The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight by Gina Ochsner Read Free Book Online Page B

them the multifaceted arts of begging and stealing, drinking and glue-sniffing. And Tanya felt sorry for them. They were like those dog-children from the old stories who needed a mother to call them by the right name. Then they would remember their true selves and how to act like children. She would gladly take care of them—all five of them. If only they would stop throwing rocks.
    As if on cue, Vitek unpeeled himself from the shadows. Like the Devil in church, he was uncomfortable in his own skin but tried valiantly to hide the fact. He smiled at Tanya and his gold tooth gleamed.

    'I'm sorry about your, well, you know,' Tanya said. It had only been seven days since the wake and it was the orthodox way to refrain from a direct mention of the name of the dead until they'd been gone for a full nine days.
    Vitek shrugged and withdrew a vial from his coat pocket. 'Have a gargle?' Marsh Lilac, a cheap perfume with a high alcohol content.
    Tanya wrinkled her nose.
    Vitek slid the vial back into his coat. 'In that case, I'll come to the point quickly, and incidentally,' Vitek pulled at a greasy forelock, 'I beg your pardon for bringing up the indelicate matter of money.'
    Tanya glanced at the city inspector's yellow line of tape. 'You can't collect rent on a condemned building.'
    'You aren't supposed to be living in a condemned building.' Vitek shrugged. 'You see the difficult position I'm in.'
    'But you live in this building, too. So does your mother.'
    'It's a complication, all right.' Vitek smiled.
    Lukeria threw open a window. Autocracy! Nationality! Orthodoxy!' she shouted, her voice as subtle as a poke in the eye. It was an old saying, something Lukeria liked to shout whenever she saw Tanya talking to anyone she considered suspicious, a saying that marked Lukeria as completely anti-cosmopolitan in her leanings. Which was to say, Lukeria didn't like Jews, Gypsies, Asians, or anyone not personally known to her for less than forty years. Which was to say, living in this building with Yuri and Olga, Jews both, Azade and Mircha, Muslims railed in from the Caucasus, and Vitek, whose facial features hinted at Mongol inclinations, Lukeria was completely friendless.

    Vitek rolled his eyes toward the windows and snorted. 'We all have to listen to that, you know.'
    Tanya pressed her mouth into a flat line, handed over a crumpled ten-rouble note, and turned for the stairs. The problem with her grandmother was that she sincerely believed that if orthodoxy should ever fall, the world would collapse with it, that it was the secret reservoir of the faithful that had kept the heart of Mother Russia beating during all these troubled years. And according to Lukeria, it was an orthodox sun that shone quietly over their cold land, an orthodox light that provided the necessary illumination to properly see this world by, though most people did not even know it.
    But on evenings like these, Tanya wished her grandmother would progress with the times. They were, after all, new Russians, no matter what the red-browns and other reactionaries were saying. All you had to do was look around and you could see times had changed and in ways none of them had ever imagined. Now a hundred grams of cheese cost fifty roubles instead of ten. The rise and fall of inflation could be tracked in the price of chewing gum and chocolates, the morale
of the country measured by the price of vodka, which was never more than the price of bread. And where old pensioners like Mircha and her grandmother once could count on a monthly salary, it was now up to the new Russians like Tanya, who made less than the workers at the western-style coffee shops, to look after their own. No wonder her grandmother was so nostalgic for the past.

    'Doors!' Lukeria shouted from her perch at the window. It was an orthodox greeting meant to hurry Tanya from the corridor lest the Devil come in on a draught and blow out the candle.
    Tanya scuttled into the apartment. She kicked her boots off,