Oleg began rifling through the papers. Everywhere he looked were letters from his mother to his father, the father he’d grown up with, speaking of love, of faithfulness, of Oleg’s resemblance to him. Oleg cried all night, and the next morning he got up to wait for his sister to tell her how he’d lost his mind when he was sixteen, and imagined some terrible things, and even killed a man because of it-for the man he’d shot didn’t look at all like the photograph of the real criminal.

But his sister never came. She must have forgotten about him, and that was all right because he soon forgot about her, too-he was busy with his new life. He finished the vocational program, went to college, got married, had children.

And what was funny was that both he and his wife had dark eyes and dark hair, but their two sons were blue-eyed and blond, just like their grandmother, Oleg’s dead mother.

One time his wife suggested they visit his mother’s grave. It took a long time to find it: the cemetery was old and the gravestones crowded together, and also, on his mother’s grave, right in the middle, there stood another, smaller head-stone.

“That must be my father,” said Oleg, who had not attended his father’s funeral.

“No, look,” said his wife, “it’s your sister.”

Oleg was horrified-how could he have neglected his sister like this?-and he bent down to read the inscription. It really was his sister.

“Except the dates are wrong,” he said. “My sister came to visit me much later than that, after I came home from the army. Remember I told you how she got me back on my feet? She literally saved my life. I was young, and small things were always sending me over the edge.”

“That can’t be,” his wife said. “They never get the dates wrong. When did you come back from the army?”

And they began to argue, standing there at the foot of his mother’s unkempt grave. The wild grass, which had grown considerably over the summer months, reached to their knees until, at long last, they bent down and started clearing it.

Allegories

Hygiene

ONE TIME THE DOORBELL RANG AT THE APARTMENT OF the R. family, and the little girl ran to answer it. A young man stood before her. In the hallway light he appeared to be ill, with extremely delicate, pink, shiny skin. He said he’d come to warn the family of an immediate danger: There was an epidemic in the town, an illness that killed in three days. People turned red, they swelled up, and then, mostly, they died. The chief symptom was the appearance of blisters, or bumps. There was some hope of surviving if you observed strict personal hygiene, stayed inside the apartment, and made sure there were no mice around-since mice, as always, were the main carriers of the disease.

The girl’s grandparents listened to the young man, as did her father and the girl herself. Her mother was in the bath.

“I survived the disease,” the young man said simply, and removed his hat to reveal a bald scalp covered with the thinnest layer of pink skin, like the foam atop boiling milk. “I survived,” he went on, “and because of this I’m now immune. I’m going door to door to deliver bread and other supplies to people who need them. Do you need anything? If you give me the money, I’ll go to the store-and a bag, too, if you have one. Or a shopping cart. There are long lines now in front of the stores, but I’m immune to the disease.”

“Thank you,” said the grandfather, “but we’re fine.”

“If your family gets sick, please leave your doors open. I’ve picked out four buildings-that’s all I can handle. If any of you should survive, as I did, you can help me rescue others, and lower corpses out.”

“What do you mean, lower corpses out?” asked the grandfather.

“I’ve worked out a system for evacuating the bodies. We’ll throw them out into the street. But we’ll need large plastic bags; I don’t know where to get those. The factories make double-layered plastic sheets, which we could use, although I don’t have the money. You could cut those sheets with a hot knife, and the material will seal back together automatically to form a bag. All you really need is a hot knife and double-layered plastic.”

“Thank you, but we’re fine,” repeated the grandfather.

So the young man went along the hall to the other apartments like a beggar, asking for money. As the R. family closed the door behind him, he was already ringing their neighbors’ bell. The door opened a little, on its chain, leaving just a crack, so the young man was forced to lift his hat and tell his story to the crack. The R. family heard the neighbor reply abruptly, but apparently the young man didn’t leave, for there were no footsteps. Another door opened slightly: someone else wanted to hear his story. Finally a laughing voice said: “If you have some money already, run and get me ten bottles of vodka. I’ll pay you back.”

They heard footsteps, and then it was quiet.

“When he comes back,” said the grandmother, “he should bring us some bread and condensed milk, and some eggs. And soon we’ll need more cabbage and potatoes.”

“He’s a charlatan,” said the grandfather. “But those aren’t burns; they look like something else.”

Finally the father snapped to attention and led the girl away from the door. These were his wife’s parents, not his, and he rarely agreed with them about anything. Nor did they exactly ask his opinion. Something really was happening, he felt: it couldn’t help but happen. He’d been sensing it for a long time now, and waiting. For the moment he was experiencing a temporary stupor. He walked the little girl out of the foyer-there was no need for her to stand there until the mysterious stranger knocked again. The father needed to have a serious talk with the stranger, man to man, about treatment options, escape routes, and the overall circumstances on the ground.

The grandparents stayed at the door, because they could hear that the elevator hadn’t been called up. The young man would still be on their floor. He was probably asking for all the money and shopping bags at once so that he wouldn’t have to run back and forth. Or else he really was a charlatan and a crook and was collecting the money only for himself, something the grandmother knew a little about since the time a woman knocked at their door and said she lived in the next entryway and that an old lady, Baba Nura, had died there. She was sixty-nine. The woman was collecting money for the funeral, and she held out a list of people who’d donated, their signatures, and the sums they’d given: thirty kopeks, a ruble, even two rubles. The grandmother gave the woman a ruble, though she couldn’t actually recall anyone named Nura-and no wonder, because five minutes later one of their nice neighbors rang the doorbell and said that they should be careful, some woman no one knew, a crook, was soliciting money under false pretences. She had two men waiting on the second floor, and they took off with the money, dropping the list of names and sums to the floor.

The grandparents were still at the door, listening. Nikolai joined them; he didn’t want to miss anything. His wife, Elena, came out of the shower at last and started asking loudly what was going on, but they hushed her up.

Yet they heard no more doorbells. The elevator kept going up and down, and people got out on the sixth floor and made noise with their keys and their door slamming. This meant it could not have been the young man: he didn’t have any keys. He’d have had to ring the doorbell.

Finally Nikolai turned on the television, and they had supper. Nikolai ate a great deal. He ate so much the grandfather felt compelled to make a remark. Elena came to her husband’s defense, and then the little girl asked why everyone was arguing, and family life went on its way.