Abominations

by Unknown Author

  it written in Arabic letters. Call me Greg, everyone does.” “Thank you,” she said, staring at the tall man. “You said that Nadia didn’t want to see me?”

  “It’s not that,” said Greg. His English was almost perfect, with the slightest accent, a hint of Bela Lugosi to drive the locals wild. “It’s just that she hasn’t much felt like seeing anyone since the incident at the Langley. But I thought perhaps it’s time she came out of her shell a little bit.”

  Betty nodded. Bruce had wanted to talk to Nadia Dor-nova, to see what else might be learned from her. And since Bruce was big, green, and a fugitive, Betty was the only choice for the job.

  Betty nodded. “She’s something of an idol of mine,” she lied cheerfully. “And my class has been studying Antigone, and the relation of religion and piety to the state. I thought perhaps I could talk to her. But perhaps—” “That’s fine,” said Greg, nodding equally cheerfully. He seemed to come just short of winking at her. Betty looked past him into Greg’s office. There was a man by the window muttering into a cellular phone, in an equally severe suit. She heard a Midwestern accent and saw the man look away from the lovely curtains and throw her a glance, nodding. A SAFE agent.

  Greg tapped her on the arm and led her down the hall to the door onto the deck. “At any rate,” he said, “if she won’t come out of her shell—perhaps you should go in?” Betty opened the door and stepped onto the deck which buttressed the garden and heard the door click shut behind her.

  Greg eiuered his office again and said, “Who is she?” Julius Timm clicked his phone shut and stuck it in his pocket. He shrugged. “Upstairs said let her in. She’s safe, that’s all I can say.”

  ‘ ‘Really? Safe or SAFE?” Greg frowned, sitting at his desk. “That’s all you can say? I have an American agent in my office and another one waltzing down the hall and even the KGB tells me to be nice to her, and even they aren’t sure why.^jH

  “Cooperation,M. smiled Timm, “is a wonderful tiling.”

  “All I can say,” Greg mused, putting his hands behind his head, “is that I hate being out of the loop. So the KGB is cooperating with SAFE, is it? And Nadia knows something?”

  Timm shrugged.'‘'Can’t hurt to have a visitor.”

  ..-;£‘Is she really a professor?” he said.

  ^“Oh, yes.”

  Greg frowned again. “Fine. But remember—you assured me that this woman had been checked out by both governments, and that at the very least she’s not an assassin.”

  “She’s not an assassin.”

  “So who is she?”

  “Betty Gaynor.”

  Greg resisted an urge to pummel Timm into the ground. “Who is she really?’j™

  “A very helpful angle, hopefully.”

  Sunlight dappled the garden and lit the water in the fountain. Betty looked around her, stepping out on the stone deck. Here and there statues danced and played instruments, moss grew out of stone navels and mouths. Betty held up a hand to shield her eyes and looked back, to the stone wall on the other end of the garden. Ivy covered the wall, and she caught the blue glint of a peacock wandering by. Then she sav- rhe garden chair and the blonde woman on it. She wore a silk kimono, a cup of coffee by her side.

  “Ms. Domova?’ Betty stepped off the deck and onto the beautifully manicured lawn. Nadia was staring at the peacock and looked up.

  “Yes?” Nadia frowned, but it was an almost sweet frown, as if she didn’t want to be rude.

  “Hello, I’m terribly sorry to bother you.”

  “Are you a reporter?” Nadia threw a quick glance up and down Betty’s blazer and skirt.

  “No, I’m a teacher.”

  Nadia sat up a bit as Betty stood by another lawn chair, fingering the iron lip of the chair back. “What can I do for you, Ms.-—?”

  “Gaynor,” Betty said. ‘Betty Gaynor.” She held out a hand and Nadia took it. Her grasp was timid, as if she were floating and afraid to touch anything lest she gain weight and fall. Nadia had been here, at the consulate, ever since the incident at the Langley. She was not giving interviews. The show did not go on. Betty continued, “I read about what happened, what happened to you—’ ’ “Not to me,” Nadia shook her head. “Everyone but me.”

  “If I may,” said Betty, gently “everyone and you. You were the target. He did this to hurt you. And it worked.”

  ■ “Ah, you’re a psychiatrist.”

  “No,” Betty said, smiling. “I was almost a nun, once. And I’ve been a counselor, but, as the saying goes, I’m not a licensed therapist.”

  “I don’t know why that comforts me.”

  “I teach a religion class at Richards College. Ostensibly I’m here to ask you your thoughts about Antigone. Since you play her every night, perhaps you had some insight.”

  Nadia leaned forward and picked up her glass of tea. She lowered her sunglasses, smiling. “Please,” she said, “sit down. I can’t believe how rude I can be. Would you like some iced tea?”

  Betty thought about that as she sat down on the ornate iron lawn chair. “Iced tea? Where does a Russian girl develop an affinity for iced tea?”"

  “On tour in Texas, that’s where,1’ laughed Nadia. “I know what you mean, though.” Nadia pushed a buzzer on the small table and shortly thereafter, a servant appeared in the garden. Nadia spoke a quick Russian word and the servant disappeared again.

  Nadia leaned back. “Ostensibly.”

  “Hm?” Betty’s tea appeared and she thanked the waiter graciously as he dissolved through the stone and moss and back into the consulate.

  “You said that Antigone was what you were here about, ‘ostensibly.’.'-

  Betty smiled. “Very good. Very good.” She sipped her tea.

  “I don’t know why I feel like talking to you, Ms. Gaynor. Perhaps it’s your disdain for a straight answer. Or maybe it’s just the hint of fallen nun about you.” “Betty,” the fallen nun said. “Call me Betty.1’

  “Not easy to get into the consulate. They let me in because I’m the ambassador’s girlfriend.”

  Betty looked at the peacock. “Do you ever want to go home, Ms. Domova?”

  “Nadia. Sometimes.”

  “Why don’t you?” Betty asked, and then she felt the harshness of the question.

  Nadia didn’t seem to consider it harsh, or ignored that. “Things change. People are gone. It’s a cliche to say you can’t go home, out it’s not any less true.”

  Betty shifted her weight and sipped her iced tea. ‘You were married once.: ’

  ‘‘Yes,” Nadia nodded, “For about six yearsfi^^ “What was his name?”

  ‘Emil,” she said. “Emil Blonsky. My—what’s that other cliche?—my high school sweetheart? We shared desks when we were young.”

  “Really?” Betty .aughed. She wasn’t sure why that was funny, except that she was trying to picture the Abomination behind a child’s desk. The moment she caught the image the green monster shrank in her mind, and all the lost mass became a wave of sadness fhat washed over her and killed the laughter.

  “Yes,’" Nadia said. “And on March 8th, Women’s Day, at the end of our last class together, he gave me an engagement ring.” Nadia rested her chin on her palm, a dainty pose, elbow on the arm or her chair. “He was going in the Army, he said, and had bought the ring with his savings. Hard to save money, then.”

  “Is that what your husband did?”

  “You know,” Nadia Domova looked at the peacock, bobbing along, blue and green feathers glinting, eyes watching. “There are cultures in this world where a man is not known for what he does. You meet people at a party and you ask what books they read, what films they watch—even what they like to eat. Where they like to go in the summer. And what they ‘do’ never even enters the conversation. America, I have found, is not one of those cultures.” She arched an eyebrow. “And neither was the Soviet Union. Yes. He was in the Army. And I think it’s common enough information that he was with the KGB.# K'iMv father was a general in the Uni
ted States Army,” said Betty.

  “Still alive?”

  “No,” she said, “but he died recently.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Nadia. She had such a sweet face. Such a sad, sweet face. “My husband died several years ago.”

  “How did he die?”

  Nadia’s eyes grew wide, but not in an insulted or in-truded-upon way. She simply seemed to be sizing Betty up. She thought for a second and cleared her throat. ‘ ‘He was away. He went away a lot in those days. All I can tell you is that he didn’t come back.” She shrugged. “ ‘Terribly sorry, Mrs. Blonsky, here’s your widow’s pension.’ Twenty-six and a widow already, where does one go from there?”

  “Where did you go?”

  “I went to work just like always,” Nadia sighed. “I was a dancer, but never the angel of the stage that I wanted to be. Slowly they let me move into acting, and I turned out to be fairly good at it. And then, a few years ago, I defected.”

  “Why?”

  “Too much,” she shook her head, “too much past ai home. Too many memories. And let’s be frank, Betty. For years the only thing my government saw fit to spend money on was weaponry. We had you to race against, after all. Lines for everything. Everything! Finally I just, I guess I just thought, what am I doing here? Am I waiting for Emil to come back to life, spirit me off to some hidden casde? I decided to take my life into my own hands. So the first thing I did was leave the country.”

  Betty looked down at the table, fingering the rivulets of condensation on her glass of tea. “Do you ever think about Emil?’;’-’

  Nadia chewed her lip. “What kind of question is that?”

  “I don’t mean to be rude—’

  “No,” Nadia smiled. “You ask a lot of questions, but you’re anything but rude. I mean, what do you want to know? Do I think about him every day?”

  “I guess,” said Betty.

  .“Let me tell you,” Nadia tapped the armchair. She tilted her head and her blonde hair swayed magically, betraying a hint of gray at the sun-dappled temples. “Emil had a grave. No body, but a grave. Decorated beautifully, with fine chiselling and a picture of him, that mountainous man with a perfect nose and a beautiful smile—the one picture I could get him to smile for. I sent him back to the photographer after the first batch with orders to smile this time. And when first he died, I went there every day.” She shook her head, stretching out the words. “Every day. I felt as if I could talk to that stone and that piece of earth, even without a body in it, and he could hear me. You know, we’re clay, that’s what they say, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and all that. So I thought, he’s in the earth, somewhere, all of us will be. And in my mind I saw the earth passing my words along to him, like an operator, you know?”

  Nadia gave a short laugh, through her nose, more a sniff. “And every day I talked to him, sitting on this little stone bench, about what happened that day. How long the lines were, how nasty the people at the commissary could be. And I cried each day when I left. And at night I cried, alone in that big bed. And after about a year, I skipped a day.”

  Betty leaned forward. “How did you feel?” “Horrible,” Nadia shook her head emphatically, her eyes wide. “I felt like a monster. Like I had betrayed him by not visiting his earth.1'

  Betty thought. She was supposed to learn about Emil. “Was your husband a religious man?”

  Nadia thought. “In his way. Emil was a quiet man. He worked very hard. He very much believed in the purpose he served in the State. But to be honest, he kept to himself a lot of his feelings about things.”

  “Did you keep visiting the grave?”

  “Hah! After skipping it once, I went back the next day. The next month, I skipped another day. And another. And after a time, I was visiting him once a week. Once a week, and we would talk, I would catch him up and the earth would pass Emil my message.”

  “And when you left?”

  “When I left I was still visiting him once a week. And—this is silly, Betty, but—” Nadia looked around and said, “I’ll tell you a secret!”

  Betty leaned forward expectantly.

  Nadia reached into her pocket and fished around, finally drawing out a small glass vial. She held it up, show-mg it to Betty. Inside of it was about two inches of packed earth. “I took this with me.”

  “What is it?” Betty asked, but she knew.

  “It’s earth from Emil’s grave.” She clasped it in her hands and said, chuckling. “I know, it’s a stupid, girlish thing to do. But I thought, the earth is still magical. I wanted some of it to carry here, to talk to.”

  “You talk to the vial?”

  “Well...” Nadia tilted her head. “Sort of. I carry it around. I pray with my hand upon it, sometimes. And soon—I haven’t found the right place for it yet, but I’m going to plant this, mix this earth in, perhaps under a new tree. I have a new house upstate, if I stay, if I feel at home there, I think I’ll mix this in, and the tree will be Emil’s new grave for me.”

  Betty nodded, smiling, “You carry him around with you.”

  ““In my own way. We all do that, don’t we?”

  Betty said, “Of course we do.”

  “But of course,” Nadia shook her finger, “I know this isn’t what you wanted to talk about.”

  “Hm. I’m not sure.1’ Betty sipped her iced tea again and said. “I have a confession to make.”

  “Please. It’s all the rage these days.”

  “My husband worked for the Army as well,” said Betty. “A long time ago.”

  Nadia saw the distant look in Betty’s eyes and said, “I’m sorry. You’re a widow, as well?”

  “No,” Betty said. “Not a widow. He was in—an accident. A horrible accident. He, ah, hasn’t been the same since.”

  Nadia closed her eyes and bowed her head slightly. “I could say a thousand things you've heard before. Is he still with you?’ ’

  “Yes,” Betty said, “Actually, I knew him, but the accident was before we were married. God, we were both so young. And I—” She shook her head, not finding the words.

  B~*What?” Nadia asked softly.

  “I always wonder, what our life might have been like, if things had been different. If we could go back, and make it go away, everything we didn’t want, and keep what we did. Does that make sense?’- -

  “Yes, of course,” Nadia sighed. “Absolutely it makes sense. What is it like?”

  “He keeps to himself,” Betty murmured. “He sits in the dark. He opens up sometimes, when I pry at him.” “And does he ever let you in?”

  Betty had to smile. “Yes. Thank God, yes. But it’s so hard. So much to get through. The fact that his life has gone on now for so long like this.”

  Nadia pushed back her hair. “And your life?”J “My life is— My life became wrapped up in his so long ago that I can barely separate them.”

  “Are you going to stay?”

  “I can’t imagine not staying.”

  “So here we are, ‘ said Nadia. “Widow to the dead and widow to the half-living.” Betty looked up at her, startled by the irony of the statement.

  “Maybe we’re both.”

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘ ‘I mean—’ Betty wanted to tell her everything. He's alive! He’s alive and he’s a maniac! But she was thinking about Bruce and about the need to keep secrets. Nadia knew nothing of Emil, she felt certain, nothing of today’s Emil. There was nothing to tell her. Finally she said, “I mean, maybe my husband is dead, in a way. Maybe the man I knew is dead. Sometimes I think that. In the same way that the girl I was is dead. And I grieve. God, I grieve for what we were. And then I look at you and your vial of earth and I say, whatever happened to Emil, he’s alive. The Emil you knew will always be alive.”

  Nadia whispered, “And maybe the husband you knew, somewhere, will always be alive.” She looked at Betty, and the blue eyes locked in. “The past is alive in us, Betty; We carry it and we grieve like widows and orphans, but it’s there, and it’
s real. Thomas Hobbes said that memory and imagination amounted to the same thing, called different names for different purposes.”

  Betty sniffed wiped her eyes. “My God, an educated actress.;’ -

  Nadia smiled, a bit proudly, “But of course. And never underestimate the power of a good book of quotations for lively conversation.’^ Nadia took Betty by the hand. “You must promise me something.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know you or your husband or his problem. But stay with him. Or don’t. But be true to yourself, the living, walking Betty Gaynor that you are today. Explore what he is today. And if the present sends you apart, then go. And if you stay together, stay. But don’t let the past run your life. Don’t let what he was color your life with him as he is.”

  Betty wiped her eyes again and looked at her watch. “Oh!” She frowned. “I have a class. I have to—” “We’ll talk about Antigone another time.”

  “I have to be honest,” said Betty, leaning forward. “I wanted to help, you know? But I think you’ve helped me more than you can imagine. And we haven’t even gotten to—”

  “To my problems?” Nadia laughed, waving a hand. “Not to worry. I’ll be back on stage soon,” said Nadia. “Just a little exhausted. I couldn’t understand why I would be the target of this thing, but I have to go on.” “We really do, don’t we?”

  Sean Morgan swiveled around in his chair and regarded the split screen on the wall. There were two men staring at him. He sighed and ran his fingers through his sandy hair, then with his right hand grasped the space between his thumb and forefinger of the left, squeezing the nerve, and felt his fresh headache slowly ebb away. “I wish I had more to tell you two.”

  “Be straight, Colonel Morgan,” spoke an American voice belonging to the man on the left. He was a balding man, in shirtsleeves, a pair of reading glasses tucked into his breast pocket, “The Company wants to know what you’re up to on our turf.”