The Great Glass Sea by Weil Josh

Author:Weil, Josh [Weil, Josh]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2014-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

Now, Dima was out under the zerkala again. It seemed to him the Consortium must have sent more up: they filled the sky, a city of lights above the city of none, as if the souls of all the disused streetlamps of Petroplavilsk had taken residence in the heavens. Beneath them, Dima walked the long walk to his brother’s home.

Again, he had returned to his own just before morning. Again, he’d slept through the day. And waking in the late afternoon across the room from Yarik’s old cot, in the same strings of sunlight coming through the window-hung kovyor, he’d felt the weave of them, him and his brother, the threads that all their lives had held them together, fraying—the day they’d sold their father’s boat, the evening Yarik first saw Zinaida, the hours Dima had spent with Vika last night: these were the moments that pulled the loose ends of life—and, rising, he had known they had to see each other, to talk, whether Yarik wanted to or not.

By the time he got to the building it was late enough Zina and the children would have already eaten supper, late enough Dima could be sure his brother would be there. He’d found a pair of peeling boots to replace his lost shoes, and the tape that he’d used to hold together the sole of one had come undone. The rubber slapped with every step on every stair. On the landing, he paused. Through the apartment door he could hear the baby crying, dishes banging in the sink, Yarik shouting at his wife that she was going to break something, her shouting back that he was one to talk.

When Dima knocked, all the noise but the baby stopped.

“Bratets,” he said, “it’s me.”

There was whispering before his brother came to the door. Yarik had on a bathrobe and slippers and his hair was wet. The hallway light showed the trails trickled down his temples, his neck.

“Hello, bratishka,” Yarik said.

“Hello, bratan.”

It seemed like such a long time since he had seen his brother. Now, standing so close, last night seemed even farther away than that. Or maybe just seemed smaller. Maybe, back beside his brother, he already felt a little less scared of it, a little more safe. Some neighbor below opened a door, shut it, started down the stairs. Dima reached out and took Yarik’s hand and lifted his arm and put his brother’s palm over the back of his neck. Footsteps down a second flight, a third.

Yarik squeezed a little. “Come in,” he said.

A color television flashed from the living room, flickering over Polya’s scattered toys, and there was Timofei, sitting crosslegged on the floor before a video game, nearly unrecognizable in the crazed light of the screen. The coatrack had been moved. Dima didn’t see why until he reached to it, ran his hand down the post their father carved, his palm slipping over the spirals, slowing, going still. There, at eye level: a second hole in the wall.

“It was like only having one shoe.

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