by Adam Vine
THE CITY
I WOKE UP to Kashka banging on my apartment door. We’d made plans to visit the Concentration Camp Museum outside City at ten, but I’d slept through my alarm, and I could tell she was pissed off as soon as I opened the door and saw her standing there.
“Why did you not answer my messages?” she said, storming over to the bedside table where I kept my phone.
“I didn’t hear it go off. I just woke up,” I said.
Kashka was silent as she scrolled through the unread message notifications. She put the phone down and glared at me. “Are we still going today, or not?”
“Yeah, of course we are.”
“I don’t know. It might be too late. The museum closes at three PM. You should not have slept so late. Where were you last night?” Kashka said.
Images of prison camps buried in snow, of Snowmen dying as Zaea tamed the Lice with her countless tendrils of shadow, of reading Queen Rat to sleep next to a withering fire, and of stealing the Glass Book all flashed through my mind like fragments of a fading dream, though I knew it wasn’t.
I wiped the sleep from my eyes, pulled on a pair of jeans, and approached Kashka slowly, cradling her face in my hands. I tried to kiss her, but she moved her face away. I kissed her on the eyelids instead. “Three o’clock, babe? That’s five hours from now. We’ve got plenty of time. I just need to brush my teeth, then we can get going.”
Kashka shook her head, fuming, as I hurried to the bathroom. “No. It is too late. We will already miss this bus. The next one doesn’t leave until eleven.”
“Eleven’s fine. Stop being crazy,” I said through a mouthful of toothbrush.
“I’m not.”
“You are, and you know it.”
“I do.” She leaned on the bathroom doorframe, a slight smile curling the corners of her lips. She frowned and said, “Babe, is it really the truth? Did you not go out last night at all? Not even for one beer?”
I spat out the toothpaste and rinsed my mouth under the faucet. “Kashka, why do you ask me things like that? No, I didn’t. Why would I lie to you?”
“Maybe you were with other girl.”
Christ. This again?
“You know that I wasn’t. I was home.”
“No, I don’t,” Kashka said.
“You have issues.”
“No. You do.”
“You’re not wrong about that. Come on, let’s get going,” I said.
There was already a long line for the bus by the time we reached City’s central station. We barely made it on. Kashka argued with the driver for about five minutes before he took our money and printed our receipts for the hour-long ride to the museum, which cost a grand total of four dollars and fifty cents. The bus was one of those crappy little minivan busses that can only hold twenty people at maximum capacity. We sat on the floor next to the driver, uncomfortably bumping and lurching as he barreled down the twisting country back roads. There were only two highways in Country, and neither of them went anywhere near the Concentration Camp Museum.
I said a silent prayer that we wouldn’t crash, then spent most of the ride thinking about what would happen when I returned to the Night Country, but those plans no longer seemed urgent. I could go back whenever I wanted, and there was something I had to do here first.
It was noon by the time we bought our tickets and entered the museum. The sign above the archway of the camp’s infamous main gate read Arbeit Macht Frei, a German phrase endemic among the concentration camps of the Holocaust, which meant “work for freedom." The perimeter was closed in a riddle of barbed wire fences punctuated by wooden watchtowers, the grounds a silent sepulcher of autumn trees all weeping their leaves. Tour groups full of Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Israelis, and Americans meandered through the gray gloom of early afternoon, reading the signs and taking dishonorable selfies in front of the camp’s most morbid sights.
We didn’t say much over the next three hours as we explored the matrix of brick buildings where Jewish, Russian, and Countryish prisoners had once slept and starved body-to-body under thin, threadbare blankets. The rooms were long since converted into museum displays depicting the timeline of the camp’s role in the Holocaust, from the Nazi occupation of Country in 1939, to the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in City, to the forced migration of those who were to be murdered into the concentration camps and their eventual deaths at the hands of Hitler’s genocidal regime.
We’d watched Schindler’s List in high school, studied the pictures of the mountains of pots, shoes, and disembodied braids of hair, even the dead themselves, emaciated and skeletal from months of starvation. But there was something about actually being in that place where those horrors had actually happened, feeling the chill and tasting the dusty concrete flavor of the air that transformed those images from abstract ideas into the harrowingly real.
Kashka clung to my side, but even her comforting warmth couldn’t shake me out of the dark, hallucinatory visions conjured by the evil of that place.
We saw the hair, hills upon hills of seventy year-old braids shorn from the heads of five hundred thousand murdered women, and all I could think of was that it could’ve been hers.
We saw the shoes, endless piles of shoes that could have just as easily been on Kashka’s feet, or Carly’s, or Zaea’s. The styles weren’t much different from the styles women wore today; high heels, flats, strappy little sandals.
We saw the pots, a towering stack of them filling a room larger than my whole apartment, and all I could think was that any one of those countless pieces of enameled metal could have been the one Kashka and her family cooked their meals in back on her farm.
We approached a ruined courtyard where thousands had been marched toward a wall now covered in flowers and shot.
We walked through a low brick bunker with concrete floors and square ventilation holes in the ceilings. I didn’t realize until we entered the incinerator room that we were standing in a gas chamber.
We saw the prison cells where gypsies, pregnant women, and the mentally ill had been held without water or food, then taken away to be subjected to the most brutal experiments in human history.
Kashka was mostly quiet for those few, eternal hours we spent wandering the camp, seldom offering to break the silence with a whispered “I love you,” or some tidbit about the last time she’d visited during a school field trip in the fourth grade. She mentioned that the museum had been funded by the Russian Government to preserve the memory of the tens of thousands of Russian soldiers who had been murdered there, then quickly added that in her opinion, Russian people were dishonest and always tried to make everything about themselves, so therefore the displays about Russian losses couldn’t be trusted.
I was too lost in my own head to care about most of what Kashka said. One thing did stick out to me, however, that echoed in my mind long after we’d climbed back on the bus for the hour-long ride back to City, as I watched a red sun set over fleeting quilts of fallow fields and old, dense forests.
Kashka said, “For us, this is not something shocking that happened many years ago, that we see in movies or that we learn about in school. It was really here. My grandparents told me stories about it. One in five people died when the Nazis came. Our cities and villages were turned to rubble. Even the people who did not lose their lives lost everything. My grandfather had to start over from zero.
“Countryish people have suffered many times throughout our history. The Second War was probably the worst instance, but it wasn’t the only one - not even the most recent. Suffering is part of our lives. It’s who we are.”
Hearing her say that put an arrow in my gut. It brewed and grew and tangled me up inside, until I finally admitted to myself what I’d known all along, that I was being incredibly unfair in wasting Kashka’s time. I wasn’t going to marry this girl. In the U.S., maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, but here, it was.
I could no longer lie to myself about the fact that each day I led Kashka on further limited he
r options for having a happy future. In Country, she didn’t have a choice to stay single into her thirties, to be carefree and independent like people did back home. She’d be poor and seen as a failure by her family and peers. Unfair? Absolutely. But Kashka couldn’t opt out of doing as the Romans do simply because something was unfair. Kashka was in Rome whether she liked it or not.
Ink would’ve told me not to worry about it, that Kashka’s problems weren’t my problems, that I should sleep with her until I got sick of her and then find someone younger and prettier. Ink would’ve told me not to attempt to see things from Kashka’s side at all. But my indecision wasn’t just leading Kashka and I to an inevitable bad breakup. I actually had the power to destroy the life of someone I cared about, and I’d sworn to myself two years ago I was never going to make that mistake again.
When we got off the bus in the old quarter of City, a harsh autumn storm had rolled in, sending freezing, sideways gales of rain to howl down the ancient, crooked streets.
“I need a drink,” I said.
“You want to go to Castle of Beer?” Kashka said.
“Sure.”
We rushed to find shelter from the storm. I stopped us outside the door to Castle of Beer, under the overhang where I’d kissed her the night we first met, I took her by the arms, and pressed her gently against the slick, dimpled stones. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin for me to kiss her, waited, and opened her eyes.
“You don’t want to kiss me?” she said, already knowing the answer.
Do the hard thing, I told myself. Do the right thing. Be a good man, or at least, try.
“I don’t think we should do this anymore,” I said.
“What?”
“This. Fight all the time, then break up and get back together. It just isn’t working for me. And it’s not just the fighting. It’s your past. I never know where you are or what you’re doing. We’ve been dating for two months and I haven’t even been to your flat. Why? How can you accuse me of hiding parts of myself from you, when you’re not open with me at all?”
“My flat is very old and ugly. I don’t even have a shower, just a tub with a gas heater. I don’t have enough money to move. I didn’t want you to think I was poor,” Kashka said quietly.
“I’m wasting your time, and it isn’t right. I don’t want to do that to you,” I said.
Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes. Her lips quivered downward into an involuntary frown. “Dan. Please. I love you. I want to marry you. I want children with you. Do you not want it anymore? Truly? You really don’t love me anymore? Because I don’t believe you.”
“Sometimes love isn’t enough. We’re not good for each other, Kashka.”
She stared at me like I was her last glimpse of sunlight before the golden afternoon of her life vanished into dusk. She fought back her tears. I tried to hold her but she pushed me away.
Kashka’s eyebrows slanted. “I loved you with my whole heart. That’s the truth. I’m not a bad person, and I think you will not see it until it’s too late. But all right. It’s okay. My heart will heal. It’s been broken before. I thought you were the one who wouldn’t break it, but I was wrong. I will not argue with your decision. We say here that everything happens for a reason. I think you were sent here to punish me for my sins.”
“You’re just saying that to be cruel,” I said.
Kashka shook her head furiously. “I’m not. I believe it. And now you will never change my mind. When I told you I loved you for nothing, I meant it, because you made me happy. I will be happy again, someday. Someday, I will be happy. Goodbye, Dan. I hope you have a good life. I wish you the best luck in the world.”
“Goodbye, Kashka. You, too.”
It took me hours to get home. I wandered aimlessly through the cold and the rain. I walked as far as the river, where I found myself standing alone under the slender, curving abutments of the Lover’s Bridge, one palm gripping the metal hand railing littered with its rusted padlocks all bearing a thousand forgotten names, the other snaking inside my shirt to grasp the familiar shape of Carly’s arrowhead necklace.
I thought of Carly, of Kashka, of the life I’d left back home and the one I’d found in City, of Ink, of Zaea, the Night Country, and the Blot, of the man I had been, and the one I would never be. Instead of feeling happy, or at least satisfied with my decision to let Kashka go, I was emptier than when I’d left my parents at the airport in San Francisco.
Maybe I would see her again. Or maybe I never would, and Kashka, like Carly, would become nothing more than a memory. Who are we to say what is possible and not? The universe is much larger than a simple yes and no, black and white, can and cannot. The universe is maybe, and maybe is deep and wide.
I tore off Carly’s arrowhead necklace, pricked the tip of my finger with the obsidian point one last time just to feel something, cocked my arm back, and threw it into the river.
THE CITY
THE NEXT FEW DAYS were a vodka-induced blur. I got drunker than I had since my first week in Country, staying at the bars until closing, throwing back shot after shot of scorching, questionably-sourced liquor until I was too hammered to see straight.
I scoured the empty streets for pretty women to approach, but City’s nightlife was dead due to the Feast of Saint Nicholas. The holiday didn’t exist in America, but it was one of the four or five times per year in Country when everything except bars and restaurants shut down for three whole days, even the grocery stores, and the students all went home to their villages to spend time with their families.
I wasn’t even thinking about sex. I just wanted someone to talk to. The truth was, I didn’t think I could have sex if the opportunity presented itself. The black spot on my genitals was growing. It had started as a single bump, but had begun spiraling outward, giving birth to a coiling tendril of black, that I had the horrifying premonition wouldn’t stop growing until it covered my entire body.
The worst night of my post-Kashka streak was the night I went to Drinks Bar, and the cute bartender fed me multiple shots of a 140-proof vodka with a name I couldn’t pronounce. It was distilled from plums. The bartender was the same girl who’d poured me my drinks on my first night out in City, the one with the dyed-red hair and facial piercings. She was wearing a black tank-top that revealed a full-sleeve tattoo on her right arm. The tattoo depicted hardened Slavic knights in shining armor battling a hideous demon in the ruins of a medieval palace.
I’d spent enough time obsessively re-reading Arkadius that there was no mistaking that scene. The artwork was nowhere near as good as Lolek’s subtle, nightmarish illustrations. The bartender’s tattoo was drawn in a cliché, Ed Hardy style, and didn’t look at all like what I’d imagined when reading the poem, but I leapt at the chance to ask her about it, hoping my expertise would impress her.
“Act IV,” I said, drunkenly pointing at her tattoo. “The scene where the Good Knight slays the demon. Climax of the poem. Fugging… epic.”
The bartender raised an eyebrow at me. “What?”
“When Arkadius stabs the demon in the face and frees the Kingdom,” I said, almost falling off my stool as I leaned in closer.
The bartender recoiled, squinting at me. “Oh, yes. You mean my tattoo. Arkadius is my favorite story. I’ve reread it every year since I was a girl.”
“Why?” I said.
“Pride in my homeland, maybe. It is our tradition. Plus, I like swords, and this guy has a cool one. Look.” The bartender flexed her bicep, and the Good Knight’s tiny, gleaming blade plunged back and forth into the black depths of the demon’s hood.
Cool optical illusion, I thought. But that isn’t what happens in the poem.
“Wow. You’re a nerd,” I said.
The bartender smirked. “You’re the one who commented on it.”
“I had to read it for my job,” I said.
“Oh. What do you do?”
“I’m a book translator.”
“A what?”
“A
book. Translator.”
“Oh. Okay. You don’t need to yell.”
The bartender smiled pityingly and put the bottle of plum vodka back on the shelf. I thanked her and promptly stumbled home, but I was so drunk I couldn’t find the keys to the front door of my building. I passed out on the front lawn next to the gutter.
I woke up to the gray light of dawn in a pool of my own vomit. I was shivering, and my head hurt like I’d been brained by a Snowman’s axe. Thankfully the temperature had stayed above freezing. If it had been any colder, I would be dead. Some nice person had draped my coat over me like a blanket at some point during the night. They even left my wallet, though there wasn’t much cash left after my three-day bender.
My keys were in my coat pocket.
In the painful cave of my apartment, where my hangover bloomed and then deepened, I thought back on the chain of events that had led me to this place of suffering and regret so far from my home. I thought of the people who were no longer in my life, who my failures or choices had driven away (some of them, for good); my dad, my mom, my sister Delia, her husband Nick, their little girl, Evan, Carly, and God.
As if summoned, my phone buzzed on the bedside table. It was a text from Evan.
Hey man, sorry for the delay. Life tough with the baby. Always busy. Glad to hear you’re doing well. Talk soon, buddy.
Rage spilled down my fingers into the touch screen of my phone as I drafted my response:
Seriously? It took you two fucking months to send me a goddamned text saying hello? What kind of guy leaves his best friend hanging that long, when I’m in a foreign country? I’m not okay, Evan. I’m not okay at all.
But I didn’t send it. I’d fantasized about burning Evan for his disappearing act since I’d moved to Country, but now that I finally had a chance, it seemed stupid and childish. Ink would’ve scoffed at me for acting like such a little baby.
