poring over his pale gold.
The waiter tucked his cloth under an arm and applauded vigorously. Lebedeva clapped her hands. “Oh, superb! It’s about us! How gratifying to be so recognized.”
Encouraged, Marya hurried on. “A novelist writes a long kind of story, with … a lot of smaller stories in it, and motifs, and symbols, and sometimes things in the story really happened, and sometimes they didn’t.”
The waiter wrinkled his lovely nose. “Why would you tell a story about something that didn’t really happen? At least the poetry was straightforward, manful. Not concerned with idle fancies, just a respectable census report!”
Marya slurped at her soup thoughtfully. “I suppose because it’s boring to keep telling stories where people just get born and grow up and get married and die. So they add strange things in, to make it more interesting when a person is born, more satisfying when they get married, sadder when they die.”
Lebedeva snapped her fingers. “It’s like lying!” she exclaimed. “Well, we understand that, of course! The bigger the lie, the happier the liar.”
“Yes, a little like lying. But…” Marya leaned in close to them conspiratorially. She couldn’t help it—she enjoyed being an expert, an acknowledged authority. Watching her opinions become fact. And as she lived and ate and slept in Buyan, she learned better to explain things so that her comrades could understand them. “But you know, a wizard with black hair and a thick mustache put a curse on Moscow, and Petrograd, too, so that no one would be able to tell the truth without lying. If a novelist wrote a true story about how things really happened, no one would believe him, and he might even be punished for spreading propaganda. But if he wrote a book full of lies about things that could never really happen, with only a few true things hidden in it, well, he would be hailed as a hero of the People, given a seat at a writers’ cafe, served wine and ukha, and not have to pay for any of it. He’d get a salaried summer on the dacha, and be feted. Even given a medal by the wizard with the thick mustache.”
The waiter whistled. “That’s a good curse. I should like to shake that wizard’s hand and buy him a vodka or two.”
“Someone ought to write a novel about me,” said Lebedeva loftily. “I shouldn’t care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can’t abide a poor liar.”
“For a while,” said Marya Morevna, “I thought I might like to be a writer. I walked to school in the mornings and read poetry and wondered if I could be like the men and women in the reserved tea shops. If there was a story in me, somewhere deep, sleeping, waiting to wake up.”
“I doubt it.” Madame Lebedeva sniffed. “Your lying really needs work. Perhaps it’s because you’re so far from Petrograd. Curses haven’t much sticking power, geographically speaking. Honesty is such a nasty habit, dear. Like biting your nails.”
Just then, the round window of the cafe, fashioned from the lens of a whale’s eye, shook with a quiet tremor.
“It’s possible you chose an unfortunate poem to recite, my love,” said Madame Lebedeva, finally allowing herself a single, decadent slurp of her pale green soup. Her eyes slid closed in exquisite satisfaction. The waiter hurried off, suddenly quite interested in a table far across the room.
Outside, a black car approached. Its long nose sloped and curved like a merciless beak; its fenders hunched up as round as eggs. Like clever eyes, the windows narrowed. It was both like and unlike Volchya-Yagoda, the car who had borne Marya to Buyan. This one seemed wholly larger, more careful, more luxurious, more serious.
Below it, four yellow chicken legs loped gracefully on the road where wheels ought to have been, their black claws scrabbling at the hard snow.
Setting her silver spoon aside, Madame Lebedeva extinguished her cigarette on her plate, then retrieved it with a flourish, whole and unsmoked, tucking it into her hat.
“Much as you know I adore you, devotchka, there is about to be far too much excitement in here for my poor little heart. I believe I shall adjourn myself to the cigar room and snuffle out their oldest yaks blood. To settle my stomach.”
Lebedeva left in a flurry of feathers and pale, swinging hair—she did everything in a flurry. Marya Morevna blinked twice and glanced nervously at the car again, its chicken legs shuffling back and forth on the icy cobbles. Her own stomach quavered—her body had learned to feel it deep in the guts when something strange was about to happen. This was useful, but uncomfortable. Marya kept her hands steady.
The cafe fell abruptly silent—a complete, profound silence, with no tinkle of plate or dropped cup to blemish it. The skin of the walls prickled in gooseflesh as a broad-breasted woman with a nose like an axe blade strode into the place, her throat swallowed up in a black fur coat, her white hair strangled back into a savagely tight chignon. She looked to her left, then her right; then her eyes fell on Marya Morevna like an old, fat crow settling on a branch. She seated herself with the confidence of a landlord; three waiters hurried to bring her tea, vodka, golden kvass in a fresh jar. A fourth appeared, a rusalka, his hair dripping wet, bearing a whole goose on a golden tray. The woman tore off a leg and bit into it, licking the juice from her slightly fuzzy chin. The waiter was obliged to stand, a piece of furniture hoisting the goose for her further enjoyment.
“So you’re her,” growled the old woman, grinning with her mouth full. She had all her teeth, and they were sharp, leonine, yellow.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Marya Morevna softly. The old woman crackled with potency; Marya’s stomach felt it like a blow. The crone tapped the table with the goose’s leg bone.
“Kid, let’s skip this pantomime where you pretend you’re not rutting with my brother up in that gauche tower of his—come off it! Does everything have to be black? He’s an affected old bull, I’ll tell you that for free. Anyway, I have no patience for innocent girls, unless they have apples in their mouths and are on speaking terms with my soup pot.”
Marya tried to smile politely, as though they were having a pleasant conversation about the weather. But she gripped her teacup so tight the handle left red moon-shapes in her palms. Her face flushed and the old woman rolled her jaundiced eyes.
“Oh, quit that, Yelena! Blushing is for virgins and Christians!”
“My name is not Yelena.”
The old woman paused and crooked one eyebrow, whose scraggly hairs had grown so long she’d braided them neatly along her brow bone. Her voice changed timbre, rising to an interested tenor. “Forgive me. I just assumed. My brother has a”—she stirred her tea with the fatty end of the goose bone—“fetish for girls named Yelena, you see. Almost a monomania. Occasionally, a Vasilisa will sneak in there, just to keep things spiced. So it’s an easy mistake. What is your name, my child?”
“Marya Morevna. And there aren’t any others. There have never been.”
The crone tossed her goose bone over one shoulder. The waiter, still silent and dutiful behind her, caught it with a deft hand. She leaned over the table, her fur coat sloshing into the vodka, and plunked her face down in her hands.
“Well, isn’t that just fascinating,” she breathed. “The devil take lunch! Let your old baba take you on an … expedition. It’ll be good for you! Morally fortifying, like having a good stare at a graveyard. A body needs a good memento mori to flush out the humors.”
The crone seized Marya Morevna by the arm and shoved her out of the restaurant. She paid for nothing.