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boreothegoldfinch · 3 years

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chapter 5 paragraph xvi

Boris's father was a mysterious figure. As Boris explained it: he was often on site in the middle of nowhere, at his mine, where he stayed with his crew for weeks at a time. “Doesn’t wash,” said Boris austerely. “Stays filthy drunk.” The beaten-up short wave radio in the kitchen belonged to him (“From Brezhnev era,” said Boris; “he won’t throw it away”), and so were the Russian-language newspapers and USA Todays I sometimes found around. One day I’d walked into one of the bathrooms at Boris’s house (which were fairly grim—no shower curtain or toilet seat, upstairs or down, and black stuff growing in the tub) and got a bad start from one of his dad’s suits, soaking wet and smelly, dangling like a dead thing from the shower rod: scratchy, misshapen, of lumpy brown wool the color of dug roots, it dripped horribly on the floor like some moist-breathing golem from the old country or maybe a garment dredged up in a police net. “What?” said Boris, when I emerged. “Your dad washes his own suits?” I said. “In the sink in there?” Boris—leaning against the frame of the door, gnawing the side of his thumb nail—shrugged evasively. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said, and then, when he kept on looking at me: “What? They don’t have dry cleaning in Russia?” “He has plenty of jewelry and posh,” growled Boris around the side of his thumb. “Rolex watch, Ferragamo shoes. He can clean his suit however he wants.” “Right,” I said, and changed the subject. Several weeks passed with no thought of Boris’s dad at all. But then came the day when Boris slid in late to Honors English with a wine colored bruise under his eye. “Ah, got it in the face with a football,” he said in a cheery voice when Mrs. Spear (‘Spirsetskaya,’ as he called her) asked him, suspiciously, what had happened. This, I knew, was a lie. Glancing over at him, across the aisle, I wondered throughout our listless class discussion of Ralph Waldo Emerson how he’d managed to black his eye after I’d left him the previous night to go home and walk Popper—Xandra left him tied up outside so much that I was starting to feel responsible for him. “What’d you do?” I said when I caught up with him after class. “Eh?” “How’d you get that?” He winked. “Oh, come on,” he said, bumping his shoulder against mine. “What? Were you drunk?” “My dad came home,” he said, and then, when I didn’t answer: “What else, Potter? What did you think?” “Jesus, why?” He shrugged. “Glad you’d gone,” he said, rubbing his good eye. “Couldn’t believe when he showed up. Was sleeping on the couch downstairs. At first I thought it was you.” “What happened?” “Ah,” said Boris, sighing extravagantly; he’d been smoking on the way to school, I could smell it on his breath. “He saw the beer bottles on the floor.” “He hit you because you were drinking?” “Because he was fucking plastered, is why. He was drunk as a log—I don’t think he knew it was me he was hitting. This morning—he saw my face, he cried and was sorry. Anyway, he won’t be back for a while.” “Why not?” “He’s got a lot going on out there, he said. Won’t be back for three weeks. The mine is close to one of those places where they have the state-run brothels, you know?” “They aren’t state-run,” I said—and then found myself wondering if they were. “Well, you know what I mean. One good thing though—he left me moneys.” “How much?” “Four thousand.” “You’re kidding.” “No, no—” he slapped his forehead—“thinking in roubles, sorry! About two hundred dollars, but still. Should have asked for more but I didn’t have the nerve.”

We’d reached the juncture of the hallway where I had to turn for algebra and Boris had to turn for American Government: the bane of his existence. It was a required course—easy even by the desultory standards of our school— but trying to get Boris to understand about the Bill of Rights, and the enumerated versus implied powers of the U.S. Congress, reminded me of the time I’d tried to explain to Mrs. Barbour what an Internet server was. “Well, see you after class,” said Boris. “Explain again, before I go, what’s the difference between Federal Bank and Federal Reserve?” “Did you tell anybody?” “Tell what?” “You know.” “What, you want to report me?” said Boris, laughing. “Not you. Him.” “And why? Why is that a good idea? Tell me. So I can get deported?” “Right,” I said, after an uncomfortable pause. “So—we should eat out tonight!” said Boris. “In a restaurant! Maybe the Mexican.” Boris, after initial suspicion and complaint, had grown to like Mexican food—unknown in Russia, he said, not bad when you got used to it, though if it was too spicy he wouldn’t touch it. “We can take the bus.” “The Chinese is closer. And the food is better.” “Yah, but—remember?” “Oh, yeah, right,” I said. The last time we’d eaten there we’d slipped out without paying. “Forget that.”

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