Chapter Text
«I have only two emotions
Careful fear and dead devotion
I can't get the balance right
With all my marbles in the fight
I see all the ones I wept for
All the things I had it in for
I won't cry until I hear
Cause I was not supposed to be here.»
(The National -- Don’t Swallow the Cap )
I.
«No».
Tatiana Markovna sat in her cushion-lined bench with a heavy bound tome lying open in her lap. Peering above the rim of her reading spectacles, she sternly regarded the scrawny black-haired child who stood barefoot on the grass patch at the very edge of the patio, her tiny hand clasped in the colossal grip of a towering stone humanoid, and repressed a shudder.
«It is out of the question, Verochka», she stated.
The child’s brow furrowed in a most genuine expression of dismay. «Please babushka !», she begged. «It doesn’t like to sleep outside!»
«Now, that is plain ridiculous», Tatiana quipped, snapping the book shut and setting it down next to an empty glass of wine on the low wrought-iron table. She had been anticipating that drink all day; this , she sighed inwardly, was supposed to be her hour of leisure. «What difference could it possibly make to a—».
The word lingered on the tip of her tongue, and she gulped it back, wincing and shaking her head, as if she had been forced to take a considerable sip of some rancid medicine.
She would not speak it. She could not allow the old superstition into her home again.
«Umph!», she scuffed, waving a hand as if to dismiss both the abominable creature that had been brought before her as in audience and the sudden anguish that had gripped her. «The Thing can spend the night in the shed, if it so cherished the idea of having a roof over its head. Now go wash yourself. Hopefully, that slacker uncle of your has been making himself useful in the kitchen...»
«But it’s lonely!», whined Vera, latching onto the arm of her unholy playmate, «it wants to live with us. I promise he won’t break anything, babushka ; he’ll behave just like a person.»
Oh, Heaven forbid! , thought Tatiana with a surge of terror.
«I said “no”», she replied, «and that is final. I refuse to listen to another word on this matter. You leave it in its proper place, which we agreed is in the backyard, and make sure it sits still like a good statue. Then go get ready for supper».
Vera lowered her gaze to the ground in defeat. Framed as it was by long strands of uncombed hair, her thin pouting face struck old Tatiana with painful familiarity.
My wild child , her mind whispered. My lost wild child...
When she spoke again, her tone had softened. «Do as you are told, Verochka», she said. «I understand that it seems unfair to you right now, but there are rules to be followed, as there are lines to be drawn. If we lived on a farm, would we ever let a pig sleep on the carpet in the living room? Would we allow a horse to sit on the sofa or eat at the same table as ourselves?»
Vera pursed her lips before answering, albeit with a clear hint of reluctance, «No».
«Well, the same applies to your stone robot, here. It does not belong in the house. It never has and never will. It is not a pet, much less a person! At most, you can think of it as a toy».
«But I keep toys inside! They’re all in my room», Vera retorted.
«Not all of them. Have I ever allowed you to bring your bike inside? No. And would I ever store, say, my gardening tools into my bedroom? That would be absurd! Who does that, anywhere in the world? Come now, it doesn’t suit a girl your age to be despondent. God knows I have enough to worry about...»
With a sorrowful grimace, Vera looked up at her faceless companion. «I’m sorry», she muttered, «I don’t think she’s going to change her mind.»
Tatiana watched, her mouth twisting in mild disgust, as the Thing’s huge head tilted sideways, first right, then left, in a sequence of eerily mechanical motions; its shoulders heaved, and its upper body slumped forward, producing the startling impression that it was trying to express disappointment and resignation. Awkwardly, it lifted one of its rough, gargantuan hands; with a tenderness one would never have fathomed it to possess, placed it atop the child’s head, and its blundering body began to emit a low, melodic rumble that resonated in rippling shocks of vibration across the ground. Whether she was witnessing some pathetic mockery of language or the grotesque imitation of a purring cat, Tatiana could not tell. There was nothing threatening about the sound itself—that much she was willing to admit; yet, hearing it brought on an icy wave of discomfort. It was unnatural , she knew; even for an Ability User like Vera, this was not normal by any extent.
Vanechka—
—and, oh, may God forgive her! But for a grueling fraction of a second, instead of the boisterous five-year-old whose joyous grin she had wished to conjure up, it was the crazed, shrivelled phantom with the spirited sunken eyes that flashed to the forefront of her memory—
—had been precocious, a mere toddler when he first sculpted that grainy white pebble into the tentative shape of a dove, just by holding it in the palm of his tiny hand. Later, she remembered, he had crafted a stone swan and made it strutt around the garden, parodying the haughty gait of its flesh-and-feathers model, much to Tatiana’s quiet amusement and his brother Ilya’s clamorous delight. Even so, none of Vanechka’s creations ever acted as though it possessed a mind of its own.
Sure, the boy had refined his art over the years, to the point where the oddly life-like marionettes that, at fourteen, he still insisted on calling “friends” would move about with such fluidity that to glimpse their graceful silhouettes out of the corner of one’s eye bordered on the uncanny. Nevertheless, Tatiana saw no reason to doubt that, at all times, he was the one pulling their strings, and that said strings would remain firmly attached until the day he lost interest and his disturbing playthings reverted into formless piles of dust and clay. No spark of consciousness ever flared within those stone husks, no matter the breathtaking heights of realism to which her nephew might raise his work.
Well, Ilyuska often mused, if dear Vanechka had been a zealous naturalist since the very onset, Vera showed a unique penchant for Cubist geometries and surrealist abstractions. Her bizarre artwork’s “face” consisted of two shallow sockets, a crooked protuberance to provide the faint suggestion of a nose, and a cavernous horizontal chasm which served as a mouth, although what use such a miserable automaton could possibly have for it was anyone’s guess; its arms and legs were knobby bulks of rock, and the whole Thing looked unfinished, like a half-thought, roughly sketched only to be discarded—a miscarriage—what with the unsettling way it lumbered about, a patchwork of misplaced joints and extravagant proportions.
Yet, Vera reached out to it. She asked it all sorts of preposterous questions: what do you want to do? Shall we play “house” again? Where did you put my roller blades?
And the ugly head would either nod or sway from side to side; a thick misshapen digit would point toward the shed—or amidst the branches of the old elm tree if, indeed, it was in the mood for pulling a joke on its little “mistress”—and the Thing would clap its hands at the child's frustration; then, it would pick a flower from the rose bushes that grew along the fence on one side of the house, rip the thorns out, gingerly lower itself on one knee, and offer its reconciling gift like a valiant knight courting his beloved princess in one of those saccharine folk tales for which Tatiana could not have spared an inkling of patience even in her youth.
She refused to dwell on whether their companionship exhibited any hints of morbidity; what upset her was the now-solidified certainty that it was not Vera who commanded her creation to behave in such a manner. For several months, and against all evidence, Tatiana had maintained that her grandniece had merely been roleplaying, pretending that her friend could respond and freely interact with her when, in reality, it was but following her silent cues. Was it not what girls her age were known to do, as they made their dolls “talk” to one another and hosted “tea parties” with the lot of them arranged in eerie circles around plastic tables or on the floor of their bedrooms? Why, Alyona Sergeyevna, who lived two houses down their street and whose daughter had attended kindergarten with Vera, once admitted that her own pig-tailed, pug-faced brat was fond of entertaining endless debates with those horrid puppets!
This, however...
She frowned. The Thing had crouched down, extending its arms for Vera to find refuge and solace in their cold embrace; its head once again tilted sideways, and this time Tatiana read a timid inquiry in its stance: “will you come?”, it seemed to ask; “will you let me hold you?”, “shall I soothe you?”
No , she told herself.
Vera let out an audible sigh and pressed her forehead against the Thing’s massive shoulder.
This monster is no puppet.
Tatiana rose to her feet and called out: «Let's go, Vera. It's already half past seven, and I reckon we're all starting to feel hungry. I wonder what Ilyusha has been up to...»
Her tone came out a tad harsher than she had intended. Her grandniece lingered for another minute wrapped in the Thing’s strong hold, but at last she gave in and allowed herself to be released. Pouting, she mumbled something unintelligible before turning to meet Tatiana’s impatient scowl.
«I told it to go to the shed, okay?», she said.
«Very well», replied Tatiana. The knot in her stomach loosened as her eyes followed the Thing’s loitering march toward the back of the house.
She picked up her book—a 1902 reprint of Leibniz’s Monadologie , complete with the original French text: a cherished relic of her University years in Moscow— and balanced the empty glass atop its sturdy front cover. The setting August sun glinted off the rim and, for a moment, she thought she remembered something; but whatever it was, fleeting as it had been, only made her heart race for a few beats, and the warmth that unexpectedly pooled in her chest dissipated just as quickly.
«Go ahead, dear», she told Vera, who stood waiting at the bottom of their front steps. «Go on, take a shower. And, please, tell your uncle that he needs to empty the dishwasher before setting the table. I’ve already got headache, and the last thing I want is to hear him complain that we’ve “run out of clean forks” again».
The child nodded hastily and hurried inside. Tatiana huffed, took off her reading glasses, and rubbed her index and middle finger over the aching spot above her left eyebrow, squeezing her eyes shut against the waning daylight. What she did want was another drink. A cup of strong black tea, spiked with a sip (or two) of stronger liquor; something to help her drift into a dreamless sleep.
Something to numb the pain.
She knew it all-too well; she knew what it preluded.
***
Ilya Aleksandrovich was jack of dismally few trades, and definitely master of none. His short list of finely developed skills did, however, include cooking, something in which he’d taken great pride since his otherwise rowdy teenage years.
Sure, he could hardly call himself a “Master Chef”, but people never did pass up a second helping of his borsch ; and Maria Nikolayevna had once described his pirozhki as nothing short of “marvellous”, even through the haze that clouded her mind after that one awful trip…
Unemployment would have weighed unbearably on his pride, had he not come up with some way to make himself needed around the house. Well, his aunt Tatiana hated cooking, together with an ever-increasing number of ordinary chores, and Vera was still too young to provide any substantial help. So, here he was: all things considered, he’d cut himself a pretty sweet deal. A proper job might have made him more… respectable, if not quite happier , at least in the judgemental eyes of society. He’d never found the prospect of a “career” to be awesomely enticing, but autonomy and self-assertion were only available in the form of a monthly paycheck, and the fatter the better.
Sadly for whatever morsel of ambition may have survived his daily expeditions to Morphine-Land and the occasional idle visitation of the precipice overlooking the riverbank, down by the Vinnovskaya Grove, nobody was willing to hire a drug addict, no matter for how long they claimed to have been off the stuff. Once a junkie, always a junkie, was how the logic went. And, of all potential employees, Ilya was the candidate less likely to disprove their prejudice.
A self-contemptuous sneer curled his lips.
Meanwhile, the sauce bubbled cheerfully in the pan, and he stirred it one last time before switching off the stove. The main course would be ready in a matter of seconds—by all means, his chief accomplishment for today.
He groaned inwardly.
Two years , he reminded himself.
Two years, five months, and… nine days, if he was doing the math right. It was a record.
The time before that, he’d lasted one year and eight months; he couldn’t bother to recall how many weeks. It’d make no difference now, no more than it had back then.
But, man, he could have killed for a one last fix…
«What’s for dinner?»
Ilya glanced over his shoulder. Vera was leaning against the doorframe. Droplets of water dripped down her long black hair onto her naked arms and shoulders; pale as she was, he mused, she looked like the demon child that crawled out the well in that horror movie…
Under different circumstances, he might have found that funny.
«I made pelmeni », he announced.
Vera’s mouth twisted with scepticism.
«You mean you bought them at the store and dumped them in hot water».
«Fair enough. But I did make the sauce. Diced tomatoes and everything, young lady».
She stuck out her tongue, then smirked. Ilya smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
He knew this child. From long, long ago—another lifetime, almost. Yet, he could make out the other one —the stranger, the man whose name he should never mention—lurking beneath the surface. Something about the shape of her mouth, coupled with the color of her hair and eyes, which neither he nor his aunt shared… It made it next to impossible to hold her gaze.
He turned back to the stove, busying himself with fishing the pelmeni out of the pot and laying each neatly into the pan of thick red sauce. He became aware of a dull ache in his jaw.
He hadn’t realized he’d been clenching his teeth.
«Why don’t you finish setting the table, hon? We still need plates and… Well, that should be it. I’ll bring the salad in a moment».
Behind him, Vera opened one of the lower cabinets of the antique cupboard and crouched down to gather three plates in her arms.
«Where’s babushka ?», she asked.
«Upstairs. She wanted to lie down for a while».
Vera didn’t reply and scurried off to the dining room. By the time she reappeared in the doorway, Ilya had switched to the delicate art of shredding cucumbers and chopping celery.
He gestured for her to sit beside him at the kitchen table.
«Care to help?», he suggested.
Vera arched her eyebrows.
«I’m seven», she reminded him.
«So?»
«What if I cut myself?»
«We’ll put a bandaid on it.»
She reached into the bowl of washed and peeled vegetables, and held up a celery stalk. Its bright green leaves flopped pitifully on one side.
«Ok, but can I do this one?», she said. «It looks easier».
He handed her a small knife and watched her work on the opposite end of the cutting board for a while, instructing her on how to position her fingertips so that she wouldn’t run the risk of slicing the skin clean off.
She nodded, never taking her eyes off the task at hand, and asked no questions. She rather seemed to be lost in thought, and lacked her usual liveliness.
Ilya couldn’t claim to be any good at reading people. He had been a lousy judge of character in the past: his own parents had been in equal measure stingy and ambiguous in their displays of affection toward him and Vanya, and his therapist back in rehab—during his first attempt at getting clean—believed that it may have been this very lack of straightforwardness that made them both so emotionally vulnerable.
Easy prey , was how the Doc phrased it. Five years later, it still haunted him.
Children, he’d persuaded himself, were relatively easy to understand. Vera kept her own secrets, no doubt—he’d had them too, when he was her age—but he’d raised her, he’d known all of her quirks as she developed and grew out of them; he liked to think that she was overall transparent to him, just as she was to Aunt Tatiana, and that she allowed him to see through her because she trusted him the way she would a parent. A decent one, at least.
Sure, he’d been… absent for a few months here and there, too busy being a squatter in some of the dirtiest apartments he’d ever had the misfortune to set foot in, yet too dazed to so much as roll off the threadbare mattress he occupied with one or two of his kind. He had missed out on a couple of milestone, such as her first day of school… But she was still his baby girl, wasn’t she? And he could tell what upset her at a glance.
It was a reassuring thought. It meant that he’d be able to soothe and protect her, to snatch her close and hold her as tight as she’d need him to, before she decided to slip away, seeking comfort in the wrong places.
He had very little else to be proud of.
He cleared his throat.
«Did you and babushka have an argument of sorts?» he inquired.
Vera didn’t look up nor did she pause her diligent slicing.
«I asked her if I could bring my friend inside», she replied, and shrugged. «She said no».
Of course she did , he thought bitterly, and asking for my opinion didn’t even cross her mind.
«Figured», he said. «That’s just how she is—always on her tiptoes around Abilities, as far as I can remember. She wouldn’t let Vanechka do it, either. Not that he minded», he added, «he couldn’t do much with single rocks, in any case. Or so he said. He had to be close to the earth in order for his tricks to work properly. I don’t think he ever called one of his sculptures a “friend”».
This time, Vera’s eyes met his.
«What did he call them?», she wondered.
For a moment, Ilya was transported back in the cluttered, dim-lit room they had shared at their parent’s place. Except, their father had already left, and their mother was already lost to alcohol.
He was sitting cross-legged on Vanya’s bed, listening to his brother—although he still thought of him as “sister” then—rant on and on about an old folktale about ambitious men building humanoids out of clay, the same way God was said to have done in the Scripture, and controlling them through a sort of magic. Over the course of history, some had called them “homunculi”, but Vanya had leaned in and whispered a different name, one that sounded oddly familiar, even though Ilya could have sworn he’d never heard it before...
«Artworks», he said, blinking to dispel the memory. «Or “giants”, when he felt like being original». It was only about a third of a lie, after all. He forced a chuckle. «I bet he could’ve made them even without the Ability, it would just have taken him longer. He had the talent for it. You’ve seen his drawings, right?»
Vera nodded.
«I like the ones by the river», she confessed. «The ones from the cliff that looks down into the water».
The precipice , he could have told her; instead, he flashed a fond smile and let his gaze wander back to the chopped vegetables that were steadily piling up between them.
«Why, this is what I call a job well done!», he sighed.
Vera peered into the empty bowl.
«We did it!», she exclaimed. «Thank God, because my hand is going to fall off», she added with a grimace, dropping the knife. It landed on the bare table with a dull clank .
Ilya scuffed.
«You need more practice», he taunted her.
«So does babushka », she retorted.
He burst into laughter.
«Ah! Good luck convincing her! She barely peeks her head through the door anymore…»
«Always talking behind my back, uh?»
Tatiana had, as a matter of fact, materialized herself on the threshold. She’d changed into her night robe and donned her favourite pair of slippers: fluffy blue puffs that were twice the size of her feet.
The sheer irony and timing of her appearance caused Ilya to laugh even harder.
Aunt Tatiana rolled her eyes.
«Oh, Ilyusha», she lamented, «why must you be so… silly , for Heaven’s Grace!»
He stood up, jogged across the room, and wrapped an arm around her bony shoulders.
She went stiff, but didn’t shoo him away. Taking this as a sign that, demeanor aside, she wouldn’t mind a little jesting, he tickled her side. She jolted and huffed with impatience, but the expression on her face had grown warmer.
«You know we love you, Auntie», he said, «and we do like to take care of you».
«I should hope so!», she replied.
It was a practiced routine between the two of them. It made it hard to picture life without her, even in the late nights when resentment invaded him like venom. She’d aged twenty years in the nine that followed Vanya’s last phone call; she’d lost weight, her hair had turned grey, and her eyes appeared to have sunken into her skull.
Ilya would never confess to it, but he’d found the pills stashed at the very back of her bathroom cabinet, hidden behind the creams and the powders and the lipsticks that she rarely wore nowadays. Her heart medication.
Why are you keeping this from us? , he wanted to ask.
For the first time in his life, he wished that she could read minds, so he wouldn’t have to speak the fear that twisted his guts and threatened to plummet his mind on the edge of the fearsome blackness that seemed to always lie in wait, like an eldritch monster at the bottom of the sea.
Loosening his grip around her, he planted a kiss on her cheek.
«You go and sit down», he chirped. «We’ll be there in a minute».
«I’ll fetch some more wine», she said. «Although not for you, young man—all this merriment doesn’t do you any good».
Vera chuckled. Ilya bit his lower lip and spun around to stare at her in mock outrage.
«Oh, so you betray me! Some gratitude I get, after everything I’ve taught you!»
«You are such a showman», Tatiana shook her head, trodding off to the canteen. «You mind that she doesn’t hurt herself with those blasted knives, you hear?», she called over her shoulder.
«Don’t worry, Auntie», Ilya assured her. «We’re all responsible adults in this household».
He winked at Vera. A grin had crept back upon her lips, and so did the uneasiness in the lone recesses of his consciousness.
He suggested that she went ahead, sat with babushka , made sure that the honorable matron didn’t pour herself a glass too many. He would join them in a moment.
The child stood up, but hesitated. The pensive expression had returned, and she began to wring her hands, as though she were contemplating whether to voice whatever weighted on her mind or keep it to herself.
Ilya pretended not to notice, until she made her choice and said:
«Is babushka afraid of Abilities?»
He took his sweet time chewing on his lip before answering, «Maybe».
She regarded him with something disconcertingly akin to suspicion.
«Are you?», she asked.
Now, that was rich!
Was he? He hadn’t been afraid of Vanya, that much he could swear by—up to his one trip to Yokohama, that was.
He thought about the hospital room; about the angry red welts etched into his brother’s skin by those sturdy leather restraints; and one of those nondescript security agents muttering in broken English Just a safety measure, Mr. Goncharov , over and over—an absurd mechanical mantra—as if it could quell his horror.
He thought about a tall, dark-haired man holding out a gloved hand for him to shake; about the vermin-infested flats where he’d burned away years of his life; about the drugs, the living-dead surrounding him, all rotting teeth, skeletal hands, and falling hair.
And the void. Icy sharp teeth mauling him from the inside. Patient, deliberate. So much so that he had become desensitized to their onslaught. And every day they had sunk deeper.
Did he fear them? He’d be a fool not to.
While he couldn’t tell Vera about any of that, perhaps he could still make her wise.
«Yeah», he replied. «Sometimes».
***
Vera Ivanovna—
—unbeknownst to her, the earliest version of her birth certificate had specified “Fyodorovna” as her patronymic. Tatiana Markovna had, however, nearly suffered an apoplectic fit upon seeing it, and had proceeded to request that the offending name be removed immediately from any official documents, as well as, possibly, banished from collective memory forever and ever, until a second Flood would cleanse the Earth of human existence. Amen . The child had already inherited her mother’s “dead name”, she’d reasoned, so why bring anybody else into the picture? Vera Ivanovna it would be, and Ilyusha be damned, with his obnoxious complaints that it sounded like a name you’d expect to find in the practice section of one of those Russian for Dummies guidebooks!—
—hugged her knees to her chest and flipped another page of the yellowed sketchbook that lay open at her feet.
There, a young dancer, depicted with her back to the onlooker, was facing sideways, her attention drawn by something outside of her paper frame. On the adjacent page, a train crossed an overpass, its metallic bulk grinding onward against the sky, ablaze with the glorious rays of sunset.
It was a wonder how such a scenery could be rendered in nothing but graphite; how the contours of clouds could be darkened to contrast with the intensity of the light that tore through their dense shroud; how their gliding expanse was able to create a sense of both depth and movement to the unchanging lines of the picture.
The melancholic dancer remained her favorite, though, with her laced corset and her shiny hair done up in a bun and the heartbroken longing welling up beneath those long eyelashes.
She bore a striking resemblance to Vanechka.
Vera had never met him in person, but she would spend endless afternoons looking at the photographs that babushka had thankfully decided not to store away in a cardboard box, running her fingers over the protecting glass, whispering stories she’d make up on the spot for her silent friend’s imaginary enjoyment.
The one in the dining room sat on the third shelf from the top of the bookcase: in it, a blond-haired child of nine or ten stood in the hallway, carrying a large backpack, wearing light blue jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt, and a purple sweater tied around their waist, and sporting a playful grin. Lost in time.
Another one was perched atop babushka ’s vanity, next to Vera’s and Ilya’s beaming faces. One could have mistaken them all for siblings.
But the one she held most dear portrayed him as a teenager. He and Ilya were both sprawled on the couch, arms wrapped around each other, and they were laughing with abandon. Vanyechka’s shoulder-length hair was tied in a ponytail, and Vera recognized the silvery glint of a pair of round earrings, the same ones she had discovered at the bottom of one of babushka ’s drawers, folded in a velvety red cloth.
That picture had been a steady feature in her room (which had once belonged to Vanechka) since the onset. During the first months of her life, babushka would place it on the nightstand right beside the crib; then she moved it on a shelf, next to Vera’s collection of comics and books. Earlier that year, the child had set it on her desk, so that she may complain aloud to it about the insane amount of homework she had been assigned for the weekend.
Vera closed the sketchbook. She got to her feet and walked to the open window. The sky was still a dark purple on the horizon, and the breeze was slightly cooler than it had been the previous nights.
She could see the shed from here. It would be pitch black within its cramped confines, and so unbearably lonely… It filled her with remorse. Not that she was mad at her babushka— it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t understand. To Vera, she was the cleverest person in the world, surpassing even her school teachers: why, there seemed to be nothing concerning mathematics and the Bible and that strange tangle of ideas she called philosophy that she didn’t know and couldn’t talk about for hours on end! Alas, day by day she learned that even the brightest and most imaginative of adults had their limits.
Vera may have been young, but she realized that it wasn’t a matter of selfishness. Tatiana provided for her and Ilya in every possible way, always had; her love and care came with a set of strict rules, that was all. Disobedience would have pained her immensely. And yet…
Perhaps Vera should have insisted. Friends weren’t meant to be discarded like a toy you’d grown bored with; they shouldn’t be left alone in such an ugly, damp place. Sturdy as it appeared, even a playmate like her stone giant was bound to seek warmth and closeness. It had been born with a gentle, fragile heart, no different from her own; and even though you couldn’t feel it beat, you just knew it was there. It had to be.
Ignoring the sting of an unspoken apology digging its sharp nails into the corners of her eyes, she pressed the shutters closed against the dreadful emptiness of the night sky.
Letting out a deep, afflicted sigh, she plopped down in her chair and reached for Vanechka’s photograph with both hands. As she held it in her lap, Vera found herself contemplating the yet-uncharted path of deceit.