“Put on your coat, Citizen Garkovsky,” says the former fan of Lermontov in a flat voice, trying to normalize what has just happened. He stuffs the briefcase with mathematical formulas under his arm, his eyes flickering from Sasha and Marik on the floor to the police wagon in the window, still unable to look at his teacher.
“Please don’t worry,” says Marik’s father to his wife and son, but also to Sasha. He stands by the door, scrambling to get his arms through the sleeves of the coat Marik’s mother holds out for him. “Go to school and make me proud,” he says to the children, who are clutching on to each other on the floor, braving the bruises that are just beginning to throb. “They will straighten this out soon,” he promises. “I will be back in a few days.” He is trying to stay composed, but his voice is quivering. “All will be well,” he says, even though his words sound hollow, lacking the weight required to ground them in Sasha’s mind, maybe even in his own.
Should Sasha believe him? Despite the two policemen leading him out of the house, Marik’s father still looks like the hero from a film about the first Five-Year Plan they saw at school, imperishable and proud. Whom can she believe if she doesn’t believe him? She holds on to Marik to keep him from lunging after the guards, wishing that everything, as her grandma likes to say, would soon indeed turn out to be well.
2
Sasha stands next to Marik by the gate to the courtyard, checking that Grandma can’t see her. Her house, like Marik’s, sits on the outskirts of Ivanovo where the town streetcar ends its route behind a field, where every hour it crawls past Grandpa’s garden to come to a standstill farther down the street, by the cluster of lilac bushes. But Sasha is not thinking about the lilacs now. She is thinking about the streetcar clanging along the track, with sparks bursting on the wires above. The best manifestation of defiance is to jump onto the back of the streetcar and straddle the long piece of iron protruding like a tail, gliding past the clumps of nettles, past the envious glances of their friends, until the streetcar screeches to a stop and its driver rolls a cigarette between his fingers and cups his hands around a lighted match. So far, nine-year-old Andrei, two years older than Marik and Sasha, is the only one who has had the guts to ride on the streetcar’s metal tail, and he has been sauntering around with his hands in his pockets since, forgetting that the three of them are friends, whistling and gazing over their heads as if they’ve suddenly shrunk in size.
She looks back to check that Grandma’s face has disappeared from the window and waits for the streetcar with thrill and trepidation, as if it were a final test at the end of school in May. She and Marik both wait, ready and determined, glancing back at Grandma’s house, which Sasha has always known is full of secrets. Secrets that are stashed in letters tied with ribbons under Grandma’s bed, tucked away into the upper shelves of the armoire Sasha cannot reach, hidden in the dusty space of the storage loft above the front door. They are secrets from the old life, the life before Sasha and Marik were born: before the country shuddered and convulsed into a new social order, before her mother’s two younger brothers became engulfed by the war. They wait and wait for their defining moment, their hands sweaty, their stomachs growling in protest to the daring plan they have concocted. To shrink the waiting, they kick the dust, although they know they shouldn’t, because it will ruin their shoes, and getting new ones is an event almost as big as overthrowing the tsar.
And then, from around the corner, they hear the approaching rumble. The rattling of windows becomes louder as the streetcar turns and heaves in their direction and for a moment swallows them in its enormous wake. They let it pass and then run behind it on the track so that the driver can’t see them in his mirror. She sees Marik grab onto the iron tail and jump, straddling the metal bar, clutching its cold neck with both hands. She jumps, too, and the tracks begin to sail away from under her feet, just like she saw in a movie once, but she concentrates on holding on. Her hands are sweaty, and Marik’s must be, too, because she can see him grasp at the metal as his fingers keep slipping off. Is he as frightened as she is? Is his heart beating as fast as hers? To keep her own balance, she focuses on his tense back in front of her. Then the car lurches forward and slows to a crawl. Suddenly she can see Andrei from the corner of her eye, frozen against the fence. He glides past and disappears, but neither Marik nor she looks back because they can’t afford to lose their balance when the streetcar swings on another turn. Then, when the brown grass rolls into view and when they are both still on the back of the streetcar clattering past the lilac bushes, she knows that they have done it, that the two policemen didn’t win, that Andrei will never again gaze over their heads or spit out sunflower shells in their direction.