A Time of Miracles Read Free Page B

atlas. Dobromir, his warm lambskin blanket. And Anatoly, a poetry book that you’ve lost.”
    As always, I end up with the same question. “And Zemzem? What did
he
give you?”
    Gloria puts a finger over her lips and answers that it’s a secret. What Zemzem gave her is so precious and so beautiful that she can’t say anything about it. And as always, I am disappointed. I badger and plead, always in vain.
    Gloria smiles at me. “One day, maybe, I’ll tell you.”
    “When?”
    “One day.”
    Defeated, I sigh and ask for the end of the story.
    “After my brothers and Zemzem had gone, I went to my father and mother. I told them that I was leaving too. I was responsible for you, and I had to take you away from the soldiers and the bombs. Liuba gave me her kitchen utensils. Old Vassili gave me his samovar and said, ‘You see, I knewyou would be leaving. Go, my daughter, and find a place where you can live a happy life.’ ”
    “That’s why he nicknamed you Gloria Bohème,” I say. “ ‘Bohème’ means that you’ll always be free and can cross all borders.”
    “Yes, Koumaïl. And then Vassili pulled on his suspenders to make them snap. He didn’t want to talk anymore.”
    Suddenly Gloria looks sad. She lies down under the blanket on the other mattress; I can see her stomach, which rises like a hill. She coughs and coughs and coughs—enough to tear her throat out.
    I swallow to undo the knot that strangles me.
    “One day you’ll find Zemzem and I’ll find my mother,” I say, hoping to make her feel better.
    The log in the stove is almost burned. Gloria gets her breath back.
    “And my father?” I ask. “You didn’t see him in the train car?”
    “No, Koumaïl, I did not see him.”
    The Complex is now silent.
    “Go to sleep, little miracle,” Gloria whispers to me in the pitch-darkness. “Tomorrow life will be better.”

chapter six
    THERE are all sorts of people in the Complex, including peasants who’ve been driven off their farms because of land requisitions, laborers who’ve lost their jobs, old people who’ve gone soft in the head, sailors without ships, women without husbands, deserters, a meditating monk, and Miss Talia, who used to sing at the opera. There is also Abdelmalik, a tall black teenager.
    Abdelmalik lives right next to Emil, in the garbage shed near the Complex. No one dumps garbage there now, but the stench is embedded in the walls. And no matter how hard Abdelmalik washes and scrubs his skin, he stinks like rancid butter and putrefied peelings.
    “Sorry,” he says each time he goes to someone’s apartment.
    At first you hold your nose; after a while you get used to it.
    According to Emil, Abdelmalik is nineteen years old and escaped from jail. It’s in jail that he learned to fight.
    “He had to!” Emil explains to me. “In jail, if you don’t fight, you’re dead!”
    To entertain us, Abdelmalik shows us his moves in the courtyard or on the roof of the Complex when it’s not too windy. We make a circle around him, and he bounces from one foot to the other, his fists at face level.
Whoosh!
He punches the air. He bends down to skirt his imaginary adversary’s counterattack and
thwack!
A kick! He turns, he twirls. His arms smash invisible jaws, his legs cut and whip. We clap our hands in rhythm. It looks like a dance.
    “Uugh,” Emil sighs. “It’s too easy! I’d like to see a real fight with a real opponent.”
    “We should ask Sergei,” I say.
    We all agree. Sergei is the only one who would know how to fight against Abdelmalik. But we’re too afraid to ask him.
    On some days old Mrs. Hanska gives us lessons. She boasts that she was once headmistress of a school for young girls. We don’t really know what that means, but the way she swells her chest when she says it makes her look important. According to her, this qualifies her to teach us the essentials.
    No one grumbles because school is a good distraction from our chores and roughhousing in the stairs. We