Lights All Night Long

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

When summer came in Berlozhniki, the snow thawed and things surfaced. Trash, mostly. Old issues of the Vecherniye Berlozhniki, their ink bled to a uniform gray, their stories erased. Scarves and mittens, dolls and books, dead squirrels and birds, perfectly preserved, their eyes like crystals. Sets of keys glinted patiently in the newfound sun, waiting for discovery. Rubles appeared on sidewalks, in gutters, on stoops. Cars emerged on corners where snowbanks had loomed the highest. Their windows were cracked from the pressure, their seats soggy, but sometimes their engines sputtered and caught, and their owners cheered and bought a bottle of Imperia and gathered friends to witness the miracle and before long they’d forgotten, all over again, where the fuck they’d left their cars.

Children stepped out of the kommunalkas, blinking, their eyes adjusting from the TV to the world as it was. They yelled. They ran. They remembered, suddenly, how full their lungs could get.

There was talk that the snow would melt and reveal another body. Multiple bodies. There was talk that Vladimir had killed others that winter and buried them in deep drifts. Sometimes Ilya was tempted to believe these rumors. As the snow grew patchy, he eyed the piles that were still big enough to hide a body, and he wondered if there might be someone in there. A victim with a clue that would absolve Vladimir: a chunk of the killer’s hair gripped in a fist; the knife with fingerprints frozen on its handle; or a note, written in the throes of death, naming the killer.

By July the snow was gone entirely. The ground was swampy, and they’d all traded their felt boots for rubber ones. No more bodies appeared, and the Vecherniye Berlozhniki began to cover other news besides the murders and Vladimir’s arrest. A twelve-year-old girl collected enough change in the melting town’s nooks and crannies to pay her family’s rent for a month. She smirked in the picture in the Vecherniye Berlozhniki, each hand hoisting a tube sock filled with rubles.

“What a ferret,” Babushka said, slapping the paper down on the table. “She steals people’s change, and they call her a hero.”

“You’re jealous you didn’t beat her to it,” Ilya’s mother said. It was her day off, and she’d spent it watching Simply Maria and smoking cigarettes out the open window. Ilya was not used to her smoking—she’d quit when she was pregnant with Vladimir and begun again after his arrest—but he liked to watch her slim fingers pinch the tobacco into a neat row. She rolled a cigarette just like Vladimir did.

A week before Ilya left for America, he walked out to the Tower. It was empty. Daylight streamed through glassless windows. Puddles had collected in the dips in the concrete. It didn’t seem to Ilya like a place he’d ever been before, and it took him a while to find Vladimir’s room. The posters had been torn down and left in long strips on the ground. The blankets were gone, and so were Vladimir’s clothes, but sitting there in the middle of the room was the pink plastic bag. Vladimir’s camouflage sweatshirt was inside, and as Ilya pulled it out, he heard the familiar, plastic clatter of his Michael & Stephanie tapes beneath it.

Ilya spent much of that last week in the kommunalkas, on their tiny balcony. If he leaned over the rail a bit and looked to the right, he could see the polyana, where they’d found Lana. The police tape was long gone, but there were still these snatches of color from the photos people had left. Someone had painted a tire in rainbow colors and planted flowers inside it. Sometimes Ilya thought that if he stared hard enough he’d be able to see what had happened. He’d see Lana walk to the trees. He’d see who was with her. He’d see it all, and he’d know that it hadn’t been his brother.

That was where Maria Mikhailovna found him. It was early morning, but already light. He hadn’t slept, and he tried not to think of the only other time she’d been in their apartment.

“It’s time to go,” she’d said, in English, as always.

His mother and Babushka hugged him good-bye, and Timofey pressed a thousand-ruble note and a tiny knife with the hammer and sickle on it into his hands.

“It’s a lucky one,” he said.

Two hours south of Berlozhniki, halfway to Leshukonskoye, they stopped at a petrol station with faded yellow pumps.

“Two hours to go,” Maria Mikhailovna said, and Ilya filled the car while she went inside to pay. It wasn’t until the tank was full that he noticed a wind chime above the door. There was something familiar about it, about the hollow clatter it made when the door opened. And the yellow pumps. Ilya touched one, picked at a flake of paint with a fingernail. He walked toward the road. A truck was coming. A pale splotch on the horizon, far enough away that he could barely hear it. He could feel a memory growing like a bubble within him. He remembered running, laughing. Vladimir was chasing him, reaching out for him. Behind him, the wind chime made its rattle. The truck was close now, its horn blasting. In a second, Vladimir’s arms would be around him. He waited, and he waited.

“Ilya!” someone called, and then a hand yanked him backward, and the truck passed, close enough that the pressure of it made his body shake. Maria Mikhailovna gripped his hand in hers. The sun was hitting her glasses, turning them into mirrors.

“Ilya,” she said again, in this way that meant he was forgiven, and he forgot what it was that he’d been trying so hard to remember.