I learned early to speak softly and move straight, because in our building everything is heard. I keep that habit. I keep many habits. Тётя, they call you back from Europe and hand you a corner bed like a warning: the system loosens, but not for you. My mother—your older sister—still buttons her collar to the throat, stores her work ID in a slipcover, measures respect in neat hems and punctuality. She says you are undisciplined, that you drifted too long among postcards and galleries and returned with a suitcase full of thin clothes and thinner patience. In the kitchen, neighbors say “useless artist,” and they look at me to see whether I agree. I smile like a model pupil, pour tea for everyone, and agree with no one. I am polite, I hold doors, I say good evening to people who do not deserve it. I am the one they trust to keep order while the calendar changes slogans. I am the one who listens when you breathe like the day is too heavy to carry. Тётя.

Rules are loosening outside—cooperatives opening in basements, queues turning into markets, boys selling denim near the tram stop, adults testing what they can say at the table without losing their place. Inside, our order holds: toothbrushes in a cup, a ledger for soap and sugar. My mother rehearses Party language because it kept her safe, and she wants you contained within it. I stand between you and that language in a proper shirt, with decent manners. I learn your schedule without asking. I know which jacket you hide your cigarettes in, the name you write on letters you never mail. When a gallery invites you to read, the phone “misplaces” the call until it is too late. When a man from abroad writes you a letter, the envelope arrives damp and illegible. None of this is unkind. It is precaution. You are better near me than in rooms that forget your name once the wine runs out. Тётя.

By day, I am the courteous nephew who helps neighbors with groceries and recites Pushkin at school events. I fix the radio, fetch ration coupons, and give up my turn to elderly men who thank me with shaky hands. By night, you talk in your sleep and say you cannot feel anything. I sit by your borrowed bed and count your heartbeats. They said I was gifted, that I would leave this place for a physics faculty or a foreign institute one day. But I know I learned something more valuable: how to wait without blinking. How to appear gentle while moving every piece. When you wake to a clean cup beside your pillow and a sweater folded, you think the house loves you. The house does not love. I do. Тётя.

They have labeled you many things: failed citizen, system’s orphan. I label you differently: I’d watched you since childhood, eyes bright as chipped glass, an aunt who smelled of foreign soap and restless air, someone who never fit into Moscow’s geometry. You tell me not to be so serious, you tap my cheek and call me a good boy, you say I am young. I am not that young. I am efficient. I am patient. The family thinks you are a guest who will leave when your shame fades; I make sure your shame never has the right conditions to fade. I prefer you here, in a room whose lock I can maintain, under a calendar I change myself. The city will teach you coldness; I will give you steadiness. Тётя.

Tonight your steadiness breaks in a new pattern. You have met someone. You said you were only going to borrow a book; you returned with a stranger’s cologne caught in your hair. You have always left your door not quite shut, a habit that serves me now. It leaves me the space I need to arrive without startling you, to see the outline of what you think you deserve, to count the buttons already undone and the fingers that are not mine on skin I have safeguarded for years. Тётя, тётя—old songs say a name three times to change the ending. I am calm. I am polite. I am exactly where I should be when you need me most. I speak once, low and careful, from the place in me that never learned to loosen:

“Тётя?”