6.

She rode back with them.

She no longer saw who she was riding with or what they were passing. There was only one radio on, and it was inside Ulyana’s head. It broadcast in ragged snippets, as if the signal were breaking up, as if someone were jamming it.

How do you live with a disabled person at home for the rest of your life? Right now he’s happy on the meds, but when it really sinks in who he’s become, what kind of person will he be? Fine, okay, there’ll be a pension, he won’t go hungry, but he’ll have to do something with himself, won’t he? Spend all day wheeling around the apartment, watching TV, playing dominoes with the old men in the courtyard—is that the kind of husband he’ll be? He’ll come off his injections and start drinking for sure; he’ll have to replace one anesthetic with another. He’s not going to train for the Paralympics, is he? So he’ll drink himself stupid. And he’ll always be angry; Ulyana had never known a kind-hearted disabled person. Just try imagining yourself with no legs, circling the track between the fridge and the TV—how could you not go fucking crazy living like that? And who would be to blame for all of it? Whoever’s there beside you, that’s who; they’d be the one to take the brunt of it. A hundred-pound weight around your neck. What would it cost to live like that? Sure, it was stability—but the kind of stability you got in prison. And could you even divorce a disabled man? It would be shameful to leave him, and you wouldn’t get to live it up on child support with a baby, either. Okay, Sasha was still a good man, he was good, he was kind; maybe he’d manage, wouldn’t grow bitter about life, wouldn’t take it out on Ulyana—trampling her with his stumps, God forgive her, over the hurt he felt. But to be tied to him like this forever now… She’d had the thought, it had flashed through her mind, that “severe” meant one arm or one leg gone, but she’d forbidden herself to think any further in that direction, so it wouldn’t come true. And now it had all happened and was simply waiting for her, like a rat trap with bait on the pedal—a little piece of bacon, eight million rubles. Idiot. What did eight million mean to her? That was the death benefit; for a wound it was less, and for disability less still…

She took out her phone and looked it up—how much did they give you for disability, anyway? There were different figures. She switched on the VPN, checked again with the AI girl, like Kristinka had shown her, and it immediately gave her a report: six million if you’d completely lost your ability to work. Okay, six… Six wasn’t nothing… But the six million would be paid to him, to Sasha, and they’d probably have to share it with his parents too, since they’d be his dependents as well, wouldn’t they? And how would they split it? Half and half? She asked the AI how disability benefits for a participant in the Special Military Operation were divided between his wife and parents. It depended on how many children there were, but it was clear Ulyana wouldn’t get the whole amount. And she still hadn’t asked him about his mother—did she know he’d been found? Ulyana suddenly remembered. On the way there—she remembered while chewing her sausage roll, kept it in mind—but as soon as she walked into the ward, she forgot. No one had brought up his mother, either—not Sasha, not his roommates, not the attending doctor, not the nurse. But he must have thought about his mother himself; he was conscious, after all, even if he was a little strange. And it was a military hospital, so somewhere he must have been entered in the records as alive and found; word would have gone down the chain to the enlistment office, and they’d pass it on to Tatyana. They’d probably already told her, and she still hadn’t called Ulyana—just keeping quiet. Could she have rushed over too? Or maybe she was at the Vologda station right now, waiting for that same train so she could turn up at Sasha’s in the morning? Maybe she’d already been to see Sasha before Ulyana, been there first? She should have asked the attending doctor, idiot that she was. At least then she’d have some sort of certainty, but as it was… And she’d have to share the eight million anyway, and that was only if she managed to get ahead of Tatyana and register the marriage first. But even split in half, eight million made four; and if there was a baby, the AI girl had said, then Ulyana would get two-thirds, and his parents only a third. Two-thirds of eight million was how much… How much? She came to her senses. What are you calculating? What are you working out here? Have you buried him already, Sasha? Are you already splitting the death benefit with Tatyana? What kind of a piece of shit are you? And you’re no better than his mother. Think instead of how he smiled at you, how glad he was to see you, how happy he was about the baby, how he worried that without legs he wouldn’t be able to support or raise the child. How can you even think about money? Money, sure, and what do you need it for? You’re young, you’ve got your legs and arms and your pussy, God forgive you—you’ll manage to feed yourself somehow. You don’t need those millions. Okay, you’ll buy an apartment, you won’t have to rent anymore. So what? What would change? Well, having your own place is a whole different life, of course—peace of mind, being your own boss, not depending on anyone. So what would really change? But at what cost? Not at a cost like this, surely? Not depending on anyone, not having to depend on anyone ever again, being in charge of your own life—that would be it, that would be the dream. But if you’re tied to a man with no legs for the rest of your life, even in your own apartment, is that really a dream? And how will the operation go? The attending doctor had said it was complicated, that anything could happen—or had he not said that, and Ulyana had just understood it that way? And what did “anything” mean? Maybe something even worse, maybe they’d have to cut something else off. Maybe he’d end up chained to the bed for good, shitting himself, and she’d have to clean him up. And how do you fuck a man with no legs? It was a sin to say that, a sin, but she had to think about it too. She was still a young woman, healthy, she needed it. She’d worn out her vibrator waiting to hear from Sasha, stayed faithful to him, but two months was one thing, and a whole lifetime was another. Stop it, you’re thinking about the wrong things. It’s shameful to think this way, but anything could happen—anything, including him not pulling through. That was shameful too, and worse besides. But why should it be shameful? Ulyana had only herself to count on. She couldn’t count on her mother, with her salary; she’d stand behind that counter for another year or two, then retire, and her pension wouldn’t go far. Who was going to support her? Her daughter. And that was fine, that was normal, but where was she supposed to get the money for all of it? Well, from there, then, from that money, if they got married. What was so wrong with that? Who else would have to carry it all? Certainly not Tatyana Nikolayevna! And anyway, how much had they paid for their place, she wondered? It was beat-up, but in Zarechye, almost in the center. They must have taken out a mortgage, and they’d have to keep paying it off for years—but Ulyana definitely wasn’t going to take responsibility for that. Tatyana had only herself to blame: she’d driven her son into the army for the money, sent him off to be slaughtered, and now she was going mad. If only she’d seen Sasha smiling like that, she’d know. So had she come or not? They couldn’t afford to wait. She had to go straight to the chief doctor first thing in the morning and get an appointment.

She asked the AI girl how exactly you got married to a participant in the Special Military Operation who was in hospital, and it gave her the full instructions: no need to go to the registry office, you could register the marriage in a single day, even right there in the hospital. The administration would call in a registry office official; there was no need to wait a month. It was all thanks to a special government order now. The president had spoken about it too: they’d created all the necessary conditions. Well, at least something, at least in one respect, she thought with relief, grateful to the state for a change, since she usually thought of it as a deranged threshing machine—you had to hide from it, dodge it, or it would grind you up. And now, look at that, it was taking care of people. Well, thanks; they wouldn’t turn that down. And three million in disability benefits—that wasn’t just money, it was a whole lot of money. If the down payment was big, she could shave a little off her salary each month for the rest. Plus he’d have a pension. He didn’t have to die; Ulyana didn’t have to be a piece of shit, either. On the contrary, on the contrary—he’d pull through, and what then? Was she really going to leave him, leave this Sasha who loved her so much, who called her before his own mother, who, out of everything that had happened to him from childhood right up to the moment he was hit, remembered only her phone number? Was she going to leave him and run off to live her own happy life? No. They were bound together now, after all, and Ulyana wouldn’t leave him; she’d nurse him back to health. He wouldn’t start drinking, either. Hell, who knew, maybe he really would go to the Paralympics one day—if she did her best. It would be scary on her own, sure. Back in the nineties, women had struggled with the veterans who came home from Chechnya, but with resources like these, surely they could manage? Of course they could. She just had to go to the hospital first thing tomorrow morning and get straight in to see the chief doctor, so she could get it all done, one hundred percent. God, let Sasha’s operation go well. God, let it be successful!

Maksim lifted a slab of red fish from the communal platter and, as he carried it to his plate, discreetly sniffed it. No, the smell wasn’t coming from the fish.

The place was crowded and lively. The waiters, trained in the new Moscow style—not drilled, not servile, not fawning, but reservedly smiling, as if simply friendly and welcoming—materialized beside you as soon as you thought of them, then melted into the restaurant din the moment you forgot about them. Everything here was arranged with taste, Maksim had to admit. Beautiful dishes came out, wine was poured into fine glassware, pleasant electronic music played. It hadn’t gone anywhere: Moscow was flourishing. Moscow was buzzing.

He splashed some white wine into his glass and stood up.

“Well, then? Vadik! How old are you turning today? We won’t say it out loud…”

“And rightly so!” the bald birthday boy cut in. “Age is like the weather on your iPhone. It doesn’t matter what it says; what matters is how it feels! And I feel twenty-seven!”

“Exactly,” Maksim smiled. “And you know… When you’ve known someone a long time… You see in their face those very same features you’ve known since they were a kid, since they were young. I mean, I look at you right now and see you in tenth grade. Sure, you’ve got a few wrinkles, I won’t lie, but you’re the same guy. Not just the same as you were at twenty-seven, but the same as you were at sixteen.”

“‘Kids, your mom’s sixteen again…’” Kolyan chimed in. “Ha!”

“Right. And we all know that inside, we’re the same people we were at sixteen, at twenty-seven. So our friends—the closest ones, our school friends… Since first grade, for Christ’s sake… Like us here… They see us the way we see ourselves, all our lives—outside time, outside age. They see who we really are. They understand that age doesn’t exist, that it’s all an illusion. So, Vadik! You’re not even twenty-seven, you’re just seven right now, same as me, and I love you very much!”

“Kiss!” Kolyan shouted.

“Kiss!” the whole table roared in agreement.

Maksim clinked glasses with Vadik, took a big gulp, and plopped back into his seat. There, done. He blotted the sweat from his brow.

Apparently, no one here but him had even thought to question the inappropriateness of what was going on.

He glanced over at his wife. She was chatting animatedly with Kira; her glass, as usual, was still full. Whenever someone made a toast, she took a sip—just so no one would ask questions—then discreetly set it aside. Alcohol didn’t mix with her pills.

It had been a long time since they’d gone out. But it was a classmate’s milestone birthday, and they’d already lived through seventy percent of their lives. Soon enough, the whole thing would be over. They hadn’t made excuses; they’d come. Had they done the right thing? What was the decent thing to do?

Actually, Marina and Maksim could easily afford restaurants, and even before the war they’d tried not to eat dinner at home on Fridays and Saturdays at all: they’d usually pair the latest fashionable fusion food with a concert at the conservatory or a premiere at some experimental theater. The war hadn’t touched the restaurants; they stood just as before, and the food was still just as good. And, hand on heart, their family hadn’t lost much money, either. In a Moscow untouched by war, you could live just as sybaritically as in the prewar city; every opportunity was still there, and Moscow had enough well-off people to keep every place packed, inside and out. As the hostesses said, “We’re fully booked.” If anything, the clientele had changed a little: there were fewer faces polished by two decades of Europeanization, and more that were rough around the edges. The restaurant terraces now seemed to be filled with the same people who ran the Chinese flagships, looking out at the world with that same expression—triumphant and unquestioning. And their appetites were just fine, war or no war.

Maksim was the one who’d lost his appetite.

And where was he supposed to get one? From pictures of Ukrainian cities burning? From drone footage of little people writhing on the ground? From endless fields planted with crosses? From the fact that every day the television sold people all this horror as the fulfillment of their own will? From all the other endless lies, told with a nasty little smirk? From being forced to believe those lies, or at least not argue with them? All of it twisted Maksim’s stomach; it made his throat seize up. It really did. Physically.

In the first year of the war, he’d even argued a few times with friends who kept stubbornly stuffing their faces in restaurants, unwilling to give up their eating habits. He’d said nastily, “Yeah, the Patriarch’s Ponds are still the same, standing there without a tremor, but now they’re serving you human flesh instead of veal. How does it taste?”

They’d told him they weren’t going to give up their peaceful lives—especially since the authorities wanted to take them away. Maybe this was their form of protest! Maksim tried to explain that the authorities, on the contrary, benefited from maintaining the illusion of normality. As long as the war wasn’t total, the authorities wanted Moscow and St. Petersburg to look like peaceful, well-fed cities, with the extermination of people banished to the periphery of mass consciousness and entrusted to special killers—so that anyone who wanted to turn away from the war and not look could do so. And people publicly chewing their way through their food in trendy gastro bars were the very ones normalizing the war, treating it—and thereby making it—like something distant and not frightening, and therefore tolerable and acceptable. Making the war acceptable to everyone was precisely what the authorities wanted.

In the first year of the war, many people agreed with Maksim; in the second, not many; in the third, no one. And by the fourth, Maksim himself—come on in, the water’s fine—was sitting in a restaurant. Fidgeting, but sitting. Sniffing the food, but eating.

Of course, Maksim didn’t say anything about human flesh to Vadik today. Why ruin the man’s birthday? He made his speech. Broke into a sweat. Swallowed. It was out of these little compromises that consensus was built, he pinched himself. But then again… Whom had he convinced with his restaurant abstinence? No one had joined his bold Dolce Vita boycott. Muscovites had been stuffing their faces before, and they were still stuffing their faces now. The rodent squad hadn’t noticed one of their number missing.

While everyone was listening to Kolyan, he poured himself another glass, not waiting for the waiter to deign to serve him, and gulped it down in a hurry. Marina noticed out of the corner of her eye but said nothing.

The Chablis was excellent, and its alcohol content lowered the level of vileness by one degree.

Then Emma stood up. She took off her glasses and wiped them. She began to speak, but her throat tightened. She cleared it. The birthday boy shushed everyone, and they fell quiet and turned toward her.

“You know,” she said clearly, but quietly. “There’s something else I’d like to raise a glass to today. To peaceful skies above our heads.”

Then there was a second of silence. It seemed that the people at the neighboring tables had heard the toast too. They murmured their approval, but quietly, as if someone had said something kind about the deceased at a wake.

“To peaceful skies! And to you, Emmka! You’re a star!” Maksim said to her. “A star!”

He clapped once, twice, three times—and met the waiter’s gaze. The man’s face was strange, unreadable. He stared at Maksim without moving, like a surveillance camera, perhaps memorizing him and the whole group for later identification.

She left a little early to take a walk. Leninsky Prospekt shimmered in the dark; on Gagarin Square, an iron man soared into the deep-blue sky in the beams of the searchlights. And at last there was fresh air. Billboards glowed along the road—now the faces of heroes of the Special Military Operation, now online marketplaces, now mobile carriers—and Ulyana was glad someone had thought to buy advertising for the heroes too, because it was only fair. They had shed blood, after all; people who never left Moscow except to go to Dubai should see their faces. Maybe they’d put Sasha’s face up there one day too, she thought. That would be cool. Ulyana would be proud, so what? You didn’t have to actually die to become a hero of the Special Military Operation on a billboard on Leninsky, did you?

Her mother called. Ulyana didn’t want to answer, but she did.

“Hi.”

“How are you, Ulyash?”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“And how’s Sasha?”

“Sasha’s… I went to see him. I told him.”

“And what did he say? Was he happy?”

“I don’t know, Mom. I’m not sure he understood.”

“It’s okay, he’ll understand eventually. Men are slow on the uptake.”

“Yeah.”

“And how’s my Marinka? And Maksim?”

“They’re doing great.”

“Did they treat you well? Like family, at least?”

“Yeah. Aunt Marina kept asking about you.”

“Well, okay. And here, things are…”

By the time she reached the courtyard, her phone battery was on its last breath. She’d drained it to zero talking to her mother. She trudged through the dark to the entrance and looked up. The windows were black. The guard’s shift was over, too; the booth was empty, the curtains drawn. She sat down again on the same bench where she’d been sitting that morning, to wait for her hosts. It was nearly ten; they probably wouldn’t be much later.

But they still didn’t come. Her stomach started growling, twisting with hunger. She felt a little sick, too, annoyed at Aunt Marina for going out somewhere for the night without telling her.

Instead, some guy appeared in the courtyard. He was loudly talking to himself, laughing, and coming closer and closer to Ulyana. At first she tensed up, thinking he was a junkie, but then she took a closer look—he was just talking to someone through his white earbuds. An ordinary guy, even kind of cute. He stopped by Ulyana’s entrance to finish his conversation, opened a paper tobacco pouch, started rolling himself some funny little cigarette, sealed it, smoothed it out, lit it, then noticed Ulyana and gave her a theatrical bow, smiling warmly, like they were old pals. And as he paced back and forth, he kept talking:

“Nah, bro, you were pretty damn epic yourself. That bit when the three of you were on a scooter—you and the girls—and you crashed into the bushes! Yeah! And the cops were after you, too… I mean… You could’ve gotten your asses kicked so bad… What do you mean, you don’t remember? Did you black out or something? Who was dancing on the roof to Dorn at five in the morning? Yeah, man, yeah! I swear! Well, I get it, absinthe with Sprite, bold choice! Wednesday. They do it Wednesdays there. At Rovesnik. Diana’s playing, yeah. She plays this stuff, you know—sometimes synth-pop, sometimes some Eastern mix—but their best night’s Fridays. They take movie soundtracks and lay beats over them. Yeah. Sure, let’s go together next time. Deal. All right, bro, I’m done smoking. Yeah, big hug. Hug.”

He went over to the trash can, carefully tossed in the butt, returned to the door, tapped his intercom key against it, and turned to Ulyana:

“Aren’t you coming in?”

He was tall, with a wild mop of dark hair, and handsome in that groomed, metropolitan way—not quite Russian, more French, maybe. And there was something familiar about his face, as if they’d known each other a hundred years; someone you could easily strike up a conversation with. His white summer shirt looked as if he’d moored a sailboat right outside this entrance. Ulyana suddenly thought: if Sasha wore a shirt like that, he’d look like a waiter from Shokoladnitsa.

“We are,” she nodded.

“Then we’re headed the same way.”

It didn’t really matter to her where she waited—the courtyard or the landing. It was July, the nights were warm. But for some reason she wanted to say yes, to follow this carefree, cheerful young man wherever… Somewhere.

“Can I?” she asked, getting up from the bench.

“You should!” The guy opened the door, held it with his back, and ushered Ulyana inside.

He didn’t suspect a thing. Didn’t interrogate her. Just let her in, that was all.

“Forgot your keys?” he asked on the stairs. They were climbing in step.

“They haven’t given me any. Haven’t earned them yet,” she said with a wry smile.

“New neighbors?”

“Unexpected guest.”

“Spotter?”

“Raider.”

While they waited for the elevator, silently watching the floor numbers change on the display, he scanned her with his eyes in a split second—more than enough time to intercept a target, of course. Top to bottom, bottom to top, then back to the display.

The soldiers at the hospital, yes, had stared at her, but a soldier’s attention was worth nothing; they were always running short. And to the premium Muscovites who lived inside the MKAD, she was like a cloudy pane of glass: they all looked through her, frowning, and saw right past her. This one was the first to see her as a regular person, not someone from out of town. And… Ulyana thought, he’d seen a woman in her, too. For a second, it seemed again that even Ulyana might somehow find a foothold in Moscow, push off the asphalt and take flight. Her heart clenched—with the possibility and the impossibility of it.

“Seriously, thanks. You saved me,” Ulyana turned to him. “Otherwise I’d still be hanging around on that bench like a bum until my people got here. And then along comes this prince.”

“A prince on a white horse,” the guy laughed, and she could smell some kind of fragrant liquor on him, probably something fancy. “And you’re not Sleeping Beauty by any chance?”

“Looks like I’m the sleepless kind.”

The answer “the kind who doesn’t sleep with anyone” even formed in her mind, but she was too embarrassed to joke like that.

“You’re not a Leo by any chance?” she asked. One hundred percent, he was a Leo!

“Only if you mean a social lion. Which floor?”

“The fifth.”

“You mean the neighbors?” he said in surprise, and suddenly all his mystery fell away, as if someone had sprayed him with antistatic. “Ulyan, is that you?! Unreal!”

Ulyana froze—and then it dawned on her, too.

“Kiryusha?..”

“Whoa! You…”

“And you… Kiryusha? You’re a whole Kirill Maksimovich now…”

“Holy shit. How did I not figure it out…”

“I was thinking, you look kind of familiar…”

“How many years has it been, damn? Like fifteen?”

“More! I was twelve.”

“Seriously…”

Kirill started fumbling with the lock, unable to get the key into the keyhole because he kept glancing at Ulyana, disbelieving. At last he let her into the apartment, and as they crossed the threshold he added:

“Mom did say you’d come… That you’ve got a fiancé here, right? In the hospital…”

It was as if she’d stepped in the dark into an open manhole, and in that brief weightless moment all her insides rushed up into her throat: shame made her go cold. She’d just been flirting with him, having barely left Sasha’s side—and worse, what if Kirill realized she was hitting on the first guy she met while her fiancé was lying there wounded? The heat rose, prickled… God, what a fucking person you are…

Kirill called her into the kitchen.

“Want anything? Cognac or something fizzy?”

“I’ll just have tea. And a sandwich, if there is one.”

“Sure, let’s have tea.”

He poured himself a centimeter of something amber and dropped in some ice. They sat down to tea.

“How is he?” Kirill asked. “Your guy?”

“How do you think…” Ulyana said. “They cut off his legs.”

“Oh. That’s fucked up,” he said, looking upset.

He took a big gulp. Made her a sandwich with doctor’s sausage and handed it to her.

Sasha appeared before Ulyana, with his empty sheet, his puppy eyes, his drugged-out smile. She wanted something to warm her up, too, but she couldn’t. She put three spoonfuls of sugar in her tea.

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Same as me, then? Holy shit.”

At least he wasn’t avoiding the subject of Sasha, like his parents; he wasn’t pretending Ulyana had shown up for no reason, that she’d just come to visit.

He stood, took the bottle off the shelf, and topped himself up. One centimeter hadn’t been enough for him to digest that. Ulyana said nothing. There was nothing to add.

“Do you remember that New Year’s tree? You came to our place for the tree back then, right? The Kremlin one.”

“Of course I remember! I was just thinking about it today…”

“Mom got tickets for us and you guys. I never went before or after that. So, seriously, you’re associated with the Kremlin for me… You were wearing this gold dress, right?”

“That’s right! It was gold!” Ulyana smiled, remembering.

“There you go! Imagine that, it stuck with me… And, oh, another thing—Mom took me to your village. I remember the cellar and a rooster there.”

“What rooster?”

“Some rooster. Black. And I remember this guy sawing wood with a chainsaw, and the smell… Gasoline. And wood.”

Maybe he wasn’t thinking of judging her. Maybe it hadn’t even occurred to him. He was somewhere else: a little boy himself, and Ulyana, twelve years old in a gold dress. Kirill smiled at her, and at himself—and zoned out. Studied the wallpaper. Ulyana started to worry again: what now?

“Poor guy… But, uh…” Kirill rubbed his forehead. “Why didn’t he get the hell out?”

“Where to?”

“Out of Russia.”

“How?”

“Well… How… I mean, he doesn’t have an international passport?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t he get one?”

“Where would he go?” Ulyana smiled wryly. “I don’t have one either. And it costs money.”

“Well, money. But he could’ve gotten away. He was called up, right?”

Ulyana thought for a second, sipping her tea in the meantime. It was a test. But Kiryusha was on Ulyana’s side and was practically giving her the right answer. He wanted Sasha not to serve, to have run away. Was that just because he felt sorry for him, or was he against military service, against the war? He was clearly hoping Sasha had been forced to serve, called up. The right answer: They made him.

She leaned her head forward. Seemed she’d guessed right.

“Fuck… It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s Armenia, Kazakhstan… You can get in with just your domestic passport. Belarus! Listen, yeah… Take me, for example, so we don’t have to look far for one… I personally got a draft notice. September ’22. Remember when they sent them out to everyone? For the mobilization. And another friend of mine got the same lovely letter. So we jumped straight in the car, Mom baked some syrniki for us to take, made sandwiches, and off we went to Georgia. You remember when a million people were stuck in that traffic jam at Verkhny Lars? We were right there with them. Three days in the car. We ate all the sandwiches, then nearly ate each other. But somehow we squeezed through. Anything not to get drafted. It was fucking terrifying.”

Ulyana nodded.

“I see.”

“And that was it, you get me? All he had to do was wait out the worst of it somewhere else, while they were grabbing everyone. They don’t care who shows up and who doesn’t; they’re just counting heads. Whoever turns up, turns up. So they didn’t have to have your guy in particular… Just somebody… Any sucker who had no clue what was going on in the country. I mean… Sorry, I don’t mean…”

Ulyana shrugged.

“I only get one life, Ulyan… What, am I supposed to fucking throw it away? The shit they tell you on TV is all total bullshit, and I know it’s some kind of dick divination, and you know it, and they all know it themselves, but everyone pretends it’s all serious. No offense! That’s why I feel so bad for your guy, too. What did he go through all that for? What for? For nothing, for no reason. Just because our old man went nuts. What did you say his name was? Sasha?”

“Sasha.”

“So what did your Sasha go through all that for?”

Ulyana’s fear of her Moscow relative, the fear of being condemned for thoughtcrime: for being a slut, for betraying Sasha, began to recede; and the memory of the gold dress, the joy of that brief closeness, of sharing a tender scrap of childhood with this stranger, faded too, reverting to an old Polaroid: just blurred outlines. And even the fact that Kirill had taken an interest in Sasha stopped being enough to excuse him. He’d fucked off, that was all. So what? Because he could. Because he had an international passport.

Because he was scared shitless. He was scared shitless, not smart.

That must have shown on her face right away. She’d learned, more or less, to lie with words to survive, but God hadn’t given her much acting talent. She hadn’t even managed to say anything out loud, but he sensed the change in her, saw it through the cognac, too, and started fidgeting, gabbling away.

“Why didn’t you stay in your Georgia?” Ulyana shot back.

“Listen, why didn’t I stay… Well, it’s still pretty rough there. Bare-bones living. Sure, we brought them the best Moscow had to offer—matcha lattes, kinky parties, dog-walking services—but the people there are generally doing their own thing. All of Tbilisi is covered in graffiti saying ‘fuck Russians’ and ‘Russians go home,’ and every conversation with a local starts with me saying I’m not for the war, that I left because of it, that we’re really grateful to you, et cetera. The first three months of this penance were kind of okay, but after that it starts to get a little old. No, I’m genuinely very grateful for their hospitality, and Tbilisi’s a great city, and the people, and khinkali, and the Aragvi, and the Kura, and chacha, and young designers. I get it, they’re within their rights; they’ve seen all kinds of shit from us over the past two hundred years, they’re tired of it too. But not a day goes by without someone reminding you you’re a guest here—as if they’re talking to you while glancing at their watch, wondering when you’re finally going to leave, you know? And honestly, it’s nowhere near Moscow—not for matcha, not for kinky parties. Well, just… I’m a Muscovite, damn it, it’s my home, I miss it, how long can you go on like that, you know? I want my own apartment, to see Mom and Dad, not to be a guest anymore…”

Ulyana frowned.

“And what about the draft notice? It’s still hanging over you, isn’t it?”

“Yeah… The draft notice. So what about it? This is how they work: they have a KPI, how many people they have to hand over to the old man to feed. The old man says, ‘I want to eat!’ They do the math—okay, we need three hundred thousand people. What do we do? Let’s hold a death lottery. Send out a million draft notices completely at random. We get three hundred thousand, Grandpa gets his meal, the rest are free for now. My buddy and I came back, and some other guys did too, and nothing happened, no one got picked up. Then Sobyanin even said something like, ‘That’s it, relax.’ It’s always the same in Russia: this blazing Eye of Sauron sweeps left to right and right to left, and whoever gets caught in the laser beam gets incinerated to fuck, well, sorry. What did you expect? This is the motherland, son; everyone knows the rules. And those who managed to dodge it are like, ‘Oh, cool, we got away with it, we’re alive!’ So we keep hanging out. Well, if that’s the case, we keep hanging out, right?”

We keep hanging out, Ulyana repeated silently after him. So what.

“I, uh…” She stood up. “I should probably go. I have to get up early tomorrow, go to the hospital again.”

“Huh? Yeah… Sure. I understand.”

He got up too—to pour himself a little more. She put her empty cup in the sink, thought for half a second, and decided to rinse it. He was sipping behind her. Enjoying himself. Ulyana turned around. It was strange to forget how, half an hour ago, she’d been able to see a handsome guy in him.

“Good night.”

“Wait,” he said. “Here, take my key. Keep it. So you don’t have to stand outside the building if anything happens.”

“Merci much.”

She washed up, hid in her room, and lay down.

As soon as she turned out the light, she was back in the hospital room in front of Sasha. She entered from the hospital corridor again, saw for the first time again the emptiness beneath the sheet, his sunken eyes ringed in black, the corners of his lips turned up; and there it was again: “How am I going to raise him?”

That time, an answer had come to Ulyana right away, but now she was at a loss. It had been easy to lie to Sasha when he was on medication, but now he’d sobered up, stopped grinning, and was watching her sternly, like a dead man.

“Hello. Yeah, I thought I’d call you properly, with my voice, yeah. Am I interrupting? Well, I don’t know, what, some intellectual podcast or something. Yeah, that’s how I imagine your evenings. Well… First you work on your reputation, then your reputation works for you… I just wanted to pay my respects, so to speak, since the whole thing was kind of rushed… Yeah, I take my hat off to you, that set was fucking bomb. And the style… Madam, you’ve gained a devoted fan in me. It’s immediately obvious the references are serious. No, their Thursdays don’t even compare to your Fridays! Yeah, there’s some seriously hardcore beast-fucking playing there, I swear, just steam coming out of my ears. No, no, you’re the best, definitely.”

Ulyana was already standing by the door, her ear pressed to the wood, and every word came through clearly. Kirill was chatting in the kitchen, but had no intention of shutting himself away in there. He wasn’t embarrassed in front of his cousin—or maybe he’d already forgotten she was there. He’d plunged into the ice hole, thought about death: brrr!—and climbed back into the warmth.

“Dianaaa… What if we, like, went to dinner? Just an idea. Yeah. How about tomorrow, then? ‘Lucky Izakaya.’ Yeah. Why not? An immortal classic. Sure, it’s got a Japanese focus, but it’s pan-Asian fusion. And there’s that place right in the courtyard nearby, too… Uh-huh. Then we can crawl over to Level Two, just for a little while. Tempting? Gedzhu’s playing there. You don’t completely reject other performers, do you? It’ll be totally chill. I have work too. Yoga in the morning, the road in the evening? No, wait, what’s the right version? Synagogue in the afternoon? I’m kidding. All right then, I’ll book it, okay? Yay!”

They hung up.

Ulyana crawled back to her room, wrapped herself in the sheet like a caterpillar, and stared into the darkness. The darkness kept her out for a long time, but eventually swallowed her whole.

They were already driving home, late at night, when Maksim’s phone rang in his pocket. He pulled it out—“Mitya.” Another old school friend who had finally made up his mind and left for Israel when the war began. For years he’d been moaning that he couldn’t go on like this, and then three years ago he finally took the plunge.

Marina took her eyes off the road for a moment, glanced at the screen, and nodded to Maksim: go ahead, talk.

“Hey, Mityai.”

“Shalom, Orthodox folks!” Mitya launched straight in. “So, how did Vadik’s birthday go? I called him too.”

“Very nice,” Maksim said.

“Where’d you go?”

“Pandemonium on Nikitskaya. The new one.”

“Fusion, I bet? What’d they serve you? Zimbabwean sweet potato with Iranian black caviar and tender kumquat with young Arkhangelsk herring?”

“I don’t really remember. But it was delicious, unfortunately.”

“I remember it all,” Mitya laughed. “That sweet potato visits me in my dreams at night. And young potatoes grown by the monks of Valaam, with whipped cream made from buffalo milk. What else was there… By the way, ‘restaurant’ in Hebrew is misada.”

“Everything’s still here, Mit’,“ Maksim assured him. “Come visit.”

“No thanks. Better you come to us.”

“How is that better? They’re bombing you like crazy over there; even we see it on TV. Why are you still sitting there? You might as well have left.”

“Well, you get used to everything,” Mitya said. “Right, Max?”

“Not everything.”

“Everything!” Mitya countered confidently. “So how was it—everyone gathered around the table. Did you talk about the war?”

“About your war or ours?” Maksim jabbed, beginning to get annoyed that Mitya was dragging him into these conversations over the phone.

“The war with Ukraine.”

“Listen… Let’s talk when we meet, okay? Have you already forgotten what it’s like here?”

“When we meet…” Mitya sighed disappointedly.

“What do you want to hear?” Maksim said, trying to keep his voice steady as his insides clenched. “Only Andrey among our crowd went full Z, but Vadik wouldn’t have invited him anyway. Otherwise… Emmka made a toast against the war. Everyone here understands everything, Mit. Nobody’s in favor. But what can we do right now? Nobody can do anything. We can only get thrown in jail, and that’s it.”

Marina shot him a warning look and shook her head: she understood too that it was inappropriate to discuss this over the phone, even on WhatsApp. Mitya just didn’t understand. He used to know, but now he’d forgotten. He didn’t want to remember, was showing off his amnesia.

“You could’ve left, and you wouldn’t have had to live like this.”

“Where to? Unlike you, I don’t have a Jewish grandpa.”

“Everyone has a Jewish grandpa,” Mityay declared confidently. “The question is how desperate you are. Apparently, you’re not desperate enough yet.”

“And anyway,” Maksim said angrily, “why should we leave? This is our country. Let that whole St. Petersburg gang get out of it.”

“Our country!” Mitya giggled. “You really are such a sweetie. The country of victorious fascism.”

“And what about you?” Maksim cut in.

“Well, right now it’s akol beseder, as they say. But what happened two weeks ago, when the Iranians kicked up a fuss, hasn’t happened again so far. Two hundred ballistic missiles at little Tel Aviv. That was something, of course… I used to live in a house without a mamad, had to run to the miklat, and every night there’d be an azaka. Now it’s great—I live in a new place with a mamad. You just move into another room, basically, sit there watching a movie.”

“And you’re not scared?”

“I am. Well, scared—there’s no time to freak the fuck out. But it’s this feeling, you know… That this is your home. Your home, you understand? The country’s small. Get on the rakevet, and in half an hour you’re in Jerusalem, in an hour you’re in Haifa. They attacked you. You hit back. They’ve dug tunnels all over Gaza. Our guys went in with tanks, digging them out. Once they’ve dug them all out, there’ll be peace. You just have to wait it out. And then there’s Iran, too.”

“Who, all of them?”

“The little Arabs.”

“There are civilians there,” Maksim told him.

“They take up rifles at thirteen there,” Mitya told him. “Don’t believe TV so much.”

“And isn’t that the same as here?” Maksim asked. “Sounds pretty similar.”

Marina signaled that it would be good to wrap things up. Besides, they were almost home.

“It’s not the same at all,” Mitya replied.

“But there’s a lot that’s similar,” Maksim said by way of goodbye.

Only three years had passed, and the man was already speaking—and thinking—in a language Maksim couldn’t understand. And when he’d lived in Moscow, somehow they’d understood each other without needing to say much.