Postcards from the edge of night

I am wandering on a childless weeknight. N is out of town on family business. I am putting long avenues in front of me as I cannot sleep in this heat. Cold vanilla ice cream in limp waffle cones. The smell of gasoline and dead grass all around me.

Down the stairs to a produkte* still open, with old familiar faces from when I lived here. Blue plastic sandals, blue smocks, always sharing a microwaved bowl of pelmeni. Licking from plastic spoons their eyes roll to me like blonde deer on an empty country road.

A troup of transvestites stomp in, buying mineral water and loose candies by the gram. They are tall, in tiny hot pink dresses and crooked fishnets. They need a shave, their makeup thick and creamy on their cheeks. Eyelashes bigger than the ladies in blue sandals that ask about E and put a few free chocolates in my bag for her.

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A tiny man approaches me in the street, more a wrinkled up piece of paper in an ill-fitting suit. His sunburned face is flat like a frying pan. A few teeth poke around his smile. He points at me, one small laugh of recognition, a tiny nod and then he moves on towards the fountains and the giant arch. Towards a tiny church and half-eaten chebureki still wrapped in their oily paper.

I bought N a handful of pink peonies. In Russia you must buy an odd number of flowers, unless they are for a funeral. The saleswoman watched me leaving, flowers held upright the clear plastic rustling noisily around them. In Russia, everyone carries flowers hanging down – upside down, for some reason. Sometimes I want them to know I am a stubborn foreigner.

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E she has a magic rock that protects her when she is in her mother’s apartment.

Her eyes wide, she grabbed my forearm across the kitchen table.

“Pop, you need a magic rock too.” She said fiercely.

She spent the next night at her mother’s.

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N returned, tired and hungry. She returned romantic as ever, with gifts wrapped carefully in plastic bags, with a kitchen spoon all the way from Tibilisi which I promptly put in a drawer.
“When you are away, I will use this spoon and know you are alright.” I said.
She smiled her Audrey Hepburn smile, brushed the hair from her face.

It began to rain for the first time in weeks. The sun was still shining.

A few lazy fat drops splashed outside the kitchen windows.

“It is called blind rain.” She said. “When the sun is still shining.”

I closed my eyes, imagining a cool wave of air crossing my face. It did not come.

I saw giant tufts floating upwards, as the raindrops danced around them.

“They are called topol.” N said. “If you catch one, you must make a wish.”

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When I went to take E the next morning, her mother shoved her quickly into the hallway.

“Is she wearing underwear this time?” I asked, sliding my foot into the door. The last few Sundays E was handed off without socks or underwear for some reason.

E looked up at me, her face deep and sad. She shook her head no.

They disappeared inside, after a furious turning of keys in the locks.

I waited thirty minutes, listening to the shouting, calling on the phone, ringing the doorbell for a long time. Eventually E came back out from the dark entry that smelled of cat pee.

“I have something for you.” She said.

The door slammed behind her, the keys turning furiously again.

Skipping down the stairs, her hand tight in mine E was starting to sing.

In N’s little green car, I buckled E into the back seat.

“Pop.” She said. “I have a surprise for you.”

She pressed a toy cel phone holder towards me. Inside was a red plastic ornament from Ikea.

“It’s your magic rock!” She shouted.

N looked at us, her quiet smile spreading across her face.

I breathed in deeply, and let out a long sigh.

“You’re the best, kiddo.” I said.

“Pop, you have to know.” E continued. “It’s not simple. There are only three magic rocks in the whole world and yours is a wolf rock. So, if there are wolves you have to hide it.”

“Where does your rock come from?” I asked her, after a minute.

“Mine is from New York.” She said. “Nobody is going to take mine. Mine is simple.”

* produkte – think, bodega….

Redhook, Part 1

We made our way down Kutuzovksy, stopping for ice creams and bottles of water.  The midday sun pressing into us with no shade or breeze. Her fine hair soon a thick wet mess, E asked me to carry her most of the way, sweaty in my arms, almost slipping from them.

At home we washed vishinei (sour cherries) and sliva (plums) and ate them, watching great fat flies buzzing around the windows. Then she fell asleep.

I wrapped a t-shirt around my head to block out the sun and put my feet up. Something smelled strange - maybe the pillows, maybe something from the fridge. I could not get up, and closed my eyes the same as E now splayed across the couch. The sound of grinding metal, of circular saws chugging through plywood filtered up to us from the hotel renovations.

I found myself remembering Redhook, Brooklyn. The most dangerous place in America when I worked there, welding circus scenery and dodging stray gangland bullets. There was a methadone clinic on the corner and dealers just outside it. Van Brunt was a street of abandoned buildings then, and the great ancient warehouse we worked in. Uncooled in the summer, unheated in the winter. Forced to wear a full-body jumpsuit to avoid getting burned by welding slag, I drank two gallons of water a day in the volcanic artificial night of my welding area. There was a stench there too, mostly of rotting river rats in the walls. Some as big as my forearm when we found their dry husks.

I thought of the packs of inbred wild dogs there, just like the ones in Moscow, their ancient nipples dragging across the cobblestones. I thought of the scrawny prostitutes that gave $5 blowjobs to Hacids around the corner from the warehouse - their arms outside of the station wagons, just their faces lost behind the darkness of the windows. I thought of the junkies that wandered the streets, stealing our tools if we left them on the ground for a few minutes when we tried to work on the sidewalk. They would try to sell them back to us a few minutes later.

It was the same relentless sun there. The same giant green flies buzzing around the shit in the street. The same sense that you were at the end of the world, and there was no law, no rule, no reason. Just the choas of a brand new car that could get parked across the street, unlocked and doors open. Then the bomb would go off. A great chemical cloud of smoke, green in the mid-day sun. The fire would eventually go out after the plastic and the gasoline had burned off. Next the junkies would arrive with the sloppy-wheeled shopping carts they forced across the cobblestones. Everything would be stripped away - copper wires, brake pads, sparkplugs. Now the car would look like a skeleton balanced on a series of cinder blocks, maybe surrounded by bits of broken windshield. Next, someone would move in, and make it home. Cardboard would fill the windows for privacy. Two or three would be sleeping there when we got to work in the morning, their hands graceful as angels, maybe a long line of piss walking away from them and across the sidewalk. Maybe a few plastic bottles of Midnight Dragon rolling around in the breeze. In Moscow they call these people zapor, a special kind of drunk. Next, the car would be lit on fire once again - maybe with them still inside. Blankets and paper quickly burned to nothing. The weathered skeleton would get bashed in, and picked over once again. It would sit for some days, maybe a weekend. And then one day it would just be gone. Maybe just a shadow of the bomb on the ground, and then even that would disappear.

там, здесь (there, here)

The sky hangs heavy, just a strip of fierce sun in the distance. One more opera backdrop. The view is too magnificent from this place. It never fails to hold me, studying the patterns of light, the archaic hammers, sickles and five point stars. Built by German prisoners of war, now littered with satellite dishes, air conditioners and potted plants. N has been away for seven days on vacation with relatives. She is in Cyprus, getting sunburned, eating fresh fish, waking up late, drinking eternal cups of Turkish coffee.

I wake up sweaty and dry mouthed, the sun already baking the walls. Cold water on my face, two cups of coffee and I'm still fast asleep. I am not here, I am there with her. I am making jokes in the sand, sipping from a tall, cold glass of grapefruit juice. Spreading lotion across her back and shoulders, trying to decide if it's time to splash into that blue ocean yet. Savoring the taste of salt water on her lips.

No, I am here. And her phone is out of money and I can't even call her.

I have a client we call "The Millionaire". Before every meeting with him, I call N and she wishes me luck, as I stand in the shadow of a Lenin Statue on Oktoberskaya Square. Today, I called her anyways - the out of service message playing - I pretended to talk with her, a strange superstition I could not erase. I felt completely foolish walking past the fountain on the square, where teenagers splashed in the water taking pictures of each other. Jeans and shirts soaking wet, painted on their bodies. The smell of algae and stale cigarettes is there.

She'll be back late Saturday night. I will see her Sunday morning.

She will enter the house with that perfect sound of her keys turning in the lock. Maybe wearing a new shirt, a fresh touch of perfume on her neck. I will make us coffee in the kitchen, and she will wrap her hands around the red cup the way she always does. Even in this heat, she takes it's warmth, sipping slowly. Eyes holding on me, sharing anecdotes and bits of news. There is something completely perfect about her - her grace, the presents she brings for E and me. She is here now, and the cat is marching around on her knees saying hello, spreading a thousand hairs across her black shirt. She is here now, and I can only quote Neruda.

Quiero hacer contigo
lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos.


I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

And once again, I am that 19 year old boy sitting by the empty train tracks, with a slim pink book bought on a solo journey through Manhattan. I am flipping through the pages, surprised how familiar the Spanish feels on my tongue in the hot air. The September sun is burning into the pages, making them translucent. Once again, my thoughts swell with rapture and humble respect. 

Only now, I am not alone.

the crow's anniversary

July 4th carries a personal significance for me now. This is the anniversary of "the beginning of the end". The only fireworks on this day last summer were the screaming and doors being slammed off of their hinges. Of dishes being thrown, of a child crying.

I had been feeding E and myself on the rice and potatoes in the cabinets for weeks. A bad business deal had left us freakishly exposed, and there was no cash in sight. In an act of desperation, I asked one of D's old friends if he could loan us $300 until a payment came in. It was quite strange for me to do the asking, but I had lost all self respect so many years before it was a simple conversation. He agreed, and said he would give D the cash later that day. She did not return for some hours, and when she did the cash was gone. When I asked her where it went, she replied that she really needed to ride a horse, and was depressed because we could not afford for her to ride for the last two months. So she went and paid for a month of riding and a few giant bags of apples and carrots she fed to her favorite horse.

E and I had eaten the last of the corn flakes and milk that day. Of course I lost it. How a horse could eat better than E and me, how the money could go for horse riding not her child was beyond me. She offered no explanation, just saying she owed both of us nothing. We did not even deserve an explanation according to her.

At one point one of the kittens jumped from the third floor balcony rather than spend another minute in that apartment. None of us noticed this for some time. This is the cat that lives with me now.

Gathering E in my arms I walked down to the river and sat on some stairs for a very long time. I watched young people coming and going, drinking beers and licking ice creams. The party boats motored past us, churning out generic music. I smelled the foul water, some odd garbage floating past us. E wrapped her sweaty fingers around my neck, breathing into my shirt. She was four then - a tiny four, before she started speaking English, before she completely understood what was going on. She was in her survival mode, holding on to the only person who was looking out for her. Something turned in me that long sunny Independence Day. I did not even know it was the fourth, just some hot day in July with no money and a madwoman on our hands. I knew that a new line had been crossed, and that the years of tolerance and understanding, the tens of thousands of dollars had all amounted to nothing. Nothing but more madness.

I stood up and put E on the ground.
"Let's walk a little." I said.
She rolled her giant eyes up to me, nodding once in agreement.

We wandered through the dusty streets, walking slowly, without purpose or direction. A horde of fat black crows sat on a dumpster, clawing and jabbing at the bags. Their ugly voices punctuated the afternoon silence. E stood watching them, and I looked down at the street. A 500 ruble bill was flipping around in the breeze. I chased it, and picked it up. E stared at me and broke into laughter, scaring the hell out of those crows. They flew away.

I bought her an ice cream.

We returned to the apartment after the sun had gone down. E's mother sat in the narrow kitchen, perched on one of the stools just like one of those crows. She was chain smoking those long, putrid cigarettes, staring into space. Her eyes glazed over, only her chin moved as she sucked on the smoke bringing it deep inside her.

I read books to E until she fell asleep and then made my bed on the floor. D was still in the kitchen, smoking. I fell asleep thinking she was a human version of those crows, waiting for something to die so she could pick it apart.