her rescuer from Manhattan starving artistry. “You’re a Midwesterner, Jayney. Aren’t you supposed to
like
this stuff?”
Douglas was never embarrassed to be an American, never hesitant to reveal his monolingual helplessness. Wherever he found himself, he pumped hands with street vendors and enjoyed an incorruptible digestive system. Travel scraped him away to reveal not some dulled surface but bright new layers of personality. But Jayne is thirty years old. She wishes to learn nothing new about the man she married. That time is gone. It has been months since she has even attempted a sculpture, a career that has earned her a reliable five-figure salary, provided that one counted past the decimal points. This was her joke for the cocktail-party circuit.
Jayne now studies the plain, awful hurt on Douglas’s face. It is a large lumpy face above which a periwig would not seem at all improper. The bluish beginnings of a spotty, erratic beard gleam upon his cheeks and chin like an unfinished tattoo. His boot is beside him, encased in a cracked shell of mud. She catches herself thinking,
Ruined
. The boots I bought for him are ruined. And she knows that for one horrible moment she has forgotten that he is hurt, or does not care, which is the same thing. This is marriage, she thinks, with a whelm of heartsick apathy. This is what happens. Its intimacy is such that you—
“God,” Jayne says suddenly, paddling her hands in front of her face. Some of Viktor’s cigarette smoke has, in the motionless air, drifted to her nostrils and given her lungs a toxic baptism. She looks over at Viktor. “What on
earth
are you smoking?”
Viktor flashes a horselike smile. He has a pure Slavic face that allows Jayne to grasp what
Caucasian
really means. The arches of his cheeks look as hard as whet-stones. His hair is stalky and yellow, like wheat. It occurs to her that only Caucasian follicles pigment their yield with something other than humanity’s standard-issue black.
“Death in swamp,” Viktor answers her. “Very strong. Very bad taste. Is what we call them.”
Jayne obliges him. “We?”
“Afghantsi,” he says.
Jayne nods blithely and looks back to Douglas, who is staring at Viktor with huge confounded eyes.
“Afghantsi?” Douglas says, his tone one of vague challenge.
Viktor nods sharply, then stands. “
Da
. Come. Replace your boot. We walk again.”
“What,” Jayne asks Douglas after Viktor has forged out ahead, “is an Afghantsi?”
Douglas reaches out to Jayne and she pulls him onto her boulder, releasing his hand the moment he is balanced. Douglas’s ankle feels vulcanized, though he has tied his laces so tightly he cannot quite claim that it hurts. He shrugs at Jayne. “That means he’s a veteran.”
Jayne stares into some middle distance, her chest heaved out. Stray coils of premature gray wisp around her small shell-like ears. “A veteran of what?”
“The Soviet war in Afghanistan.”
They both look at Viktor. He has stopped ten boulders up and waits for them with a lavishly dour face and his arms in a tight cross-chest plait. Jayne stares at him, her lips scarcely moving as she speaks. “And these Afghantsi all smoke the same awful cigarettes?”
“Looks that way.”
“Great,” she says, leaping to the next rock.
“Your coat,” Viktor asks Jayne. “How much you pay?”
They are walking across a greenish hillock, pingo mounds squishing beneath their boots. The boulder field is an hour’s walk behind them. The clouds have broken, and sunlight falls upon the steppe in huge warm rhomboids. The lower slopes of the Tien Shan Mountains are smoky with the vapor of spring-melted snow, and their white saw-toothed upper slopes and horns glitter like pyrite. Jayne walks beside Viktor, while Douglas has dropped back.
Jayne looks down at her orange jacket. It is a Patagonia Puffball jacket, space-agey and shiny, tricked out with Polarguard HV insulation, a ripstop nylon shell, and
like
this stuff?”
Douglas was never embarrassed to be an American, never hesitant to reveal his monolingual helplessness. Wherever he found himself, he pumped hands with street vendors and enjoyed an incorruptible digestive system. Travel scraped him away to reveal not some dulled surface but bright new layers of personality. But Jayne is thirty years old. She wishes to learn nothing new about the man she married. That time is gone. It has been months since she has even attempted a sculpture, a career that has earned her a reliable five-figure salary, provided that one counted past the decimal points. This was her joke for the cocktail-party circuit.
Jayne now studies the plain, awful hurt on Douglas’s face. It is a large lumpy face above which a periwig would not seem at all improper. The bluish beginnings of a spotty, erratic beard gleam upon his cheeks and chin like an unfinished tattoo. His boot is beside him, encased in a cracked shell of mud. She catches herself thinking,
Ruined
. The boots I bought for him are ruined. And she knows that for one horrible moment she has forgotten that he is hurt, or does not care, which is the same thing. This is marriage, she thinks, with a whelm of heartsick apathy. This is what happens. Its intimacy is such that you—
“God,” Jayne says suddenly, paddling her hands in front of her face. Some of Viktor’s cigarette smoke has, in the motionless air, drifted to her nostrils and given her lungs a toxic baptism. She looks over at Viktor. “What on
earth
are you smoking?”
Viktor flashes a horselike smile. He has a pure Slavic face that allows Jayne to grasp what
Caucasian
really means. The arches of his cheeks look as hard as whet-stones. His hair is stalky and yellow, like wheat. It occurs to her that only Caucasian follicles pigment their yield with something other than humanity’s standard-issue black.
“Death in swamp,” Viktor answers her. “Very strong. Very bad taste. Is what we call them.”
Jayne obliges him. “We?”
“Afghantsi,” he says.
Jayne nods blithely and looks back to Douglas, who is staring at Viktor with huge confounded eyes.
“Afghantsi?” Douglas says, his tone one of vague challenge.
Viktor nods sharply, then stands. “
Da
. Come. Replace your boot. We walk again.”
“What,” Jayne asks Douglas after Viktor has forged out ahead, “is an Afghantsi?”
Douglas reaches out to Jayne and she pulls him onto her boulder, releasing his hand the moment he is balanced. Douglas’s ankle feels vulcanized, though he has tied his laces so tightly he cannot quite claim that it hurts. He shrugs at Jayne. “That means he’s a veteran.”
Jayne stares into some middle distance, her chest heaved out. Stray coils of premature gray wisp around her small shell-like ears. “A veteran of what?”
“The Soviet war in Afghanistan.”
They both look at Viktor. He has stopped ten boulders up and waits for them with a lavishly dour face and his arms in a tight cross-chest plait. Jayne stares at him, her lips scarcely moving as she speaks. “And these Afghantsi all smoke the same awful cigarettes?”
“Looks that way.”
“Great,” she says, leaping to the next rock.
“Your coat,” Viktor asks Jayne. “How much you pay?”
They are walking across a greenish hillock, pingo mounds squishing beneath their boots. The boulder field is an hour’s walk behind them. The clouds have broken, and sunlight falls upon the steppe in huge warm rhomboids. The lower slopes of the Tien Shan Mountains are smoky with the vapor of spring-melted snow, and their white saw-toothed upper slopes and horns glitter like pyrite. Jayne walks beside Viktor, while Douglas has dropped back.
Jayne looks down at her orange jacket. It is a Patagonia Puffball jacket, space-agey and shiny, tricked out with Polarguard HV insulation, a ripstop nylon shell, and
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