Any Day Now Read Online Free Page A

Chaikovsky Street? “What are the living conditions like there?” she asks, and Boris wonders at the two words put together like this, as adjective and noun. Isn’t living itself a condition?
    â€œA very Russian question, but I thought he didn’t understand English,” says Luba.
    â€œBoris has a gift for languages,” I say, “a nearly instantaneous gift. Like yours.”
    â€œGo on,” she sighs.
    The Woman is relentless. Has Alexei taken many couples to this orphanage? Where were they from? Does Alexei have children of his own? How many and what age? Alexei answers da, da, da. Boris worries for her. Doesn’t she feel how she is being dismissed? She seems not to notice. In fact, as they leave Moscow farther behind, as they pass village after village on the route of the Golden Ring, he can feel her body growing in energy, can feel a pulse in her muscles. He feels it down to his old feathers.
    â€œI’ve waited forever,” the Woman tells Alexei, now ignoring her completely. “Her name is Natasha and she has red hair and she’s nearly two, two next month. I’ve had her picture for months and now I am going to see her and take her home. I’m so happy! And nervous, too, of course. Who wouldn’t be?” She tells him about the birthday party she’s already planned for her new daughter back in Montreal, who has been invited and what kind of cake she will make. Alexei doesn’t even nod. In four hours she’s exhausted him. But then she cries out, “The Monastery of the Transfiguration of Our Saviour!” because they’ve come at last into Yaroslavl and there, like a blessed vision, are the golden domes of the sixteenth-century cathedral.
    â€œEpiphany!” says Alexei, pointing to a church covered in coloured tiles.
    â€œI thought he didn’t speak English. I thought he wasn’t talking to her, period,” says Luba.
    â€œShow me a Russian who isn’t proud of their old churches,” I say. “He’s revived.”
    â€œI need another coffee,” says Luba. She waves to a kid behind the coffee counter, though the place is strictly self-serve. He takes his time coming over.
    Luba lowers her eyes, looks up, smiles just for him. “ Moi, je prenderais une allongé. ” The kid pinkens and scampers away.
    â€œYou’ve made his day,” I say.
    â€œThey love flirting when they know there’s nothing behind it,” Luba says, and nods at me knowingly because I’m one of the few people she’s come out to.
    The boy is back in a jiffy — there’s even a free biscuit tucked next to her demitasse.
    â€œYou’re going to have to get to the climax, should I say? Of your little story?” says Luba.
    I close my eyes to bring it back. “The orphanage is a hell-hole. Boris — after all, he’s led a sheltered life, especially in the last few years — is shocked by what he sees. In fact, he sees in a flash the relationship between ‘living’ and ‘conditions.’”
    Boris has heard stories about Russian orphanages, even watched a TV documentary on them when his owner left him draped on the couch one night. He wept at the sight of those babies in their high, metal cribs, no one to pick them up, no one to pat their little heads, hold their clammy little fingers. Boris doesn’t much like babies — they soil and dampen him — but watching the solitary white bundles with their hurting, angry faces left him feeling saggy for days.
    Baby House #2 hasn’t been painted in decades, or cleaned much either, not with soap and water, anyway. As she follows a woman down a long, draughty hall, the Woman seems to shrink a little. Boris holds close, presses deeper. She really needs him now. He hears shouts a long way off, a clatter of dishes. They pass old women, bent nearly in half over dust mops. And the smell! It makes Boris think of peaches falling