Snow in May: Stories Read Online Free Page B

by the garbage dump in the courtyard. One of them, Tanya was shocked to discover, was from a color TV, a defitsit unavailable in stores even in Moscow. Luckily, the foam forms were still intact—perfect for fruits and vegetables. She hurriedly repacked everything again for optimal transportability.
    At the airport, the loudspeaker announced that the eight-hour nonstop flight to Magadan was delayed because of adverse weather. The terminal swarmed with passengers, stir-crazy from the foul-smelling bathrooms and insufficiency of places to sit. Various personages of questionable intent, particularly gypsies and persons of Caucasian nationality, trolled the waiting halls, panhandling, selling trinkets, and soliciting fortune readings.
    Tanya had too many things to carry all at once. She dragged her suitcases up to the end of the check-in line and asked the woman in front of her to keep an eye on them. When she returned for the boxes mere seconds later, the one for the color TV was gone.
    She lost her breath, as if punched in the stomach. The bananas. She spun around and around: thousands of people, thousands of boxes of every stripe in continuous movement like atoms. How could she have not foreseen this?
    Tanya shuffled back to her place in line. Now she knew with absolute certainty that she’d been happy just a moment ago, steadily on her way home, with presents for everyone. She began to cry. And she couldn’t stop, not when the woman in front of her asked her what was wrong, and not when, pushing her remaining luggage centimeter by centimeter, she reached the counter and handed her passport and ticket to the check-in clerk.
    Everything felt wrong, like she was living in a parallel universe, separated by one crucial degree from the one containing the life she was meant to have. This other, true life was visible to her, even palpable at certain instances—like during the births of her sons—but impossible to occupy. She cried from pity for herself, and because of the stupidity of such pity. She cried for Luciano and for Anton. She cried because she’d only loved one boy with the follow-you-over-the-edge-of-the-earth kind of love—at fifteen. She cried for her mother, who had died two years ago, and whom she still missed every day.
    For the rest of her wait Tanya haunted the airport, looking in every corner for the missing box, in the weak hope that, upon opening it, the thieves had discovered no color TV and abandoned it. It was eight in the evening when the plane finally took off.
    She landed the following afternoon. Wet snow fell in clumps from the chalky sky. After an hour on the washboard Kolyma Route—the infamous road built on the bones of Gulag prisoners—Tanya began to recognize familiar streets, decorated with red flags along the May Day parade route. Banners with noble yet unrealistic proclamations hung from the most important buildings. The snow kept falling and falling, covering muddy slush from the recent thaw, last year’s yellow grass, and the garbage on the sidewalks—masking, for a short while, the old sins.
    The taxi driver parked by Tanya’s building and helped her carry the luggage up to the fourth floor. Their apartment was small, but all their own. Anton was supposed to be at work and the boys in kindergarten, but as she opened the door and right away stumbled over a vacuum cleaner in the hallway, she knew that everyone was home, waiting for her. It smelled deliciously of fried potatoes.
    A soccer match played on TV in the living room. Various articles of clothing hung over the backs of chairs, and socks were piled in little nests on the floor. Anton and Pavlik were napping on the couch, Anton’s face raw from a recent shave. She bent down to Pavlik’s bottom: his pants appeared to be clean. She looked at them again. They were a perfect subject for Mary Cassatt, had she painted in Russia. Tanya felt a twinge of pleasure and shame.
    She went into the boys’ room. Borya sat on the floor,