Work Text:
“When somebody loved me
Everything was beautiful
Every hour we spent together lives within my heart
And when he was sad
I was there to dry his tears
And when he was happy, so was I
When he loved me…”
Ottawa, 2021
Ilya pours a glass of Slava Ultra and sets it by the window, covered in a thick slab of Borodinsky rye.
He and Alexei never saw eye-to-eye, as the Americans say, but his brother did not deserve the end he had. Thyroid cancer, he had it many times, but eventually — it was too much for his body. Ilya knows where the tumors probably came from, growing in the brother who thought he escaped the touch of Pripyat, of Chernobyl. But no, thyroid does not like radiation; the fallout, it settled in grass that was eaten by cows, the cows made milk and children like Alexei drank it. Nobody can see radiation. Nobody can taste it. It does not smell wrong. It does not turn the milk black or make it bitter. It looks like food. The thyroid is hungry for iodine. Children’s bodies are growing, changing, dividing quickly. The danger settles quietly inside them, and years later it returns as a tumor. Ilya was born after they had come to Moscow, but not Alexei.
Ilya cannot help but feel angry. He is angry at Soviet government, at men who hide information and who tell families everything is under control while radioactive dust falls over homes and farms. He is angry at the milk, at the grass, at the cows. He is angry at Alexei for becoming cruel, for becoming like the man who terrorized them instead of raising them. He is angry at Alexei for being in the hospital and letting Ilya be the one to walk in and find their mother — who had depression, coupled by the fact it had become readily apparent that her exposure at Chernobyl had doomed her children. Ilya is angry at himself for leaving, he is angry that the last years between them are full of arguments and is angry because he cannot remember the last kind thing he said to his brother.
Alexei was not a good man, he said his cruel words because he knew exactly where to put the knife. He was too much like their father in that way, but Lyoshenka was also his brother. He was good, once. He would — he bought Ilya his first skates; first let him dream of a life beyond the cold of their father, of Russia. He did not deserve to die of tumors in his throat, lungs and bones.
Ilya smokes like a chimney, but Alexei never did. His first tumors were when he was fourteen, so he never touched them. He died anyway, from a cancer that was not his making.
“Za tebya, Lyoshenka,” He says, fingers just barely touching the bread. He should raise a glass, but he does not dare.
He knows that he can never go back to Russia, even before the world found out about him and Shane — he knows there were whispers. He does not want to know what those rumors would amount to. He does not want to die in the cold. So there will be no pominki for Ilya to mourn his brother, not one that he may attend — no table crowded with food, no vodka poured in Alexei’s name and no relatives pressing black rye into his hands and saying that Lyoshenka was difficult but good, that he was stubborn, that he loved his children. Ilya will not stand beside his sister-in-law, and he will not hold Alexei’s children while they cry. He will not touch his brother’s coffin. He will not put flowers on the grave.
Still, Ilya sets out a place for Lyoshenka and wonders if his brother will end up in the same place as their mother, or that of their father. He knows that they are not together, if there is another place to go.
Ilya has always been closer to death than most, his heart forever limiting his lifespan, whether he likes to admit to it or not. He has named Shane as his sole beneficiary in his will — Shane, who will take care of the foundation, of his sister-in-law, of her and Alexei’s children. Ilya could not think of anyone better.
It has taken him a very long time to come to a sort of acceptance — that he may only give Shane ten years of marriage, maybe less, not the hundred or eighty he would have liked. He wants to grow old enough that their hands shake when they reach for each other and neither of them have any hope of getting it up anymore.
But, Chernobyl will come for him, just as it came for Alexei and as it has come for a decade of children just like them — picking through families who spent decades asking whether the sickness was connected, whether the government knew, whether anything could have been different. But it is too late now, it is always too late.
Shane is out on the deck, doing his yoga and meditation, and Ilya allows himself the indulgence of watching him — of tracing the lines of his body. So skinny, the babushka in him whines, no padding where there should be much. But oh, so beautiful in the curve of his eyes and the swell of his lips. Shane is truly the best view Ilya has ever known, ever seen. His Mama would have loved Shane. Ilya knows what he will say to her when he meets her again, probably far too soon — he was mine, Mama and he was so wonderful.
He was my Shane.
I was his Ilya.
Ilya knows he will never get to keep him, but Shane is his for now. Shane is his to love, to hold and Ilya knows he will only be a memory one day — Shane will live after him, he will wake one morning and Ilya will be gone. He will become photographs, old videos and stories.
But he likes to think that his love will go on, wrapped around Shane like a blanket, like his body once did.
He sticks his head outside and bellows over the speaker blaring fake ocean splashes. “Moy zashchitnik, come inside! Is getting cold! My dick is lonely!”
“Lonely and forgotten
Never thought he'd look my way
And he smiled at me and held me
Just like he used to do
Like he loved me
When he loved me…”