Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

“Brueghel,” Ben said. “Don’t you see the resemblance?”

“I don’t know, kind of,” Lena said.

“This boy managed to pull it off.”

In some of the pictures Sasha was drawn next to a husky little girl, about twice his size.

“Sveta was my only friend.”

“She would protect me from other kids.” (Sveta drawn pounding on some vicious-looking boys.)

“But more often than not she would beat me up herself.”

(Sveta pounding on Sasha.)

The following page was flooded with blue light. There was a teenage girl in the center, with dark messy hair and huge anime eyes stroking the crying Sasha on the head. The boy was smiling, even though his clothes were covered in vomit.

“Her name was Lena,” the caption said. “It was love at first sight.”

“Is that you?” Ben asked. “Was he in love with you?”

“Oh my God. He was ten!” Lena said.

“I would’ve fallen in love with you when I was ten.”

Next there was a long and rather boring series of frames depicting a walk in the woods. Lena skimmed through, until a page-sized rendition of a hedgehog made her stop. The boy was holding the hedgehog in his outstretched hands, about to give it to Lena. But Lena declined the gift.

“It can’t be kept captive,” she said. “It will die of boredom and gloom.”

The eyes of the hedgehog were actually clouded with sadness. Lena had never seen anything like that.

“Amazing drawing, isn’t it?” Ben asked. He was right next to her. Exuding heat and the smell of campfire smoke. His hand on her shoulder. Studying the drawings at the same time as she was. It felt very intimate. Perhaps too intimate.

The next frame was almost entirely dark, with the barely distinguishable silhouette of Lena hovering over the boy’s bed.

“Every night, I waited for her to come and sit by my bed.”

“Do you think Inka meant Sasha? Was he your secret admirer?” Ben asked.

“I don’t know. I never thought of him that way,” Lena said. She thought of Inka’s expression. She said “secret admirer” with a smirk. She must have seen the book. She must have meant Sasha.

“Every night the counselors would go on dates with soldiers. Lena was the only one that stayed with us. I hoped and prayed it would always be this way. It wasn’t.”

There was a drawing of a dark camp unit seen from outside. The lonely figure of Lena by the window.

The next frame was flooded with colors and light. It showed a dance floor in the middle with big waves coming off it to signify vibrations, and lyrics from different songs popping up here and there—one sillier than the next. Ugly figures were dancing, or rather contorting and twisting their bodies. Some of the kids were dancing as well. Sasha and Lena were standing by the fence. Holding hands. Looking on.

In the next frame Lena lets go of Sasha’s hand and steps forward. She is dancing. Twisting her body at impossible angles. Close-up of Sasha standing alone, his eyes clouded with sadness just like those of the hedgehog.

The next frame depicted Lena standing by the picnic table holding hands with an ape-like guy in a soldier’s uniform.

“The first one’s name was Kostik. He was a moron.”

The next frame was exactly the same with Kostik and Lena holding hands, except that Kostik was crossed out with two fat red lines.

“I wasn’t going to take it.”

Lena swallowed and looked at Ben. She had a hunch that something disturbing would be revealed in the next pages, and she didn’t want to discover it in Ben’s presence. She thought of suggesting they go to bed, and finishing the story alone after Ben was asleep. But Ben had already turned the page.

CASTOR OIL + LENA = THE RUNS

DATE + THE RUNS = DATE RUINED

Following the equation was a drawing of a jar with sour cherry jam with instructions on how to mix some castor oil into a jar of jam.

“Was that what happened?” Ben asked.

Lena tried to remember. She remembered Inka giving them sour cherry jam that she had snatched from the kids. Everybody except for Lena had some. Lena hadn’t wanted any jam, because she had a toothache. They kept trying to persuade her to have some, but she was firm. Was it possible that Sasha could have poured castor oil into a jar of jam, and then made sure Inka “discovered” it? Yes, it was possible. Inka was famous for taking sweets from the kids. And then as she and Kostik went on that romantic walk to the phone booth, the castor oil started to work. No wonder Kostik acquired that tortured expression.

Lena looked at Ben: “But why did he disappear?”

“I don’t know. He just shat his pants and didn’t want you to notice?”

Lena laughed and shook her head: “Poor Kostik.”

She turned to the next page and was shocked by its sudden burst of color—a bright blue with tiny golden stars sprinkled across the page.

The following picture showed Lena crying over the pile of misshapen shoulder straps.

“Here was my chance to make her notice me.”

The next series of frames showed Sasha tiptoeing out of the bedroom at night, going downstairs, opening the envelope with the shoulder straps and setting to work.

“Sasha Simonov? Sasha Simonov was the one who made the stars for me? Not Danya, but Sasha?”

“Really? It was Sasha?” Ben asked.

“Apparently. There is no reason he would have made that up. And this makes much more sense too. I’ve wondered how Danya managed to sneak in at night to take the straps and then to bring them back.”

She sighed and flipped to the next page. She felt embarrassed, disappointed, stupid, and even angry with Danya. Even though it was illogical, especially after all these years. He had never known about the straps. They had never, not once, discussed them. He didn’t know that she thought he was the one who made them. He didn’t know that she’d used them as a point of reference for all these years. Every time Lena had doubted Danya’s feelings, she would tell herself to think of the straps.

“She didn’t even thank me,” Sasha complained in the next caption.

Lena thought of little Sasha doing that heroic deed for her, expecting a smile, praise, waiting anxiously for her to notice the straps, seeing how happy they made her, and finally being met with her perfect indifference.

“But I didn’t know it was him,” Lena said to Ben.

Ben nodded.

“I mean, even if I hadn’t thought it was Danya, how would I know it was Sasha?”

“Well, he was probably the only one in your unit who was good at art.”

“That’s true. He was.”

Lena sighed and turned the page.

The following frames told the story of Vasyok stealing salami to win Lena’s heart and Sasha spying on him, and then telling on Vasyok to Vedenej.

“What a little shit he was!” Lena said.

“He was mad at you for not acknowledging the stars.”

“Still.”

Lena shook her head in amazement. So it was Sasha who made both Kostik and Vasyok disappear. Vedenej had nothing to do with it. Was Danya’s transfer to the North Sasha’s doing as well? No, Sasha couldn’t have possibly done that. But wasn’t his dad a really big shot? Could it be that he asked his dad to transfer Danya?

On the next page there was a drawing of a thermometer showing 100 degrees followed by a series of rather uninspired frames depicting hardships of the heat wave at the camp. The only good drawings in those pages were the ones devoted to lambada. Apparently, it was Sasha’s special talent to capture dance moves. His dancing Yanina was simply amazing. He drew her in such a way that she was getting brighter and larger compared to the other dancers in each frame.