Castle of Concrete by Katia Raina

Author:Katia Raina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: New Europe Books
Published: 2019-06-16T00:00:00+00:00

29

Afternoon Off

A wall unit with shelves and shelves. China that shimmers with soft mother-of-pearl shades. A few assorted-size iron weights on the floor in the corner. They remind me of his biceps tightening under my hand.

Wooden chairs and kitchen stools, and the smell of old furniture. A round table covered in cloth stands between two sofa beds facing each other.

“Do you live with your grandmother?” I ask him.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “She’s at work.”

“What does she do?”

“Nothing interesting, I promise.”

In the middle of the room stands a pretty little New Year’s evergreen, decorated with fancy ornaments. I touch them gently: the cones and the painted glass balls, the chubby Father Frost figures and the sweet, smiling Snow Maiden figurines.

“Beautiful tree,” I say. “You decorated it with your babushka?”

“Yes.” His reply is oddly curt. Is he as nervous as I am? Or still angry about Misha? He sits on one of the sofa beds and pats the space beside him. I throw another look around, awed at how much furniture he and his grandmother were able to fit in this rectangle of a room.

“What happened to your—” parents, I want to ask, but he speaks at the same time, his words covering mine.

“What’s the matter,” he says, smirking, “Never been to a boy’s apartment before?”

“Actually—no.” His smirk grows wider, then, just as suddenly, he grows serious.

“Come here,” he whispers.

The warmth of the radiators melting my cheeks; his hands expectant on my uniformed shoulders.

“Sit down.”

I sit on the tacky burgundy flower on his bed cover, wrapped into my own arms, knees close together. I stare at a small wrinkled picture of a Russian Orthodox saint tucked behind his bed.

“Relax,” he breathes in my ear. “Would you like some Georgian wine?”

“No, I’m all right.” I’m all right.

You don’t have to keep doing this, Sonya, the memory of Misha’s voice rises up from somewhere deep inside my soul. I shake my head at the memory and tell it to go back to geometry.

“How about a joke?” Ruslan plops down beside me on his bed and places his hand over my leg.

“Sure.”

The sun is white outside the window. His hand burns on my leg.

His eyes are far away, but his hand slides down my leg, then back up. Only this time when it climbs, his fingers are underneath the skirt of my dress, not above it. That’s all right, I tell myself. It’s what I want.

“A negr—a black-skinned man—asks a genie, ‘pleaze, make me white …”

I tune out the rest of it. When he is done, he looks at me expectantly. The laugh he wants from me stays glued to the bottom of my throat. His fingers stroking my leg do not falter.

“A bit vulgar?—All right, how about this one. A negr and a Georgian tried to trade with a Jew—”

“No.”

He lifts his hand from my thigh for a moment. I dare a small breath, realizing only now that I haven’t been breathing, trying to quiet my leg trembling under the sudden absence of touch.

“I don’t want to hear any more jokes.

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