Murmansk-13

“Yes, ma. Who did you think it was?” Katja replied flippantly, hanging her overcoat up and tossing the rest of her clothes into her bedroom.

Katja had visited many friends houses who lived within the Soviet tenements in the city below. The interior of their old maisonette was much the same, a product of looting not long after the Bolsheviks seized control. Whoever reappointed the mansion after the paroxysm of revolution had done so with the stark pragmatism that would demark proletarian home life under the Communist regime. Sturdy but heartless plasterboard walls divided the dining/living space from the kitchen and the hallway off which the bedrooms and bathroom were situated.

Mother and Father had decorated in the mid seventies and the old carpets, furnishings and peeling wallpaper still just held onto the hues of once fashionable brown and orange that had surpassed the rest of the world by more than a decade.

Her mother sat at a large space age plastic table, reading the Pravda, fag hanging from her mouth. Behind her an electrical fire glowed orange, she peered up at Katja with hangdog eyes, socked in a fattened face. Katja couldn’t remember a time she hadn’t looked tired and much older than her years. She’d been pretty when she was young, a faded wedding photo atop the tiled fireplace bore testimony to the fact. Katja shuddered at the thought of sharing her genes. As she lost the weight of teenage apathy, her mother grew heavier. A scintilla of resentment would glimmer in her mother’s eyes when Katja dropped another dress size.

“Where’s Father?” Katja asked, hardly able to contain the excitement and trepidation, “I’ve got something I need to tell him.”

“It’s good to see you too, Kat,” her mother said thumbing in the direction of the balcony with a meaty, pale forearm. Net curtains flapped briskly in the steady breeze. Katja felt a renewed chill as she breached the miniature front where cold fresh air met hot still electrical heat.