Deathless

24 Nine Shades of Gold

Marya’s black book lies open on the floor of the cellar where she no longer stands. Very slowly, mold grows in the spine, crawling out over the words, reading softly, greenly, to itself.

A ptarmigan lays a speckled, tea-colored egg; a moorhen leaves behind her a white egg spattered with red, as if with blood. By the egg, you may guess at the bird.

The Tsar of Birds, despite being a Tsar and not a Tsaritsa, is not wholly eggless. Speckled with jewels are his eggs, copper and chartreuse and turquoise, enameled in jet, painted with scenes of dancing girls and sunsets behind churches. And from this, child, you may guess that Alkonost is a bird of impossibly many colors, possessing a soul so rich and fecund that he cannot help lay eggs. Anything which passes through him emerges streaked with grace. Alkonost’s long tail lashes and whips, possessing feathers of indigo, fuchsia, and nine shades of gold. His broad, downy chest flashes six hues of white; his talons shine green, his claws pearl. Above his bird’s body, his human face floats beardless and exquisite, his hair bright as coins beneath his crown. All these things you could tell from his egg, if you could but see it.

Once, Alkonost hatched a daughter. He named her Gamayun. Like her father, she saw the future and the past projected onto her eyelids like two film reels running together. Like her father, she preferred to be alone, the company of her own eggs being preferable to that of her extended family. Together, father and daughter chose the meditations and quietude of the sky over the worries of the earth. They knew how it would all come out already, you see.

Once, because it is not possible to possess so many colors and also a hard heart, Alkonost pitied his brother, the Tsar of Life.

“You are so fragile, Brother, and often in despair. At any moment, Death might take you.”

“Tscha!” said the Tsar of Life. “Life is like that.”

Alkonost, his azure tail feathers waving in the wind, embraced his brother with infinite succor and love, which he had learned from the clouds, which they had learned from the sun. His glittering wings opened around the Tsar of Life like the doors of a church, and when Alkonost withdrew his wingspan, they lay together in his nest, which rests so high in the mountains that the air turns to light and the light turns to air. The Tsar of Birds thatched his nest from the braids of firstborn daughters, and its softness knows no equal. Into these ropes of gold and black and red and brown the great bird laid his brother and fed him like a chick, retching his own sweet meals into the mouth of the Tsar of Life.

Much time passed, and secret things only brothers may speak of. And all the while Alkonost tended an egg in secret, holding it beneath the feathers that covered his ankles. The egg began from his pity for the Tsar of Life. It swelled with each passing day. And each day the Tsar of Life cried out in agony, clutching his chest.

“Brother,” he wept, “my heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it.”

“Tscha!” said the Tsar of Birds. “Life is like that.”

As the egg neared its time, Alkonost could conceal it no further. It shone huge and black in the light that was air and the air that was light, studded with cold, colorless diamonds. Alkonost did not love it, for it bore more of his brother’s countenance than his own. When it hatched, the two brothers peered over the shattered, starry rim of the shell to see what waited inside the thing that they had made together. Once they had seen it, they agreed to seal up the egg again and conceal it beneath their hearts, never to let it be found, to the extent of both their powers. A ptarmigan could not seal up a hatched egg. Alkonost can.

The voice of the Tsar of Birds is so sweet that should he wish it, anyone hearing him would forget the whole of her life, even her name. Of course, she must wish it. But should Alkonost speak with the smallest kindness, the littlest mercy, the richness of his voice would sweep away any sorrow in any heart, and leave there instead only the perfect world that might have been, if only the world had not invented hearts in the first place. For this reason, some folk stuff their ears with wax. Some seek out the bird of heaven all their days, praying to be drowned in him. Each of these cannot comprehend what drives the other. How can you want to lose yourself, your history, your name? How can you run from the voice of God? But of course, no amount of seeking will find Alkonost, and no amount of hiding will avoid him.

Life is like that.

25 Gross Desertion

At the end of a long, thin road lies the village of Yaichka. Pale gold larch trees close it in as tightly as a wall, and in the autumn, the mist touches the ground only on Sundays. Much rich-smelling smoke from well-made chimneys and aged, crisp wood rises up to the very clear night stars, which look like nails in a strong, black roof. Wolves howl in the forest, but are never seen. Thick, new straw is piled high on every roof; green onion shoots poke out of every kitchen garden. Yaichka possesses several fields whose soil forgives all offenses; four horses; ten head of cattle; two hens and a rooster for every family; three sheep (one pregnant); a solitary goat who has a passion for onion shoots; and a small river, so small it forgot its own name, but which nevertheless allows for Yaichka to possess one mill. A liking for meat keeps these numbers pleasantly accurate. Rain comes only when everyone has shut their doors as tight as they can; snow falls only after each man has chopped all the logs he needs.

No one ever leaves Yaichka—what is out there to want? And no one ever visits from out of town. In the village they have a saying, Yaichka possesses many things, but the forest possesses Yaichka.

Among the other things Yaichka possesses is a short, wide house where Marya Morevna lives with her husband. She has always lived here, and never anywhere else. One other thing Yaichka owns is the secret sight of Marya lying naked in the summer forest, drying her black curls in the sun. On Thursdays and Mondays she briefly touches the ring of iron keys hanging over her hearth, but cannot remember what they might unlock. Then she takes out one of the four horses—her favorite, a dapple grey named Volchya—and gallops into the larch forest so fast her heart flies out ahead of her. With her rifle on her back and her best red scarf knotted around her shoulders, she hunts in the depths of the shadows, crouching, chasing, firing—and on Thursdays and Mondays her peals of laughter are the Yaichka’s church bells. She returns with deer or rabbits, pheasant or goose, sometimes, mysteriously, a wolf flopped over Volchya’s broad back, one of those who howls but is not seen. Marya Morevna shares her meat with her village. No one likes wolf soup much, but they do not complain. Marya does not complain when her hens forget to give her eggs. Life is like that.

Marya Morevna’s husband, Koschei Bessmertny, is so handsome that he could lend a cup of his beauty to every man in Yaichka and still charm the bark from his dogs. Wheat falls into loaves at his feet, but also at the feet of his friends, and all of Yaichka is friends with Koschei Bessmertny. When he bends to pull beets out of the earth, he sings a little song with four lines of five words each, and the last word of the song is wife. When his cow catches pregnant, he offers the calf to the family with the fewest cows, and the milking heifer to the family with the most children. Of the goat he says nothing, and lets him go on his onion-hunting way. Sometimes, in a certain light, he seems to recall to Marya someone she used to know, and could almost remember: a kind of golden cast to his black hair, a way he had of laughing, like a hound baying.

Once, Marya Morevna woke and saw someone working the fields before Yaichka had washed the dreams from its eyes. The someone wore a bright coat of many colors, and cut grain with an enormous pair of shears.

“Who is that?” she asked of her husband.

“Do not look at him, volchitsa,” said the handsome Koschei. “Let him take his share.”

Marya Morevna thought no more of it, kissed both of her husband’s sunburned cheeks, and rode into the wood after two fat beavers with tails like pancakes. When she returned to Koschei Bessmertny in the evening, being held by him was like being held by the sun, and together they relished the pale god of the butter on their bread.

On Marya’s left-hand side lives Vladimir Ilyich and his wife Nadya Konstantinovna, whose hens have such good memories they never forget an egg. Nadya’s scowl is so severe even winter leaves her well enough alone. Vladimir has gone bald and needs glasses, but he broke his comb over his knee and made his peace with God long ago. Around that time old Vova fell asleep with his new glasses on and was visited by a dream involving an army of red ants and an army of white ants. Somehow this led him to gather together the four Yaichkans who owned horses and devise the system of horse-shares which provides both for Marya’s hunting expeditions and for the equitable tilling of Yaichka’s several fields.

In his youth, a smaller Vladimir encountered a beautiful jackdaw with a red blaze on her chest. The bird snapped savagely at him, and ever since then the boy has possessed a gift for convincing people of strange things. Once, he declared to his neighbors that the tall, beautiful roses that climbed the walls of his house grew unjustly, so that they received both theirs and the lilacs’ share of the rain. The roses were corrupt, he said, and both Aleksandr Fyodorovich and Grigory Yevseevich listened sympathetically over cups of sweet myod. The roses are vicious by their nature, Nadya agreed, and scowled so fiercely that the myod spilled immediately, in order to absolve itself of any involvement. Vladimir Ilyich tried to encourage the lilacs to take the rain for themselves, going so far as to hang buckets from his eaves and distribute the water himself, sprinkling it evenly among the flowers with his long, thin fingers. But this did not suffice.

“What is to be done?” he demanded. “What is to be done?”

And one morning the village of Yaichka woke, and the heads of Vova’s roses had all been hacked off at the neck.

Vladimir and Nadya have two sons under their roof, Josef and Leon. They dream boys’ dreams: of getting a slice of their father’s fortune, of girls, of growing big mustaches. Several jokes concerning the brothers buzz through Yaichka, for one never hugged the other without making his hands into fists. Josef has chased Leon into the woods many times, red in the face, bellowing for his brother never to return. But of course, around dinner, Lyova slinks back, and Josef embraces him as if nothing was amiss. Leon, for his part, scowls in his room and breaks his toys to show them who their master is. After the incident with Vladimir’s roses, Josef stomped upon all the flowers of the garden—lilac, rose, peony, daisy, and even his mother’s flowerless savories, mint and dill and thyme. He stood in the middle of all his destruction, panting, his dark eyes wild as a kicked horse, looking to his father for praise.

“You are my favorite son,” said Vladimir Ilyich to Josef, which is all the boy ever wished to hear. “And so I forgive you for the flowers.”

This made the child smile, but did not really shine up his disposition. One spring day, as fine as a cake, the boy marched straight up to the very kindly Sergei Mironovich and shot him with finger pistols: pow, pow! The two stared at each other in the muddy, fragrant road of Yaichka, as if remembering something that happened long ago.

“Lyova did it!” cried Josef, frightened by Sergei’s silence, and ran off to hit his brother soundly. So it goes with Josef. Every village has one.

On Marya’s right-hand side lives Georgy Konstantinovich, who sits out on his steps and plays his birchwood gusli so prettily that the moon faints away from love, and whose wife Galina Ivanova has a lamb’s modesty. Everything in Georgy’s house proceeds with perfect precision. Even the eggs boil when he says so, and not a moment sooner. The bees in his garden sup only at the flowers he likes best. When the wolves in the forest howl, Georgy wakes up and stands watch with his daughters all in a line, their rifles on their shoulders, and it cannot be disproven that this is why wolves are heard but not seen. Georgy is more modest, even, than his wife. He would never say that he saves Yaichka each night with his strong antiwolf posture, but his neighbors say it for him, and bring to him and his girls hot tea and slices of pie wrapped in muslin when the cold snaps. Georgy herds the cows as well, for they recognize his authority, and proceed in formation into their pen without argument.

Now, just down the way lives Nikolai Aleksandrovich and his long-haired wife Aleksandra Fedorovna. Before their open door play their four beautiful daughters—Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia—and their sickly young son, Aleksey, who sits in the shade of a poplar and reads while his sisters kick pine cones between them on the green. Nikolai himself is a bit dim and distracted, but his mustache is thick, and he means very well, even if his garden half dies every winter for lack of water, even if his cow screams to be milked every so often, and he does not hear her. Vladimir Ilyich once tried to discuss his doctrine of roses and lilacs with Nikolai, who gave him a cup of kvass and listened intently. The sun passed behind a cloud. But Nikolai Aleksandrovich only laughed and sent old Vova on his way, his sympathies being rather with the roses. Aleksandra, her apron embroidered with a moth’s delicacy, her arms muscled from arguing with sheep, once told Marya Morevna that her husband was visited by the same dream as his neighbor, of the white ants and the red, and had wept in his sleep for weeks. She kisses Nikolai’s knuckles, where dreams live, until he quiets, but then she herself cannot sleep, and watches the stars spell out the words of a long poem from the warmth of her bed.

Many more folk bustle and quarrel and clap their hands over their ears in Yaichka. That is what villages are like. All day long, this or that grandmother could tell tales that stretch on like taffy concerning Vova’s plans for the distribution of the pregnant sheep’s lamb, or Josef’s somewhat more worrying plans for the goat, and they wouldn’t have even begun to recount the rumors of Aleksandra’s infidelity with a certain monk, let alone remember to name half the folk in Yaichka. That is what grandmothers are like. Cows moan in the grass; hens flutter when the rooster happens by; the earth turns blackly, wetly under plows; and for a while, just a little while, everything shines and nothing is the matter, anywhere, ever.

Yaichka has always been here, and never anywhere else. It has always possessed these people; their four horses; ten head of cattle; two hens and a rooster for every family; three sheep (one pregnant); the small and nameless river and its mill, owned by everyone and worked on a biweekly schedule designed by you-know-who; the solitary goat who would stop eating up everyone’s onions if he knew what’s good for him; and several fields whose deep, dark soil forgives everything done to it.

26 What Will We Call Her?

In the house of Marya Morevna, even the windows laugh. Long after the winter hearth has gone dark, the bodies of Marya and her husband glow. He is so alive in her that his skin tastes like an apple tree, full of sap and juice. The warmth of him, she thinks, the warmth!

“Oh, volchitsa,” he whispers to her, his belly brimming with soup and good bread, “I’ve a dog’s luck! Butter in the barrel, a good smoke after supper, and you, my bootlace girl, drawn up so tight to me!”

“When you said that just now, I almost thought you were someone else,” sighs Marya. But Koschei is always himself, perfectly so, whole and bright.

And he sets on her like the sun, and all her teeth show when she smiles. Each day she looks at the iron keys hanging by their door, and tries to think: Where have I seen those before? When have I had a thing I needed to lock? And each day, unless it is Sunday and the mist is down and all of Yaichka staying in, she shakes her head to gather it and strides out onto the long, thin road. Each morning, Marya Morevna thinks that she has never been so full, and each evening she is fuller still. Her black curls shine as if seen underwater.

On Wednesdays, Ushanka visits, her friend whom those old grandmothers most likely forgot to name, since she is the kind of girl who shows only half of her face at a time. No one knows her surname, but that’s all right. Surnames go politely unmentioned in Yaichka. Marya Morevna always makes sure she has a leg of rabbit and fresh bread with a little bowl of honey set out, and Wednesday is her day with the silver samovar that makes the rounds of all the houses, just like a horse.

“And how is your husband?” says Ushanka, a beautiful blue ribbon fluttering from the scalloped edge of her lace hat. Ushanka makes lace like a spider, and gives her shawls freely to the women of Yaichka. Just yesterday, gentle Galka pulled one up around her shoulders, feeling a draft.

“He feels sure the new calf will be a heifer, and so go to Aleksandr Fyodorovich. I’ve discussed the prospect of juniper-cheese with Natasha.”

“How lovely for all of us. And you, Masha? Are you well? Do the ladies visit when I am not about? Do the men let you drink with them when you’re thirsty?”

Marya Morevna puts her chin in her hands. “I believe I have never been so well, Ushanochka. I am so well that my glass fills before I think to be thirsty. To be certain, I am sad when the moon is thin. I remember friends long gone, and how one of them painted her eyes to match her soup, and how one slept curled next to me, and another kissed me, just once, by a river. I remember one with wet hair, and her baby. I wish they could drink from full glasses, too. I wish they could see the new lamb when it comes. But the moon waxes, and my sadness dries up. Life is like that, of course.”

“Of course.” And Ushanka puts her hand on Marya’s, for they have shared tea more often than tears. Her skin is like cloth. “The sweetness of it all is sharpest when placed alongside sorrow, close as knife and fork. But it is my job to interrogate your happiness, to prod its corners, to make sure it holds. When a sadness chews at the bottom of your heart, it’s as though you walk all day with your dress on backwards, the buttons facing the forest, the collar facing the village. To everyone else, all may seem normal, but my eyes are so keen.”

Marya Morevna poured tea, coppery and steaming. “I have sometimes wished for a child,” she confessed. “But when I ask Koschei about it, even while he tells me he loves me with a bear’s love, he says, ‘Can we not wait a little longer? Just a little longer.’ Isn’t that strange?”

Ushanka shows only half of her face, and that half grows very thoughtful, but says nothing.

“I saw the bird again while hunting this rabbit,” says Marya brightly, picking at the gleaming bone. “So terribly bright it could have been on fire! I think it’s a male. His feathers shine golden, and bronze, and scarlet, and blue—such flames!—and the air around him bends into oily waves. His song echoes like Georgy’s playing. A firebird, just like in the old stories. I shall catch it, Ushanka, if I have to ride all the way through the forest and come out the other side.”

“What other side?” says Ushanka, showing the other half of her face. “You’ve been listening to Josef’s silly insinuations. There is only Yaichka, and you, and I, and Sasha’s juniper-cheese, and rabbit with bread on Wednesdays.”

That afternoon, Marya Morevna goes to the well after Yaichka has shaken off the dust of the day and sees someone working the fields. The someone wears a bright hat of many colors, and cuts grain with an enormous pair of shears.

“Who is that?” she asks of her husband, just returning, his hands all bloody with the afterbirth of the new calf.

“Do not look at him, volchitsa,” says the handsome Koschei. “Let him take his share.”

Aleksandra Fedorovna—who ought to know, having five of her own—once told Marya that a woman knows it when the night passes and leaves her with a child.

“They tap you, Masha. Like a root.”

“Oh, I don’t believe you, Sasha! How can you feel such a tiny thing?”

The beautiful Aleksandra shrugged. “When you are cut, you feel it, even if the cut is tiny. Such a thing is a child, a wound within.”

When the perverse moon pries through their windows, spying round the curtains, Marya does not feel it, but her handsome husband does. Koschei Bessmertny winds his red limbs in hers, as young as young, and shatters inside her, the shards of him floating free in her body, until one, sharp-edged and cruel, lodges in her and will not be moved, stubborn thing. In the guttering stove-light he lays his head on her belly.

“And death shall have no dominion over her,” he whispers, and kisses her navel.

“What a thing to say!” Marya moves her fingers in his shaggy hair. “Someone else said that to me, once, so long ago I cannot remember. Sometimes you seem to me to be two men: my Kostya and another I cannot quite recall, all squeezed into one body.”

Koschei looks up at her. The whites of his eyes show. “Nothing wants to die,” he says faintly, and Marya Morevna does not understand, because she has seen so few dark things.

“What will we call her?” Koschei says, and smiles the best smile he has learned, so golden and hot that Marya thinks of the bird in the forest, the one that eludes her still, and turns the air to oil.

“Who?”

“Our daughter, who already knows your name.”

Koschei Bessmertny will not sleep for nine months. He gives all his sleep to his daughter. It is her due.

Does magic number among the things Yaichka possesses, along with the river without a name and the pregnant sheep? One day, the old man Grigory Yefimovich decided to settle the question once and for all. He tells all the children he was once a priest, but everyone knows there is nothing before or after Yaichka, or alongside it, or underneath it, and only stars above it, so old Grisha seems mysterious and wise to them indeed. Nevertheless, all the folk of Yaichka entertain him, for he tells wonderful stories, knows how to deliver babies, and tugs on his beard when he lies, and thus can be relied upon utterly, so long as he leaves his beard alone. “I saw a star in his hair,” whispered little Olga Nikolayevna, Aleksandra’s daughter, and she was generally believed.

To settle the question of Yaichkan magic, Grisha took Aleksandra Fedorovna, whose hair was like gold wire, to the exact place where the larch forest meets the edge of Sergei Mironovich’s medicinal garden. He stood with one boot in the wood and one boot in the village—magicians know the import of such stances, and Grisha certainly knew the import of knowing what a magician should know.

“Now, Sasha, watch me eat this mushroom with silver spots on it, which you and all your children know has a terrible poison.”

Aleksandra watched carefully. Grigory Yefimovich chewed it up. Nothing ill seemed to happen. His limbs did not seize up; his tongue did not turn purple.

“Do you see?” said Grisha.

“I see,” said Sasha.

“Now, watch me hang myself from the larch. Give me your apron to throttle myself.”

Aleksandra watched carefully. Grigory wound the apron around his neck and hung himself from the tree. Nothing ill seemed to happen. He smiled pleasantly and swung back and forth for a while. His eyeballs did not burst; he did not sputter a final confession while choking.

“Do you see?” said Grisha.

“I see,” said Sasha.

“Now, you must shoot me, for the final proof.” And the old not-really-a-priest produced a small pistol—which, if Aleksandra had thought about it, was entirely the most magical thing to happen that afternoon, as no one in Yaichka had ever produced a pistol before.

Aleksandra shot carefully. Her bullet entered his heart exactly as every bullet dreams of doing. Blood seeped out of Grisha’s shirt, which he had gotten from Galina Ivanova in exchange for a tale about a great warrior who defended a city against soldiers with faces like rats. Galina had nightmares for weeks, and called it a good trade. But then, Grigory Yefimovich smiled and showed Aleksandra that his breast was whole, with the same scraggly hairs still on it as had been before. He took the pistol back and no one ever saw it again. Sasha did not tell anyone that Grisha had ever had it, or that she herself now knew what a pistol was, and had fired it as easily as rolling out dough for vereniki.

“I will tell you the magic of Yaichka, Sasha. Death has forgotten Yaichka, and knows nothing of it.”

“Surely not. Everything dies. The cows, the sheep. Marya shoots her deer.”

“Can you remember any person dying?”

Aleksandra was silent for a long while. The sky got blue and depthless. “I seem to, in my heart. In a part of my heart locked up behind the farthest, smallest room of my heart. Under that lock is a place with a dirt floor where it is always winter. There I seem to think that someone has died, and no one helped them. Then I weep so bitterly that horrible flowers grow from my tears.”

Grigory Yefimovich put his long, rough arms around Aleksandra Fedorovna, whom he had loved secretly since he was young. She knew it, of course, and because of both of them knowing a thing like that, they treated each other with a very tender kindness.

“Never mind, Sasha,” said Grisha. “It was only a trick I can do. Don’t cry.”

On Fridays, Marya Morevna goes to the fields to cut grain. In Yaichka, the grain always sighs to be cut. Even six months along, she does not shirk, but takes up a short scythe, its handle well worn by all the hands of Yaichka, all those oils, all that skin. The sun polishes the tips of the trees and turns Marya’s black hair blue. Up she raises the scythe and down again, and the blade knocks back the golden stalks, and the solitary goat bleats ecstasy as he discovers a patch of wild onion no one will scold him for devouring; and up sings the scythe and down again, and lovely little Anastasia Nikolayevna drops a stitch in her knitting, and Volchya the dapple grey deliberately throws a shoe so that Marya will have to tend to him later, because he is that sort of beast; and the grain falls in a pile, a cairn, and six mice that Yaichka does not know it possesses wash each other’s ears with pink tongues; and up she swings her blade and down she swings it low, and without knowing why, the women of Yaichka go to the exact place where the well-tilled field whose soil forgives them all meets Nadya Konstantinovna’s radishes, and they watch Marya without understanding why it is they came to watch a pregnant woman with a belly like a bow drawn back all the way, her scythe raised like a sword, slicing down again and again, and the clean sweat dampening her hair as the sun sings a little song with four lines of five words each, and the last word of the song is death.

It is Thursday, and Marya is too big around to ride Volchya into the larch forest. She walks instead, her long red woolen dress trailing behind her, her black hair almost as long as her dress, her rifle strapped to her back. The leaves pose at the exact moment before they should fall, but do not. Tiny birds like scraps of bark fly up in whorls behind her. The smell of the forest pricks at her cheeks, brightening them, kissing them. She holds her belly with her right arm—she is sure that Mars in all its mountains could not be so huge as she.

“If I could talk to you, Daughter, I would say, We made you when our eyes were at their darkest, when the solitary goat was full of onion, and the moon looked just like an egg. I would say, Who will you be when you are grown? I would say, What will we call you?”

Behind a copse of seven birches, a thing rustles. The leaves crisp and spark under the feet of the thing, and smoke wisps up. A streak of orange winks out of the birch trunks, and Marya cannot run, really, but she can hold still as a house. Inside her, her daughter moves, pushes her tiny hand against her mother, her tiny foot against the eggshell of her world. I want it, Mama, the hand says. The beautiful bird, the foot says. One step forward, through the leaves, then another, and there it shines: the bird’s long, long tail, shaming any peacock ever born, dragging along the forest floor like a red dress burning.

Marya Morevna hoists her rifle. She loves her rifle. Someone made a present of it to her, though she cannot remember who, or when. It is warm from her hands. The bird rears up, flapping his wings, sending sparks into the air, smoke, and the bird is burning, burning, so white and gold Marya sees spots dancing around her eyes. Her daughter stretches out her tiny arms inside her. Mama, the arms say, the light! When she fires, the child in her belly surges downward, as though she means to be born right now, right this very moment.

In all of Yaichka, no one can beat the firing arm of Marya Morevna. The bullet collides with the firebird like a child leaping up into her papa’s arms when he comes home after a long journey. The bird stumbles backwards against the birches, trapped by their trunks. He lifts up his eyes to the sky and Marya clutches her belly; but there are tears floating like naphtha in the firebird’s eyes, there is a song in his mouth like blood; and the sound hurts her, pulls at her, plucks the bones of her ribs like gusli strings. The tips of his wings blaze like blue gaslights. Allee, allai! the bird ululates; Marya hears a beckoning in it, like a calling to prayer. Allee, allai!

Mama, the light! Marya steps into the ring of the firebird’s flames. He does not burn her, nor is he wounded, no more than Grisha was wounded by Sasha’s pistol. His eyes grow huge, crimson, spinning; his wings fold around her, drawing her close in, his tears dripping wax on her head, but he does not burn her any more than she killed him, and together they fall to the forest floor in each other’s arms—allee, allai!

“What does it mean?” whispers Marya in the embrace of the firebird. He smells of burning bread, and butter, and sugar, boiling down into the earth.

“It means I forgive you,” he sings to her, “for the last time you killed me, and this time, too, and forever and forever, until death.”

Inside the body of Marya Morevna, her daughter grows very quiet, and listens to the sound of the firebird’s impossible, enormous heart beating slowly, sounding so much like her mother’s, so much like her own.

Marya Morevna returns to Yaichka empty-handed, but that is all right. Shame is for other villages, other women. There is still so much, even without firebird soup. She says nothing of the bird in the forest, and no one asks. On Monday, Marya Morevna caught two beavers (and their tails) as well as a young boar with one broken tusk. Tonight, with the help of her handsome husband and Nikolai Aleksandrovich (whose mustache sweats prettily), she lugs their great wedding table out into the middle of the village, where the red leaves of autumn already skip and blow, bright and sharp as stars. She boils a stew of onions and potatoes and mushrooms with glistening lumps of those pancake-tails floating in the broth. She roasts the pig over a great fire. Georgy Konstantinovich brings fish he caught yesterday through stealth and planning; Grigory Yevseevich brings a basket of apples redder than the leaves. Vladimir and Nadya Konstantinovna contributed a store of honey smelling faintly of their long-vanished roses. Nikolai brought vodka from his own still, just as clear as rain. The children run around the table, pelting each other with leaves, their laughter rising up to the sky like smoke. Little Anastasia and Aleksey dance together to Georgy’s gusli, and Josef pinches all of them savagely under the table.

Around the great table all the people of Yaichka rise and hold up their glasses.

“Nastrovye!” cry Georgy and Aleksandr; cry Grigory and Sergei; cry Josef and Leon; cries Koschei Bessmertny; cry all four of Aleksandra’s beautiful daughters and their brother, too; cry Grisha and Sasha; cry Nikolai and Vladimir. The setting sun shines through their glasses.

“To life,” they say, and crash their glasses together, laughing, as wolves howl distantly from the forest, but never show themselves.

And Marya cries out, too. She clutches her great belly as her child protests the hunt and the lugging of the table and the drinking without her. The child sears through her, ready at last to be born, right now, right this very moment. Marya Morevna falls to her knees, her hair spreading out around her, as black as if it has been burnt.

27 The Sound of Remembering

In Yaichka, they say a child draws her first breath through her ears, her second through her eyes, and her third through her mouth. This is why it sometimes takes a moment for a baby to cry. The first breath is for the mother, the second breath is for God, and the third breath is for the father. The breath through the mouth brings the most pleasure, and we forget immediately that we ever knew how to breathe any other way. When a child in Yaichka cries, his mother will pick him up and hoist him on her hip and laugh and say, Look at my little bearlet, breathing through his eyes again! And the child stops his crying because he likes to be called a bearlet.

Marya and Koschei’s daughter takes her first breath through her ears, like any other child. The breath makes a tiny whistling sound, too high for even dogs to hear.

Then she grows up.

It happens so fast even the cabinets turn their heads twice. Marya Morevna puts her child to her breast; she latches just as perfectly as any child has ever done, and with one long drink, the baby takes all the milk of her youth into her belly and stands up seventeen years old, naked, with her mother’s blood still sticky in her black hair.

Koschei Bessmertny smiles so sadly Marya puts her hand over her heart as though a bullet had bit her there.

“But you have been happy here,” he says softly. “You have been happy here with me?”

“Kostya, why are you so sad?” says Marya, and she is perplexed, but not upset, for a daughter grown up so fast is strange and a little tragic, but not less strange than a firebird. “Help me name our girl!”

Koschei looks long at his child. The girl takes her second breath, through her eyes. It makes no sound at all. “She has a name already, volchitsa, my love, my terrible wolf. She is my death. And I love her abjectly, as a father must.”

Death, their daughter, who will never learn to speak, who will never need to speak, holds out her bloody arms, streaked white and silver with fluid.

“I always die at the end,” he whispers, and he is afraid now, his hands shaking. “It is always like this. It is never easy.”

The iron keys on the wall bead blood as though they are sweating. Marya stretches out her hands, and she is a mirror of her daughter, but she does not know whom she wishes to catch, only that she wishes to catch someone, anyone, to be anchored, to be connected, to be not abandoned.

But Koschei the Deathless steps into his daughter’s embrace and holds her, gently, tenderly, proudly, for a moment, smoothing her wet hair with his hand before kissing her forehead as perfectly as any father has ever done. She opens her mouth and takes her third breath, wholly, fully, through her mouth, the last trickles of the water of her mother’s womb spilling from her lips. The force of her third breath drags Koschei’s eyelids down, down, down, until they droop, and fall like scrolls unfurling to the floor; and he is become his brother, the Tsar of Death, for a tiny silver moment no larger than the prick of a pin. He lifts his eyelids with one arm to see Marya Morevna one last time, lifting them over his daughter’s shoulders; and beneath the lids and lashes there is only light, more and endless light, silver as water, pouring out of him; and suddenly they are both gone and there is a bird in the room, a bird both like and unlike Marya’s firebird; and Marya’s belly is flat and firm as though she were never full of daughter, and she is not in bed, but standing in a corner of her house in Yaichka, in the dark, and all is grey and cold except the bird, the bird staring at her with a human face.

“Sit down, Marya Morevna,” says the bird, and his voice is like Georgy’s gusli. “I am going to tell you everything that ever happened to you. Come on, then, find your knees.”

Marya sits without knowing if a chair will catch her. But of course one does; this is Yaichka, where she cannot fall. Her face thins and hollows even as she stares at the bird, his feathers of indigo, fuchsia, and nine shades of gold, so bright in the freezing black house, so bright beside her drained body.

“Do you know where you are, Mashenka?” The bird cocks his head, his exquisitely beautiful face tender, his sorrowful eyes like an icon.

Marya Morevna stares dully out the window. The grass there freezes slightly at the tips of the blades.

“Do you remember when Koschei gave you his egg? How black it was, how silver?”

Marya Morevna puts her head in her hands. Her hair shrivels up. Her tears freeze slightly, falling to the floor with tiny shatterings.

The Tsar of Birds shakes his coppery green chest feathers. Beneath his wings human arms reach out to her, their fingers slender, perfect, soft as down. He lifts her cheeks up and kisses her, his mouth the color of blood, hers the color of ash, and in his kiss her gentle tears become harsh sobs, her whole body racked with them, her bones stretching to let more darkness in. Her lips peel back from her chattering teeth, and even they grieve, but still he kisses her, kisses her until she is screaming.

“I remember, I remember,” Marya weeps, and Alkonost wraps his flawless arms around her, and his turquoise-and-golden wings around them both. In the dark, she disappears into his iridescent embrace.

“I laid that egg, Masha, poor child. Every egg must be laid; otherwise they cannot live. I laid Koschei’s egg long ago, far away, up high in the air, and when we saw what was in it we swore to each other never to open it again. But brothers are built for breaking promises. Do you know what was in it?”

“His death.”

Alkonost strokes her hair with his human hand. “Well, yes, obviously. But an egg has a rooster and a hen both. The way a child has her mother’s impressive nose, her father’s sloping eyes; the way you could spend your whole life watching a person, picking out the parts of her which owe to her mother, the parts which are copied from her father. Our egg had a death from him, a beautiful death, compact, perfect, terrible. From me it had Yaichka. You have lived all this time within my egg, Marya, within my world. Oh, I know! How can you believe me? So many people, so many seasons, and the forest, and the firebird flashing between the birches! Even I did not understand it at first. I am a bird of prophecy, but no future I have ever seen contains Yaichka, hanging in it like a jewel. The trouble with prophecy is that it is alive. Like a small bear. It can get angry, frustrated, hungry. It can lick and bite and claw; it can be dear; it can be vicious. No one prophesies. You can only pursue prophecy. So perhaps my little bear was playing a trick on me, yes? I pored over this egg long after my brother left me to pursue war and girls, which are his particular obsessions. I pored over it and tried to understand what Koschei and I had made together. Do you know, Masha, how revelation comes? Like death. So sudden, though you knew all along it must occur. A revelation is always the end of something. It might even be cause for grief.”

The Tsar of Birds kisses Marya’s forehead, clucks over her like a mother.

“You told him to take you away, do you remember?”

Inside her heart, Leningrad opens up from a single, almost vanished point, growing bigger and colder and whiter, and a hunger begins in Marya, a hunger barely remembered, that chews at her like a worm and will not be satisfied. She groans against Alkonost, a groan so heavy, like iron crumpling. The warmth of his heart radiates out like a star in her arms.

“Yes, that is the sound of remembering,” sighs Alkonost, and his plumes flush violet. “Koschei brought you to me. You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews. Sometimes, when a person has starved nearly to nothing, feeding them will hurt them worse than starving did, and push them the rest of the way over into dead. My brother wanted to show you his houses again, and feed you sweet things, and put into your ashen mouth a slice of thick bread with roe shining on it like rubies. He wanted to sink you in steaming water, and brush your hair, and make you well. But he could not. You were too far gone. So instead he and I held you between us and I fed you, I fed you like a chick. I chewed up clouds and starlight and the rind of the moon and vomited them back into you, the most wholesome food we have known since the youth of the world—it could not hurt you, not ever. And you opened your eyes. And I, more fool me, nuzzled you as I would a chick, and whispered nonsense in your ear, as chicks love to hear: Allee, allai! I should have known, but the little bear of prophecy was wicked that day. I spoke, and my speaking swept everything from your heart, and you vanished like a record skipping, and where you had been was the egg. The ghosts wailed for the loss of you, and my brother wailed, too. With his nails he clawed open the egg to climb after you, and I was suddenly alone in my nest with all abandoning me. And I understood, like revelation, like death. The place in the egg, Yaichka, is a very elaborate place, a place to hide a death from its owner, and also to lead him to it. It is a perfect world, a world which could not survive outside the jeweled egg of Alkonost and Koschei, no matter how many permutations of this story the world might cycle through. (For of course you know the world tries on this story over and over, trying to make it work out differently, trying to make it perfect as an egg.) The world that is left behind when you forget what sorrow looks like, and death, too. A prophetic world that can never come true.”

The Tsar of Birds wipes Marya’s tears, but more replace them, and his feathers darken with salt.

“Mashenka, his death was hidden in the depths of Yaichka, and you were the path to it, as life is always the path to death. Here, he could be yours, he could be whole, both Koschei and Ivan, devil and man, powerful and weak, dark and gold. You could be the girl you might have been, if you had never seen the birds. If you had never had your scarf stolen. And if he did not want to die, all he had to do was never touch you once, never get on you the child he cannot have in the real world, for he is the Tsar of Life, and death always looks like a child—the end and only purpose of an animal body. But of course it ended as it always ends. Life is like that. Who in a perfect world does not demand their lover, forever delighted? Oh, Marya Morevna! Do you know how the church-folk call me, me and my daughter Gamayun, when they paint us on their ceilings? They call us archangels, and say that we live in heaven, where no vine of sorrow or memory grows. That is where I sent you, not to heaven—tscha! I know nothing of that place. But to a place like the ceiling of a church.”

“Why didn’t he take me out again, to Buyan, where he could still be deathless?”

Alkonost sighed, and his sigh moved the strands of her hair like a winter wind. “Buyan is gone, Marya. Didn’t you know? The war is over.”

“Is that why the iron key bleeds?” Marya whispered, hiding her face in his feathers. If only she could stay there in his wings and forget again. Again and again.

“No, child. Those are the keys to your own house, and they bleed because in that house Ivan is dying, and he is alone.”

28 I Saw a Rook in the Ruins

Marya Morevna spun like a spool; she had the peculiar feeling of a huge hand pressing down on the crown of her skull, of her ribs being squeezed as they had so long ago, when a domovoi showed her the world behind the stove. She felt herself shrink down, fold up, all the golden light of Yaichka going out within her like luchina, the lit coal at the tip of a pine needle when no candle can be found. Her legs sucked in again, skinnier than branches; her arms hung down weak and light; her tongue so thirsty, so terribly thirsty and thick in her mouth. And she feared she would never be big again, never full, never warm. She hung in the dark like that, small, skinny, ragged. She put her shoulder to the dark, pushing, pushing, pushing as she had when Koschei’s death had been born.

Mama, the light!

The dark gave; Marya Morevna stepped out from behind the old stove into her kitchen. Snow sifted down off of the bricks—a shell had taken out half the roof, and flakes drifted down from splintered rafters. The rose tiles lay burst and shattered over the floor like broken dishes. Ice coated the iron pans in blue; pipes had burst and wet everything—the cabinets, the table, the chair where Sofiya used to sit. Marya’s knees nearly buckled as the memory of Sofiya cracked open inside her. The table was still set for someone to eat. Snow filled all the bowls like soup.

“Ivan?” Marya called softly. She felt as though she had not used her voice in years. How does one measure the time spent inside an egg? “Ivanushka?”

Wind answered, blowing blackly through the rooms. The house was boarded up with silence. Marya crept up the stairs, afraid to find him, a skeleton still wondering where his wife had gone. “Oh, Ivanushka, where are you?”

The roof upstairs had held, but their bed was frosted in silver, furry with ice. The linens lay wrecked in forlorn hillocks and heaps. Frozen dust speckled the bedknobs. Finally, Marya whispered, “Zvonok?”

And the domovaya tugged at Marya Morevna’s trousers. Marya looked down, her black hair spilling over her shoulder like a curious shadow. Her friend stood there, stooped almost in half, her beautiful golden hair straggled and grey, her mustache falling out, her clothes torn and tattered. She wore no shoes, her toes chilblained and sore. Zvonok’s cheeks stood out like knives; her eyes flared yellow, starveling and feral.

“He’s there,” growled Zvonok, her voice scratched and ugly with disuse. Marya knew hers sounded much the same. The domovaya pointed to the frosted bed, and Marya saw how the hillocks were shaped something like a man.

“Zvonok, what’s happened to you?”

“The house is sick, so I am sick. All the houses are sick. Everyone is dying. The winter will never end.”

Marya shut her eyes. “What year is it? How long have I been gone?”

“Nineteen forty-two. It is February. If such things still existed, it would be the end of Lent now. But of course they don’t, even though we fasted so well this year. So well we could be mistaken for pious. I think that’s funny. Isn’t it funny? Last week a man held a concert at Glinka Hall. Snow fell in through the broken roof the whole time, piling up on the oboist’s head. The air raid sirens played, too. We all listened from the roofs. Like cats. But not like cats. There are no cats left in Leningrad. Ivan said, If only we could eat violin music. I kissed his thumbnail. He said he was glad of me. Then he crawled into that bed, and I don’t know if he’s dead or not, but I will be, soon, I think. I wonder how Comrade Chainik has fared? Old Chairman Venik? I would like to think they are fat, still. I remember what it was like to be fat. Wonderful, it was. You could roll them down the hall like marbles. Those were days I wish I could eat now, but remembering is like eating, don’t you think? Gobble up the past to keep warm. I hope it was warm, where you were.”

Marya Morevna lay down on the frozen floor of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street, the house on Gorokhovaya Street. Zvonok crept into the crook of her neck, near her ear, where the blood flows so close to the skin, where warmth stays when it is gone from everywhere else. She kissed her there, and held her arms wide to embrace the whole of Marya’s face.

“Where were you?” the domovaya whispered. “Where did you go?”

And then she vanished, arms outspread, melting away like vapor.

Marya stood up, her mind expecting her Yaichkan body to respond, young and full and strong. But her Leningrad body answered, creaking, wizened, brittle. She limped to the bed, not wanting to see what lay beneath the frosted covers, to pull back the blankets and find herself too late for anything, useless to both her husbands, in the end.

“Ivanushka, are you alive? Are you awake?”

From under the linens, a moan, tapering into a rattling breath, then a cough. “Leave me alone, Zvonok. Don’t, not today. Don’t pretend to be her.”

“It is me, Ivanushka, it is me. Come out; look.”

A hand rose out of the bed: blackened around the fingernails, fingers shrunken into claws with huge knuckles, grey as the frost. It could not be Ivan’s, not Ivan, always so warm, always so big. His eyes peered up at her, sunken and old, the same starveling, feral flame in them that the domovaya had. He was so thin, so thin she could not imagine how he still lived. But somehow, Marya Morevna felt that she saw him naked for the first time, the intimacy of his bones showing through his skin, his helplessness. He was beautiful, still. She felt as though she looked at him from a long way off, through a telescope, at the bottom of a well. Bounce up, she thought. Bounce up and become Ivan again.

“Oh,” he rasped, “oh.”

“I do not know if I ought to say I am sorry,” Marya said, putting her hand gingerly on his head, on his matted hair. “It seems too small a thing to say.”

“I will say it,” Ivan whispered. “I was harsh with you. You did not make me a criminal. I should not have said such a thing. In fact, when I forged our wedding certificate, I was so happy to write your name beside mine, so happy to hold in my hands evidence of us, something to carry between us, this falsified document which told the truth even while it lied. I’m sorry, Masha. I should not have said half again the things I said.”

“Hush, Ivanushka. It doesn’t matter.” It didn’t. She had said cruel things in both her marriages. She had never begrudged him his share of barbed words. Marya lifted him into her arms—he weighed so little, so little, and if her muscles were shrunken and battered, still they remembered Yaichka, still they remembered being strong. In her grey arms she wrapped her grey boy, and the snow fell outside without sound, and no one talked on the streets or played guitars, and no one came to any door looking for any girl in any window. Leningrad lay so empty, as empty as an old bed.

“Masha, do you know, I tried so hard to find you!” Ivan coughed, and Marya wiped his mouth a little, but her hand only opened up the pink sores there.

“Don’t speak, my love. Talking isn’t worth the strain.” And I cannot bear to hear how loyal you were. Do not tell me.

Ivan rasped; his throat rattled like stones in a jar. “Talking is the only thing I can do! I cannot take you in my arms, or kiss you, or make love to you as one should to a wife who has returned after a long journey. I cannot make you understand that I forgive you, that I know you loved both he and I, the way a mother can love two sons. And no one should be judged for loving more than they ought, only for loving not enough, which was my crime. After all, I took you from him to begin with, so I cannot begrudge him taking you from me—” Marya Morevna tried to protest, to absolve him or herself or both. But he looked at her with eyes leached of color and tried to lift his hand to hush her. “Oh, don’t interrupt, Masha! If I stop I shall never start again. I know I did not take you and he did not take you. I thought that for a long while, but you chose me, and then you chose him, and choosing is hard—one choice is never the end of the story. Gamayun told me this was all a story, and I had to be sure to love you, or else it would not work out as it should. He needn’t have worried: In the space of one heartbeat to another I loved you and I was lost to you, like one of those dead soldiers made of cloth. And I have had such a long time to think about it, Marya! Such a long time to lie in the basement in the ropes that held him and wish that they had held me, because that would have meant you wanted me enough to keep me secret, the way I wanted you, and kept you secret.” Ivan rested his ashen hand on her arm. It was so dry, so light. She could feel his bones, as she had once felt Koschei’s bones beneath his skin. “But do you know, after you disappeared—I had forgotten you could do that—and after they cut the rations again, and then again, I thought, Why did she stay so long? And that was comforting, because you must have stayed for me. Don’t answer. I don’t want to be corrected. But do you know, I looked for you? All over the city, over thrice nine districts, thrice nine prospekts. I asked everyone for news of you. I went to Maklin Prospekt, to Decembrists Street, where that house you liked used to stand, the one with all the paintings on it? It burned down, did you know?”

“Yes, I knew.”

“Zvonok cried when she saw it. But I went to that house and I saw bits of the paintings in the rubble: golden like a girl’s hair, like chicken legs; and red like a firebird; and green, where the coat of Ivan the Fool once was. And I laughed because of course I am Ivan the Fool, of course I am. Only a fool is so innocent as to think he can measure up to a woman’s first love, can measure up to deathless. You know, it’s like when the Tsar was killed. I think maybe Russia had two husbands, too, and one was rich and one was poor, one old and one young, and the poor husband shot the rich husband in the chest, and all his daughters, too. He was braver than I am.”

Ivan shut his eyes. His brow furrowed as though he might like to cry, but had no strength for it. “I went to the house on Decembrists Street, and I saw a rook in the ruins, just as black as if he’d been burnt himself. I looked at the rook and he looked at me, and I thought I had never seen such a big bird, so fat, such a sheen on him, like a duke among rooks. Even before we ate all the birds we could shoot, I had never seen one with such a sharp glance for me. My stomach said, I’ll have that bird. But my heart said, There are few enough fat and beautiful things left in this city. And you were not there, not in the rubble, not in the snow. I walked home, but as I walked the rook followed me, hopping from stoop to stoop, flying down the dead power lines, his sharp glance bouncing off the roof tiles and down and down to me. When I turned back onto Dzerzhinskaya Street and touched the door of our own house, the rook flapped his wings and spoke to me from the branch of the cherry tree.

“‘Give me something of hers,’ he squawked. ‘And I will help you.’

“All I could think of was the red dress I bought you so long ago. It hung in the closet; it still held your shape. I pressed my face into it, but your smell had gone. I fed it, inch by inch, out the window, and the rook took it with his curved beak.

“‘Forget her forever, that is my help,’ he squawked. ‘But if you cannot, let me keep the dress. She is my family. I will look on it and remember her. It would not be the first time some good has come from remembering.’

“I did not want to, Masha, but I gave him the dress. He turned up his black throat to the sky and choked it down until the fluttering red sash disappeared into his mouth. Then he flew away.”

Ivan stroked Marya’s arm thoughtfully. His skin rasped against her; they were both wrung down to nothing. Well matched, finally. “Still, I looked for you. All over the city, over thrice nine districts, thrice nine prospekts. I asked even the corpses for news of you. I went to the Haymarket, where we heard of that awful woman selling pies, do you remember? She is gone now. Other people sell the same horrible pink pies, and their faces are so heavy and full—heavier and fuller than mine, anyway—and I don’t want to tell you if I bought their meat. Don’t ask me. But I went to the Haymarket and I saw the pie-sellers, and the boot-sellers, and the bread-sellers. They wanted six hundred rubles for a hunk of bread that was mostly sawdust. Today it’s probably a thousand. Still, I wanted that sawdust bread. My mouth moved as if I were already eating it. A few months ago barkers hollered in the Haymarket, and people brought strands of pearls to trade for bread. Now everyone stands still and lets the snow pile up on their shoulders and they are so quiet. Either you can buy it or you can’t. They haven’t the strength to haggle.

“I saw a plover in the market, just as brown as if he’d been baked out of sawdust himself. I looked at the plover and he looked at me, and I thought I had never seen such a big bird, so fat, such a sheen on his white chest, like a baron among plovers. Even before we ate all the birds we could catch, I had never seen one with such a keen gaze for me. My stomach said, I’ll have that bird. But my heart said, There are few enough keen and shining things left in this city. And you were not there, not in the market, not in the ice. I walked home, but as I walked the plover followed me, hopping from stoop to stoop, flying down the dead power lines, his keen gaze bouncing off the roof tiles and down and down to me. When I turned back onto Dzerzhinskaya Street and touched the door of our own house, the plover flapped his wings and spoke to me from the branch of the cherry tree.

“‘Give me something of hers,’ he squawked. ‘And I will help you.’

“All I could think of was the silver hairbrush you loved so well, so long ago. It sat in a drawer in your dresser; it still held a few strands of your dear black hair. I brushed it through my own hair, so that our curls could take comfort in one another. I passed it out the window, and the rook took it with his short beak. The weight of it nearly toppled him.

“‘Forget her forever, that is my help,’ he squawked. ‘But if you cannot, let me keep the brush. She is my family. I will look on it and dream of her. It would not be the first time some good has come from dreaming.’

“I did not want to, Masha. But I gave him the brush. He turned up his white throat to the sky and opened his beak so wide! He choked it down until the carved handle disappeared into his mouth. Then he flew away.”

Ivan moved his eyes over Marya’s face, memorizing it. She memorized his in turn, both as it had been and as it was now, for in her memory she would be honest. “Still, I looked for you. All over the city, over thrice nine districts, thrice nine prospekts. I asked even the stray ordnance for news of you, squatting huge and grey and stubborn in the streets. I went to the Hermitage, where the statues of giants hold up the roof—do you remember? Their elbows are all full of bullet holes now. Still, they look so strong, and beautiful, standing there in the snow, carrying their burden, their knuckles frozen over. I admire them. I thought, If only I could be like them.

“I saw a shrike on the big toe of one of the statues, his cheek just as red as if he’d been shot himself. I looked at the shrike and he looked at me, and I thought I had never seen such a big bird, so fat, such a sheen on his black wing, like a prince among shrikes. Even before we ate all the birds we could shoot, I had never seen one with such an ardent eye. My stomach said, I’ll have that bird. But my heart said, There are few enough ardent things left in this city. And you were not there, not below the statues, not in the dark. I walked home, but as I walked the shrike followed me, hopping from stoop to stoop, flying down the dead power lines, his ardent eye following the snow, down and down to me. When I turned back onto Dzerzhinskaya Street and touched the door of our own house, the shrike flapped his wings and spoke to me from the branch of the cherry tree.

“‘Give me something of hers,’ he squawked. ‘And I will help you.’

“All I could think of was your rifle. Forgive me. It lay where you left it, under our bed. It still held the marks of your hands; the bone gone brown where you used to hold it, so often, so well. I would imagine you, when you were younger, gaily shooting things, not because you were hungry for them, but because you could. I cradled it in my own arms.

“‘It is all I have left of her,’ I said. ‘When it is gone, she will be gone.’

“The shrike said nothing.

“What could I do? I passed it out the window and the shrike took it with his sharp beak. The size of it nearly pulled him from the branch.

“‘Forget her forever, that is my help,’ he squawked. ‘But if you cannot, let me keep the rifle. She is my family. I will look on it and mourn her. It would not be the first time some good has come from mourning.’

“I did not want to, Masha. I had nothing else to give the bird. But I gave him the rifle. He turned up his red throat to the sky and opened his beak so wide! He choked it down until the butt disappeared into his mouth. Then he flew away.

“I sat in the dark house without you, without Kseniya Yefremovna, without little Sofiya babbling about fishes and balloons. I cried so hard that day I thought my spine would crack. And then Zvonok was sitting beside me, patting my knee. The little domovaya said she’d known you all your life, and that you were wicked and had left her, too, but also that you would come back, probably. Wicked creatures never stay away for long, she said. And we began going up onto the roof, taking our posts there to watch the German line and report any movement. We did our best, even though it is colder on the roof than anywhere I have ever been.

“And once, when our watch was done, the domovaya came to me, and she had grown big, and grown long black hair, and she said, What is the point of suffering more than you must? And she kissed me … and I don’t want to talk about that now; don’t ask me. You left me; she stayed. But the next day, I sat on the roof, squinting out at the edge of the city, and a rook flew up onto the gutters, just as fat and black as a rain cloud.

“‘The dress has lost its color,’ he squawked. ‘There is a pain growing in Marya Morevna.’

“And he coughed, and retched, and the dress came up out of his mouth, colorless, not even grey, a dress like spittle. He spat it out onto the roof and leapt back into the snowy air.

“And you can guess it, Masha, of course you can. The next day it was the plover, so brown, so like bread I could have eaten him, and I would never be sorry.

“‘The brush has tarnished,’ he squawked. ‘There is a grief growing in Marya Morevna.’

“And he coughed, and retched, and the brush came up out of his mouth, black with tarnish, not even a little silver showing. He spat it out onto the roof and leapt back into the snowy air.

“Of course you know what I will say next, Marousha. You know this is a story, and you know how stories transpire. The shrike came last, so red, so red. I could hear music playing, somewhere far-off, violins and oboes—but that’s mad, who would play their violin in Leningrad? Why would anyone bother?

“‘The rifle fired itself, and killed a passing owl,’ the shrike squawked. ‘There is a death growing in Marya Morevna.’

“And he coughed, and he retched, and worse, for a rifle falling out of a bird’s mouth is an ugly thing. It clattered onto the roof, but I caught it before it tumbled off. The shrike looked at me with such pity. And he leapt back into the air, snow already on his wings.

“And then you came. You are here. My Marya, all whole and alive and come back for me. That was my whole soul gone out into the telling of all that has passed. But I have your dress and your brush and your rifle, just where you left them, in the closet, in the dresser, under the bed. Where is your pain, Marya Morevna? Where is your grief? Where is your death?”

Marya held him close to her and wrapped him in her hair to keep him warm. And she told him all she could think to tell, of Yaichka, and her hunting of the firebird, and how she had given birth to a child called death, and the radiant bird who had held her, just as she held Ivan Nikolayevich now. “I do wish you had not kept the brush,” she sighed.

“Birds are such trouble,” Ivan said, and for a moment he seemed to want to speak again. But he only coughed, and shivered. Tears spilled out of Marya’s eyes and splashed onto his cheeks.

“If this were really a story, Ivanushka, I could heal you with the Water of Life, and you would stand up and dance with me, and then we would find a table set with all sorts of food and the city would wake up from an endless sleep, and what shouting and singing we would hear, coming up from the streets like steam!”

“Tscha!” hacked Ivan, his cough catching in his throat and unspooling into threads of spittle and phlegm. “Life is not like that.”

“Don’t worry,” Marya whispered, kissing his forehead. “My old bones will follow yours soon enough.”

“Wife, you could sow wheat in the rock of Dzerzhinskaya Street, wait for it to grow, reap it, thresh it, grind it into flour, bake it into bread, and eat the bread and share it round, and even then, you could not catch me.”

And then Ivan died in her arms, his last breath spiraling up to the ceiling like cigarette smoke.

Marya Morevna put on her colorless dress and dragged her rifle out from under her marriage bed. To two husbands I brought death with a woman’s face, she thought, and stumbled out onto the slush-bound, ice-packed length of Dzerzhinskaya Street. A pack of men in furred coats and hats ran by, their boots stamping shapes in the snow like ellipses. Marya stared at their tracks mutely, her tears chafed into freezing.

“Hey, old woman!” cried one of the men, his own black rifle cocked over his shoulder. “Can you shoot?”

Marya stirred and met his eye. He gestured at the beautiful bone rifle in her hands. “Well?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she said finally, and her breath broke into pieces, carried off by the wind.