The Domovoi

Please note, this story contains themes of war, violence and suicide.

He can smell garlic salt and coffee. Last night, he forgot to shut his blind, so the weak, white winter sunlight spills onto his bed. There is the peculiar prickle of snow in the air and he can hear cars, trundling through slush for the morning commute. Spurred by the smell of breakfast, he puts on his big socks, slings a granny blanket around his shoulders, and slopes downstairs.

In the kitchen, his mother is kneading dough under her sun lamp with an unlit cigarette poking from her mouth. She grunts as he sits down at the table gesturing the coffee pot. He pours them both a cup. She’s making pirozhki again, really slapping the dough into the countertop, disappearing behind clouds of flour. He stretches his legs, letting the warmth of the electric heater melt away the night, sips his coffee. On the stove top, cabbage and ground beef sputter in a pan.

His mother stirs the pan and puts the dough in a bowl, covering it with a tea towel, wipes her hands on her apron and sits down. She takes the cigarette from her mouth.

‘Where is my lighter, Andrei?’

‘Good morning to you too, ma.’

‘It’s gone again. That’s the third one this week.’

‘Are you sure you aren’t just going senile? Perhaps you put it in the fridge.’

She cuffs him gently around the ear. ‘Don’t think I don’t know you go off with your little mates and smoke hash behind the hill. I can smell it from here.’

‘I don’t smoke hash, ma. You don’t give me enough money to buy any.’

‘Get yourself a job. Then you can buy your own damn lighters.’

‘Hang on,’ he says, taking a box of matches out of his pocket. He lights her cigarette for her, and she tuts, taking a long drag. The smoke eddies into the room, assuming the electric violet colour of the sun lamp.

‘Why do you have that thing on again? It eats up electricity.’

‘Oh, don’t start with your Greta Thunburg crap. That lamp is all that stands between me and despair.’

He laughs. ‘I only meant because it’s sunny outside. You could save yourself the electricity bill, and the planet incidentally, and go for a walk.’

‘Oh right, and where would I walk to with my hair like this?’

‘I don’t know. You could go to the farm, scare away some crows.’

She stubs out her cigarette. ‘You really have your father’s cheek you know.’ She looks him over. ‘But none of his good looks.’

‘I’m growing into them.’

Underneath the floorboards, the domovoi sparks up his own cigarette, munching on some dropped beef. His fingers tremble, hands as lined as cliff tops. He listens, always listens, creeps between cracks in the walls, lurks in the pipes, spoons the pigeons in the rafters to keep warm at night. When Andrei was a baby, he was a breeze, turning the airplane mobile above the cot whispering lullabies.

Bayu-bayushki-bayu,

Ne lozhisya na krayu.

He learned the pirozhki recipe from Andrei’s great great grandmother, and watches over it now, adds a pinch of salt, stops it from burning when Andrei’s mother, Sasha, forgets what she’s doing and stares out of the window. Twice this week, she’s fallen asleep when Andrei’s been out, with a cigarette lit, so he stubbed them out, covered her with a blanket and took her lighters away.

The other domovoi in the block don’t talk to him. They think he’s too involved, whatever that means, but he is the oldest of them by far, been on this spot since it was a lemming’s burrow, and watched the babies picked off one by one. So, he makes his own rules now and helps where he can.

He sings a little song under his breath as Andrei gets ready for school and Sasha fills the pirozhki.

Aty baty, shli soldaty

Aty baty, na bazar…

Russian winters are hard winters, long months of solid ground, shovels bend, harvests finish. Take the cabbage, beetroot, chop finely, 500ml vinegar, sugar, salt, boil, strain, jar. Keep these in the cupboards through the cold months. Jams are good too, dandelion, plum, berries, varenye. Huddle close, light fires, wear layers. Russian winters breed good summer babies.

The domovoi finishes his sigareta, blows the smoke between the slats in the floorboards, watches as Sasha sees Andrei off and wanders round the house, runs a bath, lets it go cold, picks up a book, puts it down again, and, when the food is ready, eats three buns in a row without stopping,

There is a knock on the door. She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, looks at the door in alarm, tries not to move or make a sound. The domovoi knocks a pan from the counter and, after a pause, there is another knock at the door.

‘Sasha, I can hear you in there. Open the door!’

Sasha picks up the pot, curses, and goes to the door.

A short, sharpish looking woman is stood on the porch, expectant.

‘Smells good in here, Sasha, I am glad you’re eating. May I come in?’ She elbows her way into the house before Sasha can speak.

‘Karine, hi. I haven’t had time to tidy-‘

Karine gestures and tsks. ‘Never mind that,’ she says helping herself to a pirozhki and putting on the kettle. ‘I’ve come to see you, not the house. Though,’ she looks around, ‘I don’t know what you’re going on about,’ wiping her finger across a surface, ‘it’s pristine in here. Does Andrei help out?’

‘He is a useless teenage boy. You know.’

Karine smiles, lighting a cigarette. ‘Oh, I know all about useless teenage boys.’ She takes a bite out of the piozhki. ‘Sasha, as always, your cooking is a balm for the soul.’

Women have been meeting at this kitchen table for centuries to talk about absence. Not this kitchen table, but a kitchen table, wooden chairs, or stools by the fire, meeting over soup, or tea, or cigarettes and wine. And the domovoi listens, always listens. He takes on the features of the men who should be in the empty chairs. The men who dressed up in uniforms and didn’t come back. Even when they came back, they didn’t come back. There are always chairs empty, arms empty.

The domovoi enjoys Karine’s visits. She is a messy eater and drops crumbs.

‘How is Andrei?’ she says.

‘He seems OK. He goes out a lot. He has friends.’

‘That’s good, friends are good. Does he have a girlfriend?’

Sasha shakes her head. ‘Do you think he’d tell me if he did?’

Karine scoffs, reaches out a hand and lays it on Sasha’s. ‘And how are you, Sasha?’

Sasha smiles, then looks away. A large tear plops through the floorboards and lands on domovoi’s head.

‘Of course, you are shit,’ Karine says, pulling a tissue from her bag, ‘you are shit and then you sleep and then you are shit again.’

Sasha wipes her eyes. ‘Oh, ignore me Karine. I’m fine. I just miss the summer.’ She lights another cigarette.

The domovoi takes the opportunity while the women talk to fix the leaky tap in the bathroom. It has been keeping Sasha awake for days.

Aty baty chto kupili

Aty baty samovar

When he is done in the bathroom, he wipes the sealant from his hands and creeps up to the attic with a cloth and some Brass-O. The rest of the house, apart from Andrei’s room, is bare, clean, organised, but the attic is fit to burst. Storage boxes full of men’s clothes, photo albums, bags of rubbish. He knows he must sift through it at some point, but not now. Now is not the time. In the far corner, the cracks of light from the rafters strike the bright, undulous form of a brass samovar. Sasha’s mother, Sasha’s grandmother and Sasha herself, have all sat around it, filled the house with the consoling fragrance of hot tea. It has had a place at their table for decades and shone proudly in the kitchen, boasting memories of weddings and christenings, pouring warmth into their funerals.

Brewing tea is outdoor work. Put on the thick knits, shovel the snow. Dead branches, dry wood chips. Fill the samovar with cold cold water and start the fire. Let it crackle until the water boils, put the top back on. Pour tea into the pot, some of the smoky water, take it inside to the table. Seats are all filled, music spilling from the houses, a fresh layer of snow.

But it sits up here now, gathering dust. So, the domovoi takes it on himself to come and polish it weekly so it is ready to be used when it’s needed again.

As he polishes, a pigeon coos, he hears the door close as Karine leaves to start cooking the evening meal. Soon Andrei will be home and Sasha will perform her own mothering before he goes to bed and she collapses into a chair to stare at the walls. He takes his time, relishing the task, restoring brightness to the brown-grey detritus of the attic. The cracks of light through the rafters lengthen and dim as the sun sets and soon the room is blue, lit only by the moon and the samovar, brilliant, shining.

Andrei has not come home. He is probably behind the hill with his friends, but Sasha will be pacing, worried, so domovoi creeps downstairs.

She is in the kitchen making sour schi, Andrei’s favourite cabbage soup, to have with the leftover pirozhki.

Sasha nicks herself with the knife. The blood is vivid next to the insipid green of the sauerkraut. She curses and finds a plaster, sets the soup to simmer and sits down next to the sun lamp.

Beneath the floorboards, something taps on the wood.

‘Don’t think I can’t hear you,’ she says lighting a cigarette, staring into the violet light. ‘You are not very subtle.’ Sasha listens for a while, but, other than the low buzz of the sun lamp and the soup bubbling, there is no further sound. She rubs her eyes. ‘Well this is it,’ she says, ‘I’ve gone mad at last.’ Laughs a dead laugh. She is tired, but every time she lies down to sleep it feels like she’s been shot through with electricity. She is so tired. Sometimes she just wants to walk out into the snow. But Andrei, but Andrei.

Bayu-bayushki-bayu, hush little baby.

She pours herself a cup of soup and steps out into the garden. The snow is thicker now, blanketing the ground, muting all sound. She hopes the smell will carry over the hill to Andrei and he will come home hungry. He should be home by now. She’s not wearing shoes. He should be home, even when he stays out late, he always comes back to eat. Her breath rolls from her in a thick blue cloud. She can’t hear them, the boys, over the hill like she usually can. The cup drops, bounces on the snow, the schi spits out onto the ground, steaming. She feels a wave of nausea and then a blinding dizziness and she stumbles, her heart beating painfully in her chest. The snow is against her face now, her arms, it’s melting through her nightgown. She feels, at last, sleep spread over her like a warm blanket.

Sasha, in her bed of snow, can see a man at the back door. He’s standing in her home, calling her name. He has the kind face of her father, sandy brown hair, blue eyes, lines of laughter etched into his face.

‘Sasha, you must come inside,’ he says, ‘your dinner’s ready.’

‘Ssh,’ she says, ‘not now, Papa, I’m sleeping.’

‘Please, solntse, my sunshine, remember the song I used to sing you, the grey wolfie will come, and take you to the forest. You must come inside.’

Sasha stirs, looks up at her papa and the warm light of the house. He’s in his uniform, handsome. Hand outstretched, he leans forward and opens his mouth, but his next words are drowned by the sudden shriek of gunfire, shells dropping, men crying out for their mothers. Her father’s eyes widen and stare at a point behind her, a point she cannot see, and his jaw is blown clean from his face by an invisible assailant. Blood pours onto the snow towards her and she screams, screams for him to come home, but he falls to the ground and is gone once more. She burrows into the snow. She sleeps.

The next voice is her husband’s, like caramel. The voice that turned her head all those years ago. Softly, ‘Sasha, darling, wake up.’

She wakes up, ‘Mmm, Pyotr, it’s you. Come out here, Andrei’s not home.’

‘You must come in, Sasha. There are wolves out here.’

‘Psh, not in the city. Come out here and be with me.’

‘You know, Sasha, I can’t.’

She looks up then, and he is there, just like he was. Her tears pour onto the snow with a sizzle. She is about to get to her feet, to run into his arms, when she sees his face properly. His eyes are glassy, hollow like they were in those last months when he started avoiding mirrors. At his feet there are pills, too many pills, and an empty bottle. There is dried sick on his shirt. She calls his name in despair. ‘Pyotr, I can’t join you. Not yet.’

He reaches for her, and she stretches toward him, longs for his touch, his hot boozy breath, his stubble, his heavy warm arms. But she can’t, so she lets her head fall back into the snow, back into sleep.

Finally, she hears Andrei’s gentle footsteps approach the back door. He is chanting something. Soon, he appears in the doorway, haloed by the light of the house. But he doesn’t look like her regular Andrei, in his jeans and hoodies, with his slouch. Here, he is magnificent, shoulders back, head raised, voice loud in the chant. About his shoulders, which she now notices are broad, broader even than his father’s, he is wearing a cape of blue and yellow and there are violent streaks of silver and gold in his black hair. He is holding a large placard, crudely painted with words in the same bright colours. NO TO WAR. She is about to call his name, to ask him what the hell kind of time he calls this, when he is abruptly knocked to the ground onto his front, his arms twisted behind his back, his face pressed against the floor so they are almost eye to eye. He contorts and grunts a few times as though he has been kicked. Sasha flinches as she too is winded by his invisible onslaught. She begins to weep, but then notices Andrei’s face. His eyes are shining, and he is smiling a fierce, defiant smile, looking directly at her, telling her with his face that she does not need to worry about him. He continues to chant as he stands up, limping slightly.

This time Sasha is unhesitant. She is up, flings herself at the backdoor towards her son and, as soon as she steps over the threshold of the door, Andrei is gone and the domovoi is there, dragging her into the kitchen, wrapping her in blankets next to the sunlamp.

She looks at him, her eyes adjusting from the darkness outside, and his face flickers through the faces of the men she’s known, of her ancestors, heavy browed and strong jawed.

‘You,’ she says, ‘you have been stealing my lighters.’ And then the fatigue hits her again and she falls asleep slumped over the kitchen table.

*

When she wakes, she is rested and warm. She is in the kitchen with her head on the table and the soup is gently reheating on the stove. In front of her is her granny’s samovar, already hot, lightly smoking still and bright as a penny.

She laughs, pulls the blanket tighter round her, the weak light of morning pouring through the window.

She pours three cups of tea and the front door opens.

‘Andrei?’ she says.

‘Ma, I’m so sorry, I lost track of time and fell asleep-‘

‘Shh, Andrei, please get yourself to bed, you are a terrible liar. I’ll bring you up some soup and tea.’ She looks around at him. He is wearing his ordinary clothes, hiding a bruise with his hair. It has a flash of silver in it. She smiles. He frowns but does as she says and stomps upstairs to his bedroom.

She puts the tea, two pirozhki, and two bowls of soup on a tray, and then leaves a third meal on the table with a cigarette and a lighter.

‘Thank you,’ she whispers to the house, before mounting the stairs to Andrei’s room.

He is already asleep, and she watches him as she eats, like she did when he was a boy. Like his father, and his grandfather, he has a battle to face, but this is a battle she can fight alongside him. This battle is brightly coloured, shines like the samovar. That magnificent defiant smile flickers around Andrei’s lips as he sleeps. His bag is open next to the bed and she pulls out the blue and yellow flag, wraps it around herself.

The house seems to sing as they sleep.

Bayu-bayushki-bayu,

Ne lozhisya na krayu.