Work Text:
March 2010
Ilya settled into the booth at the coffee shop with a quiet groan, stretching out his sore left leg. He’d have to stretch well this evening. He had a game that night at seven, and he needed to finish his schoolwork before that. He had one story to read and a stack of pages for statistics, most likely problems and new information to memorize. He had managed the application to BU, but he sometimes still doubted his ability to complete a degree in a language he barely spoke. Honestly his advisor’s suggestion of Comparative Literature (which he’d ignored because Grigori wouldn’t stand for such a choice) was sounding better and better. At least then Ilya could’ve been an expert in one language at least half the time.
Instead of either reading something in Russian or ignoring all his work in favor of doing an extra workout, he was crammed into a booth with his overfilled backpack and an over-priced, watered-down coffee, trying to read a story that hadn’t even originally been written in English, so that he could pass a class he didn’t even really need. Is not true, he reminded himself. It’s for GE’s. The general education requirements were the bane of his existence. He’d been forced to take a basic American history class (how many ways could people try to rehash the same ideas without naming the real problem? Endlessly, apparently), and he’d also been forced to sit through a basic math class because he’d been unable to complete the placement test due to hockey training camps. Ilya strongly doubted he’d ever actually complete or use his business degree, but it looked good (and Grigori had approved). Getting his father’s approval smoothed the way, but there was a heavy sense of obligation and you will pay this back someday, Ilya, when you are an NHL player. Even moving to Boston couldn’t alleviate the heavy weight Ilya felt when he considered his family. At least with a solid time difference and over four thousand miles, there was more room to breathe.
Ilya sighed again and carefully took the lid off the aforementioned, distasteful coffee. It was definitely too hot to drink right away. In his quest to take as little as possible from his father, he was budgeting carefully, even with the generous hockey scholarship he had. He wanted to be safe, just in case something happened.
With his coffee steaming and his highlighter next to it, Ilya fished the printed PDF out of his folder. There was a reader of printed material for the class, but Ilya had calculated that it was slightly cheaper to print all the required readings himself from the library. Budgeting, again. The story he’d printed today was Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis.” Ilya poked through typing in the name of the story in Google’s search bar on his phone’s Safari page and started scrolling through the results. He forced himself to add notes to the lefthand side of the first page:
- Originally published in German → Die Verwandlung
- Published in 1915
Then he used Google Translate (one of his favorite emerging features from Google, although the accuracy was potentially bad), and typed in ‘die verwandlung.’The transformation, Google told him. He poked around in the Safari window on his phone and found a Wikipedia page for the story. He added written in 1912 to his bulleted list. Ungeziefer, Wikipedia also told him. Ilya clicked on links until it translated that too: vermin. Вредители?
Shit. This man turns into vermin? What the fuck does this professor have us reading? Ilya shook his head but kept going. He had found that it was always better to read about the stories first, especially for this class that called itself “Seminal Works of the 1900’s.” The professor loved to assign wildly different things in the name of teaching. Ilya had already had to read a weird short story about a jumping frog, and that didn’t even make sense because the story was published in 1865 (he’d heard some girls complaining about it as they left the lecture that day, but Ilya had other concerns so he just tried his best and wondered at the shit Americans would do–and write about).
Wikipedia also noted that ungeziefer was specifically for Jewish people. Ilya put that in a note on his list as well, although he wasn’t sure what that really amounted to. Maybe he could ask his professor.
Ilya started the first sentence and had to read it twice. This man, Gregor, found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
Truly, what the fuck. Ilya shook his head and highlighted ‘insect’ to come back to later. Whether he understood it or not, he needed to finish this reading before he could leave the coffee shop and before he could go to his game. He added translated notes for himself in Cyrillic, and then he added a few translated English notes beneath those, so that he could refer to them in class.
He tried not to think much about how close Gregor was to Grigori. He kept reading, noting details about Gregor’s life, his job, and his family. If Ilya was reading this correctly, he thought Gregor might be a bit stupid. The poor man had missed his train to work and was thinking about catching the next train, but Ilya was 90% sure Gregor was literally a bug, which meant he probably wouldn’t be getting his train. Ilya took a drink from his coffee and hissed. It felt like it was still boiling.
His phone vibrated next to him on the table. Probably the girl he’d seen last night. Ilya ignored the buzz but spared a small smile. She’d been pretty and more than willing to sleep with the first line center on the university’s hockey team. Ilya didn’t think he’d see her again, but he’d had a good time.
Poor Gregor was now trying to convince his family that he could get up and go to work. Ilya sincerely doubted Gregor would be going anywhere any time soon. Ilya next found himself bewildered by the phrase ‘numerous little legs.’ Exactly how many legs did this fucking man have? Bug? Man? Ilya wasn’t sure anymore.
Ilya nearly rolled his eyes at the mother’s description of Gregor’s boring life. This man who never goes out and only works and gets turned into a bug? Fucking God. Ilya was glad he wasn’t Gregor. He thought about the girl from last night again. Maybe he should call her.
Ilya felt a twinge of pity as Gregor was unceremoniously fired, but apparently he’d also been shit at his job? So perhaps turning into a bug was just the final straw. Ilya felt another twinge of sympathy when Gregor found he had no teeth, and Ilya felt yet another twinge of embarrassment when Gregor believed his family was actually outside the door and rooting for him (Ilya felt mildly satisfied when he found that Gregor’s family actually detested him after all. Families are never so kind, Gregor, Ilya found himself thinking. I should know.).
Ilya was unhappily transfixed by the way Gregor’s family forced him back into his room, with Gregor’s father beating at him with the discarded walking stick. He studiously avoided thinking too hard about his own family. Perhaps all fathers were harsh, and there was nothing more to say. His left leg ached. Ilya took an aggressive sip of his coffee and let the heat in his mouth distract him.
As he made his way through the rest of the reading, Ilya noted a few things that generated some type of feeling in his chest, although he did his best not to think about it too closely. When Gregor was confined to his room, with only his sister’s help, Ilya highlighted the line about how because Gregor couldn’t talk, people seemed to assume he couldn’t comprehend either.
I know how that feels, Ilya thought with annoyance as he dragged his highlighter across the page. Just because I can’t say so many things in English, it does not mean I am stupid as well. Ilya knew his English was improving rapidly, and it should be. He practiced with his teammates, with the girls he flirted with (and with boys as well), he read for his classes, he watched American TV. Some godforsaken program called NCIS was always on television somewhere, and he’d seen more reruns of that than he cared to count. The agents still had to introduce themselves every time, and Ilya thought that was fair. Even though he knew he had limited knowledge of American law agencies, he had never heard of NCIS and had fully believed the show was about a made-up group. It wasn’t. So anyway, Ilya knew his English was getting better, but he still resented when people spoke to him like he didn’t know what was going on. Sometimes interview questions for hockey got too long, and he wanted a teammate to step in and answer first, but Ilya would just smile in the way he knew would dazzle the reporters (or at least win them over) and ask them to repeat the question.
Ilya made a note on his printed reading when Gregor began to eat less food. He made another note when Gregor overheard his family talking about finances.
It always comes back to money. Ilya knew that well enough. In the back of his head, he could hear his father asking about how much a signing bonus for the NHL would be and how long he needed to play for the university team. Someday, papa, Ilya promised him.
Ilya felt a deep twinge of sadness when Gregor heard his mother’s voice and realized that nothing except her voice could have drawn him back to thinking about human society. Nyet. Ilya cut himself off from that line of thinking. That wouldn’t do him any good.
Ilya forced himself to read the rest without emotion. He simply needed to finish the reading and get through his damned statistics problems. He set aside the thoughts trying to crowd his mind as Gregor felt himself to be more and more repulsive and slowly wasted away. Ilya made his final notes on the pages as Gregor’s body was found, now only a husk of himself and his family celebrated.
Fuck. Ilya tried not to think of home often or of the specific reasons he had for pursuing the NHL rather than the KHL and applying to this American university and completing his stupid general education credits, even though he’d been drafted.
He suddenly found himself dreading his discussion section in two days’ time. He didn’t want to discuss this story with his classmates. He didn’t want to hear their asinine observations about how Gregor had turned into a bug and been treated horribly. Some clever girl would probably suggest a framework or a lens to talk about the story. Ilya couldn’t get himself far enough away from the story to view it with someone else’s eyes. He was stuck. He was Gregor. He had felt verminous and terrible and unwanted in his home, just like Gregor had. He had watched his father treat his mother like she had some terrible disease, when all she had wanted was kindness. She had been so beautiful and so funny, and also so, so sad. Ilya felt a momentary urge to simply put his head down on the table and let himself cry. Only years of Grigori’s training and years of hockey corralled it into something manageable. He sighed instead and took a sip from his long-forgotten coffee. Now it was cold and watery and tasted even worse. Making a face, he set it aside for good. He could probably snag an energy drink on his way to the game or wheedle one from a teammate. He put the printed story into his folder and grabbed his statistics book.
As he worked through the problems in his statistics textbook, pausing to translate difficult words, his mind kept running in circles back to Gregor. He was expected to support his whole family, and once that utility was gone, Gregor was no longer a family member. What would happen to Ilya if he was no longer useful? What if the hoped-for NHL career never came? What if the team that had drafted him never called? What if he never made it out of training camp? What if some horrible thing happened before then? Without the promised NHL money, would Grigori allow him to stay abroad? Could Ilya afford to go home?
There had been whispers of increased scrutiny for people who were homosexual. There were rumors of new anti-gay laws, and police were not protecting the gay rights’ activists. Ilya knew himself and he knew that if he had to go back, he would have to be very careful. He tried not to think too much about it. He had allegiances to his family. If he played hockey at a high enough level, he could be selected to represent Russia at the Olympics. He would have to go home.
But, all of his carefully planned choices that had led him to Boston, with its university, its party scene, its freedom, were lined up to keep Ilya far away from home and publicly pursuing hockey. Without that, what would he do? He was part of the way through a Business Administration degree that he didn’t really want, suffering through statistics and strange readings for literature classes. His left leg twinged again, a sore spot along his knee where he’d pushed too hard at the game two days ago. They had one more home game before they had a few days of travel. With any luck he could get two seats on the plane when they flew and stretch it more. Until then, he still had to attend this cursed discussion section. With any luck there, he could make a couple comments, avoid crying about his family, and get his attendance and points for the week.
Ilya packed his statistics book into his backpack and put the lid back onto the now thoroughly cold coffee. He tossed it into a trash bin as he went out the door into the cold March sunshine.