The Secret History of Moscow Page 11

  Sergey did the same. The small pockmarks and imperfections on the glass sphere's surface became enlarged, and he felt as if he were looking at the lunar surface, mysterious and luminously green, distorted by the slight curvature of the glass, smoldering with craters. He discovered that if he rotated the sphere in his fingers, the green world rotated with it, showing him its hidden mountains and deep fissures.

  "Not a bad place for a soul to be, don't you think?” Slava said to him. “You game?"

  And thus Sergey found himself in what they euphemistically called the glass business, and he accumulated a nice collection of souls as Slava and the rest expanded their territory. That is, until he found himself on the wrong end of the glass granule.

  He grew increasingly curious about Slava's sources of arcane knowledge, and he asked questions. When the questions proved fruitless, he started to snoop. By then he could afford to ditch the Volga, rusted and heavy with class implications, and bought a Jeep-secondhand, but in better condition than anything he had owned to date. Slava, however, changed his Mercedes for a new one as soon as the ashtrays filled up, and Sergey suspected that his sources of income included other things besides racketeering and soul-trapping. He decided to track Slava's secret dealings.

  He took a post at the entrance to Slava's apartment building, a well-appointed old house on Tverskaya; for that expedition, he borrowed an unassuming Zaporozhets (the make that in the city folklore was often compared to a pregnant ninth-grader, since both equaled family disgrace) from a friend, and kept vigil among the equally homely cars parked in the courtyard, with a good view of Slava's maroon Merc. He waited until well after midnight, when Slava emerged from his building, alone; Sergey's heart picked up its beat-the absence of the two meaty bodyguards that followed him everywhere lately indicated that Slava was about to do something secret.

  Sergey waited for him to exit the yard and turned on his lights. He followed him through the slow crawling traffic, quite certain that the Zaporozhets was well below Slava's detection threshold. The traffic was dense, and Sergey worried a few times that he would lose his quarry. Once they merged onto the Sadovoe Koltso, the following became easier. Sergey headed south-east, toward Kolomenskoe.

  The park was closed, but Slava easily scaled the iron fence.

  Sergey parked his car well away from Slava's, and followed over the fence. He followed the winding paths, stumbling in the dark and cursing under his breath, but never losing the sight of Slava's flashlight up ahead, between the trees.

  The moon came out, and it was light enough to see some of the commemorative plaques. Sergey surmised that they were going to Peter the Great's shack-a tiny wooden house, transported plank by plank to Kolomenskoe, where it could be properly immortalized. And now, it seemed, it was the scene of some shady dealings.

  Slava's flashlight disappeared inside the Peter the Great's shack, and Sergey tiptoed closer. There were voices inside-at first, Slava spoke, and a strange voice answered. Sergey felt cold sweat trickling down his spine, and the weight of silence around him. A small breeze stirred the leaves over his head and he was embarrassingly grateful for this sign that he was still in the park, in the human world, for the voice he had just heard certainly did not belong here.

  He could not discern the words and was too spooked to look inside. He backed from the house silently, even more terrified to make a sound. He knew well what Slava was capable of, but the creature he conferred with seemed even more dangerous, unfathomable and otherworldly.

  He made his escape and no longer followed Slava on his night expeditions. The change in his demeanor was noticed, and it was his turn to be questioned. He feigned personal preoccupations and even invented a knocked-up girlfriend who wouldn't get an abortion.

  "All right,” Slava told him, his eyes still dark with unease. “Just don't let it make you sloppy."

  Sergey swore that it wouldn't; he felt relieved at not being found out.

  The end came when Slava called him on his cell. “I need you to do something for me,” he said. “Very hush-hush. There's a new hex in town, and I need you to find me a test subject. I don't care what or who it is, just get me a body. Just make sure it is alive."

  Sergey drove through the streets of his neighborhood, to an open-air market where sloe-eyed Caucasian nationals sold roses and melons, tomatoes the size of a baby's head and bootlegged American thrillers. It was dusk, and the customers dispersed. Relations with the Caucasian gangs were strained as it was, so he decided to target one of the leaving customers. A middle-aged woman, her hands happily occupied by bulging plastic bags of southern produce, turned down a narrow side street, and Sergey followed. He pressed a gun against her ribs and persuaded her to follow him to the vehicle. He didn't worry about her being able to identify the Jeep-the subjects of Slava's experiments rarely got an opportunity to talk about their experiences afterward.

  He called Slava back. “Got one,” he said.

  "Meet me at the central entrance,” Slava said.

  "I'll be there in half an hour."

  He drove to Kolomenskoe, and parked next to the idling Merc. Slava waited inside, a cigarette smoldering in his narrow lips. “Good job,” he told Sergey once he presented the woman, mute with fear and tear-stained. “Come along-I want you to see this."

  Sergey and his captive followed. The tourists and the relaxing citizens had cleared out of the park by then, and the paths crossed by long shadows were especially mysterious. Slava kept quiet, and Sergey grew uneasy.

  "What's that new thing for?” Sergey asked.

  "Turning people into birds,” Slava said. “Only it's not for us. It's a favor I'm doing."

  "For those who gave all this magic to you?” Sergey asked.

  Slava stopped and turned, his hands in the pockets of his maroon jacket. “Yes,” he said. He took one hand out of the pocket and showed Sergey a blue glass sphere. “And this one is for you."

  Several goons with tape and pliers stepped from behind the trees crowding the dark path.

  Sergey struggled in their hands. “What did I do?” he asked Slava.

  "I hate spies."

  "I'm not a spy,” Sergey said. “Why do you say that?"

  "I never told you the central gates of what,” Slava answered. “Stupid bitch."

  9: Oksana

  There were too many questions that needed asking, and yet Fyodor felt disinclined to ask them. He left it up to Galina and to Yakov; the latter continuously surprised Fyodor by his seemingly earnest caring about finding out what happened to the bird people. Ever since the resurrection, he had been locked in the back room of the Pub, interrogating the resurrected thug. Fyodor and Galina waited with the rest in the overcrowded main hall, drinking David's homemade beer, which Fyodor was growing quite fond of.

  Galina and Elena were speaking in hushed tones, and he looked around for entertainment. Koschey, apparently satisfied with success of his feat, walked from table to table, smiling and nodding to the grudging praise. Fyodor smiled and thought that the underground felt cozy to him, as if he actually belonged here. He loved Koschey and Zemun, who leaned against a table where several rusalki and vodyanoys were sharing a pitcher of something steaming and delicious; he loved the Medieval Tatar-Mongol who argued animatedly with the Red Army soldier circa 1919 two tables over. He was used to the interstices of life, he fit comfortably into crannies which most people overlooked, and the underground was nothing but crannies and interstices. He was content to let Yakov and Galina chase after leads and interrogate dead thugs. He was quite happy to stay in the Pub.

  His gaze traveled from one table to the next, snagging at patches of color and unusual faces, drinking it all in. He thought about the history they had learned in school, and felt a profound sense of gratitude that there was an underground, to supplement the stirring tales of conquests and orderly victories, of revolutions and heroes, of thwarted invasions; that there was that hidden side without which nothing made sense. All the while it had been there, and now Fyodo
r knew why the world used to feel so off-kilter, so careening, so missing something important. He wondered if everyone felt that way, that vague longing for something they believed lost a long time ago, but in reality just buried underground.

  "What are you thinking about?” Galina asked.

  He just shrugged, lacking the ability to verbalize the deep sense of calm and satisfaction at all the pieces finally tumbling into their proper place. “Just how cool this place is."

  "Well, it won't be so pleasant much longer,” Elena said. “Enjoy it while it lasts."

  Fyodor sat up. “Why?"

  "Weren't you listening to that-corpse?” Galina said irritably. “If the thugs know there's something here, don't you worry they'll come looking for more?"

  "Not to mention that one of the old ones is helping them and turning people into birds,” Elena said. “This is serious business. And still no trace of Berendey."

  "Maybe he's just busy,” Galina said.

  Elena shook her head. “When Zemun calls a meeting, all the old ones come. Even Koschey made it, which frankly I found surprising."

  "Do you think he's the one who's helping them?” Galina said.

  Elena shrugged. “It would be in character, but I don't think we should be hasty in our conclusions."

  Zemun sauntered over, her jaws moving in their indefatigable chewing. “Who has the most to gain? Answer me that, and you'll have found your culprit."

  "Gain what and from what?” Galina irritably swatted a strand of hair that fell across her forehead. “We don't even know why whoever it is wanted people turned into birds."

  "We can guess,” Elena said, and Zemun nodded.

  Fyodor resumed his survey of the Pub. He noticed a bright spot of green, red and blue out of the corner of his eye-the same swirl of intensity he dabbed on his canvas time and time again, remembering a jingling of bracelets on thin wrists and a flutter of black hair that swept over dark smoldering eyes. At the thought of her, his fingers itched to paint the forbidden, that which could not be understood or pinned down. He took another sip of his beer and turned carefully, expecting the vision to dissipate once it was in full view. It did not.

  Fyodor shook his head to dispel the unbidden apparition; he told himself that it couldn't be her-she still looked the same as that day, years ago, on the bridge. She saw him too and frowned a bit, as if trying to locate his face in the gallery of her memories.

  He smiled and she approached their table, petted Zemun's muzzle with a distracted hand, her eyes still on Fyodor's. “Excuse me,” she said. “Do I know you from somewhere?"

  He nodded. “I was rude to you and your bear. And I painted your picture."

  The expression of her face did not change, but it was as if her soul suddenly drained out, leaving behind a perfect but lifeless and brittle replica of her face. “What are you doing here?” she said. “I thought I left you behind."

  He nodded. “You did. I was looking for you, to tell you I was sorry. Have you been underground long?"

  "Ever since I gave my luck away.” She pointed at the gold chain around his neck.

  "You can have it back if you want.” He felt curious stares from Galina and Elena on him, and wished that the girl would just sit down.

  She shook her head. “I can't. Once you give it away you can't get it back."

  "I'm sorry,” he said. “Why did you give it to me?"

  She finally sat, wedging between him and Elena. She looked at him as if from a great distance of time and lived experience that separated them. “I just wanted someone to like me."

  He laughed, surprised. “Like you? How could anyone not like you?"

  "You didn't,” she said, and gave a long sideway look at Galina.

  "I was young and stupid."

  She looked down at her hands, smiling a wan smile. “Then so was everyone else."

  "What about your tabor?” he said.

  "That's the thing,” she said. “You always treated us like vermin and told us to stick with our own kind. We were never people to you, we were rats who should be grateful for your scraps and who are run out of town the moment you decide you're uncomfortable with our presence or you need someone to blame for a drought or an epidemic."

  Fyodor wanted to argue, but he remembered his own fears and forbidden interest, the expression on his mother's face when she told him that gypsies would steal him. He nodded instead.

  Sovin looked up from his table, where he was engrossed in a game of checkers with another old man, and waved. Oksana waved back, smiling. “Where are your rats?” she yelled over the din of the pub.

  "Right here,” Sovin answered, and several rats scurried from under the table and ran over to Oksana, climbing on her long skirt, racing to be first on her lap.

  She petted them as if they were cats. “My friends,” she told Fyodor.

  "I can see that,” he answered. “Do they do tricks?"

  "Some,” Oksana said. “I'll show you when there are more around-they work better in groups."

  The rats settled, sniffing at Oksana and sometimes turning to Fyodor, testing his scent with their whiskers; they smelled Oksana's luck on him.

  "You want to go for a walk?” he said, just to get away from the acute discomfort that intruded upon his idyll.

  "Sure,” she said. “Do you mind if the rats come too? They need exercise."

  "Not a problem.” He nodded to Galina. “I won't be long. Hope your cop friend finds something."

  She nodded, without looking up, and Elena twined her arm around Galina's shoulders, whispering quick reassurances in her ear.

  It was dark outside, and glowtrees dimmed, flashed and sparkled with seconds of brilliance, and dimmed again.

  White jackdaws and rooks slept in the branches, their heavy beaks tucked under their wings, and only occasionally a ruby eye opened to give the passing people and rats an indifferent look and closed again, filming over with leathery eyelids.

  "Did you want to ask me something?” Oksana said.

  He nodded. “I want to know how you got here-and you know, what it was like for you. On the surface."

  * * * *

  Oksana knew the sense of misplacement before she could talk. As long as she could remember, she knew moving trains and changing landscapes, with the only constant of women sitting on their parcels, and children crying and playing under the wary eyes of their mothers.

  She was lucky, she said, when her family received reparations from the Holocaust-an event she had a vague concept of, but because of it money was sent by some foreign humanitarian agency, and it was because both of her maternal grandparents had perished in a gas chamber. But the money was good, and they bought a house-a shack with no running water or indoor plumbing, but still a real house where they could stay in one place and Oksana could attend school. This experience only increased her confusion-other children asked her questions that had never occurred to her, and she struggled for answers.

  She had to explain that she was a gypsy and that gypsies spoke a legitimate language, not any thieves’ argot. She explained that her mother really could tell people's fortunes. That the movies about gypsies really weren't that accurate, and the songs that sold on shining black vinyl records, even though they were called “Gypsy Romances” were neither. And with every question the distance between her and her classmates grew. She started to hate her Ukrainian name, given to her because she was born in Kiev.

  Then the money ran out, and they joined their old tabor again. Her mother ailed and told fortunes increasingly bizarre and dark; Oksana had to find a source of income more substantial than what walking the bear on a leash could provide. She started doing private parties at expensive restaurants, where she danced and played her guitar and sang the Gypsy romances. These songs were just like the real ones, with the point and the soul taken out of them-she could not understand why it was necessary to kill the germ of something alive and genuine in everything intended for mass consumption. It was the same with matryoshkas, the dumb soulle
ss chunks of wood which enterprising artists sold everywhere; it was the same with sex.

  They needed the money, but at first she balked when at the parties one or the another drunk businessman, red and sweating, his jacket unbuttoned and his tie long gone, asked her if she had lice and when she answered in the negative offered her a thin stack of large bills for something extra. Eventually, she could not afford to say no, and really, it wasn't that bad, just follow them to the bathroom or the backroom, close your eyes, chew your lip, and really, how was that different from what Fyodor was doing, selling her painted and repainted picture, her features just a smudge of dusky skin and black eyes and red lips, blurred by repetition of the movement, how was that different? How was that different from a cracked needle wearing a groove through old vinyl, going round and round and never arriving, how was that different from the birch stump spinning under the sharp incisor of the carver's knife until it acquired the pear shape of the stupid nesting doll?

  The world spun them all around, in circles that bore an illusory similarity to spirals, until they were worn and stripped of all identifying features, like her coin, like a lollypop in a greedy child's mouth. She span in the dance, her skirt flying about her in a brightly desperate circle, she sang, she took it from behind, all accompanied by a dreadful feeling of being hurled into the gray void of an empty October sky.

  She only felt balanced that day on the bridge, when on a whim she peered over the angular shoulder of the man with a notepad and saw the bridge and the church across reflected in paper just like the water reflected them-the same yet different, not defiled but honored. And right then, she wanted to see herself as he saw her, as others couldn't.

  And when he painted her, she felt real. She felt less like an assemblage of exotic features but a primal creature of color and light, of primal planes and sharp angles. She was broken down and reconstructed on paper, not quite herself, but real, with the gravity her actual body lacked, free of binding spirals and the sandpaper fists of the world.