‘Is that right?’ he said, and added some more strokes of red paint to the grass to draw more strawberries. I couldn’t think of another thing to say.

“ ‘Do you want to try?’ he asked, and handed me a clean brush. The brush was larger, lighter than I’d expected, with really soft bristles. I leaned over the painting, careful not to touch any part of him.

“ ‘I have never painted anything with a large paintbrush,’ I said.

“ ‘It’s easy.’

“ ‘I like the smell of paint. Is this oil?’

“ ‘Yes. Don’t be scared. Dip the brush into this jar and make a stroke right here.’

“ ‘Here?’

“ ‘Yes. I need to color in the trunks.’

“ ‘You’re making them blue?’

“ ‘Brown. Blue is for the shadows. They would look flat if not for the blue.’

“ ‘I can’t. I’ll ruin it.’

“ ‘No you won’t. Dip the brush. Yes, like that.’

“ ‘Like that?’

“ ‘Uh-huh. Not too much paint. It shouldn’t drip.’

“ ‘That much?’

“ ‘Even less than that.’

“ ‘So I just make a stroke here?’

“ ‘Yeah.’

“ ‘Like that?’

“ ‘Yeah. Just do it. Don’t leave the brush hanging there!’