The Goldfinch

BRIGHT SUN WOKE ME. We were in my bed: wet hair, half-dressed and shivering in the air-conditioned cold, with Popper snoring between us. The sheets were damp and reeking of chlorine; I had a shattering headache and an ugly metallic taste in my mouth like I’d been sucking on a handful of pocket change.

I lay very still, feeling I might vomit if I moved my head even a quarter of an inch, then—very carefully—sat up.

“Boris?” I said, rubbing my cheek with the flat of my hand. Brown streaks of dried blood were smeared on the pillowcase. “You awake?”

“Oh God,” groaned Boris, dead-pale and sticky with sweat, rolling on his stomach to clutch at the mattress. He was naked except for his Sid Vicious bracelets and what looked like a pair of my underwear. “I’m go

“Not here.” I kicked him. “Up.”

Muttering, he stumbled off. I could hear him puking in my bathroom. The sound made me sick, but also a bit hysterical. I rolled over and laughed into my pillow. When he stumbled back in, clasping his head, I was shocked at his black eye, the blood caked at his nostrils and the scabbed cut on his forehead.

“Christ,” I said, “that looks bad. You need stitches.”

“You know what?” said Boris, throwing himself stomach-down on the mattress.

“What?”

“We’re late for fucking school!”

We rolled on our backs and roared with laughter. As weak and nauseated as I felt, I thought I would never be able to stop.

Boris flopped over, groping with one arm for something on the floor. In an instant his head popped back up. “Ah! What’s this?”

I sat up and reached eagerly for the glass of water, or what I thought was water, and—when he shoved it under my nose—gagged on the smell.

Boris howled. Quick as a flash he was on top of me: all sharp bones and clammy flesh, reeking of sweat and sick and something else, raw and dirty, like stagnant pond water. Sharply he pinched my cheek, tipping the glass of vodka over my face. “Time for your medicine! Now, now,” he said, as I knocked the glass flying and hit him in the mouth, a glancing blow that didn’t quite co

Uncertainly I stood, in a prickle of cold sweat, and made my way into the bathroom, where in a violent rush or two—hand braced against the wall—I emptied my stomach into the toilet bowl. From the next room I could hear him laughing.

“Two fingers down the pipe,” he called in to me, and then something I missed, in a fresh shudder of nausea.

When it was over, I spat once or twice, then wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. The bathroom was a wreck: shower dripping, door hanging open, sopping towels and blood-stained wash cloths wadded on the floor. Still shivering with sick, I drank from my hands at the sink and splashed some water on my face. My bare-chested reflection was hunched and pale, and I had a fat lip from where Boris had socked me the night before.

Boris was still on the floor, lying bonelessly with his head propped against the wall. When I came back in, he cracked his good eye open and chortled at the sight of me. “All better?”

“Fuck you! Don’t fucking talk to me.”

“Serves you right. Didn’t I tell you not to faff around with that glass?”

“Me?”

“You don’t remember, do you?” He touched his tongue to his upper lip to see if his mouth had started bleeding again. When his shirt was off you could see all the spaces between his ribs, marks from old beatings and the heat flush high on his chest. “That glass on the floor, very bad idea. Unlucky! I told you not to leave it there! Huge jinx on us!”

“You didn’t have to pour it on my head,” I said, fumbling for my specs and reaching for the first pair of pants I saw from the communal heap of dirty laundry on the floor.

Boris pinched the bridge of his nose, and laughed. “Was just trying to help you. A little booze will make you feel better.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.”

“It’s true. If you can keep it down. Will make your headache go like magic. My dad is not helpful person but this is one very helpful thing he has told me. Nice cold beer is the best, if you have it.”

“Say, c’mere,” I said. I was standing by the window, looking down at the pool.

“Eh?”

“Come look. I want you to see this.”

“Just tell me,” muttered Boris, from the floor. “I don’t want to get up.”

“You’d better.” Downstairs it looked like a murder scene. A line of blood drips wound across the paving stones to the pool. Shoes, jeans, bloodsoaked shirt, were riotously flung and tossed. One of Boris’s busted-up boots lay at the bottom of the deep end. Worse: a greasy scum of vomit floated in the shallow water by the steps.

xxiv.

LATER, AFTER A FEW half-hearted passes with the pool vacuum, we were sitting on the kitchen counter smoking my dad’s Viceroys and talking. It was almost noon—too late to even think about going to school. Boris—ragged and unhinged-looking, his shirt hanging off the shoulder on one side, slamming the cabinets, complaining bitterly because there was no tea—had made some hideous coffee in the Russian way, by boiling grounds in a pan on the stove.

“No, no,” he said, when he saw I’d poured myself a normal sized cup. “Very strong, very small amount.”

I tasted it, made a face.

He dipped a finger in it, and licked it off. “Biscuit would be nice.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Bread and butter?” he said hopefully.

I eased down from the counter—as gently as I could, because my head hurt—and searched around until I found a drawer with sugar envelopes and packaged tortilla chips that Xandra had brought home from the buffet at the bar.

“Crazy,” I said, looking at his face.

“What?”

“That your dad did that.”

“Is nothing,” mumbled Boris, turning his head sideways so he could wedge the whole corn chip in. “He broke one of my ribs once.”

After a long pause, and because I couldn’t think of anything else to say, I said: “A broken rib’s not that serious.”

“No, but it hurt. This one,” he said, pulling up his shirt and pointing it out to me.

“I thought he was going to kill you.”

He bumped his shoulder against mine. “Ah, I provoked him on purpose. Answered back. So you could get Popchik out of there. Look, is fine,” he said, condescendingly, when I kept on looking at him. “Last night he was frothing at mouth but he’ll be sorry when he sees me.”

“Maybe you ought to stay here for a while.”

Boris leaned back on his hands and gave me a dismissive smile. “Is nothing to be fussed about. He gets depressed sometimes, is all.”

“Hah.” In the old Joh

Boris laughed, with what seemed like genuine amusement. “And what? You don’t get sad yourself sometimes?”

“He should be in jail for doing that.”

“Oh, please.” Boris had gotten bored with his bad coffee and had ventured to the fridge for a beer. “My father—bad temper, sure, but he loves me. He could have left me with a neighbor when he left Ukraine. That’s what happened to my friends Maks and Seryozha—Maks ended up on the street. Besides, I should be in jail myself, if you want to think that way.”

“Sorry?”

“I tried to kill him one time. Serious!” he said, when he saw the way I was looking at him. “I did.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“No, is true,” he said resignedly. “I feel bad about it. Our last winter in Ukraine, I tricked him to walk outside—he was so drunk, he did it. Then I locked the door. Thought sure he would die in the snow. Glad he didn’t, eh?” he said, with a shout of laughter. “Then I’d be stuck in Ukraine, my God. Eating from garbage cans. Sleeping in railway station.”