Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

Daniil’s name had bounced from wait list to wait list for three years before he’d been assigned to his apartment by the Kirovka Canning Combine, where he worked as a packaging specialist. The ten-story paneled novostroïka was newly built and still smelled of mortar. His fifth-floor suite was no larger than the single room he had shared with his parents in a communal apartment, but he could call it his own. The day he’d moved in had been nothing short of sublime: he’d walked to his sink, filled a glass of water, guzzled it down, then lay on the kitchen floor with his legs squeezed into the gap between the stove and table. Home was where one could lie in peace, on any surface. He felt fresh and full of hope. Then came a knock at the door. Daniil’s grandmother burst into the apartment, four mildewy sacks of grain and a cage full of hens strapped to her back. She spoke Ukrainian, which Daniil barely understood, having been raised and educated in Russian. She cursed her neighbor, who either was in love with her or had it in for her and had threatened to poison himself, or her, or perhaps both. Daniil simply nodded, ashamed to ask for clarification. And so Baba Ola stayed.

Two. Two had been fine. Until two became fourteen.

—

Minimum Dimensions of Space Necessary for Human Functioning, 85 processes: Sleeping (based on average Moscow male, head to toe) = 175 cm. Standing (gravitational effect included) = 174.5 cm. Opening oven (based on average Moscow female, buttocks to baking tray) = 63.5 cm. Washing face (elbow to elbow) = 52 cm. Opening refrigerator (door span area) = π(55 cm)² ÷ 4. Lacing up boots (floor space) = 63.5 cm x 43 cm. Pulling out dining chair (floor space) = 40 cm x 40 cm. Mending clothing, shoes, other (floor space) = 40 cm x 40 cm. Child rearing (floor space for corner time) = 30 cm x 30 cm. Watching educational television programs = 64.5 cm x 40 cm. Listening to educational radio programs = 64.5 cm x 40 cm. Evacuating bladder (volume) = 400 ml. Mental training (based on average Moscow male, brain volume) = 1260 cm³. Dreaming = 1260 cm³…or ∞? Breathing (torso expansion) = 1.5 cm. Yawning (torso expansion) = 3 cm. Sneezing (torso retraction) = 3–4 cm. Stretching (limb extension) = n/a. Etc. Etc. Minimum dimensions necessary for human functioning (TOTAL) = 9 m².

—

Daniil stuffed his hands back into the damp warmth of his pockets as he climbed the narrow set of stairs to his floor.

Suite 56 greeted him with its familiar smell, boiled potatoes and fermenting cabbage. “Daniil, is that you?” Aunt Nika hollered from the kitchen. At sixty-five, her voice retained its cutting timbre, perfectly suited for her job hawking seed oils at the bazaar. “Come look, we get barely any gas.”

Daniil cringed. He had wanted to remain unnoticed by his relatives for a few seconds longer. When he opened the closet to hang his coat, a pair of gray eyes stared back at him, round and unblinking. Daniil started. He had forgotten Grandfather Grishko, who slept standing, as he used to do while guarding a military museum in Kiev. This was the fourteenth member of the Blinov residence. Daniil closed the door softly.

“Took me three hours to boil potatoes,” Aunt Nika told Daniil when he stepped into the kitchen. She wore a stained apron over a floor-length mink coat inherited from her grandmother. Its massive hood obscured her face. She turned the knobs to maximum; the burner heads quivered with a faint blue. “Did you go to the town council? They should look into it.”

“It seems they already have,” Daniil said. “But they’re better at turning things off than on.”

A pigtailed girl, Aunt Inaya and Uncle Timko’s, jumped out from under the kitchen table singing, “May there always be sunshine / May there always be blue skies.” She air-fired at the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Aunt Nika gently scratched the nape of the girl’s neck, and the child retreated back under the table.

“What did they tell you at the council?” Aunt Nika asked.

“The building doesn’t exist, and we don’t live here.”

Aunt Nika’s mittened hand brushed a strand of dyed red hair off her forehead. “Makes sense.”

“How so?”

“I had a talk with the benchers last week.” She meant the group of pensioners who sat at the main entrance of the building, ever vigilant, smoking unfiltered cigarettes and cracking sunflower seeds day and night. “They told me this block was supposed to have only two towers, but enough construction material had been discarded to cobble together a third—ours.”

A series of barks blasted through the thin walls of the bedroom. Daniil glanced in alarm at Aunt Nika. He hadn’t approved of the hens, but they were at least useful—now a dog?

Aunt Nika cast her eyes down. “Vovik. Bronchitis again, poor boy. What are you going to do about the gas?”

Aunt Nika’s granddaughter bellowed from under the table, “May there always be mother / May there always be me!”

“I don’t know,” said Daniil.