The second time, Temerity suggested, then insisted, that Kostya remain mostly on his back. Dubious, he acquiesced, and afterward slept much better.
After the third time, she asked for shoes.
Kostya shook his head. He could hide shoes in another package, wrap them up with his laundry, perhaps. Getting shoes up the stairs: not impossible. Getting Nadia back down the stairs and outside? —I don’t know how to get you past the watchwoman. The new one, oh, Nadia, she doesn’t miss a thing, who lives in which flat, which children are in which grade at school. Yesterday she told me I was late bringing my dirty laundry to the service this week, and then she complimented Efim on his haircut. I never noticed he got a haircut. Did you?
Temerity shut her eyes, unable to escape the memory of Elena Petrovna calling on Stalin as if calling on God.
Then Kostya spoke about his language school dream. —Maybe Finland? Get to Leningrad first. We’d have to swim. How are you in cold water? You said you can speak some Finnish.
Recalling Mikko Toppinen’s Babel Interior, Temerity smiled with sadness and shook her head. —Danish. And nowhere near enough.
The days wore on. The flat got hotter and hotter, cooling at night only to ramp up at dawn, and Temerity always felt hungry — for food, for Kostya, for fresh air, for every word, however difficult, in Pravda, Izvestia, and Krokodil.
Kostya looked at her in growing worry, wishing he could explain why he dared not search Arkady’s house, now occupied by Boris Kuznets. —A few more weeks, Nadia, and I can get this settled.
The night of the second of July, she had her first recurring dream of being lost in a flower garden, the flowers growing not from soil but flesh. The giant from Ruslan and Lyudmila pursued her. In the morning, the radio announcer, a woman, shared a sombre bulletin: Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan had disappeared.
Efim worried more each day, each week. He and Kostya continued to use a laundry service, yet Nadezhda Ivanovna washed her clothes by hand. Efim and Kostya continued to come and go for work almost every day; Nadezhda remained in the flat. Efim could hear almost everything in that flat, every little whimper and thrust. What he could not hear: the words in those urgent whispers.
Who is she?
So Efim spent more and more time at the lab. A breakthrough, he’d say, we’re near a breakthrough.
Sometimes, when Kostya worked a night shift, Efim and Temerity sat up late, talking. He told her funny stories from his time in medical school, and he told her about courting Olga. He even told her about some of his time on the armoured train during the civil war, omitting the coercion. Sometimes he described a deathbed vigil. He called it medicine’s brittle privilege.
Had Olga’s first pregnancy gone to term, the child would be about Nadezhda’s age.
— Thank you, Nadezhda Ivanovna. I’ve always found it easier to talk to women.
Temerity smiled, said nothing.
Near mid-July, Efim confessed a great unhappiness: no letters from Olga, over a month now. His restless fingers hid his mouth as he spoke.
Temerity felt chilled, and her Russian pronunciation slipped. She sounded like an foreigner. —I’m so sorry.
Sighing, Efim shut his eyes and refused to remember the first morning, when Nadezhda Ivanovna asked for something in what sounded like English. I heard no such thing.
Temerity took his hand in both of hers, and he flinched.
She smiled. —Tell me about your wedding.
Efim looked away. He should refuse, at least demur, yet in that moment he wanted to think of nothing else, and she still held his hand. The wedding. All the food. The funny drunken guests. The joy. —You’ve not got the time to listen me ramble.
She let go of his hand and sat back, gesturing to the walls. —I’m not going anywhere.
He blinked several times. Then he started the story, this time entering it sidelong with observations of Olga’s maiden aunt. —Of course, she’s dead now, but Valentina Vladmirovna, like most women I know, had more backbone and fire than twenty young men…
Then he grimaced, as if in pain.
— Efim?
— I don’t deserve this.
— Sometimes letters get lost.
— I mean, you. I don’t merit your kindness. At the lab, we…test things. Compounds. Drugs. People die. It’s no hospital. They’re prisoners. They suffer, and they die. And then I tell myself that compared to Kolyma’s slow death by hunger and cold, it’s a mercy.
He waited for Temerity to sneer, to cry out in revulsion.
Instead, she took his hand again.
Efim sobbed. —I never wanted this. How can you even look at me? How can I do these things?
After a long moment, she answered him. —You’re trapped. You want to survive, Efim Antonovich, and you’re trapped.
He placed his other hand over hers. —If your parents had not named you for hope, Nadezhda, then they could have named you for mercy.
Temerity looked toward the door. —Thank you.
Kostya woke Efim later that evening to ask for a higher dose of morphine. —Target practice. It always hurts after target practice.
— Where is Balakirev?
— I told you, out of town.
— Perhaps you can go without a dose tonight.
Kostya shut his eyes. —It hurts.
— Will you be speaking with Balakirev anytime soon?
— How many times do I have to say it? He’s out of town.
— The moment he’s back, then.
Kostya studied Efim a moment. Tell him? Confess his stark fears that Arkady might not return?
Efim held the morphine ampoule to the light. —I write Olga twice a week, yet I’ve gotten nothing back. It’s been too long. Surely someone else can approve my leave?
— If Balakirev’s your case officer, then you simply must wait for Balakirev. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.
Efim stared at him.
Kostya looked to the floor. —I can make inquiries here at the Moscow office, have them passed on to Leningrad.
— You’d do that?
— Of course.
— Won’t that cause you trouble?
— I’ll handle it.
After a moment, Efim lashed the tourniquet to Kostya’s arm. —Make a fist. Good, good. And you’ll tell Balakirev I need to see him?
— The moment I see him myself, yes.
Efim gave Kostya the injection.
Temerity overheard, and once Kostya closed the bedroom door, she took a breath to ask him about her papers.
Kostya placed his gymnastyorka and portupeya in the closet. He tucked the holster and gun beneath his pillow. —I am so tired. What is it, Nadia?
— Nothing.
Taking care not to jostle his shoulder, he lay on the bed. Soon, he dozed.
Too hot to sleep, the open window letting in only noise and not fresh air, Temerity stared at the ceiling and listened to nightingales. Other voices interfered: memories of Kostya and Misha at the clinic, the desperate parents in Bilbao, Cristobal Zapatero.
Freckles on your eyelids.
Can she speak Russian?
Kneel. Now!
Señorita Inglesa, Señorita Inglesa…
I like strawberries.
Sweating, she sat up, got her breath, listened.
Kostya snored; nightingales sang; the ceiling squeaked as a neighbour on the floor above paced his flat.
She hid her face in her hands.
The following night, after assuring Efim he’d made the enquiries to Leningrad, lying, Kostya spoke of his grandfather. —I don’t know why I’ve been thinking about him so much. Today someone mentioned Koshchei the Deathless, and I almost got lost in remembering how my grandfather told that story. Every time he told it, he added something new. He said that we need to hear stories again and again, stories, especially the scary ones, because stories are how we rehearse for our lives. I always told the boys that.
Efim welcomed the distraction from his consideration of Nadezhda.
Her manner of speech, the gentle accent at once suggesting Leningrad and also some other land, her bare legs and feet, all so easy to dismiss, and yet…He forced himself to look at Kostya. —Which boys?
— At one of the children’s homes. I would visit and read them books, tell them stories.
Efim peered at him. —Really?
— Yes. Why not?
— I just don’t picture NKVD officers doing that sort of thing.
Kostya inclined his head, acknowledging this. —Well, it has been a while. I spend most of my time listening to stories now. Confessions, I mean.
Efim raised his eyebrows.
Smile strained, Kostya took Temerity’s hand as though inviting her to dance. He kissed her fingertips, and she did not pull away.
Later, Temerity turned around on the bed, got up on her knees, and faced the tiny open window. Birdsong pierced the rattle of the city. —So many nightingales?
Ignoring his memory of the coded messages in Spain, the phrase from Turgenev to signal liquidation, even nightingales can’t live by song alone, Kostya knelt up beside Temerity. He wrapped his left arm around her shoulders, wincing. —Ilya Muromets fought Solovei, the thief who hid in the forest. When Solovei whistled like a nightingale, the woods fell flat. Ilya fought him, bound him, dragged him back to the tsar. You’re trembling. Hush, hush, you’re safe.
Temerity snuggled into him. He’s so warm.
Curls tickled Kostya’s face as he kissed the top of Temerity’s head. —Nightingales sing louder in the cities.
— Why?
Kostya kissed her again. —So they might be heard.
[ ]
FERTILITY RITES
Friday 23 July
Examining Kostya’s shoulder, Efim used the word narkomania.
In the bathroom, where the shower ran, the stall empty, Temerity pressed an ear to the door and eavesdropped.
Efim said it again. —Narkomania, but not the morphine.
— Then to what am I addicted, Comrade Doctor?
— Deceit. Something’s wrong with that woman, and yet you keep her here, when it’s dangerous for us all.
— It’s nothing. Once Balakirev gets back in town, I can…
— Even self-deceit. You grope for it as a drunkard for the bottle, or a child scared of monsters for his blanket.
— It is not deceit!
Kostya took a breath.
It’s hope. I can’t be addicted to hope.
Efim shook his head. —You’ll kill us all. As sure as if you pulled the trigger yourself.
— Efim, wait.
Temerity placed her hand beneath the shower stream to break up the flow of water and convince the men she stood under it, unable to hear them.
Kostya emerged from Efim’s room and stood near the bathroom door, by the telephone.
Temerity got the rest of her body beneath the stream and managed not to cry out as the water blasted cold, then hot.
Kostya returned to his bedroom. —It’s fine. She can’t hear us.
The piece of soap melted as water hit it. Temerity hurried to finish, and she recalled her Aunt Min standing beside her as she soaked in a bath in 1933. Min had returned from managing the West family business interests in Darjeeling to coach and chaperone motherless Temerity through her debut and first social season. Temerity dismissed the entire exercise as a cattle market, mere theatre. Min agreed, then called it very necessary theatre, prattling on about white dresses and dance cards, calendars and rubber petticoats, the precise placement of ostrich feathers in one’s hair, and the deferent elegance of the curtsy due to the king.
— Min, why?
— Because one must curtsy to the king.
— I know, but—
Min passed her niece a towel. —Come out, dear, you’re pruning.
— Screw for survival, is that it? Marry some dolt of an aristocrat who’s got money in the bank yet nothing in his head?
— An aristocrat with money in the bank? They’re all skint, dear.
— Fine, fine, money tied up in the estate, and then nothing in his head.
— Surely one of these young men has some intelligence.
— None on my dance card. Min, I don’t want to be the wife of Lord Gormless. I don’t want to be a society hostess. I’ll die.
Min helped blot Temerity’s hair. —Die of boredom, yes, I shouldn’t wonder, and all those languages you speak shall wither on the vine, drop to the soil, and rot, unnoticed.
— Min!
— Temmy, my dear, you know how your father serves king and country. Have you given much thought to how I do so?
— What?
Min peeked over Temerity’s shoulder and met her niece’s gaze in the mirror. —It needn’t be the cattle market.
Only later, travelling through India for several months with Min, did Temerity discard the last of her contempt. Min had fooled her, as she fooled many people. Lady Minerva West, the avid photographer who now owned and used, at great expense, both a movie and a still camera and plenty of colour film, Min the sweet older lady who charmed others and got them to open up by speaking to them in their own language, Min who supplied long and detailed reconnaissance reports, photographs, and movies to the Secret Intelligence Service. No dotty memsahib here.
When Temerity admitted her mistake, Min only smiled. —I told your father you’d travel well, and that it might knock some sense into you. Now, remember what I said about making your mind like a steamer trunk, many compartments. No matter what you must pretend to be, so long as you remember your duty and your best self, you’ll do fine.
Travel well. The phrase signalled more than grace under seasickness. On a rope bridge in Darjeeling, Temerity stared down between slats at the chasm below, aware of menstrual blood flowing into the gauze tampon Min had taught her to roll. Nothing to it, really. One bled, and one lived, all in the same moment. Temerity had reminded herself of that bridge during her last period at the end of May, as she arrived in Moscow, miserable with cramps.
May.
Breasts aching, Temerity traced lines on her left shoulder to mirror Kostya’s scars. Min’s voice: Remember your duty and your best self. Her own voice, on the Bilbao docks: Don’t let them forget their Spanish names. Her fingers traced shorter lines on her shoulder now, letters of the Latin alphabet, her initials: TTW, TTW, TTW.
[ ]
CHILD OF THE STRUGGLE
Saturday 24 July
A large and suffocating sound, yet disciplined and contained: swish-slap, swish-slap, swish-slap. Frowning, Kostya strode around a corner. He knew he should recognize the noise, but it seemed off, even eerie, lighter than it should be. Then he saw why. Row on row on row of attractive and muscular young women dressed in navy blue shorts and white blouses marched past, their thin white shoes hitting the street in unison. The women all wore their hair in the same style, cut near the top of the ears, parted on the left. Brunettes, blondes, and redheads, hair straight, wavy, curly, upturned faces intent on some distant ideal, seemed to blend into one Soviet woman.
A practice march then, a rehearsal for a parade. He must wait. Even if possessed of the necessary rudeness to try, one could never cut across such a phalanx.
The women marched on, perhaps a hundred of them, in perfect formation, smiling, quiet.
Kostya waited another moment after the end of the parade passed, then crossed the street to a large house repurposed into Home of the Child of the Struggle Moscow Number Two Supplemental Number Three. The building looked even more dilapidated than it had the last time Kostya saw it, as though no one had so much as lifted a hammer for repair work because permits lay hidden on a bureaucrat’s desk.
Over a year and a half since his last visit. He considered Efim’s words: I just don’t picture NKVD officers doing that sort of thing.
He knocked on the front door, and a woman in her early twenties let him in.
Kostya took off his cap and gave the woman a light bow to signal courtesy and, he hoped, the fact he’d not come
to arrest her. —Thank you, comrade. I noticed the old sign on the lawn is gone.
Her voice wobbled. —What sign was that, Comrade Officer?
— The one identifying this building. Has the name changed?
— No, we just…no longer have a sign. We burnt it. In February. For firewood, I mean. But it wasn’t my idea. I protested. With vigour. It was noted.
— I see.
— Vigour.
— Of course, of course.
She took a breath. —How can I help you today, Comrade Officer?
— I used to visit regularly starting in ’33, before your time, once a week to tell stories to the boys, read to them. How a Little Old Woman Obtained Ink, that book was a great favourite.
— I did not work here in ’33.
— Yes, that’s fine. One of the boys—
The woman clasped her hands together before her waist. —I was still in school. Please.
— Yes, I understand. On one of my visits, I met an extraordinary young man. Timur. I don’t recall his surname.
— Neizvestny?
— No.
— We’ve no one called Timur here.
— I’m sure he must have graduated by now. I remember him because he’d decided to keep an archive.
Her fingers tightened; her voice sounded airy and unconcerned. —An archive?
— Yes, records of each of the boys, their pasts, how they ended up here. Their stories. I thought it showed initiative and compassion. I’d like to see it.
— Comrade Officer, I have no idea what you mean.
— He wrote…
— Yes, I understand that, but I promise you, we have no archive. You may search the classrooms, if you wish.
— No, I—
— Please. Search them. We have nothing to hide.
— That’s not why I’m here. The one Timur, can you tell me where he is?
Sweat shone on her forehead. —We have no one called Timur.
— Yes, so you said. Right here, right now, you have no Timur. But he did live here. Could you check your files? Ask another worker? Perhaps he’s gone into the army.
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