Moscow nights, snow twinkling around Mama and Papa and Zhenya and me like falling stars. The Kremlin is a beautiful red against the inky sky; everything looks gilded with gold as the snow hides all of the dirt, all of the suffering. I sing and stomp my foot with the rhythm like the old folk singer groups.
I do not miss the Moscow nights, but I miss what came with them—the love of my family, all of us happy and joined, and my childish certainty that nothing could ever tear us apart.
Al Sterling stares at us from the corner. His stare itches up my arms like scratchy wool. Everyone’s leaning forward like they want to bathe in our voices, but it’s so thin, raspy and shredded though they are from the smoke and the noise growing and swelling in my head.
Somehow we make it to the final verse. Everyone’s clapping in rhythm to the song (more or less) and the clarinetist is warbling all over the place like a drunken starling. I am lost somewhere between the lyrics and the truth of the Moscow nights they try to romanticize: bitter cold, blistering psychic noises chasing you down, bits of razor wire embedded in your palms, the very people you’re trying to help betraying you.
We reach the end of the song with absurd vibrato, and everything seems to happen at once.
Al Sterling stands up, nearly tumbling over, sweat running down his gaunt cheeks.
Valentin bounces a single chord back and forth between his two hands like a tennis ball, deep low octaves and high sparkling ones.
Papa’s smile starts to slip as he notices his friend, his bleary, drunken gaze sobering in an instant as the static sparks and snaps.
Mister Tibs’s drumstick snaps in two as he bashes it against the rim.
The clarinet squawks.
My knees buckle underneath me.
Papa shoves through the mindless, screaming crowd toward the exit just as Al Sterling charges for him.
Valentin stands up from the piano.
Papa cups a hand around his mouth and beckons us toward the exit. “Yulia, run!”
CHAPTER 21
THE COOL, SLIMY WALLS of the staircase (Is this really a cave? Are we lost, like Marylou, in the stream of time and space?) make for bad handholds as we clamber upward, Papa close behind us, and Al behind him. The cool April night air douses me, washing away the smoke and haze; it’s too clean and empty. Breathe in, out. Like Cindy taught me. But I can’t hold onto my breath from the smoke and the singing and the panic that’s pulling like a garrote at my throat.
We are running. Well, Papa and Valentin are running; Winnie is clip-clopping behind them in her heels, and I am bobbing up and down like a pogo stick on my good ankle and my bad. Three scrubbers in a row ahead of me, blazing down U Street like a satellite’s contrail, all their signals and noise crackling behind them.
Al Sterling. The memory floods back to me, torn at the edges but enough for me to piece together: the scrubber in the catacombs of Paris, looming over Al with a syringe. Al Sterling, getting injected with the super scrubber serum. The current scrubber in Rostov’s chain.
The men vanish into the alley next to Ben’s Chili Bowl, all lit up like a carnival in yellow and red. There is a scuffle—a thudding sound. Someone yelps like a beaten dog. I round the corner of the alley just as Al breaks out of Papa’s tackle. Valentin is clutching his hand and hissing through his teeth.
“What happened?” I shriek, though my feet are still carrying me toward the end of the alleyway. Toward Al—but, he is no longer Al; he is one of Rostov’s scrubbers now.
“He tried to jab me—with that—”
Something metal glints on the ground, but my attention’s jerked away. Papa grabs for Al, but Al effortlessly flings him backward. Papa’s arms flop uselessly against the shattered glass paving the alleyway, as if he’s warring with himself. I lurch forward. Did I take that step? My head is spinning, buzzing like a swarm of wasps gathering to strike.
“It’s not too late to surrender,” Al says, but the words are forced through his vocal cords like it’s a sausage grinder. His voice sounds so harsh, so foreign. “We can bring you back into the Party, Andrei. Antonina would be very proud of you.”
But the voice isn’t Al’s chipper, carefree tone. It’s General Anton Rostov’s voice.
Papa stands up and forces one foot in front of the other. Al is cornered. I can barely make out his face; it’s just a mess of confusion and sweat and a sinister grin. I crouch. No. I am not choosing this action. This fog in my head, raw as asbestos, is shredding away my control. My hand closes around the metal on the alley pavement? A syringe. Just the right size to hide in a cigarette case.
Like the one Anna Montalban had.
As soon as I have that thought, though, it’s swallowed up in confusion. The only clear thought I have is of Rostov, his desperation to make the world dance on his red strings. The scene before me is only a series of surveillance photos:
Papa lumbering for his best friend as if his feet are made of uranium.
Winnie staring at us from the alleyway, blood running down her nose.
Al Sterling’s hand closing around a bottle of liquor someone left in the alley.
My thumb finding the plunger.
Valya’s eyes gleaming white in the neon night.
I am the wasp. I sting.
“Forgive me,” Al’s voice pleads. “I can’t let him—I never meant to—” But it’s squeezed away by Rostov’s mad laughter. Al pours the bottle’s contents over himself and pulls his beloved Zippo lighter from his pocket.
I collapse at Valya’s feet, wondering why he sounds like an air raid siren.
As everything goes dark, the smell of burning meat wafts around me, sweet and smoky, making my mouth water for a half-smoke from Ben’s Chili Bowl.
*
I blink, clearing away the empty world I’d been drifting in. I am lying on my side, broken glass under me. The noise is gone. The toxins in my veins and my brain have burned themselves out, self-immolated. Valentin is slumped beside me while Papa is tamping down a fire at the dead end of the alleyway. Why did he start a fire? Why am I crying?
Bozhe moi.
It comes back to me in fits and starts: Rostov taking over Al through the serum, and Al setting himself on fire to stop Rostov.
Papa stands over his friend’s incinerated corpse. For the first time since we’ve been reunited, his face has lost its creamy smoothness; his forehead bunches up and his eyes squeeze shut like clenched fists. This is it, I think. He may not feel anything for Mama anymore, but this is the moment that will break him.
I turn to Valentin, but he’s sprawled beside me, gasping for breath. At the sight of him, my mind clears. Rostov took control of me, too—the syringe—
It’s jutting from Valentin’s forearm. Right where I plunged it.
I scamper backward, horror wriggling out of me in sharp bursts, like explosions under my skin. “No—No—No—” Over and over. What else is there to say? What else is there to do? This moment in time is a well of gravity, infinitely heavy, and the rest of my life is collapsing on this point from both sides of the continuum.
“You didn’t mean to,” Valya is saying, but his teeth are chattering together, biting off bits and pieces of his words. “You couldn’t help it.”
Winnie staggers toward us, her eyes red and swollen. “Andrei? Yul? What’s happening?”
I can’t bear it as she notices the needle in Valya’s arm, as she looks between him and me. I back away, hard, cold brick pressing into my spine. My hand is over my mouth; dimly I sense my teeth digging into my fingers. No. No. Valya. No.
But then the air around us crackles, and Papa’s face is as cool as ever as he reaches over and rips the syringe from Valya’s arm.
“We must go.” He holds out a hand for me, and one for Valya. “Now. If it’s not already too late.”
*
“I feel fine,” Valya insists, jaw tight, Adam’s apple bobbing in a nervous gavotte. “I’m fine. Nothing is wrong.”
Papa slings his arm over the back of my seat
as he maneuvers the Austin Healey into the street parking spot. “Get your rest, all the same.” Something flickers across his face—like a split-second image looming through the static of a badly tuned TV set. It’s a look of compassion, concern. The look he got whenever Mama had a bad headache, or Zhenya retreated into himself. A look that told me he cared.
That look is like a crack spreading in the dam that keeps my emotions at bay, and I’m not sure if I can hold this all in anymore. Papa, showing emotions. Is that how dire the situation is?
Valya crawls out of the backseat and opens my door for me. I reach for his hand. I need to squeeze it, reassure myself he is still here, but he jerks his hand away. He looks at me, guilty, some half-apology stuttering on his lips, but I turn away, burning with embarrassment and shame.
“I—I’m sorry, Yulia.” He hangs back as we climb from the car. “Until we know what this is, it’s better if—I mean, if it’s contagious—”
Of course we cannot touch. “I understand.” But it stings worse than a slap, all the same.
“Stay near the phone,” Papa says. “Rostov’s too vindictive to stop with Al. This won’t be the end.” He throws the Austin Healey back into gear and tears away.
Valya and I bob up the sidewalk, one foot of air separating us, one whole cubic foot of atmospheric pressure keeping whatever is inside of him at bay. We fumble at the door—he tries to hold it open for me just as I try to let him go inside first, then we’re both pushing in, shoulders nearly crashing together, then finally I duck under his arm. Inside Papa’s house, I can smell the sweat and smoke and alcohol and fear that clings to me. I check the phone in the conservatory, make sure it’s in its cradle, then stretch the cord out so I can reach it from the chaise lounge where I intend to collapse for the night, though I know my nerves will be standing at attention throughout my dead sleep, ready to answer Papa’s phone call if and when it comes. I settle onto the chaise and tug a fluffy chenille blanket over me. I kick my boots off only as an afterthought.
The piano bench groans as Valya settles onto it.
“Thank you for my song.” I’m too embarrassed to meet his eyes. “Every note was perfect.”
He slides on the bench so he’s angled toward me. Just a few feet away. I stretch out my arm. I can almost, almost, reach his knee …
I drop my hand. My fingers trail along the cold wood floor. There is a great depressurized zone in my chest where there should be a solid mass: a Valentin wrapped up in my arms. The emptiness there makes me float, untethered. I need his anchor.
“I don’t care about the dangers right now. Please let me touch you,” I say.
His head is lowered; he glances at me through his lashes, through the shield of his glasses lenses.
I fight to keep my hands from fluttering. “If these are…” Our last moments together. “If there’s any chance…” That I’ll never be able to touch you again.
He hears the unspoken words, the unformed thoughts, that fill the pauses in our shared music, flowing back and forth between our heads like a wave. It’s more than a psychic ability, the way we know each other’s contours in the dark and know each other’s thoughts. He stands, slowly; pulls toward me as if caught in my gravity. He sits on the edge of the chaise and I curl around him, arms around his waist, my nerve ends sighing with relief the moment his warmth meets mine.
And he is warm. Has he always been this warm? Is this the onset of a fever, some disease that will burn him up from inside? A symptom of something worse? No, I have to quiet my mind—smooth out these panicked thoughts like wrinkles in a sheet. Savor this moment. Sear it onto me so it can never be taken from me.
“Your offer to take my bad memories,” he says, fingers stroking my cheek like it’s the warmup for a concerto. “The ones that hurt … that I can’t clear away. Does your offer still stand?”
I sit up. My pulse is cantering as I lean toward him, syncopating with our psychic wavelengths. “I’m here for you.” My fingers stitch around his, custom-fit. “I’ll always be here.”
He clenches my hand in his. “I know. I’ve never doubted you, Yul—even when you doubt yourself.”
Once again, emotion bubbles up in me, threatening to boil over, but I cannot waste the space for it. I repeat my mantra, over and over, until it hums in my veins: My mind is mine alone. “I’m ready,” I say.
Valentin’s eyelids sink shut as he grips my hand tighter. As his music unravels, I fall deeper into it, the conservatory melting into his swirling thoughts. Melodies snake past, and fragments of ideas, half-formed and then discarded, until all of his armor falls away, and I am enveloped in his memory.
Sand, still warm from the height of the day, scratches between my toes—Valentin’s toes. In his memories, his skin—my skin, now—has that clammy just-drying feel as a breeze carries away some of the heat from my bare legs. There is a symphony in my head—no, not a symphony. This is scaled-down music, intimate, but no less powerful. A violin and a piano, the theme charging forward and retreating, like waves against the shore. Dark without being sad, stormy without being a downpour, and peppered with warm, bright rays.
“Schumann,” I say as my fingers patter the theme along my slender thighs. “Sonata No. 1.”
I turn to look at my mother, expecting to see her smiling, pleased that even as I play on the shore my heart is still back on the piano bench. Her dark curls pool like oil around her head as she leans back in her chair; her skin, tanned and hardened from decades of seaside life, is crusted with salt and sand. But she is not smiling. Something snaps tight inside me; I stand up straighter. A shadow stretches over our shoulder as a cloud crosses the sinking sun.
“You heard what those boys were saying about you, Valya.” She does not move a single feline muscle, she does not open her eyes, but I hear the transformation. She has slipped out of the wonderful, loving mother who plays violin with me and fallen into that dark and roaring abyss. This other side of my mother is the only monster I fear in the dark.
I glance down the shore, at the older boys—twelve, thirteen—shoving and kicking sand at each other. When they passed, they looked at each other; I heard what they thought of me, a wimpy little kid, a scrawny no one, not fit for the Georgian life. A spoiled Party brat, one thought. The others used darker words.
I dig one toe into the sand. “I don’t care what they think.”
“But you know what they think.” Her golden skin has taken on an amber tint. Radioactive. I step back, instinctively, hearing the flames crackle in her thoughts.
“It doesn’t matter.” I swallow. “I’m not gonna change their thoughts.” Schumann’s tempest of violin and piano swells in my chest like a hurricane pressure.
“It always matters. It will matter one day, when you take the wrong thought from someone’s head.” She climbs up from her chair, sinuous, slithering. “When you set your father’s bed on fire. When you feel the flames eating you alive.”
“Just because you can’t control it—”
I stop short, but it’s too late. The unspeakable words have been spoken.
“Control? Do you think I wish to control it, like it’s some pet I can tie up in the yard?” Juicy drops of sweat wreathe her face as she stalks toward me; her skin is now the brilliant red of too many hours in the noonday sun. The air around her shimmers, smelling spicy and sweet, like grilling meat. “I would be rid of it. In an instant. Rid of it for both of us.”
It is far too late. She has fully transmuted into her other self, the one who knows no reason. Like a wildfire, this rage must consume everything before it burns itself out.
“Every morning and every night, I pray. To those gods they tell us no longer exist—to gods that could not exist, for how could they curse us so? I pray they will strip us of this plague. Sear it out of us, bleed it out, whatever they wish. But they don’t answer me. Look at me, Valentin Borisovich! Look at me!” Her short curls stand out, wild; sand melts in the wake of her footsteps, glimmering like a path of glass. “They won’t
answer me!”
“We can control it, Mama. I promise, I’ll keep it under control.” But my voice is so tiny; the air, thick now with salt and smoke, smothers it.
“No. We must answer the prayers for ourselves.”
Before I can move, her arm is around my waist, searing into my flesh until we have melted together. Flames jump from her fingertips as she charges into the surf. I am screaming; I am trying, vainly, to drill into her mind—to find purchase in that cauldron of frenzied thoughts—but I am flailing.
She runs deeper. Water surges up my nose, the salt water stinging as it pours down my throat. Mama is on fire, and even as the cool water fills me, it is a relief. It embraces me and tugs me under. The undertow of the waves are like an exhale, pushing me further down still.
I am weightless, frozen in flight. The heat from her diminishes. Finally, she has cooled her fire off without igniting the world around her.
But I am sinking.
I thrash but she is motionless, eyes open, smile easing across her face. The Schumann concerto thrums darkly under my skin. My lungs grate as I suck down nothing but sea. I struggle to pull free from her grasp, but she has hardened like steel around me—as if she was a molten rod, and the sea was the cooling trough to temper herself in. Vomit builds at the back of my throat, demands to escape. Black spots crowd around my vision.
Air. I need air.
I push into her mind. Please, Mama, please—you want to swim back to shore. Her eyes fly open; they stare through me, into the murky depths. But she doesn’t obey. Her choice to die is too heavy for us to budge. I can’t get a handle on it; I can’t knock it loose.
Mama, please—
I am sinking—
Let me go.
Mama is still, so very, very still and cold and heavy, trying to weigh me down like cement. Her thoughts are sluggish and syrupy. All I can do, all I have the strength for—is to force her to release me.
One finger, then the next. Her arms slacken as I make her pry them away. This is my curse: to command others’ minds, even if I can only manage as small an act as this. My vision falters—air, our brain is screaming, I need air—but I have to catch one more glimpse of her as I break free, and she sinks into the darkness below. I shove up, sky breaking around me as I surface, as I wheeze in one watery gasp of air—
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