Katka was awake when we stepped into the living room. Flickering blue light from the television screen illuminated her faint silhouette. She sat huddled up on the couch with a blanket drawn up to her chin, a rolled-up pillow propped her head up.
The scent of their home hit me, reeling me back into years of suppressed memories. The Karamovs had a fragrance about them that was even more elusive than the taste of water. It hits your nostrils with a flare at first, but just as you're about to identify the undertones, it adapts into your system. I took deeper breaths, trying to store the dissipating traces that reminded me so much of my childhood.
Katka called to her siblings in Brommin without so much as casting a glance our way. I waited for the inevitable; the moment she turned her head and noticed me standing, like a statue, outside the threshold while an unsettling feeling wrung my stomach.
In the meantime, I mimicked the siblings and took off my shoes at the entrance. It was surreal to find myself inside the very house I had sworn so many years ago I would never return to. The living room felt familiar, even though some of the decor was new. The television drew my eyes, as well as the illuminated coffee table, but everything else was lost to the dimness.
Reality and recollection superimposed like mirroring images, until it became impossible to tell the two apart. Had it only been four years ago I had been best friends with these same people whom I now considered strangers?
Katka said something in Brommin to Anja, who out of three of us was the closest to her. I had the feeling Katka was staring at me, but I couldn't tell from our distance. The side of her pale face flickered from one shade of blue to another as the images on the screen changed.
Anja chuckled at whatever Katka had said. She looked back at me and said, - No, he's very much real.
Katka rose from the couch but seemed almost afraid to approach me.
- Ru? What the hell happened to your face? She drew one step closer to us. Her nightgown, which had caught on the seat, came loose and spilled past her calves to her ankles. Her bangs were rolled up with a hair roller. She looked as unprepared to see me as I had been at the thought of seeing her ten minutes ago.
- Get in line like the rest of us, Yuri whisper-shouted from in front of me. He looked at Anja and said, - We'll head up to the bathroom. Get some hot water, a cloth, plaster, and the peroxide.
- Come, he motioned for me to follow him upstairs.
- Yuriâ, Katka took a step forward but was interrupted by her brother's hushing. With one forefinger to his lips, he pointed his other down hallway to where I assumed their parents were sleeping. Katka retreated her inquiry into herself; her expression falling in disappointment.
- I'm okay, I assured her. She didn't seem convinced and ended up following us upstairs. Our steps were masked by the carpet, but our effort of discretion in the cramped stairway died at the first rustle from our jackets. Yuri slipped out of his and hung it on the bannister as soon as we reached the second floor.
He reminded me that Surimna and Lopija slept in the room opposite the bathroom and that we needed to keep our voices down. I nodded in understanding. He went over to his room, adjacent to his younger siblings', and flicked on the light. He left the door open. I hadn't understood what he was doing until he opened the door to the bathroom. That's when it clicked that the light from his room would spill into the bathroom, acting as a substitute. That way we wouldn't risk waking up the children.
I passed Katka on my way to the bathroom. Her eyes, meticulously calculating, raked over me from head to toe. I stepped over the threshold onto the cracked mosaic tiles. Both siblings followed my every move as I went over to the sink, and placed my hands on the cold porcelain before I looked at myself in the mineralized mirror.
Behind the caked blood around my nostrils and upper lip, and my cut lower lip, and the grave swelling of my purple eye, I barely recognised myself. The tiled floor swayed beneath my feet, and I was thankful for the support of the cold sink.
If I hadn't looked like a mangled caricature of myself, I might have laughed. The proportions I had come to know were offset by the swelling, and the blood, and my wind-tousled hair. I understood then, the urgency with which Yuri had warned me not to show my face to my family. Anyone who looked at me would have freaked out with good reason.
I touched my bruised eye with the tips of my fingers. In the ache was the remembrance of the ring-leader's sneer, his forceful punches, the cold. I looked over at Yuri. I was grateful, though I couldn't find the brainpower to utter the words. If Yuri understood, it didn't show on his face. His expression was cast in shadows.
I turned back to the mirror to examine the two gashes on my upper cheek, distal to my cheekbone. The corner of my left eye was bloodshot from a ruptured blood vessel. The contrast against the sclera on the other side of my dark iris was a hideous sight to behold. Luckily, it didn't hurt at all. What had the Brommian hit me with? Rings? I moved closer to the mirror and tilted my head so that the light caught the cut on my lower lip.
My father. How on earth did I explain this to my father? The panic flared up only to be extinguished in the following second by Yuri's voice from the doorway.
- Katka, go help Anja find the plaster.
Katka tore her gaze away from the mirror and turned with dragging steps the way we had come.
With shaky fingers, I opened the tap and turned the knob till the water ran lukewarm. Yuri stepped into the bathroom but didn't make a move to approach me. Our eyes caught in the reflection. I broke our eye-contact to remove my jacket. I folded it before laying it on the toilet seat. The cuffs on my dress shirt provided an excuse not to look at him. I fiddled with the small buttons before I rolled up my sleeve. The water was temperate, and so I washed my faceâtaking my time, being careful to get all the blood off. I felt, rather than heard, Yuri stepping closer to me. I was afraid he would draw close enough to notice the running water turn russet on the white porcelain sink. Yuri's presence unnerved me. The questions in his eyes were shards of glass, sharp enough to burst the pregnant silence. But he didn't ask, didn't make his questions known. We tipped around each other, eyes darting but never resting on the other.
He handed me a handful of paper towels. I took them and dabbed them on my scarred face. The inevitability of our situation was a thorn in my side.
- Doesn't look so bad when all the blood is gone, does it? I asked, just to say something to fill the silence. His expression in the reflection didn't change.
- The bruising will go down...but the cuts...they're going to form scars. Slowly, his lips puckered like they used to do whenever he got lost in thought.
I forced a tight-lipped smile.
- What do you care?
- Why do you keep saying that? Was that aggravation in his voice? I couldn't be sure. The sharp angles of his clenched jaw contradicted his soft whisper.
What was his problem?
I swivelled around to look at him, but before I could meet his eyes, our attention was snatched by the muffled footsteps coming up the stairs.
Anja stepped inside the doorway. She had an orange bucked in one hand and a roll of fabric tucked under her other arm. Katka came to stand beside her sister, carrying the rest of the load.
Yuri stepped forth and took the things from the girls.
- I'll take it from here, he told them.
- Go downstairs and go to bed. I don't want to hear you walking in the hallways, understood? And turn the television off, you know how Papa gets. He gave his sisters a brotherly look of authority, which didn't go down well with Katka, who seemed more eager to stay than Anja. Yuri and Katka exchanged heated whispers in Brommin, while Anja bid me a farewell nod. At last, Katka conceded, but not before flashing me a cunning smile.
I looked over at Yuri to try to figure out what he had promised her. I didn't get far before I was gripped by the sudden quiet, and the dawning realisation that we were alone.
He must have caught my discomfort because his head dipped and he hurried out of the bathroom. His footsteps trudged down the hallway. I heard him switch off the light in his room. For a few seconds, we were engulfed by darkness. Some countable seconds later, he reentered. The light over our heads came on, and for a blinding second, everything was washed in white.
Yuri closed the door behind him.
- We need to see the wounds better, he explained, and I nodded for a lack of a better thing to say. He saved us both the awkward task of conversing by rummaging through the things his sisters had carried upstairs. Finding what he was looking for, he dunked a clean linen cloth in the bucket and wrung out the excess.
He motioned for me to sit down on the toilet seat. I did, albeit it hesitantly. For a second, he had me believe that he would come over and help me clean my wounds, but something in his expression changed, and instead, he handed me the cloth while maintaining a good distance between us. I sighed inwardly in relief as I took the fabric from his hand. I dabbed the damp cloth on the cuts on my cheek and lower lip.
He tilted a tinted bottle over a torn cloth. The pungent smell carried to where I sat. He handed me the rag. I looked dubiously at it. It smelt like it would burn my face off. But I didn't dare disrupt our delicate quiet, and so I said nothing. I just took the cloth from his outstretched hand.
He turned to fuss with the pack of plaster. He noticed me looking at him and must have confused it for me wanting help because he came over and tugged the rag from my loose grip. He stepped closer till we were standing knee to knee. By a force of his will we shifted, and in turn, rearranged so that he stood between my knees. He leaned over me. I smelt his scent, still so familiar to me, on his pullover. My heartbeat pulsated in my temples.
He was looking down at me with a focus that made his forehead crease. If he noticed the storm of emotions raging inside me, he made no effort to acknowledge it.
His face was less than ten centimeters away from mine. I could make out the specks of grey in his iris, and had I had a desire to try, I would've been able to count his lashes one by one. How was it possible that I simultaneously hated how close he stood, yet also wanted him closer? I couldn't understand myself.
His eye flashed down to mine. I broke eye contact. I shifted. He shifted closer. His breath wafted on the side of my face. I wasn't ready for the coldness of his fingers when he tilted my head to the side. My protest was lost to the groan that escaped me as he put the blistering liquid to my wounds.
- Hold still. Yuri grabbed my chin to steady my head. I winced and grimaced through each dab. He kept at it for a while, taking his time with each part of my bruised face. When I thought he was overdoing it, I grab hold of his arm to stop him. He immediately yanked himself loose from my grip as if I had seared his skin. He stepped back, his hand clenching the rag.
What was his problem?
Fidgety, he grabbed the pack of plaster which he had placed on the porcelain sink. I watched him struggle to get the plastic wrapper off before he finally handed it over to me.
- I can't, I said. - I don't know where to place it. I can't see myself.
I hated that I was practically inviting him to step closer once more. I swallowed my pride, and with it, the tiny excitement that arose at the prospect.
Yuri flushed and took the plaster back with more force than what was called for. I looked up at him, trying to figure out why he was acting so strange. It only made me more anxious. Moreover, why was I tiptoeing around his fluctuating mood? I swallowed down the irritation that refluxed up my throat. Could it be that he was regretting helping me? Then why had he kept insisting in the first place? It wasn't like I had asked him to dote on me. I wasn't a child. I was well capable of cleaning my own wounds and putting on a piece of plaster.
The same second I took things into my own hands, (since he was obviously only helping me out of some kind of obligation) Yuri step closer. We crashed into each other. I hit my forehead on his chin and heard his jaw slam shut.
- What's your problem? I couldn't contain the anger. My hand flew up to my massage my throbbing forehead.
Yuri's eyes widened at my outburst. He took a step back and hit the sink.
- Here, give it to me, I said and tore off the plaster that had adhered to his finger. I didn't wait for a response. I sauntered over to the mirror above the sink and placed the plaster over my wounds. I felt Yuri's gaze burn into my profile.
He watched me under a deafening silence.
I gauged his expression in the reflection. His cheeks had grown even redder. He didn't seem agitated, which left the possibility that he was...embarrassed? That couldn't be. What did Karamov have to be embarrassed about? I was the one degrading myself by standing in his bathroom, accepting his help.
- I-I know you don't like me...and I know we're not friends anymore. You don't have to tell me, but I'm going to ask anywayâjust this once, okay. What happened to you? Who did this to you?
There was something vulnerable in the way the harsh bathroom lighting hit him at that exact moment. Something in his sympathetic expression, in the way his face had shrunk in age, resembling the boy I had known so many years ago.
I felt a myriad of fleeting emotions in my chest, weaving in and out with the beat of my heart.
I blinked, and in the following seconds, the part of me that was still stuck as an eleven year old; the 'me' who had been hatching a plan for years on how I would completely and utterly destroy Yuri Karamov fluttered awake in my chest. A faint whisper in the back of my mind beckoned me to say the words that would once and for all level the scores.
Yuri's face was open, conveying that he would listen to whatever I had to say without judgment. His expression said he would be my friend.
I wanted that.
I ached for that. I had wanted his attention for so long; been yearning for it like a parched man did an oasis in the desert. Only now it was reality. He was here in the flesh and we stared back at each other in the mirror.
Hesitation robbed all the words out of my mouth.
I wanted to be Yuri's friend. But at what expense? What guarantee was there that he wanted the same?
- Did it happen in Rujga?
I remembered that he had asked something similar on the road. How did he know I had been in Rujga?
I shook my head at his reflection.
- Then, at the train station? He guessed. I looked down at where my hands gripped the smooth, rounded surface of the porcelain sink.
- You're right, I said. The sound of my voice bounced off the tiles in the bathroom and echoed, hollowly, in my ears.
- We're not friends.
I couldn't do it.
I couldn't risk losing it all again. Not when my sanity was balancing on a tightrope thinner than a spider web, and just as fragile. I retreated back into the comfort of my four white walls.
Yuri's eyes dimmed before they darted away from mine in the reflection. The sudden distance between us went beyond the physical. It wasn't just that Yuri moved away from the scope of the mirror, he drew into himself. I turned around to meet his expression. The understanding smile I saw there felt it like a punch to the gut.
- Come, he said. He grabbed my jacket from the toilet seat. - I'll take you home on the scooter.
I couldn't look at him as I took my jacket from his outstretched arm. I followed him out into the hallway. Yuri paused in front of his bedroom door. He went inside without switching on the light. I hesitated at the threshold. What little was visible inside his dark room, indicated that not much of the interior had changed since I had last stepped inside. It was still messy, with the same sparse furnishing. The walls were plastered with sheets of paper that looked like posters; of what, I couldn't tell from my distance.
Curiosity dragged my feet over the threshold. I didn't get far before Yuri returned to my side.
- I need to use the toilet first, he said. - We'll grab the helmet on our way downstairs...wait there or something. He nodded to the bed behind him.
He left me in the dark room. I heard his steps retreat into the bathroom we had just left. I took the opportunity and stepped further into the room, to peer closer at the posters that hung above his bed.
Prior to that moment, I could never have imagined Yuri taking an interest in enrolling in the army. Even though we were virtually estranged at that point, I knew him enough to say that he wasn't the type to enroll in the cadet corps straight after high school. In my innocent state of mind, I came to interpret the clusters of mismatched posters as just another waning interest of his adolescence, at best explained by their artistic value. Yuri liked photography after all.
The first set of pictures depicted jet planes, especially those employed in the army, cruising the sky. They could have been mistaken for birds if it weren't for the white streaks they left in their wake. My eyes scanned the other posters. They showed images of soldiers at war; black and white photos, and what looked like a portrait of the Red Socialist's leader, FÃ sio Abdul-Beron. Above them all, Yuri had hung one of those pop-art posters of Che Guevara, and alongside him, the Brommian flag. I didn't think so much about them at the time, and why would I have? It wasn't out of place to have the leader of the only party that represented the Brommian, in a Brommian household.
Had I squinted closer at the writings on the posters, one or two things might have cleared up, and I might not have done what I did next.
I took the liberty to take a seat on Yuri Karamov's unmade bed, above which, the slogans of the BKA hung. Their warfare fantasies on full display. But I knew so little about all that back then. I had never heard of BKA before my run-in with the six Brommian at the train station. I didn't know who, or what, they were.
My thoughts were, therefore, more drawn to the fact that I was in the very place Yuri Karamov dreamt every night. His bed was smaller than mine, the spring mattress thin and unyielding. I lay my head on his dented pillow. It smelt of his scent; pine and spices, intermingled with unique undertones of wood and earth. I buried the healthy side of my face in it and lifted my feet up on the bed before I lay my full weight on the mattress.
This was where he slept.
I smiled to myself, remembering a time we used to lie in it and it used to fit us both. That wasn't the case anymore. There were times when I would catch glimpses of him in school, or around town, and it would feel as if he'd turned into a complete stranger. His thoughts and emotions, which we shared openly on lazy days while lying side by side were now guarded and shared with others, and it felt like I would look at him one day and have no frame of reference to the person he'd become.
I often imagined what had changed in his life, if it was anywhere near as drastic as I feared, but looking around his dim room filled me with relief. Some things stay constant no matter how much time passes. Looking at his shin guards and his socks haphazardly cast aside in a corner of the room, I wanted to believe that Yuri was still the same person. I wanted it so badly, it was the only reason I allowed myself to relax. To smile, and then yawn, and lastly stretch and get comfortable.
In my wait for Yuri, I must have closed my eyes, but I don't have any recollection of it. My last thought was a flashback to a time when things were a lot less complicated. The bitter-sweet feelings they induced clung to the back of my tongue till I sunk into oblivion.