Chapter 7 The Noose #2
I gulped and gazed out the window as we crossed the bridge.
The river wasn’t completely frozen over at this time of the year, but the ice banks were already crawling toward the currents.
Everything seemed so gray. The Brezhnevka buildings—the twelve-floor concrete apartment complexes—crowded together and created a backdrop to a city that wouldn’t see vibrancy until the spring.
It would be better once we passed all the living districts and arrived at the city center.
There, the neoclassical architecture inspired a sense of civic pride that could almost fool someone into thinking the rest of Kurov was kept up after Communism fell.
A shame, they’d destroyed a handful of the older imperial buildings to erect tall, metal and glass modern giants full of stores and offices. People protested this at the time, but they had bigger problems and not enough money to be asked their opinion.
He pulled onto a side street crowded with parked cars, mostly newer Volgas, with an old green Moskovich sitting among them like the kid not invited to the birthday party who showed up anyway.
Parking wasn’t difficult to find, but I saw no nice buildings around us and the thought balled up in my chest that perhaps Vitali couldn’t afford the dates he’d been taking me on.
It was not unusual for men to woo a girl with presents, yet live with their babushkas.
The champagne from two weeks ago sickened my stomach.
I shouldn’t be having those feelings, as it wasn’t about money.
I made up whole scenarios in my head where Vitali was some foreign (apparently New Zealand) prince, and he’d done nothing to dissuade them but that didn’t make them true or justified.
I was ready for the illusion to shatter because I was miserable and everyone else was too, and I didn’t want to have these thoughts because they were too pretty for my overall bad mood.
“There is no elevator, unfortunately,” he told me as his metal key squealed in the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“This used to be an administration building before they moved the politicians over to the other side of town. They didn’t invest a whole lot into renovations.
I can leave the keys if you want to wait in the car. I’ll be quick.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. I’d gotten this far, and I needed to see where he lived now.
“It’s on the third floor.”
The stairwell was like any other stairwell, but cracked plaster greeted us in place of concrete, a remnant of a pre-Stalin era. The graffiti was a bit classier because I didn’t see anything anatomically correct on the walls. Just gang tags, proclamations of love and break-ups.
His steel door had a keypad instead of a keyhole, and he typed in the code in my plain view. I didn’t catch it because I was busy bracing myself for whatever lay on the other side.
It was—
Ordinary.
No expensive, modern furniture or electronics. No Venetian plaster on the walls. Just neat, unfaded wallpaper, a seat to take off your shoes, and a plain sconce letting off yellowed light.
“Would you like something to drink?” He startled me. “There is an electric kettle in the kitchen. I can get you tea to warm up.”
“Oh, no, thank you. I’ll wait for the cafe,” I said, looking around curiously as the high of my overactive imagination wore off.
He walked ahead to show me to the living room, where I took off my scarf. It hardly differed from my own, with the wall-length veneer bookcase sharing the space with a light brown couch. On it were three red throw pillows, crushed and strewn about.
He even had the white lace curtains, which were outdated enough to have been my babushka’s.
“I’ll be quick,” he reassured me again, and this time I heard the note of shaken confidence in his voice. Had my expression embarrassed him? Oh God…
I didn’t sit down as he disappeared behind his bedroom door. Instead, I stared at it with my heart doing backflips.
Someone else’s legs were moving me forward when I took my next step. Someone else’s hand rested on the door, waited a few seconds, then eased it open. Strange, there were two keylocks. One of them was on the outside…
But I’d already moved past and into his bedroom.
His very ordinary bedroom.
The low bed with the floral-pattern comforter was made, neat and tidy, just like the rest of his home. The pull-chain lamp and a completely out-of-place expensive watch were the only things on his otherwise bare nightstand. The drawers were veneer too; the exact same kind Mama had in her room.
There was no door on the bathroom, but it was at an angle where I couldn’t see inside unless I took five or six steps forward.
It was still possible to leave. It wasn’t too late to go to the kitchen and fill his electric kettle and scald myself on tea I didn’t deserve for being a privacy-invading snoop.
But it was.
I held my breath and took a couple of steps.
The faucet whined and water turned on.
A couple more. A part of the bath came into view with its predictable, cracked, green tile. Pipes. Generic soap and shampoo.
What I saw next caught me completely unprepared.
Vitali was midway through taking his sweater off and hadn’t noticed me as he grabbed the hem and pulled it over his head. The first thing I saw was the pronounced muscle shifting and flexing beneath his skin. The second thing I saw didn’t quite register.
At first, I thought he wore an undershirt. My stupid brain tried to make sense of it and held me very still, staring. He straightened by then, the sweater balled up in his hands, and turned his head to acknowledge my presence, but said nothing. His precious turtlenecks made sense.
They were tattoos.
A lot, a lot of tattoos.
His entire neck was just a dark space without pattern, and it extended down his spine where a large depiction of a sleepy sun covered it shoulder to shoulder, the last of its rays ending just above the waistband.
I didn’t get to study whatever was on his arms because I nearly blacked out as he noticed me.
“Alright,” he said, and cleared his throat. His shoulders tightened.
I thanked God he was buying more time for both of us.
The water was still running.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and the utter embarrassment of my criminally inappropriate invasion hit me all at once. If there were a door on those hinges, I would have slammed it shut. “I’m sorry, I’ll go.”
“Are you leaving?”
The hurt in his voice tore my heart out.
I opened my mouth, but he turned to face me, and his chest—his entire chest was covered in them too, and the Russian language instilled in me since birth became orderless gibberish.
“I don’t have a phone. But I can flag down a taxi.
Or I can drive you home,” he said, any hint of emotion gone.
Just ‘what kind of tea do you want, mint or chamomile?’ but ‘are we never going to speak again or will you say enough to let me know how you’re getting home, and then we’ll never speak again? ’
My hands shook.
He raised an eyebrow, and when I only stared at him, opening my mouth like a fish without sound, he picked up a razor and leaned over the sink.
“I’ve never seen tattoos before…” I whispered, and he gave me a dispassionate glance through the mirror. “In person…”
“And?” he asked genuinely without pausing the shave.
“I don’t know what to tell you that isn’t a lie,” I said, oblivious to everything but the rapid beating of my heart and trying hard not to stare at him.
“I guess that leaves the truth.”
“I’ve never seen tattoos before,” I repeated. “I’m just… it wasn’t expected.”
Mama would have a heart attack. Elena would have a heart attack.
I was having a heart attack. I couldn’t even think of anyone I’d seen on TV with this many—and certainly not in Russia aside from some prison thugs, and that was just in pictures.
Papa’s friend had some faded green letters on his knuckles, but Papa never let him inside the house.
“They’re not from prison,” he said, clearly reading my thoughts. The razor tap-tapped on the sink. “I’ve never been to prison, Katya.”
I leaned against the doorway and helplessly crossed my arms just to put them somewhere. I should have left the room and had this conversation when he had a shirt on…
…I’d have to spend hours confessing before a priest whenever I went back to church to make up for my thoughts, because God—I didn’t want him to put a shirt on.
I wanted to continue staring at him and figure out every line, curve, and small letter hidden among the designs.
It didn’t take away from his good looks, only made me feel like a no-good deviant with no Mama to raise me like a lady for being so interested.
“Is this… does everyone in New Zealand have these?” I did his job for him, trying hard to convince myself and hoping he’d play along.
He smirked, touching up the last bit of stubble. “I don’t know what to tell you that isn’t a lie.”
“Then lie to me,” I whispered.
“Once you get one, it’s easy to get others,” he said, and set down the towel, taking a step into the doorway which was clearly not big enough for the both of us.
The ink was so close to me I could see my reflection in the water droplets that’d splashed onto his chest. “I didn’t have a choice in my first one.
So I covered it with the others until I didn’t have to see it every time I looked in the mirror, Katya. ”
I didn’t want to know, because nothing good could come from knowing.
“What was the first one?” I asked anyway.
He didn’t look away, and his eyes were sadder than ever.
“A noose, Kotik. Around my neck.”
* * *
About Russia
brezhnevka - concrete 9-17 story concrete apartment buildings built in the 1970s, low-quality mass housing.
Moskovich - Soviet/Russian automobile brand
About tattoos: They were still heavily associated with the criminal world and considered taboo by the general public.
There was a lot of stigma surrounding prison tattoos, which meant different things depending on the design and acted as “codes.” Non-prison tattoos were uncommon and viewed negatively, especially by the older generations.