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light/03
Lyonka himself had never minded losing by association, or at least had never seemed to. He was good because he was simple, and because he was simple he was a lost cause from the beginning. But even then Esenin had shared with him a sort of kinship born of struggle. Lyonka fared better, untroubled for being so low on the chain and so hopeless at schoolwork. When his classmates called him "Lyon-kol" after the post-like shape of the failing mark, Lyonka had to have the joke explained to him. He never stayed for workroom, and shredded his notes to cushion the saddle of a seven-string Ural, which he loved. He also loved Bylat Okudhzava, and had never been in a fight until he lost one just to keep Esenin company.
They struck up in earnest when Pear, pronounced too rude for ballet, was sent to learn piano at the Youth Center. Esenin came to collect her on the same days as Lyonka's Pioneer squad volunteered cleaning rooms. From then on, they kept up an almost entirely untroubled friendship. Still ripe with floor-polish and lye, they would waste good weather on the front stair of Lyonka's tenement, exercising the guitar. Now and then the neighbor girls emerged to jostle them, but always indifferently, accustomed to close quarters with Lyonka's renditions of "Katyusha." Meanwhile the Ural cared for its master and never bit him with snapped strings. Esenin expected that the first female to appreciate it, no matter how ugly or unpleasant, would have to be the one. But even Dunia, who was not unpleasant, had to cross a minefield before poor Lyonka put it all together.
Esenin met her in the year his father died. Permitted at last to spend the summer with Lyonka's family, he felt very much like a man while hitching a ride from the station to their dacha at Romanovo. He arrived just before dinner, rajah-like on the back of a Gaz truck. Lyonka was varying his three chords by the ditch, and Dunia had come out to listen. She spoke so rarely that at first Esenin wondered if she wasn't genuinely impaired. Most days she seemed to do nothing but sit on her porch, plumbing the grass with bare feet and poring over a book. Coming over to investigate, Esenin saw that it was Pushkin's "Tale of a Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs."
"She's perfect for you," he later told Lyonka, half-serious. "A nice country girl."
Lyonka said, "Maybe she is. Like you're so much smarter than everyone," which made Esenin half-serious in a worse way.
Divided by this quarrel they learned from the local boys to roll cigarettes and to shoot rabbits respectively, then one afternoon were wordlessly friends again. The two of them went out to practice on the rabbits, but soon downgraded to squirrels, then trees. They headed home collecting mushrooms in Lyonka's hat.
"I know which ones," he insisted. "Red ones with spots are the deadliest. These are all right." He had insisted on rabbit for dinner as well, and on leading the way back.
"Good work, Grandma."
"Oi, Vov, I think the hermit lives around here."
"What hermit," said Esenin. He had insisted on charge of the rifle.
Only by sheer miracle did the beeches at last turn to underbrush, which soon opened on a fallow field. There was no village in sight, only a clay road splitting the galaxies of mustard-bloom and daisies. When she spotted her neighbors, Dunia was carrying well-water on the back of an enormous bicycle, the kind that a girl must hop astride from a rolling start. It afforded her a fine vantage.
"Da. What's she doing? Is that waving?"
Esenin put up a hand against the sun. "Who knows? Perhaps she is happy to see you."
Presently Dunia dropped the bicycle, spilled the water, and put out her palms in the universal gesture of halt. When that proved unclear she performed a sort of pas-ballet, in itself quite beautiful, to mime an explosion and shouted, "Mines!"
"Vov. Vova. She looks pretty angry."
Fearing they were going to start across, Dunia plunged into the wild oats first. "Mines!" she shouted.
Esenin shouted back, "What kind of mines?"
They were too baffled to do anything but wait for her. Dunia only faltered on arrival. Lyonka looked as though he wanted to catch her, then as though the notion was too overwhelming. He stood guiltily by while she leaned on him gasping.
"Use the trail." She pointed to a swatch of white halfway up the field, just visible in the oatgrass. "The sign fell. Idiots! What kind of mines."
Esenin blanched. He glanced from her to Lyonka to the gold all around them, hiding myriad now-wary cicadas, and suddenly mines. Lyonka, on the other hand, was so pleased by the quality of Dunia's entrance that he actually laughed.
"Amazing! I never even knew! Are there a lot of them?"
"Does it matter," said Esenin. "Shouldn't there be more signs?"
Seemingly in blanket response Dunia answered, "Yes."
Lyonka whistled. "A big thank you for warning us." When he shook her hand she let him with polite tolerance, as if handshakes were new to her. Lyonka managed to think of something else. "Nu da," he said, tipping his chin in the direction of the fallen bicycle, along the way she had run. "Those must have been some stupid Partisans. Who mines one side of a field when the Germans could just go across over here?"
Dunia shook her head. She seemed about to speak, but instead she reached up and flicked Lyonka's forehead, just hard enough to hurt. He reddened, gathered that inexplicably he was holding his hat, and showered himself in mushrooms. While it all dawned properly Esenin went around to pick up the sign unsolicited, altruistic in a season of loss.
At the top of White Nights they were invited to a bonfire. Lyonka's grandfather objected, so they had to sneak out in broad half-light, risking the belting it should earn them. At the last moment Lyonka decided to double back and haul along his guitar. A couple of locals had brought theirs, too, along with a three-liter jar of samogon. In color it resembled Starka, but smelled like shit. Esenin was told it was made on the urine of milk-cows, an obvious prank at his expense.
Now and then someone would walk up to borrow a tin cup, down a pour, and launch forth to leap over the flames. A couple of hollers announced a new candidate readying for a go. Esenin turned sharply to his left, but of course Lyonka wasn't there. He was publicly drinking cow piss. Across his place in the grass, Dunia had been given charge of the Ural. Returning Esenin's look, she shrugged and said, "No problem, we can roll him around if what."
That kind of preparedness deserved a nod. Dunia laughed a little, in her own way. Hands around his mouth, Esenin shouted, "Eh, Lyon-kol! Do it for Okudhzava!"
Lyonka heard him. He saluted.
It was impossible not to hold a breath as he went over the bonfire. He landed like a gymnast, chest out and arms raised, to unilateral cheers. Then there was nothing for it but to join in. Dunia hid her face with her hands. Across the distance Lyonka turned to them, backlit by the fire, toplit by the night. The brightness that suffused his face meant he had seen something, perhaps Dunia meeting his eye, or her arm around the flank of his guitar. It drew him back at a walk that became a run. Laughing, he half-rolled, half-dropped into place.
The chant all around was, "Bitter! Bitter!" And in Lyonka the brightness was still there, you could see how loud it was inside him, and carried on that brightness he turned to Dunia and kissed her. This adequately sugared things for everyone except Dunia. She shrieked and gave him a sort of headbutt, mindful of the guitar. Curious to see how Lyonka would take it, Esenin glanced over just in time to get grabbed by both cheeks and kissed in turn.
"Sweet!" was the general sentiment. Esenin didn't have time for his own. He was barely braced for Lyonka's face as it came in for landing. There was only a hitch in his stomach that cut sharply downward, slackening his mouth. His lips must have been dry, because Lyonka's were very wet. Esenin couldn't believe how wet they were. The thing that came up in him wanted to push away as hard as it could, if only for the space to wipe his mouth.
It was simple enough to pretend they were drunk. Someone started a round about the apples and the pears, for which Katyusha sent her ordnance into the sun. Lyonka, idiot king of bardship, could never keep it together around the faces Esenin supposedly made while singing. Before long he lost the beat and went rolling around in the grass, nose down to suck at the smell of the earth.
Esenin almost believed that nothing had happened at all. Company and darkness lulled his humiliation to a tiny, nearly pleasurable sting. Dunia came to sit with him, plucking the Ural for so long that Esenin started when she spoke. Did he read books? She had finished three years of school and a corridor, whatever that meant, and had never seen a library. Her face was round amid a crop of fawny hair, like a bowl of milk, and moved through expressions so resolutely that at times it seemed painted. She should have been named after a saint, thought Esenin. He thought that he could marry her. It got him sort of cramped, as if all of him were one big muscle, so he went and kissed Lyonka again, just before dawn, amid pulling up well-water to rinse themselves of spirits and ash.
That time it took longer to stop, because of where Lyonka's hand went right away. His mouth was cold. It was just like having a sip from the bucket, weight on the tongue and the taste of aluminum. It was like stretching, but everywhere at once. Lyonka's other hand must have let go of the rope. There was a ringing slap on the surface below, followed by the little gulp of sinking.
"Okhh," said Lyonka. "Ow. You're not doing it right. Like this."
Esenin forced his hand away. "I am not a girl," he said.
They struck up in earnest when Pear, pronounced too rude for ballet, was sent to learn piano at the Youth Center. Esenin came to collect her on the same days as Lyonka's Pioneer squad volunteered cleaning rooms. From then on, they kept up an almost entirely untroubled friendship. Still ripe with floor-polish and lye, they would waste good weather on the front stair of Lyonka's tenement, exercising the guitar. Now and then the neighbor girls emerged to jostle them, but always indifferently, accustomed to close quarters with Lyonka's renditions of "Katyusha." Meanwhile the Ural cared for its master and never bit him with snapped strings. Esenin expected that the first female to appreciate it, no matter how ugly or unpleasant, would have to be the one. But even Dunia, who was not unpleasant, had to cross a minefield before poor Lyonka put it all together.
Esenin met her in the year his father died. Permitted at last to spend the summer with Lyonka's family, he felt very much like a man while hitching a ride from the station to their dacha at Romanovo. He arrived just before dinner, rajah-like on the back of a Gaz truck. Lyonka was varying his three chords by the ditch, and Dunia had come out to listen. She spoke so rarely that at first Esenin wondered if she wasn't genuinely impaired. Most days she seemed to do nothing but sit on her porch, plumbing the grass with bare feet and poring over a book. Coming over to investigate, Esenin saw that it was Pushkin's "Tale of a Dead Princess and the Seven Bogatyrs."
"She's perfect for you," he later told Lyonka, half-serious. "A nice country girl."
Lyonka said, "Maybe she is. Like you're so much smarter than everyone," which made Esenin half-serious in a worse way.
Divided by this quarrel they learned from the local boys to roll cigarettes and to shoot rabbits respectively, then one afternoon were wordlessly friends again. The two of them went out to practice on the rabbits, but soon downgraded to squirrels, then trees. They headed home collecting mushrooms in Lyonka's hat.
"I know which ones," he insisted. "Red ones with spots are the deadliest. These are all right." He had insisted on rabbit for dinner as well, and on leading the way back.
"Good work, Grandma."
"Oi, Vov, I think the hermit lives around here."
"What hermit," said Esenin. He had insisted on charge of the rifle.
Only by sheer miracle did the beeches at last turn to underbrush, which soon opened on a fallow field. There was no village in sight, only a clay road splitting the galaxies of mustard-bloom and daisies. When she spotted her neighbors, Dunia was carrying well-water on the back of an enormous bicycle, the kind that a girl must hop astride from a rolling start. It afforded her a fine vantage.
"Da. What's she doing? Is that waving?"
Esenin put up a hand against the sun. "Who knows? Perhaps she is happy to see you."
Presently Dunia dropped the bicycle, spilled the water, and put out her palms in the universal gesture of halt. When that proved unclear she performed a sort of pas-ballet, in itself quite beautiful, to mime an explosion and shouted, "Mines!"
"Vov. Vova. She looks pretty angry."
Fearing they were going to start across, Dunia plunged into the wild oats first. "Mines!" she shouted.
Esenin shouted back, "What kind of mines?"
They were too baffled to do anything but wait for her. Dunia only faltered on arrival. Lyonka looked as though he wanted to catch her, then as though the notion was too overwhelming. He stood guiltily by while she leaned on him gasping.
"Use the trail." She pointed to a swatch of white halfway up the field, just visible in the oatgrass. "The sign fell. Idiots! What kind of mines."
Esenin blanched. He glanced from her to Lyonka to the gold all around them, hiding myriad now-wary cicadas, and suddenly mines. Lyonka, on the other hand, was so pleased by the quality of Dunia's entrance that he actually laughed.
"Amazing! I never even knew! Are there a lot of them?"
"Does it matter," said Esenin. "Shouldn't there be more signs?"
Seemingly in blanket response Dunia answered, "Yes."
Lyonka whistled. "A big thank you for warning us." When he shook her hand she let him with polite tolerance, as if handshakes were new to her. Lyonka managed to think of something else. "Nu da," he said, tipping his chin in the direction of the fallen bicycle, along the way she had run. "Those must have been some stupid Partisans. Who mines one side of a field when the Germans could just go across over here?"
Dunia shook her head. She seemed about to speak, but instead she reached up and flicked Lyonka's forehead, just hard enough to hurt. He reddened, gathered that inexplicably he was holding his hat, and showered himself in mushrooms. While it all dawned properly Esenin went around to pick up the sign unsolicited, altruistic in a season of loss.
At the top of White Nights they were invited to a bonfire. Lyonka's grandfather objected, so they had to sneak out in broad half-light, risking the belting it should earn them. At the last moment Lyonka decided to double back and haul along his guitar. A couple of locals had brought theirs, too, along with a three-liter jar of samogon. In color it resembled Starka, but smelled like shit. Esenin was told it was made on the urine of milk-cows, an obvious prank at his expense.
Now and then someone would walk up to borrow a tin cup, down a pour, and launch forth to leap over the flames. A couple of hollers announced a new candidate readying for a go. Esenin turned sharply to his left, but of course Lyonka wasn't there. He was publicly drinking cow piss. Across his place in the grass, Dunia had been given charge of the Ural. Returning Esenin's look, she shrugged and said, "No problem, we can roll him around if what."
That kind of preparedness deserved a nod. Dunia laughed a little, in her own way. Hands around his mouth, Esenin shouted, "Eh, Lyon-kol! Do it for Okudhzava!"
Lyonka heard him. He saluted.
It was impossible not to hold a breath as he went over the bonfire. He landed like a gymnast, chest out and arms raised, to unilateral cheers. Then there was nothing for it but to join in. Dunia hid her face with her hands. Across the distance Lyonka turned to them, backlit by the fire, toplit by the night. The brightness that suffused his face meant he had seen something, perhaps Dunia meeting his eye, or her arm around the flank of his guitar. It drew him back at a walk that became a run. Laughing, he half-rolled, half-dropped into place.
The chant all around was, "Bitter! Bitter!" And in Lyonka the brightness was still there, you could see how loud it was inside him, and carried on that brightness he turned to Dunia and kissed her. This adequately sugared things for everyone except Dunia. She shrieked and gave him a sort of headbutt, mindful of the guitar. Curious to see how Lyonka would take it, Esenin glanced over just in time to get grabbed by both cheeks and kissed in turn.
"Sweet!" was the general sentiment. Esenin didn't have time for his own. He was barely braced for Lyonka's face as it came in for landing. There was only a hitch in his stomach that cut sharply downward, slackening his mouth. His lips must have been dry, because Lyonka's were very wet. Esenin couldn't believe how wet they were. The thing that came up in him wanted to push away as hard as it could, if only for the space to wipe his mouth.
It was simple enough to pretend they were drunk. Someone started a round about the apples and the pears, for which Katyusha sent her ordnance into the sun. Lyonka, idiot king of bardship, could never keep it together around the faces Esenin supposedly made while singing. Before long he lost the beat and went rolling around in the grass, nose down to suck at the smell of the earth.
Esenin almost believed that nothing had happened at all. Company and darkness lulled his humiliation to a tiny, nearly pleasurable sting. Dunia came to sit with him, plucking the Ural for so long that Esenin started when she spoke. Did he read books? She had finished three years of school and a corridor, whatever that meant, and had never seen a library. Her face was round amid a crop of fawny hair, like a bowl of milk, and moved through expressions so resolutely that at times it seemed painted. She should have been named after a saint, thought Esenin. He thought that he could marry her. It got him sort of cramped, as if all of him were one big muscle, so he went and kissed Lyonka again, just before dawn, amid pulling up well-water to rinse themselves of spirits and ash.
That time it took longer to stop, because of where Lyonka's hand went right away. His mouth was cold. It was just like having a sip from the bucket, weight on the tongue and the taste of aluminum. It was like stretching, but everywhere at once. Lyonka's other hand must have let go of the rope. There was a ringing slap on the surface below, followed by the little gulp of sinking.
"Okhh," said Lyonka. "Ow. You're not doing it right. Like this."
Esenin forced his hand away. "I am not a girl," he said.