Constant Nobody

by Michelle Butler Hallett

  A few days later, Kostya had hired himself to a herring merchant in a line without a queue master, someone to write a number on everyone’s hand and so maintain the order of the line, and he found himself next to Timofei Boykov.

  — Kostya? Oh, you remember me, now that we’re in the same queue.

  — I always remembered you.

  Timofei blew smoke into his face and signalled to a group of boys a few metres off. —No. You pretended not to see me. Your grandfather always gave me cigarettes and kopeks, but you pretended not to see me! Like I didn’t exist. Kostya, I fucking exist.

  — No, I—

  Timofei spat at his feet. The other boys grabbed Kostya by the arms and dragged him from the line. Kostya cried out for help and mercy; Timofei turned his back. Others in the queue, if they deigned to notice at all, told themselves boys would be boys, so let them play their games in these difficult times, and besides, the fuss died down in no time.

  Dragging Kostya into a nearby catacomb entrance, the boys kept a terrible silence; only Kostya’s voice sounded, one thin voice. It cracked. In the darkness then, limestone glittering in the brief flares of a match light, the boys beat Kostya in the belly and face until he vomited and cried. Then, on a signal Kostya missed, they abandoned him. As he lay near a puddle, struggling to breathe, he told himself he knew the way out. He found the path soon enough and emerged — the street children called it going back up to heaven — to find the queue had both moved and grown, and the people between whom he’d stood might as well have vanished from the earth. No number inked on his hand: no proof of his place in the queue. Wrapping his arms round his rib cage, he shuffled to the end of the line. When the herring merchant found him there, he boxed his ears and struck his face. —Fucking useless bezprizornik!

  Bloodied and bruised, Kostya explained his troubles to Arkady, and the following day at dusk, as Kostya settled into a meal of bread and sausage, Arkady strode in with the herring merchant.

  Arkady and the other Chekists interrogated the merchant by candlelight. Kostya kept to the shadows, obscured, aware. The Chekists charged their prisoner with economic tyranny, bourgeois contempt, anti-revolutionary activities, and violent perversions. He denied everything, first with vigour, then with confusion, finally with indecision and growing fear. His anger, weak fire under sleet, surrendered.

  In the morning, Arkady sent Kostya out to find some fresh loaves of bread, and Kostya took great care not to look at the prisoner still handcuffed to a chair. The prisoner spoke to Kostya, voice soft with petition and fatigue. Could the boy not explain matters to the Cheka?

  When Kostya returned with a loaf of bread that looked like a charred brick, he discovered that Arkady’s prisoner stood on the sidewalk before the boarded-up shop window, hands beneath his armpits, lips blue.

  Stood there naked.

  Arkady held his prisoner at gunpoint. As he called out the charges, he projected well and reached the edge of the crowd. His recitation became a priestly chant; he lacked only incense and bells. Other citizens peered through windows or watched in the street. Kostya told Arkady later that many of them seemed to recognize him: Dr. Berendei’s grandson. They’d said nothing to Kostya when Dr. Berendei disappeared. They’d said nothing to Kostya when they saw him on the streets, sharp-boned and sad. They said nothing now as Kostya stood near the big Chekist for protection and warmth.

  One older woman, wavy grey hairs escaping her hood, stepped forward.

  Arkady kept his Nagant aimed at the prisoner and turned his head a few centimetres to include the woman in his line of sight. He stood with his feet maybe half a metre apart, shoulders back, knees steady. Snow marked the ground in whorls, like the skirt-hems of waltzing women, and the wind whistled round the wires.

  Arkady addressed the older woman. —What do you want?

  — Why are you doing this?

  — He’s guilty.

  The prisoner shifted his weight from foot to foot. Arkady commanded the man to be still and resumed listing the litany of crimes.

  A window from the flat above the depot opened. Arkady’s colleague stuck his head out, studied the men below him, then lugged a large pot of water, almost a cauldron that reached to a grown man’s knees, to the sill. He tipped the pot. Some of the water hit the prisoner’s right shoulder, and it gave up vapour that froze like the breath behind the prisoner’s cry. Arkady gestured with his revolver that the prisoner must stand in the puddle. He did so. The officer above poured some more, and the water hit the prisoner’s head. He cried out again, then gasped, knees buckling, as though hit by a rock.

  Arkady commanded him to keep still.

  The prisoner obeyed.

  Then Arkady ordered his colleague to slow the pour.

  Many pots of water, some of it unclean.

  Arkady explained it to Kostya. —We make an example of him.

  — Frozen to the ground, like I was?

  Arkady seemed not to hear him. —This would go easier with a hose and proper water pressure. Pots and pails will have to do. Here. You watch him. I need to go upstairs and take my turn with the water. Those pots get heavy.

  Kostya accepted the revolver, held it in both hands, pointed it. He knew the make: the famous Nagant 1895. Curves stroked his fingers and kissed his palm. Kostya had often watched Arkady clean it, had studied the disassembled parts and begged permission to touch them. Arkady had refused. Now this sudden act of trust, this bounty, this privilege of the Nagant’s beauty, jolted Kostya into a new strength, and a new understanding of that strength. A starving bezpriznorik held the life of a wealthy herring merchant. Was it so easy to obtain and exercise power, to solve problems, take revenge, soothe humiliation and pain?

  It felt better than a hit of vodka.

  The prisoner stared back at Kostya, eyes dull, teeth rattling.

  Arkady’s amber beads clicked as he walked away.

  The prisoner’s lips moved. Kostya thought the man might be praying.

  Considering his own bruises, the pain of them, Kostya decided he cared nothing for the mystery of the prisoner’s words. He shifted his gaze from the prisoner’s face and stared instead at his hairy belly.

  Water sluiced down, and another Chekist pried Kostya’s fingers free of the Nagant. —Give me that, now.

  By noon, a pile of sloping ice, about the height of a crouching man, stood beneath the broken window. Citizens avoided it, as they would avoid a deposit of debris.

  The squeal of the metro train on its tracks hauled Kostya back to the present. The train slowed, approaching Krasnoselskaya, and Kostya rubbed at his eyes with the pads of his fingers. Debris.

  A boy of maybe eleven, intent on his book, dropped a candy wrapper on the floor; Kostya ordered him to pick it up.

  Eyes shut, Arkady turned over in bed and thereby escaped his itch, if only for a few moments. He considered the nerve signals and how itch ambushed him: intersections of power. He almost smiled. If he’d managed to pound nothing else into the boy’s thick skull, he taught Kostya about intersections of power. A lesson had come the day they got Kostya’s new papers in Moscow, though Arkady remained unsure how much the feverish boy heard. —The steppe gives up in patches to forest, and forest gives up in patches to tundra, yet in places where you see no change, all the differences blend. Power works like that, Little Tatar. Deep intersections, almost invisible. A clerk wields power over everyone in his queue, for they have come to beg, but he must remember to demonstrate his power, indulge in a little theatre, to manage the irritation and maybe anger of those in the queue. He must show his power and keep them near despair. So he keeps them waiting. In a queue for cheese, however, the people have power over the cheese-seller if he runs out. The power there tips much more quickly. Study the situation. Read and manipulate the emotions, and when necessary, do that to yourself. Find the intersections of power and adapt.

  This memory of mentorship and its peace of certainty retreated, elusive as one of his cats.

  Arkady sat up, refusing
to scratch. I felt so strong then, so well. And I didn’t fucking itch at night.

  He stood once more over the toilet, produced nothing, and peered again into his father’s mirror, hoping a better face would reveal itself in the failing light.

  A distant click startled him.

  It’s fine, just the house settling.

  Another click.

  Cat flap.

  A rustle: likely a cat leaping onto the table, despite Arkady’s repeated assertions that he did not allow cats on the table. He’d shoo them down, and they’d leap back up again behind his back. The cats, Arkady maintained, understood him perfectly.

  The itch rose, soles to scalp. Let me sleep.

  The wall of the hallway outside the bathroom still bore the shadows and stains of bookshelves. Not knowing which of his parents’ books might be considered bourgeois, dangerous, or illegal, Arkady had burned them all, and so kept himself and Kostya warm in the worst of that winter when it seemed easier to find gold than coal.

  Kostya had wrinkled his brow the first time Arkady tore up a book for kindling. —Back in Odessa, my grandfather had lots of books.

  — Did he, now?

  — He was a doctor. Why did those people take his house?

  — Leave that behind, Kostya. Those thieves will get what they deserve.

  — When I’m grown, I’ll go back and—

  — It’s out of your control.

  — Shall I wait for God to set it right? God who no longer exists?

  Arkady couldn’t answer Kostya’s question then. He couldn’t answer it now. Sitting on the edge of his bed and leaning forward, he hid his face in his hands.

  I stole him. I stole a doctor’s grandson with a gift for languages. And if that doctor had lived, how would he have guided Kostya? Force him into medical school? No, Kostya was alone in this world. I didn’t steal him. I saved him.

  Maybe a week after the incident with the Odessa herring merchant, Arkady had received a message. He sat down on the cot next to Kostya and put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. —I’m ordered back to Moscow.

  — I won’t eat much.

  Arkady sighed. You’re quick, boy. Too quick. —Kostya, I can’t.

  — I’ve got no one here!

  — Go back to the catacombs. It’s getting warmer.

  Snorting, Kostya wriggled free of Arkady’s protective arm. —The other street kids hate me. They will kill me. I’m the Chekist’s lapdog now. You know this!

  Arkady took off his glove and caught some of Kostya’s tears on his fingers.

  Kostya’s voice sounded deeper. —Why did you even come here?

  — Orders. Luck.

  — Fucked in the mouth, then, aren’t I?

  Arkady said it before he’d even accepted the fact himself. —I would have to steal you.

  — How can you steal me? I’m no dog.

  — Correct. You are free, Kostya, free to live in the catacombs.

  — Free to die!

  Arkady tugged his glove back on.

  — Steal me.

  — Kostya…

  The bezprizornik knelt before the Chekist, raised his arms and reached for the dangling amber beads. Then he rested his face on Arkady’s knee. —Steal me.

  Steal me, Kostya had said. Begged.

  Arkady rubbed his eyes. I am so tired.

  A cupboard hinge creaked, the cupboard where he kept salt and tea.

  The cats couldn’t open latched cupboards.

  Already? No, we don’t arrest until after midnight. It’s not that dark. Is it?

  Silence.

  Despite the growing ache in his back, Arkady dared not move.

  A rustle in the study: someone opened the closet.

  Arkady’s itch deepened as he imagined the path of the intruder. The clack of a light switch signalled his descent to the basement and furnace. Gentle clanks against the furnace wall and grate travelled throughout the house.

  He even rakes the ashes in the furnace.

  Then Arkady bit his lip. Those near-silent footfalls on the steps as the intruder ascended meant either a very good burglar or NKVD. Whoever crept up those steps knew to skip the final one, for it creaked.

  The electric light switch clacked off.

  Is that you, Little Tatar?

  Of course not, Arkady told himself, refusing to consider the British woman or her handbag. Kostya had no reason to sneak around this house.

  The intruder left through the front door.

  Arkady counted to fifty, then stood up, wincing at the pain in his back and legs as he descended the stairs to the parlour and front door. He had locked the door earlier and taken the key. If his phantom existed, then he had his own key to lock the door behind him.

  Arkady wrenched the knob.

  Locked.

  Either he’d hallucinated, or Kostya had just searched the house. Neither possibility held any appeal.

  Weeping, Arkady poured a large measure of vodka. A cat returned, slipping through the cat flap and leaping onto the table, where he dropped his newest slaughter: a mouse. No, Arkady thought, tracing a finger along the dead animal’s long tail, a small rat. Still warm. Praising the cat for his courageous efficiency, hoping the cat would then curl up in his lap, Arkady stared through the growing dusk at his telephone. He scratched the cat in his favourite spots, around his ears, at the base of his tail. The cat purred, rubbed his jaws against the side of Arkady’s hand, and ran off.

  The soil’s freshest here.

  Smelling lemon, pepper, and earth, Kostya placed the tea packet from Arkady’s pantry to one side and dug his fingers deep into the soil near the hedge. Then he caught another scent he recognized, from one of the perennial beds: iris.

  Her perfume at Lubyanka.

  Years ago, Misha and Kostya would listen to Arkady drone on about flowers: perennials, annuals, patience, beauty, and roots. Both boys found the subject a painful bore, yet they listened, and, when quizzed, they answered. As Misha got older, he took up flowers as a small hobby of his own, learning how to please women with arranged bouquets. Iris, he told Kostya, looks and smells like cunt.

  Dirty to his elbows, Kostya tangled his fingers in shredded silk stockings.

  He glanced over his shoulder, back at the house. No lights burned. The old man’s still out.

  Engine. NKVD car.

  Soil invaded Kostya’s mouth as he struggled to hide himself. Explain digging in Major Balakirev’s shrubbery at night? Not a hope in hell.

  The officers drove past the house, their errand elsewhere.

  Kostya buried the stockings again and got to his feet, smearing his trousers as he brushed damp earth from his legs. Then he patted a pocket to make sure he’d not lost his keys.

  Upstairs, the bathroom and the old man’s bedroom. Go back inside and search there.

  He stared up at the study window, its curtains open, and his shoulder ached.

  Shadow on the glass? Is he there?

  Mating cats yowled and hissed; dogs barked.

  Walking to the metro station, switching the packet of tea from hand to hand, Kostya wanted to spit at the quiet houses and peaceful blocks of flats. You all sleep. How dare you sleep? You know nothing of night duty.

  Headlight beams caught him from behind: another NKVD car. The driver did not slow down, and Kostya thought he recognized the eyes reflected in the rear-view mirror.

  Back in his own lobby, despite his quiet tread, he woke the watchwoman called Elena Petrovna.

  — Comrade Nikto.

  — Good evening, Grandmother.

  Then he thought of his own grandmother. She’d never dressed like this, all black layers. She’d bobbed her hair, favoured white blouses and purple skirts, and wore perfume, lavender or rose. Wondering how old Elena might be, Kostya gave her a light bow.

  — Why, Comrade Nikto.

  — Yes, Grandmother?

  — Whatever did you do to get so dirty? Dig a grave?

  Aware of the weights of stolen tea and missing pass
ports, Kostya ascended the stairs.

  Yes, Grandmother.

  [ ]

  ALL THE TEA IN MOSCOW CAN’T HELP THIS HEADACHE

  Wednesday 9 June

  Accepting dossiers and a glass of tea from Evgenia Ismailovna, Kostya squinted in a sudden glare of sunlight, planned a careful return to his office through the heaving crowd behind him, and pretended not to notice the rapid approach of Yury Stepanov.

  Yury would not be ignored. —Nikto, I need you.

  — Join the queue. See this pile in my arms? The department is busier than Finlyandsky Station. Perhaps you’ve noticed?

  — Who pissed in your kasha this morning? Down in the cells. I’ve got a Kazakh.

  Kostya adjusted the dossiers in his arm. —Why am I worried about your Kazakh, Stepanov?

  Weaving and dodging, Yury followed Kostya to his office. —He’s a fucking Mongol who doesn’t speak two words of Russian. How did he even get to Moscow? We’ve probably gotten eighteen different confessions—hey!

  Collision.

  Eight heavy dossiers flew from Kostya’s arms and slapped against the floor. He managed to hold onto the podstakannik handle and so keep his tea.

  A sergeant turned pale as he recognized not just Kostya’s insignia but also his own offence: knocking dossiers from the arms of someone important. —Oh, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, let me fetch those.

  The dossiers, like those knocked over by the clerk at the poligon, were tied shut and had released nothing. Kostya knelt with the sergeant, noticing hundreds of tiny scratches and dents in the once elegant parquet flooring. Other men’s legs shading their vision, they collected the burden.

  — I’m so sorry, Comrade Senior Lieutenant. I’m trying to find my way, all the corridors…

  — It’s nothing.

  — Senior Lieutenant Nikto? It’s me, Katelnikov, Matvei Andreivich Katelnikov.

  — Yes, we’ve met. Pass me that dossier, yes, that one there, before it gets kicked to the wall.

  Matvei did so. —I try to match your records in the basement.