The Secret History of Moscow Page 12

  She gave him her luck and she showed him Misha, hoping that Fyodor would recognize them for what they were, that he would realize that Misha was a soul at the last stages of being ground down to bare bone and splinters of broken teeth and claws. That he was what awaited her if she remained in this life. Instead Fyodor walked away, and nothing was ever right.

  Oksana did not blame him, not directly; after all, no one owed anything to anyone else. She wasn't looking for a savior, just for someone who would understand. She was mad at herself for her failure to explain. Her singing acquired a cracked quality as her throat grew dry and something in her chest shattered. Her fingers slid limply off the strings of her guitar. Misha died in October.

  They had moved from the train station then, and took residence in Tsaritsino-the park was under construction, large parts of it were closed off, and a gypsy tabor and a bear could hide there until winter, when they would head for the warmer climes or overwinter, cold and huddled but stubborn like crows. But now, they had a dead bear on their hands. Cremation seemed like the best option, and Oksana, grieving more than the rest, found something proper and almost poetic about it.

  They built a funeral pyre from loose branches and a few small birches and lindens they assumed no one would miss, and the body of the bear, shrunken and desiccated, was rolled on top of it. It was night, and the leaves still clinging to the branches stood black against the indigo sky and the large pale moon.

  The yellow flames licked the branches and crackled, drying the sap in a cloud of pungent black smoke, tainting the air with the taste of true autumn and bitterness. Their tongues twined around birch trunks, and the long curls of white bark whispered and lit easily like paper, every mark on their surface outlined in red for just a moment and then gone in a flash of pure orange flame. The flames reached for the dead bear's body, and the smell of leaves was supplanted by the stench of burning hair.

  The rest dispersed then, satisfied that the flames burned hot and bright, and in the morning nothing would be left but a few ash-colored bones, easy to break apart into long sharp splinters and bury. Only Oksana remained, her eyes watering from the stench. She hugged her shoulders as the wave of heat slammed into her again and again, and greasy soot settled like fat black snowflakes on her hair, eyelashes, cheekbones, lips. The bear on top of the pyre seemed to come to life-his limbs contorted in the heat, as if he were waving to her to join him. She understood that the movement was the result of the contractions of drying muscles, before they turned to cinders. But she also understood that there was no point in waiting until she was as old and broken as Misha, her body heaved on a funeral pyre of her own. Or perhaps they would bury her, and the thought filled her with disgust-she did not relish darkness or the wet smell of earth, or the inevitable worms. She would rather go now, in a burst of flames like so many gypsy women of bygone days. It would be her only act of defiance-to confound fate by embracing it too early.

  Oksana took a few deep gulps of breath, as if she were about to dive underwater, not into the roaring flames with the sizzling corpse of a dead bear inside. The flames surged upward, licking the pale moon with their red dog tongues, and curved inward, opening a dark glowing passage between them. Oksana closed her eyes and stepped through, buoyed by the blindingly hot gust of air from the pyre's heart; her feet left the ground and for a while she hovered, surrounded by gleaming walls of solid fire, her arms outstretched, flying like a bird, until it hurled her with the force of an ocean wave toward the dead bear, and she felt the two of them-burning, burning-hurled into the empty ocean of the dark October sky.

  * * * *

  Fyodor remained quiet-what could he say? He didn't give any promises, he was blameless and yet guilt nestled somewhere close to the surface. He watched the rats streaming in a small dark rivulet around Oksana's walking small feet. There seemed to be more of them coming from the cracks in the pavement and out of houses, joining the glossy throng of brown fur. He looked up, at the white birds in the trees.

  "All we see here are those albino things,” he said to break the awkward silence. “I wonder where all the black ones went."

  "There aren't any,” Oksana said.

  "I meant the ones that flew in from the surface. The ones we've followed."

  She nodded. “I heard David and Sovin talk about that but I never saw any myself. That girl's sister is one of these birds, isn't she?"

  "So I heard,” Fyodor said. “But isn't it strange? These birds go here and disappear."

  "It is strange,” Oksana agreed and fell quiet.

  He knew that she didn't want to talk about the birds or the thug, of everyone's agitation. She was remembering a private pain, and at the moment it eclipsed everything else. Fyodor had no comfort to offer, and had he done so it wouldn't have mattered-she didn't want to be comforted.

  "Do your rats have names?” he asked.

  She nodded. “That one's Alex, and this is Sasha, and Sonya and Masha and Artyom."

  "How can you tell them apart?"

  "They are different,” she said. “And they tell me their names. They try to tell me more but I don't understand."

  "One of them was looking at the coin you gave me. I think it smelled you."

  She gave a small rueful smile, briefly transformed into a naked skeletal grimace by the flaring of a glowtree. “They like me, and Sovin doesn't mind if they spend time with me. Want to see the tricks they can do?"

  "Sure.” Fyodor was eager for anything that would distract her from dark thoughts and self-pity. “There must be a hundred of them here."

  Oksana whistled to the rats and they fell into formation-the blur of rat bodies acquired a shape as they parted like the Red Sea and formed neat rows, their eyes glittering red coals in the dusk.

  Oksana whistled some more and the rats obeyed-they jumped on each other's backs, forming tall columns instead of rows. Fyodor admired their organization and architectural cleverness-each column had a base of several dozen rats, and grew slimmer as it grew taller, with only one rat crowing the taper of the column.

  "Neat,” Fyodor said.

  She smiled. “Look at this.” She whistled a low sad note that hung in the air a moment too long, trembling, and the rat columns twisted, falling toward each other. The rats formed chains, made of rats twining their tails back to back and holding hands face to face; the chains grew thicker, writhing, rising away from the ground, coalescing into shape-Fyodor recognized two stout legs and a bulky body, two long arms and a round head with a long snout. The creature stood before him, tottering a bit. And he laughed. “This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen,” he said. “That's a bear made entirely of rats. Can it walk?"

  Through a miracle of coordination, effort, and desire to please, the creature took one laborious, shuffling step forward, its arms swaying freely, giving a disturbing impression of broken bones.

  Oksana tilted her head to her shoulder, looking the creature over critically. “What do you think?"

  "It's impressive,” Fyodor said. “I'm always amazed at how smart those things are-rats and crows. And they're just vermin, you know?"

  "I know,” she said, and stopped smiling. “Like gypsies-isn't it what you're going to say?"

  "No,” he said. “I know how people see you. But when I was little, my mom was telling me how gypsies would steal me."

  "Sure,” she said. “Blame it on your upbringing."

  "I think I wanted to be stolen,” he said. “And yes, I know you don't really steal children, but that's not the point. You complain that they treat you differently…"

  "And you do."

  "I just wanted something magical,” he said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know that different is always bad."

  "Of course. Admitting that different can be better is actually a confession of inferiority; who would agree to that?"

  The bear made of rats took another stumbling step forward. Oksana judged that it was safe to resume walking, and the rat-bear stumbled behind.

  The sleeping albino bird
s woke and suspiciously watched the bear glittering with a myriad of rat eyes and festooned with dangling naked tails. Some even joined along, hopping from tree to tree, exchanging quiet caws.

  They turned back to the pub, the white birds still following.

  "At least this bear is not going to die,” Fyodor said. “You made yourself an immortal pet who'll never leave you."

  She nodded, smiling, and walked faster, her skirt swishing around her ankles. Good, Fyodor thought. He had finally found the right thing to say.

  10: Timur-Bey

  Galina could not sleep that night-in Sovin's'warm house smelling of animals and the suffocating comfort of hay, it should've been easy to sleep. But every time she started to drift off she dreamt of Masha, sometimes human, sometimes a bird. Masha cried and reached for her with her jet-black wings and called in her sweet voice. “Where are you, Galka? Why aren't you coming for me?"

  "I am,” Galina told her. “I am looking for you."

  "Don't leave me here,” Masha pleaded. “Please don't leave me, don't forget me."

  "I would never leave you."

  "Find me beyond death, beyond the river."

  Masha's eyes grew huge and wide and human in her bird face, and Galina woke with a start, Masha's high voice still ringing in her ears. She sat up on the inflatable mattress that was already sagging; must've been a leak. She was alone in the room-the years of privation and a habit of hard work prompted Sovin to build big when he got a chance, and his house sprawled, irregular, in a maze of small angled rooms. The naked beams of the walls, warm and worm-holed, felt rough and reassuring under her fingers.

  She thought about what Yakov told her, and she felt uneasy. The darkness surrounding Sergey's associates’ plans and their underground allies worried her. There was an expectation she learned in her childhood that the universe was essentially predictable, even if the life didn't always work out the way it was supposed to. She didn't expect to be diagnosed in high school and prevented from going to college; but things turned and she could find a job without any formal education, just a good working knowledge of English, French and German acquired through studying by herself, in the mental hospital, just to pass the time. Back then, foreign words and strange letters warded off the heavy breathing of stygian beasts that crouched around her bed. They were her talismans, those words, those varied shades covering the same meaning like masks. There was order in the world, even if it was occasionally disguised. It chased away the monsters.

  She sat down on the floor, her back pressed against the door, and whispered her protective spells-she whispered the words for bread, earth, air in all four languages in turn. Water. Grass. World. The nightmares subsided, leaving only the sense of longing and confusion.

  She knocked on Sovin's door-he didn't sleep during the nights out of old habit; she could see the weak light from the tallow candles seeping through the uneven crack under the door.

  "Come in.” He wore long underwear, and his thin old man's legs reminded her of a stork; a padded jacket over the stained shirt hung like a pair of atrophied gray wings.

  "I dreamt of my sister,” she said. “She told me to find her beyond the river-do you know what that means?"

  "There is a river nearby,” he said and sat on the padlocked chest at the foot of his narrow pristinely made bed that reminded Galina of the hospital. “Have a seat, dear."

  She sat on the edge of the bed, for lack of any other arrangements. “You live so sparely,” she said.

  He nodded. “The less you have, the less you lose."

  "Or the more you lose the less you have,” she answered.

  "Could be. But the river… we don't cross it all that much-the vodyanoys and rusalki don't like people mucking it up. And getting across can be problematic. Berendey's forest is on the other shore."

  "No one has yet seen him, right?"

  He shook his head and hacked wetly. “Not that I know of. Zemun's worried, and Koschey is raring to go. Now everyone thinks that he's up to something, so he's eager to pin it on someone else."

  "You don't think it's him?"

  "I don't,” Sovin said. “He's a chthonic figure, and they are always demonized without good reason. People just don't like anything associated with death and dirt. Do you even realize how different you and I are from everyone on the surface? Most people would rather die than live underground, without sun."

  "I don't want to stay here forever. Just as long as I need to find my sister."

  Sovin opened his mouth to say something but then thought better of it and just sighed.

  "Thank you,” Galina said. “I know it might take forever. I just don't want to think about it right now."

  "This place sucks you in,” Sovin said. “It's comfortable here, and at first you want to see what else is here, you want to explore-and then you just settle and build a house and spend your days playing checkers."

  "It won't happen to me."

  "I suppose not.” He chewed the air with his toothless mouth. “I suppose you do love your sister."

  Galina nodded wordlessly. She'd forgiven Masha for marrying and having a baby; she just wanted her back now. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered, forgetting about Sovin. “It's all my fault."

  "Just be careful,” Sovin said. “Look at David if you need reminders-he did love his wife and yet he never did anything to get her back. Now is a good time for you; everyone's talking doomsday and how the surface is going to overtake us; everyone's scared. Maybe you'll get someone to come with you across the river. And if you want my advice, go tomorrow, go while the pain's still fresh enough to egg you on. The day your heartache dulls, you'll be living here and drinking tea with her majesty Elena."

  "You don't like her?"

  "Not just her. It's the aristocracy I don't like."

  "She seems nice."

  "Oh, she is. But it's about the principle."

  "How can you hate someone on principle alone?"

  Sovin sighed and closed his eyes. “It is easier than you think."

  Galina stood. “Thank you. I'll leave tomorrow. I guess you won't be coming with me?"

  He shook his head, dejected. “I feel old. I don't want to explore. You're welcome here anytime, but that's all I can do for you, sorry."

  She returned to her room whispering Je ne sais pas and Ich weiß nicht to herself to guard from confusion. There was a river, then; did it mean that Masha's appearance in her dream was real? But she had been expecting a river all along, a dark twisting river smelling of dust, with a lone oarsman who would accept a copper coin in his palm, solid and crevassed as if carved from dark wood-and did it even matter? There were signposts, and she would be a fool not to follow them.

  With that thought, enormous fatigue came, and she lay on her mostly deflated mattress; even before she closed her eyes, the dark waters rolled before her, and a small speck of light grew larger, as the boat moved closer toward her, guided by the uneven light of the lantern mounted on its prow.

  * * * *

  The next morning, she asked Fyodor and Yakov if they wanted to go. Yakov nodded, dutiful. Fyodor thought a bit and shook his head.

  "Zemun will go with us,” Yakov said. “Yesterday, she was agitating that we need to do something. If you ask her, she'll have to go. Ask around, see who else is game."

  "I think we need to bring that thug along, Sergey,” Galina said. “He'll be able to recognize the voice he heard."

  "It's not a bad idea,” Yakov said. “Only he is a dangerous man, even if he was recently raised from the dead."

  "Just take his soulstone,” Fyodor said.

  "Won't work. How will you talk to it? Through a medium?"

  "Maybe put it into something else,” Fyodor said. “A rat maybe."

  "They can't talk either,” Galina observed.

  "Oh, fuck me.” Fyodor slammed his palm on the table. “Just trying to help here."

  "If you want to help, come along,” Galina said.

  Fyodor made a face. “I do what I can. I did
n't have to lead you here, you know."

  "Enough bickering,” Sovin said. “Zemun and Koschey will figure something out."

  They found everyone at the Pub. Galina wondered to herself if anyone ever went home, or if they sat behind the wooden tables, upright and silent in the darkness, all night long.

  "I'm leaving to go across the river,” Galina told Zemun. “I'll need someone to come along."

  "We'll find someone,” Zemun promised. “But we also thought that we need to mount an expedition to the surface."

  Galina saw her point, but the thought made her unease flare up. If Sergey was telling the truth-and she had no reason to doubt his veracity-then who knew what his former friends were up to. A vision of the empty city came to her mind, deserted streets with garbage blown across the pavements, flocks of birds studding the power lines and turning the sky black; she imagined them watching from the roofs, looking through the windows of their former residences, longing for the lives they had been forced to abandon. She thought of her mother, an old grey crow, and Masha's baby-it would be just a hatchling, unable to fly on its own.

  And what of her grandmother, locked in the hospital, among the walls covered with cracking, piss-colored paint? What of the old woman alone, her wrinkles flowing around her eyes and mouth in a fluid pattern, sitting on a hospital bed, wondering dimly why no one comes to visit her anymore, not even her daughter-didn't she have a daughter? She remembers pigtails and cheap patterned dresses, she remembers mending white bobby socks, but the girls all blur together, daughter, granddaughters, nieces, grandnieces, extended family and friends; she could never remember Galina's name, and always tried a few others first.

  Galina pitied the old woman in that abstract way one reserves for the old-a general pity for decrepitude and decline, recognition of one's inevitable fate in another. She pitied the old women who timidly waited by the benches where young people laughed and drank beer, until there was no one around so they could quickly snatch the empty bottles and turn them in at the recycling centers for pennies each, but they added up to enough for a bottle of milk and some cheap fish for the cat, they added to the destitute existence on government pensions that remained the same as the prices doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in a single day. She pitied the old men who pinned their medals to the threadbare jackets to hide holes on their lapels and who grew thinner by the day.