Dog Park E-Book

Sofi Oksanen

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'An ambiguous horror story about egg donorship and the black market, it keeps the reader equally balanced between frustration and fascination. ' Daily Mail 'An intricate, textured slow-burner that paints a vivid picture of a post-Soviet state where gangsters rule and the exploitation of the female body is big business' Guardian Helsinki, 2016. Olenka sits on a bench, watching a family play in a dog park. A stranger sits down beside her. Olenka startles; she would recognize this other woman anywhere. After all, Olenka was the one who ruined her life. And this woman may be about to do the same to Olenka. Yet, for a fragile moment, here they are, together - looking at their own children being raised by other people. Moving seamlessly between modern-day Finland and Ukraine in the early days of its post-Soviet independence, Dog Park is a keenly observed, dark and propulsive novel set at the intersection of East and West, centered in a web of exploitation and the commodification of the female body. Oksanen brings fearless psychological acuity to this captivating story about a woman unable to escape the memory of her lost child, the ruthless powers that still hunt her, and the lies that could well end up saving her.

Leseprobe

Sofi Oksanen is a Finnish-Estonian novelist and playwright. She has received numerous prizes for her work, including the Swedish Academy Nordic Prize, the Prix Femina, the Budapest Grand Prize, the European Book Prize, and the Nordic Council Literature Prize. She lives in Helsinki.

ALSO BY SOFI OKSANEN

Norma

When the Doves Disappeared

Purge

Originally published in 2019 as Koirapuisto by Like Kustannus, Helsinki.

First published in hardback in the United States of America in 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

First published in trade paperback in Great Britain in 2021 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Sofi Oksanen, 2021

English translation copyright © Owen Frederick Witesman, 2021

The moral right of Sofi Oksanen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 83895 142 9

E-book ISBN: 978 1 83895 143 6

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

A glossary of terms is provided at the end of the novel for the reader’s reference.

HELSINKI

2016

Perhaps everything would have gone differently if I’d recognized her immediately and known to flee. But I didn’t; I didn’t even turn my head when the stranger sat down at the end of the bench, a pained slowness to her movements. Hoping she would understand that I wasn’t looking for conversation, I loudly rustled the pages of the book in my lap. I wasn’t in this park looking for company.

The book belonged to the library just a stone’s throw from the park and its fenced dog run. Carrying a bag bulging with novels made my stops at the park look natural. Whenever anyone happened to ask, I told them how much I liked animals and watching them play but that I couldn’t keep a pet of my own because of allergies. The woman sitting next to me didn’t have a dog either, I noticed, but otherwise my attention was focused on the street surrounding the park. Furtively I glanced at my watch, although I knew I was on time. I was afraid I’d come for nothing.

The woman extended her legs and stretched, as people often do when considering how to initiate conversation—a yawn, a straightening of a jacket, or a hand gesture laying the foundation for comments about the weather or other trivialities. However, there weren’t any questions about my book or any platitudes about the temperature.

Sliding to the other end of the bench, I increased my distance from the interloper. Recently I’d begun paying a different sort of attention to the others idling in the park. The retirees and unemployed people strolling here just needed an excuse to get out. Perhaps someday I would be like that, after I no longer had any reason to visit the park or any kind of schedule to my life. Then I too would want my neighbors to hear the bang of my front door as a sign that I was busy and had friends to visit, and then I would come here to be part of the world by watching other people’s lives.

A white miniature schnauzer approaching the dog park received admiring glances from passersby. My companion on the bench perked up. As she leaned forward slightly, I expected her to finally work up the courage to say something, maybe about the schnauzer’s grooming or its exemplary obedience, but the woman remained silent.

I

Invisible

A VILLAGE, MYKOLAIV OBLAST

2006

When I entered the bedroom for the first time since childhood, I recoiled at the sight I encountered. Framed pictures of me graced the table, the chest of drawers, and the wall. For the most part they were yellowed advertisements cut from newspapers, showing me using my curves to peddle everything from stain removers to car parts. I’d sent the pictures to my mother as proof of my modeling work, assuming they would end up in a scrapbook, but Mom had turned them into a full-room shrine with eye-catching splashes of color and mark-down percentages competing for attention. There was nothing in these pictures to celebrate, let alone remember with pride. They made me ill.

After removing the clippings from the walls, I swept the pictures on the chest of drawers into my arms and shoved the whole lot into the closet. On top of the pile lay a yarn ad featuring skeins that glowed with all the colors of a crackling fire.

By suppertime, the pictures were back in their places—even the chestnut puree ad, which I despised. My mother’s swiftness astonished me. She had managed it while I was outside inspecting the garden with my aunt. When my aunt entered the bedroom, she put a hand on my back and whispered that I shouldn’t deny a mother the right to be proud of her children. I couldn’t tell her how wrong everything had gone. My aunt looked at me and gave me a squeeze.

“We’re expanding the plantings, and Ivan is helping, so we’re fine,” she said. “I’m so glad we have you home again, Olenka.”

My aunt had aged, as had my mother. The dog standing guard in the yard was new. Otherwise nothing had changed since I left. A stork’s nest still sat on top of the electric pole, though the birds had already flown south, and there were still dead men’s jackets hanging next to the front door. One was my father’s, and the other belonged to his sister’s deceased husband. According to my aunt, it was good for visitors to think we had men in the house. We’d moved in with her after my father’s funeral, and now I had returned to this house of lonely widows where we gave each other flowers on Women’s Day. That thought made me ask my aunt whether Boris was still making his horilka. As she fetched a bottle, I finally changed my shoes for galoshes. They were new and lightweight, maybe silicone. Bought for me, presumably.

The next morning, I walked to the bus stop and looked to see what was visible through the cracks in the garden fence and over it from farther down the road. There was nothing to attract attention, and no one would come to inspect this plot of land by chance. The situation might be different once the flowers were blazing red. But my aunt was right, we would need more poppies. I was an extra mouth to feed, and the previous evening I had already ordered us some thirtyliter canisters of drinking water. Abroad I’d become accustomed to drinking water constantly and had completely forgotten the state of the wells here. I didn’t know how I would pay for my order. I would have to abandon the way we models keep our weight in check. A thicker waist was the least of my worries.

I didn’t want my aunt to seize on Ivan’s suggestions—to borrow money from him and not to increase the size of the poppy fields—even though I trusted him and his desire to help. A tall field of corn could conceal even a large flower planting, and our hired hand, Boris, could handle the expansion. He was Ivan’s brother and like a son to my aunt. Still, I didn’t want us any more dependent on the gang Ivan worked for and to whom he delivered the compote derived from the poppies. I hadn’t planned a future like this for us. We wouldn’t even be talking about poppies if my face had paid off. We would have closed the compote kitchen, and I would have built my aunt a new house in place of the old one or bought an apartment in the city. They never would have needed to worry about every sign of instability that might affect their already insufficient pension payments.

I’d claimed that homesickness had brought me back. I don’t know who believed that, though. I hadn’t been able to send money for years. I had to fix this situation. I had to find work.

I began to visit the city to look for job postings. Often a bevy of girls brimming with hope and emitting clouds of perfume rode the same bus to the Palace, where bride shows were held for foreign bachelors in the conference rooms. As their destination approached, the girls with short hair would add more hairspray, and the girls with longer locks would grab their brushes, whose strokes fell in time with the rhythmic clinking of lipstick tubes, powder cases, and pocket mirrors. I’d spent years in back rooms full of similar dreams of bright futures; only the scent cloud on this bus also contained the stench of rancid rouge. The girl sitting behind me was powdering her cheeks with a puff that hadn’t been washed in years, and many of the girls’ dresses featured patterns familiar from the pelts of wild cats. I listened to their conversations and wondered whether I’d have to try my luck the same way, even though I knew none of us was any more likely to find Prince Charming abroad than here. These girls didn’t know that yet, though, and their excited voices reminded me of my own escape to Paris. I’d been nervous, too, and afraid that I might do something wrong. I’d also wanted more than my home could offer. I knew this road.

Once we arrived, the flock of girls fluttered out, leaving the smell of old cosmetics and young hair as they click-clacked arm in arm toward the hotel. Business was clearly booming, and that made me think of something that might help.

. . .

On the way to the Internet café, I stopped to inspect the weathered flyers attached to the electric poles, trying to pick out any companies that seemed like bride agencies. If I couldn’t find the solicitations I was looking for on the poles, power boxes, or phone booth walls—or online—I would have to waste money on newspapers and go through their help-wanted pages.

But I was in luck.

The agencies weren’t looking only for brides, they also needed multilingual women to work as interpreters. I tore off all the phone number flaps fluttering at the bottom of one flyer. Then, after a moment’s consideration, I removed the entire leaflet from the pole, as well as a couple of others, to reduce my competition. I decided to begin my calls that day. I couldn’t fail. I was more than qualified. Hope bloomed like a flower, the brushes of its petals on my cheeks restoring the self-confidence I’d lost.

I landed an interview the next day, but I didn’t get the job. Instead of giving up, I simply swung my hair and arranged another. The mood of the girls racing to the city on the bus was infectious, and there was no shortage of bride agencies. There were three on Lenin Prospekt alone, as well as on Sovetskaya and Moskovskaya. I would get to know the industry, save what I could, and maybe someday manage to set up my own business—perhaps one that would offer tips for winning the hearts of Ukrainian women, helping to choose personal gifts for one’s ladylove. We would remind men that a gentleman should bring flowers, offer his arm, open doors, and help his date out of the car. Or maybe I could search for faces suitable for Western magazines and open a modeling school in one of the many million-plus cities of Siberia, where nationalities had blended in unique combinations because of the camps. I always used to lose out to those girls, with blood from every corner of the Soviet Union—Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Asia, many of the indigenous peoples. However, a plan like this required capital, and that I did not yet have. Soon I would, though.

I was on my way to the bus station when a vaguely familiar girl ran after me. Greeting me, she said she’d seen me in the queues at the bride agencies. She had also been trying her luck there. Today she’d applied as a bride at the same agency where she’d also applied for a secretarial position.

“At least it doesn’t cost anything,” she said. “You should do it, too.”

“I don’t know.”

I dug out of my bag the ads I’d been collecting, to ask her for tips about the different companies, but before I could ask my questions, she shook her head.

“Don’t bother.”

“What do you mean?”

Then I listed the languages that I spoke at least passably. I knew English, French, Russian, Ukrainian, Estonian, German, and even a little Finnish. Foreign words had always stuck in my head easily. I was probably the most linguistically talented woman in the whole oblast, where there was even a shortage of English speakers.

“You’ll find a husband in no time.”

“I don’t want to get married. I want to be an interpreter. Or maybe a visa agent.”

The girl laughed and pulled her boots up toward her thighs. Her skirt was short. I realized I had dressed wrong for today. I should have been showing off my other assets.

“My cousin’s friend is an assistant at a company that was just looking for an interpreter. She told me who got the job,” the girl said. “Some girl who’s dating the boss’s son.”

Looking up at the tangled web of trolleybus wires, I wished for a drink. Nothing ever changed in this country.

“And yet you keep going to interviews.”

“You have to try everything. Maybe the owner’s son will drop by the office while I’m there and fall in love with me. That’s how my cousin’s friend got her job, too.”

The girl fluffed her hair and gave me a wink. Pulling a pack of slim cigarettes out of my bag, I offered one to her. I was anxious at the thought of returning to that room contaminated by all those ads with my picture in them. I suspected I’d have to live there longer than anticipated. My aunt had called all her acquaintances, as had my mother and Ivan. Everyone promised to tell us immediately if they heard about a suitable job. No one had gotten back to us yet, though.

“You can make a good living in travel documents. You could set up your own visa agency,” the girl said, “but for that you need connections and a fat wallet. I have a better idea.”

“Okay, spill it.”

“They need pretty faces at protests. You get paid right then, and they take everyone who wants to do it.”

I vaguely remembered my mother mentioning this. After the Orange Revolution, ads had begun appearing on the electric poles seeking participants for demonstrations. The nature of the events always remained unclear. But the pay was the most important piece of bait, and they always mentioned that.

“My brother makes a little in the screamers.”

I frowned.

“You haven’t heard of them? The work is almost the same as marching in protests but louder, and they have to rehearse. Actually, it’s more for men. You have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

“Then come with me to carry banners. Sometimes the bus rides are long, and I could use the company. Call me if you’re interested.”

The girl rummaged in her pocket for a ripped ad, wrote her phone number on the back, and handed it to me. My throat tightened. I would have liked to invite her for coffee and cognac, but she was in a hurry to pick up her child from day care, and her marshrutka was around the corner and would leave as soon as the seats in the van were full.

At home a mood of panic greeted me. Boris sat rocking in the corner, his hands covering his head. My mother and aunt were still in their funeral clothes, which they’d put on that morning to travel to the burial of a distant relative. I thought something must have happened at the funeral, until I found out what was wrong. The compote kitchen was empty. Even the television was gone. We’d been robbed. The house had been left unguarded for just a moment before Boris came to work, and that had been a mistake.

I wasn’t worried about the thieves. Ivan would track them down and make sure they understood they had touched the wrong people, knocked out the wrong people’s dog. That wouldn’t bring the compote back, though. I remembered the love with which Boris had watched over the poppies’ darkening pods, how well he’d cared for them and his kitchen. The robbers had taken the best stuff in the oblast. Nothing remained.

The ad on the electric pole wasn’t the only weathered notice seeking beautiful girls, but it was the first one that said directly it was not an escort service, a bar, or a bride agency. It also expressed a warm welcome to young mothers, as well as married women. That caught my attention. I realized it could be just another way of luring in fresh meat. However, I was getting desperate and was sick of all the headlines asking, “Why should a beautiful girl be poor?” The job interviews had not borne fruit. My aunt had already talked to Ivan about the lost compote and the possibility of a loan. But I didn’t want to go down that road. My family’s plight was a result of my failed career. It was my fault, and I had to fix it.

The ad hinted at significant lump-sum payments, and only one phone number tab remained at the bottom of the paper.

The woman who answered the phone became excited when I told her about my years as a model. In the background, I could hear the tapping of a keyboard as she searched my name. I hoped the browser would take her to my old agency’s site. My pictures were still there. I’d looked at them a couple of times on the computer at the café. I didn’t know why. It was as if I wanted to torment myself or needed courage to present myself more confidently in the interviews.

“When can you come visit us?”

“Wait a moment, I’ll check my calendar.”

I was standing on Lenin Prospekt, outside a bride agency called Royal Relationship. Next up, on Moskovskaya, Arrows of Amor and, next to Hotel Metallurg, the Slavess. Also, disintegrating in my bag was the phone number of the girl who worked as a protester. Quite a lineup. I started walking back to the bus stop and tossed the girl’s contact information into the street. The office was located in Dnipropetrovsk, so the journey would take time. Still, I was ready to jump on a train at a moment’s notice.

“It would be nice if you could bring a picture of yourself, and maybe also of your family—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins,” the woman said. “The more, the better. We want to know our employees, who you really are and what your strengths are.”

“What kinds of pictures?”

“Anything. A picture is worth a thousand words,” the woman said with a laugh. “The director is coming from Kyiv next Monday on the evening flight and will have to return on Wednesday.”

I banged my toe on a raised paving stone. Was this company doing so well that its director flew between Kyiv and Dnipro? Only ministers of parliament and top businessmen did that—people with money to burn. Was I really going to have a face-to-face meeting with such a person? Or was this woman trying to make an impression on me, make it clear they were a boutique operation? My hand instinctively went to my hair. My roots were showing. At my aunt’s house, we only had a summer shower. Washing out hair dye under it was difficult, so I’d have to go to a hairdresser.

“The director’s schedule next week is very busy in Kyiv but more relaxed here. So, will meeting on our premises work for you? If you send your account number, we’ll transfer money for a train ticket. Will an SW-class carriage be acceptable?”

I managed to reply in the affirmative and hoped that the interruptions in my breathing weren’t audible on the other side of the line. The stink of coal in trains nauseated me, so a ticket in a two-person cabin was a pleasant surprise. But something didn’t add up. I’d found this ad on an electric pole, not in the newspaper or online or even in a marshrutka. I’d found it in a place they didn’t have to pay for, not where successful companies advertised. How did the director of a company like that have the money to fly between Dnipro and Kyiv, and how did a company like that have the resources to buy a job applicant an expensive train ticket simply for an interview? I didn’t understand the rush any more than the scope of the request for photographs, let alone what the job actually was. The woman’s enthusiasm made me suspect organ donation, though I didn’t get what that had to do with my family photos. But what did it matter? The pay was the thing. The woman continued chattering, saying something about the gift of life, and then returned to the travel arrangements. I decided that I could give up one kidney. One was enough to get by. And half a liver. They would pay even more for that.

I didn’t share my suspicions with anyone. The excuse I came up with for my trip to Dnipro was an interpreting job, and that lit a spark in my mother’s eyes. She began to stride back and forth in the kitchen, her back straight and her cheeks shining like the side of a brand-new bus, as if wanting to tell everyone the good news, even though the audience was only my aunt. I didn’t want to worry them. They wouldn’t know so much as my job description until I’d been promoted to coordinator.

HELSINKI

2016

My heart leaped in my chest when the father followed the mother and the dog into the park. Both children were also with them. The boy, who trailed the others, looked animated as he rooted in his quickly dwindling bag of raisins; I nodded almost unconsciously at the family’s healthy snack habits. Last week I hadn’t seen the children and blamed a bout of the stomach flu that had been going around. Now all of them appeared healthy. To look at her, you wouldn’t have believed the woman had been sitting up nights at her children’s bedsides, and she’d even managed to go shopping: her new sandy-brown trench coat would have looked good on me, too, and the girl had a scarf I hadn’t seen before. When his phone rang, the man answered it and smiled at his wife as if apologizing. The woman brushed his arm and pressed her head against his shoulder for a moment. Even the mad dash of their schnauzer when they let it free was a flawless performance. Its rare white coloration attracted attention; at dog shows, it always won. For a moment, I admired the dog as it ran and the watchful posture it adopted when it stopped after noticing something interesting in the distance. The boy hung back at the gate. After shaking the final raisins from the bag, instead of throwing it on the ground, he placed it in a trash can. He’d been raised well and had the same good manners I would have taught a child.

The clank of a lighter interrupted my observations. The woman who had sat down next to me lit a cigarette. Glancing at her irritably, I just had time to recognize the familiar floral pattern on her slim cigarette pack before I returned my focus to the family disappearing behind the rocky hill. My companion was not Finnish—Glamour cigarettes were not a local taste.

“In America they called us angels. Is that where you learned it?”

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard correctly or if my mind was playing tricks on me. My gaze was still focused on the family, my chin raised. I didn’t dare turn my head and confirm what I’d heard. The woman continued, and the longer she went on, the surer I became that this wasn’t a hallucination. I knew her, and she knew me, and we were both sitting on this bench in this Helsinki park as if the years hadn’t passed between us. Word by word she dislodged one stone after another of the foundation I’d carefully built for my life. I had never imagined that it would happen this way. That it would begin with these dulcet descriptors she tossed into the air like Lomonosov porcelain teacups, watching whether I’d remember what she was talking about. Whether I’d remember that, years ago, I’d been the one to use words like these to lure girls to work for us and that I’d also used them on her. But of course I remembered. I remembered every trip wire in every saccharine adjective, and each of them bent my shoulders lower, as if that might help me disappear from this bench. Syllable by syllable, I felt myself shrinking.

“But you always managed to find the girls who no one ever praised. They were exactly what you were looking for.”

“You weren’t like that.”

“Many were.”

She smacked her lips and stretched out her arms like a ballerina.

“How did it go?” she asked. “Swan Lake. My arms reminded you of Swan Lake. Was that it?”

“They still do.”

She laughed, her windbreaker rustling, and I saw that familiar wing motion. I was fond of her controlled way of moving. With each step, her foot met the ground as if an auditorium full of people was looking on.

When we took the pictures for this woman’s portfolio—she was just a girl at the time—she had done splits in the dress I chose. Even though she was only warming up for the actual photo shoot, there was something unforgettably intimate in the combination: the floral swing dress, the rehearsal room, the flexible ankles. It was as if she had forgotten the photographer. The makeup artist had spent an hour with her brushes on the girl’s face, but you never would have guessed. When I saw the finished folder, I’d known that Daria would become my star and that she would make me a star.

Daria stood up and started walking toward the gate of the dog enclosure. I’d recovered from my shock enough to realize what this meant. Meter by meter she was approaching the family, and meter by meter images began to pop into my mind of what would happen when the father recognized her. First, he would be shocked, and then he would take out his phone. The mother would start to scream, the dog would go wild, the girl would burst into tears, and the boy would stare at us, wondering at the cause of the mayhem, and when the mother dragged her children to safety as the police sirens approached, the boy would look back, and the sight of the ragged women who had sent his parents out of their minds would be burned forever into his memory.

The family had split up during our conversation, and Daria stopped for a moment as if considering which one to approach first. The father held the little girl by the hand, and they were going after the dog, which was out of sight, while the mother’s attention had been captured by a golden retriever puppy, whose owner was chatting with her. The boy was hanging around by the street. Daria tilted her head, made her decision, and opened the dog gate. Only ten meters of rocky ground remained between her and the mother. I would be exposed in an instant; I would lose everything I had succeeded in building over the past six years. I would lose my entire new life in Helsinki. My future would be numbered in days, perhaps in hours.

I turned my eyes skyward. My mother believed in God and the saints, but I did not. Still, I raised my scarf to cover my head as if I were in a church and muttered something that could have been a prayer, and it was that simple movement of covering my head that woke me up to the fact that I still had two functional legs. I had to stop Daria.

The schnauzer shot out from behind the hill with a terrier on its heels, and the pets’ wild play captured the family’s attention. They didn’t see my swaying steps or how I nearly tripped on my scarf and people moved to avoid me as if I were drunk. Daria was only a few meters away from the woman and was already opening her mouth.

“Do you want money? Is that what this is about?”

I’d made it in time after all. The corners of Daria’s mouth curved into a smile. The mother’s back receded. The dogs were back under control. Leash hooks snapped shut around collar rings.

For a moment I thought Daria would laugh and say something about my clothes and how little my appearance bespoke affluence, but instead she froze in place and didn’t try to pull out of my grip.

“How much would you give me?”

I followed her gaze. The family was preparing to leave the park. The mother adjusted the girl’s coat, and then her daughter threw her arms around her mother’s neck. Daria flinched as if she’d been hit. I felt a tremor in her bony arm. What if she wasn’t in the park to blackmail me or this family? But everything about her argued for the assumption that she needed money. She’d lost weight, and her clothes hung off her. They were rags, the faux leather of her boots flaking and her shoulder bag gaping open to reveal tears in the lining that had been repaired with tape. Daria had made good money. Where had she squandered her earnings? Had someone taken her savings, or had she gotten tangled up with the wrong man? Had she used it to help her family? Had she used everything to get them out of eastern Ukraine and away from the war? Hadn’t the money been enough to build a new life? Or had she wasted it earlier and now had to get her hands on more cash to help the family members she’d left behind? According to my mother, the Donetsk People’s Republic had taken some people’s homes while offering others a path to riches because the refugees had left behind so much wealth. Some joined the separatist forces voluntarily, while others were press-ganged, and deserters were shot. Some joined because otherwise their homes and possessions would be confiscated, and their loved ones would be left destitute. Could Daria’s arrival be related to that? What if the separatists had forced one of Daria’s two brothers into their ranks and he wanted to get off the front? Or what if one of her relatives had been kidnapped? Daria watched the park until the family disappeared from view, and her gaze went dark like a candle burning out. I took a deep breath. I’d received a reprieve.

“You won’t get a penny from me if we’re recognized.”

“Did they recognize you?” Mockery flickered on Daria’s mouth, and she licked away a drop of blood that had appeared. Her lips were dry and cracked.

“Yeah,” Daria snorted. “They don’t remember you any more than me. You’re just as unique to them as I was to you.”

I had called Daria unique. The most unique. I had praised her bone structure and her language skills, her IQ and her gymnastics background. Her smile had been as cloudless as the Texas sky and her chin like a shining mother-of-pearl caviar spoon.

“I was convinced you wouldn’t remember me even if I said my name when I sat down next to you that first time,” Daria said. “You weren’t expecting me to find you before anyone else, were you?”

I remembered how once as a child I’d been separated from my father in a tunnel. Dad had found me within seconds, but I’d already had time to worry that I would never see him again and that something unimaginable would attack me from under the wall formed by the crowd’s dark winter coats. Now I felt that again. Except that no one would save me. No one but me. I would have to try to figure out myself what was going on.

“Can we at least talk about this somewhere else?” I asked and looked at my hands. The blood had left my fingertips.

DNIPROPETROVSK

2006

The director of the company spread out on the table the stack of family photographs I’d brought. I hadn’t prepared, and never would have suspected that I’d have to review the photos in the actual job interview. I hadn’t seen any pictures of my father in years.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked, which was when I realized that I’d covered my mouth with my hand.

“I just miss him,” I said, taking the proffered handkerchief. This sentimentality surprised even me. I was embarrassed. Why hadn’t I prepared for this better? I’d made my mother collect the photos, claiming that when I was abroad, I’d wished I’d had a family album. Mom probably thought I was planning to move. She tried to ask me about it, but I quickly shoved the photographs in my bag and slipped out. I trusted that my mother wouldn’t choose anything that would distress her daughter. Like funeral pictures. At least I didn’t see any of those in front of me.

“Your father died in some sort of accident . . . was that it?”

The director spent another moment inspecting the photographs like a bad hand of cards, then she went to a cupboard to retrieve a bottle and two glasses, along with a box of chocolates. Focusing on the weight of the crystal in my hand and the cognac burning away the tightness that had formed in my throat, I ordered myself to get it together. I’d screwed up: I hadn’t given a thought to how my father would look to a stranger’s eyes. When he died, I was fourteen, and it felt like I was fourteen again, at the mine where my dad had taken me. In the topmost shot, a group of men who had just finished their shift were smoking, bright sparks burning in their black fingers. In the background was the old bathtub used to hoist them out of the hole. Someone sat unwrapping his toe-rags and grinning with a row of shining teeth. They all looked the same under a layer of coal dust, except for my father, his face gleaming clean in the center like a full moon—he was the only one lacking the third eye of a headlamp.

There was another photo from the same time. In it, my father stood next to a man I didn’t recognize, who wore a leather jacket. The smiles of a deal well done caressed their cheeks. Behind them stood two vans, Bukhankas, and amid all the gray, black, and brown gleamed a chaffinch egg–blue ZiL truck.

In the most recent photo, my father had a couple of days of stubble and wore only a sleeveless undershirt. Its yellowed piping hung slack. In his fingers lolled a cigarette in a holder, and his elbows rested on the kitchen table. On the windowsill, tomato seedlings in need of thinning grew wild, the sticks holding them up bent and helpless. Between an open bottle of pickles and an enamel bowl filled to overflowing with boiled potatoes stood an unlabeled vodka bottle. The mood was despondent, the heavy glass ashtray barely visible under the mound of ashes, the matchbox empty. There were three glasses but no sign of visitors. I recognized the waxed tablecloth and the wall of our house, its canned pea–green color. I couldn’t figure out who had taken the picture or why. Where was the father I remembered with the manner of an owner and the nonchalance of a moneymaker? The man in this picture was tired, sties and life weighing down his gaze. No sign of his youthful good looks remained, not even a hint.

The director pushed the pictures back.

“Your mother is good proof that being photogenic is something you inherit, as was your father when he was younger. What happened after that? And what about Snizhne!”

“We didn’t actually live there.”

“Your résumé says that you went to school there.”

“Only for a little while.”

“But your father was from Snizhne, as were his parents. Why on earth did you move there? From Tallinn, in the nineties no less?”

The director shook her head. This clearly made her doubt the intellectual gifts of my family, as it did me. It had been stupid then, and I was still paying for it. Leaving my aunt’s house no longer seemed likely. I hadn’t been able to prepare mentally for the job I was applying for because I didn’t know what it entailed. However, as the interview progressed, I began to understand what was going on and why Snizhne mattered.

“Your chest X-rays,” the director said. “What do they show?”

I frowned in confusion, though I already sensed what she meant. My father stared back at me from the table. He had developed the early pictures of himself, and their edges curled like birch bark. Some of the shots had triangular brackets still stuck to them from where my mother had removed them from her own photo album.

“Once we had a client who was a Ukrainian-American environmental researcher who wanted a donor from her family’s home region in Donbas, Stakhanov, right next door to Snizhne,” the director said. “In the end he changed his mind and chose a girl from the least polluted oblast in the Soviet Union—not in Ukraine. He wanted to avoid risky material. Some Western clients are extremely environmentally conscious. If they start doing searches about Snizhne, the results won’t be good. Want to try it yourself?”

The display of the desktop computer rotated toward me.

“Look.”

The director typed in a few words, and the screen flooded with views that would startle anyone. Just like those final photos of my dad.

“Our office specializes in serving foreigners, and images like this don’t give a good first impression. They arouse suspicions that our girls are motivated by money rather than the calling. Snizhne comes across as a poor, desperate city.”

I was already halfway out of my chair when the director started to talk about the agency’s future prospects. Apparently, the interview wasn’t over yet. She had just wanted to put me in my place by making clear the factors that reduced my market value. Now, instead of presenting more harsh realities, it was time for a relaxed account of how the director had begun her business in the great cities of the Soviet Union, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv, where she had found skilled workers eager for jobs because the collapse of the empire also meant a crash in specialist employment. Her plans had been received with joy, delighting even the ordinary person on the street—because of her, the entire medical profession had not vanished into the West. Listening to her, my interest in the job began to grow beyond the pay. I was fascinated by this woman, by her talent, which it was impossible not to admire, and by her ability to seize the opportunities she encountered. It was in that moment that my faith in her was born. I wanted to be like her.

“Did you know that the first test-tube baby in the CIS was born in Kharkiv? Our medical staff and researchers are world class. But do you think that’s enough for Western clients? Of course not. So, we have to change the way we work,” she said. “They ask about groundwater, pollution, problems from the mines and their hereditary impacts. On the other hand, we don’t have to build bomb shelters for the nitrogen tanks, like we did for the Russians. In our Kyiv office we don’t need anything like that, because there our new clientele is made up mainly of Westerners, and they’re our primary target group.”

I considered how I could improve my position.

“You would probably get pretty good image search results for Dnipro,” I suggested cautiously. “This is a great city and always has been.”

I was still afraid that my years in Snizhne might show in any blood tests, chest X-rays, or other tests I knew nothing about, and this job might remain a dream. There was no rational basis for this fear—I just didn’t have time to think the matter through. The coordinator I’d spoken with on the phone had gushed about my pictures. I’d thought I might be paid immediately and would return to the countryside in triumph, just to tell my mother that they wouldn’t need a loan from Ivan. My options were limited. I could look for a man with an open wallet, but that would take time, and I’d already had enough of Western jackasses during my years as a model. Then I remembered dimly that I might know something that could increase my value. Something that would make this woman understand that I was a good fit for this profession.

“I received my vaccinations properly. Back in Tallinn.”

“What do you mean?”

“The prequalification form didn’t ask about it, and no one has requested my vaccination certificate. But they should have. It means I’m a suitable surrogate if not a donor.”

The woman’s eyes blinked a few extra times. This hadn’t occurred to her. Maybe I still had a chance. If not here, I would search for another agency, knowing now what kinds of applicants they preferred. I would avoid anything related to Snizhne and would wipe that from my personal history. Or I could find a less exclusive agency. They had to exist.

“If you haven’t had any problems with vaccinations, you’re lucky,” I said and nodded at my father’s picture. “His friend was involved in the vaccine business. Donbas girls aren’t risky material because of the pollution but because the locals are skeptical of vaccinations, and half of the children in the area don’t receive them. And then there are others who get the same stick too many times because the schools got into the business, too. What could be the consequences of receiving the rubella vaccine every school year? Or what if an unvaccinated donor comes down with a disease in the middle of the process? You probably know how poorly rubella mixes with pregnancy.”

The director pursed her lips and looked at me with new eyes.

“You’re a smart girl,” she said, and I caught a glimpse of one of her canine teeth with a beauty mark–sized smudge of lipstick on it. She smiled at me and at the possibilities, and I prayed in my mind to the Holy Mother of God. This had to work.

“We’ll have to come up with a way to handle your dad. And Snizhne. That needs to disappear. We’ll have to find another home for your father’s parents. You went to Paris from Tallinn, right? Just like Carmen Kass?”

I didn’t understand what she was getting at. I knew who Kass was, of course. An agent from Milan had found her in the Kaubamaja department store in Tallinn. She had been luckier in her modeling career than I was. Or smarter.

We went through everything that was good to share. If clients asked about Chornobyl, I should mention that I lived with my family in Tallinn at the time of the accident. From there, my parents had later moved to Mykolaiv, nearer to my father’s sister since she wasn’t up to caring for their elderly parents alone. Because I couldn’t show the more recent pictures of my father, we moved his death to a year when he still looked presentable. My cousin who died in the Afghan War was left in the family tree but not the fact that my aunt had gone crazy after receiving her son in a zinc coffin with worms slithering out of the gaps in the seal. Clients were interested in three successive generations, and so it was best if there were no unnatural deaths, or any diseases that could be seen as genetic, either physical or mental.

“If any of your relatives are in prison, you should tell me now.”

“But imprisonment isn’t hereditary.”

“Aggressiveness is. And you shouldn’t tell that joke to any clients.”

I knew what she meant. Around here, the honest people are in prison, and the liars are in parliament.

When I asked if this meant a new family tree had to be pulled out of a hat for every Ukrainian, I received a bright shower of laughter in return, accompanied by a clicking of fingernails on the tabletop that sounded like summer rain.

“Westerners don’t know how to think that way. A donor’s father has to have a legal job. I won’t even ask what your father’s accident was or where it happened. Our kopankas don’t fit into their worldview. That was where your father worked, right, at an illegal mine?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“And prison? What about that?”

“My dad managed to die before he ended up behind bars.”

“You aren’t the first miner’s daughter to come talk to me, nor the first whose family’s livelihood comes from kopankas.”

I understood very well that my father’s story was ill suited for my portfolio if I wanted well-paying clients. There was no room here for drunkenness, for suicides, assisted or genuine, let alone for illegal coal mining or poppy plantations.

“Let’s forget all that and concentrate on finding the right education for you. A couple of years of comprehensive school isn’t enough, so what if you left modeling to study and graduated from the Kyiv National Linguistic University?”

I had passed the test. I was approved. My new boss called me a window-dressing girl and wanted me to move to Kyiv, where we could serve Western clients better, and she even promised me an advance. I could give my mother money, and I would get my own apartment, my own bathroom, running water again, and a new phone to replace the one I had, which was on its last legs. I could look forward to restaurant food, espresso, and the life of an adult instead of a failure to launch. The boss arranged papers that said I taught English and French, which was completely believable given the language skills I’d picked up out in the world, and according to my payroll statements, I taught private evening language lessons. An account statement purchased from a bank was necessary for the visas. The balance shown on it made me laugh in disbelief. I was beginning to look perfect, and so was my father. His records were changed to depict a construction worker who had died in an accident on a job site, and his final employer became a contracting company in Mykolaiv. According to my boss, the company was a reliable partner in situations where girls’ personal information needed a little aesthetic enhancement. So Snizhne was erased from my family history as if none of us had ever even visited.

I’d been ready for anything, but now I rejoiced: I was able to keep my liver and kidneys and didn’t have to knock on the doors of any more bride agencies. Compared to that, donating a few eggs was ridiculously effortless.

I didn’t tell anyone about the donations. And no one asked later how I’d ended up in the industry. My boss sometimes said she’d snapped me up in an instant once she realized how sharp, cosmopolitan, and skilled at languages I was, and everyone immediately assumed I’d started out in the office as a coordinator. My donations were irrelevant and, as I progressed in my career, I came to believe that telling anyone about them would have knocked me down to the same level as the girls. I would lose my position of authority.

I didn’t lie to you deliberately. I considered these embellishments to be harmless cosmetic corrections of the sort everyone made.

HELSINKI

2016

“You don’t have a man,” Daria commented at the bar. “It shows. Do you have anything else? A dacha, a house, even a car?”

Pretending not to hear her questions, I ordered us both coffee and cognac. It was only when I took out my wallet that I released my grip on Daria’s arm. The precaution had been pointless, though: she left the park with me without resistance, which surprised me. I still didn’t fully comprehend that I was no longer the one with power over her. Daria didn’t need to escape me.

“At least you have a job, don’t you?”

I carried the drinks to an empty booth. The bar was like any watering hole on these streets, and we were like any other customers looking for a drink except that we didn’t order beer. There weren’t many people, as was appropriate for early on a Monday night, so only a few extra pairs of eyes saw us together. Two exits, still without doormen.

“I work for a translation company,” I lied.

“You were always so good at languages.”

I tried not to betray my relief. Daria didn’t know where I got my money and maybe not where I lived either. That was something, though it didn’t answer the most important questions: how she had found me, and why now?

“Well, spill it. Did he leave you?”

Daria took a handful of nuts from a bowl that had been left on the table and settled into the bench as if anticipating a good movie. I remained silent. I didn’t intend to correct her assumptions. I would let her think that I’d had someone.

“Were you married?”

My fingers curling around my glass did not deceive Daria. She grabbed my wrist, and after opening my fist, she read my entire life from my hand. My inflamed cuticles made her click her tongue. The watch that appeared from beneath my sleeve had belonged to my mother, and Daria giggled at it. I knew how my ringless hands looked.

“No wonder he left you. Children?”

“No.”

“You wouldn’t have made a good mother anyway.”

Daria couldn’t know how deep that cut me, and I couldn’t let her see. I bit my tongue and allowed her gaze to appraise my stretched collar, my cleaner’s hands, and my colorless lashes without any extensions. The light of the bar was more compassionate than the spring reveling outside, but that didn’t help. Nothing about me suggested success. Daria cast a significant glance at my backpack, and her expression seemed to say, “So that’s what you’ve come to?” My downhill slide clearly caused her pleasure.

“You can’t afford to pay me,” she said as she savored the cognac, knowing why I didn’t take to my own glass so eagerly: bar prices were high, and I didn’t believe Daria would offer to pay. I had always covered everything when we went out together.

“I’ll find a way. Just name your price.”

“And then what? What do you think you’ll get for that money?” “You know.”

“To friendship,” she said, raising her glass and laughing.

Daria’s teeth were still white, and only her canines showed even the slightest hint of tobacco stains. Still, she couldn’t afford to look down on my state of decline. Didn’t she realize how she looked? Before, her cuticles had been healthy, her nails her own, without any ridges, their surface as flawless as a newborn’s. Her fingers were easy to imagine on the strings of a violin. Now there were mourning bands on her nails, her knuckles were chapped, and her previously enviable skin looked as thin as a hotel registration card. Her hair was in better shape; however, her blond, waist-length locks were a thing of the past, and in their place she sported a dark A-line bob. Something had happened to her, but what? It couldn’t be the war or what was happening with her family. I knew those things. Ending up like this took years.

“You were probably hoping that someone other than me would have caught up with you first.”

Daria leaned over the table to look at my face, took me by the cheek, and pinched. For a moment, I thought she would put her finger in my mouth to check the condition of my teeth. I pulled back, though I should have shown that I wasn’t afraid and simply stared back at her. I knew how difficult girls were kept in line; I just hadn’t been forced to do it myself.

“How do you sleep at night? Do you even dare to close your eyes? No wonder you look like this.”

Daria pulled her phone out of her pocket, turned it over in her fingers for a moment as if considering whom to call, then lifted it in front of her. The flash fired. Instinctively, I covered my face with my hand, but too late.

“Those bags under your eyes.” Daria giggled and magnified the picture on the screen glowing in her hand. “What do you think? What would they pay for you?”

For a second I thought she was assessing my value as a donor. Then I realized what she was referring to. She was waving in front of my eyes fresh evidence that she had met me, that I was here, in Helsinki. She could extort money from me, the agency, her old clients, you, everyone. Did she want to sell me to my old boss? Would that be her final revenge? Or had she ended up as a bounty hunter because she was broke? But if she had come after me, why did she want to expose us to the family in the dog park? Was that just teasing? Was that what she had become, my Daria?

“The world doesn’t revolve around you,” she said. “I didn’t come because of you.”

I lifted my gaze, stopping at Daria’s jaw, the tip of which had become sharper. “Or for money.”

I snorted and turned to look outside.

“Even though I know that’s an impossible idea for you,” Daria continued.

“What the hell are you doing here then?”

“I wanted to see the family. That’s all.”

“See the family? Do you intend to blackmail them?”

“I wanted to see what the girl has grown up to be like.”

Daria let her phone thump on the table. I couldn’t imagine any reason for her to lie, and I remembered the hunger in her eyes as she watched the children in the dog park. If she had come because of them, she wasn’t trying to get revenge on me. At least that was something.

“It’s forbidden. You signed the papers. We don’t do that.”

“ ‘We,’ ” Daria repeated, and one eyebrow went up.

It had just slipped out. There was no “we” anymore. No boss, no office, no personal desk. No credit cards. No errand boys. No one to order to handle unpleasant tasks. I had never talked to Daria this way, without any trump cards. I didn’t know how to act or what to say. For a moment I wondered if I should finally tell her about my own donations. Would that change her attitude toward me? I wouldn’t just be her ex-boss, I would be one of the girls, an equal. I rejected this idea. At least for now.

“Shall we have another?”

Daria pushed away her empty cognac glass and waited for me to go to the bar. She was in no hurry. She didn’t glance at her watch or the door or the window. She didn’t lower her voice, and, unlike me, she let her hands wander and tap at her phone, her glass, and the bowl of nuts, and it wasn’t because she was nervous. She just didn’t care what I thought about her behavior.

“The same?” I asked, but I didn’t wait to listen to what was likely to be a more expensive request. The four-centimeter shots disappeared all too fast. I decided to switch the drink to a more affordable Jaloviina cut brandy. I would present the mixture of cognac and spirits to Daria as a Finnish specialty that was worth a taste. At the counter, I glanced back.

Daria sat in her seat like a mushroom, her back toward one of the doors. If I did get out without her noticing, in no time she would realize I had fled, and all she would need to do was make one call and send my picture, and everything would be over. My body would be thrown from the roof of an apartment building or wrapped in plastic or a rug and dumped at a construction site or into the sea. No one would do that to a friend. We had been friends, but we weren’t anymore.