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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nTwo Sisters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Went to see the Shulinskys yesterday. Adik has put on even more weight, and Marina has dyed her hair again. It suits her. Shall I dye mine, too? No, probably not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We talked about what everyone\u2019s talking about these days: how bad things have got, how they\u2019re bound to get worse soon, very soon indeed. Marina was talking about how happy she was that their son Boris was finishing school somewhere in England: he\u2019s only just turned eighteen; here, he might have been snatched into the army. They\u2019re hoping he\u2019ll enrol at a university there and not come back. Adik was explaining about the sanctions, and Marina said that the Nazarovs had left. Just like that: Misha had left without saying goodbye to me. As if there\u2019d never been anything between us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kostya complained about the pay cuts at the language school. It has a grand name \u2013 State Foreign Language Courses, but the pay is poor. He used to earn fifty thousand at 75% of a full-time position. They cut it to forty as the war began. Another thirty thousand as a PhD bonus, the only reason he\u2019d wrote his PhD thesis on Castelo Branco, an utterly irrelevant 19th-century Portuguese writer, known, but only in his native country, as \u2018Camilo\u2019. I read him in Kostya\u2019s translation and couldn\u2019t see anything remarkable. The man\u2019s life was more interesting than his work, though: scandals, affairs, prison, a big name at the Portuguese court of his time\u2026 At the end, he went blind and shot himself out of despair. Must have realised that nobody cared about him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody cares about the Portuguese language, either: those who speak it no longer come here. Russians used to go to Angola, and Angolans used to come to Moscow, meaning that Kostya made some extra cash interpreting. There was plenty going on in Angola \u2013 oil, diamonds, uranium, some other stuff, can\u2019t remember. He\u2019d told me about it, but I never really understood why we\u2019d need resources from there if we have them ourselves. Admittedly, I didn\u2019t particularly try to understand: it was an alien life, an alien world. Outside my windows. Outside the windows of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We lecturers used to get extra pay for publications but now we hardly ever do. I don\u2019t get anything for film reviews anymore, either. I write columns for two online publications, but I don\u2019t really feel like writing, what without pay and with the new films not being worth watching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At least they haven\u2019t cut the rates at the University of Cinematography yet, I\u2019m getting paid as before. I don\u2019t have a full-time position, either; still, I make more than Kostya. For now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Shulinskys are lucky: Adik\u2019s advertising agency keeps him going. Keeps him fed. Keeps their son at a boarding school abroad. Kostya and I never really made any money. Then again, we\u2019re better off than Nina: she works as a museum curator, and things are dire there. Really dire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Nina found Jesus five years ago, and life\u2019s troubles no longer bother her. Nina, Nina… How much fun we had together! Any day, anything could happen. And did happen. My best friend, she was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nina dresses \u2018modestly\u2019 now \u2013 calf-length skirts, high-necked blouses, long sleeves. On Sundays, a headscarf: she puts it on for church and keeps it on, walks about all day with her head covered. As for her legs, they are covered all the time. Even though she\u2019s got legs like a model, the stupid thing! A shame to hide them under these skirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve always wanted legs like Nina\u2019s: shapely, long, slender, like those of a mannequin in the window of an expensive boutique. Chiselled legs. Now always concealed under a skirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My legs are my weak point. I mean, they\u2019re straight, but not very long. Proportional. Nina\u2019s are like a fawn\u2019s \u2013 a bit out of proportion, which is where the beauty lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My legs are classic, like those of ancient statues. Only my ankles aren\u2019t slim. I\u2019d like them to be slim, like Nina\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I know her legs like my own. We used to fool around back in the day, just for fun, to try it out. With women, it\u2019s always only about pleasure for me, I don\u2019t expect a relationship: I expect sensations. But men \u2013 I aim to get them hooked, to make them need me. As if I was afraid that I had no other kind of worth. That I wasn\u2019t interesting. It\u2019s because my parents didn\u2019t need me. Nobody ever needed me, except Kostya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mark once explained this to me, a long, long time ago. When I was sleeping with all of his friends, and all of mine. With everyone, really. As if I were building an army, recruiting. Every guy \u2013 another box checked, another recruit made. Another friend. Now he needs me. Stupid, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I<\/em> don\u2019t need me. That\u2019s what\u2019s scary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The war began on the telly, and for a long time, there it stayed. I mean, we all understood that something terrible had happened, that they<\/em> had started a war. But it was their war. Their war, for them to fight. Outside our windows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We should have realised that our windows had long since been smashed. I saw it before the others: when Daletskaya appeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n August in Moscow is a time of waiting for another life to begin. Life will restart in September; in summer, the city stands empty, hushed, weighed down by the dusty heat. Everyone\u2019s at their dachas, but we had none: Dad didn\u2019t like country life. The money from his films first went to buy a flat on Vorotnikovsky, and afterwards, simply spent on living. Then it ran out, and the possibility of a dacha vanished all by itself. Kostya and I used to visit friends\u2019 dachas. I went to my friends\u2019 dachas without him, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The possibility of a dacha. Inspired by Houellebecq. Unattainable, just like an island. And just as illusory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was a Thursday. Why should that matter? No idea, but I remember: Daletskaya turned up on a Thursday. I forgot the date, sometime in late August, but I definitely remember it having been a Thursday. A summer morning, the flat filled with shadows from the early Moscow sun seeping through the light tulle curtains. The windows were shut against the nighttime chill and the daytime flies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I waited for the lift to stop on our floor and peered through the peephole: no one there. Though the lift doors had opened and closed, I\u2019d heard the rubber smacking. Then, the doorbell rang. Still, no one in the peephole. I opened the door and didn\u2019t see her at first, looking straight ahead. I should have looked down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daletskaya has a beautiful voice: rich in overtones, soft, captivating. Makes you want to listen. She must have got it from her actress mother. Then again, my mother is an actress too, but I inherited neither her ballet shape nor her purring voice, the voice of an affectionate big cat just before it devours you. I wonder what she was like with men. They must have gone mad over her: a beauty, an actress. Exotic looks \u2013 dusky complexion, black hair, dark eyes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s all I got from her: the duskiness, the eye colour. But I\u2019m not olive-skinned like her, my complexion is sort of grey. Not as beautiful. Dad\u2019s blood had diluted Mum\u2019s exotic looks to produce my greyish skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At first I thought it was a child at the door. Then I realised: she was a dwarf. Standing there, smiling. Her head too large for her body. Somehow she seemed to meet me at eye level rather than from below. To this day I don\u2019t know how she, with her height, manages to look at people this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You must be Asya? I nod. I\u2019m Polina Daletskaya. I\u2019m here to see Roman Kirillovich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was about to say he was still asleep but for some reason didn\u2019t. Please come inside, I\u2019ll call him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She came in, followed by her little red plastic suitcase. It now stands behind Dad\u2019s desk in the study. Her things are laid out in the cabinet beneath the bookshelves, where we used to keep albums of family photographs \u2013 of Grandma, Grandad, me as a little girl, Dad on film sets. Now the cabinet is home to Daletskaya\u2019s things, small just like herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s okay, Asya, I\u2019m used to people staring at me, I don\u2019t take offence. What can you do if you were born like this? I don\u2019t mind. It doesn\u2019t hurt me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her head and neck look quite normal, it\u2019s as if her body had been squeezed from the shoulders down. Daletskaya is a hundred and thirty-seven centimetres tall: once, when we were standing side by side, I noted where she came up to on me, and later measured it on myself. Maybe it wasn\u2019t right to do that, but I did. I needed to for some reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [\u2026]<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n I graduated the year Putin decided to come back. On 12 June, I was defending my thesis on silent cinema, whilst the March of the Millions from Pushkin Square to Bolotnaya was trying to make itself heard. They had their words, I had my silence. That was all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lots of students from our year went. I asked Mark, but he only laughed. He sat me down on the sofa in front of him, made himself comfortable on the floor the floor the way he liked, and gave me a speech about the Age of Enlightenment and its culmination, the French Revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asya, he said, you must understand: when the Enlightenment emerged as a reaction to the calamities of the 17th century \u2013 the plague, the Thirty Years\u2019 War, the schism in Europe \u2013 and replaced God with man, it did not solve humanity\u2019s problems. Society\u2019s problems. Liberty, equality, fraternity? Liberty transformed into liberalism, capitalism, the dictatorship of money. Equality ended in Marxism and the dictatorship of the proletariat. And fraternity turned into nationalism, which soon evolved into Nazism as its purest, unadulterated form, and gave rise to a third dictatorship, that of a single, chosen nation over all others. Three fine words and good intentions \u2013 libert\u00e9, \u00e9galit\u00e9, fraternit\u00e9 \u2013 created three dictatorships, putting an end to all liberty, equality, and fraternity. Those at the roots of these projects lost control, and the projects took on a logic of their own, a course of their own, one that ended in catastrophe. When you participate, you have to answer for the outcome. That is why I chose not to participate. Not in anything. You can choose what you want but remember: you will have to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t join the Bolotnaya protest in June, nor in September. I chose not to participate in something I couldn\u2019t control. What could I control? Myself, my life. Even that, not entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What was outside my windows stayed. Dad, Mum, and I lived apart from what was happening there. Mark\u2019s friends \u2013 my lovers \u2013 lived for themselves and for each other. Back then, I didn\u2019t realise then I was only a lover to them. I thought they were my friends, too. That they needed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sweet little Asya. Free to do anything. The time to answer for it all would come later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s how we lived \u2013 quite apart from everything that wasn\u2019t us. Life went on, life happened, raged in the squares and on TV, but we didn\u2019t go to the squares and didn\u2019t turn on the telly. We didn\u2019t participate. And didn\u2019t realise that this was also something we\u2019d have to answer for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once I asked Mark why he hadn\u2019t emigrated. Sure I have, laughed Mark. Straight away. At birth. I left and never came back. I live in my own country, which I built for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s the name of your country, Mark? Its name is MARK GELFAND. Population: one person. No entry permitted, no visas issued. The border is sealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hoped, prayed almost, that Mark would open the border of his country for me. That he would meet me at the checkpoint and lead me into our shared home. I told myself I was already there, inside. That I\u2019d been issued a new passport, that he would take me into his life. Forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asya, darling, Mark laughed, you must understand, baby, my country is a country for one: for me. Build your own country and live in it. Or you\u2019ll end up like your mother, in a foreign country \u2013 your father\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I didn\u2019t want my own country: I wanted to live in MARK GELFAND. It wouldn\u2019t let me in. Or it did, but on a tourist visa, not for permanent residence. Because it only had room for one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kostya Muromtsev, my future husband, was a gift handed over to me by Nina. She\u2019d been sleeping with him for a couple of months, their relationship going nowhere because the only relationship Nina wanted was with someone else, and that one wasn\u2019t going anywhere, either: the man turned out to be hopelessly married. Two children, still at school. Nina kept hoping that the children would grow up, and then<\/em>\u2026 The children were growing up, and \u2018then\u2019 kept getting pushed back \u2013 until they started university, until his wife recovered from a sudden illness, until his next poetry collection was published. Things were always just about to happen. But they never did. While waiting for \u2018then\u2019, Nina would start affairs to soothe herself, choosing the most handsome and most pointless men she could find. Of all the handsome and pointless men at that time, the most handsome and pointless one was my future husband, Kostya Muromtsev.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He really was handsome, still is, indecently handsome for a man. Why isn\u2019t he gay with looks like that? No idea. As I said: the world is full of riddles. Sometimes they try to pass themselves off as mysteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kostya looks like the Soviet actor Kostolevsky, only completely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you want him? Nina asked. Take him. I have no serious intents. And he, does he have serious intents? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Are you for real? Nina laughed. Asya, you are the one he\u2019ll have serious intents for. Have you seen how he looks at you? In two months, he never once looked at me like this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few years later, I asked her if she regretted giving him away. She didn\u2019t even understand what I was asking at first, she\u2019d forgotten all about it. Forgotten the married man, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, Nina lives with her god. She married him. Like a nun, a bride of Christ. Her long skirt concealing her amazing legs, her head covered with a black scarf on Sundays, modest clothes for every day and fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays. Hoping for salvation. Salvation from what, Nina? From whom? Eyes downcast, a prayer on her lips. She prays for me. That I might see. That I might find salvation. No sense in that, I won\u2019t be saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fasting instead of feasting \u2013 that\u2019s Nina now. The horror of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love Kostya. Very much. He needs me. He is mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love Mark. Very much. He doesn\u2019t need me. I\u2019m not his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad didn\u2019t wake up straight away when that Thursday \u2013 but what was the date? \u2013 I came into his bedroom, leaving the little woman with the red suitcase in the hallway. I didn\u2019t invite her into the living room. But did it help, not inviting her? It didn\u2019t: that day, she settled in our kitchen, taking over Glasha\u2019s sofa, and now she lives in Dad\u2019s study. I shouldn\u2019t have let her in at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad was wearing his pyjamas. I don\u2019t know anyone else who actually wears pyjamas to sleep. Dark blue, with a sheen. I don\u2019t remember where he got them, two identical pairs. When one pair is in the wash, he sleeps in the other. Sometimes he walks about the house in them all day, late into the night. Sits in his study in his dark blue pyjamas. Works on a new film in his dark blue pyjamas. What sort of film can you make wearing pyjamas? One that puts the audience to asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad, someone\u2019s here to see you. Who? From the studio? No, not from the studio. A woman. With a red suitcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He spent a long while washing his face, trying to wake himself up. Then he stepped out into the hallway, bright with the sunlight spilling in from the living room windows. There he stood. He didn\u2019t realise straight away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Hello, Roman Kirillovich\u2019, said the little woman. \u2018I\u2019m here to see you. I\u2019m from Bryansk.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad nodded. And suddenly shuddered, ran a hand over his face. He does that when he\u2019s nervous. But why would he be? So there was some woman from Bryansk. A fan, probably. Though too young to be a fan of his. Younger than me. Or maybe not, perhaps dwarves look younger than they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018From Bryansk? You said you were from Bryansk?\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Yes\u2019, Polina the dwarf nodded. \u2018Mother died. It\u2019s been about a month.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n She said it simply, without sadness, as if her mother had not died but gone away on holiday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dad was silent. I was silent too. The sunlight on the walls was silent with us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018What happened \u2013 \u2019 Dad faltered. \u2018She isn\u2019t\u2026 she wasn\u2019t old at all.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018A blood clot. She didn\u2019t suffer, died in her sleep. I found her one morning. She wasn\u2019t coming out of her room for the longest time, so I went in to check. And she was dead.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the sound of the voices, Kostya peered out from our bedroom, his wavy hair falling to his shoulders beautifully, as if he wasn\u2019t fresh out of bed, as if he\u2019d only just had it styled at the hairdresser\u2019s. Some people are lucky this way. He\u2019d only stuck his head out, his body was still behind the door, so he wasn\u2019t even wearing underpants yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Hello\u2019, Daletskaya nodded in greeting. \u2018I\u2019m Polina Daletskaya. From Bryansk. I\u2019m Roman Kirillovich\u2019s daughter.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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