May Day (1)
"Please come again, sir!"
The voice cut off the moment the door shut.
"Ugh… cold!"
Leningrad's dawn was merciless. A raw chill slapped my face; when I drew breath, a fog of white vapor scattered into the air. The wind was cold enough to peel the first layer of drunkenness clean off me, yet my insides still felt like they were on fire.
There was a reason vodka ranked as both winter essential and strategic commodity in Russia. Even weather this brutal left your body flushed and warm afterward—how was anyone supposed to resist?
The problem was that I had treated it like some rare delicacy I'd never get another chance at, and poured it down without restraint. By the time I came to my senses, I had drained every last drop of the fresh bottle Rokossovsky had ordered as well.
Fortunately Kacha had been drinking with me, so I never quite crossed the line into blackout. Still, the heat the liquor had banked inside me was starting to drain away. I cinched my coat tighter and took a step.
Then the click of heels beside me suddenly fell out of rhythm.
I glanced sideways without thinking. With every step Katerina took, her body listed half a handspan to the side.
"…Kacha?"
"I'm fine."
She answered with deliberate, precise enunciation—so precise it felt forced, the way a drunk driver tries to sound stone-cold sober in front of a breathalyzer. Looking back, she had refilled my glass every time it emptied and topped off her own with the same quiet regularity. We had more or less matched each other drink for drink.
"Maybe we should rest a bit before we—"
Her gait was growing more precarious by the second. Before I could finish the suggestion, her shoe caught on the cobblestones.
"Ah…"
Katerina listed sideways, strength gone from her limbs. I lunged, caught her, and steadied her weight against me.
For a split second an unspeakably base impulse flared up. Safety first, though. I slipped an arm under her shoulder and propped her against my neck.
"……"
She had gone completely still. Then she looked up at me. We stood under the yellow pool of a streetlamp. The face that was usually carved from ice had flushed a vivid, carrot-red.
"Thank you, but… about tonight."
"Sorry…?"
"…Tonight. Please act as if it never happened."
Katerina closed her eyes. Across that flaming face a new expression—one I had never seen before—flickered and was gone.
"I apologize, Yakov. I made a spectacle of myself last night."
The next day Katerina appeared at my quarters and bowed the moment she saw me. Her expression had snapped back to its usual setting—colder, sharper, and more pitiless than a winter gale. Apart from the faint residual flush of alcohol, it was the same face I had first met. The rosy cheeks and the blank mask sat at odds with each other; the dissonance was almost uncanny.
…Which one was the real face?
I was curious, but asking her outright would get me nowhere, so I simply tilted my head.
"A spectacle?" I scratched my head and added, "I was pretty far gone myself. After we left the tavern I don't even remember how I got back here. …Did something happen?"
A lie, of course. I remembered every detail: propping up the drunk Katerina while lecturing her for a solid half-hour on the dangers of driving under the influence; taking her wrist and walking her to a park bench where I kept her company until the liquor wore off; and, once she was sober enough, personally cranking the car for her (I only discovered then that it was a Model T Ford). All of it was still filed neatly in my head.
I lied because she had asked me to treat the night as if it had never existed, and I meant to honor that.
Katerina studied me with those sharp eyes. At last she gave a short nod.
"…Thank you, Yakov."
The alcohol clearly hadn't finished burning off; her cheeks and the tips of her ears were still stained peach. I seized the opening.
"More importantly, Kacha—didn't I ask you yesterday to call me Yasha?"
A shameless request coming from someone who had just claimed total amnesia, but I wanted the stiff "Yakov" gone for good.
"…A moment ago you said you remembered nothing of last night."
"Strangely enough, that particular part is crystal clear. You kept calling me 'Yakov.'"
At my nonsense her face softened a fraction. I knew how transparent the ploy was; she had to know it too.
"……"
Katerina opened her mouth, closed it, hesitated again. The two syllables "Yasha" that she had used so freely in the tavern the night before seemed to catch in her throat.
"…Ya—Yasha."
She averted her eyes and murmured the name under her breath. The honorific still clung to the end, but it was enough.
"I didn't come here for this, but…"
It sounded more like she was talking to herself, so I let it pass without comment.
The golden stretch of holiday vanished in a blink, and I was back at the academy.
"I'm jealous, seriously jealous… While some of us spent the entire weekend out in the sticks shoveling dirt like a shakhtyor— a miner—huh?"
Gailis sprawled across his bunk, grumbling.
"And you, Yasha—word's already out. You were drinking alone in town with a girl? This bastard's already… I'm so jealous I could die!"
"…Where did you even hear that?"
More to the point, how had it become a rumor at all? The only cadets who had leave that weekend were Kuzmin and me.
"What? You mean the story about Yasha sitting across from some blonde beauty in a tavern and knocking back drinks?"
"…I'm asking how you know it in that much detail."
"Ha! See? He doesn't even deny it!"
Gailis twisted around and shouted to the rest of the room.
"Listen up, everybody! Our model cadet of the people, Comrade Svanidze, while the rest of us were overfulfilling the labor quota with our shovels for the motherland, single-handedly carried out the great task of clinking glasses with a blonde beauty!"
…Overfulfilling the quota?
I was too dumbfounded to speak. Anyone listening would have thought we were running a Stakhanovite campaign. Yet every head that had been bent over personal gear swung toward me at once.
"Is that true? A blonde beauty?"
"So the rumor was real. Man, I'm jealous…"
Jealousy mixed with a thin vein of envy flew at me from every direction. I knew none of it was serious. Still, for the sake of the cadets who had spent their weekend under the banner of "voluntary labor," I decided to keep the smart remarks to a minimum.
"Damn it, Yakov! Did you pick her up at the bar…?!"
"Hey, Svanidze. That's not how people behave. Introduce us to some girls too."
"…Haa."
My head still hurt. I was shaking it and doing my duty as the dorm's public enemy when a familiar voice cut in.
"Hey. That's enough. Can't you see you're putting Svanidze on the spot?"
"…Huh?"
I turned toward the voice that seemed to be defending me.
"And Gailis, you're over the line. Yasha simply received the fair reward for his grades. You have no right to be jealous."
"…Kuzmin, why are you sticking your nose in? Since when are you Yasha's friend?"
To my surprise, the speaker was Kuzmin.
"Friends? Hardly. You're just being loud."
"Forget that—why are you even here? You're from a different yacheyka."
"There's no rule that says a different cell can't enter another dorm. I was only passing by and the racket dragged me in."
Arms folded, Kuzmin answered curtly—yet the whole time he was watching my face, and not even trying to hide it. Until a few days ago he had looked at me like mortal enemies. What wind had changed him so completely?
I had a few guesses, but I never imagined the shift would reach his eyes and every gesture.
"…Kuzmin."
"What."
"Drop it and go back to your own cell. Stop making things awkward for Yasha."
"…You're the ones making things awkward."
His frost toward everyone else—especially Gailis—remained unchanged. I called him again.
"Kuzmin."
"…What?"
"Did you properly apologize to Gailis?"
"……. Just as you told me to. I apologized properly."
I looked over at Gailis. He scratched the back of his head.
"Yeah, he did. Out of nowhere he bowed and apologized—caught me off guard, but… yeah, I got a real apology."
"……"
"I thought he was the type who never listens to anyone, but he's not completely like that."
"Wh—who never listens?!"
Kuzmin bristled. The tips of his ears had gone faintly red.
"Good. That's enough."
I nodded. Whatever the method, Kuzmin had kept his word to me. Any lingering grudge was gone. This was sufficient.
"……"
When I smiled at him, the rigidity in his face loosened into something that looked almost relieved. Then, as if the feeling embarrassed him, he cleared his throat and turned away.
"…Okay, seriously, what is going on with you two all of a sudden? Since when are you this friendly?"
Gailis looked from one of us to the other, unable to stand it any longer. At the question Kuzmin composed his features again and addressed me.
"Ah—and the real reason I came looking for you, Svanidze."
"…Yeah?"
Kuzmin drew something from inside his coat: a single sheet of stationery that looked unmistakably expensive.
"My father wants to invite you to the Labor Day celebration gathering. This is the invitation."
Labor Day celebration… gathering?