Constant Nobody

by Michelle Butler Hallett

  The prisoner stood up, seeing only spots of yellow. His vision cleared, and an officer came into focus within swirls of smoke: a handsome man, wavy black hair, big green eyes, livid red scars on his left ear and neck. The prisoner reached for the officer, asked him for a cigarette. A hand on his elbow then: the photographer’s assistant steered him to the doorway that led to the courtyard. The prisoner mumbled an apology. One did not bother secret policemen for cigarettes when shuffling towards death.

  Dogs barked.

  The camera flashed, flashed, flashed.

  The master-sergeant stood near Kostya and cleared his throat. —Special Squad is in the stone house. Would you like to see it?

  Drawing hard on his cigarette, Kostya nodded. Then he followed the master-sergeant to the little stone house, unfurnished and unlit, and discovered some of the men of Special Squad drinking vodka from one of two barrels. The master-sergeant introduced him; the men of Special Squad responded with correct protocol, if little enthusiasm. Kostya moved to the other barrel, bent over to scoop some up in his hand, flinched — not vodka but Troynoy cologne.

  His eyes burned.

  Then he laughed at himself, making sure the men noticed. Cautious and deferential, they invited him to the vodka barrel. When he scooped up a drink in his hands, they nodded and smiled.

  Search lights clicked on and illuminated the courtyard. Dogs growled and whined now; men snarled at them to shut up. The men inside the stone house lined up and marched into the courtyard; Kostya among them.

  Seven prisoners now stood in the courtyard, facing a guard tower and a wall, the lip of a long pit at their feet.

  Kostya followed the other officers to line up behind the prisoners. On a table to their right, the table tilted slightly on the uneven ground: boxes and boxes of bullets, one neat pile for the Tokarevs, and one neat pile for the Nagants.

  As a tractor chugged, Kostya noticed how much soil in the courtyard seemed fresh beneath tire prints. The courtyard would soon run out of room for mass graves.

  The Special Squad now stood in a perfect line about two metres back from the pit.

  Voices murmured and whispered; prisoners bargained with the officers, bargained with God.

  — Kneel!

  The prisoners obeyed. Some also bowed their heads.

  — Aim!

  The officers pulled their weapons from holsters. Three of the men, Kostya noted, used a Tokarev, and the other three, like him, used a Nagant. Each man aimed at the back of a skull.

  — Fire!

  Dogs howled.

  No one knelt at the edge of the grave.

  The next seven prisoners marched to the lip of the pit.

  Prisoners knelt.

  Officers aimed.

  — Fire!

  Again, again, again, again, again, until those using Nagants called for a pause to reload. Those using Tokarevs smirked and made loud complaints about the slowness of revolvers, about shooting one’s load too early. After all, a Tokarev pistol carried eight rounds, clearly the superior weapon, comrades.

  Seven prisoners at a time, thought Kostya. How many in total? And why the hell can’t the Tokarevs just load seven rounds in the magazine?

  When the Tokarevs had to pause to reload, they informed the Nagants that loading a magazine felt much like thrusting inside a woman.

  Kneel.

  Aim.

  Fire.

  Kneel, aim, fire, fire, fire, fire…

  When the Nagant users called for a second reload, everyone took a break. The chained dogs snarled at any man who came too near, and the air stank of soil and blood.

  Back inside, men scooped up Troynoy to splash on their faces; red tendrils stained the liquid. At the other barrel, they scooped up vodka, some in tin cups, others in their bare hands. The vodka, too, reddened. Cocaine appeared, thick lines of it. Left arm almost numb, Kostya refused the first offer, instead drinking more vodka. The second offer? Yes, comrade. Head nodding in a sudden and desperate need to sleep, he sniffed a line off the back of someone’s bloodspattered hand. Lights brightened; laughter sharpened; pain calmed.

  Clarity. Purpose.

  — Kneel!

  Kostya laughed at the sky.

  — Aim!

  Tears ran down his face, his jaw.

  — Fire!

  Seven bullets, four in joy, two in doubt, one in despair.

  A prisoner died yet failed to fall into the pit. He had to kick her corpse.

  Reload.

  Insult the Tokarev-lovers.

  Kneel, aim, fire.

  Pause for the Tokarevs.

  Kneel, aim, fire.

  Five more rounds.

  Reload.

  Curse the dogs.

  Threaten to shoot the dogs.

  Another line of cocaine as the man offering it spoke of strawberries growing in places like the fertile poligon, so lush, so sweet…

  Kneel, aim, fire.

  They sang ‘Yablochko,’ over and over.

  Ekh, little apple, where are you rolling?

  Right in my mouth. Now I have got you.

  Ekh, little apple…

  More vodka. Crying out as he moved his left arm, grateful no one noticed, Kostya now understood why they stood so close to the prisoners. He could not shoot straight from any distance now even if someone aimed a gun to his own head.

  And if I can’t shoot, then these apes…

  Kneel, aim, fire.

  He drank bloodied Troynoy by mistake. It packed a better hit than the vodka.

  The dogs snapped and snarled. The men dropped ammunition as they tried to reload. The shooting postures changed and changed again: two-handed grip, one-handed grip, left hand behind the back or left arm slack, as the officer preferred, or as he needed so he might keep his balance.

  Everyone laughed.

  Ekh, little apple, where are you rolling?

  Right in my mouth. Now I have got you.

  The Nagant so warm, so heavy…the stink, the stink…

  Kostya noticed him then, over behind the vodka barrel. Taller than the others, quite slender, long golden hair tucked up beneath his cap, like a woman in some pathetic disguise in a bad play, he drew his weapon: not a gun, but a sword. His huge eyes fixed on Kostya, eyes of flame.

  Gavriil?

  Kneel.

  No, wait, the ikon…

  Aim.

  Gavriil stood beneath the beam of a searchlight and shone the brighter.

  Fire.

  — I said, fire!

  Kostya flinched: only his prisoner remained, screaming, screaming in animal terror, worse than the dogs. He staggered forward, jammed the muzzle of the Nagant in the base of the man’s skull, fired.

  Spat.

  Told himself he’d been stupid to bother with a clean gymnastyorka.

  Sought Gavriil, failed to find him.

  A call for a break to let the guns cool.

  Two of the men found a strawberry patch and soon praised the fruit, so lush, so sweet. A third clapped Kostya on the good shoulder and offered him yet more cocaine. —Here, I’ve got the good shit. Stay sharp, Comrade Senior Lieutenant. We’ve got four hours to go yet.

  [ ]

  THE BUTTER PRINCE

  Tuesday 8 June

  The radio announcer gave a time check. —At the tone, the time is fifteen hundred hours, or three p.m.

  The lock clicked.

  Temerity looked up. She sat in the front room, gnawed by fear’s fatigue, with the 1936 Directory for All Moscow splayed open on her lap. Efim Antonovich home? At this hour?

  She’d paced the flat for much of the night in Kostya’s absence, checking the lock every few minutes, just in case, because maybe this time, this time, it would release. When she did sleep, dreams thieved any rest, dreams of exile and flight. She’d struggled to read a map in the last dream, a map on which borders writhed and legends blurred.

  Now she struggled with the tiny typeface of the telephone directory.

  God’s sake!

 
; Kostya lay asleep, in his bedroom. He’d returned home around five that morning, loud and staggering, almost incoherent, waking both Temerity and Efim. Beneath waves of Troynoy cologne, he gave off a terrible odour: sweat, cordite, blood. Unclean, Temerity had thought. Kostya had then complained of pain in both his shoulders, ache of heavy use in the right, usual mess in the left. Done with that, he cursed about the tepid trickle of the shower. When Efim asked Kostya how he’d irritated his shoulder, Kostya shouted that Efim enjoyed no right to question him, and neighbours beat their fists on the walls. Then Kostya had laughed, low and steady. I couldn’t shower with those apes. I’m a senior lieutenant.

  The two men had disappeared, Efim emerging a few moments later to the front room where Temerity sat. He seemed angry with her. In the animal kingdom, Nadezhda Ivanovna, it’s adapt or die. How much longer will you be with us?

  So, on hearing the lock click and the door open, Temerity expected Efim, and she expected him still to be in a foul mood.

  Instead, a different footfall, and a lower voice, almost melodious. —Kostya?

  Temerity kept still, waiting for Kostya to respond.

  Silence.

  The man eased the door shut behind him, pried off his boots with the wooden bootjack, and padded into the kitchen. —Kostya, it’s just me. I don’t want to startle you.

  Temerity hurried to put the phone book down before this man rounded the corner. —He’s asleep.

  — Oh?

  A man who looked to be in his fifties, shorter than Kostya, fluffy hair snow white, eyes bright blue, peeked into the front room. He wore NKVD uniform and took off his cap. —I am Vadym Pavlovich Minenkov, an old friend. And you, dear?

  Temerity walked towards him. —Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova.

  Vadym held out his hand, as though ready to accept something; Temerity held out hers. He kissed it, thinking how this petite woman with her dark hair and round hips looked nothing like Kostya’s previous willowy blondes. If well fed, she might run to a pleasing embonpoint. The eyes, the cast of her face, yes, compelling. Then he noticed her bare feet: a vulgar display. New days, new ways, he told himself, retrieving a brown paper package from the pouch on his portupeya. —Here, my dear, take this. I found dried mushrooms. Our Kostya adores mushrooms.

  — Oh, so do I.

  — He likes the agarics in a soup, a beef broth if you can manage it, and the puffballs and reindeer antlers sautéed in butter and black pepper and served on toast. Have you got any butter?

  — Ah…

  — Run out and get some butter. What about bones? Have you got any bones to make a broth? Shall I fetch you some?

  — I’ll wait and see what he’d prefer.

  Vadym kissed her hand again. —Keep being good to him, yes? Delighted to meet you, dear.

  Still holding the packet of mushrooms, Temerity walked Vadym to the door and watched him haul on his boots. When he opened the door and exposed a dim hallway of other doors, she almost lunged.

  Right, tell one NKVD officer how I wish to escape another. That would end well.

  Vadym prepared to lock the flat again from the outside. —Please don’t trouble yourself, dear. Give Kostya my love when he wakes up, the lazy cat. Goodbye.

  As the door closed and the lock clicked, Temerity held the packet to her nose and smelled earth. Then she strode to the bedroom, where, curled on his right side and naked beneath a sheet, Kostya remained asleep. His holster and the amber beads peeked out from beneath his pillow.

  Temerity coughed, cleared her throat.

  Kostya shifted onto his back, opened his puffy eyes, and tugged the sheet farther up his chest.

  Temerity shook her head. —I’ve seen it before, remember, when it dripped with gonorrhea. Here, Minenkov brought you mushrooms.

  Kostya tore a corner of the packet, sniffed it. —Dima? Oh, my God. Mushrooms. I’ve not gone mushroom hunting in years.

  — Your God is a little fungus on a rotten log?

  — If you ever ate these cooked properly, you’d consider them sacred.

  — I do know what a mushroom is, thank you.

  Laughing, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, the sheet draped over his belly and thighs. Then he patted the mattress to his left. —Yes, of course you do. Britishers know everything. Sit here.

  She did, unsure where to look: the hair on his chest and forearms, the stubble on his face. —Your toe looks much better.

  The scars on his ear, neck, and shoulder flushed deep red, and the skin over them seemed very thin.

  — Are the scars painful?

  He gave a half-smile. —Hurt like hell. At least, what I used to imagine hell to be, back when I could study a beauty wall. Now, these mushrooms. Wait, I told you not to go to the door. How did he get in?

  — He had a key.

  — Dima has a key? Then Arkady Dmitrievich loaned it to him. Fucked in the mouth, can the old man not even give me this much peace? Loaning out a key to my flat so he can check on me. I don’t loan out my key to his house. I suppose all of fucking Moscow can get a key to my flat. Has all of fucking Moscow got any butter?

  — Minenkov suggested bones.

  Kneel, aim, fire. —What?

  — For broth.

  — We need an onion.

  Temerity rubbed her temples. —An onion.

  — Yes, an onion. What’s wrong with that? Do you not have onions in the British Empire? If the onion turns blue in the broth with the mushrooms, then we’ve got poisonous ones, and if you eat them, you’ll die frothing at the mouth, like this, fffffff…are you all right?

  — Fine, fine.

  — I’ll get some butter, and some wine. We’ll feast tonight.

  He placed his left arm around her shoulders: heavy, stiff.

  Warm.

  Temerity kept still.

  Kostya took his arm back.

  Temerity shifted her weight. —Onions, butter, and bones. Does Minenkov always bring you groceries?

  — We’ve all gone hungry. We shared everything during the last round of food difficulties. Look, Vadym Minenkov’s lovely, but don’t assume that means he’s weak. And he can tell you stories about Dzerzhinsky himself. Just don’t ask him; you’ll be there all night. Now, butter. What are you smirking about?

  She dropped her voice to almost a whisper. —I once saw the Prince of Wales made of butter.

  — Who?

  — Edward VIII, before he was king.

  Kostya waited for her to stop giggling. —The one who abdicated?

  — Britain’s better off without him. He has no understanding of duty. Back in 1924, at the Empire Exhibition, the dear Canadians sent us a life-size statue of the Prince of Wales made of butter.

  Her laughter broke free, and though he loved the sound of it, Kostya squinted at her. —Wait, a statue made of butter?

  — The Canadians are farmers, wide open prairies and whatnot, dairymen, lots of milk. Sturdy children. Like your Ukraine, I expect. They’re certainly proud of their butter. And so, the Canadians’ gift: Wales, in butter. Life-size, with a horse. Three thousand pounds of it.

  — That’s just over thirteen hundred kilos. What happened to it?

  Temerity dragged her thoughts from a memory of the Duke of York, now George VI, stammering and gagging through his speech to close the exhibition. —Ah, well, we got a replacement statue, I know that. The exhibition lasted for some time.

  — No one ate it?

  — I don’t think so. I expect the butter turned rancid.

  Kostya discarded the sheet and rushed off the bed, all muscle and speed. Then he bowed with great flourish and straightened up, grinning. He did not look happy. —Should I not be taller?

  — What?

  — Thirteen hundred kilos of butter, Nadia. In 1924, two years, two fucking years after the…food difficulties, when I was nineteen years old, I still wore the same size clothes as when I was twelve. I had a growth spurt at age twenty-two. And you greedy and arrogant British propped up your empire with art
made of butter.

  Her cheeks burned as she thought of her grandfather’s wealth. Looking down, she straightened her skirt. —Please put some clothes on.

  Sighing, Kostya sat beside her and covered himself with the sheet. —Truce. Dima is right. Butter and broth are the best things for these mushrooms.

  — Very thoughtful of him.

  — He’s good that way. He nursed me through the worst flu I’ve ever had.

  — What, 1918? You told me the truth about that?

  — I told you the truth about many things. How much have you lied to me?

  — Not about that flu. I did dream about skull lights as nightingales sang, and the fever locked me in a trunk and threw me in a river.

  Kostya could smell the disinfectant in the clinic in Spain. —Like Svyatogor’s wife when he punished her for adultery.

  — Yes, except I escaped the trunk. When I did, I found that my mother and brother had died.

  — Nadia, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.

  He means it. —Thank you.

  Kostya made to kiss her forehead, stopped. —How many languages?

  — Now, why would I tell you that?

  — I’ll go first. Seven, including Russian.

  — I find that hard to believe.

  Kostya sounded younger, like a boy eager to prove himself. —No, really, I told the truth. Spanish, Italian, and French but then if you’ve got one of those, you’ve got them all. German, Ukrainian, some Kazakh…

  — Kazakh?

  — And English.

  — And where did you hear all those tongues?

  — Odessa, to start. Oh, and some Yiddish.

  — Lucky you.

  He leaned close, and his stubble scraped her cheek. —You’d get French at school, yes, nice British girl? French is the gateway.

  — Indeed, it is not. Latin is the gateway.

  — You’ve got Latin?

  — Ancient Greek, too.

  He snorted. —Spare me the talk of the dead.

  — You’re jealous.

  — The languages people speak now, Nadia.

  — The word gonorrhea is Latin. It means flow of the seed. Of course, it’s not semen that leaks out of the head of your cock but pus.

  He stared at her a moment, then laughed. —Nurse, pedant, and polyglot, the girl of my dreams.