19 September 1985
She awoke before dawn. Whenever she drank, she could not get to sleep properly because of the adrenaline. She rolled onto her hip to more easily control her nausea. She could smell Boris’s congested bad breath. As always, he was sleeping with his mouth open and gently snoring. As usual, he had crept unheard into the bed in the middle of the night and curled up beside her as soft as a millipede. He never clung to Sergej, but always her. Although when awake father and son were in complete harmony, Boris avoided his father’s touch. Maybe it was just your average boy’s discomfiture, a sense of awkwardness beside a larger, wider and expressively masculine body, but sometimes she thought that Boris, like her, was intimidated by their similarity. As a rule, children are an echo of childish versions of their parents, but even at the age of seven Boris was simply a smaller version of the grown up Sergej: dark, wiry hair that was impossible to comb or shape; light blue, at times scarily sterile eyes; a sharp curve between nose and top lip; rigid shoulders, which lengthened a torso of average height, but strong. Boris had even inherited Sergej’s walk, together with all its bizarre details. A comic swaying whenever he hurried and ungainly shuffling when he wore slip-ons in summer. Probably, she thought, excessive familiarity did not evoke trust in Boris. Although still a child, he still wanted to be an original.
She was sure that Sergej did not delve into such doubts, that he deliberately did not think about it, but when he was compelled to, his interpretation could never be so gloomy. And she herself was succumbing to them more in order to seal the real reasons for her anxiety. It wasn’t only the birthday alcohol that was lodged in her stomach and gnawing behind her eyes.
She rested against the bed head. The millipede, still asleep, moved and put its head in her lap. Vulnerable as she was in the morning, the contrast between the warmth released into her body and the scheming that would mark her day hurt her.
“Ana, is something the matter?” Sergej’s voice was dreamily husky, but he sat up on the bed as if on parade.
“Oh, but you’re awake. That’s not like you.” She was trying to be witty. She was always trying to be witty: the worse things were, the more wound-up were her jokes. Through humour, loud or fleeting, she built up the layers between herself and others so that it was impossible to get close to her. But Sergej, who had been penetrating these layers for a number of years, could not be deterred.
“Ana, you look as if you’re going to cry. What is it?” He gingerly reached across Boris and stroked her thigh. This brief contact was enough to set the tears running down her cheeks.
“I want to get out, you know?” The quiet words were spoken into her hands, which were trying to stop new teardrops. “I’ve got myself terribly tangled up and I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s not right. It was never right.”
His mother’s sobbing woke Boris, who leant upwards between his parents and rubbed his eyes. He did not register her tension. He never registered the burdens of others; his focus did not apply to other people. He would grow up into a capricious and domineering person, she not infrequently thought.
“Do I have to go to school already, mum?”
“Yes, my little dormouse, you do,” she glanced at the clock on the bedside cabinet in order to avoid her son’s eyes. She didn’t want him to see so early her careworn face, even though it might not bother him. “Go and get washed and get your bag ready, I’ll come soon to make breakfast.”
The boy unwound himself lithely, no longer like a millipede, but like a fox. He ran towards the bathroom and as soon as he had carelessly slammed the door behind him the air became sharply, heavily dense.
“Dissociation of the subject,” she gave a grotesqu
