The Russian Winter by Holly Wade Matter

***

LIKE A PAGAN IDOL, Balboa Stabilo sat on a purple and gold cushion in the middle of the splintered kitchen floor. She balanced a skull full of fortune cookies in her right hand; the fingers of her left hand formed a rude mudra. Thirteen stainless-steel doves clanked aimlessly around her; and behind her rose the arched doorway, quiescent, for the time being, of the MindFuck Instantaneous Gratification Unit.

Noble and naked (but for her metallic gold wig and a rope of raw turquoise beads), she presented a complex visual challenge to Auburn, who sketched her for a future mosaic. Balboa was magnificently and sensually fat, and really needed no ornamentation but her blue-black pubic hair. Auburn, herself thin in severe grey wool, envied Balboa’s luxurious body. Of course, Auburn need not have patterned herself in the style of a Russian intellectual circa 1917, with steel-rimmed glasses and starvation cheekbones. She could have chosen something Byzantine, for instance, the enormous eyes and elongated face of an ikon. She could have adorned herself in the murky colors of El Greco. Yet she would still have been long and thin, uninviting, a plank bed on which to lie, and devoted to the representation of what she adored but could not be.

“I’d kill,” said Balboa, barely moving her lips, “for a Diet Mecca.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Auburn. “It makes me uncomfortable and it spoils the composition.”

“But gods have to kill people,” said Balboa. “It’s in the job description.”

***

She was a tabla, she was a drum on which tiny hands beat, a tabla inside out, for the tiny hands beat inside her, inside a membrane of blood and flesh. The tiny hands that beat inside her were now grown, almost thirty-three years old, and they raised a fork to red lipstick puffs. Her daughter chewed with teeth ground flat from trouble in her dreams, and swallowed with a throat that rattled like a gourd full of dried split peas.

And there sat the man who once beat inside her, blood against blood, skin against skin, whose own heart beat against her chest in strong thuds after he’d sent his half of the child into her. Now he was silent, an echo to her silence, and no longer remembered the nights of wild tattoos beneath a canopy of plaster cumulus, amid the trunks and branches of china trees.

The phone rang. Bobbi lay down her fork and rose from the table, where her husband and daughter argued about Napoleon’s defeat in Russia. It seemed she’d heard this argument before, long ago, when Lola was a child, when Bill’s hair was chestnut-brown and full.

“The Russians did so beat Napoleon,” Lola insisted.

“No, they did not,” said Bill.

“Excuse me, are you changing history just to win an argument?”

“I’m telling you, the Russians did not defeat Napoleon.”

“Okay. They didn’t. Napoleon won. Jesus Christ, you want me to get the World Book?”

“Watch your phraseology, miss.”

Bobbi picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s six o’clock,” said the woman. “What are you doing?”

“Eating dinner,” Bobbi said.

“Thank you.”

Bobbi hung up and sat back down.

“Who was that?” asked Lola.

“A pollster,” said Bobbi.

“A what?”

“The Russians did not beat Napoleon,” said Bill, with finality and triumph. “Russia did.”

“What kind of pollster? What did they ask you?”

Bobbi shook her head, leaned toward Lola and said, “It was the Russian winter that defeated Napoleon.”

“What are you talking about, Mother?”

Bobbi sat back, confused. “What were you talking about?”

“Men’s formal attire,” said Lola. “Whether or not you can wear an ascot with tails.”

“Oh.” Bobbi pressed her hands together in her lap. It had happened again. It happened all the time now. Next thing she knew, Bill would tape together a strip of notebook paper and travel it with a pencil, to prove to Lola that a piece of paper could have only one side. And then he would teach her the number-prediction trick, and then they would argue about everything, everything under the sun—law and science and math and books, everything disputed to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications.

And she wouldn’t understand a word they were saying.

She was a tabla, her mind, her ears resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the lie that time was a Moebius strip, that it had one side alone and could be traveled again and again. If that were so, if it were true, she’d travel further back, or further forward, and find everything she’d lost.

But she was a tabla, to be drummed by everyone but herself.

***

Silo slouched over her government-grey desk, pulled up the next phone number, and dialed. She was sick of her job, which seemed as meaningless as it was intrusive, since the data would probably never be used. Who the hell really cared what Americans were doing at any given time? Occasionally she’d get an answer that made her evening worthwhile—like that guy who said he’d draped himself in his boa constrictor and was dancing naked to the theme song from “The Patty Duke Show.” That made an interesting crimp in the data. Or the woman welding a block-long sculpture depicting the life and career of greeting-card poet Suzanne Peels Skits.

However, those sweet crimps and kinks were far too rare.

A woman answered the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s six o’clock. What are you doing?”

“Eating dinner,” said the woman. A man and another woman argued in the background.

“Thank you.”

She broke the connection, keyed in the data, and dialed the next number.

Some people reacted to her with hostility, as if her question caused their emptiness, rather than simply revealing it. Most took her for granted, as they would any other kind of meter reader. Some, in conversations she’d overheard in a restaurant or on the train, complained because they’d never been polled. As if it were their right. As if it made the slightest difference. As if having their everyday lives documented would somehow validate them, or preserve them.

“Hello?”

“It’s six-oh-two. What are you doing?”

Silence. Then, “Preparing to bury my child.”

“Thank you.”

After she broke the connection, Silo realized that she’d dialed the same number twice in a row. She double-checked the log, and stared at the screen, gently biting her forefinger and trying to understand. Eating dinner and Preparing to bury my child. Uh-uh.

She dialed the number again.

“Hello?”

“It’s six-oh-nine. What are you doing?”

The woman laughed. “Working on scoring a six-pack of Diet Mecca. How do you like that?”

“Is this—” she read the number off.

“Sure is, cutie. Better hang up before you give yourself a Norman architecture nosebleed.”

“Did I just talk to you? Twice?”

“In your dreams, sweets.”

The woman broke the connection. Silo stared at the screen, at her hands, at the walls of her cubicle. Then she launched her glossary and keyed: “What the hell is Diet Mecca?”

***

Diet Mecca was a misleading name. The product had nothing to do with dieting, everything to do with euphoria. The soft drink had long been outlawed by the Blue Law Board, but certain religious groups were allowed limited access. Balboa hoped to form her own.

Auburn’s sculptures and mosaics were in the manner of graven images, the first step in Balboa’s master-plan for deification.

***

After dinner, Lola escaped the kitchen and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Fog had risen as the night fell, and smudged the pasture, the hills, the bright light at the construction site deep in the woods.

What was her state of being, standing in the fog, looking at the branches and nerve-endings of the trees, at the dim small dot of light in the hills, listening to trillions of water molecules rubbing against each other? Who else would know, and see, this melting away of the world, but her? What if it weren’t the world at all, but her own dissolving away? What if it were actually full daylight, no fog, and the dim small dot the sun?

It seemed inappropriate to smoke a cigarette while thinking things like this, but she didn’t put it out, not even when the rattle in her throat built to a crescendo of coughing.

Should she share this night? Should she call out her mother and father, and see if they saw what she saw? Better not. Dad would pick her brain, examine each thought through a telescope, a microscope, an opera glass, and argue with her: What do you mean by state of being?

And Mother, who seemed, nowadays, lost in her own nebulous state of being most of the time, would simply say, “The fog’s too thick for you to drive home, honey. Better stay here tonight.”

Lola dropped the lipstick-stained cigarette onto the gravel and watched the coal burn, dim, fade away.

***

Bobbi, fearing the fog, insisted that her daughter stay the night.

Lola complied.

***

Auburn had never intended to devote her life to the making of idols. She’d distinguished her academic career by developing the Virginia cowslip viscosity index at the age of 19. Out of school, however, she’d turned from the ivory tower, donned the grey wool and steel-rimmed spectacles of a Bolshevik, and worked in a dim factory as an aspect ratio assembler. Her immersion in proportions triggered a deep-seated geometrical passion, which found its apotheosis when she met Balboa, so perfectly composed of spheres.

Nowadays, she lived with Balboa in a derelict house, and devoted her time to art and scoring, for her addicted beloved, the occasional six-pack of Diet Mecca. The enormous brick complex across the street, which had in the 1920’s been a Home for Unwed Mothers (and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers, thanks to the past ten years of backlash politicos breaking the public’s fingers on morality charges), was the major supplier, until the Freds busted the matron and turned the whole place inside-out.

Balboa, on the other hand, had neither the need nor the inclination to work. Ever. She generally preferred to stay in the house stark-naked, pose for Auburn’s ubiquitous art projects, and play with the lifelines of people from the past—Reality Cut-Ups, an art form in itself.

And patently illegal.

***

“Sweet Columbines o’ mine, my doves, my dears,” Balboa cooed to the strutting birds, whose talons scraped the floor with the sound of minute car crashes. “Mama Willendorf has some messages for you to deliver.”

Balboa rested the skull in her lap and cracked open one fortune cookie after another after another. The doves rose in mechanical flight. Their talons stretched and retracted, grasping the cookie fortunes that Balboa fed to them. Each of the doves clattered through the arched doorway, no longer quiescent, of the MindFuck Instantaneous Gratification Unit.

“Is it wise,” said Auburn, “to feed it so much?”

Balboa crunched a fortune cookie. “Let’s just see what comes out.”

Auburn shook her head in Russian. Her face was grave. “You will hurt somebody.”

“Several somebodies, I’d imagine,” agreed Balboa.

***

“It’s six o’clock,” said the woman. “What would you do for your child?”

“I’d kill,” Bobbi said.

“Thank you.”

Bobbi hung up and sat back down.

“Who was that?” asked Lola.

“That dim-fated Napoliticosity,” said Bobbi.

Lola stared at her. “That what?”

Bobbi tried to explain, to an empty kitchen table, but she broke down.

Next thing she knew, Bill would teach her law and science and math and books, everything she needed to bury her child.

Her mind, her ears, resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the drumming of years and years ago...

A man and another woman argued in 1917. The street had the dark, murky colors of El Greco.

“But gods have to kill people,” said Bill, with finality and triumph. “Russia did.”

It happened again. It happened all the time now. Next thing, she’d lost everything.

“It’s six-oh-two. What are you talking about, Mother?”

Looking at the dim small dot of light deep in the past, she was silent. Once, she had hung time’s luxurious Byzantine growth around her neck, over her breast.

But now, all she owned was thanks and tolerance and water-daughter hands, twisted.

She fell, further back, and further back, and further into the sun. There was Lola, three years old, raising a gourd full of dreams.

And there sat the moment of death, the street to the child inside her.

***

Silo slouched over her government-grey desk, pulled up the next phone number, and dialed. She was sick of her job. Who really cared that Americans were allowed limited access to Stravinsky’s “The Patty Duke Show”? She could have adorned herself in the data, for all anybody cared. She could have eaten it. She could have deleted it all, and the world would not, Not, NOT have become a tabula rasa.

A woman answered the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s six o’clock. What are you doing?”

“Eating dinner,” said the woman. A man and another woman argued in the background.

“Thank you.”

She broke the connection, keyed in the data, and dialed the next number.

“Hello?”

“It’s six-oh-two. What are you doing?”

Silence. Then, “Preparing to bury my child.”

“Thank you.”

After she broke the connection, Silo realized that she’d called the same number twice in a row. She trouble-checked the log, and stared at the screen, gently biting her forefinger and trying to understand. Eating dinner and Preparing to bury my child. Uh-uh.

She dialed the number again.

“Hello?”

“It’s six-oh-nine. What are you doing?”

The woman laughed. “Working on scoring a six-pack of Cadet Mice. How do you like that?”

“Is this—” she read the number again and again. It happened all the time now. Silo pressed her hands against the walls of her cubicle. “Hello?”

“I’m still here, cutie. Are you?”

“It’s six-oh-nine. What are you changing?”

The woman laughed. “You. You are no longer remembered in the data, like that guy who said he had draped himself in his boa construction site and was dancing naked to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications.”

Silo covered her eyes. She felt dizzy.

“Score a six-pack of Cadet Mice right now. That’s a six-pack of Cadet Mice, right. Do it right.”

The woman broke the connection. And then there was silence. Silo stared at the screen, at her trembling hands, at the walls of her cubicle. Then she launched her glossary and keyed: “What the hell are Cadet Mice?”

***

Cadet Mice were a sort of goddess.

***

Bobbi, fearing the fog, insisted that her daughter stay the night.
Lola declined.

***

Lola switched on the car radio for company. The classical station played Stravinsky’s “The Firebird.” As the car crested the hill, the fog swallowed the road, swallowed the car, swallowed Lola, and spat her out over the edge.

She flew, she fell, further than time, into bright killing burns.

***

Balboa Stabilo rocked back and forth on her purple and gold cushion, laughing at the streamers of chaos her stainless steel doves brought back to her.

Auburn considered Balboa’s addiction-fueled master-plan for deification. Was it worth the broad palm of Balboa Willendorf smacking time’s flies, extinguishing time’s little matches?

“Stop killing them,” she said.

Balboa rocked back and forth, back and forth, laughing.

“What does it matter?” she hooted. “They’re all dead anyway. They’ve all been dead for years!”

“Why are you changing history just to score a six-pack of Diet Mecca?”

“Why not?”

Auburn snatched one of the stainless-steel doves and held it fast with one hand, while with the other she wrote one word on a sheet of sketch paper. She stuffed the paper into the bird’s beak and flung it through the arched doorway.

“Because I asked you not to.”

Balboa stopped laughing. “What did you tell it?”

Auburn blinked once, behind her steel-rimmed glasses, eyes as grey as a Russian winter.

“Undo,” she said.

***

She was a tabla, she was a drum on which tiny hands beat, a tabla inside out, for the tiny hands beat inside her, inside a membrane of blood and flesh. The tiny hands that beat inside her were now still.

And there sat the man who once beat inside her, blood against blood, skin against skin, whose own heart beat against her chest in strong thuds after he’d sent his half of the child into her. Now he was silent, an echo to her silence, and no longer remembered the nights of wild tattoos beneath a canopy of plaster cumulus, amid the trunks and branches of china trees.

The phone rang. Bobbi lay down her gloves and rose from the table, where her husband and daughter had once argued about Napoleon’s defeat in Russia, long ago, when Lola was a child, when Bill’s hair was chestnut-brown and full.

Bobbi picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“It’s six o’clock,” said the woman. “What are you doing?”

Silence swallowed the number.

“Preparing to bury my child,” Bobbi said at last.

“Thank you.”

Bobbi hung up and sat back down.

“Who was that?” asked Bill.

“A pollster,” said Bobbi. She shrugged. She laughed. She covered her eyes. She uncovered her eyes.

Next thing she knew, Bill taped together a strip of notebook paper and traveled it with a pencil, to prove to Lola that a piece of paper could have only one side. And then he taught her the number-prediction trick, and then they argued about everything, everything under the sun—law and science and math and books, everything disputed to the finest point, the most precise use of words and implications.

It was happening again.

“Lola,” she said to the child, with infinite longing.

Of course Lola didn’t hear her. Could not hear her.

The child Lola, the young Bill, were echoes, phantoms. But who else would preserve them?

She was a tabla, her mind, her ears resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the lie that time was a Moebius strip, that it had one side alone and could be traveled again and again. She wondered if the dead traveled continuously as well, or if, at the moment of death, the strip tore, flattened out, had two sides, and an abrupt beginning and an abrupt ending.

Bobbi rose from the table and tore a strip of paper from the notebook by the phone. She taped it together, and wrote Lola’s name on it, over and over, in pencil.

She took the kitchen scissors and cut it up into fragments, into confetti, and tossed them in the air. The fragments swirled down like flakes of snow in the Russian winter.

***

She was a tabula rasa.

***

“I hope you’re happy,” said Balboa, pouting.

“I’m never happy,” said Auburn.

“Go score a six-pack of Diet Mecca right now.”

Auburn left Balboa sitting on the purple and gold cushion, and went across the street to the enormous brick complex, which had in the 1920’s been a Home for Unwed Mothers (and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers [and was now again a Home for Unwed Mothers]).

***

After dinner, Lola escaped the kitchen and went outside. Fog had risen amid the trunks and branches and nerve-endings of the world, and smudged the past ten years. She sensually preferred the night now, and silence. All was silent, an echo to her silence, yet she could not defeat Napoleon.

A cancer marched through her temperate body, and the Russian winter wouldn’t come until she was dead.

This is what it will be like. Nobody else would know, and see, the melting away of the world, but her.

Should she tell them? Should she call out her mother and father, and tell them? Tell Dad, who would argue even with the bright light at the moment of death? Tell Mother, who seemed, nowadays, lost in her own nebulous state of being most of the time, and wouldn’t understand a word she said?

Better not. Not now.