She’s a flash of color in a grey world. White skin, porcelain and unblemished. Red hair, which glows under the harsh color of the streetlamps. It’s her eyes which truly capture my attention, though. They’re so blue they sparkle like pale jewels in her face. Her lips are deep pink, and her cheeks pale pink. She’s nothing but color.
The girls are jostling, fighting over something in the way girls do, which is better than the way we boys do because they tend not to break bones and other things.
Someone pushes the girl with the red hair and she falls down, her knees hitting the hard concrete floor as she lets out a cry.
“Hey,” I say to the girl who did it. She turns cool grey eyes on me.
“What? I’m not scared of you.”
“You should be,” Abram says. “His uncle kills people for the Bratva.”
The pretty jewel looks up at me from where she is kneeling on the floor, her eyes wide.
The bitch, though, the one who pushed the jewel, sneers, “I call bullshit.” She says the world bullshit in English.
“It’s true,” I answer with a shrug. “He’s Roman Vasilyevich Kuradan.”
Her face pales as she looks at me. Yeah, she knows his name alright. Should, as he killed ten men according to local lore. It’s probably, truthfully, more.
My uncle is a scary man if you don’t know him. If you’re like me, you’re family, then he’s jovial and kind.
I reach down to the jewel still on her knees on the floor and offer her my hand. She takes it, and I pull her to her feet.
“Thank you,” she mumbles. Her voice is so soft it’s like the breeze brushing past my ears.
“Thank you,” the bitch mimics.
One of the other girls pushes her, and then they’re off, squabbling, pushing, and shouting.
“Want to get out of here?” I ask Abram.
He nods, and the jewel glances at me then back to the girls, then at me with big eyes.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
“Dasha,” she says softly.
“You want to come too, Dasha?” I ask.
She nods and grins.
We set off out from under the shadow of the looming tower block. They’re everywhere, these buildings. Behind our block are another three. They stand in a straight line, one after the other like sentinels.
Why they didn’t place them at angles when they built these places, I don’t understand. The way they line up one after the other for rows of up to ten or more buildings is oppressive. They’re so big compared to us humans, and sometimes I imagine them coming alive, waking from a deep slumber and striding away like giant concrete monsters.
We walk in silence past the small empty parking lots. The wind blows a plastic bag toward me, and I kick it away, but it gets stuck to my shoe, and I try to kick it again, but it doesn’t move. I glance at Dasha, somehow embarrassed by this bag stuck to my foot.
Dasha doesn’t fit here. She looks like one of the Russian Princesses we learned about in history. The Tsar’s daughters. She’s refined and delicate. You don’t see many delicate things around here; they get stamped out, or they turn into something hard in order to survive.
We reach the destination after a five-minute walk. It’s a big old garage that no one seems to use anymore, on a plot of wasteland between yet more huge blocks of apartments. The garage has a light that works inside, and we found an old gas heater and brought it here, which wasn’t too difficult as it had wheels underneath.
We pull the stiff door open, and Abram slips through first. I gesture for Dasha to follow him, and she does. I enter last, and Abram clicks on the light switch as I close the door. We head straight to the heater and put it on. We sit ourselves down on one of the worn mattresses lined up on the floor. These we didn’t bring; they were already here.
To the side of the mattress is an old bureau with many drawers in it. I open the top drawer and take out some rolling paper, a packet of tobacco, and some matches. Methodically I roll two cigarettes. One I pass to Abram, and one I keep.
Lighting his first, I then light mine and take a drag.
“You smoke?” Dasha asks. She sounds worried.
“Yeah, sometimes, why?”
“It’s not good for you,” she says. “My momma told me it’s very bad. It puts gunk into your lungs.”
Then she screws her face up as the smoke reaches her. “You could die early if you keep this up.”
I don’t tell her that we’re all probably headed for an early death. People don’t live long around here. It’s just a fact of life.
“It isn’t good for a fit and healthy body,” she says primly,
I suck in some smoke and blow a perfect smoke ring, and her eyes go wide. “Oh wow; do that again.”
I smirk, liking how impressed she is by me and the things I can do.
“What do you know about being healthy; you’re only little,” Abram says.
“I’m in training,” she announces importantly. “I’m going to be a prima ballerina when I grow up.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“A lead dancer in the ballet.”
Oh, of course. The ballet. I know what that is; I just hadn’t heard of a prima ballerina before. I don’t like the ballet. It’s weird. Lots of people in odd costumes doing strange things with their arms and legs.
I suppose I don’t like much. I read a lot, and I enjoy drawing, although I kind of suck at it. But I don’t have things I love doing, not like Dasha loves her ballet. Maybe being outdoors? I love being in nature and out of the city. Not that I get to go often. However, on a few occasions either my mother or my uncle have taken me to a park or to the area outside the city where there is grass, trees, and rivers. You can breathe there in a way you can’t here.
There’s a tiny patch of trees nearby, and a small lake, but it’s surrounded by the concrete giants on all sides. Still, if you use your imagination you can pretend you’re in a giant forest. I do that quite often.
“Show me,” Abram says, and for a moment I don’t know what he means. I realize he’s staring at Dasha. “Show me how you dance.”
She shakes her head.
He laughs. “I don’t believe you. You’re not a prima ballerina.”
She scowls at him, tiny but fierce. “Of course not. I said I will be one day, silly.”
“So, show us.” Abram gestures between us.
She sighs, but to my surprise stands. Her arms raise above her head, and she looks exactly like the doll in the music box my mum has. You open the box and this tune plays, and the doll raises her arms slow and jerky, then spins around.
Dasha looks like the doll, except more graceful. She rises onto her toes and begins to step and twirl, step and twirl. I don’t like the ballet I see on TV, but this I like. It’s a strange, magical moment in our mundane world.
As I watch Dasha dance, something occurs to me. Her name and my name mean almost the same thing. We are god given, or gifts of god.
Maybe she is a gift from God? My very own precious jewel. I decide there and then that Dasha is going to be my new best friend.
Abram just got demoted.
Chapter Seven
Dasha
We reach the theater, and my heart is still pounding. I may be many things. I may be weak. I may be scared. I may be lost. What I am not is stupid. Bohdan isn’t here by accident.