by Liz Williams
Manas gave another shout of laughter. “Very well, then, we fight tomorrow.”
“What? Why?”
“Things are so dull in these parts.” Manas snorted. “This much-vaunted peace between the khanates. Timidity and decadence, more like, with warriors more interested in boys’ arses than a decent battle. But now you’re here in Samarkand. It is fitting that we should be pitted against each other. You, the hero of Russia, and I, the hero of Kyrgyzia—our lands are ancient foes, after all. We were born enemies. And isn’t it said that only one bogatyr can kill another? What better place than Samarkand—the very heart of Asia, the place where Tamerlane himself lies buried? Russians are not welcome here. This place is sacred.”
Ilya sighed. Manas was beaming, ostensibly cheerful. But there was a barbed note of warning beneath his words, and a glint in his eye that spoke of a real hate. Ancient enemies, indeed.
“All right, then,” Ilya said. “Tomorrow it is. But in return, I’d be grateful for some information… .”
“Marvelous! I’ll meet you in the Street of the Tombs, an hour before sundown.”
And so now Ilya was here, underneath the falling petals of the mulberry tree, looking for a hero who would do his very best to kill him. Slowly, Ilya began to climb the stone steps that led to the Street of Tombs, sword drawn, surrounded by hot sun and shadows.
Seven
ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY
The next day, Elena went to Gorky Park with Gulnara and the latter’s small son. She had not seen her friend since the trip to Tashkent and she was hoping that Gulnara might talk Atyrom into another run. But it did not seem to be much of a possibility. Atyrom was leaving, Gulnara said, going to try his luck in Siberia. Uzbekistan was getting too repressive, policemen on every corner, foreign troops on the streets, and there wasn’t much in Almaty. A man like Atyrom needed a bit of room to maneuver. Elena, thinking of the not-entirely-legal load that they had taken to Tashkent, was obliged to agree.
The trees had a faint tinge about them, and for the first time she could feel a breath of spring in the air. The sunlight lay thinly across the foothills of the Tien Shan, glimpsed across the ice of the boating pond. Gulnara and Elena, chatting as they walked, made their way toward the children’s playground from force of habit; it had closed at the end of the previous year, due to lack of money. Then, turning the corner, Elena found herself face-to-face with a bronze figure beneath the desiccated leaves.
It was a ghost.
It was Lenin.
“So that’s where he went!” Elena said. The statue had originally stood in one of the parks along Furmanova Street. Lenin’s back had been turned resolutely away from the mountains; he clasped a manifesto to his chest. He had stood there ever since Elena had been a little girl, then one day she had walked down Furmanova and found that Lenin had gone. His pedestal was empty; he’d simply disappeared. It seemed ironic that he and his successors had caused so many people to vanish without a trace, and now it was happening to him.
A week later, Elena had walked back the same way and found another statue in his place: a scowling warrior on a prancing horse, with a bow in his hand. All over the city, the old faces were being spirited away and even older faces were replacing them: Tamerlane and Abai and Genghis. Elena was glad that they hadn’t just thrown Lenin on the scrap heap. Through the trees, they could see other Lenins, endlessly repeated, a graveyard to Communism. Gulnara and Elena stared at them in silence, and then walked on.
The silence grew, and then Gulnara said, with a curiously diffident hostility, “It’s not just Atyrom. All the Russians seem to be leaving, too. The Kazakhs don’t want us anymore.” She gave an angry sniff. “But we’ve given them everything. If it wasn’t for us, they’d still be herding camels and living in yurts. Ungrateful bunch …”
There it was again, the lightning twist and spin across the ethnic divide, but Elena said nothing. Revision of history and culture was the old Soviet specialty, remaking dreams to fit the grim reality rather than the other way around. Gulnara had a Kazakh mother, a Kazakh name, and Uzbek relatives, but she still thought of herself as a Soviet citizen. Whereas Elena’s people, Russian colonists, had put Gulnara’s ancestors to death not so long ago, and poisoned their lands with dumping grounds for radioactive waste and cosmodromes and concentration camps for Chechens. The Kazakhs had no reason to be grateful. This new phoenix republic belonged to them now, and where did the Russians fit in? Where did anyone? Her thoughts were once more running down a familiar and depressing track.
“I hear you’re leaving Almaty, too,” Gulnara said.
“Who told you that?”
“Your sister. I saw her in the Business Club on Friday.”
Elena frowned. “What was Anna doing in the Business Club?”
“Same as everyone else. Dancing, listening to music. She introduced me to her boyfriend. He seems nice, doesn’t he? For a German.”
Elena said nothing. If Anna had a German boyfriend, this was the first she had heard of it. Usually she and her sister told each other everything. She wasn’t going to say so in front of Gulnara, however. Stifling a twinge of betrayal, she muttered something noncommittal.
“So where are you going to go?” Gulnara asked.
“Canada,” Elena said firmly. The more she talked about it, the more real it seemed.
“Have you got visas?”
“Not yet. We’re going to get them in Moscow.”
“I heard it was difficult to get a visa these days. Too many people wanting to get out.”
“We’ll manage.”
“Do you have a job lined up?”
“No. But I’ll find something. I’m well-qualified, and so is Anna.”
“I might write to the embassy myself,” Gulnara said. She looked around Gorky Park, at the derelict children’s playground with its fading cartoon murals and rusted swings. Her mouth turned downward. “Look at it. Nobody cares. It’s not like that in the West.”
Elena felt a sudden surge of resentment that, given the dream of Canada, took her completely by surprise.
“How do you know? You’ve never been there. Sveta Dubrovina went to the States and didn’t like it. She said no one knew who their neighbors were, and when she went into the supermarket she couldn’t make up her mind what to buy; there was so much stuff that no one needed …”
Gulnara’s mouth was open. “But you’re planning to go there.”
“I know.” Elena sighed. “It’s just that—I wanted something better for us here.” I wanted my “beloved work,” as we used to say, but there’s no chance of that now.
“Oh, here.” Gulnara grimaced. “There’s nothing here. There never has been.”
“That’s not true. We knew where we were going, once. And then they decided to abolish the country.”
“Well, I think it will be wonderful in the West,” Gulnara said. She hesitated. “Do you think you’ll get married again?”
Elena nearly said, Why do you think I’m going? But it was not altogether true and she did not want to sound desperate.
“I doubt it, Gulnara. I’m on the shelf already. At least I’ve been married, I suppose—better that than a starukha. ”
“Oh, Elena. No one would ever think you were an old maid. And you’re only thirty-five. That’s young over there. Not like here.”
“It’s all right for you, Gulnara. You’re in the best possible position—divorced, with a child.”
“You could have kids, Elena.”
“Gulnara, you know I—”
“They might be able to do something. They have clinics for that sort of thing in the West.” She fell silent for a moment, then went on, “Anyway, there’s more chance to meet people, they say. My friend signed up with a dating agency—she’s writing to a French guy already, and an American. They like Russian women over there. Not so pushy. And an American man would be a better catch than someone here. Or a German, like your sister has. They’re all rich. And they wouldn’t expect you to do a
ll the housework. My friend says she knows an American man who cooks. Imagine that.”
“Well, not with a Russian—easier to teach a bear to thread a needle. But Uzbek men cook. They’re supposed to be good in bed, as well.”
“Elena!”
“Well, that’s what they say.”
“But you wouldn’t want to marry a Moslem, would you?” Gulnara, herself Islamic, said doubtfully. “Kazakh men are hopeless.”
“Russians aren’t much better.”
“And Westerners don’t drink so much. They treat women with respect over there.”
Elena sighed. “I like Russian men, though. They can’t all be alcoholics. My English isn’t great, though of course I’d try to improve it. I want to come home and have a conversation in my own language, not just sit and simper and flutter my eyelashes.”
“You could make him learn Russian.”
“I suppose so. I’d rather stay here. I’ve never really wanted to go and live abroad. But I’m not going to clean floors for the rest of my life, either.”
They walked on in silence. By the time they reached the park gates, Lenin was long since lost among the trees, and Elena was wondering how much it would cost to sign on with an international dating agency.
Eight
ST. PETERSBURG, 21ST CENTURY
The dream of Samarkand, of Manas, faded. Ilya raised himself on his elbows, groaning, and realized with a jolt of shock that the stranger he had seen by the river was sitting by the side of his bed.
He fumbled for the sword, but the man said with a curl of the lip, “Leave it.” He twitched the heavy overcoat aside, to show Ilya the gun resting in a shoulder holster. “Anyway, you’re in no condition for a fight.”
Ilya stared at him. The man’s face was as round as the moon; his eyes, embedded in the folds of flesh, were black and liquid. Immediately, Ilya thought: He is a volkh, a sorcerer. He did not know where the thought had come from.
“Who are you? How did you get in?” Ilya asked. His voice was still furred with cigarettes and vodka. To his dismay, it sounded querulous and old.
The volkh did not bother to reply. Instead, he said conversationally, “My name is Kovalin. I saw you yesterday afternoon. I watched you puking blood into the snow. I saw your savior, too.” His gaze flickered down to Ilya’s dirty shirt. “She did a good job. You look well enough, for a man who’s been knifed. But you were stupid, all the same. That’s no way to die.”
“Any way is a good way,” Ilya murmured, and began to cough.
“You don’t sound very healthy,” Kovalin mocked. “Perhaps you should take a holiday. Somewhere quiet. Why should you want to die?”
“Don’t we all want what we can’t have?” Ilya said bitterly.
“Ah, so that’s the problem. I thought it might be something like that.” He glanced at Ilya and his gaze sharpened. “How old are you now? Eight hundred years?”
“Something like that.”
“You don’t look it. But then, you don’t look like a hero, either. I don’t suppose anyone would bother to write a byliny about you these days.”
Ilya gave a wheezing laugh. “There’s an opera.”
“I know, I’ve heard of it. But I don’t like opera. I know a great deal about you, Ilya Muromyets. I know all the stories—how you couldn’t walk for the first thirty years of your life, until three mysterious strangers turned up and freed you from your paralysis; how you slew the Nightingale Bandit; how you defeated the Tartars; how you fought for fifty days with the Kyrgyz hero Manas.”
“You shouldn’t believe all you read. It wasn’t thirty years; it was only six. And I didn’t kill the Nightingale Bandit, either. I thought I had, but years later I heard rumors that he still lived… . I fought against the Tartars, true, but it was an entire army that defeated them. As for Manas—the fight lasted fifty minutes, perhaps.”
“You disappoint me,” Kovalin said. “I expected such great tales.”
“You won’t get them from me. Why don’t you go in search of the Nightingale Bandit and ask him? Or Manas? Assuming they’re still alive.”
“You’re supposed to be the last of the heroes.” Kovalin paused. “According to the stories, aren’t you supposed to have a flying horse as well?”
“Look around. Do you see a flying bloody horse?”
The volkh smiled. “Well, what a history, nonetheless. I imagine it all merges into one in the end… . You must be longing for death.”
“You have no idea.”
“Why don’t you kill yourself, then?”
Ilya looked at him with loathing. “Because I can’t. Something stops me. I hold a gun to my head and my finger freezes on the trigger. I swallow poison, and it comes back up again. I clutch at a knife, and my hand won’t budge an inch.” Manas’ words echoed in his head with the last of the dream. “Only one bogatyr can kill another, they used to say. I’ve never believed it, but I went looking for the others anyway, seeking death. I found no one. One by one, they have all vanished into the mists.”
Kovalin said with sudden distaste, “You’re a fool. Think of how you could have used your time. You could have been the tsar of all the Russias by now, with your powers. You could have changed history. And yet you’ve spent your time moping after a mortality that anyone with any wisdom would be happy to renounce. I suppose you don’t even have the guts to leave Russia. Look at you. A junkie, a drunk … What happened to the hero you used to be?”
Ilya Muromyets did not reply. He did not want to look at Kovalin any longer. “Go away,” he whispered.
“No. I’ve paid attention to those stories, you see. The ones that say you used to be a hero. Until recently, we thought the last of your kind had died out hundreds of years ago.”
“We?” Ilya looked at the man, at his black gloves, his expensive overcoat, and wondered whether Kovalin was with the FSB. Ilya had met such men over and over again, first in Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka, then in the NKVD and KGB. Power attracted them like spilled blood.
Kovalin shrugged. “My colleagues and I.”
“And what exactly do you and your colleagues want?”
Kovalin paused. His small, fleshy mouth pursed. “Have you never wondered, Ilya Muromyets, just what a bogatyr might be? Or is it simply that you’ve never stopped wondering, but have given up all hope of an answer?”
“I’ve wondered,” Ilya said cautiously. God knew, he had made enough efforts to find out over the years.
“Of course you have. You are one of the strangest of things, are you not? A man born in the twelfth century, who has lived hundreds of years and yet who looks to be no more than forty-five. A man with supernatural powers of hearing, who hears things no one else can. You used to be a sorcerer’s dream, Muromyets. Now you are a scientist’s.”
Ilya looked at him, his heart beginning to pound with a long, slow beat that he had not felt for decades.
“You must have wondered,” Kovalin pressed. “You have so much more information available to you now, for perhaps the first time in history.”
“Genetic engineering?” Ilya whispered, and hated the hope in his voice. For it was true what Kovalin had said. He still craved answers.
“In the twelfth century?” Kovalin smiled. “The only thing your people might have engineered, was turnips. And yet the bogatyri were a breed apart. You never knew your father, did you?”
It was as though Ilya had been waiting all his life to have this conversation. “No. I use a patronymic, but my mother told me he was dead, under the swords of the barbarians.”
“If it is any comfort, she may not have lied. Not all the chosen women remembered what happened to them. Did you ever hear her speak of the rusalki?”
“Yes. She told me she used to see them in the woods by the lake, up in the trees. She was afraid of them.”
“She was right to be afraid. Did she tell you of a day when she fainted in the woods after a stumble, or, perhaps, sat dreaming at the water’s edge, as girls do, until she had lost so much time tha
t she could not account for it?”
“No, she didn’t.” But then came the long-ago echo of his grandmother’s voice, saying: The woods are dangerous, Ilyushka, even in summer and the light. One day, I remember—oh, long before you were born—your mother went out to gather mushrooms and she was so long, Ilyushka, that I thought she was never coming home. And when at last she did, she was mazed, as if she’d spent too long in the sun… .
Wonderingly, Ilya repeated this to Kovalin.
“But what happened to my mother? And what has it to do with me?”
“I would hazard a guess that it was your conception.”
“What? The rusalki are female. And whatever befell my mother that day took place long before I was born.”
“The rusalki are not female, despite their appearance, and the gestation of their offspring is not human, either. The rusalki do not have a gender. If you were to be so unfortunate—or so lucky, for opinion varies—to sleep with one, you would find that they have nothing that approximates to human genitalia.”
“You seem remarkably well-informed,” Ilya said dryly. “Have you been so blessed, then, or so cursed, to have a rusalka as your lover?”
“No. But I have dissected them.”
“I have killed rusalki,” Ilya said, staring at him. “And they shatter into ice at the touch of a blade.”
“If they have time to marshal their illusions, yes. But they can be caught unawares and turned to colder flesh. They are not spirits, Ilya Muromyets.”
Ilya rose, stiffly, and crossed to the window. Ice glittered on the Neva beneath the winter sun. Beyond marched the ranks of apartment blocks, made of the grey, crumbling concrete that had been a Soviet speciality. The modern, everyday world, where spirits and heroes did not belong. But he was sure that Kovalin was lying to him. He could almost smell it.
“Then what are they?” he asked, still gazing out across the city.
