Constant Nobody

by Michelle Butler Hallett

  Efim found a vein, gave the injection. —It may take a while now to get this settled down.

  One-two, three-four, five-six…—Just give me a bigger dose.

  — No.

  — Please.

  — Konstantin, I said no. If I give you more, then I make it all worse.

  — Make what worse?

  — The need.

  Kostya shook his head. —I can’t be addicted already. It still hurts.

  — Keep still. Let the morphine work. There, some relief?

  Kostya’s voice sounded looser, less connected somehow. —Yes. Thank you. It’s not enough, but thank you. Must you help everyone? Medically, I mean. If someone comes to you wounded or sick, and you don’t like their politics, do you still help them?

  I am the doctor who leapt from the train. —Why would you even ask me that?

  — I was thinking about my grandfather. I like to think he helped anyone who needed him, no matter what side they were on.

  Efim nodded. —Very likely.

  Kostya rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers. And Dr. Cristobal Zapatero, would he have shown a stray Russian such mercy?

  Sitting up, Kostya adjusted the sheets to cover himself better. —I feel I owe you both something after that little show. I heard this joke at the office the other day. Picture one of those big houses made over into flats, where everyone uses the one main door to get outside. So they’re all sound asleep, and it’s two in the morning, and bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, knocks on the door. Everyone wakes up, yet no one moves. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! Everyone has the same thought, that it’s NKVD officers on a raid. Still, no one moves. The knocks get very loud: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! Finally, the old man who lives on the top floor, the oldest of old men, says ‘Well, my life is over, so I might as well be the one to answer the door and be taken away.’ He gets out of bed and limps down the stairs. Everyone listens. The door creaks open. Voices murmur. The door closes. Everyone keeps so very still. Then the old man then shouts up the stairs: ‘It’s all right, comrades, nothing to worry about. The building’s on fire, that’s all.’

  Efim laughed. Temerity, eyes huge, looked at the bed, the wall, the floor.

  Kostya noticed. —No sense of humour, Nadia? Try this one. The Kremlin, big meeting of Politburo, and the Boss himself, our beloved Comrade Stalin, is about to give a speech.

  Efim glanced over his shoulder, knowing, even as he did so, no one else stood there.

  Kostya continued. —Just as the Boss straightens his papers and opens his mouth, someone sneezes. Achoo! The Boss is furious! He demands: ‘Who sneezed?’ Silence. The Boss orders the guards to shoot the entire first row. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. The smoke dissipates, and the Boss clears his throat, ready to address his beloved comrades, when, wait for it, somebody sneezes. Achoo! Terror shoots through everyone, faster than electricity, and more than one old revolutionary fears for the state of his shorts. And the Boss glowers at the entire assembly, and he thunders out: ‘Who sneezed?’ Silence. ‘Guards,’ orders the Boss, ‘shoot everyone in rows three to nine.’ The guards obey. Bang! Too many thumps to count. And when the smoke clears, everyone can see the Boss still stands at the podium, still waits with the infinite patience of a kind and loving father. He takes a breath to speak, and once more, Achoo! ‘Comrades,’ roars the Boss, ‘this is too much! Who sneezed?’ A rustle in the silence as one man, one tiny man in the very back row who can bear his guilt no longer, stands up and waves, and he says, ‘I did.’ The Boss fixes his yellow eyes on the man…and says ‘Bless you, comrade.’

  Efim laughed some more. So did Kostya. Each man’s laughter fed the other’s, and the harder they tried to stop, the harder they laughed.

  Temerity stared at them both. —That’s not funny.

  Efim dabbed at his eyes, deciding he now had an excellent excuse to make his accusation. —If that’s not funny, then you’re not Russian.

  Kostya smirked at her.

  Temerity kept her back to Efim as she smoothed some of Kostya’s hair from his forehead. —Lost in translation, perhaps.

  Still chuckling, Efim wished them both a good night.

  Back in his own room, about to lock his door, Efim considered what Nadezhda Ivanovna had just said about translation. He visited the bathroom, urinated, then looked at himself in the mirror.

  The doctor who leapt from the train was a much younger man.

  Temerity took care not to rock the bed too hard as she got back in it. —Still hurts?

  — Not as bad.

  — How did it happen?

  Kostya let out a long sigh. —Gerrikaitz.

  — What were you doing in Gerrikaitz?

  — My duty.

  She took the risk. —Cristobal Zapatero?

  After a moment, he answered. —I lost your sketchbook in the hospital. I lost his beads, too. I left you out of my report.

  She waited, knowing that if she pressed him, he’d stop talking.

  — And you, Nadia, what dragged you to Gernika so you could get bombed?

  — Nothing dragged me. I chose to go to Gernika so I could get a message to London.

  — Misha and I forced the issue. You chose nothing.

  — Not this again. I chose duty.

  He turned over to stroke her face. —And you got nothing worse for it than a bruise on the forehead.

  — Nothing to show. Bad dreams. Then I got to Bilbao. I had to get home, or at least report in. And, ah, well, I was hardly the only one in Bilbao. What happened to those boys?

  Kostya wanted to shout at her, tell her to shut up, demand she get him some vodka. He lacked the strength. —I don’t know. It was a trial run. No one made a sound about it in the press.

  — A secret evacuation?

  — I was waiting for orders in Bilbao. Down by the docks I heard someone shout for anyone who spoke Russian, and I said, ‘Here I am.’ And this man told me he was a colonel and now I had to escort a dozen boys out of a war zone to Leningrad. And he just left them with me, twelve boys wearing cardboard name tags. Not one of those boys spoke a word of Russian. I hadn’t slept for three damned days, and suddenly I’m looking after all these boys. The younger ones cried for their parents. I told them and told them they’d be safe, but they kept crying. I wanted to kick them, shove them aside, fuck, call them bezprizorniki. I told myself to do that, to help them toughen up, yes? I also wanted to hold them, calm them down, listen to them. My right arm was still bruised, and the left was useless. I couldn’t even hold the pencil, let alone a crying child. Then I saw you. After you wrote their name tags, something in my mind collapsed. I was afraid of you, and I couldn’t say why. The boat set out from Bilbao, and I tried to get the boys settled. I told them in Spanish they’d come back one day, when the war was over, but for now they were on an adventure. Two of the boys spoke only Basque. Some of the other boys could interpret. Yet if I just let them cry, that worked better than words. So I let them lean on me and cry. I tried to pat their shoulders, stroke their hair with my good arm. Fuck, that hurt. Then I organized the older ones and set them up as squad leaders, and we put the younger ones into squads. I made sure we kept brothers together. I demanded the cook feed them only the plainest rations, because otherwise they’d be sick the whole damned time. They got only hard bread, boiled peas, potatoes, and Narzan, and that’s all I took as well. Solidarity, comrade. The steamer made it to Leningrad, and as we stood on the docks, swaying on our sea legs, I put them through some language drill. Then I heard the boots. The boys froze when they saw the uniforms, and my esteemed colleagues separated us. Some of the boys cried out to me, and I could not go to them. The oldest boy took this as a betrayal, and I saw the anger play out on his face. He blamed me. I got bundled onto a train to Moscow, and they got marched away. Those children are the reason I got home. It was an accident. I was in Bilbao at the right moment. The captain of that little fishing boat was Red Army Intelligence, working hand in hand with NKVD. Chance.

  Temerity tapped
her mouth with her fist.

  Kostya touched her fist, loosened the fingers, kissed them.

  She took her hand back.

  He sat up, found his cigarettes on the side table, lit two, and passed Temerity one. Cigarette smoke curled around their faces, making Kostya think of both Odessa fog and a fired Nagant.

  — Kostya. This can’t continue.

  — I know.

  — Please, just get me to the embassy.

  He said nothing.

  — Kostya, I’m begging. Help me.

  Recalling the sensation of the ashes in Arkady’s furnace on his fingers, Kostya ground out his cigarette, unfinished, and lay down.

  Temerity waited another moment. Then turned onto her side, facing away from him, and flicked off the lamp.

  He stared at where the ceiling should be. —Nadia? If I could protect you here…

  — You can’t.

  — If I could.

  — Kostya, please.

  — If I could protect you, if you were in no danger here, would you stay with me? Run that language school with me?

  — Duty, Kostya.

  — If duty didn’t matter.

  — If, if, if.

  — What if there’s no if and you are meant to be here? We should never have met at all.

  — If everything is meant to happen, then why did you choose to take me from that party?

  He said nothing.

  After a moment, she rolled onto her back. —The nightingales are loud.

  — The what?

  — The nightingales, my gentle thief. The birdsong.

  He frowned. —Are you saying I should have just left you at that party?

  — You stole me.

  — I saved you.

  Temerity turned over on her side again, her back to him.

  Kostya wept.

  [ ]

  A RADIANT FUTURE

  Tuesday 27 July

  Wrapped in a towel, Kostya answered the telephone next to the bathroom door and just kept himself from sighing as the operator told him to stand by for a call from Lubyanka. Expecting Evgenia Ismailovna to inform him of an extra shift, he smiled as instead he recognized Vadym’s voice.

  — Kostya, can you come see me in my office?

  — I have the day off.

  Static on the line, for it must be static, made Vadym’s voice tremble. —Kostya, please.

  Riding the metro to Dzerzhinskaya, Kostya knew he must face certain things, perhaps even the moral need to tell Vadym about Misha in Spain. Kostya’s final report, while initially delayed by his convalescence, was long since approved and filed away. It was also incomplete. He’d said little of Misha and nothing of the British nurse. Any discovery of such omissions could get him arrested. If he told Vadym about Misha, he’d implicate Vadym in his faulty report. If he continued to refuse to tell Vadym about Misha, then he’d gall a man he loved with the torment of uncertainty.

  Kostya did not see the two young women on the bench opposite him, wondering at the tears on the face of this uniformed NKVD officer.

  Dima, I am sorry…

  He thought of the story ‘The Maiden Tsar,’ of the moment when Baba Yaga complains of the hero’s Russian smell and then asks him: Are you here of your own free will, or by compulsion?

  He muttered the hero’s response. —Mostly of my own free will, yet twice as much by compulsion.

  Then he noticed his tears and hurried to wipe them away. As he glanced up, the young women watching him looked down.

  At his desk in Lubyanka, Vadym felt confused by how little, yet how much time sagged between his hanging up the phone and hearing a knock on the door. —Come in, Kostya.

  — Vadym Pavlovich.

  He looked up. Not that he needed to look up to confirm the rich voice of Boris Kuznets.

  Uninvited, Boris sat down and spoke in a quiet manner, almost an enemy’s mutter, almost a lover’s croon: a difficult task, comrade, a heavy need in these troubled days of widespread corruption when we must investigate comrades we thought we could trust, your closeness to the man in question and your simultaneous loyalty forged in the fires of revolution…

  Vadym looked out his window.

  — Vadym Pavlovich, please understand. I must pass on orders for you to assist in the investigation of Arkady Dmitrievich Balakirev and Konstantin Arkadievich Nikto for cronyism.

  Vadym shut his eyes. Cronyism meant nothing. Yet it could mean everything.

  Boris continued. —I’m compelled to point out that if you refuse or even hesitate to assist, then the investigation would widen to include you. If it hasn’t already.

  — My nephew.

  — What?

  Vadym opened his eyes again and met Boris’s gaze. —Misha. Mikhail Petrovich Minenkov to you. You promised to find out what happened to him.

  Boris leaned on the desk as he got out of the chair. —I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, or why you think I’d barter information.

  — Is he coming back?

  — Speak with care, Vadym Pavlovich. To an outside observer, this conversation might sound close to cronyism. We could both be charged.

  — Tell me if he’s ever coming back!

  — Ask Nikto. He was the last to see him.

  Vadym stared at Boris and refused to look away.

  After a moment’s silence, Boris drew his index finger across Vadym’s desk. —Dust. And a messy pile of dossiers. I’ve never seen your desk in such a state.

  As Boris left, Vadym shoved himself away from his desk and strode to his office window.

  I shot other men’s sons for the good of this country.

  Any moment his desk telephone would ring: his brother, asking for news of Misha. Despite Vadym’s pleas, Pyotr would call again and again. Any moment he would call, and the cacophony of the wretched telephone bell would slice into Vadym’s ears.

  He leaned his forehead on the glass.

  Any moment.

  Wishing, as ever, that Dzerzhinskaya felt less grim, less grey, Kostya hurried to emerge. Back to heaven, Odessa bezprizornik.

  As he strode toward Lubyanka, the racket of cracking glass made him look up.

  A wooden chair fell from a third-floor Lubyanka office, and it shattered into sharp pieces on the ground: legs, arms, slats.

  Then a uniformed officer leapt through the broken window and ran through the air.

  No one cried out.

  The officer fell atop the broken chair.

  Kostya ran to him as others stared. Then he saw the shock of white hair.

  Vadym had fallen onto his chest, face turned to the left. His jaw worked, and his right fist clenched and twitched. Blood flowed towards it.

  Kostya hurried to kneel besides him. —Dima? Uncle?

  — Misha?

  — Kostya. I’m Kostya. Hush, don’t move.

  Vadym spat up blood.

  — Dima!

  The gathering crowd, so quiet, threw shadows.

  Boris Kuznets touched Kostya on the upper arm. —Come away.

  Other men pried Vadym’s body from the asphalt, revealing wood, blood, bone.

  Boris kept his hand on Kostya’s good shoulder as Kostya gave his statement to other officers, described what he’d seen. Then Boris guided Kostya inside Lubyanka, up to the department.

  Evgenia gasped when she saw Kostya’s face.

  Boris eased his office door shut. —Sit down.

  Kostya obeyed. He studied the large rocking blotter on Boris’s desk as the older man poured two stiff measures. The blotter reminded him of the one on the clerk’s desk in 1918, when Arkady took him for identity papers.

  Here you are: Nikto, Konstantin Arkadievich.

  Boris offered a glass.

  Kostya kept staring at the blotter.

  Boris took Kostya’s right hand and placed it around the glass. —Drink.

  — Yes.

  Kostya knew he sounded young, impossibly young. Then he drank.

  — Finish it.

  Kostya obey
ed that order, too.

  — More?

  Kostya nodded, drank the second dose.

  — You knew him well?

  — I call him uncle.

  — You’re his nephew by blood?

  — No. Vadym is an old friend of Arkady Dmitrievich.

  — And neither are you Arkady Dmitreivich’s son. Yet you’re so much alike.

  Shock and vodka stifling his fear, Kostya told the story of his name.

  Boris raised his eyebrows. —Arkady Dmitrievich saved you? Why?

  — I…oh, God, Dima is dead.

  — Yes.

  — Dima is dead. He ran as he fell.

  — Impossible. Bodies tumble.

  Kostya stood up and slammed his glass on Boris’s desk. —He ran!

  Boris studied the splash of vodka, noticed how it missed his paperwork. —I am sorry you had to witness it. These are difficult days.

  — He called me Misha.

  — Sit down. That’s an order. Now Kostya, listen to me.

  — Do not call me that!

  Boris stared at him.

  A dozen apologies ripped through Kostya’s mind only to fail in his mouth. He softened his voice. —With respect, Boris Aleksandrovich, you may not use that name.

  — You’re in shock, so I’ll let that go. Nikto, you cannot work today. Go home.

  — No, wait, I—

  — Senior Lieutenant Nikto!

  Kostya stood to attention.

  — You will not work today. Is that clear?

  — Yes, Comrade Captain.

  — At ease. Now sit down.

  Kostya almost fell back into the chair.

  Silence.

  — In a few moments, Konstantain Arkadievich, once you feel ready, we shall leave this office and descend to the garage, and I will drive you home myself.

  Playing with his glass, Kostya shook his head. —I want to take the metro.

  Boris blinked several times, then brushed his hand over his eyes. —Nikto, don’t crack on me. Not now. I never expected this from Minenkov. I’ll drive you home.

  Kostya’s voice sounded clear, precise. —I’ll be fine. I like riding the metro.

  — What’s your station?

  — Vasilisa Prekrasnaya. My flat’s a short walk from there.