As he climbed out of the car, Kostya noticed various people watching him through windows.
Or perhaps, lost in their own worries, they stared at nothing.
Arkady drove off.
In the lobby, a new watchwoman stood by her rocking chair, her face stiff, not quite allowing herself to relax yet after a terrible fright.
The uniform, Kostya told himself, the car. —Good afternoon, Grandmother. I live on the sixth floor, flat number seven, Nikto, Konstantin Arkadievich. Do you wish to see my identification?
Avoiding his eyes, she shook her head. —I believe you are what you say you are, Comrade Nikto.
— Nadia?
Temerity stood still, arms raised in graceful defense. Ignoring Kostya, she finished the move.
— What is that?
She smiled. —Just a stretch.
The vodka bottle made a sharp clink against a glass. —I know sombo when I see it.
— The correct term is jiu-jutsu.
Looking to the ceiling, Kostya sighed. Then he sounded friendly, warm. —Come sit with me.
She joined him at the little table, accepted a drink.
His voice stayed warm as he lit two cigarettes. —Did you feel a kick? Here, take it. Hey? Answer me, Nadia.
Her brown eyes glittered. —Why?
— What do you mean, why?
— I mean, why in hell should I answer you?
— Because I deserve to know.
— Oh, do you?
— Yes. I deserve to know, before a bullet crashes through my brain, if—
— It was far too early to feel a kick.
After a moment, he sneered and ground out his cigarette. —Efim?
— Well, it wasn’t Elena Petrovna, now, was it?
— Nadia, please.
She kept her voice steady. —Should I be happy? Should I recite some Shakespeare? Should I make this easy for you?
— I only—
— You did this to me!
— Nadia, you came to me!
— You! The man who’s kept me in his flat to please himself!
— To keep you safe!
She ducked, shielding her face with her arms, and Kostya saw he’d raised his arm, ready to backhand her.
He chose to reach for the cigarettes.
Temerity heard the scrape of the match, then opened her eyes and lowered her arms. —Kostya, just get me somewhere near the embassy. I’ll run.
Drawing hard on his cigarette, he shoved himself away from the table.
— Run with me. I’ll vouch for you, tell them you’ve been kind. I can get you out of here. Kostya, please.
He wrenched open the door and strode into the corridor.
— Please!
She expected him to slam and lock the door behind him.
Instead, he eased it shut.
Then locked it.
The early evening gave no respite from the heat. Standing in the kitchen, his jacket and tie in a heap on the hinged table, Efim plucked his sleeves from his sweaty skin, rolled them up, and told himself the heat was no bother. Neither was his likely sentence of twenty-five years when found guilty of providing an abortion. His attempts at self-deception provided no real distraction. Once NKVD hauled him in, he’d confess it. He knew this. A matter of time, and perhaps of pride, but mostly time. I’ll babble it in the car before we even reach Lubyanka.
As he sterilized his gynecological instruments by boiling them on the stove — he’d not dared to use the autoclave at the lab — Efim confronted a deeper recognition. Not only had he broken several laws, but he’d chosen the safety of this patient, however desperate, over the safety of his wife.
What kind of man am I?
He’d asked that question earlier in the afternoon at Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two, testing refinements on a new formula with which he and the other doctors murdered two young women, twin sisters with frizzy blond hair, each pleading pregnancy.
He told Temerity he must examine her.
On Kostya’s bed, towels beneath her, Temerity sweated in embarrassment and fear: the difficult pragmatics of tilting her pelvis at a good angle to allow Efim a view, of exposing, once again, a part of herself both violated and loved.
— No sign of infection, Nadezhda.
— I need to be sick.
— Did this come on suddenly?
She rolled on her side and retched.
Efim took a thermometer from bag and shook the mercury down. —Once you’re done, we’ll see if you’re feverish.
Her temperature reading normal, Temerity tugged sheets up over herself. I’m going to die here.
Efim studied the bruise on Temerity’s face. —I think you fell in love with the wrong man.
She sat up, making her nausea worse. —You think I chose this?
— Shh, your voice.
— My voice? I should scream. Isn’t that what captives do? I should have stabbed him after I kneed him. I should—
The telephone rang; they both flinched.
Temerity listened to Efim answer the caller’s questions: yes, yes, no, no, no, yes.
He stood in the doorway. —I have to leave.
— Wait, I need money.
He shut his medical bag and shook his head.
— Efim Antonovich, please, just thirty kopeks.
— You shouldn’t be on your feet yet. Get some rest. Doctor’s orders.
He left the flat.
After a moment, she checked the door.
Locked.
She arranged fresh bandages for herself. Then, in the front room, she switched on the radio. A shrill report on production quotas for iron concluded and gave way, for the education and betterment of all, comrades, to a live performance of the first movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E Major. —Please welcome violinist Comrade Orlova.
Temerity knew the piece well. Bach’s vigour and clarity in this partita always made her heart beat faster, and she gasped in pleasure. Static interrupted yet failed to obscure the insistent, almost frantic beauty as the violinist reached beyond the state-induced Stakhanovite aesthetic of faster-faster-faster, more-more-more, and begged — dared — the listener to keep up.
Temerity felt her ribs ache, her lungs twitch, as if she’d forgotten to breathe. She’d last heard the piece performed at a concert three years before, accompanied by her father and Count Ostrovsky. Tears pricked.
A click: the announcer informed the audience that he held a stopwatch close to the mic. The first movement of that partita often took three and a half or even four minutes to play. Comrade Orlova had just finished in three minutes and thirteen seconds.
— Have you anything to say, Comrade Orlova?
— Oh. Ah, just thank you.
She sounded much as Temerity imagined Amelia Earhart would: not frightened, but exhilarated. Despite the menace and threat of the Purge, despite the risk of drawing the attention of those who might sense her resistance and strength and so wish to harm her, Orlova had reached for beauty. In this moment, she could be both loyal and, for those who had ears to hear it, subversive. Of course, she pursued excellence for collective joy and the glory of the motherland, nothing self-interested, bourgeois, or formalist here. And yet, in the same moment, she pursued excellence as a private devotion to something greater than mere survival. In that decision, perhaps more instinct than choice, she stood defiant.
Patting her left shoulder, Temerity smiled.
— No sign of him?
Efim placed his medical bag on the sofa. —None.
Pacing, Arkady gestured to his large table: cheese, bread, and some cold roast fowl, little bowls of chopped cucumber in yogurt, and three bottles of wine. —Leftovers. I hosted a funeral reception today. Help yourself.
Resenting Arkady’s hospitality after his command to come to the house, no explanation given, Efim studied the table and its offerings. —Please accept my condolences once more.
— I told Kostya to stay at the flat
and call me.
— Nadezhda Ivanovna says he got upset and left.
— Nadezhda Ivanovna can rot in Kolyma and then take a holiday in hell. Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova: you do know that’s not her real name. At least, you suspected. And she’s not Soviet, either. I’ve seen her passport.
Efim felt dizzy. How could I not know what I know? —Why do you tell me this?
— So that now we shall all tumble into the meat grinder hand-in-hand, singing folk songs that celebrate the triumph of the workers. Drink?
Nodding, Efim sat down. A cork popped; wine splashed; Efim looked up. As Arkady returned to Efim, passing through patches of shadow and light, a sheen glistened, then dulled, on his forehead, like a salt stain, like a frost.
Efim accepted the wine. —When did you last consult a doctor? For yourself?
— You’re here now, aren’t you?
Efim peered at him. This big Chekist, free of his uniform, seemed smaller. His cheeks sagged, and his eyes betrayed something new, something besides fear and corruption and expectation of command: sacrifice. Balakirev, Arkady Dmitrievich, Major, NKVD, his desires and motives wrinkled and obscured, had reached a decision.
Arkady sat near Efim. —Let me tell you how my father died.
Efim listened to this story as he studied Arkady’s face, eyes, hands. Then he asked permission to listen through his stethoscope.
The lungs crackled and wheezed, air fighting with fluid. The heart beat too fast.
Arkady shuddered as though chilled. —I itch all over. Worse at night. Get that thermometer away from me.
Efim stroked Arkady’s cheek with the backs of his fingers and found no fever. To make sure, he pressed his lips to Arkady’s forehead. As he retreated, he tasted his lips: salty, uric, foul. —You’ve no pain with this, Comrade Major?
— None.
Efim washed away the taste with a sip of wine. —That may change.
— I don’t care.
Efim believed him.
— I don’t care. I just want Kostya looked after, and for the first time in my life since I became a man, I can do nothing. Too much works against him. I cannot save him. And I’m afraid he cannot save himself.
Efim’s practised speech for the dying, his gentle encouragement to detach from worldly concerns and visit the church of the mind, failed. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to use the diminutive, for in this moment he’d intruded on something intimate, as a doctor must. —You need to let Kostya worry about himself.
— Kostya, alone? Him, and that whore? Even if I can’t save him, I will still protect him. I know him well; I know how he thinks; he’ll be here soon. And then I may need you all the more. I don’t want him to know you’re here, though, so when I tell you, wait in the study.
— What?
A wheeze sharpened Arkady’s sigh. —Efim Antonovich, I’ve been presumptuous. I ordered you here instead of inviting you. Vadym said I treat every encounter as an interrogation. I think he was right. Will you stay a while?
Not a command but a plea, a plea from a sick man. Confused, Efim nodded. —Of course.
As Arkady topped up their drinks and started telling a story of Kostya as an adolescent, the trouble he caused with a friend called Misha, Efim saw how he must counsel two violent Chekists on the inevitability of death. He laughed at the thought, just at a moment where Arkady’s story invited laughter. Then he recognized a deeper truth: he must prepare a loving son for the loss of his father.
Ears ringing and arms stiff from too much target practice, Kostya struggled to write his name on the correct line to sign out a car. He passed the forms back to the clerk, who, eyes down, eager to return to the magazine he’d hidden when the officer had approached his desk, wrote his initials next to Kostya’s signature. Then the clerk stood up, stretched his lower back, and plodded to the new display of keys. They dangled on tiny metal rings, the rings themselves hanging on individual nails. Above each nail: a careful entry in pencil of numbers matching key to automobile. Several spots lay empty. The clerk stood there a moment, as though watching a confrontation play out and deciding whether to intervene. Then he returned to his desk and glanced at the form again.
Kostya rolled his eyes. Just pick one.
The clerk plucked the key from its nail and gave it to Kostya. —Car number forty-two, Comrade Senior Lieutenant Nikto.
— Thank you, comrade. Goodnight.
In the garage, where the cars waited in their numbered spots, a driver opened a car’s rear door, and Vasily Blokhin emerged. —Good evening, Nikto. On your way home?
— Just finished some target practice.
— Excellent, stay ready. I’ve got night duty, myself. How’s your shoulder?
— Oh, fine, fine.
— You knew Minenkov. Vadym Pavlovich.
A statement, not a question. No tinge of accusation.
— Yes.
Vasily bowed his head. —My condolences. These are difficult days.
Then he left, his walk slow and steady, and his purpose, it seemed, clear.
Behind the wheel of car number forty-two, Kostya removed his Nagant from the holster and studied it. Such a practical design, elegant: the inviting curve of the grip. Seven rounds nestled the chamber. A thing of beauty, a joy for the permanence of revolution.
Ready.
As was he.
— Not yet.
Kostya’s eyes glittered as he hung up the phone from talking with Arkady. —Why not?
Behind the bathroom door, Temerity adjusted padding. —Just a minute.
Studying his wristwatch, Kostya leaned against the wall. He’d done it. Signed out the car. Kept his promise. He’d get her to the embassy.
Temerity touched his good shoulder. —You mean it? In truth?
One of those spells again: asleep with his eyes open. —Yes, my Marya Morevna, in truth.
She blinked away tears.
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. Then, tasting salt, he whispered in her ear. —The car’s just outside the lobby. I’m your driver. We make it look right, yes? I’ll open the car door, and you get in the back. Even the watchwoman can’t object to that.
Her rapid nod brushed her curls against his nose and mouth, tickling him. He held her tight, inhaled the scent of the top of her head, let her go.
Outside the flat, at the top of the stairs, expecting this dream to shatter, Temerity hesitated. Up so high, such a fall, the watchwoman at the bottom…
Kostya offered his arm.
Temerity took it, and they descended together.
In the lobby, Kostya pressed his palm to the seat of the empty rocking chair. —Still warm. She’s not gone far. Move.
Dusk. The air seemed to patter on her face, like raindrops. Temerity took in a deep breath. —Oh, God, it’s so fresh.
Holding the car door open for her, Kostya shook his head. —It’s hot. The whole city stinks.
Temerity took in the smells of the car: leather, oil, steel. Kostya peeked at her in the rear-view mirror, then adjusted his cap, too big now for his bald head.
As they passed Vasilisa Prekrasnaya, Temerity remembered some of the drive from the party to the flat, remembered screaming at Kostya about the car being all over the road. Unaware she did so, she patted her blouse where the Temerity West passport still lay hidden. —Just get me across the bridge and drop me near the embassy. I’ll be fine. You don’t even need to stop the car, just slow it down. I’ll run.
Curious about why she patted her blouse, Kostya wanted to caution her: growing accent, rapid speech. You sound loose. —We’ll take the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky across the river. It’s fastest.
Steady the Buffs. —Thank you, thank you. I’ll never forget this. Thank you.
— But first I need to say goodbye.
— What?
Headlights played on the curtains; a car engine shut off. Arkady, sitting in his favourite armchair, in uniform with his gymastyorka unfastened, informed the cat in his lap that he must stand up.
&
nbsp; The cat only purred and seemed to get heavier.
— No, Tchaikovsky, I have guests. I must answer the door.
The cat spread his paws and kneaded Arkady’s thigh; two people outside approached the door.
Arkady resumed scratching the cat around the ears. —Then again, he has a key.
The cat jumped away. Wincing at the pricks of Tchaikovksy’s claws, Arkady flicked on electric lights and plodded to the door.
The lock released; the knob turned; that British woman with the bruised face stepped inside. Kostya, in uniform, walked right behind her, either to protect her, or block her exit. Which one, Arkady could not say.
Kostya greeted him. —Arkady Dmitrievich.
Voice hollow, quiet, Arkady gestured to the parlour. —Leave your boots and shoes on. Sit down.
Temerity’s memory strengthened with each click of her heels. This room. She recognized the chair Arkady now offered her, even as the light glared on his spectacles and hid his eyes. She shook her head. —I’ll stand.
— You’ll sit.
Kostya nudged her towards the chair, and both men watched as she obeyed.
Then Arkady turned to Kostya. —Just what do you hope to accomplish with this stunt?
— I need to get her to the British Embassy.
Temerity closed her eyes. God’s sake!
Arkady snorted. —Sometimes we tell lies not to save ourselves but to comfort ourselves. You’re not going to drive her anywhere, Little Tatar, because you’re not that stupid.
— Arkady Dmitrievich, please. Let’s say goodbye.
— What?
— I’m going with her.
Temerity stared at him. A vision, a desire, a delusion: a sweet summer evening at Kurseong House, in the library, Kostya in his fifties, hair gone grey, face lined from laughter and cigarettes, sitting beneath the Novgorod Gabriel print with a book. Nightingales sang.
After a moment, Arkady managed to speak. —Just steal a car and cross the Moskva like nothing matters?
Kostya gave a crooked smile, acknowledging the absurdity. —The car’s not stolen; I signed it out. And I left once before.
— You can’t come back, not this time. Even if you make it across the water, even if the British take you, you’re done. You will turn your back to me, which doesn’t seem to bother you—
Constant Nobody Page 36
