Page 6 of The Fire Beneath the Frost

That hit me harder than I expected.We’d lived in that same two-room flat my entire life.The idea of having my own room—walls, a door, a space that belonged only to me—felt like winning a small, quiet lottery.

“It’s not much,” he added, as if apologizing for the thought.“But it’s more than we had.”

The cars ahead finally moved, slowly, like cattle herded toward slaughter.He eased the Lada forward, navigating around a pothole the size of a bathtub.

“I can help out, you know,” I said, watching the steam rise from the heating vents.“If there’s something you need.I’m not afraid of hard work.”

“You’ve done enough,” he said simply.

I turned my head toward him.“What do you mean?”

“You sent your pay home from Afghanistan,” he said, eyes still on the road.“Every month.Your mother didn’t ask you to.But you did it.That helped us more than you know.”

I looked down at my hands, fingers raw from cold and war and everything in between.I hadn’t thought much of it.There was nothing to spend it on over there, and I’d figured my parents needed it more than I did.

He went quiet for a while, then spoke again, softer this time.“I’m glad you’re back from that useless war.”

I turned sharply to him, surprised.

“It was a waste,” he said.“A waste of money.Of boys.An entire generation, gone for nothing.”

I didn’t know what to say.Hearing him speak like that, with actual emotion in his voice, was like watching a marble statue cry.

We turned off the main avenue and into a side street lined with identical concrete apartment blocks, tall and rectangular like prison towers.Laundry lines flapped weakly in the icy wind.A drunk man shouted at a cat.Papa pulled the car into a narrow space beside a row of battered garbage bins, killed the engine, and stepped out without waiting for me.I followed, boots crunching on the frozen slush.

Our building loomed above us—gray and stained, with rust streaks below every windowsill and a flickering bulb above the entrance.A group of children played halfheartedly in the courtyard with a flattened football, their laughter thin and ghostly.

Home.

Whatever that meant now.

We climbed the stairs slowly, the Lada’s smell still clinging to my coat.The stairwell reeked of boiled cabbage and cigarette smoke, the walls a patchwork of peeling paint and water stains.

The elevator hadn’t worked since Brezhnev, Papa said, not that he ever used it.“Breaks your legs or traps you inside,” he muttered as we passed it, as if it were a vindictive beast that needed regular warnings issued.

Our apartment was on the very top floor—seven flights up.I was winded by the time we reached it, my duffel strap digging into my shoulder.Papa jiggled the key in the lock and pushed the door open with his shoulder.

“Elina?”he called out.

And then I saw her.

She burst from the kitchen like she’d been waiting by the stove all day.Her slippers slapped against the wooden floor as she rushed at me, and then I smothered in wool sleeves and the faint smell of onions and rose soap.Her arms clamped tight around me, trembling with the force of held-back sobs.

“Oh, my boy,” she whispered into my coat.“My sweet boy.I thought—I thought I’d never see you again.”

I hugged her back, tighter than I meant to.She felt smaller than I remembered.Her hair had gone almost completely gray, and her face had thinned out.But her eyes were the same—bright and sharp and unbearably kind.

“I missed you, Mama.”

“I made your favorite,” she said, stepping back but still holding my hand.“Kartofel’niki with mushroom sauce, and that honey-cake you like.You’re too skinny, even after all that soldiering.”

I wanted to laugh—too skinny, when my shoulders barely fit through the damn doorway.But I let her fuss, because it felt good.War hadn’t made me soft, but coming home was starting to.

She led me down the short hall and stopped in front of a door at the very end.“Your room now,” she said, her smile proud and a little nervous.“Come, come.”

She opened it with a little flourish, and I stepped inside.

It wasn’t much.But it was mine.

---