After Anatevka

by Alexandra Silber

  “I shall not allow you to foul my family, Tenderov,” he said. “I trusted you, and you have sinned. How you sinned, Andrey Tenderov, and with such clear eyes! Treachery within the walls of my own house.” He drew a knife from his coat pocket and handed it to an adjacent guard. “Do not apologize! Betrayal should be impersonal, even when it is not.”

  The Gentleman licked and bit his lip at the thought. Then, with narrowed eyes, he ordered a guard: “Cut out his tongue.”

  Tenderov’s friends stood beyond the barbed fences—Hodel listened to Irina’s roars, which nearly drowned out the sounds of Andrey’s own screeches as they ripped his songs out by the root. When it was done, the guards prepared him to receive the lashes of the birch rod.

  After one of the three hundred blows, Tenderov fell senseless on the snow.

  The Gentleman remained behind as they carted the body away to the hospital ward. Hodel looked on, scrutinizing his gaze. But all at once, the icy blue eyes were upon her, clutching at her for a frigid moment before The Gentleman moved away and out of sight. All that remained behind were boot prints, a tongue inert upon the ground, and the Nercha riverbank, now dark with blood. The songs of Andrey Tenderov had been drowned for good.

  They stood there in a sudden access of horror; hope had somehow purged it from their consciousness, but now it flooded in—in swift, dark, bloody tendrils like the ones before them. They felt it poignantly: Andrey Tenderov’s fate was every bit their own.

  “I hope that wasn’t the pivot,” Grigory muttered, turning away.

  “The pivot?” Hodel murmured.

  “The fulcrum. The turning point. In every story there is always a moment when the anchoring thread of the tapestry unravels. I don’t know that I’ve ever been inside that story until now.”

  “But what do you mean by ‘the pivot’? The pivot of what?” Hodel entreated him.

  Grigory’s expression was as pitch-black as his eyes. “Of disaster.”

  forty-two

  DMITRI SCRATCHED AT HIS ARMS AND NECK UNTIL HE BLED. HE had recently caught fleas from Yevgeny, who in turn had caught fleas from Mitya the dog, and all of them (except Yevgeny himself, of course) were in a volatile temperament. But Dmitri Petrov had also been riled by the incident with Tenderov, Perchik’s unexplained disappearance, and the keeping of so many secrets. He was not cut out for internment, activism, or dogs.

  The tides were turning. They had been assigned to the roof—a punishment for unruly behavior in the dining hall earlier that day (the men cajoled Yevgeny as he danced happily atop a dining table). Dmitri had hopes that Yevgeny’s antics might afford him a few hours’ respite. Instead, he was assigned to the roof as well, along with Grigory. Shame. The wooden roof was covered with natural debris in constant need of clearing; and though the air was fierce, the task imposed certainly was not. (After all, Anatoly had already been assigned to serve in the outhouse—by such comparisons, they considered themselves fortunate!)

  “And anyway, Anatoly’s been a brute recently,” said Grigory below his breath. “All mighty and suddenly priggish about our stash. What a two-faced killjoy.”

  “Come, Grisha,” cooed Yevgeny. “Is that any way to speak of your friend?”

  “Oh, I make it a habit never to let friendship get in the way of a good insult,” he said slyly. “Not that I have many friends.”

  The sky was dark, the hour late, and they were not allowed to leave until the job was complete. The overseer let them rest for ten minutes every two hours and never let them out of sight, so they worked tirelessly.

  Yevgeny laughed with the whole of his body as he swept. His hair was wispy and hung down in his eyes when sweaty. Dmitri, for his part, was tortured less by the punishment and more by keeping the company of Yevgeny for an entire evening.

  “You know,” continued Yevgeny with a delightfully mischievous grin upon his face, “I will say: I prefer this duty to the furnace, I do. That I do.”

  Yevgeny had been carried to Siberia an already elderly man; his charm, manners, and the noble nature of his Jewish ancestors’ misfortunes, as well as an almost childlike face of utter sweetness, all won him the good graces of the milder superior officers. Even The Gentleman, despite his better judgment, genuinely enjoyed Yevgeny’s merriment and often kept him assigned to the head office on Sundays, even once admitting him to dine at the officers’ table.

  “I find The Gentleman to be of the old school. Far be it from me to understand his logic. All I know is punishment comes my way at least once a fortnight!” said Yevgeny.

  His energy was lighthearted, his good humor infectious, his mind unworried—who could not care for such a man? But Yevgeny often forgot himself (especially if he had been drinking) and became recalcitrant— then The Gentleman would be forced to constrain him to the furnace for a week or so to tend the fire. Yevgeny would weep and feign infirmity, swear reformation, and remind the guards of the pettiness of his crimes. But soon he would find himself once more upon the roof, in the outhouses, or back beside the furnace.

  “Please,” said Dmitri, punctuating each new insult by kicking icy debris aside vigorously with his boots. “That man is deeply common; he’s of both limited skill and education. His powers have been heedlessly awarded, and his behavior is as transparent as the air!” Dmitri removed his hat and wiped his brow in frustration.

  “Now, now, Dmitri, steady there,” muttered Grigory. “No need to get worked up again.”

  “But then of course, I have the fortune, or rather the misfortune, of always being in the very highest of spirits!” Yevgeny continued thoughtfully, settling down for their break in the labor. “So I believe The Gentleman punishes me very often to see if it will make a better man of me!” Grisha laughed with delight as Yevgeny continued, “I do not bow to him. That is what I believe makes him most enraged. He says I am . . . oh, what is the word? What is the word, Mitya? You are so clever! You are always so clever with words and things!”

  “Impudent,” Dmitri answered, eyes rolling to the back of his head from the irony of it.

  “Impudent! Oh, Mitya! Bless you! I am so fortunate to have you looking after me!” Yevgeny ran and embraced him. “Promise me you shall never forget me!”

  “Bah!” Dmitri spluttered and clawed Yevgeny off him. “I wish I could forget you!”

  “But you shan’t. For I have made such an impression upon you, haven’t I? And I carved you that little cello out of dung so that you may be reminded of your music even when you cannot play! And to be reminded of Yevgeny long after we have parted! It is for you to have for always.” Yevgeny poked his bunkmate on the shoulder and smiled as he shook the shock of unruly white hair from his eyes.

  “Enough!” Dmitri could take no more. He threw his rake upon the ground and extended himself to his full height. His eyes were ablaze. “You have never done a thing in your life worth mentioning!” For all the insults he had flung at Yevgeny over the years, none, not a single word of it, did he mean in earnest. But his voice was different now. It frothed with bile, with every blackened hatred Nerchinsk and all her components had planted in his soul. And that hatred grew hot and thick within him— hatred that now stung with the deadly infection of angst. “You are a goddamn nuisance. A cretin. A good-for-nothing swine. Do you know that?”

  Yevgeny’s jaw trembled. Tears spilled from his eyes. But, dignity intact, he gave a laugh concealing all his agony. “I know that I make merry only because I could never make much of anything else.”

  Grigory spoke softly. “You do indeed, Yevgeny. You make us all quite merry.”

  Yevgeny smiled broadly at that, his face still soaking and taut. “Yet perhaps that is no bad thing,” he said, shrugging as though none of it mattered very much at all. “How else would I get to see the world as I have, and meet such fine men as yourselves, without my inveterate naughtiness?”

  Suddenly, the soft, wrinkled skin around his eyes appeared deeply shadowed, the rims red and wet and swollen. He clapped his fists against his heart, quiveri
ng from knee to belly, plagued by the weight no one had ever named until tonight. “I am not a wicked man. Just a useless one. A man who cannot—who could not ever—help himself.” He fell upon the fragmented rooftop.

  Dmitri caught Grigory’s eye. Both turned cold.

  “That is not badness,” said Yevgeny, weeping. “No, Mitya, you see. That is not badness.”

  forty-three

  WEAKENED AND WOOZY, PERCHIK REACHED FOR HIS THROBBING head only to discover he was inhibited by chains. He gazed down at his hands in horror, as if seeing them clearly for the first time in many weeks. They were of a ghostly pallor, completely hairless, and so transparent that the blue of his veins stood out like routes on a train map, a nefarious etching of an atlas to oblivion. With spotted nails, his hands were covered in a metallic rash unlike anything he had ever seen before. Suddenly, an ache was in his guts, not merely at the sight of his skin, but from a sickness of thought, which rose within him like a gas. He twisted, then retched upon the floor beside his boots.

  The room itself was constructed of stone and contained nothing more than the chair and table he was chained to and a large, imposing lamp hanging from the ceiling. The air was as thick and wet as the walls themselves—and stank of something like a cellar, with a more than slight suggestion of corpses. His innards buckled and he retched again.

  When he rose from the violence within him, he wiped his mouth upon his shoulder and opened his eyes. Before him, upright—as though he had been there all along—and smiling with the faintest touch of contempt gracing his mouth was The Gentleman.

  Perchik did not move. A bottomless silence broke open between them. Perchik eyed him coldly for a few moments before The Gentleman finally spoke.

  “Do you like my cuff links?” The Gentleman polished their surfaces with the soft pads of his fingers. “They were a gift.”

  When Perchik made no answer, The Gentleman laced his fat fingers together in a fist, smiling broadly. The entire gesture was patronizing, as if to suggest he was both dominating and worshipping the prey he had finally caught. “My, it is wonderful to see you here. We have waited a terribly long time to get something on you!” The Gentleman laughed, his tone suggesting he was beginning to let his guard down. “Andrey Tenderov turned out to be rather a disappointing agent, wouldn’t you agree? He came with the highest of recommendations from government intelligence. Shame. Beautiful singer, wasn’t he? But as for his espionage, well . . . we all know he became distracted. But no matter! Pfft! All gone.”

  Perchik felt a serenity come over him—all these years of squalor had not made him skeptical; they had made him clear.

  “A gang of hooligans up against the Russian imperial government?” The Gentleman said. “Against a tsar who has been appointment by God? My, my. You idealists are such a headache. I think I despise idealists almost as much as I love ideals. But we knew you would misstep sooner or later. We have intercepted your coded communications and know with whom you have been communicating. Your grand schemes are void now—your affiliates have been similarly exiled, comrade.”

  The Gentleman adjusted his cuff links, which, now that Perchik looked closer, he could tell once belonged to Andrey Tenderov.

  “I am happy to be the bearer of the news” he continued. “You are an enemy of Mother Russia. You wish to destroy her majesty in exchange for the creeping erosion of individual choice—until we are all faceless, choiceless drones, all digging one another out of human mess.”

  There must have been a lucidity in Perchik’s eyes that The Gentleman could not decipher, for Perchik saw a shudder of agitation in his face—the feral look that precipitates panic. There was a subsurface barbarity that lay there; a raging violence almost always reined in, but kicking from deep within. They had all witnessed its full power but a few days before.

  “Can’t you feel it crumbling in your hands?” The Gentleman whispered as he reached toward him and slowly opened Perchik’s palms to reveal the metallic rash within. Perchik did not flinch, did not unlock his eyes from The Gentleman’s. He made no move at all.

  “I was told to kill you, you know,” The Gentleman said. Perchik had suspected as much. “But I could not do that. So the committee agreed we should slowly poison you instead.”

  Together they gazed down upon Perchik’s hands, knowledge passing between them. The Gentleman smiled, and Perchik’s intestines lurched. Poison. He had not accounted for that.

  “I didn’t—and I do not want to kill you!” The Gentleman cried in delight. “Kill you! Lord! What would I do without you?”

  Here, in this room, The Gentleman could speak his truths without impediment.

  “What would she do?”

  forty-four

  IF THE TRUTH OF A MAN LIES WITHIN HIM, THEN IT STANDS TO reason one might be able to simply open him up and grasp at that truth the way one carves into a carcass to extract the tenderest cuts of meat. But there are certain men whose inner truths are far too delicate, and whose constitutions are far too strong to penetrate. In such a case, one must simply wait for the truth within to creep out of its own accord, like a creature that may break apart if pressure is put upon it. Perhaps it was so with Dmitri.

  How could the shackled heart, and the poetry that mocked within him; how could the stench of fear, and the cacophonous clamor of uncertainty, and the darkened depths of spirit; how could any of it ever be expressed?

  It was the cello, in the end, that set him free. That gave him peace. Inside the chords, notes, and arches of melody, he found a space where all of what he longed to be could fit—that unnameable, unknowable self.

  To look at him before Nerchinsk, one would think Dmitri Petrov had no reason for pain. His musicianship, his higher education, his rugged looks, and his lovely family—of course one would think he had no agonies. But there is pain and there is pain.

  Once in Nerchinsk, no cold, no labor, no punishing treatment, no single thing could mar him more than the love that raged within his breast for her. The love he felt but could not utter; the love he knew— with every scrap of his being—did not belong to him, but to the only man he admired. The man he respected above all others. If only he could say what everyone already knew to be true. Everyone, that is, but her.

  He felt that ancient barbed twine unravel itself and come between them. It lodged itself into Hodel without her knowledge, and once enmeshed it yanked and ripped at his already riled heart and made it throb in agony. One moment he would revel in her scent, the next he could weep with guilt.

  The three of them were such a happy triangle. But Dmitri recognized he was the hypotenuse in a shape perfectly right without him—an excessive attachment, not at all unlike a third wheel on a cart—excessive, unnecessary for it to function. Countless times he nearly spoke, nearly moved to kiss her. Tell her! his mind urged. Take her in the arms you know were designed to enfold her within them! But every time, he thought of what would happen if he did. Crippled by loneliness, fear penetrated his love; the alchemical result was aloofness. Or often, viciousness.

  He knew that he could never be alone with her without wanting desperately to touch her. Could not touch her without wanting to possess her, to make her his own. So he barely spoke to her at all. He would waste his life away beholding a painting upon the wall of a locked house he would never be allowed to enter.

  There was nothing to be done. Nothing he could do but honor them. And play, of course. He could play his cello. Every strand of aching music, every forlorn concerto, for her.

  He was tied to a chair. At least as far as he could gather. His eyes were blindfolded, his mouth gagged, head throbbing from what was certainly an injury to the side of his skull. Had he been captured in the night? They had brought him to a place where he could only faintly hear the cries of other men from what seemed like leagues away as though through water, or along the very darkest of nightmare-laden hallways.

  Galvanized into action, Dmitri Petrov shook himself. He threw his head to try to free his eyes, bucked wildly agains
t his restraints. The chair thudded hard upon the stone floor as every muscle in his long body burned to be unfettered. All at once, Dmitri heard a door open and then close. A presence had entered the room.

  “Ah, Dmitri Petrov,” the voice of a man spoke at last, sliding in casually behind him. “The man who makes the music.”

  “Who’s there?” Dmitri Petrov asked, for he did not recognize the voice, and in his consternation continued to flinch within his constraints. “Who are you?”

  “That is not of import,” the man replied. “Around here, they tend to simply call me ‘the Voice.’ I am quite taken with the title, truth be told.”

  “Come now,” Dmitri scoffed. “This is unreasonable!”

  The man suddenly went vivid in his coldness as he spoke again. “I don’t do reasonable, Petrov. That is why they laud me.”

  The temperature inside the cell dropped with the remark.

  “I shall scream, then!”

  “But cries cannot go through the earth, can they? We are deep beneath the ground, my friend. And your cries, however musical, are not stone-piercing.”

  Dmitri’s mind raged.

  “Dmitri Petrov. Mitya. I assume you know why you are here? This is not the hour for loyal friendships or beautiful gestures. It is the age of even exchanges—a tit for a tat. I know this because I specialize in criminals—the only power any government has is the power over its criminals. Tit for tat: that’s the system, Mitya. That’s the game. Once you understand it, things will be much easier.”

  Suddenly, Dmitri was overcome by the desperate need for music—for his hands to play his instrument, caress the wooden body, the wearing strings, and let it save him from this hell as the cello always had. His fingers twitched with it.

  “Poor thing. Little Mitya, for whom no one cares. Little Mitya!”

  Finally, Dmitri exploded. “Dmitri! That is my name. Dmitri Pavlovich Petrovsky. That is all. Nothing less. The name is Dmitri— everything else gnaws the man to dust.”