I

Veronika Voloshin’s account:

They said I should tell the story from the beginning. I don’t think they knew how long ago the beginning is. But I’ll do as I’m told.

I was sixteen.

He sat all the way across the table. A vase of pink and red roses hid half of his face from me. Seven roses, I counted. Always an odd number.

He made sounds. The way he chewed on salty bread, the way he took sip after sip of the soup, the way he spoke to my mother… all made sounds. But he was quiet to me. His silence was only mine, his own daughter’s.

Eventually, he would look at me. He would ask about school, and I’d tell him about failing geography and having to attend summer school. He would then tell me how he can’t cancel his plans for the holidays, how I should take responsibility and stay here…

He would tell me that only the two of them are going.

No sign of disappointment or shame in his face. only dismissal.

‘But you did score an A+ in English, right? Top of your class, I heard.’ said my mother. An uninvited effort to clear the air between me and my father. She was naïve to even think there was an air between us she could clear. No. There was nothing between us.

He put his spoon to the side, announced he would come home early tomorrow, then disappeared behind the bedroom door.

Mom, now less tense, asked me to help her clean up then joined him.

I stayed in the living room. The next two hours of my life were the emptiest: I only watched the clock tick.

Slow slow ticks.

I felt the caress of a breeze all over my skin. Brain numbed, hands shaking, heart racing with fear and confusion…

I made up a familiar figure in the dark and far distance: first just the eyes, greyish, cruel, colder than the foggy environs. His eyes and my body met, both naked. He wore disgust on his face. Instead of looking in my eyes, disappointed, he only stared down there.

Not exactly what he’d wanted to see, that.

As the distance between me and my father closed, he looked at least a foot taller, two wider, and much more capable and intimidating.

His hands wrapped around my neck, quick enough to scare, but slow enough to hurt. I spent my last seconds thinking how funny it was that I would need a breath to beg for one.

Something snapped.

I woke up in the middle of the night, still in the dark living room.

A nightmare, I thought.

The clock’s ticks were noticeably louder. The noise overlapped with my breathing as I slowly regained composure.

They also seemed a bit slower. I contributed that to my adrenaline-accelerated brain and shrugged it off.

I sluggishly headed towards the kitchen. A few steps in the darkness, careful not to stub my toe (perhaps all the times I had stubbed it around this area conditioned me into extra caution.)

I looked around at the empty house, knew I should go to my room and sleep already, but there was something I felt the need to do first.

I rotated the pommel a bit, as gently as I could. There they were, both asleep. That was all I needed to know: that I was safe from him.

I exited their room, was supposed to head back to my own and sleep. That should have been the night.

Stories are born when things go wrong. They had gone wrong in my life so often that tonight, when they finally go right, a story would be born.

The scenery kept changing before my eyes. Between blink and blink, I found myself in various places. At some point, I stood facing the front door. There was a streetlight I could see through the window, then a firefly, heard before seen.

I opened the door. Left and right, not a soul, save for hordes of early summerly insects.

Without much thought or hesitation, I began walking. Perhaps I’d left the door open, perhaps I’d worn nothing on my feet. I was not going to stop for a pebble or stone.

I did not know where I was headed. At the same time, I knew exactly where to go: just follow the light. The lights grew brighter the closer I got to the city. Even in the middle of the night, cities never died.

But I was getting ahead of myself. We lived in the suburbs far north of the city’s noise and action. It would be at least an hour’s walk.

Enough of that. Let’s talk about my father.

In the mid-eighties, he was a sole soviet immigrant. He spoke a crippled, Russian-infused English. Naturally, he was put in jail, then soon – suspected to be a spy – tortured and interrogated. He had never mentioned much about that, and his version of the story is the only one there is, so that’s all I know.

Somehow, against all odds, he was released and naturalised (something one can only contribute to the kind-heartedness of the CIA.)

All that changed almost nothing; he was still penniless, homeless, and barely spoke the local language. He immediately knew he had to sell something; to cast out all trace of a foreigner’s hesitation; adorn gravels or polish glass. Just survive.

However, just like nobody was in the business of buying scraps, he wasn’t in the business of selling them. Instead, he had his body to sell. More precisely, the athletic build honed by whatever forced him to escape his homeland in the first place.

And at the topmost of this nation’s growth, a pair of strong hands were all but idle. Yes. They were used, mishandled, paid not nearly enough. But for most, it was better than nothing.

To compensate for the low wage, it wasn’t a clever trick or magic he used. Simply having as many jobs, eat and spend as little as one can and not break.

Every time he told the story, listeners waited for the moment he would succumb, for the day he would show weakness; anything they could hold onto in order to feel okay about themselves. I waited as well.

I am still waiting.

My father was not the kind to settle down in one place. Summer, he headed east, worked in construction for a whole season in wait for the colder weather to guide him southward.

He met people, tons of people, countless names of powerful men and loyal friends. Not only did he learn English, but many accents. ‘If you want people’s heart, you must first speak as they do,’ he always used it say.

There is more to his story; parts nobody – not even I – should know. I will not get to those now.

I reached the city after a while. It felt more than the hour I’d expected. I was beginning to get exhausted from walking. But it was no place to rest. As the city itself remained restless.

Before my eyes was the land of grownups. As they say, the possibilities were endless.

Streets were illuminated in various colours. From the white, objectively better streetlight. To the red LEDs, meant not to improve vision but to guide lost shameless souls. Glass buildings, tall and mighty, were dark except for scattered lustrous windows.

Some more walking was all it took for me to realise I was lost.

Yes. I did not know where my legs had gotten me, but that was not the kind of lost I was. I did not know what to do in such places. People all around me, not many, but enough, all seemed to have so much fun. I needed to do something.

Among the passersby, a man’s back posture caught my attention. It seemed uncannily familiar. ‘Hey!’ I called with my usual confidence, the kind that lets one get away with anything.

He turned back. A complete stranger.

‘Oh, excuse me… I must have mistaken you for someone else.’

He stared at me with dark eyes made darker by the night. ‘How old are you, lady?’

The question sent a bolt through my body. Not enough to cause panic or any sort of reaction, but certainly enough to increase my awareness: I was not supposed to be outside this late. Even talking to strangers held risk.

I stepped back, subconsciously planning an escape route. But he gripped my hand with a firm unshakeable hold.

His skin tone appeared darker in contrast with mine. Despite the strength in his hand, I could still feel traces of sweat in it. I could see his coat, cheap and dirty. I could make up the uncanny features of his visage.

‘Where do you live?’ He said, angrily, almost. ‘I’ll walk you back home. Where is that?’

As for me. I just stood there, no sign of the confidence of not long ago, looked scared and remained silent as his expression changed from mad seriousness to pity. No. Concern or maybe understanding.

‘You don’t wanna go back, do you?’

I nodded. Being on the receiving end of an exchange was not like me. But I couldn’t help.

He spent some time thinking, rubbed his spiky chin, then responded with his slight accent I hadn’t noticed up to that point. ‘Fine. But you’ll stay with me.’

Not that I had anything to do, anyway.

I avoided asking questions. I didn’t need to be told how bad of an idea it was to test the temper of a complete stranger. Besides, what he couldn’t say, his smell and torn clothes spoke of. While completely lacking the presence and dignity typically felt from the poor, he definitely had the look of one.

‘So… how do you spend your night?’ I finally asked.

‘Walking; you never know when or where something might happen.’

They were the same.

So, we walked an additional hour to the one I’d walked earlier before my exhaustion came to his attention. Whether by a convenient coincidence, or his intentional guidance, we were nearby a park.

I had come there very often as a child. Not as much in high school.

Like most things, it looked different. The green, under daylight, was just another colour in the palette – an artistic choice. Now, I was made to see it by force, as nothing else could catch the eye. Save for a million minuscule fireballs – bugs hovering around the faint lights.

I sat on a bench, him on the ground.

‘Why did you run away?’

There it was, I thought.

‘I’m just out for a walk.’ I did not intend to hide my intentions from him; just didn’t want to fold immediately. I was certain he would insist anyway.

‘You’re fooling nobody with that.’ He pointed at my feet, indeed, bare. ‘You can talk to me. We’re probably not seeing each other ever again after this night.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Know your kind is all, I don’t see them often.’

My kind?

‘It’s my dad.’ That sounded like a good place to start, in my head, at least.