Velvet draperies collecting dust in the viewing room. The buzzing of sewing machines, the rustling of pattern paper, and there, Eline's frame silhouetted against the light. Her audible click clacks on the chequered floor as she moves from one papier mâché mannequin to another, pinning together fabrics that given the right time and care will come together like 3D copies of the drawings spread out on her mahogany desk.
Ru, can you hand me more pins?
She's caught me watching again. She knows I'm bored and have nothing better to do. Outside the rain is pattering against the windows. Inside the musty scent of fur and dust wears down my attention span until I find myself entranced by the flurry of her movements. It's her space. Her room. And Eline is studious. Eline is a master at what she does.
I don't rise from my seat. We stare at each other, and I will my expression to convey just how little interest I have in becoming her ball boy.
No.
She lumbers over to the table herself, dragging the mannequin behind her. If she's exasperated; if she's holding back a sigh, or imagining the many ways she could poke my eyes out she doesn't let it show. Eline never lets anything I do show.
One day you'll cling to my skirt you'll love me so much. Just you wait and see.
It's easy to explain Eline. I picture opening my mouth and letting the words give form to the walls, the ceiling, the pillars, the chequered floor until I've constructed the viewing room around her. Until Ezra sees her as I see her in my mind. A slender woman with a ballerina's poise, blonde hair slicked back and pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck, sewing pins held between her lips, the sleeves of her favourite, burgundy cardigan rolled up to her elbows. I could say something like: Eline designed the prime minister's daughter's wedding dress, and perhaps that would convey enough to leave out the chunk of information I can't say. But what is Eline without her studio, and what is her studio if not a viewing roomâand indeed what is a viewing room if not a museum?
And how do I say that? How do I explain the presence of a single room in Ljerumlup dedicated to the myth of our superiority without outing myself as this...this alien? I can't. He thinks we're of the same strain, that when you cut us open and remove our organs, in our very cores, you'll find the same substance of generosity, and acceptance, and wanting to better humanity. He believes this because his father was once a Ukrainian refugee and sometime in his formative years it left an impression that when we, formerly lumped-together compatriots, wash up on Her Majesty's shores we must all do so as refugees in need of saving. When he tried to speak to me in broken Russian, I did not correct him. I liked how he looked at me. I liked his single-minded focus on salvaging the parts of me closest to the surface, those he could identify and name because it correlated with a narrative he understood. If you're fleeing war you can't be inherently bad because the presumption is that you oppose the corrupt structures and political mayhem driving you out of your countryâyou're the underdog, the little man with no voice.
He thinks I'm good, and I want to keep him stranded where he is, in a fog of ambiguity where even if he's figured out I'm Arash and that I'm from Dronesk, he'll remain blind; grasping for clues he'll rationalise away because he'll ultimately circle back to the assumption that we're the same.
How do I tell him it's not true? That it's a mistake to look at me and see a single individual when at any given moment, I'm a collective. I'm Bikjaru. I've never once wholeheartedly believed I could better the world, and the only refuge I seek is from him; his judgement when he realises he's let a poser into his home. I've lied and I've deceived, and I might just do it again because the truth is too absurd, and comical, and vile to be uttered out loud in his small living roomâthis far away from Ljerumlup and the pillars that would've supported it otherwise.
The truth is this: when conflict breaks out; we don't get displaced; we go on holiday. We take a breather, confident things will settle down again, and life as we knew it will resume. And I have to believe that life will resume; that the collective will guarantee that things will remain the same. I have to.
The thought of there never being a Dronesk to return to is one so brittle it breaks over and over again in the grooves of my brain. My mind rejects it on the premise of everything I've been taught. Even a simple memory of watching Eline fussing over fabrics in the viewing room is imbued with this unshakable belief. Because when I look away from her and down at the black and white photographs on the mahogany desk, staring back at me is Nikolai Dudarov in his decorated Soviet Army uniform, in the very room we're in but void of all superfluous decor.
The point is that after looking at these pictures from the first remodeling of Ljerumlup some sixty-odd years ago, I'm supposed to march up to my aunt and tell her what a crook Nikolai Dudarov was. The aim of this homework is to make me agree with her and not Mr Benofs about the argument we had on our way to church. I've already devised a plan to bolster my aunt's view and diminish Mr Benofs's. Nikolai Dudarov knew his father was dying of war wounds when he denounced his title and pledged allegiance to the Party. But unlike my aunt who thinks him a traitor, and Mr Benofs who excuses the atrocities he committed because he strategically reacquired Ljerumlup from communist bureaucracy, my true stance is ambivalent.
It seems pointless to be arguing about the morality of someone who succumbed to the paranoid Stalinist machine when there's so much more to gauge. Trees, and hills, and buildings seemingly sprouting from the mountainsides; a bird's-eye view of Dronesk. The same one my great-grandfather would've stood before when he first named it the viewing room. A view that not only inspired a conquest but which embedded so deeply in our fabric the belief that no matter how destructive a war, we always rebuild.
However far back I cast the net, sullying my memories are instances when lessons of who I am overpower me. They ring in the back to my mind, an incessant reminder that I can never relate to anyone but my kin. That in some sense, I'm an alien everywhere else but at Ljerumlup, and that the only people who can understand me are those who've seen the world from that narrow window in the viewing room. Yet I can't help but sometimes think they don't love Dronesk as I do. That I'm alone in feeling a deepening sense of despair and existential dread the longer the war wages on. Ljerumlup, they assure me, will be rebuilt. They say it over and over again, each time a little more soothingly.
Everything of value is stored away safely. Don't worry. All those things, they're just thatâthings. We're so much more than a sum of arbitrary materials. The important thing is that we're all safe. That you're safe.
It never occurs to them I might be worried about more than the things in my childhood room. That the reason I'm calling is that every time I close my eyes I see Molotov cocktails and tear gas, 24-hour newsreels and political pundits stoking mass hysteria. On those phone calls home, I don't bother asking about the people, knowing their compassion only extends so far and that everyone they consider being of importance is safe. I certainly don't ask about Petra or any of the Brommian, imagining the answer as a variation of the same offhand comment I hear all the time: Well, of course, they're safe, they're Brommian.
Although never stated explicitly, it's implied that I should get over it, that my concern is holding me back. It's the reason I'm not flourishing like Adriana who's winning medals left and right, and whose high school experience, despite the civil unrest, is just like the ones in the movies. I listen to her talk about boys, about who is cheating on who, and her plans for the weekend, and it seems ridiculous that I can't have thatâa normal life. I push the worry down and cling to the conviction that things will be all rightâbecause I'm Bikjaru. Because we rebuild. Everywhere I turn, the collective is there to assure me of the same.
Don't worry. Just focus on you, focus on your future. Don't do anything stupid to mess it up, and everything will be all right.
By the time I turn twenty-three I've developed a knack for predicting how my day will pan out by the amount of alprazolam circulating my bloodstream. I've sky dived off the coast of Turkey, broken a leg skiing down Val D'Isere, gotten a blowjob in a gallery bathroom in Naples, yet when I meet him, it becomes painfully evident I haven't lived a day past eighteen. I'm not even three weeks into life at LSE, the Croatian sun still fresh on my skin, when he collides into me, knocking years of carefully constructed survival mechanisms off-kilter.
He's been raised on liberté, égalité, fraternité and it shows in the way he talks about the worldâhis eyes dilated, hungry to perceive things as they are. He wants to know me, and he doesn't mind if it's through kissing, doesn't mind my fumbling, stumbling mess of a conversation. He says he knows some Russian; says he wants to save the world, and for whatever reason, it strikes a chord with me. I follow him to Tallinn. Every single kilometer feels like a fever dreamâlike love; delicious deliriousness.
All my life, I've been an automaton, my every action dictated by the collectiveâwhat I should study, where I should go to university, where I should internship. To be with him is to brave a bite of the forbidden fruit. To glean an alternative interpretation of life, one I suspected everyone else must live, but whose mechanisms had always been too elusive to understand. And I finally understand them. I understand what it means to live on one's own terms. All Ezra's ever needed is a camera, a few loyal friends, and his passport. I convince myself that I, too, can be like that.
Those five months we're together, I stop talking to my father. Slowly, like weaning myself off a drug, I cut the connection. At that point, it's been so long since I've seen him, I've conveniently forgotten the lengths he'll go to to keep me on his leash. Then one evening, the independence I've been curating for months comes crashing down when my card gets declined at the club, and then again at the kebab kiosk. It feels like a slap to the face. But, somehow, I'm still defiant. I still think I can pretend Ezra and I have enough common denominators for me to carve a dream out of his aspirations while, at the same time, get my father to come around and see reason.
I'm juggling these separate parts of my life, trying to find a way to merge them; to make a life on my own termsâI'm so close I can practically taste the freedom with every lungfulâwhen Ezra asks me to go with him to Rujga Province. His project has been green-lit. The funding is in place; the studio has acquiesced to his criterion. Francesca is the executive producer. She's flying in from Los Angeles. Then there's Kevin, and Mo, andâ
This is it. This is what we've been talking aboutâit's really happening. I want you there. You're on board, right? You have to. This is...this is so much bigger than our wildest dreams. This is our one chance. Please say yes.
Hope wasn't part of the equation, and now it's like a chasm opening up beneath my feet, tearing asunder all the survival mechanism that's kept it in check for so long. I want it with such aching desperation; I become numb. To return. To see for myself what they had denied me to witness. It was the only prayer that night after night had rouged the roof of my mouth as I tried to find sleep squeezed between boys who had been deemed maladapted at the boarding school. Please, please, let me come home, I had said on the phone to my father more times than I can count over the course of those grueling three years. Yes, my father'd say, and naïve as I was I believed him. I believed him every time. Hope is a despicable thing, and I can't be at its mercy again.
What should have felt like a declaration of love, of care, of a promise of a future together, now feels like he's asking me to jump head first to my death when all these years I've been trying my hardest to survive. I can't. And I can't tell him why because then I must tell him who I am, and then he'll know. He'll know I've worn his dreams like a cape; like a child pretending at saving the world when I can't even save myself.
I say yes. I say yes, yes, yes. We pop a bottle of champagne that I buy with the last of the money I borrowed from Ivana. It's supposed to be a quiet celebration to not jinx our luck, but we somehow end up linking up with Salamander and Lee. Give it half an hour and practically everyone we know shows up at Ezra's flat. Someone's got blow, someone else pot. The coffee table is littered with cans and bottles. There's enough ruckus and mayhem to warrant the neighbours banging on the door.
It's a stark contrast to the nowâthe 'us' facing each other in the quiet. The present superimposes on the past and I watch the coffee table, now empty and wiped down, bleed into the projection in my mind. One second the living room's full of people, Ezra's smiling at me from across the room, the table's littered, there's my drink and then there's his, side by side. Then the next: the living room is empty, but we're closer. Much closer.
I blink myself back to the Ezra across from me who's wearing an expression not all that different from the one I imagine he wore when he woke up and found all traces of me gone. I'm gripped by the same guilt and fear as when I lay next to him, staring at the Virgin Mary tattoo on his chest, counting down the minutes till his breaths evened out.
He takes a sip from his mug, and I shove away the memory of pulling his T-shirt over his head and throwing it on the backrest of the loveseat; the very one he's got his head propped up against. I left. I left in the middle of the night and never once returned his calls, and yet he's not angryâhe's silent and contemplative, which is somehow worse.
I fumble for the words that don't come any easier now than when we sat down two, five, ten minutes ago. The window's pitch black, mirroring back our reflection, and in there somewhere is a memory of Eline amongst mannequins and taxidermied animals. Every other memory feels like a bundle of nerve endings being scraped against a rough surface. Eline, if anyone, is the easiest to explain. If I focus on her, I won't run the risk of rousing quieter memories buried under montages of explosive cocktails, and burning cars, and protesters facing off police platoons.
- We have this view-, my voice comes out hoarser than I expect, forcing me to I clear my throat and speak louder. - I mean had. We had this viewâon the west wing of the house, in this room we called 'the viewing room'.
Holding his gaze, I say it Russian; smotrovaya komnata. He shakes his head, confused, and with a sudden lurch of my gut, I realise I have to describe it.
- You look out the window, and you see everything; the valley, the roads and the houses like specks of brown dotting the forest, all the way to the cluster of buildings downtown. We used to live on a mountain, much higher than everyone else, and from that view you could see the road starting from downtown, making its way up through rougher and rougher terrain and ending at our doorstep. I used to think it was a coincidence. The roadmenders were all Brommian, there were Brommian living in Elhem as well, but that road, it was ours. It was made for us.
I stare at him, willing him to understand. My heart drums against my sternum; fast, faster. I gulp, and he says, - Okay. Dragging the vowels in the universally understood language for: I have no idea what you just said.
- In Dronesk, I say, but it comes out rougher, more frustrated, than I intend which only deepens the furrow in his brow.
- I'm assuming this is your explanation to why you stood me up, and never responded to any of my texts, right? Right. Okay, let me help you along: start from the beginning.
- The beginning? My tongue is dry like sandpaper.
- Yes, love,- his smile is razor sharp, - start with how he broke your heart however many years ago and how you're still so fucked up over it, you had to break mine.
My heart squeezes painfully in my chest. I laugh it off; a quick burst of breath that morph Ezra's features into something mean and unrecognisable.
- I'm sorry. I mean it. What I did was beyond cowardly, but it has nothing to do with this...this person you've made up to blame.
He snorts, - you can't even say his name anymore, can you?
My regret of having shared something he could use against me silences me. Of course. Of course, he's angry. Why had I believed otherwise? I grind my teeth, thinking of a way to turn this conversation around, when he interrupts.
- Say it. Prove me wrong.
- See! He says when I say nothing. - That expression. Look at you, are you really telling me there's no one? Two months, Konstantin. Come on. Two months of looking for you everywhere. Constantly calling, texting. Come on. I deserve some closure. Give me that at least.
- I'm trying. Stop making this about...it's not. It has nothing to do with that. I just...- I rub my face in frustration, suddenly hyper-aware of the fatigue weighing my bones, - I don't know how to explain. I can't return to that place. And I couldn't tell you, because then...
- Then what?
I stare at him.
- Then what? He asks.
- You'll never look at me the same way.
- And how do I look at you?
- Like that! Like I'm you, capable of just hoping on a plane with flimsy ideas about the world, and how it should be.
It snaps him shut, and that same unnerved look comes over his face. The one he wore when he saw me coming up the landing to his flat.
I swallow.
- Okay, he says, like an admission of defeat. - So tell me. That's why you're here, right? Tell me, then. And start from the beginning. Start before the war.
I must have known coming here would lead to this. At the back of my mind, I must have been aware that jumping on bus 19 would entail sitting in front of him and baring my soul. My heart has no right to beat as erratically as it does. I knew it would feel this; a wound slowly being pried open. The stitches snapping one by one.
- The beginning, I say, like I know exactly where that is. I feel nauseous and lightheaded and ill-prepared, but even so, I nod. What choice do I have? Who else can I turn to with all this heartbreak and loneliness? Who won't simply tell me not to worry, when all I do is worry? I want his friendship, and I want it without all the lies.
- Okay.