In 1938 on Mercury Theater, Orson Welles panicked Manhattan with his radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds. Fifty years later, a popular Leningrad television show, The Fifth Wheel, also troubled its public.

It’s 1988, the first years of Gorbachev, and the shelf life of the Soviet system is nearing its end. Evgenia Yakova, a Leningrad conservatory student who’s just received high marks for her Paganini Caprice, repositions her violin case as she jostles with the crowds that plod through the dark winter evening. Her success in school angers her: in the Soviet Union, artists are tottering as a commodity. Evgenia had been counting on working her way up and into the Leningrad Philharmonic through a former boyfriend, now evasive. A man smashes against her free shoulder and Evgenia makes him her big eyes to see if he’ll notice. He does, and this gives Evgenia enormous hope.

Crowds seem worse and there’s filth everywhere, snow and mud fusing everyone to the common denominator of the ground. Evgenia is careful with her first pair of high-heeled boots—another sacrifice her mother has laid upon the altar of her beauty. It’s only the barrier of this beauty that lies between that filth, and what Evgenia fears she really is. At fifteen, Evgenia has a heart-shaped face like a planchette bearing messages. Within it, swollen lips and pale-green eyes murmur seduction to one another. Apple cheeks punctuate this dialogue. This beauty is to be the axis upon which her drab and hopeless world will pivot into glamour and money—the debts that life owes a face like hers.

More kiosks have mushroomed since yesterday. Their occupants are padded and wrapped, fat fungi huddled in single windows or narrower stalks leaning over. Grease vapors waft, but fried chebureki don’t interest Evgenia. She’s tempted by the stand selling Mars Bars at exorbitant prices. Evgenia’s teeth are brittle and streaked, a pact between genetics and State dental care. She disperses her last money on this extravagance anyway.

The spongy nougat dissolves in wet warmth between tongue and palate, and Evgenia is transfixed. The trance of this exotic sweet conjures up the sugar of Tchaikovsky, and for the kettledrum finale she’s about to crunch the almonds when something stooped and sexless and wearing a headscarf emerges from behind a kiosk. The elderly terrify Evgenia because they’ve failed to stay young. Everything on Evgenia’s face now slices downward, negating all her studied makeup so that her fierce Cossack father, whom she’s never seen, appears.

The old woman’s eyes look up, their cloudy film reflecting the frigidity of the evening. Cunning cuts through their fog.

"Please, little one—pazhal’sta, malen’kaya. Just a little … Nemnoshko. A smidgen."

Crowds part before this beggar. The old woman’s teeth, Evgenia notes, are sound though entrenched in a festering black marsh. Her own are cork by comparison. Evgenia has never envied the old before; and now, intimidated by covetousness and fear, Evgenia observes her own mitten offer the hag the last of her chocolate-coated nougat and almonds.

"Spasibo, spasibo, malen’kaya," the Babushka chants. Beneath Evgenia’s ribs, an asymmetrical space swells with heat, expanding like the lopsided grin of her own grandmother, whom she loves. The Babushka bows as though Evgenia were some Tsarist official while she stuffs the candy into her mouth before it can be snatched back. "God will be blessing you."

At this Evgenia snorts, then regrets it. Vicious fairytales from childhood are still ringing in her ears. Also, she’s heard stories—incidents that point occulted and ghostly fingers towards the sky: people cured, husbands lost or found. How can one be sure? The Babushka continues chewing with her mouth open, exhibiting mush strewn with almond bits, when a sudden cap peaks from behind a kiosk and a stooped being follows. Evgenia recognizes it as male only by its matted beard, which frames a collapsed and toothless mouth. The old woman catches his form with a heavy arm to help him forward. He’s close to starvation, and Evgenia watches in horror as the Babushka spits the salivated mush into her palm and raises it so that the man can slurp.

Evgenia flees the pair between the kiosks. Wind chases her through the marshy plain upon which Leningrad is built. She shivers as she navigates the crowds, avoiding black slush. Then her own face beckons her and she stops to study herself in a bakery’s empty window, sucking the last bit of chocolate from her mitten. At fifteen, sweets flavored with the pungency of dirty wool are still soothing.

As she suckles and contemplates her image, she decides to change her hair again. She’s picturing the attraction of her face signaling from within a neon-nimbus of bright orange when sudden exuberance breaks out across her reflection and she observes its eyes widen: it’s Wednesday. Tonight, TV’s The Fifth Wheel will be on ‘Chapygina 6.’ Its commentator, handsome and amusing, is an oasis in current programming because lately television has become charged with revelation. Facts and rumors crackle through Russia’s indolence with the regularity of an alarm clock. The public is currently being jostled awake by ancient films that expose past purges while exhibiting their dignitaries jerking across the screen as though suffering from Saint Vitus’ dance. Heads surging through crowded avenues might as well be potatoes bobbing down a river. Evgenia would wish for only comedy shows. She’s especially fond of two melon-headed musicians who play mandolin and accordion while moaning hilarious couplets about socialist disasters.

A final suction, and Evgenia releases her mitten, now wet and beginning to freeze. The cold stabs the fingers of her bow-hand, the ache conjuring up the misery of those beggars. The old man stank of metal while reeking of organic decay, slurping like an animal but without any animal grace. She suddenly recalls that, while eating, his rheumy eyes had lifted to hers, discharging into them a suffering that had sizzled through her like a spark. Evgenia now wishes that the old woman had approached her for the candy before, when there’d been more left. She’d have given it all to prevent this anguish the old man has kindled in her. Evgenia stomps a foot, then flexes a strong shoulder to adjust her violin case. After all, what can one do when suffering is more common than dandelions in a summer field? The old man’s slurping and stink return to assault her senses, and Evgenia strides on, focusing on the handsome commentator who will be on The Fifth Wheel tonight.

A shadow is stalking her, and Evgenia feels a hand where it shouldn’t be. She veers to attack but it’s only Mishka, her first boyfriend. They’d kissed wetly and often when she was ten and he, twelve, hidden in doorways from patrolling civilian druzhinniki who’d denounced even couples holding hands.

"So. What’s the story?" Mishka has expanded. His proximate eyebrows have united to appear as solid and heavy as his shoulders. Black hair kinks, waving in the humid breeze. Evgenia still thinks him handsome. She’s had boyfriends since, she’s now a woman. So she considers him. He motions to her violin’s curvaceous case, which Evgenia shoulders like a fashion accessory. "Still at it, I see. Heard you made the Conservatory. Heard you’re pretty good."

"Oi. Ape-face. From what tree did you jump?"

Mishka laughs and salutes her once before slipping back into the stream of people. Evgenia reaches in and pulls him out, her shoulders developed by years of practicing.

"Didn’t know apes were so touchy. What’ve you been up to?"

Mishka smiles, showing white and polished teeth among which one gold-plated canine gleams with a tiny diamond. Evgenia realizes what he’s been up to. He studies her with eyes the color of lead gutters. "You’ve grown yourself," he says.

Evgenia rises on her spine as if performing. Her breasts—good barter, she’s found—swell beneath her winter coat. "Yep. Too much of a woman for you. Ape-face."

"So you’ll go straight to the Philharmonic, will you?"

"I’ve contacts."

"You’ll soon be first violin then."

"It’s the son of the conductor," she says, though he’s been avoiding her for a month.

"Meantime if you ever need a gig, I’ve friends at the Casino Club. Good pay and every night. Find yourself a guitarist, learn a few light Western tunes, a few tsiganochkis. I have agents galore. I’m a kind of agent myself, for certain girls. And you’ve got lots more talent than them. Say… You must look good when you smile."

When she turns to go it’s he who catches her arm. And suddenly, Evgenia doesn’t think him handsome anymore. "Let go," she clips. And he does.

Entering her apartment, Evgenia hones onto the mirror near the door. She fixates her image first with one eye, then the other as she shrugs off her coat. Elation from her rebuff of Mishka still vibrates like the power that surges through her arms when she plays. She throws her coat onto its hook, tossing herself a final pout across one shoulder as though the mirror were the handsome commentator on The Fifth Wheel. He has beauty to match hers, and his journalist’s voice is sweetened by the honey of insinuated wisdom. Evgenia often can’t sleep after the program.

Last week he’d reported upon Tomsk’s efforts to re-educate Lenin’s statue. The bronze Lenin sported one cap on his intelligent brow but his raised fist clutched a second. The source of this overzealous hatting was the Collectivity: head with torso were cast in one town; dismembered limbs in another. Each factory accused the other of criminal hoodwinking (obolvanil). "It appears," he’d said, "that upon Mother Russia’s bosom, one breast was saying ‘shit’ to the other." Evgenia is still chuckling as she walks in.

Her stepfather is already feeding on fish. Only her mother waits as usual, standing wide-hipped in American jeans before the stove. Evgenia notes that her roots need bleaching. "Allo. Zhenya." She beams a soothing smile preceded by anxious eyes ringed in makeup that exaggerates each passing year. "How was your test?"

Evgenia frowns. "It’s tomorrow." She storms into the toilet to change. She’d hope to forget that test and watch The Fifth Wheel in peace but now her mother’s ruined everything by reminding her of it. Wearing her father’s face, Evgenia returns but then smells fish. It’s sudak, her favorite. Her mother would save her the head with the eyes to suck.

"It’s ready," her mother says. "Fresh from the Tajiks at the market. I got it on the way home from work."

Evgenia knows how difficult it was for her mother to leave early, go by the market and haggle with Muslims over fish. This only makes her angrier. She glowers at her stepfather’s baldpate bent over mashed potatoes thickened with egg. Ignoring her, he spits fish bones into a pile. Kolya has been in prison for black-marketing and isn’t afraid of Evgenia. The television flickers across his pale face, while his eyes follow her mother moving about the room where the three of them have to sleep. He’d loved her mother even in primary school and had hovered while that first marriage to Evgenia’s father had failed. Everyday after a few he babbles to her how happy he is. It gets on everyone’s nerves.

The dreary news reiterates the day’s atrocities in Afghanistan, showing coffins lined up like toppled dominoes. Next come soldiers’ smashed or frozen faces, which evoke in Evgenia that now cinematic memory of a skeleton lapping up masticated mush. The old man is about to lift his rheumy eyes to hers when Evgenia pushes this specter away. Worse luck than whistling in the house, she thinks, then cheers: The Fifth Wheel will be on soon. Evgenia condescends to sit beside her stepfather and eat the fish.

She’s just started sucking on an eye when the telephone rings. She stores the globe in a cheek as she jumps to grab the receiver. "Privet," she sings into it. A deep and unknown voice recognizes hers. "I’ll become rich then," laughs Mishka, "because you didn’t know it was me." A wealthy Mishka hovers briefly upon the horizon of Evgenia’s superstitions. "Listen Zhenya," the voice says, "you can really help me out."

"Why would I?"

"Cute. Gherman—you know, the guitarist—just called me. He says you’ve played with him before. He needs a substitute for tomorrow afternoon."

Evgenia plucks the fish eye from her cheek. "At the Casino Club?" she snarls.

"No, no, that’s not your style. You’re heading for the Philharmonic, I know." Evgenia’s perfect pitch gauges his tone but can detect no sarcasm. "The gig’s at the Evropeiskaya. Gherman’s partner Masha has man-trouble and bruises. Can you fill in? Afternoon and evening. He’s terrified of losing this gig."

Evgenia pauses. The Europe Hotel is full of rich foreigners. A stepping-stone.

"Hey. Gherman will give you two-thirds. Just for the day."

"Only to play?"

"I swear it."

The Fifth Wheel’s theme swells from the television. "What time?"

"Eleven-thirty till midnight. Starts at noon but you’ll need to go over a few scores with Gherman. Dushinka, darling. I’ll owe you."

She could make her theory test in the morning and skip afternoon orchestra. It’ll mean trouble but the money was worth it. Maybe Mishka will become rich, after all. He was still handsome.

"Well?"

"Ok, ok, spokoino," Evgenia says. "Got to go. The Fifth Wheel is starting."

"Hey, I know the guy who does that show. Gregory Kolontski—I can introduce you sometime."

"Really, of course you do."

"He comes to the Casino a lot, it’s easy to arrange. I could invite him there tomorrow. You could come when your gig’s over."

Evgenia begins to wonder.

"He has time. He’s between girls right now."

The idea of a live journalist with rounded muscles in available flesh looms as both an instant solution but also a threat: in the empty void that is Evgenia’s future, the fairytale of their romantic encounter sugarcoats the terror that he’ll despise her, and sneer. This would confirm to Evgenia her suspicions about herself.

"We’ll see if you can make good on that." She hangs up, convinced he can’t, afraid that he can.

The Fifth Wheel’s music has drawn her grandmother from the bedroom, which she occupies because she’s dying faster than the rest of them. She shuffles to the daybed, her right side paralyzed by a stroke. The grandmother’s craggy nose juts over a shrunken, sly mouth. Evgenia doesn’t imagine that her own apple cheeks are a legacy from this hollowed-out woman. Evgenia pops the fish eye back into her mouth to crunch while she turns the TV towards the grandmother, whom she loves.

"Now you’ve lost the picture. Turn it back," orders Kolya.

The grandmother aims a suspicious noise in her son-in-law’s direction. She had preferred Evgenia’s real father, the Cossack, from whom Evgenia has inherited those furious eyes.

"Fetch the vodka," Kolya tells his wife. He leaves the table to settle onto the daybed.

Evgenia’s mother is fussing with the TV’s antenna.

"Let’s all sit with Mamochka to watch," she says.

"Shot glasses for everyone" he says. "And don’t forget one for Grandma."

Startled eyes fly at him but Kolya bats them aside like insects.

"But The Fifth Wheel is on," she tries.

"I can drink while I watch TV, I’ve been known to do two things at once."

Evgenia’s mother, her mouth a red gash, returns with a tray. Kolya hooks an arm over her shoulders to lower her to his other side while jutting his bad leg. He broke it working on rotten scaffolding and it’s never really healed. He pours out vodka, then hands a glass to the grandmother, who greedily takes it with her good hand and throws it down her throat, her lower lip protruding like an elephant’s to caress its rim. He holds up a cigarette for the grandmother to inhale. "Little cutie (dushenka)," he sniggers as he puts the cigarette back in his mouth and an eyelid constricts. "She’s slobbered all over it." Evgenia knows that Kolya can’t wait to live alone with her mother.

Evgenia jumps up but there’s nothing to do but pluck the second fish eye. On the way back, Kolya hands her a glass.

On the screen, a camera is panning onto a dark stage where Kolontski sits spotlighted in an armchair. His light hair shimmers, siphoning a groan from Evgenia. His American jeans and pristine Italian loafers prove him a man of means and distinction. But Kolontski’s habitual irony is gone. Instead, he’s chanting a poem all Leningrad knows, written by a scientist who’s also a poet. His biology textbook is a staple in schools while his poems appear in every magazine and newspaper.

The spotlight widens to illuminate the poem’s author with his soulful eyes. He looks like an artichoke. His head wobbles on a thin neck, and his furred ears sit low on a wide jaw that tapers upward towards a pointed head. Tubular lips given to belching expand above a disappearing chin. He has a Hebraic last name. Many girls are in love with him.

Not Evgenia. She only melts before strong teeth and muscular shoulders. She wonders again if Mishka really knows Kolontski and will bring him tomorrow. This meeting looms before her, a coming storm booming with both excitement and dread.

"So beautiful, this poem." Her mother is weeping. Kolya takes her hand and kisses it. The grandmother grunts. Her shot glass is empty.

Kolontski lifts his eyes. "Tonight we are with the man himself, who says he has startling news. Even we at The Fifth Wheel don’t know it yet."

"What it can be?" her mother worries. "I knew something bad would happen when I settled on thirty rubles twenty-two kopeks for the fish. Twenty-two," she shivers. "All the miseries. Then some crazed piánitsa tried to sell me two flowers."

The grandmother widens her good eye. "Filthy omens," she gnashes out. Only the women can understand her.

"And now there’ll be some disaster."

"Don’t be a potato," Evgenia barks. "It’s something amusing. You’ll see."

Kolontski and his guest are seated on each side of a cluttered desk. From it a lamp’s glare explodes half of their faces into pallor while pitching the rest into darkness. Kolontski is beautiful but the poor artichoke displays every pouch and line.

"Finish your fish, Evgeniushka," her mother says, "of course you’re hungry."

"So tell us, Isak Semyonovich," asks Kolontski, "what’s this incredible news? Discoveries keep arriving by messenger, we couldn’t even talk."

The scientist sighs. "It’s taken years to research this. And at great risk. But at last my colleagues and I have proof." He rattles a folder in the air while his eyes radiate misery.

"Clever little self-promoting Yid," says Kolya.

"Proof," he repeats as if contradicting Kolya. "We now know," he says, "that Lenin was a mushroom."

Kolya howls so that he knocks over the grandmother, who falls across Evgenia, giggling from vodka or revelation no one can tell. Evgenia strokes her hair while glaring at Kolya, who only sniffs mightily and pours another round. Evgenia observes his baldpate reflecting the TV’s glow as though the brains beneath were finally activated.

Kolontski’s laughter dies before the artichoke’s steady gaze. "This is a joke of course."

Isak Semyonovich’s face is a map of woe. "No, I assure you. Consider Lenin’s ideas of Collectivity. These could only be a mushroom’s ideas. Think how a mushroom—identical to other mushrooms—could never grasp the concept of the individual. A mushroom could conceive of nothing but Collectivity."

"What nonsense," says Kolya.

"Shush," says his wife.

"So you’re saying that Lenin was not a person? But a mushroom?" Kolontski’s eyes shift offstage. "This is mere stupidity. Glupesti. Lenin rescued Russia from Capitalist oppressors. There’s Glorious October. He is historic."

"That’s right," cries Kolya.

"Bah," the screen retaliates. "History is fabrication. What would our history be now if Hitler had won the war?"

"That’s true," says Evgenia’s mother.

Kolontski offers a conciliatory smile. "But Lenin had a mother. A father. A brother who was hung. Many who saw him are still alive. Come on now, this is a hoax."

Isak Semyonovich extracts film negatives from folders. "It was Lenin himself who created his past because he controlled the State. I have proof. Proof," he begs the Soviet nation, now embodied by the puzzled Petersburg populace. "Recovered at the greatest risk." He shoves a large negative against the lampshade. "Here. Pan in. Let’s improvise."

Everyone leans to coalesce before the image except the grandmother, who remains spread across Evgenia’s lap, whimpering. She wants to be sat up.

"Look at those long beautiful fingers," Evgenia’s mother sighs.

"He has the hands of an artist," says Evgenia, who knows that Kolya is ashamed of his stubby ones.

Isak Semyonovich is pointing with a pencil to an orange mass within the negative. "This is a simple basidiomycete—that’s a large class of mushrooms called ‘puffballs’. A mushroom of the people, if you will. But look what follows." A muted rattling of films breaks in. "This negative documents the mushroom’s reproductive cycle. Notice how the spores—"

Evgenia props up her grandmother and everyone sways towards the screen.

"Here, spores have been ejaculated onto the ground by the mature puffball." Within the negative, the bright orange mushroom glows, hundreds of orange specks dotting the ground beside it. Another film appears. "Here, the spores have grown to form an imprint."

"Look," points Evgenia’s mother. "A nose," she sighs with wonder.

"You’ve got goose fat growing on your brain along with your hips," Kolya says. "If I knew this guy Kolontski, I’d get the lowdown plenty fast."

Evgenia snorts. "I’ll meet him tomorrow."

Kolya eyes her, his malice tainted by curiosity. "Sure you will. ‘Love is not a potato’ but Lenin is a mushroom. You’ll of course be so good to inform us of all details."

More negatives appear. "Observe these spores. See how they’ve grown?"

Across the screen an orange face is defining itself. A high balding forehead. Cheeks. A goatee. The spores have grown into an exact replica of Lenin’s profile. Evgenia feels the world tip. She’s always suspected it, this vast and gray world from which she craves to escape. Is this why she burns so to be noticed? Has she been living in a bland universe created by a mushroom?

On the screen Isak Semyonovich is elevating historic photos of Lenin. Lenin, shaking hands from the caboose of his train. Lenin in a crowd of dignitaries, his cap mimicking the flattened pileus of a mushroom. Lenin beside his dacha in a damp forest. The photos are rudimentary. Yet each bears an eerie resemblance to the spore formation.

"Chort!" Evgenia’s mother says. "I always knew that man was the Devil."

"Don’t be a cretin, woman."

Evgenia glares at Kolya, whose grin is armed with one blackened and prominent canine. "This is a put-on," he says.

"It’s possible, why not," Evgenia barks but then feels foolish.

"You’re so smart, why don’t you find out tomorrow?"

Kolontski’s trapped eyes are roving in their sockets. "Lenin? A mushroom?"

"How else, I ask you, could he lie in Red Square, in his mausoleum, still as fresh as the day he died in 1924? Why no disintegration during sixty years?"

Kolontski hesitates. "Because he’s a mushroom?"

"Because he’s a mushroom. Like in a jar."

"You’ll have to do better than that. We all know photos can be doctored."

Kolya slaps his wife’s thigh. "That’s right," he says.

"Besides," Kolontski continues, "we know embalmers work year-round under Red Square."

But Isak Semyonovich’s eyes are oppressed with knowledge. "All right," he burps. His nerves have given him gastritis, and Evgenia can see he’s abandoned his fate to a higher good. "You force me to say it. The people have a right to know. We infiltrated (Isak Semyonovich shakes off a hand) we infiltrated the mortuary under Red Square, where the supposed embalmers work to preserve Lenin’s body. Well in fact, there are no embalmers. There’s only one old woman, that’s all there is. She makes her own vinegar in barrels and pumps it into the glass casket from below. So Lenin is just a marinated mushroom lying in a jar."

"Absurd."

"A flesh sample from the casket gave us Lenin’s DNA. It’s the same as any mushroom’s."

A crash off-camera captures Kolontski’s surprise before the screen goes blank.

Equally blank faces turn to one another in the room. Kolya’s jaw hovers above his glass while Evgenia’s mother makes him her sheep eyes. Only the grandmother’s half-smile is mysterious. But since her stroke, she’s always simple.

"Can you imagine?" Evgenia’s mother says. "Predstavlaesh sebe?"

Kolya rises to limp into the kitchen and rummage the cabinets. "It’s a gag. A trick."

"You saw those spores. That face. It was Lenin. And the DNA—"

"—There’s no more vodka. And don’t be a fool!" He whirls, his fist raised.

"You know nothing," Evgenia shouts. "DNA doesn’t lie."

"But doctored negatives and TV artists do, Zhenya. Just another goose. Like your mother."

Evgenia’s mother pushes between them but Kolya shoves her against a cabinet.

"You’re a horrible lout," screams Evgenia, and Kolya leisurely swings his palm hard across her jaw. Evgenia backs away, fury vying with terror that her face will be ruined. Then she rushes forward to kick his bad leg.

Evgenia notes her mother moving towards his buckled and cursing figure when the grandmother falls, a stone crashing down. Her daughter cries out and kneels beside her but she’s only asleep.

As Evgenia’s mother cradles the torso, Evgenia sways within her alcoholic turbulence, both tossed and soothed. She notes that her mother is becoming old, too.

Evgenia kneels to help and, through the fluid lens of vodka, she observes her own hands sliding to disappear beneath the old woman’s crinkled skin, which will first become her mother’s and then her own. Like the skin of dried mushrooms, she thinks.

Kolya, pale and hunched, leans against the stove gripping his leg. He reminds her of the old man in the peaked cap, who suddenly blooms before Evgenia, his milky eyes pleading as if he possessed some solution. Solution, Evgenia snorts. What solution is there but power and money and fame? ‘Not even I am alone,’ his eyes bargain. ‘Even I am important because I’m needed by someone.’ Power and money and fame, Evgenia spits to the mushroom that lives with all the other mushrooms in the collective dark. And, as she and her mother lumber under the grandmother’s weight towards the bedroom, Evgenia resolves that tomorrow, she’ll flirt viciously with Mishka until she can meet Kolontski. She’ll even play at the Casino Club because now, she’s determined to start her life and find out everything.