Yalta Boulevard Read Online Free PDF Page B

electric stove, I’d be a lot cleaner.”
    It could not really be called “his” room anymore. All personal effects—the toy oxcart with the broken wheel, the rotary board game, and even the set of French metal skiers with little metal skis and sleds—had been removed long ago, and his younger sister, Klara, had taken her possessions to her own home on the outskirts of Bóbrka. A group of framed photographs hung on the wall in a loose pastiche of half-forgotten faces. Uncles and distant cousins who were killed in the war, and their wives, who had remarried or stuck out the following years in solitude. A group shot of his mother’s family from the ’teens, faces serious, as befitted the weight of such a sitting. Brano was also there, at two, and at six years old, with curls that made him look uncomfortably like a girl; Klara as a nine-year-old had the same intense features she had carried into adulthood. In the center, a larger portrait of his father—his Tati—stood sentry over the others. It had been taken during the war, a young man’s face with too many worry lines sprouting from his eyes. His mouth was open, revealing the chipped front tooth Brano always imagined when he tried to remember the face of Andrezej Fedor Sev.
    He sat on the edge of the bed, gazing at that tooth. The man was probably dead now, one tiny fraction of the endless stream of refugees who made their way west after the war. But this man had been ordered to leave, by his son, on a frigid October night.
    Brano wiped his palms dry on his knees.
    It was not his room anymore. It had become a home for guests. A guest room, and he was a guest. He put the suitcase into the wardrobe.
    Her forehead was clean and the cards cleared away. She was heating pork stew in an iron pot and toasting bread. He asked her about the store. “Well, you know. Eugen is a good boy, but I don’t need him. I could do all the work myself. It’s a small place. But the State wants two employees, and who am I to argue?”
    “You could bring it up at a council meeting.”
    “Do you think that would help?”
    “The State can’t know things unless it’s told.”
    She hummed beneath her breath and stirred the fragrant soup. She added a spoonful of fat from the pail and let it cook a little more before ladling it into a bowl and collecting the toast. She poured him a glass of brandy and seemed pleased just to watch him eat.
    He told her a few necessary details about the Pidkora factory and spent more time describing new construction in the Capital and everything that was changing. “The metro was a fantastic success.”
    “That’s a good thing,” she said.
    “When you travel you see the entire cross-section of the city—Gypsies and workers and university professors riding side by side.”
    “And Politburo men?”
    “Mother.”
    “I’m only asking.”
    He finished eating and sipped the warm brandy. She poured herself one and refilled his.
    “And what about your personal life, Brani? Do you have friends? Any women you’d like your mother to meet?”
    He hesitated. “No, no women.”
    “You’re not so young anymore.”
    “I’m aware of that.”
    “And when you reach a certain age you’ll kick yourself for not having a wife.”
    “It’s possible.”
    “Maybe we can find you a nice girl around here.”
    “No. Mother, don’t try that.”
    “If you’re not going to be sensible, then I’ll have to be sensible for you.”
    “Mother.”
    She finished her glass. “What, son-of-mine?”
    “I’m quite happy with my life.”
    “Nonsense. No one is happy with their life. Your Tati used to say that all the time, and he knew what he was talking about.”
    He stared at his drink until she let the subject go. She went on to other matters, and by eleven had told him all about the happenings in Bóbrka. Alina Winieckim and Gerik Gargas had died in the last six months, the first of encephalitis, the other in a gory drilling accident. Alina’s husband, Lubomir, got