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Prologue
The Call
The phone rang on Wednesday at half past eight in the evening. Dmitry started, and only then realised how long it had been since he had last had an ordinary “live” call.
Hardly anyone rang his number for a simple conversation any more, and at that hour it was usually the studio: someone had missed a deadline, mixed up a version of a file or suddenly remembered some “urgent” question that could easily have waited till morning. Everything else came as messages. His phone had long since become a working tool and had lost its old purpose of connecting people for heart-to-heart talks.
Before looking at the screen, Dmitry always hesitated for a second. The habit dated from the years when a late call could change a great deal.
The screen said “Nonna”.
He breathed out before he realised he had been holding his breath.
The phone went on vibrating in his palm. In the kitchen the extractor fan clicked; behind the wall the water stopped running. Nonna rarely rang. Instead she might send a photograph of the morning sky, ask whether he had eaten, or leave a forty-second voice message with a month’s news. If she did ring herself, it was only to present him with a decision already taken.
Dmitry swiped the screen with his thumb and answered.
“Hello.”
“I am flying in on Saturday.”
Not “hello”. Not “how are you”. His sister never wasted words on what ordinary people might call “simple politeness”.
“Saturday is rather sudden.”
“Sudden is when there is no warning. I am warning you.”
“Three days ahead.”
“That is enough.”
Dmitry could not help smiling. From the way Nonna’s voice softened it was clear that she had heard it.
“For long?”
“Until I have sorted it out.”
“Sorted what out?”
Nonna fell silent. She had an answer — Dmitry knew that pause far too well — but of course she was not going to give it. Not yet.
“See you,” she said instead of answering. “Love you.”
“Wait. Shall I meet you?”
“I know how to find my way around an airport and call a taxi. Even in another city.”
“I never doubted it.”
“Then do not offer what I do not need. Same address?”
“The same.”
“Good. And do not make up the sofa bed in advance. I am not made of china.”
“Nonna…”
“Everything on Saturday, Dima.”
The line went dead.
For a few more seconds Dmitry held the phone to his ear. Outside the window the evening city was lit up — street lamps, cars, signs and houses. Thousands of tower blocks glowing in the dark like trees decorated for New Year showed off the scale of the metropolis and the insignificance of each single human life.
But not to him.
The glass reflected the room: an open laptop, two mugs, Ksyusha’s notebook with a pencil between the pages. Once an extra cup had meant only that some stranger had stayed on in the house. Now the second mug had become a sign of living together with someone dear and needed.
With Nonna it was different. She was family, but she remained only a temporary guest. In someone else’s home she would at once check the locks, the fridge and everything that, in her opinion, might do harm to those close to her. She showed her care through orders, a displeased look at an empty shelf, or a suddenly bought ticket.
In all these years he had never learned to guess why Nonna was coming. She gave her explanations afterwards, when it was too late to argue with the reason.
Chapter One
A Hurricane on Saturday
In the next room Ksyusha was humming something, not noticing that the tune had long ago turned into his own — the one he had written for her many evenings before. He listened for a little before calling to her.
“Ksyusha.”
“Mm?”
“There is a hurricane coming to us on Saturday.”
Ksyusha appeared in the doorway, drying her hands on a towel. She was trying to tell from his face whether he was joking or warning her.
“What hurricane?”
“My sister.”
“You have never really told me about her.”
“Because you cannot really describe her. She has to be lived through.”
Ksyusha smiled but stayed in the doorway.
“Is she older than you?”
“No. She just behaves as if she were older than everyone.”
“Are you close?”
He looked at his phone; the dark screen gave him no answer.
“We can go months hardly talking. And then she rings and knows from the first word whether I am lying that everything is fine. I suppose that is what closeness is. Only ours comes without daily reports.”
“And why did you call her a hurricane?”
“Because after her everything seems to stay where it was, but somehow it all stands straighter. In her opinion, at least.”
From Ksyusha’s look he understood that this explanation was not enough. Dmitry was silent for a while.
“I shall tell you later. First I shall warn you about one thing.”
“What?”
“Whatever she says in the first five minutes — do not argue. Just listen.”
Ksyusha frowned, but she did not ask any more.
She went back to the kitchen, and Dmitry stood at the window for a while longer. Then he followed her after all. A sauce was finishing on the hob, chopped vegetables lay beside it, and Ksyusha, turning on the water again, asked over her shoulder:
“What does she like for breakfast?”
“Strong tea. And nobody fussing round her.”
“After your warning that sounds suspiciously simple.”
“She will do everything else herself.”
Ksyusha handed him the towel.
“Then on Friday we shall buy tea. And you will make up the sofa bed after all.”
“She told me not to.”
“Then we shall make it up and fold it away again, to check that the mechanism works.”
Dmitry looked at her gratefully. She had heard both warmth and wariness in his voice, but she did not ask. Instead she concentrated on the tasks in hand: the sofa and the tea.
Over supper they came back to Saturday several more times. Ksyusha wanted to know whether she should clear a wardrobe, whether they needed to change their working schedule, whether their usual household rhythm would get in Nonna’s way. Dmitry answered honestly: he did not know. His sister might come for two days and stay for two weeks; she might bring one shirt and three tins of her own tea; she might say nothing the whole first evening and then rearrange half the kitchen in the morning.
“Only she will not touch the lamp,” he said.
“Why are you so sure?”
“Because she knows it is not a thing you move for convenience.”
Ksyusha nodded. That was enough for her.
On the metal tray by the wall the old brass lamp was burning. Since the autumn chamber performance they had taken it out of the cupboard more often on their evenings together. Ksyusha had checked and topped up the oil before she struck the match. Now all five wicks burned evenly, and there was no reason to touch the bowl.
The lamp was not lit for guests. It belonged to the home: the five flames recalled the five forms of love, and Silence needed no flame of its own.
Outside it was getting dark quickly, the way it does in autumn. Somewhere in another city Nonna was probably already packing her case. Whether her things would fit and the zip would close did not usually trouble her.
On Thursday Nonna sent one message: the flight number. On Friday, a photograph of a case lying open on a bed, with the caption: “Plenty of room.” In the picture the things rose so far above the edges that closing the zip without outside help looked impossible.
Dmitry showed the photograph to Ksyusha.
“Is she joking?”
“No. For her that really is plenty of room.”
They went for the tea after work. Dmitry insisted that any strong black tea would do, but at the shelf he stopped and began reading the small print on the boxes.
“Any?” Ksyusha asked.
“Except flavoured.”
“So not any, then.”
“And not in bags.”
“Go on. I am writing down the terms of hospitality.”
He picked up one packet, sniffed it through the cardboard and put it back. The second seemed too finely cut. The third Nonna had once called “dyed water”, although Dmitry could not remember in what circumstances, or why he had tried to give her that kind in the first place.
“Why not ask her?” Ksyusha suggested.
“Then she will bring her own.”
“And what is wrong with that?”
“I want at least to choose the tea myself.”
Ksyusha looked at him more closely. The tea was only a pretext. Three days before his sister arrived, Dmitry was standing in front of a shop shelf trying at least to choose the right tea for her. He hoped the meeting would begin more calmly that way.
She did not say this aloud. She took a tin of large-leaf tea down from the top shelf and handed it to Dmitry.
“This one?”
He read the label, turned the tin round and put it in the basket.
“This one she will at least be able to criticise properly.”
At the till Ksyusha added some biscuits. Dmitry wanted to warn her that Nonna hardly ate sweet things, but he remembered how his sister had once demolished half a box she had been given in a single evening, all the while maintaining exactly the opposite.
“Take two,” he said.
“Now I am beginning to be frightened.”
Outside it was drizzling. Dmitry tucked the tin of tea under his jacket, although the bag would not have got wet in the five minutes to the car. Ksyusha noticed how carefully he was carrying the purchase, but again she asked nothing.
On Friday evening they tested the sofa bed, cleared one shelf and laid a clean towel over the back of a chair. Dmitry moved the cups around twice, although usually he never noticed how they stood. Ksyusha made no comment. Only once she came up behind him, put her arms round his waist and pressed her cheek between his shoulder blades.
“Are you glad she is coming?”
He covered her hands with his.
“Yes.”
“And anxious?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then I have not got anything wrong.”
He turned round to her.
“If there gets to be too much sister, tell me. Not her — me.”
“And will you tell her?”
“I shall. She may even hear it the first time.”
“Are you trying to calm me down again?”
“No. I am warning you honestly.”
Ksyusha laughed. Dmitry finally let his shoulders drop.
That night Dmitry did open the wardrobe in the room with the sofa and checked the shelf they had cleared. On it remained an old blanket, a box of cables and a few music notebooks that he had long meant to move to the study. He packed the cables more tightly into the box, took the notebooks and found between them a sheet with the early lyrics of a song. In the margin, in Nonna’s handwriting, was written: “Do not lie here.”
He remembered that evening: a cheap microphone, the kitchen in his old flat, a first draft. Nonna had not let him hide a weak line behind a pretty melody. She had listened to his songs long before there were catalogues, releases and conversations about sound. And she remembered every attempt Dmitry had made to seem more confident than he was.
Ksyusha found him in the doorway of the room.
“Changed your mind about not making up the sofa?”
“I am clearing the old notebooks and cables out of here.”
She saw the sheet in his hand but did not ask to see it.
“You can keep the notebook in the study,” Ksyusha said. “It is yours anyway.”
Dmitry put the notebook on top of the box rather than hiding it at the bottom. In the morning he would take it to the study together with the cables. The shelf was clear, and the sheet stayed within reach.
On Saturday morning he woke a few minutes before the alarm. Ksyusha was already in the kitchen cutting bread, trying not to make a noise. On the table stood a third cup — still empty.
“She has not even taken off yet,” Dmitry said.
“But the cup is already in place.”
He checked the flight message. Departure with no delay. He wanted to write to Nonna asking her to ring after landing, but remembered that she had sent the flight number herself and would certainly let him know if anything changed.
“Are you waiting for bad news again?” Ksyusha asked.
“More trying to live through all the possibilities in advance.”
“Does it work?”
“Never once.”
She pushed the bread towards him. Dmitry sat down and for the first time in three days did not move the cups. The third stood opposite — empty, ready for the arrival of one more person close to them.
Before going out they checked the room together. The sofa bed unfolded, the window shut, the clean towel lay on the chair. Ksyusha left the shelf empty. Dmitry wanted to put a spare blanket on it, but stopped.
“An empty shelf looks unwelcoming,” he said.
“It looks free. Nonna will decide for herself what to put there.”
Dmitry put the blanket back. Nonna really would decide for herself what she needed.
When Nonna’s taxi left the airport, Ksyusha put out the lamp. She waited until the wicks stopped smouldering and the brass had cooled, then put the bowl away in the closed cupboard. Nonna knew what it meant. There was no point in making a show of the meeting.
Nobody had rung the bell yet, but Dmitry was already standing in the hall.
“You could sit down,” Ksyusha said.
“I could.”
“But you will not?”
“No.”
The wheels of a suitcase rattled outside the door. Dmitry breathed out and looked at Ksyusha. She came over and stood beside him.
Dmitry put his phone face down on the table.
There was perhaps a second left before the bell.
Nonna was on the other side of the door.
Chapter Two
Nonna
She rang and came in almost before Dmitry had opened the door.
The taxi had not yet pulled away, and a suitcase was already standing in the hall — a small one, packed so tightly that the zip was holding on by a thread. Behind it stood a woman barely taller than Ksyusha’s shoulder, in a coat too warm for such weather. She looked as though she already knew how the visit would end.
The flat was small and all on one level: from the hall a single corridor led to the kitchen, the room with the sofa bed and the study. Nonna had managed to set her case across this one route, as if showing the home whose rules it would now have to run by.
“Dima,” she said instead of a greeting, “you have lost weight.”
“I am the same as last time.”
“Then last time I was right as well, I just did not say so.”
She hugged him quickly and hard, at once stepped back a pace and looked at Ksyusha.
Nonna looked closely, without smiling. That is how you study a person you have heard a great deal about and have finally met.
“Ksyusha,” she said.
“How do you do,” Ksyusha answered.
“Nonna.”
The handshake was firmer than Ksyusha had expected.
Nonna held her hand for a second, took in her face and her hastily gathered hair, and let go.
“You are different from your photographs,” she said.
Ksyusha was on her guard.
“Worse?”
“Calmer. Photographs lie about living people in any case, and Dima only chooses the ones where he feels good. That is why it looks as if it were your permanent state.”
“And what is it now?”
“Now you are deciding whether I may be let in.”
“You are already in.”
The corner of Nonna’s mouth twitched.
“Then the first question is settled.”
Dmitry picked up the case.
“Come through. We shall sort out your things later; first let us have some tea.”
“No. Not that first.”
“What, then?”
Nonna looked from one to the other and back again. She took off her coat, quickly and briskly, and hung it on the hook as though it had always been hers.
“First I want to say what I actually came for.”
Ksyusha looked at Dmitry. He raised an eyebrow with the weary readiness of a man who recognises the opening of a familiar play.
“We are listening,” he said.
Nonna folded her arms.
“You are right for each other.”
A pause.
“Thank you,” Ksyusha said cautiously.
“That is not a compliment. It is a fact.”
“Nonna,” Dmitry said.
“What?”
“We met in the hall five minutes ago.”
“The drive from the airport was enough for me to understand from the photographs what some people cannot work out in a year.”
She went through to the kitchen, switched on the kettle — again without asking where anything was, although she was clearly here for the first time — and went on talking without turning round:
“You need to make it official.”
The kettle Nonna had just switched on had not yet begun to hiss. For a few seconds the kitchen was quiet enough to hear the badly placed suitcase in the hall slowly keeling over on to its side. Then it bumped softly against the wall.
“Make what official?” Ksyusha asked.
“Your union. Your marriage. Call it what you like out loud — swapping the terms round does not change the sum.”
Ksyusha gave Dmitry a meaningful look. He met it and spread his hands very slightly: the hurricane had arrived, the warning had been honest.
“We have not discussed it,” Ksyusha said.
“Then it is high time you started.”
“Nonna, we have our own view on this. We live at our own pace,” Dmitry said.
“You have excuses. A pace is when people move. You are just standing in one place for a long time and calling it a pace.”
“That is not quite…”
“Dima.”
He fell silent.
Ksyusha noted with interest that it had taken Nonna exactly one word.
The kettle boiled. Nonna found the cups at the first attempt. In two she put ordinary tea; for herself she brewed it separately — stronger, from a tin she had already managed to put out on the table.
“I am not asking you to marry in church today,” she said, sitting down. “I am simply saying what I see.”
“And if we are not ready?” Ksyusha asked.
Nonna looked at her the way you look at a pupil who, as expected, admits to having left the homework at home.
“Readiness is a word invented for putting things off. I am not arguing with you, Ksyusha. I simply do not intend to pretend I cannot see the obvious.”
“Is that not the same thing?”
“No.”
She sipped her tea.
“An argument aims to change the other person’s mind. I do not want to change your mind. I do not need it — you need to get married. And my aim is to get that across to you. As you see, the meanings are quite different.”
Dmitry made a strange gurgling sound, something between a sigh and a laugh.
“You see,” he said quietly to Ksyusha. “I told you.”
“That is not what you told me. You said: ‘She is a bit pushy.’”
“I did not want to frighten you in advance.”
“You prepared me about one-tenth of the way.”
Nonna heard them and had no intention of pretending to be deaf. Unfortunately.
“I am not pushy,” she snapped. “I simply see further than the two of you are ready to admit.”
“Everyone has their own speed of readiness,” Ksyusha said.
Ksyusha spoke calmly, but she put her cup down on the table with more of a clatter than she had meant.
Nonna nodded slowly.
“I agree.”
Ksyusha had time to breathe out.
“But at your speed you will only decide by March which month to choose,” Nonna went on. “I am simply suggesting a shortcut.”
“That is not a suggestion. That is a timetable already,” Ksyusha objected, rolling her eyes slightly.
“A timetable is when there are dates. So far I have only a direction.”
“And a one-way ticket?” Dmitry put in.
“There is a return one too. I can just change it.”
“Naturally.” Dmitry nodded at the thoroughly predictable answer.
Nonna took her glasses out of her bag, put them on and looked at the two of them over the thin frames, like a strict teacher telling off two troublemakers.
“I understand that you are grown-ups. That is exactly why I am not going to act out a scene in which I do not care what you do with your life. If you do not want to marry, do not. But then at least once tell each other honestly why.”
This time there was no pressure in Nonna’s voice. She fell silent and left the right to answer to them.
“And if the reason is that we are fine as we are?” Ksyusha asked.
“Then that is a reason to change nothing. But it is not an answer to the question of whether you want to call each other family outside your own home as well.”
Dmitry ran his palm along the edge of the table. They had thought about a wedding for a long time, but each time they had put off talking about it directly. The subject came up over other people’s wedding photographs, in a casual “if one day”, in Ksyusha’s glance at rings in a shop window, which she thought went unnoticed. Every time something more urgent, more important turned up. And above all, between the two of them everything that was happening seemed clear without words.
Dmitry drank his tea in silence and watched them. Ksyusha already knew that expression: with his sister he saved his strength and waited for the moment when his words might have some effect at all.
Later, when Nonna had gone to unpack her case in the room with the sofa (“it will not unpack itself, and I am not going to sleep in my coat”), Ksyusha stayed in the kitchen with Dmitry.
From the room came the rasp of a zip, then the thud of a falling tin.
“It is not broken!” Nonna called before anyone could ask.
Ksyusha looked at the closed door and only then turned to Dmitry.
“Is she always like this?”
“Give or take.”
“You were not surprised by a single word.”
“Did you want me to be surprised?”
“I wanted you to be at least a little on my side.”
Dmitry looked at her seriously.
“I am on your side. But if I start arguing with Nonna now, by the evening we shall have no strength left for our own conversation.”
“And which conversation matters?”
“The one we shall have this evening. Without her in the room.”
Ksyusha softened a little, but not completely. The crease between her brows did not go away.
“She ignores everything I say.”
“She listened to you. It is just that she has a peculiarity: what she hears does not change her aims. Call it selective hearing.”
“That does not sound like a compliment to her.”
“It is not a compliment. It is an exact description.”
He was silent for a moment.
“She does not mean any harm, Ksyusha. She just cannot do it any other way. If she could — perhaps I would not be here now.”
Ksyusha did not ask him to explain. She knew whom Dmitry had tried to ring that day, and she knew that Nonna had appeared later — when the worst had already happened. Appeared and stayed: without promises, without bargaining, with that very stubbornness which had now taken the form of an order about a wedding.
Ksyusha did not answer at once. Behind the wall Nonna was noisily moving things about, already taking over a strange room.
“All right,” Ksyusha said at last. “Today I shall just watch.”
“Sensible.”
“I did not say I agree with her.”
“I did not say you had to.”
From the next room came Nonna’s voice, with words that expected no reply:
“By the way, I have already looked at which venues are free in June. Just for future reference.”
In the evening Nonna made supper out of what she found in the fridge, and complained for another half hour: “The only proper things here are eggs and butter.” Ksyusha tried to help, but twice ended up at the wrong drawer and once on the wrong side of the hob. In the end she was trusted with the bread and with answering questions.
“Do you eat in the mornings?” Nonna asked.
“Sometimes.”
“Wrong answer. And Dima?”
“If he is reminded.”
“That I know.”
“How do you know, if you do not live together?”
“Some failings do not change with age.”
Dmitry came in just on the last sentence.
“I can hear everything.”
“Then tomorrow you will make breakfast yourself.”
“Have you come to visit or to carry out an inspection?”
“I have not decided yet.”
At the table Nonna talked about the journey, about the woman in the next seat who had been afraid of turbulence the whole flight, and about the taxi driver who had tried three times to take the wrong turning. She did not come back to the wedding. That surprised Ksyusha more than if she had opened next year’s calendar again and begun explaining in what order to carry out the wedding preparations. In spite of the impression she had made earlier and her unshakeable view of their future, Ksyusha was able to see other traits in her too. Nonna turned out to be quick to laugh, attentive to detail and able to tell a story so that Dmitry several times laughed quite a different laugh — short, young, unfamiliar to Ksyusha.