Read Online Moscow but Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ekaterina Sedia
Ads: Link
heavily, his grey eyes misting over. “You know, I grew up in the church. I’m not afraid of ever losing my faith—when I was young, I saw one priest beating another up with an icon.”
Normally you would laugh at the image, but his thoughtful sincerity stops you. “I see,” you say.
“Do you know that priest’s name?”
“Father Dmitri,” you say.
“No last name?”
You shake your head and feel stupid.
“Do you know what church he was assigned to before his defrocking?”
“No. I was just thinking about his son . . . they used to live in the same apartment building as I did.”
“Go visit them, then,” he says flatly. “They were probably too poor to buy another apartment.”
“I don’t . . . ” You want to tell him that you really don’t want to see anyone from your past, anyone who would recognize you and put together the images of you—then and now, past and present—and find the comparison lacking.
But he is already losing interest, backing away. “You need to get baptized,” he says before turning away, toward the old women who wait for his glance as if it were a blessing.
“How do you know I’m not?” you call after, raising your voice unacceptably.
“You’re tormented,” he calls back, just as loud.
The priest is wrong—your mother had baptized you at birth, even though such things were frowned upon back in the 1970s. She even took you to the Easter and Christmas masses, where you stood on your aching feet for hours, holding a candle that dripped hot wax on your hands. The memory brings only boredom and unease and doesn’t lessen whatever spiritual torment the priest saw in you. He doesn’t know that the church with its battling priests isn’t as calming to you as it is to him— you worry that you will now have comical nightmares of priests in their long black robes and tall hats pummeling each other with icons and candlesticks. You are really not looking for salvation from them, but from that quiet boy in your childhood. No one else had such kind eyes. You sigh, regretful that your young self was so unaware of how rare a treasure this kindness was—and you’re not even sure if such optimism should be commended.
By the time you were twelve, you certainly knew enough of those who were not kind, of the tiny cave under the very first flight of stairs by the apartment building’s entrance, the cave you always had to run past because of those who hid there—boys who would reach out and hold you against the wall and put their hands under your skirt and down your sweater. You never told your mom why you would wait for her to come home from work, when the shadows grew long, and she couldn’t understand that you were not afraid to be home alone—you were afraid of the dash up the flight of stairs, and your two-room apartment could’ve as well been located on the moon.
You do not remember the faces of those boys, just that one who never laid a finger on you; instead, he walked with you sometimes, and watched you get into the elevator, safe. Sometimes the boys under the stairs would beat him, and once they held his face down in the large puddle that manifested in your paved yard every spring and fall—held him until bubbles coming from his silted lips turned into stifled screams and only a chance passerby spooked the hooligans.
When you get home, you unwrap the kerchief and hate it for a while because your hair is now flattened and tangled and you’ll have to wash it again. Then you pick up the phone, since there’s nothing else to do but to hurl yourself toward the past, since the present refuses to surrender any answers or even passable lies.
Your mother sounds older than she did the last time you spoke, and you try not to feel guilty about her unseen decline in some sanatorium that costs you most of your uncertain salary, and of course it would be cheaper to have her live with you, here, over the black river that smells of gasoline and foams white in the wake of
Normally you would laugh at the image, but his thoughtful sincerity stops you. “I see,” you say.
“Do you know that priest’s name?”
“Father Dmitri,” you say.
“No last name?”
You shake your head and feel stupid.
“Do you know what church he was assigned to before his defrocking?”
“No. I was just thinking about his son . . . they used to live in the same apartment building as I did.”
“Go visit them, then,” he says flatly. “They were probably too poor to buy another apartment.”
“I don’t . . . ” You want to tell him that you really don’t want to see anyone from your past, anyone who would recognize you and put together the images of you—then and now, past and present—and find the comparison lacking.
But he is already losing interest, backing away. “You need to get baptized,” he says before turning away, toward the old women who wait for his glance as if it were a blessing.
“How do you know I’m not?” you call after, raising your voice unacceptably.
“You’re tormented,” he calls back, just as loud.
The priest is wrong—your mother had baptized you at birth, even though such things were frowned upon back in the 1970s. She even took you to the Easter and Christmas masses, where you stood on your aching feet for hours, holding a candle that dripped hot wax on your hands. The memory brings only boredom and unease and doesn’t lessen whatever spiritual torment the priest saw in you. He doesn’t know that the church with its battling priests isn’t as calming to you as it is to him— you worry that you will now have comical nightmares of priests in their long black robes and tall hats pummeling each other with icons and candlesticks. You are really not looking for salvation from them, but from that quiet boy in your childhood. No one else had such kind eyes. You sigh, regretful that your young self was so unaware of how rare a treasure this kindness was—and you’re not even sure if such optimism should be commended.
By the time you were twelve, you certainly knew enough of those who were not kind, of the tiny cave under the very first flight of stairs by the apartment building’s entrance, the cave you always had to run past because of those who hid there—boys who would reach out and hold you against the wall and put their hands under your skirt and down your sweater. You never told your mom why you would wait for her to come home from work, when the shadows grew long, and she couldn’t understand that you were not afraid to be home alone—you were afraid of the dash up the flight of stairs, and your two-room apartment could’ve as well been located on the moon.
You do not remember the faces of those boys, just that one who never laid a finger on you; instead, he walked with you sometimes, and watched you get into the elevator, safe. Sometimes the boys under the stairs would beat him, and once they held his face down in the large puddle that manifested in your paved yard every spring and fall—held him until bubbles coming from his silted lips turned into stifled screams and only a chance passerby spooked the hooligans.
When you get home, you unwrap the kerchief and hate it for a while because your hair is now flattened and tangled and you’ll have to wash it again. Then you pick up the phone, since there’s nothing else to do but to hurl yourself toward the past, since the present refuses to surrender any answers or even passable lies.
Your mother sounds older than she did the last time you spoke, and you try not to feel guilty about her unseen decline in some sanatorium that costs you most of your uncertain salary, and of course it would be cheaper to have her live with you, here, over the black river that smells of gasoline and foams white in the wake of
Similar Books
