Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

“ ‘Are they going to open the pool?’ Sveta asked.

“ ‘They’d have to fill it with water first,’ Inka said.

“And then Sasha Simonov said they couldn’t open the pool, because it served as a landing pad for the aliens, and they were expecting aliens soon.

“ ‘What are you talking about?’ Inka asked. To me it just sounded like the usual Sasha nonsense, but Inka seemed genuinely interested.

“Other kids joined in the conversation, providing us with necessary alien-related info. Last year the aliens came twice. One looked like a big garden hose. They didn’t do much. They landed. They stayed for an hour or two and took off. When aliens try to take you, always scream, because they can’t stand high sounds. Or you can spray them with water. Just splashing water on them won’t help. You have to spray them.

“Inka laughed and shook her head and said, ‘Bullshit.’

“After lunch we took the kids to wade in the pond. On the map the pond appeared to be a tiny smudge of black paint. But in reality it was large, shallow, and green, overgrown with weeds and water lilies, with some irises and forget-me-nots by the banks. The kids dropped their things to the ground, kicked off their shoes, and rushed right into the water, squealing and pushing each other.

“ ‘Paradise on earth,’ Inka said, and lay down right on the grass, not bothering to spread out the blanket. I lay down too. The grass was cool and slightly damp, and the sun on our faces felt just perfect.

“ ‘Listen, listen,’ Inka said. She rose onto her elbow.

“I was so overcome with the sensation of perfect physical comfort that I actually liked the poem.

“ ‘Inka, you are a poet!’ I said.

“ ‘Thank you,’ she answered, and turned onto her stomach.

“After Inka had broken up with Andrey, we were on the same page again. We would go to the store together, we would walk to the spring, we even resumed our private book club. But we still didn’t feel completely comfortable around each other. There was something that annoyed me about Inka, something that bothered me like an itch, and I couldn’t understand what it was, and the fact that I couldn’t understand bothered me too.

“Inka stretched and took out a book from her backpack. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘remember that scene with butter in Last Tango in Paris ?’

“ ‘Yes.’ (None of us had seen the movie, but we had just read the screenplay in the Art of Cinema .)

“ ‘What do you make of it? Do you think it is what I think it is?’

“I nodded, trying very hard to appear unflustered.

“ ‘I thought so,’ Inka said. ‘Yuck! Right?’

“I nodded.

“ ‘I mean it must hurt like hell, and wouldn’t it, you know, be all covered in shit?’

“Even though Inka had had some sexual experience, she appeared to be as clueless as I was.

“We went on to discuss how this scene had a deeper existential meaning, as did the one about the pig and the vomit. We didn’t come to any conclusion about the existential meaning, but we agreed that this was what sex was all about! Not the pig and the vomit, of course. But being capable of getting that crazy.

“Inka sighed and closed her eyes. I closed my eyes too.

“We woke up when the kids stumbled over my feet and splashed cold dirty water all over me. Inka’s face was all covered in creases because she’d used the Art of Cinema as a pillow. My face was sore—I must have gotten sunburned. There was no water. The kids had drunk all of it and were now terribly thirsty. And hungry. Myshka said that she was so hungry that she might faint. Sasha Simonov looked as if he were actually about to faint.

“ ‘Get your things and start walking!’ Inka said. ‘You don’t want to miss dinner.’

“The first half of the way, the kids walked at a crawling pace. I could barely walk myself. It felt as if we were climbing a very steep mountain, even though the ground was perfectly flat. The only thing that gave me some energy was the intense hatred of the kids. They just wouldn’t shut up. Myshka was sniveling because Sveta Kozlova punched her. Alesha Pevtcov claimed that he had been bitten by a frog. Sasha Simonov was whimpering like a dog, because his stomach ached. I thought that if I heard one more complaint from somebody, I would hit him or her with an empty teakettle. Apparently, Inka felt the same, because when Alesha said that he couldn’t walk anymore because his frog-bitten butt itched, she did hit him with her kettle.

“It worked. The kids shut up and picked up their pace.

“We felt so tired, so wiped out throughout the rest of the day, that we could barely wait until bedtime, so we could just get the kids to bed, go to our room, and maybe read the Art of Cinema a little or just go to sleep. The second day of the heat wave fell on Friday, the day of the third dance. It had been so hot throughout the day that nobody felt like dancing, but we couldn’t possibly miss the dance. And so we dragged the kids to the dance floor.

“I saw Danya and forgot about the heat and exhaustion for a second. He didn’t even look at me. He stood by the fence staring ahead. Most of the people just stood by the fence, reluctant to move. Even the DJ, Volodya, seemed sluggish and bleary-eyed. So you could imagine how stunned everyone looked when Yanina took the mike from him and announced a new dance.

“ ‘Lambada!’ ”

“Lambada?” Ben asked.

“Yes, lambada. You don’t know it?”

“No. What is it? Something Latin?”

“Yeah. It’s like salsa, only simpler and dirtier. It was so big in Russia in the eighties! At the camp everybody went crazy over it.”

“Dirtier than salsa? Sounds good.”

“It’s really very simple. You put your legs very far apart, bend your knees just a little, so that your spine remains straight, and you make dance steps while rocking and swirling your hips. Not your waist, or your ass, but your hips. It looks as if you’re about to straddle someone.”

“That is dirty!”

“I know.”

“So you’re saying they allowed this dirty dance at the camp with the hands-over-the-blankets policy?”

“Only because it came from Yanina herself.”

“Uh-huh. Well, go on.”

“Volodya hurried to put the new tape in. And then the music started and everybody seemed to come alive. Sveta Kozlova, who had been engaged in torturing Myshka—coming up to her and breathing into her face—left Myshka alone and screamed: ‘Lambada! Lambada.’ We all knew the tune—it had been playing on TV a lot, but nobody seemed to know how to do the dance. People kept looking at Dena—but she only shook her head.

“Yanina walked to the middle of the floor and yelled to Volodya: ‘Turn it up!’

“She was dressed in a tight polyester dress covered with prints of birds, flowers, and dragonflies.

“She pressed her hand to her chest, took a deep breath, and started. She danced alone. Her legs were very short, and she spread them very far apart, which looked really indecent, almost obscene, but also oddly beautiful. She rocked and swirled her hips really hard, but she managed to make her movements really smooth and elegant. But the most amazing thing was the expression on her face. She looked shy and nervous like a young girl in love. And sometimes she would blush and smile as if at an imaginary partner.

“All eyes were on her.

“I looked at Danya. He moved away from the fence and was staring at Yanina as if hypnotized.

“The song came to an end. Yanina stopped, stomped her foot on the floor, and snapped her fingers. Everybody erupted in applause.”