The Secret History of Moscow Page 18

  "I don't like this,” Galina said.

  The rook squawked with laughter. “The large gun part or the men part?"

  "Oh, leave her alone,” Yakov said.

  "I'm just saying,” Sergey said. “You don't like men much, do you?"

  Galina shifted her shoulders uncomfortably and slouched. “No. What's your point?"

  "Enough,” Yakov interrupted. “This is really not a good time.” It was true, of course; at the same time, Yakov did not particularly relish the subject. He knew Galina; she had grown up the same way he had-without a father, among women hardened by bitter life experience. She had no reason to feel any differently than she did, and yet he felt guilty the moment that ‘no’ left her lips. Like it was his fault somehow-but then again, he had left his wife. Or perhaps it was she who had left him; he couldn't remember anymore, not through the cobwebs of lies and rationalizations and retellings of the same story over and over to himself, until the details took on the shape of his words, and the words themselves became the truth and the substance, their underlying memory forever lost, like the wax mold of a death mask.

  They moved along the road, under the sparse cover of the trees. The shadows of thin branches and leaves weaved in patterns of light and dark, breaking up and concealing the shapes of people and the cow that moved below them. The meadows disappeared, supplanted by patches of rough scrub-bushes and goldenrods, willow herbs growing through the charred remains of some long-forgotten buildings.

  The trees receded, and they stood between the overgrown ruins and a tall palisade, made of thick and long logs fitted together side by side, their sharpened ends threatening to pierce the distant sky. They could not see what was hidden behind the fence, only a curlicue of smoke rising from behind it, and a strong smell of burnt wood tainting the air so strongly Yakov tasted it on the back of his throat.

  "Something's burning,” Galina said.

  Timur-Bey shook his head. “It's not burning; it had burnt, many years ago, but it still smolders. Like they do.” He pointed with a nod.

  There were five men there, standing and sitting under the shadow of the fence, dressed in rags; their feet were wrapped in remnants of rough sailcloth, and muskets rested on their shoulders. But Yakov looked into their faces-red as if boiled, their beards and eyebrows singed or burned off, their eyes the blind white of a cooked egg. Their nails, trimmed with mourning black, bubbled as if melting off their fingertips. Their rags were covered in soot, but Yakov guessed them for military uniforms, even though it was impossible to see the insignia; he guessed that they were from the early nineteenth century, but could not determine their allegiance. At least, until they spoke.

  "Hey, Petro,” one of them called. “What time is it?"

  "Who cares what time it is?” Petro replied and spat philosophically. “Does time even have meaning anymore?"

  One of the others nodded and sat down, resting the musket across his knees. “And for what sins are we being punished so?” he said. “What sins have I committed, dear Lord in heaven, to guard the fence of a burned building for all eternity? What sins, what sins are so great to merit such a punishment? Dear Lord, forgive me my trespasses, lowly sinner that I am, and deliver me from this torment."

  "Shut up about your sins, Corporal,” the one named Petro said with a stifled laugh. “Who's to say sins have anything to do with this fence? And who's to say whose sins are greater?"

  A general murmur of agreement emitted from the rest of the soldiers.

  "I suffer so,” the Corporal said.

  Collective groans of annoyance were his answer, and Yakov decided that for the past hundred and eighty years the Corporal's suffering had been getting on his comrades’ nerves.

  Yakov and the rest had all agreed that a direct approach would be the most foolish one; instead, they decided to rely on an old-fashioned deception-rather, Zemun and Koschey decided on it, while Galina and Yakov rolled their eyes at each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Timur-Bey and Sergey remained neutral on the matter.

  "Seriously,” Yakov said to Zemun. “Trojan horses have been done before."

  "It's not the same,” Zemun said. “There's no one inside me.” She sounded hurt, and Yakov didn't argue further.

  They watched Zemun as she approached the gates, her jaws moving rhythmically, and her eyes as empty as those of a regular cow. The soldiers at the gate turned to watch her with their blind white eyes.

  "What's that?” the Corporal asked.

  "Looks like a cow, Corporal,” Petro said, and stroked his bare face thoughtfully, as if he expected to find a beard. “A beauty of a cow, too."

  The rest muttered that it was a nice enough cow, yes sir, sure was.

  "I haven't had have any milk in ages,” Petro said. “Or cheese, for that matter."

  The corporal stopped lamenting the cruelty of his fate, and smiled. Zemun let herself be led inside, and Yakov heaved a sigh. He only hoped that the plan wouldn't backfire too badly.

  When night fell, the gate in the tall fence swung open, lit from the inside by the ghostly blue light of the celestial cow, and Zemun herself motioned for them to come in. Inside the gate there was a yard of tightly tamped dirt; every pockmark and trough stood out in stark relief, like craters on the moon's surface, illuminated by pools of light. There were stars strewn about, and their blue and white rays pierced the darkness like spotlights.

  "What happened here?” Yakov asked, pointing at the globes of pure light littering the bare yard.

  "They tried to milk me,” Zemun answered, and looked sullen. “But I don't think they suspect anything."

  Galina exhaled an unconvincing laugh. “Of course not. Why would they?"

  Yakov looked past the scattered stars and forgot about the danger and everything else, gaping at the wooden palace that towered over them. The facets cut into its smooth light walls reminded him of the palaces in the Kremlin, and the gilded onion domes topping seven slender towers appeared more beautiful than any buildings he had ever seen. “What is this?” he whispered.

  "That,” Timur-Bey said, “used to be one of the oldest buildings of the Kremlin."

  "It's all stone now,” Galina said.

  "It used to be all wood,” Timur-Bey said, his almond-shaped eyes dark and stark in the grounded starlight. “I remember it; the Tatars burned a few of those palaces… and they kept burning throughout history. Your people rebuilt them in stone, but some of the old buildings made it here. This one… I hear that Napoleon burned it… Moscow burned for many days then."

  * * * *

  Moscow burned for many days then. Historians argue about who started the fires. Some said it was the Russians, intent on depriving the invaders of food and shelter. They burned the houses and the food stores, the shops and the warehouses; they did not care that the privation would affect them too. Others said that the Napoleonic troops burned the Kremlin on purpose and everything else by accident, due to the windy weather and too many unattended cooking fires in their encampments. Yakov didn't know who it was, and it didn't seem important to him, but he did wonder how the soldiers they had seen-Petro and the corporal and the rest-ended up here. He could imagine it now-burned and injured, suffocating from smoke, their mouths tasting of ash, they stumbled through fire and sparks, wincing at the crashing of the great beams of the palace burning around them. They must've seen the doorway, distorted by heat and smoke, and rushed through. He thought they were soldiers, probably used to fighting and routing and shooting and stabbing, but not this, not being caught in a burning building, gilded with molten flames. He imagined a despair great enough, a fear powerful enough to pick up the ghost of the stately building that roared and collapsed in a tornado of fire and howling smoke, and to bring it with them underground… even though Yakov suspected that they were not as much underground as on the other side, in some unseen lining of the known world.

  * * * *

  Zemun had done a bit of reconnaissance-she knew the sheds and the piles of firewood in the yard,
the small barracks where the soldiers with burned hair and boiled white eyes sat in dreamless sleep all night long. She still did not know who was inside, since the palace's gates were locked tight. They decided to wait until morning, hiding in one of the sheds filled with half-rotten logs and rusted axes.

  Galina kept looking up, searching for something in the molded ceiling beams.

  Yakov guessed that she was looking for birds. “They're not there,” he whispered.

  She nodded, still looking up, as if expecting them to materialize out of the surrounding stale air. Yakov looked too, squinting up into the cupped ceiling, where shadows grew dense in the corners, reaching for the thickly hewn supports and twining around them in an elaborate chiaroscuro. If he squinted and tilted his head, the shadows shifted and something glinted between his eyelashes, impossible to see directly but shifting to the corners of his vision and dancing and taunting, they twinkled like the stars that fell out of Zemun's udders, like large slow drops of magical milk.

  Galina watched them too; she asked, “Did you have a kaleidoscope when you were a kid?"

  "Of course,” Yakov said. “Show me a kid who didn't."

  Sergey the rook squawked in the affirmative on Yakov's shoulder, and Yakov felt sudden and acute pity for this man, a criminal imprisoned in a bird's body, at yet another similarity, another reminder that he used to be a child too, and that he and Yakov shared many experiences, few things being unique in the mass-manufactured Soviet childhood.

  "Did you ever break yours open?” Yakov asked Galina.

  She smiled, finally looking away from the ceiling and meeting his eyes. “Of course. Every kid does-how can you not want to see all those treasures inside?"

  Yakov smiled at the memory. There was nothing of interest inside that cardboard tube, slightly dented at the end where the plastic caps fitted, one of them with an eyepiece. There were several small mirrors inside that tube, and nothing but a button, a glass bead and several triangular pieces of colored paper. “That was messed up,” he said. “I cried for hours afterwards."

  Galina nodded. “It's funny how everyone goes through this kaleidoscope thing. You think the adults do it on purpose?"

  "Why?"

  "To teach the kids something… I don't know."

  Sergey huffed. “Teach what? The illusory nature of the world?"

  Galina shrugged. “Maybe. Or the futility of beauty, or something depressing like that. I still don't understand adults, even though I am one myself."

  "No you're not,” Sergey said. “You don't have kids. Neither do I, so don't feel bad. See, I figured it all out guarding the nuclear silo-I always felt like a kid, you know, just playing a game or something, like I just pretended to be a soldier with a stick for a gun. And there was a lot of time to think. So I figured it all out. You're either a parent or you're a kid. As long as you don't have kids of your own and become a parent, you're a kid. So, Yakov, what are you?"

  Yakov couldn't decide which one he was-neither a child nor a parent felt right. “I don't know,” he said. “But that day when I broke that kaleidoscope, I swore that my kids would never have one of those things. Damn depressing, and a horrible toy to give to anyone. I wouldn't be one of those asshole parents that teach kids nothing but how much everything sucks and that the world is messed up."

  "It is messed up,” Galina said. “In case you haven't noticed, we're underground. With a talking cow and Koschey the Deathless, about to ask a bunch of soldiers circa 1812 why on earth did they kill a beloved fairytale character with a bayonet. Also, my sister is missing."

  "I'm sorry about that,” Yakov said. “That part is indeed messed up. But everything else… it's not too bad. Is it?"

  "No,” Galina said. “It's not. I always dreamt of a secret place like that… I just wish I found it under better circumstances."

  "You can't get here under better circumstances,” Timur-Bey said from the darkness in the corner of the shed. “Haven't you been paying attention?"

  "Perhaps we should sleep a bit,” Sergey said, and hid his head under his wing.

  "I don't feel like it,” Yakov said.

  Galina snuggled against Zemun's flank. “Neither do I."

  Zemun smiled. She seemed content now, peaceful. “Why sleep when you can talk?” she said. “Just keep it down. There are enemies afoot."

  Yakov moved closer to Galina. “Sorry if it's too personal,” he said. “But you mentioned-that you were hospitalized before?"

  Galina let his half-question hang, unanswered, for a few seconds as she frowned as if gathering her thoughts. “Schizophrenia,” she said, finally.

  Yakov was surprised. She didn't seem crazy, at least most of the time. “You look normal to me,” he finally mumbled, and cringed. Now she would think that he doubted her veracity.

  "Thanks,” she said instead. “It comes and goes. They call it sluggish schizophrenia-ever heard of it?"

  He did. It was a fake diagnosis for political malcontents, as far as he remembered. A convenient way of oppression that did not require prisons. He looked at Galina with pity-she seemed like such a small woman, so hurt and broken up about her sister, so driven with the desperate resolve of the one who had very little of value in life and would fight for the last thing that was left for her.

  He didn't know how to tell her, and whether he should tell her at all-that the disease they diagnosed her with did not really exist, that it was a fabrication. He wondered if it would do any good to tell a person who believed herself crippled that she was not-would it fix her, or would it become a crushing burden? He tried to imagine what it would be like, to reconsider his concept of self, to find that he was not what he thought he was-would it be liberating or devastating? “Yes,” he finally said. “I heard of it. You seem to be dealing with it well."

  Galina smiled, grateful. “My mom,” she said. “She was the one who thought there was something wrong with me when I was just little. Funny how she foresaw it-I started having hallucinations after she said I had to go to a hospital."

  "Uncanny,” Yakov muttered. “Do you think it's possible that being in the hospital was maybe not the best thing for you?"

  She stopped smiling. “Of course I thought about it. What, do you think I'm stupid? But it doesn't really matter now, does it?"

  "I guess not,” Yakov said. “Sorry I brought it up."

  "It's all right,” Galina said. “But I'm tired now. Mind if I sleep a little?"

  "Go ahead,” Yakov said.

  Galina rested her head on Zemun's flank and closed her eyes with a sigh. Yakov remained sitting, listening to the crying of an imaginary baby somewhere in his mind, on the very edge of hearing, so that even he couldn't say whether it was a memory or just a ringing of the frayed nerves. He waited for morning.

  15: Kolomenskoe

  There were many parks in Moscow-the ones in the old city, the white city, were there for recreation and entertainment, some complete with Ferris wheels and lemonade stands, the kiosks that sold everything under the sun, including gin-and-tonic in a can. The ones in the outskirts, Tsaritsino and Kolomenskoe, were different. These felt like real places that existed regardless of people's presence. The churches in Kolomenskoe and the palace in Tsaritsino were real as well-perhaps damaged by age and neglect, perhaps speckled with bird droppings and the twinkling fragments of broken bottles; but in their old age they remained stately, dreaming, it seemed to Fyodor, of the days that slipped by them, the days that decorated their facades with weathered brick and stubborn splotches of lichen as they went away forever, leaving the buildings in their wake like the skeletons of distant shipwrecks.

  He looked at the reflection in the river-they were in Kolomenskoe now, and the river here was lively enough to resist the stiff embrace of ice that started to form along the shores. But in the center the water remained black and clear, as if purified by the early frosts of oil and other contamination. The snow fell, touching the clear black mirror without a ripple, dissolving quietly in the white apparition of the
reflected church.

  They had scaled the fence to get there. Oksana snapped a few slender birch branches and started a small fire. It melted a small crater in the snow, and they sat next to it, watching the river and the snow. Fyodor's hands warmed over the flames, but his back felt numb from the cold. He moved closer to the flames.

  "Careful,” Oksana said. “You'll set yourself on fire."

  "Better fire than hypothermia,” Fyodor said. “I saw that guy once, in the hospital. His temperature dropped so low, the only way to warm him up was to put tubes in his chest and pour warm water through them. I was one bed over, and I remember the water sloshing in and out of his chest. Weird sound, that. Nothing quite like it. It slurped."

  "Sounds awful,” Oksana said. “I saw people freeze to death too. The key is to stay awake and keep the fire going. There're no ambulances here, and they won't find us until the morning."

  "If then. No one comes here in winter."

  "It's still fall."

  "Same difference. Who would go for a walk in such weather?"

  "I hope that Sergey's friends would."

  "Perhaps.” He tossed another branch into the flames. “Where's your tabor?"

  She jerked her shoulders, irritable. “I don't know. Maybe they moved on, to Ukraine or somewhere south."

  "Why don't you look for them?” Fyodor asked. “Because of me?"

  "You're an outsider,” she admitted. “Most Roma don't like outsiders. But with me, I think you'd be all right."

  "Why don't you look for them then?"

  "Maybe in the morning.” She sighed. “It's difficult. I spent so much time among Russians, I feel like an outsider myself most of the time. The trouble is, you can't live in two worlds-you always pick one, even if you don't mean to."

  "I think I know what you're saying,” Fyodor said. “Most of the time you don't even know that you've already chosen.” He fell quiet, thinking of the summer of his eighteenth year when he failed the exams and never went home. There had been nothing keeping him from going, except that he just didn't. Couldn't. “You never know until it's too late to do anything about it."