The words don’t want to come. They resist the paper as if they don’t belong there, as if they can only live inside my head. Every letter is a struggle. The pen and the notebook repel each other like the same ends of two magnets.  I begin to sweat. It’s one thing that I can’t talk, but now I can’t write either? It gets me angry and it breaks the resistance and I write.

I start with: “No one knows.”

“No one knows what?” Pavlik reads over my shoulder.

“I haven’t told anyone why I don’t talk.”

“No one at all?”

I shake my head. It’s so easy, to shake my head, to nod, a convenient habit. I’m mad at it, and at my tongue that won’t move, and at my shaking hands.

“Thank you,” he says. “For sharing it with me.”

Thank you? I gape at him. For what? In a moment you won’t thank me any longer. 

My heart thunders. I grip the pen to keep it rooted to the page. “I don’t talk”—I write—“because the catfish made me not to.”

“What?” His brows knit. He reads and rereads my words, his face close to mine. I smell his skin and see his lips moving. Then he pulls away and studies me for a minute. 

A crow screeches, another one answers it. It sounds as if they’re fighting for a scrap of food.

I wait, my stomach in knots. 

You’ll either tell me that I’m making fun of you or that I’m mental and need to be seen by a doctor or laugh it off as a bad joke or—

“Why?” he says with a strange light in his eyes. “What did you do to it? To the catfish?”

I gawk. There is no ridicule in his tone, no scorn. He fumbles with a cigarette, breaks it, and pulls out another.

I take a breath, then write, “I called it a bad word.”

“What bad word?”

“Dura.”

He chuckles. “There are worse words than that.”

“It was bad enough.”

“So what did it do?”

“It beat me into a mouse. Mice don’t talk.”

“Mouse? You’re a mouse?”

“Yes.” I want to drop the notebook and the pen and hide.

“And who is the catfish, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“My mama.”

“Does the catfish know”—he hesitates—“who the father—”

“No.”

“Does...the mouse know?”

“Yes.”

“Who is it?”

“The boar.”

“The boar?” He drops the cigarette, picks it up. “Do the catfish and the boar know each other?” His every word is measured, careful.

“They live together, if you can call it living.”

His hand touches my shoulder. “Does the boar know?”

“No.”

“What did it do to the mouse?”

“It ate it. Tail to neck. Every night for a year.”

“Is that why the mouse went to the hospital? Because the boar hurt it?”

“No, that was horseflies.”

“Horseflies.” He looks at the window and through it, as if it doesn’t exist. “How many?”

“Five.”

“Did they...bite the mouse?”

“Yes. Worse than the jackal.” I don’t know why I write it and I scratch it out but he stops my hand. “Wait. There was a jackal?”

“The one from the Chamber Theater.” 

Pavlik is still for a couple of seconds. Then his eyes narrow. “That scum. And I thought they were empty rumors about why Lida left. Did it bite you?”

“Only a handful of times. It’s old. Its teeth are dull.”

My throat spasms, my chest hurts, and my mouth tastes cruddy. The beasts want out and I write about every one of them. The cockroach, the herrings, the Lenin statue killing the woodpeckers, the tapeworm, the roosters, the turtle in the theater, the seal and the parrots, the mole and the sheep, the vultures, and the walrus. I write and write and write until my hand cramps.

. . .

The street is quiet. It’s evening. The pine slats are rosy in the setting sun.

Pavlik throws his fifth or sixth cigarette stub out of the window. “I have a story, too.”

I put the pen down.

“Nobody knows about this except my parents.” His voice is muffled. “It happened at the old place where we lived, before we moved here. I was seven.” He lights another cigarette. “I was walking home from school one night, around six in the evening, if I remember right. It was December, like now, dark and cold. I should’ve known better. Should’ve gone straight home but that little shit Mishka hid my schoolbag behind the trash bins and it took me hours to find it. I was afraid mama would scold me if I came home without my bag. So I went to the alley—to get to our building block you had to go through an unlit park—and there they were.” He stops, eyes unfocused.

I feel his terror.

“Six of them.” His pupils expand. “Six...eels.  Swarthy, bristly, stoned out of their minds. They”—his face contorts with pain—“fell on me and burrowed in. One by one.”  

I take his hand. It’s cold. He doesn’t move, his cigarette forgotten.

“When they were done, they left me lying on the freezing ground. I remember I was looking at the stars in the night sky like they were beads of ice scattered on black velvet and I thought, this is it. I’m dying.” There is water in his eyes. He quickly wipes it.

I can’t breathe. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. 

I let go of his hand and scribble. “One of the vultures shot the macaw in the parking lot by your house. I saw it.” 

“What?” says Pavlik, startled. “The vulture what?”

“It was on the roof. It fired at the macaw and the butterfly.”

“The macaw and the butterfly?” He sounds lost.

“The black admiral. It lived, but the macaw died. The mouse pushed the butterfly out of the way but it wasn’t fast enough—”

Pavlik covers his face. 

I toss the notebook and forget myself and hold him. 

He sags into my arms and his hair is so close, so shiny and curly, that I pass my fingers through it. It’s silky just like I expected. I sway from side to side, and he silently sheds tears into my sweater. We sit like this for a long time.

. . .

It’s very dark. I can’t see my hands. Bright light flares on and blinds me. I blink. From the parlor someone is knocking on the glass of the balcony door. 

Pavlik stirs.

I see Yulia’s face, stern, her eyebrows arched in wonder, and Anton’s lips stretched in a grin. 

We’re still holding each other. 

I jump up so fast, the edge of my sweater lifts to my bare skin and— 

Shit! 

She looks and she sees. 

I hastily tug it down and smooth it over. My face is boiling and every bit of me is shaking.

 “Hey.” Pavlik opens the door. “Sorry. We lost track of time. Mama, are you okay?”

Her eyes fix on my waist and she throws a hand over her mouth.

“Yulechka, what’s the matter?” says Anton.

She points at my stomach as though she wants to poke it and watch it deflate. “This...” It’s all she can manage. “This...”

I try to look innocent but the damage is done.

“What is it?” Anton follows her finger. 

“You guys hungry?” Pavlik is trying to avert it. “How about some dinner? We’ve been sitting here all day.”

“Pregnant,” says Yulia. “She’s pregnant!”

“She what?” Anton blinks.

“Can we please come inside? Thanks.” Pavlik steps over the threshold and pulls me behind him. My legs turn to water.

Yulia’s arms cross over her chest. She starts without preamble, already controlled. “How long has this been going on?” Her voice quavers slightly.

I’d prefer it if you yelled, you egocentric hypocrite. Be honest and say it to my face. Say you hate me. Say you want your son to be rich and famous, married to a girl who can shit diamonds and not some knocked up mute dura without a ruble to her name. Go ahead, say it. Say it! I grit my teeth.

“What are you talking about?” says Anton.

“She’s pregnant! Can’t you see?”

“Pregnant? Surely you don’t think—” He shifts his gaze to Pavlik.

“What, you consider me incapable in that regard, Papa?” 

Oh no. Oh no. Don’t. I tug on Pavlik’s sleeve. 

He brushes me off.

“Watch your tone, son.”

“I’m sorry, what is it exactly that you want me to watch?” Pavlik’s voice is high, unnatural.

“All this time, right under my nose.” Yulia pins him with a burning stare. “You never had any secrets from me, Pavlusha, you always told me everything. Why?” 

No! I seize Pavlik’s hand. He roughly twists it out.

“Us,” says Anton. “Told us everything.”

Yulia’s skin attains a shade of green. “This is how you repay us? For everything we’ve done for you? This is what you do?”

Pavlik’s face is working and it doesn’t look good.

I wave my arms, it’s not his, it’s not his, and step to the balcony to get the notebook, but Pavlik blocks me. 

I’m so surprised that I back away and sink into the sofa and stare at the mahogany console draped with a crocheted hanky, the TV sitting on top of it. Unfeeling, unhearing. It’s over, it’s all over. 

Good job, Irina Myshko. Get ready to be kicked out. Where will you go now? In the middle of winter? Pregnant? What will you eat, where will you sleep? Whose ass will you kiss to make them take you in?

“Mama, Papa, please. Calm down. There is no need for this hostility. I can—” 

“Hostility?” Yulia inflates. “Hostility? I almost lost you once and you’re talking to me about hostility?” She looks at her husband. “Don’t be quiet. Say something.”

“Of course, Yulechka, of course.” He grills me through his thick glasses. “Irina, tell us. Are you, in fact, pregnant?”

Their eyes are on me. 

I shrink into the sofa.

“Why are you asking her? Like she’ll admit to it.” Yulia is livid. “You tricked us, you lied to us. You coerced my son into an affair. After everything we went through with him, all these years of pain and suffering, you come and, in the matter of months, you wreck his future. We trusted you, we took you in, fed you, clothed you. And you—” She catches her breath, veins prominent on her neck. “You trash! You—”

“Mama, stop it!”

No, let her. I get up from the sofa, seething. She’s finally telling me what she really thinks.

“How dare you yell at your mother!”

“The same as she dares to yell at Irina!”

“Pull up your sweater, please,” says Yulia.

I automatically cradle my belly in a protective hold and it jolts. The baby inside me moves. A faint passing feeling like a shift or a touch or a fluttering of wings. I look down and it does it again. The sensation of something floating, almost ticklish. 

Eaglet?

I gaze up, my mind blank. 

They are arguing and shaking fingers and Yulia is reaching over to me and Anton has froth around his mouth and Pavlik stops them both with his hands up and intercepts my stare and his eyes go wild and I know what he’s about to do but I can’t move.

He passes compressed air between his lips and I hear him say it. “That’s enough of that. You’re making my head hurt. It’s my life and my baby. Our baby. If you want no part of it, it’s your choice. We’ll figure things out on our own.”

What are you doing, Pavlik?

“We raised you,” says Yulia, suddenly teary. “We got you into one of the most prestigious Moscow schools, we’re paying your way through theater, bending over backward for Simeon Ignatievich to advance your career, and you go and lie with some trash. You’re a child, Pavlusha. You’re only eighteen. Don’t you understand what this will do to you? It will ruin your life.”

“What do you know about bending over backward?” 

Yulia goes pale. “You mustn’t say it. Don’t say it.”

“Why not?”

“This is why you were so adamant she stayed. This is why you brought her here, for us to get used to her. You planned it all along, am I right? You counted on us to raise your child while you two skip onstage, having the time of your lives. Well, I won’t have it, Pavlusha. Over my dead body.”

“Then we will leave.” 

They face each other.  

The baby moves again, as if it wants me to notice. 

I’ve felt you, eaglet, I’ve felt you! 

Yulia pushes Pavlik out of the way and slaps me and—

. . .

The mouse squeaks. The owl hoots and the viper hisses. They scare off the butterfly and descend on the mouse. Prod it, poke it, flip it over, and jab its belly. The mouse feels the eaglet eddy in its stomach, wanting to get out, to become a grown bird, a savage predator that can kill the viper and the owl and the boar and any beast that dares to hurt it.

The mouse peeps, content. It will let the eagle out even if that means it will destroy the mouse in the process.