Chapter Text
About six months later, Sergey stuffed me into his sports bag again and left Moscow. He was very drunk while he rode on the train, insulting passengers and snapping at provodniks to piss off with their endless trays of tea. He wanted vodka.
I was taken into a room of which I recognized the smells – of stale cabbage soup, kerosene and cigarette smoke. And there was a female voice I had heard before, older now, devoid of its pleasantly teasing undertone. “Why are you here? Did I tell you to come?”
“I wanted to see how you and Seryozha were doing,” Sergey answered. “I ran into comrade Volodya at Berioska last week, he told me…”
“Told you what?” She sounded impatient.
“That Roman…”
“Seryozha may be back from school any minute now. I’m busy.”
“Roman…!”
“He went to Afghanistan. Of course you know that. I take it he wrote to you all the time.”
“No, he never did…I have come to pay my respects.”
“I don’t need those, not from you! Whatever did he see in you, you’re not attractive, not smart, you’re nothing!”
“Luisa, I am sorry…for you and your little boy. I grew up without a father as well and…”
She laughed bitterly. “Oh, that’s why. No male role model. No daddy chopping wood or carving Sunday meat when the parish priest comes to lunch. Freud was right.”
“I can only hope and pray that death came to him swiftly and painlessly, and that his last thoughts were about you and Seryozha.”
“That was definitely not the case, and God knows what he’s thinking now, all plaster casts and feeding tubes in Frunze. He might as well stay there, he’s always liked the Orient, you know.”
“Plaster…what?” Sergey dropped the sports bag on the floor, sending a flame of pain through my flanks.
“As soon as he can leave the hospital bed and sit in a wheelchair he’ll come home. If he lives, that is.”
I could hear Sergey burst into tears. “Volodya told me last week that Roman had died in Afghanistan.”
“Volodya is a snake. He failed his fighter pilot exams, he has always envied Roman. My husband, my wreck of a husband, is alive. Are you happy now?”
Sergey was weeping softly, a sound that always moved me even though I usually abhor crying people with a Soviet staunchness.
Now the door opened and the thudding of a child’s feet could be heard. “Darling, do take off those muddy boots and your hat and sit at the table. Lunch is ready,” Luisa said to her son.
“Mama, who is this man? Is he having lunch with us?”
“This is an old friend of Papa’s, he came by to ask if Papa is alright.”
“Sir, are you staying? You can have my lunch.”
“No, thank you, Seryozha, you are a sweet boy,” Sergey said. Now the bag was zipped open and I was taken out.
“Look, Seryozha, I brought you a present. I got it as a confirmation gift when I was little. It is yours now.”
I was sitting on my owner’s hand, slightly tilted down and looking at Roman’s son. The boy’s nose was running with cold. He had a scab on his right cheek. “It’s rusty,” he said. “I don’t want it.”
“Don’t be impolite, Seryozha,” his mother said to him. “You must be thankful for every gift. Let’s put it on the shelf over your bed now. Do wash your hands at the sink. I made pelmeni for lunch, those are your favorite. Ah, Sergey, it is cold, you must stay awhile and eat. Spend the night here if you wish. Hotels are expensive. Do you like pelmeni? There should be some beer in the fridge, I’ll go and check…”
I sat on the shelf perched between a grubby football and a moth-eaten teddy bear and watched the three of them enjoy their lunch. Now I was glad to lack a human voice, because I’d have scolded the hostess for showing her true colours. She wanted Roman to live for the sake of her son, but what she wanted for herself was to be united with her former suitor, even though she did not consider him fit to wipe her boots on.
Luisa served Sergey tea after lunch and accepted a cigarette and a light from him. She sent Seryozha out to play with his friends and when he had left, she begged with Sergey to stay. He would not have it and claimed he wanted to catch the night train back to Moscow. They parted with a hug and then he shuffled out of the room. That was the last I saw of him.
I had become now what I had always dreaded: a child’s toy. Seryozha never showed any interest in me and left me on the shelf over his bed, but on a few occasions he had playmates over, your stereotypical rascals who have hearts of gold but still drive their teachers and Komsomol guides to despair. The boys sent me flying across the room or banged my nose on the floor to see if I would split open and reveal a treasure – sweets or ammo, I couldn’t tell.
At night, when Luisa and Seryozha had their dinner, the boy often asked his mother: “Will we see Papa again soon?” “Not very soon,” she answered. “It is a long journey to Shatsk, and you are not supposed to skip school for it.”
When Seryozha was in school in the mornings and she was not attending lectures at uni downtown, she had friends from the block visiting, army wives like herself and terrible gossips. I learned that Roman was now living with his parents on the kolkhoz where he had been born. He had been wounded after being shot down in his MiG in the desert west of Kandahar. His army days were over. He was tied to a wheelchair. All he could do now was work as a clerk at the kolkhoz office and study at night. “But he might learn to walk again, and then he’ll come back to me,” Luisa said to one of her friends. “I dread the day when that happens.”
I watched Seryozha grow from a merry little boy into a sullen primary school student. He made his homework haphazardly, sitting on his bed and drawing cartoons in the margins of his textbooks. A major started frequenting the little flat now. He was in his late forties, a bachelor and gruellingly handsome. Seryozha’s table manners were atrocious, but Luisa never scolded him for it, because he was the apple of her eye. The officer saw fit to correct him at mealtimes. “The boy needs a father figure,” he once said to Luisa when Seryozha was in the bathroom. “And I have needs too,” she quipped. They kissed.
A few weeks later the flat was turned upside down and tidied up for the next tenant. I was stuck into a box along with toys Seryozha no longer played with. Luisa was moving in with her lover, who had a three-bedroom apartment in the historic quarter of Tallinn.
The day before she and Seryozha would leave their old place for good, I heard a rap on the door. She answered and gasped.
“Seryozha! You were supposed to get home from school two hours ago, now where have you been?”
“I am sorry,” a male voice said. “Your son was caught shoplifting. The shop manager told me it wasn’t the first time she’d seen him and his friends nicking sweets. I am truly very sorry, Mrs. Matvejev, but you have to report at the police station tomorrow.”
Mother and son had dinner and went to bed in terse silence. The next morning, the crate I was in was taken away by a stranger and stowed into a van. I was soon forgotten, wiped out, with only my memories for company, and I have never seen the Estonian air base again.
END OF PART ONE