“No, the moon is too close,” says Helen. She is not joking.
“Yes,” says Sergei. He has a good feeling now. There is nothing to worry about, apart from the regular things. He is not a man for hoping, but at the very least, he will be tested past the point of exhaustion, and that’s not nothing. “I agree. The moon is much too close.”
DMITRI
You are a fag,” Dmitri says to his brother.
Ilya takes this calmly. “I am not,” he says. “But if I were, so what? Pfff. It is nothing.”
Dmitri does not think it is nothing, and Ilya’s complacent sense of himself and the correctness of his opinions are a little irritating.
“Also you should not say ‘fag’ here,” Ilya continues. “It is more cool to be okay with whatever people want to do.”
“Don’t let Papa hear you say that.”
“I am quoting Papa,” Ilya says, widening his eyes. “I repeat his words exactly. There is gay and not gay or both or maybe nothing. Yeah, and some boys are not boys and some girls are not girls and also there is mixture. Possibly we should not even learn English pronouns, to be safe.”
“Ilya, when did Papa tell you this?”
“On the walk.”
This interests Dmitri. Before their father was about to leave for training, or go on a mission, he liked to take them each on a long walk and have a conversation about meaningful things. Dmitri was always curious about what his father said to Ilya, but since Ilya never seemed curious about Dmitri’s time with their father, pride prevented him from inquiring.
“Papa was saying things are different here,” Ilya continues. “It is not a thing to say: fag. I should not say, and if someone says I am a gay, I should not fight.”
“Does he know that you got in fights because of this at home?”
“No. Did you tell him?”
“Of course not.” When their father was home, he was so happy to be with them that they all put their troubles away for a bit and pretended that everything was perfect. Some of that was good, like being on vacation. Some of it was like being in a play, which Dmitri had been made to do once in school, and had not enjoyed.
On Dmitri’s walk with his father, they had discussed the divorce. Unfortunately, his father had spoken to him like he was a child. The divorce, he said, was not a division of their family, but an enlargement. Family was the most important thing, his father had said, and therefore it was a good idea to make your family as large as possible, to include as many people as you could in your family. Imagine if the whole world were your family. Then there would be no war.
“There would still be divorce,” Dmitri had pointed out. It was as close as he dared to come in contradicting his father, or introducing a note of reproach in their conversation. His father had laughed and said, “That is true,” and appeared almost proud of Dmitri for making the remark, and for a moment it seemed like he would talk to Dmitri like a man, but he did not. His father said that it was possible to divorce with love. No one was angry, he said, as if no anger meant happiness.
Dmitri looks across his younger brother to his mother and Alexander, who are holding hands. Dmitri is used to the sight of his mother and Alexander holding hands, and hugging, and kissing. It disgusts him, but he knows that his objections are childish, and he has decided to be stoic about it. His stoicism moves him.
Tonight is Ilya’s treat. The ballet here is not in season, so they have come to a Broadway musical. Tomorrow is meant to be Dmitri’s treat, only at the time he was asked he was in the mood to reject the notion of treats, so he just said Ilya could use his turn.
Tomorrow he could tell his family that he is sick. He is fifteen. His mother might let him stay behind in the hotel on his own.
No.
Yes.
No.
Yes. He will tell them that he is sick. Tonight, he will start coughing.
“Do you want me to explain to you what the synopsis says?” he asks Ilya, opening up the program. Ilya gives him an assessing look, and then agrees. Dmitri feels ashamed about the assessing look. He teases his brother too much. He loves his brother, and admires him. It means something to him that his brother should trust him. If his brother decides that he can’t trust him, then that will be that, he will never trust him again. Ilya is not a subtle person; he only believes one thing at a time.
Dmitri thinks that in this, Ilya is very like their father. Maybe.
Dmitri translates the synopsis into Russian, quietly, because they are meant to speak only English in public, for practice. They examine the pictures of the performers that are printed in the program.
“This guy,” Ilya says, pointing. “You can tell he is a good dancer.”
“It’s just his head,” Dmitri objects. “How you can tell about his dancing from just his head?”
“You can tell,” Ilya says.
Dmitri chews his lip and then points to a picture of a girl with blond hair and the appearance of five hundred thousand teeth.
“Her name is Rose,” he says, reading the program. “She says thank you to her family and friends and teachers for believing in her, and her husband, Trey, for giving her love, and the Lord, for giving her a reason to wake up singing. So, Ilya, can you tell from her picture whether she is a good dancer or not?”
Ilya barely glances at it. “She is an idiot.”
Dmitri laughs and shuts the program. His stomach hurts.
? ? ?
IN THE LOBBY, Dmitri noticed a man.