Constant Nobody

by Michelle Butler Hallett

  She’d passed. Done rather well the third time, Neville admitted.

  She’d cheated. Standing now in the Hotel Lux hallway, Temerity saw how. She’d never lost sight of the exercise as an exercise, of her tormentors as her teachers, of the rehearsal.

  The tall NKVD officer? No ally there.

  As the huddled NKVD officers continued their conversation, Temerity counted five other Comintern members also standing outside their doors, holding small suitcases, staring at the floor. Told to keep still, they kept still. Obedience, Temerity told herself, internalized and perfected.

  Electric lights buzzed; radio speakers hissed.

  The tall officer seized Temerity’s upper arm. —Come with me.

  The grip that would leave a bruise, the ride down the crowded lift, the tap of the officers’ boots, the glimpse of Lauri Toppinen, Mikko’s father, climbing into another car, the click of doors not slammed but instead shut with care — all so stifled and polite beneath beautiful and indifferent stars.

  Shoved into a back seat, Temerity groped for balance and told herself to sit up straight. A large man sat on her right, the French father of the smiling baby. Her arresting officer climbed into the front passenger seat. His colleague, wearing too much Troynoy cologne, took the driver’s seat, addressed the tall man as Ippolitov, and then teased him about a double shift. Ippolitov grumbled and reminded his colleague his turn for a double shift would come soon enough.

  The Frenchman moaned.

  The driver demanded silence.

  Ignition, headlights.

  Back at Garage Number One, Kostya checked his watch and then noted the time of the car’s return on three different forms. He’d already delivered his prisoner to one of the collection windows and retrieved paperwork from the intake clerk. Paperwork for the car, for his prisoner’s dossier, for the night’s plan, and for the other officers under his command, kept Kostya busy at his desk until four thirty. Then, after locking away his ink and blotter — such items prone to disappearance — he descended to the detention cells to check and sign yet more paperwork, this time the clerk’s report. Officers’ delivery reports might, at any moment, be compared to clerks’ intake reports, and a discrepancy could be dire.

  His boot soles tapped on the stairs, and the grid-wire overhead threw sharp shadows in the electric light.

  At the intake bay, near the cells, he queued with other officers on the same errand for a good quarter hour. Once he reached the window, the clerk needed to check with a colleague at another window. The clerk then reviewed Kostya’s forms and said that all paperwork concerning his prisoner looked in good order.

  Kostya thanked the clerk, and the paperwork disappeared into a file. He’d declined, in the end, to note any belligerence in his prisoner, and in a rash moment he later blamed on pain and fatigue, he wished he could tell the prisoner so. He’d not likely see the prisoner again. Other officers would interrogate him, in shifts, to prevent the prisoner’s attachment to one man. A familiar face sparked hope; hope lent resilience; and resilience impeded interrogation, which only added to the burdens on overcrowded, overtaxed Lubyanka.

  I played along, Gleb had said, asked him what he’d done. ‘Nothing at all,’ he told me, ‘which is precisely why I’ve been expecting you.’

  Sighing, Kostya checked his watch: hours to go before the end of his shift. The sloth of time. Target practice? No, not with so much pain in his shoulder. He climbed the caged stairs and returned to his desk. A new crooked stack of paperwork that threatened to slip and spill onto the floor now awaited his review. He’d asked for an in-tray. Many times. Given up.

  Thoughts wandering to the constellations he’d glimpsed earlier in the night, Kostya told himself to focus on his work. He unlocked his desk, retrieved ink and blotter, took the topmost papers from the pile and reviewed them. He worked until almost seven, looking up as officers from one of the morning shifts arrived and passed by the hall. As he wrapped the reviewed forms in red tape and attached a note stating Ready, the two colleagues with whom he shared his office entered together. For now, they worked shifts opposite Kostya’s, but one day, Kostya reminded himself, all three of them could be working the same shift and need the office at the same time. Dreading that, Kostya wished his colleagues a good morning, locked his blotter and ink away once more, deposited his taped paperwork on the secretary’s desk, and signed out in the ledger.

  Outside, the gentle air smelled reedy, as from some great river in a fairy tale: the forbidden Puchai, perhaps, where Dobrynya Nikitich bathed and thereby encountered Zmei Gorynich. Recalling this story as he descended to the metro, Kostya promised himself a long hot shower. He fell asleep and almost missed his stop. He scrambled then, aware that he amused the other metro riders, not that they’d dare show it: the uniformed NKVD officer so clumsy, so human? He wished he could laugh aloud at himself, laugh with the others as they all left the metro car. Instead, here in Vasilisa Prekrasnaya, before a stunning mosaic version of Ivan Bilibin’s Vasilisa, the girl standing outside the fowl-footed hut of Baba Yaga and shining a lamp she’d wrought from a skull and holy fire, he tugged his uniform straight.

  He ascended to the street and strode to his block of flats. Eighteen hours to call my own. Civilians, seeing the uniform, made certain to step out of Kostya’s way. Kostya ignored them. By now, he reasoned, Efim Scherba would be getting ready for his workday, and Kostya would soon have the flat to himself. He greeted the old watchwoman in the lobby, noting the contrast between her white hair and black dress, and tried to remember her name. She was one of a very similar pair; they took turns. Once out of her sight, Kostya frowned. The women had only one task: to sit and watch. Not sew. Not read. Just watch. All these widows, Kostya thought, not acknowledging his relief at the lack of grid-wire enclosing these stairs. Where did we get all these widows?

  Noise interrupted his thoughts. Tape. Someone ripped long pieces from a wide roll of strong tape.

  Reaching his floor, Kostya glanced over his shoulder. Three of his colleagues worked to seal the flat of someone, or perhaps multiple someones, arrested overnight.

  Reading Kostya’s insignia, the NKVD men hurried to tug their caps back on. Kostya almost said it aloud: I don’t fucking care about uniform infractions at this hour.

  Still, they expected a response: a rebuke, perhaps a threat.

  After a moment, Kostya nodded. —Good morning.

  — Good morning, Comrade Senior Lieutenant.

  Postures stiff and hinting at the goose step, they tore off more tape.

  Kostya wrenched off his boots the moment the flat door closed behind him. Eyes aching, he walked down the short corridor to the large kitchen, turned left, and tossed his cap onto what he and Efim used as an eating table. The surface worked on a hinge and could nest in an alcove in the wall when not in use. The eating area led to a small front room, where the stenka, a high cabinet fitted with shelves and drawers, stood near a wall. A radio perched on one of the stenka’s open shelves, and a cushioned armchair, the only such chair in the flat, faced the radio. The new pine floors and the white walls reflected what little daylight came through the small windows, and the high ceilings made the flat seem bigger. Yes, Kostya acknowledged, a good flat. True, one must overlook the frailty of the plumbing, the inconvenient placement of light switches, and the nuisance of the telephone mounted on a strip of wall just outside the bathroom. Still, ninety square metres was ninety square metres.

  Efim emerged from his bedroom. —I’m glad I caught you. Take off your shirts, and I’ll look at your shoulder before I go. At the table. The light’s better.

  Glancing at the sink and faucet, recalling the strain to pump water in that clinic in Spain, Kostya placed his portupeya, shoulder sling, and holstered Nagant next to his cap. Then he eased off his gymnastyorka and undershirt and exposed his wounds. Fatigue pressed on his shoulders and neck; despite his hospital stay, he still felt drained.

  You are resilient, Gleb Kamenev once told him, resilient and adaptabl
e. You’ll go far.

  Efim manipulated Kostya’s shoulder, then studied the scars. —These are healing well. Never any infection?

  — I was full of sulpha pills when the bombs fell.

  — Lucky man. When I turn the arm like that: better or worse? Any difference?

  — No.

  Efim drew the pads of his fingers over Kostya’s scars, debridement craters and shrapnel’s demented paths. —Any new pain here?

  — No.

  — The scars on the ear?

  — They’re fine.

  — When I turn your arm like this, what do you feel?

  — Nothing.

  — Nothing at all? Nikto, strange as it is, I’m your doctor, and you need to trust me.

  — I don’t trust anyone. It’s against regulations.

  Each man looked at the other and almost smirked.

  Then Efim pressed some of the scars. —Now what do you feel?

  — It tingles, and it hurts. It always tingles and hurts. Look, would it not be your medical opinion that a man who’s been working all night should go lie down?

  — Well, yes, but—

  — The only obstacle between me, a hot shower, and my bed is you.

  After a moment, Efim stepped aside, commenting on his need to get to work, and deciding not to inform his flatmate that the building’s plumbing had, once again, proved insufficient for demand. Nikto’s shower would be a cool trickle.

  Outside the flat, Efim avoided eye contact with the NKVD officers now finishing their work. As he headed for Vasilisa Prekrasnaya, thinking of how trains now ran underground, he collided with memories of the hospital train he’d served on in 1918.

  Served at gunpoint.

  In the station, he paused to study the mosaic of Vasilisa in Baba Yaga’s yard. His eyes, however, took in not the tiles but the darkness between them.

  Coerced on the hospital train then, coerced into Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two now. He shook his head. At least in 1918, I could still call myself a doctor.

  The metro train rumbled in approach.

  The telephone’s ring collided with the jolt of pain in his shoulder and the shatter of glass in his dreams. Kostya clutched his wounds, at once protective and surprised. He’d dreamt that his scars hosted a flower, some cross between a rose and a geranium, petals fleshy, stalk veined and erect, roots tangled. It smelled of iris. Efim Scherba marvelled at this growth and refused to cut it out. Too deep, he said, which Kostya could just understand, but then, much worse: too beautiful. Kostya shouted at him, insulted him, called him a country doctor. The wound had yawned wider and wider until glass broke and bells rang.

  Grateful for the interruption, Kostya staggered down the hall and snatched the telephone receiver off the hook. —Yes? Yes, this is Nikto.

  An operator from the Lubyanka switchboard connected him with the secretary for his new department, Evgenia Davidovna Ismailovna. —Comrade Senior Lieutenant Nikto, I apologize for disturbing you. Comrade Senior Lieutenant Ippolitov cannot come to work today. We need you to take his place. You can take the sixth off instead.

  Kostya almost smiled. —Weaseling out of a double shift, is he?

  — Yes, this line is bad. I said, Comrade Ippolitov cannot report in, and we need a senior lieutenant for the paperwork.

  Kostya deciphered the warning: Ippolitov had been arrested. —Of course, Comrade Ismailovna. I’ll be there soon.

  Evgenia thanked him and ended the call.

  Kostya glanced at his reflection near the edge of the bathroom mirror: dark circles beneath the eyes, sharp frown lines at the mouth.

  I look like hell.

  He recalled shaving at the hospital before a tiny mirror and the startling moment of not recognizing himself. Long hair, black beard, strong cheekbones, chapped lips: yes, his face. Scars on his left ear and neck pointed to the deeper scars on his left shoulder. His big green eyes had looked like those of a prisoner, a man arrested, beaten, and, with his full knowledge, about to be shot.

  This morning his eyes looked calmer: not panic, but vigilance.

  The tap water ran with ferocity now, almost too hot for Kostya’s hands. He swished the shaving brush over the soap, then over his face and throat, and graced the blade over his Adam’s apple, thinking of Pavel Ippolitov’s two sons, twelve and ten. Ippolitov bragged about them all the time. Now? Sometimes adolescents followed their parents to the camps, or to the poligons to be shot — acorns falling close to trees, enemies of the people, a family affair, everyone shot. And yet the state also prepared to welcome many more Basque refugee children, to keep them safe.

  Why Ippolitov?

  Kostya rinsed his face, checked for missed stubble, slapped on some Shipr cologne.

  This makes no damned sense.

  The Moscow Metro engineers had encountered strange difficulties building Dzerzhinskaya: an underground river, and the forgotten dead. Some said a medieval church and graveyard once stood there, before layers of dirt elevated Moscow closer to the sky. Pressure from the river, and then from the dig, destabilized the earth, and so migrating bones seized the engineers’ time. The startled engineers, aware of circled days on the calendar and the brutal truths of Soviet schedules, pried loose the dead. Then they added reinforcements and filled the ancient graves with rocks and mud. The hurry and extra expense to finish Dzerzhinskaya resulted in less money and attention spent on final decoration. Compared to the other stations, opulent in lighting, design, marble, and gold, Dzerzhinskaya felt bare. Kostya, thinking of paperwork, strode from the train car and hurried up the steps.

  Once inside Lubyanka, Kostya discovered he’d lost his way. The building, overcrowded and designed for an insurance firm, blended turn-of-the-century elegance and decorations with utilitarian purpose. Many corridors looked the same. Taking a wrong turn in Lubyanka had become such a cliché that most department heads refused to accept it as an excuse for tardiness.

  As Kostya stopped walking, imagining a compass and seeking north, a man’s voice, bass, rich and clear, sang out: —Now we fell the stout birch tree!

  NKVD choir practice.

  Kostya followed the voice as the singer performed the second verse of ‘Ey, Ukhnyem.’

  Yo, heave, ho. Yo, heave ho.

  One more time and once again.

  Yo, heave, ho. Yo, heave, ho.

  One more time and once again.

  On the bank we run along.

  Ay-da, da, ay-da.

  Ay-da, da, ay-da.

  To the sun we sing our song!

  Kostya slipped into the practice room, too small for so many men, and, as he expected, he recognized the conductor. Annoyed, that officer turned to face the interruption keeping his hands in the air. Then he smiled. —Kostya!

  The singers, eyes and mouths wide, held their note.

  Laughter soft and apologetic, Vadym Pavlovich Minenkov lowered his hands and gestured to the choir to relax. His blue eyes shone, and, as one of the mysterious Lubyanka drafts blew, his fluffy white hair, protruding from beneath his cap, stirred and fell. —Final verse. Comrade Kuznets, if you please.

  Kostya felt surprise, then told himself to keep it from his face. The soloist: that beautiful voice belonged to Boris Kuznets. The choir roared behind him, louder and louder, as the men, rhythm and progress certain, reached harmonies at once delicate and robust: Hey, haul the towline! Haul the towline!

  Vadym laughed in joy. —Excellent, excellent. We’ll stop there today, comrades. I can hear a big improvement on enunciation, but we still need to work on the rhythm for our other showstopper, yes? That phrase, Yezhov’s iron fist, it’s causing us some difficulty. The new metre. If we sing with faith, we can overcome any flaws and limitations of earlier versions. When you practise on your own, remember: strength, yes, but above all, clarity. Dismissed.

  As the men filed out of this tiny room, Boris giving Kostya a nod, Vadym picked up a clipboard and filled out a form, and Kostya apologized for interrupting. —It sounded wonderful.

&nb
sp; Vadym laughed again, very pleased. —The new soloist drives the others to sing harder. He’s a treasure. Just give me a moment so I can finish the paperwork. The form’s changed again.

  Kostya felt the old surprise at standing tall enough to see the crown of Vadym’s cap. When they’d first met in 1918 at the train station, Vadym’s hair, already white, looked so strange against a face so young, and Kostya, burning with fever, wanted to pull Vadym’s hair from his head. Then, despite some stifled small voice warning him to keep quiet, Kostya told Vadym how the train carriage had transformed into Baba Yaga’s house, the racket of the rails caused by the running of fowls’ feet, a racket which in turn became a chant, and Baba Yaga’s voice filled his head: Welcome home, bezprizornik, welcome home. But home was Odessa, Kostya continued, and in Odessa they kept Baba Yaga contained and confused in the catacombs. Then Kostya glanced up past the worried faces of Arkady and Vadym to study a clock. A terrible man stood beneath it. The second hand on the clock thunked into place, a slow heartbeat, and the terrible man adjusted his sleeve, exposing black feathers on his arms. Arkady and Vadym hurried Kostya along, Arkady muttering about unwanted quarantine. Kostya remembered nothing after that until he awoke in someone’s bed, propped up on pillows and drenched in sweat. Vadym sat beside him, introduced himself, and explained how Kostya and Arkady both had flu. Kostya asked Vadym his age, and Vadym laughed as he placed a cold compress on Kostya’s forehead. It’s my white hair, isn’t it? Everyone gets confused. I’m thirty-one. I had flu in 1890, when I was a boy, and I took such a fever that my hair fell out. It grew back white. Kostya slept a long time after that, and when he woke next, Arkady sat beside him, dark-eyed and pale. Kostya slipped in and out of a fever dream of a train with no light bearing down on him in the Odessa catacombs as Arkady muttered a story about Fyodor Basmanov and the Oprichniki, how they decorated their horses’ tack with dogs’ heads and broomsticks, because the tsar’s hounds would sweep the country clean.