briefer moments, to miss. Instead she said, “Please let it go.”
Her mother was silent for a moment. “Drew,” she said, her tone adamantly bewildered, “if I had known your thoughts about it were so…fraught!” This was typical of her mother, the switcheroo, as if Drew had created a problem that otherwise would not have existed.
“Look, I have to go,” Drew said tiredly. There were other things she wanted to say, but she knew too well what it might mean to state her thoughts, to act on her feelings. The last time she acted on her feelings, she ended up with an ex-husband and two sets of parents mad at her. “I’m meeting a friend.”
She hung up, and decided to put the conversation out of her head. After all, it was a small thing, and now it was over, and if she managed to think of it that way, as a chapter that had come to a close, then it might at last become nothing much at all.
H IS FIRST MEMORY was of winter.
A Sunday, with his parents after a heavy snowfall, walking past Red Square. Everything snowy; everything snow. The square is vast and quiet. There is just one area where people are allowed to cross, and in the distance they look like black dots—black dots slowly moving across an expanse of white. Grigori is just three years old. He stares at the people-dots, entranced, while his mother urges him to keep moving, to keep warm. He hears the crows cawing as they fly overhead, and looks up. The sky too is white, except for the birds. When one swoops down lower than the others, Grigori says, “Look at the bird,” because it is something he knows.
“ Voron ,” says his mother. The word for raven, the biggest and blackest of all.
“ Voron ,” he repeats, but Feodor corrects them, as is his nature. “No, vorona . See, they have a little gray on them.” Looking up, pointing.
“ Vorona ,” Grigori repeats. Caws in the thick white sky. “ Vorona ,” and people small as dots filing across the big white square. Not a male voron but a female vorona . Just a touch of gray. That very slim difference between two such similar things.
Making his way along the poorly shoveled sidewalk of St. Mary’s Street, Grigori considered that his vocation—his attention to the smallest details of language and image, slight shifts in words and meaning, the difference that a single letter could make—must have begun there in the square, in that moment, on that other snowy day. Subtle changes in sound and sense, words contained in other,different words…Even now Grigori often found himself noting tiny surprises in written English, that “intimates” contained “inmates,” just as “friend” contained “fiend.”…This was an attention that he had carried first into Norwegian, then into French. And yet it had been a shock to discover, at the lycée, that these interests far outweighed his talents in mathematics and sciences, and that despite the long hours he spent on homework in order to be in the supérieure group, he never excelled in those other subjects. “But aren’t your parents scientists?” a bewildered teacher had asked when Grigori performed poorly on a physics exam, as if the one thing naturally followed the other.
He hunched his shoulders against the thought, shoulders to ears in the frigid air—but still that other memory came slipping back. The way she opened the glass door between them, only slightly, her knuckles protruding as on a much older woman. The door propped in front of her like a shield, the cold finality of her voice.
I’m not the person you want .
With relief Grigori entered the fluorescent-lit Dunkin’ Donuts to meet Zoltan.
There he was, the back of his head, the grizzled thinning hair, hunched over a booth by the window, the tabletop spread with many sheets of paper. Grigori took a seat across from him on the hard scoop of bench and removed his gloves, quietly clearing his throat.
“Ah!” Zoltan looked up as if shocked. “You!”
Grigori said, “You know
Her mother was silent for a moment. “Drew,” she said, her tone adamantly bewildered, “if I had known your thoughts about it were so…fraught!” This was typical of her mother, the switcheroo, as if Drew had created a problem that otherwise would not have existed.
“Look, I have to go,” Drew said tiredly. There were other things she wanted to say, but she knew too well what it might mean to state her thoughts, to act on her feelings. The last time she acted on her feelings, she ended up with an ex-husband and two sets of parents mad at her. “I’m meeting a friend.”
She hung up, and decided to put the conversation out of her head. After all, it was a small thing, and now it was over, and if she managed to think of it that way, as a chapter that had come to a close, then it might at last become nothing much at all.
H IS FIRST MEMORY was of winter.
A Sunday, with his parents after a heavy snowfall, walking past Red Square. Everything snowy; everything snow. The square is vast and quiet. There is just one area where people are allowed to cross, and in the distance they look like black dots—black dots slowly moving across an expanse of white. Grigori is just three years old. He stares at the people-dots, entranced, while his mother urges him to keep moving, to keep warm. He hears the crows cawing as they fly overhead, and looks up. The sky too is white, except for the birds. When one swoops down lower than the others, Grigori says, “Look at the bird,” because it is something he knows.
“ Voron ,” says his mother. The word for raven, the biggest and blackest of all.
“ Voron ,” he repeats, but Feodor corrects them, as is his nature. “No, vorona . See, they have a little gray on them.” Looking up, pointing.
“ Vorona ,” Grigori repeats. Caws in the thick white sky. “ Vorona ,” and people small as dots filing across the big white square. Not a male voron but a female vorona . Just a touch of gray. That very slim difference between two such similar things.
Making his way along the poorly shoveled sidewalk of St. Mary’s Street, Grigori considered that his vocation—his attention to the smallest details of language and image, slight shifts in words and meaning, the difference that a single letter could make—must have begun there in the square, in that moment, on that other snowy day. Subtle changes in sound and sense, words contained in other,different words…Even now Grigori often found himself noting tiny surprises in written English, that “intimates” contained “inmates,” just as “friend” contained “fiend.”…This was an attention that he had carried first into Norwegian, then into French. And yet it had been a shock to discover, at the lycée, that these interests far outweighed his talents in mathematics and sciences, and that despite the long hours he spent on homework in order to be in the supérieure group, he never excelled in those other subjects. “But aren’t your parents scientists?” a bewildered teacher had asked when Grigori performed poorly on a physics exam, as if the one thing naturally followed the other.
He hunched his shoulders against the thought, shoulders to ears in the frigid air—but still that other memory came slipping back. The way she opened the glass door between them, only slightly, her knuckles protruding as on a much older woman. The door propped in front of her like a shield, the cold finality of her voice.
I’m not the person you want .
With relief Grigori entered the fluorescent-lit Dunkin’ Donuts to meet Zoltan.
There he was, the back of his head, the grizzled thinning hair, hunched over a booth by the window, the tabletop spread with many sheets of paper. Grigori took a seat across from him on the hard scoop of bench and removed his gloves, quietly clearing his throat.
“Ah!” Zoltan looked up as if shocked. “You!”
Grigori said, “You know
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