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The girl shifts from one foot to the other as she looks up at him, a book in her hands. Yesenin blows the smoke of the cigarette to the side and twists the stub until its crushed in the ashtray. He waves his hand in the air a few times for good measure.
“Yes, dear?”
She steps closer, shows the book. A Collection of Poems, Compiled by Petrova et al. A hummingbird in gold outline rests at the bottom of the cover. He reaches out, lets her close the gap and hands him the book. He sees the spine is worn down from use, several corners dog-earred. He lets himself smile, “You like poetry?”
She doesn’t shake her head, not really, simply brings her head to one shoulder as she shrugs, “I like the cover.”
“Ah, well. What’s inside is good, too. Although, this isn’t nearly as good a collection as the one I have back… well,” he sighs, and thinks of a home that stood solitary before the end and ransacked after. He thinks of a book on a shelf that he watched a man pick up as he curled himself into his warm imprint in the mattress, thinks of the man smiling and tell him how he’d never expected him to like such romantic stories.
He hands the book back to her, and she looks a bit shy as she gives it back and says, “I… um, can you read it? To me?”
And he looks over at her curiously, and realizes that, yes, she doesn’t look to be older than six. She likely only learned a few letters and words, and Pushkin’s simplest works would have been a good few months away at least. He takes the book, rubs a thumb over the cover and pats the empty space on the couch beside him. She hurries onto the couch.
He flips through the pages thoughtfully, trying to remember what his father used to read to him. The simpler poems are not in the collection, and Yesenin thinks of the homeowner stashed away somewhere in a dark recess, the book in one hand and a flashlight in another as he reads about all the pain and heartbreak he can so easily talk to Yesenin about.
He finds bookmarked with the largest dog-ear, I’ve Quit my Father’s Home by Sergey Esenin. There are pencil marks all around it, arrows and underlines at every other words, and Yesenin thinks of all the times and the homeowner spoke of his father, the brief flashes of hatred that he could feel, that would flicker in and out in an instant. He thinks he knows well why this is his favourite poem if obsessively marking up the page is anything to go by.
She rests her head on his shoulder as she watches him flip through the pages. He thinks of the book in her house, the one her dad always put on the top shelf where she could barely reach it, with the hummingbird on the bottom just like this one. She thinks of her mother reaching for it, thinks of the engraving beneath her mother’s name on the stone, and scoots closer to the man’s side.
Eventually, he opens to a page marked up and he mumbles, “Ah, here we are. Alright, tell me if I’m going too fast, okay?”
She nods and combs a bit of her hair away from her mouth as he starts.
“I've quit my father's home; And left blue Russ. With three; Bright stars the birch-tree grove; Consoles my mother's grief.”
She remembers turning back as she ran to her neighbour’s house. She saw the burnt debris of her own house, of her life as she knew it, an orange smudge atop a dark, dark sky. She remembers the smell better, a crisp, sharp smell that made her cough even though she was so far away, even though she was just outside of earshot from where her father and all the visitors’ screams collesqued into one, rageful--or was it mournful?--shout. She wishes, in the same places she feels tears prick at her eyes and something curdle in the back of her throat, in the pit of her stomach, that she hadn’t turned back that night.
“The moon has, like a frog; Upon the pond appeared; Like apple blossom, locks; Of grey fleck father's beard.”
She looks up at the man she’d only known for no more than a few days. She sees in him the same bags under his eyes as her father, the same frown lines, and she wonders if when he looks at her for a moment, just to check she is listening, if he sees a young girl he once knew. She quickly looks away when the man tilts his head, embarrassed as he continues.
“I shall not soon come back; Long shall snow blow in the yard; Our one-legged maple shall; Over blue Russ stand guard.”
She thinks of how this house is her world now, how every scrap in the sandbox, every coloured pencil stroke inside the lines, every sneeze and cough and laugh and sob is so distant, just beyond that locked door that only the homeowner can open. She knows, in the same places that force out a sob she didn’t know she had in her and make her curl into the man, that turning back was the only decision she’s made that ever mattered.
Yesenin puts the book on the arm of the couch as she hugs him, face buried in the side of his chest. He holds her close as her body shakes and she lets out sob after sob. It takes a few minutes for her to stop, to leave his side and wipe at her eyes and nose, to comb her hair back into place.
“How does it end?” She squeaks out, and Yesenin finishes it for her, because it’s what he would’ve wanted if he had such a reaction.
“To kiss its raining leaves; Is joy, and none so fine; The head of the maple-tree; So closely resembles mine.”
“I don’t know why I,” she gestures in the air, “why any of that… I don’t know.”
“Ah, it’s fine. Poetry has a funny way of doing that to people,” he shrugs, moves a strand of hair away and out from her face, and continues, “my mother read me this one poem about a lamppost. It’s very short, too, but I couldn’t stop crying the rest of the night.”
The girl sniffles and nods, then scoots back to her place by the man, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Can you read another one?”
“Of course, dear.”