Clouds - Short Story

Literary Review, Spring, 2001 by Emil A. Draitser

In memory of my father

Can gasoline be fragrant?

It can. If it is pure aviation gas. If it is lifting small, nimble planes into the sky. And if you are not older than seven.

Ever since that stuffy night in late June, airplanes were flying into Kotya's dreams. He slept with his head on the windowsill on a fluffy pillow printed with polka dots. The window was wide open to the smells of summer. Kotya woke up from the rumbling in the sky. "Ooo-oo, oo-oo, oo-oo. . ."--the clouds droned ominously. The huge three-story building was thrown into alarm by the menacing noise. They carried the sleepy Kotya down into the cold cellar cut out into sandstone, where it smelled of damp and where wood lice crawled along the walls. In a month he had learned to guess the model of enemy plane by the sound: the evil roaring of the Focke Wulf; the fierce howl of the Messerschmitt; the tinkling of the Junkers spinning into the sky.

On that particular night the clouds began to swim in front of his eyes, light gray, filled with mercury, shimmering in the sun. Suddenly, from one of these clouds fell a small Heinkel with the snarling jaws of a dog, barking machine gun fire, plunging to the earth straight at Kotya. He peered into the sky from the same window of their pre-war apartment, throwing back his head. Seeing that they were aiming at him, Kotya quickly closed the shutters. (In the summer, when it was especially hot, Mama often shut them so that the small room wouldn't overheat. "We have a sunny apartment," she would proudly tell her acquaintances.) Whizzing near him, the Heinkel soared up, lazily swooped behind the distant little cloud on its right wing, and took another dive. At the next instant it appeared on top of the brown roof of the neighboring house and shot at the shutters with such a force that the wood shingles flew in all directions.

Kotya woke up in a fright.

The Heinkel disappeared, but the roar continued. It was the corrugated metal grate rumbling as it was rolled open. Morning light poured in through the huge glass. Kotya lay on an unsteady wooden folding-cot under a high ceiling, separated from a spacious room by a three-paneled bamboo partition decorated with a Chinese fan.

Aunt Tanya's voice could be heard from behind the screen.

"What happened, Eve? Your face is around your ankles! You were tossing and turning all night. You almost threw me on the floor."

Mama answered after a pause.

"I'm always pale in the morning... I couldn't fall asleep for some reason... I still can't get used to the idea that I'm sleeping in a store."

"Don't be picky! Be grateful we're not sleeping under a stairway. Anyway, who needs stores? A pound of bread, a piece of soap, two pounds of flour--we can get all that from the warehouse."

Half awake, Kotya couldn't quite understand what they were talking about. "Your face is around your ankles." How could that be? Everyone's face is on his or her face.

"So, sweetheart," continued Aunt Tanya, "don't play spy games with me. Thank God it's over. Now get it out on the table. What happened?"

Aunt Tanya and Mama slept at the other end of the room on a beaten-up, discolored, flower-print sofa. They had picked it up from the doorway of a bombed out house across the street, and rejoiced at their luck for days. Two passing soldiers had helped them drag the sofa to their shelter. One was about forty, weathered, with a magnificent yellow mustache and bushy eyebrows of the same yellow. The other was without a mustache, almost a boy, with the red epaulets of Suvorov's Military Academy for Boys. Before bringing the sofa inside, Mama and Aunt Tanya beat on it for a long time with canes. They told Kotya to help them by hitting it as hard as he could. He was surprised they even asked. Grownups rarely understand what gives children satisfaction. Mama and Auntie tried for a long time to fit on the sofa, which was too narrow for both of them, making faces and contorting themselves. This amused Kotya so much that they prolonged their efforts to get him to laugh a bit more. In the end they decided to sleep sideways, putting their feet up on some crates which had miraculously survived from pre-wartime. On one, the larger one, was stamped in gray letters: "MACARONI INSP. #768543-40," on the other: "SARDINES IN TOMATO SAUCE--GRADE A."

Finally, Mama muttered: "It's already been a few days. They've been seeing him in the city. He's here and doesn't feel like coming, I guess..."

"A few days?! ... Well... Why... ?"

"Why, why? How am I supposed to know? Some nos), friends and neighbors turned up. They're telling God knows what kind of rubbish, I bet."

"Spit on all their rubbish." Auntie suddenly raised her voice.

"Shhhh... You'll wake my baby."

Auntie changed to a whisper, but Kotya heard it just the same.

"Jealousy and gossip. How is it your fault that you have a face like Vera Kholodnaya?"

Kotya tried to understand what they were whispering about behind the screen. Was Auntie angry with someone? Someone who had attacked Mama? Or was it Mama she was scolding because she looked like some Vera Kholodnaya? He didn't know who Vera was anyway, and didn't care. Maybe she was one of Auntie's acquaintances from the line where she sometimes took Kotya to exchange the pink paper ration petals for the rosy, striped, lacquered, sticky taffy--100 grams into each pair of hands.