Snow in May: Stories

The Uncatchable Avengers, 1993

“Tak, children, we are almost ready to begin. Let’s go over this again,” the mustachioed producer said. “When I say ‘Silence in the studio. Cameras rolling. Action!’ the performer Anna Glebovna calls should come up to the piano, say your name and age, the piece you’re going to play, and who it’s by—”

Dima snorted. A couple of the other children giggled.

“Oleg Borisovich, it’s the Children’s Festival of Tchaikovsky, so every piece will be by none other than the esteemed Pyotr Ilyich,” Anna Glebovna said to the producer. Dima had recognized her from prior citywide competitions and recitals. She was the director of the Magadan Children’s Music School #1.

The producer scanned the list on his clipboard, as if looking for Tchaikovsky’s name. He wore tight black jeans, a green turtleneck sweater, and, over this, a black corduroy blazer. There was something cockroachy about him. Dima cringed. He was the first on the list, and he just wanted to get it over with. He had more heroic things to do after the taping.

“Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky,” Anna Glebovna sang out. The children laughed again but were quickly shushed by their parents and piano teachers from the back rows.

“Yes, yes, of course. Say your name, your age, the title of your piece. Sit down at the piano — please, try not to drag the stool across the floor — and play. When you’re done, take a bow and go back to your chair. That’s it. Don’t run. And please, audience, nobody talk until I say ‘Cut.’”

“Any questions, children?” Anna Glebovna said. “Let’s show our TV station what we can do, ah? Oleg Borisovich here will also send the tape to Moscow, and Moscow might broadcast clips from our little festival to the whole country. How would you like to be famous?”

Dima’s piano teacher, Faina Grigorievna, had once told him that Anna Glebovna was the worst pianist ever to hold an academic position in the history of musical education, and that she was a hack. Dima wasn’t sure what a hack was, but in her ruffled red dress Anna Glebovna sure looked like one.

“One more thing,” the producer said. “Audience, very important. Don’t forget that you are on camera, too. Please look like you’re enjoying the music. In the final segment, we may cut to reaction shots at any time, so children: no making faces or picking your nose.”

Dima realized that at that very instant his own finger had been inching toward his nose.

“Bozhe moi, Oleg Borisovich, who do you think they are? Monkeys from the zoo? You are underestimating us,” Anna Glebovna said, waving her hands as if they were fans. “These are not just some street children who spend their days chasing neighborhood dogs. These are the most talented and dedicated young musicians in all of Magadan.”

Dima craned back his neck. Faina Grigorievna sat in the last row, her gaze frighteningly calm, as usual. She wore her famous mustard shawl and giant amber earrings, into which he had stared so many times while she scolded him during lessons — he’d seen his whole life in those caramel globes. She was one of the largest people in the room and definitely had the largest head. Her short, yellow hair made it look as if she were wearing a hat made of fox fur.

Dima’s small mother sat next to Faina Grigorievna, slightly leaning away. When they had first come in, his mother sat down in the front with Dima and all the children, and wasn’t noticed until halfway through the producer’s first round of explanations. She had to be escorted to the back row while everyone watched.

She gave him a fugitive smile, then lowered her head. Poor Mama, she’d always been afraid of Faina Grigorievna. It shouldn’t take long. Playing time was under a minute, and he knew his piece forward and backward.

“All right, Anna Glebovna, let’s begin,” the producer said. They made an awkward bow to each other and took their respective positions: the producer behind an arsenal of monitors in the left corner, and Anna Glebovna on a chair in the right corner. The producer, boom operator, and both cameramen put on their headphones. “Control room ready?”

A young woman, who’d been napping behind a glass window in the back, started. With her face blue from the monitors’ glow, she looked like a fairy. “Ready, Oleg Borisovich,” her voice crackled over the intercom.

There was a pause.

“Anna Glebovna!” the producer yelled.

“Oh.” Anna Glebovna jumped off her chair. Its legs scraped shrilly against the floor. “First up is Dima Ushakov, from the Magadan College of Arts. The special section for gifted children,” she added with a smug smile.

“Silence in the studio,” the producer yelled. The cameramen stuck their faces into the viewfinders. “Cameras rolling. And action!”

Dima stood up — no floor scraping — and marched confidently to the piano, even though the pattern of black-and-white four-leaf clovers on the studio floor made him dizzy. He looked into the camera pointed at him, then at the camera pointed at an angle at him and the audience, then back at the first camera. Breathe. He saw the boom operator move, and the microphone lowered closer to his head, like a big, hairy spider dangling from the foliage of lights that covered the ceiling. He fought every urge to look up. Breathe.

“Dima Ushakov. Nine. Nine years old,” Dima said, looking somewhere between the main camera and the blue-faced girl in the control room. The microphone crept closer to his head. “‘March of the Wooden Soldiers,’” he said louder. Anna Glebovna nodded maniacally in the background.

He sat down and was immediately blinded by a panel of lights. Another microphone had been snaked into the innards of the piano. So much fuss over such a short piece, the march. He looked at the keys: white black white black white white black white. A row of tombstones. Stop, must not think of tombstones or snakes, he thought. Spiders either.

He took a deep breath, then caught himself halfway through the exhale, remembering that he was not supposed to make any noise. He noticed a big round clock on the wall, as obvious as a harvest moon: 12:04. Stop looking, Dima thought, and squeezed his thigh. Yesterday, he’d lied to his best friend, Genka, that he would be absent from school because he was going to the dentist to fix twenty cavities. He said he’d be knocked out under anesthesia all day. Genka had swallowed the fib; he was so naive. Maybe Genka wasn’t qualified to be the leader of their new gang, after all. The Uncatchable Avengers, oh. Just thinking about it made Dima’s skin all goose-bumpy. But not now, not for the next minute. Afterward. Save it for their inaugural meeting at the abandoned construction site behind the school — their secret headquarters. Genka said they would make up secret hand signs. It was a start.

Still 12:04. A piece of black wire stuck out above the dial like a curl. Head, heart, hands, ears — Dima went through the preplay checklist and cupped his hands around his knees to give them the proper shape. He imagined the vast green field where the soldiers would be marching, the sun like a big golden shield sending fiery arrows into his chest to activate his nutro, which is not a muscle or an organ, though sometimes it acts like both. Or either. Faina Grigorievna said to think of it as a little clay oven that hangs between the stomach and the heart. It’s where the stories and ideas about each piece of music are converted into a winged feeling, a bubbling fuel that makes the black dots on paper come alive. Whenever Dima felt his arms begin to tire, Faina Grigorievna sensed it. She got up from her chair at the back of the classroom and, if she’d been filing her nails, poked his lower spine with the sharp tip of the nail file. This always woke up his sleepy, sometimes frozen nutro. His arms felt immediate relief, the notes began to string together again. Sometimes she clapped above his head or banged on the higher or lower register as he played. One time, she knocked down the keyboard cover so suddenly that Dima only just managed to pull out his fingers. She knew how to set him back on track.

Nonpianist people had a nutro, too, Faina Grigorievna said, but for most it remained underdeveloped and underutilized. As was obviously the case with the whole Children’s Music School #1. Dima wondered whether his nutro could be used for the Avengers business as well, whether it could make him a better, stealthier Avenger. Genka would laugh. His nutro must be like last year’s shriveled plum.

Dima held his hands over the keys. Ears, head, et cetera. All systems on. Three, two, one …

Plop. He got the first chord right.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati …

The soldiers are marching across a wide green field. Faina Grigorievna told him to imagine the field, though the real soldiers must’ve had better things to do than march through fields. For example: march through the town square, where they could keep an eye on the unruly citizens and flaunt their military regalia. Genka talked about making a badge they could pin on their school uniforms to distinguish them from the common troublemakers and hallway racers. Then what? The soldiers had war; the Avengers had nothing to avenge. Yet.

Dima forgot whether the upcoming drumroll of sixteenths in the left hand was to be played by one finger or different fingers. His fingers went on playing, though, of their own accord.

— Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata …

As soon as he played the drumroll with one finger — a poky second — he knew it was wrong. It had to be first, fourth, third, second, then first!

His wrists clamped up; the rest of the march’s familiar topography crumbled. He stopped.

“Cut!” the producer yelled and yanked off his headphones. “Anna Glebovna!”

Anna Glebovna slid off her chair and waddled up to Dima.

“Ushakov,” she said. She had a mole on her nose that sprouted fine yellow hairs.

A hack.

Dima now remembered Faina Grigorievna talking about treating your fingers with respect and giving each one a little deserved rest. That’s why, after all, you had ten of them, not two. The moon clock showed five minutes past noon.

“Ushakov,” Anna Glebovna said again. “Ushakov.”

Whispers hissed from the audience, legs swung, backsides fidgeted.

Dima’s cheeks began to burn; the rest of his body shuddered against the clammy studio air. Poor Mama.

“Now, Ushakov. Such an easy piece. Tok tok tok tok and let’s ride.” Anna Glebovna snapped her chubby fingers. “Look how many of you I have to get through.”

March. March. March, Dima pleaded with his nutro. He knew it; his fingers knew it. March now, avenge later.

“I’m ready,” he said. The clock’s minute hand rolled lazily to six. The second hand marched on without a care in the world. In the wrong tempo.

“Silence in the studio,” the producer commanded from behind the monitors. The audience held its breath. “Cameras rolling. Action!”

Fingers, head. “Sorry, do I have to say my name and age and what I’m playing again?”

“Cut! Cut! You don’t have to say your name again. You’ve already said those things very well, now you just have to play.”

Dima nodded.

“Silence in the studio. Rolling. Action!” Dima could only see the producer’s mustache moving.

He began to play. The green field. The soldiers. The sun in the silver sky.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata.

Drumroll avenged! He knew the piece. The musical footprints laid themselves out before him, and all he had to do was let his fingers run, the phrasing guided by the steady burn of his nutro. So easy. The way he’d done hundreds of times before: at home for his trembling mother and in front of Faina Grigorievna, while she filed her nails in a little white cloud.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tatatata …

The knees in identical navy-blue uniforms shoot up in unison to the chests shining with medals. Despite the heavy boots, the soldiers’ step is sharp and exact. They march in tight formation, yet they never (unlike Dima’s fingers) trip each other. Would the soldiers march through the field with medals on, though? They certainly weren’t as vain as Genka, who wanted everyone to know he was a hero even before he knew what heroic things they should do. Dima didn’t know either. When he suggested they apprehend the older boys who smoked and confiscate their cigarettes — thus avenging those whose clothes, or worse, had been ruined by cigarette burns — Genka rolled his eyes. Maybe Genka was afraid of the upperclassmen. It had been Dima’s idea to form the gang in the first place and name it after their favorite movie. And just because Genka was three months older and taller didn’t automatically make him the leader. Stop thinking about Genka.

Dima’s mind turned a blank page, his nutro sputtered. Not again, not again, please.

“Cut, for God’s sake!” the producer yelled. “Anna Glebovna!”

Anna Glebovna was already tottering toward Dima. The big hand of the clock was now halfway to the seventh minute. Only three minutes had passed. Already three minutes. He could’ve been done ages ago.

The parents and teachers started to whisper. He turned back to look. His mother sat hunched over, her eyes darting about the floor as if in search of an escape. She was like that at the school cafeteria, too. A mouse. Sometimes it took several moments for Dima to recognize her among her fellow white-coated lunch servers. And when he spotted her, he would quickly nod, but he wouldn’t come over.

She had stayed up late last night starching his performance outfit. His pants felt like iron. The collar of his shirt cut into his neck. If it weren’t for the yellow bow, he could pretend he was wearing a knight’s armor. Though the Uncatchable Avengers wouldn’t be so uncatchable in armor. Stop, he yelled to himself inside his head. Stop, stop, stop. He wished he could put knight’s armor on his thoughts. Poor Mama.

Faina Grigorievna sat stone-faced. She was the best teacher in the Magadan region, no, the best in the whole northeast, and everybody was afraid of her, even the other piano teachers. Non — piano teachers didn’t need to be afraid because, for her, other instruments didn’t even count as real instruments. She would kick him out now, Dima thought. His mother would cry, but he would sleep better at night. Eventually. His mother cried a lot, anyway.

Anna Glebovna banged on the piano’s raised lid, a black lacquered sail. Dima wished more than anything in the world to sail out of this tomb and into the bright spring day.

“Ushakov, gather your brains, would you? If I was your teacher…” Anna Glebovna looked in the direction of the audience. “Well, our esteemed Faina Grigorievna is here, of course. Don’t embarrass her, Ushakov. She hasn’t gotten that many of you left to pin her hopes on,” she said, her voice saccharine.

A hack, a hack.

He’d never had a problem with the march before. He’d practiced so hard he could sometimes hear the soldiers marching along his teeth and up his spinal cord, and through his ear canals. He could play the piece with his eyes closed or in the dark, as he’d done many times during electricity outages. He could play it from the middle. He could tap it. He could hum it, though he never did. Singing was for girls, not Avengers. He could play the right hand’s part with the left hand, and the left with the right.

Now he only had to play the march once.

“Silence in the studio!”

Anna Glebovna scuttled back to her chair. He’d show her.

“Cameras rolling. Action!”

Mind, mind, hands, mind. Dima felt Faina Grigorievna’s stare. He counted down from ten, breathing shallow breaths so the iron grip of his collar wouldn’t cut into his throat. These keys were so flawlessly white and shiny, unlike the keys on their home piano, which his mother had rescued from the arts college dorm. Some of those keys were chipped. At the far right of the high register several cigarette burns gaped, like craters from tiny hand grenades. Piano was always a battlefield — between fingers and tempo, pedal and sharps and flats, chords and staccato, fifth fingers and forte, first fingers and pianissimo, scales and laziness, nutro and Genka. And this was before Faina Grigorievna got involved.

The dumb policeman clock showed 12:09. At 12:10, Dima could be done. Then, he would think about what to do heroism-wise; maybe he could even get something accomplished while Genka was still at school.

Ready and … the field, the sun, the shiny knees. Or the medals. Shiny medals. High knees. He transferred the domes of his hands onto the keys.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata. (Whew.)

With the first mine avoided, Dima’s hands marched on toward freedom.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata.

Now the regiment comes upon a dark forest at the edge of the field.

— TuTuTurururu TuTu Turururu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tututututu roo roo roo.

The soldiers are stumbling over the crags and roots of the tall black trees. This was a stupid story. The only reason for the soldiers to march into a dark forest would be to fight a forest monster. He should’ve made up his own story instead of listening to Faina Grigorievna.

— TuTuTurururu …

Dima’s mind drifted back to all the things that had happened in Magadan in the past year. The teachers’ hunger strike. The gas explosion at the hospital. The three bank robberies. Of course: the mayor’s murder! The killer was never caught. And never would be, his mother insisted sadly. A whole marching army would scare the murderer further into hiding. The task required stealth, surprise. The huntsman would have to act incognito, someone the culprit could never expect. Someone like the Uncatchable Avengers! How did he and Genka not think of this earlier? They would be in the newspaper, on the evening news.

Dima felt his nutro overheating, spewing steam. This venture will require sleuthing, breaking into government offices in the middle of the night, stealing documents, reexamining evidence, and reinterviewing eyewitnesses. The shots were fired in the middle of the day, on the steps of the municipal building. The murderer had been hiding in plain sight. Too bad the teachers’ strike was over. He felt bad for the teachers, sure, but free from school, the Avengers would have had so much more time to investigate their first big case. Plus, all the parents and the whole town would have been distracted. Dima remembered the poor teachers, lying on the foldout cots under heavy blankets day and night, haunting the school hallways like ghosts. He had seen his favorite teacher, Rita Pavlovna, faint in the hallway when he came to visit with his classmates, and all he could think of were the funny names of flower parts she’d taught in Nature Studies just a week prior. Pistil, stigma, ovary. Stamen, sepal, peduncle. Now he felt ashamed. Some hero he was, wanting to be on TV, and wishing such terrible things on the teachers.

Then it dawned on him: he was on TV. Now. And his legs were itching like crazy.

He stopped again. The audience began to buzz even before the producer yelled “Cut!”

The cameraman closest to Dima stood up. “Enough time to get a smoke?” he said.

Again Anna Glebovna was upon Dima, her heaving neck covered with red spots.

“Maybe someone else could play first and then we let Ushakov try again?” one of the parents piped up.

“My students can go first,” said another teacher from the arts college. Dima knew Faina Grigorievna didn’t like him either. He, too, was a hack. “They have their pieces drilled down to the last note. We’ve got all the dolls, ‘Sick Doll,’ ‘Doll’s Funeral,’ and ‘New Doll.’ We’ll be quick.”

Full-voiced conversations sprang up throughout the audience. The producer milled in front of the lights panel, looking at his clipboard.

“My daughter practiced very hard,” cried out one of the mothers. “We have a doctor’s appointment later in the afternoon. We can’t be here all day.”

Tik tik tik tik tik … 12:12 already. The plate-faced clock smirked at Dima with its unnatural brow.

“Silence! Silence in the studio,” the producer said. “Maybe we should call his mother? Or his teacher? Where are they?”

“Futile,” Anna Glebovna said and looked at Dima as if she were about to bite his head off.

He imagined his mother being dragged away from her chair and onto the stage, under the projector lights. He had never seen her speak in public; he’d never seen her do anything in public. Poor, poor Mama.

Something salty began to pop in his nose. He wasn’t going to cry now, was he? His stomach gurgled. His mother had cooked him a special Tchaikovsky Festival breakfast this morning. They didn’t eat eggs often, and he couldn’t remember the last time they’d had meat. For months now his mother was paid in barter with cafeteria food, which — he had to admit — tasted considerably better at home. But this morning she had conjured a warrior’s meal. Two sausages were the sturdy cannons, pink-rusted from their heroic participation in the Napoleonic Wars, also the Great Patriotic War, and the American Revolution. The peas were the cannonballs. If Dima asked for the whole jar, he would get at least half — there was no such thing as too much ammunition. The two eggs, sunny-side up, were enemies, which, once pierced by the five-pronged lance, spilled their blood all over the battlefield, showing everyone that no enemy blood would be spared in the fight for … against the fascists. Yes, the fascists! Their blood was yellow like poison. Tadadadadadadada pshaw, tatatadadadadadada pshaw poohhweeea!

“We should call someone,” the producer said. “Ushakov! Ushakov? Somebody do something.”

Stop, stop, stop! Dima pleaded with himself. He stuck his head into his hands. Whose idea was piano anyway? His mother’s, who else’s. And what for? Nothing heroic came of it, and everyone only suffered. When Dima struggled, squished flat under Faina Grigorievna’s teaching, his mother would get a worry flu. When he did well, he would sometimes notice a blink of suspicion and fear in her eyes. Once, he caught her sitting at the piano at home, with her elbows on the keyboard cover, her eyes closed. She sat like that for a while. He was going to ask her whether everything was all right, but the silence in the room was like the silence after the orchestra conductor had raised his baton. Thick with the future, or the past. Uninterruptible. So he closed the door and tiptoed to the kitchen.

It was too late now to uncoil the chains of fate. Dima was handcuffed to the piano, sinking down down down, through the floors of the studio and into the dark catacombs under the city, where the old Kolyma gold was buried.

Eureka! The Uncatchable Avengers will find the legendary treasure guarded by the ghosts of the first prospector, Bilibin, and the ten helpers he killed to keep the gold all to himself. Genka can’t disagree with a plan like this; he can even keep some of the gold. The rest — chests upon chests of it — they will distribute equally among the people of the town. His mother will be happy. She will finally buy a new winter coat and beef to make her famous “snowstorm stew.” He will give some gold to Faina Grigorievna, too, so she could visit her family in Germany. The Avengers will give some of the gold to the school so the teachers never have to go hungry again. Well, only if they wanted to. He felt warmth spreading from his nutro to the rest of his body. His ears rang with distant music. Cymbals and timpani. He will hire private detectives from Moscow or London (like Sherlock Holmes!) to find the mayor’s killer. A hundred buzzing violins and violas were circling in on him like a swarm of bees. He will buy mountains of coal. He will melt the city so that spring and summer would come early and stay. Or not stay: he loved playing hockey with Genka in the winter, too. He began to rock, like he’d seen the pianists do at the concerts on TV, their hands springing about in gymnastic contortions. He’d been embarrassed for them before.

Without a doubt, his inability to play his piece through was more than a problem of concentration. Under the bright projector lights and the stares of the audience and the camera, the soldiers marching through the field were amplified to the size of the world. It clogged his still-young nutro. To play the simple march, he had to forget all about the Uncatchable Avengers, the murdered mayor, the hungry teachers, the Kolyma gold, and his poor mama. Or play another piece — a virtuoso concerto with full symphonic orchestra. He could already hear the way such fortes and such pianos could sound, as if the instrument were made not of wood and metal but of something alive and breathing. He wasn’t good enough of a pianist yet.

“This is your last chance,” Anna Glebovna growled. Some of the parents were still talking. The children, however, were quiet. They knew that no matter how much they’d practiced, Dima’s fate could befall them all.

“You are embarrassing Magadan’s entire musical community, Ushakov,” she continued. “Your so-called gifted program as well as my music school. This is unacceptable. Any fool with half a mind can play this march. Don’t play it well. Just play to the end, for God’s sake. I don’t know how else to tell you.”

“Are we ready?” the producer said. He had taken off his corduroy jacket. His face was red, his mustache twitchy. “Last take, then we’re moving on to the next participant. Audience, return your chairs to their original places and be ready for the camera. Pleasant faces, content faces. Art is the beauty of life, et cetera. Crew, stand by.”

He walked toward the monitors in the back, tugging on the collar of his turtleneck. “Silence in the studio!”

The microphone lowered above Dima’s head like a bomb on a string. The light panel seemed to have lit up even brighter. Suddenly, he felt a heavy presence behind him. Sandalwood perfume. Faina Grigorievna. He turned around to face her. Her green eyes were unreadable, like windows in an ancient abandoned house.

She bent toward his ear. At the same time that she said “Play,” Dima felt a sharp pain on the top of his left thigh. He looked at his lap: there was a small tear in the fabric of his pants. The spot around it was growing wet with something sticky. Blood. He looked up at Faina Grigorievna, but she was already gone.

“Silence in the studio!” the producer yelled again. He hadn’t noticed anything. Nobody had noticed that he’d been wounded. “Cameras rolling. And action!”

Dima began to play the march. His heart thumped in the gash.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata.

The soldiers marched and marched. He felt the pain bury deeper into his leg, spread to the rest of his thigh, then his calf and foot.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata.

He picked up and kicked out his fingers, pushing forward. He was losing blood. He had to finish before it began to drip on the cloverleaf floor.

— TuTuTurururu TuTu Turururu Tu Tu Tu Tu Tutututu Tu BAbaBA.

His hands marched on across the black-and-white desert, tired and weary, bleeding. He wanted to crawl to safety, key by key.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Tatitatita tititata.

— TaTaTatitati TaTa Tatitati Ta Ta Ta Ta Ta-tita-TITA.

Applause …

He was done.

“And cut!” the producer hollered from his corner. “Cut, oh saintly father, Lenin and Cheburashka!”

The clock read 12:14.

Dima stood up and walked to his seat in the first row. The applause died down. Did he do well? He was afraid to look at his mother or Faina Grigorievna. He pulled on the fabric of his pants. It hurt. The material had stuck to the cut. He had forgotten to bow.

“Next up is my Rita Larina and after her — Sonya Kovalchuk. Gather your brains while you have a chance, Sonya and all the rest of you, so we aren’t here till evening,” Anna Glebovna said.

Sonya was another one of Faina Grigorievna’s surviving students, and she was good.

“Silence in the studio,” the producer said. “One second, one second. Ushakov, be so kind and leave. We’ve had enough of you for today.”

Dima looked at the producer’s red face. He almost pitied this simple man, with his simple life. Sonya, who sat next to Dima, grimaced sympathetically and offered him a handkerchief.

He didn’t take it. He bolted from the studio, overturning his chair, and ran down the hallway. His mother caught up with him by the exit.

“Dimochka, your coat.” An unsteady smile swung across her face like an out-of-control dancer, bumping into her nose and ears.

They were outside now. Dima squinted at the fuzzy air and the pink sun. He wiped his flooding nose. Pink and yellow dilapidated buildings. Gray and white peeling khrushchyovkas. Everything was bathed in touchable light.

“You played so well, Dimochka,” his mother said and rubbed her eyes.

“Did you see that she stabbed me? She stabbed me with her nail file or maybe a knife!” His voice came out high and squeaky.

“Faina Grigorievna?” His mother was trying to get him to put on his coat.

Dima pushed her and took off. It was snowing, snowing in May! He ran half-mad, half-happy, delirious. The snow smelled like freshly cut cucumbers, like summer at Grandpa’s. At once he remembered that more than anything in the world he wanted a bike, one that had a tire-patching kit with the special glue. He bumped into passersby on the streets and shoved those who didn’t get out of his way. He overturned a trash can with glee, ran across the intersection in front of the honking traffic. If he had a bike, he would fly on it through Grandpa’s village in a cloud of dust.

He was running to burn last year’s yellow grass in the courtyard, before the snow and Genka got to it. He’d get the matches the Uncatchable Avengers had hidden at their secret headquarters the other day. He kicked a stone toward a stray dog. The dog barked and chased after him. As he ran, he thought of the inquisitive cows at the village and the uppity goats, the earthy carrots, the cold river with tickly blue fish, and the gang of dirty-footed kids his age who smoked cigarettes and could catch a goose with their bare hands.