Something wrong with Rozanov

Linda – Never (remaster 2019)

Moscow, Summer 2003

Ilya wiped the fogged-up bathroom mirror with the back of his hand. In the smooth glass surface, uneven from the long drips of water sliding down, he saw his face: wet curls, usually light brown but now darkened by moisture, were plastered to his forehead; his nose and cheeks were red, steamed from the hot water and burned by the sun during outdoor sports. Ilya’s forehead was covered with a scattering of small subcutaneous pimples: those with white purulent tops he would pick at with the tip of his index fingernail and, squeezing the skin, force out what was inside. The pimples were annoying, but the guys at school said it meant you were almost grown up and a mustache and beard would start growing soon. Under his wavy bangs, which fell to the middle of his forehead, his skin sweated profusely, especially during school gym class and hockey practice. Mom made him wear a stupid headband that looked like a tight black spring so that, as she put it, “the skin could breathe,” but Ilya thought he looked like a girl in it, so he would take it off and shove it into his backpack the moment he crossed the threshold of the house. Every day after his shower, 12-year-old Ilya Rozanov examined his face in the mirror, waiting for the first signs of a mustache and beard. Hair had long since appeared in his armpits and groin, which was his distinctive feature among the other boys in his class; there was even a trail of thin, almost colorless hairs under his belly button, but facial hair just refused to come out. He clicked his tongue in disappointment and began to get dressed, cracking the bathroom door open to let in some cold air and catch his breath in the steam-filled room. “Come here for a second,” his mother’s stern voice sounded from the kitchen before Ilya could slip from the bathroom to his room. “Ilya! Did you pick at your forehead again?” The usual execution followed: from the cabinet under the kitchen countertop where she kept some medicines, his mother took out a brown bottle of calendula tincture, soaked a paper napkin with it, and began to wipe her son’s forehead, which had been picked until it bled. The skin stung, making him hiss like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. When she finished, Irina kissed the top of his head, and Rozanov Jr. ran off to the last hockey practice of the month. In the hockey school where Ilya studied, there was no such thing as a three-month summer vacation. In addition to standard athletic training at the stadium after the end of the school year, the best students, including 12-year-old Ilya Rozanov, were sent to a two-week sports camp. They met every day at 10 am at the main entrance of the CSKA stadium on Leningradsky Prospekt and finished at 7 pm. There was a half-hour break for lunch — they were fed in a small canteen across the road, where stadium employees and real hockey players usually ate during training. Ilya was tired as hell, but it was a pleasant fatigue: his muscles and bones ached from the overload, his ligaments from constant stretching, his knees and elbows from bruises, despite the protection. Sport gave him a huge head start in terms of physical development: at 12 years old, he was at least half a head taller than his peers in class; the muscles on his arms, shoulders, back, and legs were becoming tight and voluminous, and even his chest muscles had taken shape. There was not an ounce of excess fat on his body: he was elongated and dry, skinny as a rail. Only, dammit, the mustache just wouldn't grow... After the camp ended, the students were given a month off without classes: the boys' parents demanded it so they could take their children to the sea before the start of the school year. He, his mom, and Alexei had gone to the sea last year and the year before — spending three whole weeks in Crimean Feodosia and Bulgaria. Ilya liked the sea, but his parents couldn't plan a trip this year: Mom started getting very sick. Ilya didn't really know with what exactly. She lost weight, as if she had withered away, and no one in the family noticed how it happened. Just at one moment, everyone saw that a beautiful 40-year-old woman had begun to turn into a faded old lady. Her soft hands with beautiful, slightly tanned skin, the color of sea sand, became covered with bulging coils of blue-green veins. The skin under her eyes sunken, outlining bluish circles. The scariest thing happened to her eyes. Physically, everything was fine with them: she did not suffer from poor eyesight, and the color of her irises was still bright blue, like the boundless sky reflected in an equally endless ocean surface. But the light had gone out of her eyes. Her radiant, kind gaze, with which she looked at her sons, watching them turn from babies into boys and young men before her eyes and with the help of her inexhaustible love, was slowly fading. Sometimes she would sit at the piano and start playing Chopin, whom she adored with all her soul. Her fingers obeyed her poorly, and after half an hour of useless, arrhythmic fumbling with notes, missing the right sounds and intonations, she would strike the keyboard with both hands and slam the instrument’s lid shut. Ilya didn't understand what had changed, but he felt that something was going wrong. He couldn't explain it to himself or anyone else. His mother's condition was not discussed at home; everything went on as usual. They sat down at the dinner table as always: Irina poured chicken soup with potatoes and vermicelli into bowls, set out a small cutting board with pieces of black bread and thinly sliced raw smoked sausage, and a saucer with fresh, finely chopped dill. Alexei and Ilya ate silently, slurping the broth and pulling small chicken bones out of their mouths with their fingers. If father was present during lunch—he had started appearing at home in the middle of the day sometimes to eat homemade food—the meal was accompanied by the criminal news summary on the NTV channel. Ilya remembered that six months ago, Mom used to ask Dad to change the channel: “Grisha, the boys are eating.” Then she stopped. In any case, a real summer was beginning. A cool, boring city summer.

***

Without his usual training regimen and school classes, Ilya didn't know what to do with himself for the entire month of July. The first few days he spent a lot of time at home, although his mom constantly chased him outside — to play in the fresh air, to run around with the guys. Ilya whined that all his friends had left, and it was true: in the middle of summer, the playground in the courtyard of the neighboring house, battered by age, became noticeably quieter. Outside the window, spreading bird cherry trees swayed: they had already bloomed, so small black berries appeared among the juicy green leaves. Out of boredom, Ilya opened the window, leaned halfway out, stretched to his full length, and picked the berries from the branches he could reach. His mouth immediately felt dry and astringent, and his tongue was coated with a brownish-purple film. There was nothing interesting on TV — last year they had cable TV, but it was turned off, as his father said, “so they would study and not stare at the TV.” The true reason was a radical saving of the family budget, but neither Ilya nor Alexei were told about this. “Fine,” he exhaled decisively, threw on a dark blue windbreaker with a hood, and headed towards the front door to put on his shoes, but turned halfway to look into his parents' room. The white-painted door with glass inserts was ajar, and he carefully pulled the door handle towards himself — slowly, not letting the hinges creak. On the bed, with her back to the door, lay Mom: she looked like a tiny mound covered with a gray down shawl. Her knees and hands were tucked to her chest. Ilya didn't know if she was asleep. He called her softly: “Mom,” he fell silent and listened to the sounds in the room. The mound on the bed stirred. “I'm going for a walk.” “Okay, my joy,” Mom replied. Her voice was quiet, affectionate, and tired. “Be back by dinner.” “Are you feeling bad, Mom?” Ilya asked cautiously. “Everything is fine, son,” Irina rose from the bed with a heavy exhale, walked over to her son, and kissed his pimply forehead, lifting his hair with her palm. “You've really shot up, of course, I barely recognize you. You've become quite a big boy.” Mom smelled of sleep and alcohol-based medicinal tincture, either Corvalol or Valocordin. Ilya noticed that there were usually 2-3 bottles of this medicine on the refrigerator door, and both his father, when he was nervous and angry, and his mother took it. They said goodbye, and Ilya ran out into the street. The sun warmed his head gently; it was a bit hot in the windbreaker, but too chilly in a t-shirt. Ilya wandered around his and the neighboring houses for about half an hour, periodically greeting the neighbor grandmothers who sat on wooden benches near the front doors. Every third old lady considered it her duty to praise his height and curly hair — “oh, what a handsome boy is growing up.” The compliments embarrassed Ilya, and he quickened his pace. On a small football field between the houses, or rather, a wasteland with two leaning metal goals without nets, he noticed two tall guys, about 14-15 years old, as it seemed to him. He didn't know them personally but had periodically seen them among the other neighborhood kids before. There wasn't much choice—to while away today, he would have to make new social connections. He rubbed his nose with his fingers and moved at a leisurely pace towards the guys, who were lazily kicking a slightly deflated soccer ball to each other. Ilya circled the football field one and a half times while keeping his distance from the potential buddies for the day: all three cast studying glances at each other, but no one dared to start a dialogue. “Hey,” one of the guys called out to Ilya, apparently the older one. “You, you. Will you stand in goal?” Something fluttered in Ilya's heart — from tense expectation that ended in triumph. This was his moment of glory. Hockey, football — it doesn't matter, the mechanics are the same. Without skates, on his own two feet and on solid ground, he would show such a level that they would definitely respect and possibly even fear him. He took off his windbreaker and threw it on the grass behind the goal. They started the game without even introducing themselves. Ilya, being trained in sports game strategy, calculated their passes and shots toward the goal in mere moments and fought them off effortlessly with his hands, feet, and once even hit it back with his head, barely missing one of the boys' faces with the ball. This hit was followed by an approving “whoa” and laughter, after which the guys honored him with a handshake. The one who was taller and older was always in front and initiated the dialogue; the second, shorter and clearly a year or two younger, trailed behind and was almost always silent. Ilya was finally able to get a good look at them. “What's your name?” asked the older one. On his swarthy face, two light blue translucent eyes burned, like a husky's. “Ilya. Rozanov.” “How old?” “Just turned 12.” “Holy shit. Look how big he is,” the older kid drawled. Ilya didn't understand why his figure and height caused such a resonance. “I'm Lekha, this is Vitek.” “Nice to meet you,” communicating in street slang was not to Ilya's liking: after all, he was a fairly well-mannered and polite child. They kicked the ball around for a few more hours, taking turns in goal. Everyone gave it their all because they needed to make the right impression on new people. Drops of sweat ran down their temples and necks, drying, reappearing, mixing with the street dust that smelled of sun and carelessness, and smearing on their skin from the careless movement of palms. Ilya was soaked through, so he pulled off his t-shirt, which had darkened with moisture on his chest, back, and armpits. His muscular corset, developed beyond his years, made a deep impression on the guys, which they tried not to show openly. “You play sports or something?” the younger and shorter kid finally opened his mouth. “Hockey.” “And I went to karate,” Vitek replied busily. “Broke my arm, had to quit.” “Wow,” Ilya respected him a little. “Broke it in a fight?” “No. Fell off a ladder at the dacha,” Vitek replied, and that was his last line for the next hour. Tired from the game, the guys flopped onto the grass. The older one, Lekha, said he was thirsty and suggested the others go to his house. “Won't they drag you home?” Vitek inquired. “Nobody's home. Let's roll.” It was cool at Lekha's place: windows wide open throughout the apartment let a draft into the two-room flat, mixing the stale, musty smell of the rooms with the smells of street dust and flowers from the flowerbed at the entrance. Lekha lived in a panel nine-story building built in the early 80s, on the 2nd floor. There was a lot of furniture in the apartment, disproportionately much for such a small living space. Two of the four walls of his room were lined from floor to ceiling with old mahogany-colored wall units, the varnish on which had bubbled and yellowed with age. By the window stood a computer desk, cluttered with magazines, notebooks, and books; there was also a computer on the desk — the kind Ilya's older brother had about 5 years ago, if not more. In those years, it was very easy to determine a family's level of wealth by the presence and model of a computer. Lekha retreated to the kitchen: the sound of the refrigerator door opening and the clinking of bottles was heard. Vitek and Ilya darted towards the kitchen and saw that Lekha, with a sly, provocative smile, had placed three bottles of “Baltika 3” beer on the kitchen table, covered with a yellowed oilcloth with sticky circles from the bottoms of tea mugs. Ilya had tried beer before with his father — Grigory drank rarely, but sometimes let him take a sip of foam from his glass — but he had no experience drinking a whole bottle, nor any options not to do it right now. The concepts of street code were straightforward, undeniable, and mandatory for everyone without exception. They were tacitly passed down from generation to generation of guys just like them; no one taught anyone these codes—everyone followed them intuitively, unconsciously, by one big Russian collective consciousness. An exceptionally important thing in every man's life, like reputation, depended on the level of acceptance and adherence to these codes. It was very hard to earn, but could be lost in two counts — for example, by not drinking a bottle of beer that the host puts in front of you. “What if your parents come home?” Ilya asked, taking a certain risk. He needed to test the waters but not show that he didn't plan to drink. “They won't. They went to the village, won't be back until the day after tomorrow.” “What if they see that you drank the beer?” the silent Vitek opened his mouth, for which Ilya was very grateful to him. “I'll buy more. They left money, the saleswoman knows I'm buying for my dad. Help yourselves, guys, while it's offered.” The first few sips of ice-cold beer quenched thirst perfectly after playing football. By the middle of the bottle, Ilya realized he was buzzing. He didn't understand what was happening to his body: his limbs became cotton-like and soft, as if he had been lying in a hot bath for an hour. The same thing was happening inside his skull. His vision seemed to dull, and it was difficult, a bit painful to rotate his eyes to shift his gaze from Lekha to Vitek, from Vitek to Lekha, from Lekha to the end of the five-story building standing perpendicular to the house outside the window, to the sky covered with a torn blanket of gray clouds. His eyeballs felt like they were burning and watering. Ilya Rozanov leaned his back against the wall: the cold rough concrete under the thin canvas of old, worn wallpaper helped him maintain a state of clear mind. “Want a cig?” Lekha just couldn't calm down and systematically raised the stakes. He took an opened pack of “Kent 8” from the back of the cupboard, pulled out two cigarettes: he clamped one in his teeth and held the other out to Ilya. “What about Vitek?” “Vitek doesn't smoke,” Lekha sniffed and lit both cigarettes at once with the flame of a “Cricket” lighter. So much for playing football, Ilya thought warily, inhaling cigarette smoke. He held the cigarette with the pads of his fingers, “like a man,” as Lekha did. His eyes watered and he wanted to cough from the sensation of acrid, stinking smoke filling his entire mouth. Ilya, of course, didn't know how to inhale into his lungs, so he puffed out his cheeks, realizing it was a fiasco, that he looked stupid—and exhaled the smoke with a cough. “Drag it, drag it, come on,” Lekha, tipsy from the beer, still wouldn't calm down. After three or four drags, Ilya got the hang of it, although the process didn't give him an ounce of pleasure. But he had to finish, he understood that clearly. Outside the window, it began to get dark; Ilya glanced at his watch and informed his friends that he needed to go home. They tried to persuade him to stay, but at the words “father will come home from duty,” they let him go in peace. Today had been strange, wrong, and therefore amazing. He had new friends with whom he played football, and everyone liked it very much. He drank a whole bottle of beer for the first time and got drunk for the first time. He smoked a whole cigarette for the first time and received praise from an older guy. 12-year-old Ilya Rozanov, who felt very grown-up right now, was troubled by several vital questions: firstly, on one of the notebooks that cluttered the desk at Lekha's house, he managed to make out his last name — Solovyov. There were tens of thousands of Solovyovs in Moscow, if not more; including a man with the surname Solovyov at Ilya's father's service. What if Lekha Solovyov is the son of a policeman who works with his father? And what if Lekha gets caught for drinking beer and the smell of tobacco in the apartment and blurts out that Ilya came to visit and they drank and smoked together? Motherfucker, Ilya foolishly gave his last name when introducing himself, what an idiot. Lekha Solovyov's father will definitely tell Rozanov Sr. what his hockey player son is doing on vacation. Anxious thoughts bustled in his drunken head: it seems Ilya understood what anxiety was for the first time in his life. Secondly, Ilya felt that his hands and t-shirt smelled of cigarettes, and his breath reeked of beer. They smoked by an open window, but the tobacco stench was distinct and hit him right in the nose. Ilya walked out of the entrance, turned behind the house so the guys wouldn't see him from the window, and began to nervously ponder how to resolve everything. In the courtyard, he caught sight of an old early-variety apple tree—in early July, medium-sized apples had already appeared on it, and this was a real blessing: Ilya picked two apples, wiped them with the hem of his t-shirt, and quickly ate them, grimacing from the caustic-sour taste. This helped to chew over, to drown out the smell of beer in his mouth. He moved toward the house and realized he was carrying his hooded windbreaker in his hands, which still smelled of laundry detergent, not tobacco, and that was his only salvation. Quickly slip into the bathroom right in the jacket — and there it will all be covered. No one at home found out about his secrets. One open question remained, which Ilya secretly worried about until the end of the week: Is Lekha Solovyov a cop's son or not? But the crisis passed and Ilya soon forgot about everything that worried him. He saw Lekha and Vitek a few more times during the remaining free month of July, and Ilya had to invent excuses to refuse another visit.

***

Moscow, November 2003

Summer ended fleetingly, as if it hadn't happened. For the new school year, Ilya was bought a diary with the CSKA hockey club emblem on the matte cover and beautiful printed signatures of the players. Ilya Rozanov moved to the 7th grade, and now instead of the usual math, he had to study algebra and geometry, as well as chemistry. His grades became worse compared to last year: studying at the pace expected from an 'A' class and combining it with the complicated training program at the hockey school became more difficult. Bs and even Cs were forgiven at home, but for Ds he was severely scolded and denied access to the computer for a whole week. However, Ilya didn't have free time for computer games anyway. All focus was on hockey because that was his father's order. At 12-13 years old, boys in hockey school were formed into teams; at the CSKA school, there was a main squad of players who were sent to pre-junior level competitions, and at such competitions, one had to prove oneself because coaches and managers of youth teams came to the finals and semi-finals and watched from the stands, as Ilya's father once did, the game on the ice. Purebreds are taken as puppies, so junior hockey clubs looked for fresh blood to replenish the ranks of “Army men,” “Dynamo,” and other famous Moscow teams several years before the new recruitment. Before every important competition, Grigory Rozanov would catch his son, grab him firmly by the shoulder, and give instructions on how he needed to play and that if he disgraced himself, he would be done for at home. That's exactly what he said. Overall, it was calm at home. Ilya noticed that the degree of quarrels between his parents had dropped in the last couple of months: Irina and Grigory no longer shouted at each other behind the uselessly thin kitchen door, the clatter of dishes, knives, and forks, which Ilya was used to since early childhood, no longer came from there. Father retired in October and spent whole days at home, as if trying to make up for lost years while he disappeared at work. His presence at home felt like something alien, violating customs created by his mother's gentle hands. The key leitmotif of short, taciturn conversations between the Rozanov spouses was money. Irina listed in a quiet voice what needed to be bought for the boys — well, not boys, Alexei's older brother was already a full-fledged young man and had entered the Moscow Police College, which had to be paid for. “I need money,” Irina would say. “Take it from the closet,” Grigory would reply. “There isn't any more there” – “Means there isn't any. What do you want from me?” There was no strength in Irina's voice to object. A few years prior, in August 1998, the Rozanov family, like millions of families just like them, lost all their savings. Everything stored in hiding places in their apartment — in the ottoman mattress, in porcelain vases in the sideboard, in books with pages cut out in a rectangle with a utility knife — turned into dust, worth literally nothing. For several years, especially acutely in the period from 1998 to 2002, they scraped by on the father's salary, which had greatly depreciated due to the crisis in the country, the sale of gold jewelry, including both wedding rings, and a certain reserve of foreign currency that Irina Rozanova bought through speculators at an inadequately unfavorable rate—there was a massive scandal on this subject when Grigory found out. Of the jewelry and valuables, father had a signet ring with black agate, which he wore on his pinky finger all his life, but he refused to pawn it. Fresh meat in their house was replaced by pork and beef stew in gray cans with torn labels and beef liver; tomatoes and cucumbers, if not summer — by cabbage, carrots, and radish. Sausage and cheese appeared on the table only on big holidays. Unlike his brother's studies, Ilya, showing serious success and showing great promise in hockey, trained at the CSKA school for budget money. This led Grigory Rozanov to a simple and logical thought: if he couldn't earn mountains of gold with his eldest son, then he couldn't give the youngest any slack, and 12-year-old Ilya began to be perceived as an investment project.

***

“Mom, where is my t-shirt, I asked you to wash it!” Ilya darted nervously around the room, gathering things for practice. He was very late because he had sat up too late over his chemistry homework, and he knew he would get another chewing out from the coach — Ilya's discipline was monitored especially carefully at his father's request. Irina brought another of her son's t-shirts from the closet as a replacement, and Rozanov Jr. abruptly snatched it from his mother's hands, casting an unkind look at her.I asked you, you've been home all day, he thought to himself, angry at the whole world: homework not finished, about to be late for practice. He was putting on his shoes in a fuss, simultaneously pulling a backpack onto his shoulders with a change of clothes, a bottle of water, and sandwiches with “Druzhba” processed cheese wrapped in foil and a plastic bag. “Bye, my joy. Hug mom goodbye,” said Irina, standing in the doorway with her son, and reached out her hands to him. Ilya rolled his eyes but still walked up to his mother and reluctantly embraced her by the shoulders: they were practically equal in height. Irina wrapped her son in a hug and pressed her face to his cheek. Through the layers of clothes, Ilya felt her heart pounding in her chest—fast, tremulously, as if someone were hammering on her ribs from the inside with tiny mallets. She pulled away, took her son's face in both hands, looked him straight in the eyes for a few seconds, pursing her lips — her mouth turned into a thin arc curved downward. “Mom, I'm late,” Ilya grumbled discontentedly under his breath and freed himself from his mother's hands with an unpleasant jerk. “I'll be late. See ya!” And he disappeared into the dim light of the bulb on the stairwell. Practice didn't go well: when Ilya was put in goal, he let in several pucks, for which the coach forced him to take off his protection in front of everyone and do 50 push-ups, resting his bare hands directly on the ice surface. To keep his palms from freezing, he had to do push-ups at a furious pace, and he was so exhausted that he wanted to stretch out right on the seats of the half-empty subway car. He rode home with a stick and a full set of hockey gear because another competition with similar pre-juniors from “Dynamo,” their main rival on the ice, was scheduled for tomorrow. A very important match that his father was supposed to come to: he hadn't been home in recent days; one of his former colleagues had invited Grigory to the distant Moscow region, somewhere near Tver, for autumn fishing and a bathhouse. He wanted to eat and sleep, and nothing else. Ilya returned home at 9 pm and opened the door with his key. An icy, motionless silence stood in the apartment: it was so quiet that it seemed as if even the hands of the wall clock above the entrance door in the hallway had fallen silent, held their inevitable course. In the whole apartment, except for the former parents' — now Mom's — room, the lights were off. He sniffled and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his jumper, kicked off his shoes onto the mat at the entrance, and followed his usual route to the kitchen to wash his hands. The kitchen was very clean and tidy: he noticed that the sink, where food particles usually remained from plates, shone with an implausible, unnatural whiteness. The large gas stove was scrubbed to a shine, and the pots and pans were put away in the cupboards. Ilya opened the refrigerator in search of something to eat quickly: he saw a foil-wrapped bundle on the shelf and discovered six large meat cutlets in it. Wow! He ate two, right cold, without reheating, beside himself. He lifted the lid on the yellow enamel pot: it was filled to the brim with cabbage soup with large chunks of chicken meat. He was so happy that he licked his lips with appetite and started smiling. “Mom, what's the occasion today?” he shouted into the silence of the apartment, taking out the pot of soup and putting it on the stove, but no one answered him. After half a minute, he called Mom again: “I'm asking, what's the occasion, Mom? There's soup with meat for ten people here.” Mom didn't answer him. He looked at the soup with longing, thinking one thought:I'll be right back to you!, and headed towards the only room where the light was on. On the bed lay a quiet mound, habitually covered with a gray down shawl passed down to Irina from her mother, Ilya's favorite grandmother. “Mom,” he called again. Something clinked in his chest, as if a musician, putting his instrument away in its case, accidentally touched the strings. Ilya felt it physically. “Mom.” The mound on the bed lay sadly, motionlessly, and lonely. The smell of alcohol was felt in the room. Ilya slowly, uncertainly took a step inside: the old herringbone parquet creaked under his weight, and this sound bounced off the walls like an echo. The smell of alcohol intensified as Ilya, step by step, approached the bed. Ilya thought Mom was fast asleep. He walked around the bed to the side, standing on the other side. The bright orange light of a street lamp outside the window hit him in the back; this light crawled lazily along the walls, casting shadows of embroidered patterns on the translucent organza curtains. The dim orange light, mixing with the light of the table lamp in the room, illuminated Irina's face: calm, as if painted, having become flat and pale. Her eyes were tightly shut, her lips, on the contrary, parted. Ilya peered into his mother's face, not understanding what was happening here now. “Mom,” he climbed onto the bed in his street jeans — maybe she would notice it now, sense it somehow and scold him, as she usually did when her sons flopped onto the bed or sofa in the living room in street clothes. Ilya reached out and touched his fingers to his mother's cheek. It was cool under his fingertips, as if he had touched the cheek of a marble statue carved from a portrait of his mother. A sharp smell of alcohol and acidic vomit hit his nose. He couldn't understand why Mom was so cold, why she was silent and didn't open her eyes. Strands of light brown hair fell on her neat, chiseled forehead — the same color as Ilya's, only not with springy curls like his. On the bedside table lay an empty box and two empty Phenazepam blister packs, cleaned out to zero. Ilya knew nothing about this medicine except that Irina took it for insomnia. In that moment, time ceased to exist, the sensation of space disappeared, the presence of walls, ceiling, light and sound, house, street, the lantern oozing cold orange light into his back. Ilya clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw cramped, and gripped his hair tightly, almost tearing it out by the roots, just to feel something — and wake up abruptly, because all this was just a terrible dream. Strings of black and white dots flashed before his gaze from how hard Ilya squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his thumb on his mother's wrist, devoid of a pulse. A few minutes later, he seemed to wake up, all flustered and trembling. His whole body shook as if in an icy fever when he bolted from the bed to run to the telephone receiver in the hallway and call an ambulance: not hearing his own voice, he answered the dispatcher's questions — address, name, surname, what happened. They said the car would arrive in about 20 minutes, and these were the most endless, most terrible 20 minutes of Ilya Rozanov's life, who now no longer had a mother. He still had to live up to this fact, somehow drag on, somehow grow up. While the ambulance flew towards their house in the area of the Prospekt Vernadskogo metro station, overtaking the flow of cars in the oncoming lane, Ilya sat on the cold parquet floor, leaning his back against the bed on which his mother's corpse lay. From the photograph standing on the bedside table, her eyes looked at him — blue, like the ocean surface, and smiling. Ilya couldn't tear his gaze away from them. He drove them away from himself, but memory, the bitch, threw frames of their last parting at him: before leaving, he hadn't even really looked into her eyes — pushed away, ran off, rushing, and didn't even say goodbye properly. A new, terrible thought, inevitable as a gunshot wound after a bullet fired from a pistol, strengthened in his head: his childhood ended today.