Sanya darted up the stairs: a floor or two above her she heard hasty tramping. Ivan! She called out, but the shoes dashed faster, pattering towards the top floor of the block of flats. Her son ran like mad. She rushed after him filled with panic. Why was that six year old kid fleeing to the sixteenth floor? She already tracked him down twice on this very staircase. He was a small, silent boy, quiet on his chair while Sanya watched the newscast on the TV. He didn’t eat much and quietly lost weight in his corner since his father went away. The worst thing was he now ran again, in his old bedraggled sweater, to the ugly sixteenth floor. Perhaps he wanted to see the Struma River that stole like a cat under the bridge, or he planned to stare at the hill overgrown with prickly bushes and mushrooms. He’d done that several times.

“Ivan!”

At last the pounding shoes stopped.

“Mom,” his voice sounded soft and that threw her into panic. She imagined him standing in front of an open window on the top floor, just as the other day when he hurled her new jacket from the balcony of their apartment.

“Why did you do that?” she had asked.
“Because of you,” her son had said.” It’s your fault.” Then he had rushed again to the sixteenth floor.

“Ivan!” Sanya shouted. His silence made her freeze in her tracks. She had worried herself sick in vain. Ivan waited, bristling, squatting on the floor. “What?” she asked him. He didn’t answer. That annoyed her. His silences gave her pounding headaches. Now she saw her son had thrust his hand under his scruffy sweater.

“What have you got in your hand?” Sanya asked, feeling a nest of pain kick between her eyebrows. “Let me see it.”

Her son, who looked so much like Pavel, his father, cowered at her feet. He stayed as silent and watchful as Pavel, and one day would follow in his footsteps and go away. She was sure of that. “Okay, what’s in your hand?”

Her son lay on his stomach, his scrawny chest burying his hand in which he hid something. She looked through the window: he had just chucked out one of her blouses, the orange one that had become entangled in the branches of the walnut tree under their block of flats.

“Why?” she asked, knowing the boy wouldn’t answer. A month ago, he had started growling, quietly, like a wolf-cub, when he thought she was not at home. Her son slept, dressed in Pavel’s T-shirt. Sometimes in the evening, the kid wailed - obstinately, crouching by the wardrobe where some of his father’s clothes had remained.

“Let me see your hand,” Sanya said.

Unexpectedly, the boy stretched out his fist. He often did that: he gripped something in his fingers and stood silent, his hand outstretched. If she asked a question the kid growled.

This time he unclenched his fist and a note slipped through his fingers. It was a crumpled piece of paper, so tattered that she had no idea where he had taken it from. Then she knew.

Her son had torn it out of the calendar, from the month of April. It was the month of headaches, of colds and bad memories. On all the dates of April, and on the picture of the running children, her son had scrawled in block letters that were as big as the spring: “Let it rain a lot.”

“Why should it rain a lot?” Sanya asked. She expected no response. The kid answered her questions after a couple of hours, sometimes after a day. He spoke, wrapping himself in Pavel’s blankets. Perhaps he talked to his father’s T-shirt.

This time Ivan said, “I want it to rain”.

Ivan still had not learnt to write some of the letters at school and she wondered why he bothered to print them on the picture of the running children. She was surprised he had answered her.

“Dad comes home when it rains.”

“Yes,” she said.

It was true. Pavel had returned home twice and it had been raining all the time. She left her room and waited in the rain, under the walnut tree, while Pavel talked to the boy.

Sanya could not live with lies: she knew sometimes men fell in love with another woman and went crazy about her. Such a thing could not happen to Pavel, she believed. Yet it happened. She had no idea if that woman had gone away, or Pavel’s love for her had died, but he came back home.

Sanya could not stand by his side. Her nose bled. Perhaps it was on account of the smell. Pavel smelled of betrayal after that woman. The thought that he had sunk down into the armchair in which she sat now made her growl. Perhaps her son had learned that from her.

“Why do you go to the sixteenth floor?” she asked.

“Because of the rain,” her son said. “I’ll leave this note to the sky. It will know I want it to rain. I learned the letters “N’ and “T” and wrote the note.”

“Okay,” Sanya said. “Leave the note here. I hope it will rain, son.”

“But you don’t want dad to come back home,” the boy muttered.

Suddenly Sonya made up her mind. She could not stand Ivan dashing to the top floor any more. She’d been worried sick. She just couldn’t live through it once again.

“Ivan,” she started. “I wish it would rain now. I’ll write a note to the sky, too.”

“Are you lying to me?” Ivan whispered, but his face relaxed. She didn’t know what to say. The kid took her hand, pulled it and said, “Then let’s go.”

She wanted to tear another sheet from the calendar, the one with the month of May, but her son insisted, “I’ll have to wait a long time if dad comes in May. Please, write you want it to rain in April.”

In the afternoon, Sanya and the boy went to the sixteenth floor again. Its ceiling knew all the clouds of the town. The sky lived above the satellite antenna on their block of flats. Sanya wrote in her handwriting as round as a string of mushrooms, “Let it rain a lot.”

“Why did you throw out my jacket and my blouse?” she asked her son. “You know they are expensive and we don’t have much money.”

“I know,” Ivan answered. She expected he’d lapse into silence, squatting in front of Pavel’s bed. Suddenly he said, “You put your jacket in dad’s wardrobe. It doesn’t belong there.”

“It’s not true,” Sanya said. Her nose bled when her clothes remained in that wardrobe. Her nose bled even when she sat in the armchair in which he had reclined. She could have sold it, that ancient armchair, but she paid two guys to set fire to it instead, and waited all the time staring at the flames. Then she bought a big bottle of brandy for the guys who burnt Pavel’s place in her mind. She drank with them - she drank so much she could not talk after that. Perhaps her voice had turned into a coal after the armchair disappeared.

She felt no hatred for that woman, she managed to keep a level head when she received letters from her filled with requests for small favors. But when she saw her husband’s forgotten shirt, his book, or his shoes her arms tingled and went dead. She struggled to forget him, but the blood, which spurted from her nose, could not forget.

“You are bad when you wear that jacket and blouse,” her son said. “When you put them on it doesn’t rain. Dad can’t come home. I’d rather stay with him than with you.”

“Is that why you threw out my clothes?” Sanya asked. Her son did not say anything as he pressed the month of April to his chest. The three of them: the boy, his mother and April climbed up the stairs to the sixteenth floor where the sky lived above the enormous satellite antenna.

“There we go,” Sanya said and glued the sheet from the calendar to the window which faced the clouds. The boy checked if the note was firmly affixed to the glass, then his mother and he went home, and the month of April remained on the roof to wait for the rain.

Then the boy fell asleep. He was in Pavel’s T-shirt, the only one that had remained in their flat. Sanya had soaked it for a week in washing powders to kill Pavel’s smell, but Pavel stayed on.

Sanya took the cellular phone and dialed a number, the number that made her ill. She prayed that nobody would answer, but Pavel’s voice asked, “Is that you, San?”
“ Yes, it’s me,” she said. His voice was anxious to learn more but she didn’t want to listen to it. She was careful not to pronounce his name. Pavel used to bring her spring and warm rains until that woman’s letters came.

“I want you to come when it begins to rain,” Sanya said.

“I’ll come right away,” the telephone number offered and suddenly spring birds nested in it.

“No, come when it starts raining, please,” that “please” scorched her lips worse than the flames that had killed the old armchair.

Definitely, the antenna had called for the rain through its satellite channels. Even on the following day a torrential downpour hit the gnarled walnut tree that had been watching the Struma River for years and was perhaps as old as its waters. Sanya’s orange blouse was sopping wet, a piece of the sun hopelessly entangled in the branches and the nest of sparrows, a garment that made her bad as Ivan had remarked. The rainier the sky became, the happier beamed her son’s face.

She had prepared herself for that rain.

Even Ivan had noticed that.

“You’ve put on your green blouse, Mom. You are good when you have it on. But where’s your pair of blue jeans? You cook delicious chicken soups when you wear it.”

Sanya was ready. The pair of jeans, which cooked soup so well, had been neatly folded together with other clothes, and waited on the backseat of her old Fiat.

It was raining hard and her son hung around the front door, humming softly a song about red-haired pirates. His room had not heard of such a thing for a year. The rain found its way and flowed into the boy’s happy face. The doorbell rang at last.

“I knew it,” Ivan shouted. “I knew that the rain would bring him home.”

Pavel came in. He was tall and handsome, but she felt dizzy. That was a sign that her nose would bleed. She had to control herself.

“I’m glad you came,” Sanya said.

“Are you?” he appeared not to believe it. “Really?”

Ivan seemed to believe his mother for she had put on her good green blouse.

“Take a seat,” Sanya said to Pavel. “I’ll make the two of you some tea.” She went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. In the kitchen, she did not feel giddy but when she came back to Pavel her arms tingled. Betrayal had a peculiar characteristic: it made her fingers tremble. “I’ve cooked chicken soup… There’s no bread at home,” she added. “You are probably hungry.”

The boy’s face burned like the flames that had eaten into the old armchair and made her get drunk.

“I’m glad you take care of us,” Pavel told her.

“This happened because of the month of April, which we glued to the window,” the boy murmured happily. His father did not understand that but ruffled his hair all the same.

“I’ll go and buy bread,” Sanya said. She did not allow her nose to bleed. She pushed the blood back where it belonged.

“I’ll go,” Pavel offered.

“I’ll go, Mom,” her son chimed in. “This green blouse of yours is so good today.”

Sanya took the shopping bag.

She waved at them and went out of the room. She had prepared herself. She passed by the bakery and padded across the street to the old Fiat. There, on the backseat, her clothes waited: her T-shirts and the pair of jeans which cooked well.

She had left her son with his father and the month of April, glued to that window.