Russia kept those of his things he needed and could fit in the tiny apartment, placed a small amount of things in storage, and sold off all the rest, including the house where he and the other Soviets lived. He could hardly stand to be there anymore. The day he knew he had to move was the day he woke up, went downstairs for breakfast and ended up smashing every breakable object in the kitchen. He couldn't name the feeling behind the fit, some awful nameless sensation that burned his eyes and clawed his throat so tight he couldn't breathe and he hated it. That's when he knew he had to move, or fall so deep into a bottle he'd probably never set foot out of the house again.
He managed to choose moving.
Now the apartment wasn't new by new standards, but for Russia it was still plenty novel some fifteen years later. He had bought it during the earlier '90s when everything was chaos and real estate was incredibly cheap—the state has simply handed over ownership of the apartments to the occupants, and most of them didn't quite realize what that meant. The apartment's previous owner, a minor Party official who was at the time completely lost in the rapidly transitioning country, accepted Russia's offer of double what the others were offering and vacated the premise in two days, leaving Russia an empty space absent of memories. The small apartment had been renovated since then—there was a small air conditioning unit in the sitting room now, new plumbing and electrical wiring. Russia installed all of it himself. There was a tiny television in kitchen so he could watch the news during breakfast and dinner, and a bigger television in the sitting room. Both televisions were dwarfed by the bookshelves, containing an equal mix of classics, philosophy, physics, poetry, authors in French and German and English. His books on political theory were in storage. The chinaware for entertaining was all safely tucked away in the curio cabinets, taken out for Christmas, Easter, and New Year's when his sisters visited. His shoes were lined up neatly by the door, ready to be exchanged for tapochki. The apartment was very neat, very clean, and very, very empty.
He woke at seven every morning—well past sunrise in the summer, and well before it in the winter. Breakfast and news, out the door by eight; the metro and walking got him to work by 8:45, and meetings started at nine. Lunch break at noon, head home at five, stopping at the grocery for dinner ingredients. The evening was dinner, news, tea, reading or wandering outside if the weather permitted. If everything went well, he was in bed by eleven, three shots of vodka to ensure that his thoughts settled enough to permit sleep, and to help ward off the nightmares. During the summer, weekends were spent at the dacha, gardening and going in the banya; during the winter, weekends meant the ballet, the opera, the philharmonic orchestra, and the theatre. The cycle was routine and familiar and not really at all different from how things were before. The schedule simply contained less people now.
But recently. Occasionally. There would be another pair of shoes by the door. Two sets of dishes in the sink. A crumple of dirty laundry slumped next to a small duffel bag on the floor of the bedroom; a second towel drying in the bathroom. And an American tucked up on the couch, reading the movie subtitles and laughing, the sound reverberating through Russia's chest as the other nation shifted next to him. Russia would count his heartbeats at night, listening to the soft breath of sleep, and quietly marvel at the passage of time. He could see his schedule shifting, expanding outwards to accommodate another person, allowing them to slip in so seamlessly there was hardly a ripple of disturbance. It was unsettling and mystifying and Russia secretly loved every moment of it, held his breath to make it last longer, to keep any possibility of end spinning in some place far, far in front of them, never to be reached. He kissed hair gold as grain and murmured I love you into the hollow space of the other's neck, and slowly needed fewer and fewer shots before he could close his eyes and simply sleep. And if a night terror jerked him awake, a strangled scream caught in his throat, limbs trembling, then strong arms would hold him as he was gently covered in kisses, until he slid back into a sleep without pain.
The apartment was still new to Russia, twenty years later, and its contents never ceased to make him smile.
-o-
Short little snippet, almost autobiographical: the apartment described is the one I lived in Russia in the summer of 2012, and the daily routine essentially mine as well (minus government meetings, plus university courses; minus three shots of vodka in the evening, plus missing my partner in the States).