The Saying

March 10, 2020

Many people in our town sing in the mornings, though few admit it: Zina the dairywoman sings as she lays out cottage cheese at the market, the driver of the number seven marshrutka sings if there's no one from the management on board, and they say even a surgeon at the regional hospital sings as he scrubs his hands before an operation — and Nina Timoshenko, Grisha's mum, insists she can always tell from the song how it will end: if it's "Oh, frost, frost," the patient will live; if it's something by Pugacheva, better start praying. In the morning Grisha washed the floor and sang.

He sang badly — loudly, off-key, mixing up the words — some song of the kind they play on the radio in marshrutkas, about love and about how "you're not like the others." The bucket clattered, the cloth slapped, Grisha sang, and all of it made the shop so ordinary, so morning-like, that Kesha, coming out of the back room, doubted for a second: had it really happened? Perhaps he had dreamed it? Perhaps he himself had heard Grandpa's voice in his sleep — because he had spent the whole evening thinking about Grandpa, about Grigory, about the notebook with the copper palm?

But he knew he had not dreamed it. He had lain till morning with his palms under his cheek, and his cheek still remembered their warmth.

"Good morning, master!" Grisha called out, seeing him through the gap in the curtain. "Look at the snow! Up to your knees! The marshrutkas are running already, I texted Mum. And there are pelmeni left — shall I cook you some?"

"No need," said Kesha. "Grisha. How did you sleep?"

"Fine," said Grisha, surprised. "Like a log. Why?"

"Didn't dream anything?"

Grisha straightened up with the cloth in his hand and thought as thoroughly as if he had been asked not about a dream but about the nine-times table.

"Nope," he said. "I never dream anything. Mum says it's because my head's empty." He laughed, not the least bit offended. "What, was I snoring? Mum says I don't snore."

"You weren't snoring," said Kesha. "You were talking."

"Get away!" Grisha goggled. "What did I say?"

Kesha looked at him — at his simple, broad face that hid nothing, at his sticking-out ears, at the cloth in his hand dripping onto the freshly washed slabs — and understood that Grisha did not remember. He wasn't pretending. He really didn't remember. Grisha could not pretend at all; when he lied — and he lied once every six months, over the most trivial things — his ears went red, and you could see it from the other end of the street.

Now his ears were ordinary.

"Some nonsense," said Kesha. "You were calling for your mum."

"Ah," said Grisha, reassured. "That happens." And he bent over the bucket again.

---

Kesha went back behind the curtain and sat down at the desk. He sat for a while. Then he decided: test it.

He did not know what exactly to test. But if at night it was Grandpa talking in Grisha — not Grisha, not Grisha's dream, but Grandpa — then something of Grandpa ought to remain in the daytime too. Something at least. The way the smell of tobacco remains in the corners of the shop twelve years on.

"Grisha," he called. "Come here."

Grisha came in, wiping his hands on his overall.

"Sit down."

Grisha sat on the stool by the wall.

"I'm going to say a few words to you," said Kesha. "And you tell me what they mean. If you know. If you don't, just say so."

"Like at school?" Grisha brightened. "A dictation?"

"Something like that."

"Go on, then."

Kesha thought. Grandpa used many words Kesha did not understand — those sing-song village ones. Kesha had remembered a few, because they came up often, and once, already grown up, he had found out what they meant from a dictionary. This dialect, by the way, is no curiosity in our town: half the town came here once from the villages, some from the Poltava region, some from Chernihiv, some from God knows where, and every second old woman at the market says buriak for beetroot and tsybulia for onion and "oi, lyshenko" when a customer is lured away from her. But the young don't speak it any more, and Grisha least of all — he spoke even Russian, in the words of his literature teacher, "as if translating from English." Kesha began with the simplest.

"Khata," he said.

"House," said Grisha. "Well, a village one. Everybody knows that."

"Rushnyk."

"A towel," said Grisha uncertainly. "The kind with embroidery. My granny had one."

Many people knew that one too, probably. Kesha thought and chose a harder word — one of those Grandpa used when he was cross with Kesha for being disobedient.

"Shybenyk."

Grisha wrinkled his forehead.

"Don't know," he said. "Is it some kind of swear word? Sounds like a swear word."

"A swear word," said Kesha. "Gallows bird" — that was what it meant. Grandpa said it without malice, almost tenderly: "Oh, you shybenyk," when Kesha broke a cup or dirtied his shirt.

"Mriia," said Kesha.

"Don't know."

"Nekhai."

"Don't know." Grisha smiled in embarrassment. "What language is it? Ukrainian? I can't do Ukrainian. We only had English at school. And I can't do that either."

Kesha was silent for a while, and then slowly, looking Grisha in the face, said what all this had been for:

"'Hands under your cheek.'"

Grisha looked at him in bewilderment.

"Well…" he said, "that's when you go to sleep? Like little kids?" He put his folded palms under his cheek and tilted his head to show. "Like this?"

"Like that," said Kesha. "And what comes next?"

"What do you mean — next?"

"How does it go on? 'Hands under your cheek…'"

Grisha thought. Honestly, diligently, wrinkling his forehead and looking at the ceiling.

"Don't know," he said. "'…and sleep'? '…and beddy-byes'? Mum didn't say that to me. Mum used to say, 'Close your eyes or the bogeyman'll come.'" He laughed. "You know how scared I was of the bogeyman! Why, master, was I supposed to know what comes next?"

"No," said Kesha. "You weren't. Go on."

Grisha went, still puzzled, and the bucket clattered again, and a minute later from behind the curtain came the song about the one who was "not like the others," only quieter now and, it seemed, with different words — Grisha had evidently got lost in thought and was making it up as he went.

---

Kesha sat at the desk looking at his hands.

Grisha did not know. Did not remember, did not understand, did not recognise either the words or the saying. In the daytime Grandpa was not in him — or was so deep that you could not reach it. In the daytime Grisha was Grisha: sixteen, sticking-out ears, empty head, the bogeyman.

And at night?

Kesha remembered what he had been trying all day not to think about. Grandpa's rule: "Whoever sleeps under one roof with you — don't read them. Not your wife, not your child, not a lodger."

Grisha slept under this roof. Not every night, but he did. He had last night. And if Kesha wanted to find out what was going on with Grisha — really find out what was inside him, who was speaking in him at night in Grandpa's voice — all he had to do was ask: "Grisha, take a picture of your palm, will you?" And Grisha would take it. He wouldn't ask why. It wouldn't even occur to him to ask.

And Kesha would look.

And perhaps he would see.

He sat and thought about this, and the longer he thought, the more he wanted to — and the more frightening it became. The way it is when you stand at the edge of a roof and know you won't jump, you'd never jump — and still your feet are drawn forward.

Grandpa never forbade anything for nothing. Kesha had understood that as a child. "Don't look further than a month" — once, at thirteen or so, Kesha secretly tried it — looked into someone's palm two months ahead — and afterwards could not get out of bed for three days; he was sick, and everything swam before his eyes as after a merry-go-round. Grandpa said nothing then, only gave him a look that made Kesha want to sink through the floor. "No more than five a day" — once, in the first year after he reopened the shop, when he was completely out of money, Kesha read eight — and for a week afterwards saw nothing, not in a single palm, as if he had gone blind. He was so frightened then that he never tried again.

So this rule too was not for nothing. So if you read someone who sleeps under the same roof, something will happen. Something bad. Both for Kesha and, perhaps, for the one he reads.

No, he decided. No.

---

The day passed as usual, if you don't count that the first client, a rosy-cheeked shop assistant from the bread shop, brought Grisha a bagel "for yesterday's snow" — in the blizzard Grisha had cleared the steps outside her shop on his way for pelmeni and hadn't even noticed he'd done a good deed — and Grisha was so flustered that he photographed the wrong hand and had to retake it. Five clients, one with a blot. The seventh. An elderly woman, a retired teacher, "Kin and Strangers." Kesha wrote her the same as the others: "On the twenty-second don't go out. Don't answer if someone calls you."

In the evening, when Grisha was getting ready to leave — the marshrutkas were running, the snow had been cleared — he lingered by the door, turned his hat over in his hands and said:

"Master. I've been thinking."

"What?"

"You're always looking — at what's what. With the clients. But you've never looked at mine." Grisha spoke shyly, looking at the floor. "So I thought. Maybe you want me to take pictures better. I keep taking them and taking them — and I don't know myself how they come out. Good or bad. So."

He put his hand in his jacket pocket, took something out and laid it on the edge of the client's table — on the side where there were no black coins. Kesha could not see what: from behind the curtain it was not visible.

"I printed it," said Grisha. "At the kiosk with the photocopier. My hand. I took it myself, on the phone, this morning, while you were asleep. Light from the side, all proper. As a sample. So you could see whether I'm doing it right or not. In case I'm doing it wrong and you don't say, so as not to hurt my feelings."

We have only one kiosk with a photocopier, by the post office, and it is kept by deaf Auntie Raya, who prints everything — certificates, photographs for gravestones, term papers, wedding invitations — and reads nothing, because on principle she doesn't wear glasses; and so all the secrets of the town pass through her kiosk, and all of them remain secrets.

He stood for another second.

"Well, I'm off. See you tomorrow, master."

"See you tomorrow," said Kesha.

The stairs rang. The door of the building banged upstairs.

Kesha sat at the desk looking at the green curtain. Beyond it, on the table by the door, next to the eight black coins and Tamara Petrovna's three silvers, lay a photograph of Grisha's palm. Printed at the kiosk on a bad printer. Taken correctly — light from the side, the whole hand in the frame, fingers slightly apart.

Kesha did not want to look at it.

He very much wanted to look at it.

He got up, came out from behind the curtain and went to the table.

The photograph lay face up — a sheet of ordinary paper, slightly crumpled at one corner where Grisha had kept it in his pocket. Kesha did not look at it. He deliberately looked away, at the wall, at the door, at the box of tissues "for the emotional ones" — and felt for the sheet on the table with his hand. The paper was warm. Grisha must have carried it in his pocket all day.

Without looking, Kesha turned it over.

Face down. White side up. On the white side there was nothing — only some dark outlines faintly showing through the paper: fingers, a wrist — and Kesha looked away from those too.

Then he took one of his ledgers from the desk — a heavy one, cloth-bound, for the year two thousand and fifteen — laid it on top, pressed it down and left it like that.

And he went behind the curtain, and sat down, and sat for a long time without lighting the lamp, in the dark, listening to the water in the neighbouring cellar behind the wall beginning to drip again — for the first time in two days.