Page 52 of Ascendent
“If you ain’t here for that, then what you here for,Moskal?” The boy looked him up and down. He had to be sixteen, maybe seventeen. Old enough to have dropped out of school, ready to take his first step into adulthood. The mines waited. The refinery too. But he’d chosen this. “I know you ain’t nomusor.”
Musor. Garbage. The slang for police. Sasha shook his head. “I used to live here.”
The boy laughed. “Ty che blyad!” he roared. “Okhu el?”What the fuck, you fucking crazy? “No one leaves Norilsk. Nobody.”
“You ever hear of the Andreyev family?”
“Couple of oldbabushkas,but they died years ago. Sisters. Their men died, and they worked until they couldn’t work no more. I think they had sons, but they all died, too.” He shrugged, pulled out a cigarette pack. Offered one to Sasha. They were the local polar cigarettes, made of cheap Chinese tobacco and imported straight up the river. Like smoking Siberian dirt. He’d smoked his whole sixth-grade year, until he got sick one time and puked for two days.
He took a cigarette. “What’s your name?”
“Stas.” Stas took a deep swallow of smoke. “You?”
“Sasha.”
“So,Moskal.” Stas ignored Sasha’s name. “What are youreallyhere for? You want to party? Want some girls?”
Sasha took a slow drag on his cigarette. His vision swam. “The Andreyev family. They’re all dead? Even Toma and Zakhar?” Cousins, older boys who used to shove him in the snow and piss on him when he was seven. When he was fifteen, Zakhar, already in the mines, found him masturbating to a grainy picture of Yaroslav Boyko, something from an old gossip mag his aunt had lying around her apartment. He’d held Sasha down, forced his cock in Sasha’s mouth, made him suck. Zakhar had come all over his face, in his hair, and he’d punched Sasha for making him come. It was the last time he’d seen Zakhar. He never went to his aunt’s apartment again.
“Zakhar was shot. Maybe… five years ago?” Stas scrunched up his face, thinking. “I’d just fucked Lena, yeah. Five years ago.”
Sasha gagged. Stas had probably been twelve. Maybe thirteen. His stomach curdled.
“Some kind of fight. No one said much about it. His friend shot him in the face.” Stas shrugged. Shootings happened every day in Norilsk. Sasha was surprised he even remembered Zakhar’s death.
“Toma was with the big crew that died in that mine fire a few years back. He was the last of the Andreyevs. They’re all gone now.”
For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t swallow. Smoke burned his lungs, little fires sparking inside of his body. He couldn’t feel his face, his feet. This was it, he was going to burst apart. Maybe the cigarette was the only thing keeping him alive. The irony, that smoke in Norilsk was saving him.
The last of the Andreyevs. They were all gone. Somewhere over the years, he’d been moved from living to dead in someone’s records, and no one had connected Sasha Andreyev, the hero of Russia, who’d had a bit part of a movie dedicated to his stupid heroics, with Sasha, the odd, queer child who’d been bullied for years, who kissed a corpse on the tundra, who imagined the stars above the pollution and who’d fled Norilsk and Kayerkan. He’d rather have run away to the military than endure one single day more in his hometown.
“You looking for an Andreyev? Zakhar always was sneaking around. He had secrets, that one. He fuck someone over? Or you bringing money?” Stas’s eyes gleamed as he sucked his cigarette.
“Not anymore, I guess.” Sasha blew out a puff of smoke. He coughed. “There’s nothing for me here.” He stamped out his cigarette in the palladium-laced snow.
“Ahh, then you can drink with me!” Stas slapped him on the shoulder, turned him around. “Fellow Norilsk boy, all big man now. Look at you. Let’s go, I’ll take you to my favorite place. You tell me how you became a fancyMoskal.”
He went. He’d only ever sneaked sips of beer with the neighborhood boys when he was nine, and the others thought it was funny when he’d stumbled after being forced to chug a can they’d found in the snow.
Stas took him to a drab bar, got a bottle of Siberian-made vodka from behind the counter, and dragged him to a corner table. He dumped his jacket and his duffel and settled in, nursing his one glass of vodka as Stas pounded shot after shot.
In no time, Stas was regaling Sasha with his tales of Norilsk and Kayerkan. He’d been a Kayerkan boy like Sasha, his mother dead, his father too drunk to make it to the mines every day. They lived in Kayerkan and his brother worked in the mines until a cart accident shattered both his legs. Then it was Stas’s turn, but he decided no, fuck that. He was just the right age to start working for the drug trade, and so he did.
It was like stepping back in time, back to the smoke-filled days of his past, the claustrophobia of his youth. The vodka kept him warm, kept the ice at bay, at least for now.This is what you could have been. This is what your life could have looked like. Would you be dead like Toma?
He’d probably have been shot like Zakhar. Was Zakhar like him? Had he agonized over whether to say something to his friend? Whether he should tentatively reach out, see if there was a possibility, a glimmer, a hint of potential?
Sasha knew that agony. Sixteen years old, and he’d been the loneliest boy in the world, thinking he was the only one in the whole universe who wanted another boy. Who didn’t care about short skirts and cleavage in low-cut tops and imagining what was under the girls’ parkas and snow pants.
Stas introduced Sasha as “his newMoskalfriend” to a dozen people who wandered by, clearly staring at Sasha. Maybe he’d recognize someone, he thought. He didn’t recognize a single man. Most were his age, but had added an extra ten years to themselves thanks to the mines. No one was familiar.
What was Sergey doing? Was he sitting in front of the fire? Eating dinner? Drinking a whiskey and reading?
How had the president of Russia fallen for a boy from Norilsk? In what world, what reality, did this happen? How had he becomeMoskal? How had he become Sergey’s love?
He stopped drinking vodka when the singing started, the endless drone of drunk Russians belting out their favorite sad songs. Stas was in his element, exchanging packets of drugs for cash with almost every bargoer. He was a smooth talker, always had a smile. He’d go places in Norilsk if he didn’t piss off the wrong person. Maybe be mayor someday.
Just after midnight, Stas collapsed beside him. “Want to party more,Moskal? I can get some girls to my apartment. You look like you could use a good time. You’re so stiff. You’re funny,Moskal.”
