I

Embryo

 

Nami, bathed in sweat, holds his gramma’s blubbery hand. The waves from the lake slap against the concrete pier. He hears screams, more like shrieks, coming from the town beach. If he’s on the blanket with his gramma and grampa, it must be a Sunday. There’s one other person there too. Nami pictures three dark spots, the three triangles of a bikini, with a long dark tail of hair hanging down, brushed out like the tail of a horse, and two dark tufts of hair visible in the underarms. The three triangles move slowly in the sun, turning over again and again, until there’s only one. A little way offshore, a catfish lazily flicks its tail.

‘The surface seems lower than it used to be,’ Nami’s gramma says, smacking a fly as it lands on her belly. She chews roasted sunflower seeds, purchased from the stand on the beach, spitting the shells onto the concrete in front of her.

‘What’re you talking about?’ Nami’s grampa laughs. ‘Women’s wisdom—second worst thing in the world, next to a hangover!’

He rocks back and forth as he laughs, hands on his thighs. In one hand, wedged between the dirty, chewed-up fingers, is an unfiltered cigarette.

The three triangles pick up a thermos, turn to Nami, and pour him a cup of mint tea.

‘Have a drink, dove.’ Well, what do you know? The three triangles have a voice. It’s pleasantly deep, like the old well behind their house. Nami takes a drink. The honey-sweetened tea is delicious, sliding easily down his throat.

‘Let’s go, dove,’ his grampa says. ‘You don’t want anyone calling you a sissy. Every boy around here can swim by the time they’re three.’

He runs a hand over his rounded belly. Flicks the cigarette butt into the water, where it lands with a hiss. Nami doesn’t want to go in the water. He wants to lie on the blanket, resting his head on his gramma’s soft belly and watching the three red triangles. He attempts to lift a hand, but it just drops lazily back in his lap.

‘Go on, Nami,’ his gramma says. ‘I’ll buy you a lollipop.’

The cellophane always sticks to the lollipop. You can never get it off. The only time Nami ever gets one is on World Peace Day or when the three triangles come to visit. He doesn’t really like the taste of burnt sugar and violets, but he so rarely gets one that he always looks forward to it and is willing to do whatever he’s asked.

Nami slowly gets to his feet, but before he can fully stand he finds himself flying through the air.

‘Now swim, sturgeon!’ his grampa shouts, bursting into laughter. The three triangles scream. So does Nami’s gramma. Landing painfully on his side, Nami breaks through the surface and sinks down into the dark water. Looking up, he can see the faint shine of the sun in the swarm of bubbles trailing behind him.

His lungs ache, he’s had the wind knocked out of him. The deeper he sinks, the colder the water gets. Nami sinks numbly, arms outstretched, flapping at his side. Any second now, he thinks, he’s going to see the Lake Spirit. The pressure on his lungs grows, his ears feel like they’re about to explode. Instinctively he gasps for breath and swallows a mouthful of water. He can’t see anymore. Waving his arms and legs wildly, he makes his way toward the surface. Everything is black and shiny.

‘Stupid old fool,’ his gramma says as Nami finally catches his breath, furiously coughing up dirty water. ‘You old ass, I wouldn’t trust you with a can of worms!’

‘What’s wrong? He’s fine, isn’t he? You saw the boy swim, right?’ Nami’s grampa says in a defensive tone. His voice is trembling slightly. ‘A true warrior!’

‘Come here, dove,’ the three triangles say from the depths of the earth, wrapping Nami in their arms. One pounding chest on another. Nami settles down and stops coughing. The skin beneath the triangles is warm and bronze and smells nice. The three triangles hold him close, kissing his hair and speaking in whispers. The woman’s hair tickles his face, and she begins to sing.

‘Stop singing to him!’ Nami’s gramma shouts. Nami shudders, then lies still, not moving a muscle. He pretends that he’s dead, that he’s not even there. The singing falls away to nothing but a thick sound with each exhale, like a bell’s vibrations dying down after the clapper has stopped. Nami wishes he could stay that way forever. He steals a glance at the woman’s face, but all he can see is the tip of her nose and her prominent cheekbones. As they’re walking home, Nami faints and his grampa has to carry him.

Instead of passing through the square with the statue of the Statesman and the ditch the Russians bulldozed for people to dump trash in, they take the back way, around the apartment complex.

‘You’re quite a load, boy,’ grumbles Nami’s grampa. His foot slips and he stiffens, barely catching his balance in time to avoid a fall. When they reach home, Nami gets his lollipop. He licks it more out of obligation than enjoyment while furtively keeping his eye on the three triangles, which meanwhile have changed into a blue-and-green flower-print dress. As soon as he has the chance, he reaches out to touch it, and is rewarded with a wonderful smell.

That evening Nami has a violent fit of nausea. His stomach contracts uncontrollably, ejecting torrents of dirty water, mint tea, and lumps of sheep cheese blini. The blue-and-green flower-print dress strokes his forehead, holding his head while he vomits, wiping his mouth and whispering in a soothing voice. ‘Shh, dove, everything’s going to be all right.’

The next morning when Nami wakes up, the blue-and-green dress is gone. He takes a sip of black Russian tea and throws it back up immediately.

***

Nami grew up surrounded by the smell of fish, so he never really noticed it. The small town of Boros has a sturgeon hatchery and, right next door, a fish processing plant. Alea, their neighbour, works in the fish factory. Sometimes she comes over to sit on their stoop and brings a bucket of caviar to trade for a sack of potatoes. Then Nami eats caviar every day for breakfast and dinner. He sits over the bucket, scooping it up by the spoonful until he’s sick to his stomach.

‘You ate it all?’ asks his gramma.

Nami lowers his eyes and stares at the floor.

‘That’s all right,’ she says. ‘Caviar is the healthiest thing in the world. After ginseng!’

‘And after a good fuck,’ says the old man with a grin from the corner of the room. He rubs the corner of his eye with his thumb, gripping an unfiltered cigarette between his index finger and his misshapen middle finger.

‘Grampa, you should be ashamed!’ Nami’s gramma chides him. But she’s grinning too. She fries a batch of blini and slathers them with butter. ‘You eat like a VIP,’ she says, smiling at Nami as she fills his plate. Nami likes caviar, but he feels like that can’t be all there is. He hopes that something more meaningful lies in store, but at four years old he doesn’t have the words yet to express it. He crushes the little black beads between his teeth, absently picking at the scab on his knee.

His gramma has a big lump on her tailbone, broad bony hips, and a soft tummy Nami likes to fall asleep on. She strokes his hair with a hard, dry hand as she tells him stories about the Spirit of the Lake and the warriors of the Golden Horde, who sleep in Kolos Mountain, waiting until the great warrior comes to wake them up.

‘Will that be me?’ Nami asks.

‘Of course it will, my boy,’ his gramma smiles.

‘But how will I find them?’

‘Providence will show you the way, dove.’ Nami hears his gramma’s words and peacefully drifts off to sleep.

***

It’s Fishery Day, the biggest holiday of the year. The whole town gathers on the square around the statue of the Statesman, the children dressed in snow-white shirts, boys with colourful neckties, girls with bows in their hair. Akel the vendor, who normally sells herring and sunflower seeds from his stall, also has cotton candy and luscious doughnuts, soaked in burned fat. Today is the day when none of the fishermen go out on the lake because they’re all celebrating. By eleven a.m., almost nobody is left standing on their feet; they have sacrificed too mightily to the Spirit of the Lake.

The chairman of the fish processing plant gives a long speech, singing the praises of progress and collectivization as he shifts his gaze from the lake to the sky and back again. A man with a shaman’s headdress on—though nobody mentions him, as if he weren’t really there—dances around the statue of the Statesman. The Russian engineers and their wives, standing in the first line of listeners, are dressed in big-city fashion; the women in high heels, leather purses over their arms, hair brushed high. The local women speak of them with contempt; sometimes they even spit. One of the small Russian boys, despite the dumb look on his face, is an object of admiration, riding back and forth across the square in a squeaky pedal car. Nami can’t take his eyes off him. He grips his gramma’s sweaty hand, crossing his legs; he badly needs to go pee. In one hand he holds a parade waver shaped like a fish. His grampa stands next to him on the other side, swaying unsteadily, head drooping; every now and then he loudly smacks his lips. They hear the sound of thunder, or maybe gunfire from the Russian barracks. The Russian engineers and their wives look at one another in disgust and shake their heads. Nobody has been listening to the speech for a while now. The women converse in a lowered voice, but no one leaves, out of courtesy. They all have their minds on the banquet that awaits them in the fish processing plant: blini with caviar, herring in mayonnaise, onion tarts, blackberry wine for the women, and plenty of hard liquor for their men. Nami can’t stop watching the green pedal car, cruising over the bumps and potholes like a tank. He tries to look away but can’t. Even when he shuts his eyes, he still sees the car. His insides ache, squirming with envy.

‘Can we go now, Gramma?’

‘Soon, just hold on.’

‘How much longer?’

‘Just a little while.’

For a five-year-old boy, a little while is practically an eternity.

‘Gramma?’

‘What is it now?’

Nami doesn’t say a word.

‘You peed yourself.’

Nami’s grampa wakes from his snooze and glances around uncertainly.

‘The boy peed himself,’ Nami’s gramma whispers, elbowing the old man.

‘Idiot,’ he rasps.

A stain slowly spreads across the front of Nami’s shorts as a stream of urine runs down his thighs. It thunders again, this time with lightning too. Wind whips the last few pages of the speech the factory chairman still has left in front of him, and without further warning the sky rips open, gushing water like when Nami’s gramma empties out the washtub. As the women’s hair collapses, blue make-up streams down their faces in hydrologic maps, their high heels slipping in the mud that has suddenly formed on the square, but the chairman of the fish factory goes on speaking. The statue of the Statesman silently raises its arms to the sky. Nami is instantly soaked to the skin. All that’s left of his parade wand is a wooden rod and streaks of red paint on his arm. The square has turned into a ploughed field, people sunk in mud up to their ankles and losing their shoes. The boy in the pedal car gets stuck in the mud and starts to cry. Nami’s grampa tips back his head and lets the rain fall on his face. The square lies on a slight slope, so it doesn’t take the boys long to realise the mud is great for sliding in. Akel desperately tries to keep his stand from slipping away downhill. Doughnuts tumble off the counter, dropping in the mud.

‘It’s the Apocalypse,’ Nami’s grampa mumbles, beginning to sober up.

Water continues to pour from the sky, gradually filling the boy’s pedal car. The microphone gives out entirely, but the chairman goes on speaking. It’s like a silent comedy, except for the roar of the rain and the thunder, which every now and then strikes so close by that Nami’s gramma twitches and looks toward the lake in terror. The shaman slowly walks away, gripping his headdress. Then, following his lead, the crowd hypnotically stirs into motion. The factory chairman lowers his arm holding the microphone. Water runs down the collar of his jacket, down his shirt. He gazes accusingly at the sky. Nami can’t help himself, overcome by uncontrollable laughter, giggling like a madman. His gramma rolls her eyes at him, but Nami just laughs even more, still laughing hysterically as his gramma drags him home by the hand.

Nami doesn’t stop laughing until they cross the threshold of his house. His gramma slaps him across his sopping-wet thighs and his laughter finally stops, but he still hiccups long into the night.

They caught a lot of fish that year.

***

Sometimes Nami wakes up in bed in the morning with the sun shining into his eyes. It must be vacation, or his gramma would have woken him up. It’s probably warmer outside than indoors. From the kitchen Nami can hear his grampa’s smoker’s cough and the horn of a tugboat in the distance. He throws his arms and legs wide on the bed and stares up at the ceiling, where bunches of thyme and lady’s mantle are drying. He feels like he could spend the rest of his life like this. If he sits up in bed, he can see all the way to the lake. He stretches out and puts on his clothes. On the kitchen table he finds a plateful of doughnuts waiting, fried for breakfast by his gramma. They’re only lukewarm now. He runs outside, determined to build a hideout in the branches that will last—not like last time, when the whole thing fell apart and he got a scrape on his back.

The only tree for miles around is a cherry tree with a reddish-brown trunk that got struck by lightning, now half its branches are withered. Nami drags over a few large boards of various length and thickness. As they slip and start to fall, he has to tie them together with rope. He tries to nail them in place with his grampa’s carpenter’s hammer, which weighs at least ten pounds. The tree groans, the branches shake, and the boards resist, sliding away. The nail runs clear through the board into empty space.

‘Fucking hell!’ Nami screams, throwing the hammer to the ground.

‘What are you doing up there, boy?’ Nami’s grampa bellows, stepping out of the outhouse. ‘Lucky for you you don’t have a father, you miserable brat, or he’d tan your hide!’

Nami stops and thinks a minute, wondering what it would be like to have his hide tanned by a father. He actually likes the idea.

‘Our only tree and he goes and wrecks it. As if he hasn’t done enough damage already,’ Nami’s grampa hollers in the direction of his gramma. She stands with one hand propped on her hip, the other one shading her eyes as she searches for Nami.

Nami sits on the ground now, behind the toolshed, breaking rocks. He lifts the heavy hammer high over his head, then brings it down, closing his eyes. He repeats the motion again and again, till streams of sweat run off him and the stone turns to dust. He finds it satisfying. He stares in amazement at the palms of his hands, which have broken out in huge blisters.

He tosses the hammer into the grass and runs down to the lake to wash off the dust.

‘C’mere, you little runt! I’ll hammer you like a nail!’ his grampa shouts after him.

Nami keeps running. He knows his grampa will never catch him.

 

Translated by Alex Zucker