by Zach Powers
“I think I understand. Feelings, then, are . . . metaphor?”
“Yes, yes! I wish we had more time.” The Bishop pointed back toward the nave. “Your party is leaving without you.”
Leonid jumped up, narrowly avoiding another bash to his shin.
“Come, Bishop,” he said. “Let me introduce you to Nadya.”
The pair hurried down the center aisle, oblivious to the tourists they brushed past. Above them rushed the angels and saints. As if in orbit, Leonid thought.
The Bishop and Nadya shook hands, and the photographers’ flashes filled the whole cathedral.
* * *
• • •
DEPARTING THE CATHEDRAL, Ignatius walked with the tour guide, ahead of Leonid and Nadya. The photographers brought up the rear. The tour guide was a younger man, maybe thirty, with some portion of noble blood, an earl or a marquess or a viscount, a title bourgeois even by the standards of the West. He sported a wavy coif of brown hair that assumed a pleasing shape without seeming to require much effort at styling it. Ignatius said something that made the guide laugh. They walked closer than should have been comfortable. The guide glanced at Ignatius, then glanced away. Ignatius glanced back, then away, then back again.
“I think they’re flirting,” said Nadya.
“I never imagined Ignatius to be capable of such a thing.”
“What’s there to be capable of?”
“I used to flirt with your sister.”
Leonid had not meant to say it. The words just came out. After weeks of interviews in which every word had to be carefully chosen, it felt like utter freedom to actually share an uncensored thought. He looked at Nadya, but she did not seem to react.
“I wasn’t very good at it,” he said. “Yuri was much better. Even Mars.”
Nadya said, “Maybe that’s why Yuri is married and you’re not.”
“I’ve lived in a box for my entire adulthood. Who would I marry? One of the dogs?”
“Strelka does seem rather fond of you.”
“She’s too much of a barker. And was that a joke? Since when do you joke?”
“I thought we were flirting.”
“See? I told you I’m not very good at it.”
He did not add that Nadya was a poor flirt herself. Never once had her expression cracked, their exchange lacking the kind of mirth that passed between Ignatius and the guide. But he could not blame Nadya entirely. He had not meant to flirt with her. As close as he felt they had become, it seemed perverse to treat her the same way he had her sister. Despite appearances, no one who met them both could ever confuse the two Nadyas.
“Ignatius tried to convince me to marry one of the other cosmonauts,” said Nadya.
“Who would you choose?”
“You’re the only tolerable one.”
“Yuri always fancied you before he married. He, Mars, and Giorgi are all great men.”
“Great and tolerable are unrelated qualities.”
“I’m honored that you would rather spend time with me than marry a great man.”
“Why do you see yourself as so different from the others?” Nadya’s tone lost whatever little playfulness had tinged it before.
Leonid glanced back. The photographers raised their cameras. He smiled. Flashes. The photographers fiddled with their cameras, and Leonid turned back to the front. Ahead, Ignatius and the guide leaned their faces near to each other as if sharing a secret.
“I know we’re all pretending,” said Leonid, “but I feel the other twins could actually have done it. They could have been real cosmonauts. They understand the crowds as more than just faceless noise. Can they believe for even a moment they’re legitimate? That the praise belongs to them and not their departed siblings? Maybe they can. Maybe they’re more like their twins than I’m like Leonid. There’s a reason he was selected for flight and I was held in reserve, even though I’m older.”
“Older by minutes.”
“But shouldn’t those minutes have meant something? Shouldn’t I have recognized my mother’s frailty, and known, even by instinct, that it was my duty to protect my brother when his birth sapped the last of her strength? As Grandmother tells it, I came out wailing and my brother without a sound. The last thing my mother heard was my infant screech, the last thing she saw my scrunched face. And she never saw my brother’s face at all.”
“Fortunately, the face is the same.” It seemed like a joke, but Nadya’s tone did not change.
“Are we the same? Are any of the twins actually like the other? Talking to you isn’t like talking to your sister. I would never have said these things to Nadya. The other Nadya. I wouldn’t confuse the two of you if you’d ever been in the same place. And no one could confuse me for Leonid. He’s a hero, and I’m just his shadow.”
“Heroism is simply opportunity.”
“And I missed mine.”
“Since my launch, since I missed it, I’ve often thought of opportunity. I hope that it comes more than once in a lifetime.”
“Even though it came only once for our twins.”
The hotel loomed in front of them, a redbrick front with white stone trim, five stories high and several times as long. Posh Londoners came in and out of the lobby, greeted and wished well by bellhops in funny red uniforms. No funnier, Leonid supposed, than his own, though definitely redder. The sound of a train rumbled in the near distance.
Leonid and Nadya posed for a few final photographs, backdropped by the hotel’s great wooden doors. Leonid thanked the photographers in English. Several firm handshakes were exchanged, pats on shoulders. One of the photographers lingered near Nadya, spinning the rings on his lens back and forth, before drawing himself away. He turned back, raised the camera, and clicked off one final photo, this one of Nadya only. Her expression was less guarded, the usual stony set of her face relaxed, like Leonid saw her sometimes when they were alone together, and he remembered her sister, and thought then that maybe none of them were all that different from their twins, except in circumstance and the luck of survival. The photographer pressed his lips into a bashful smile, bowed his head, turned, and almost fled around the corner.
“I think you have a fan,” said Ignatius in English.
The tour guide chuckled. Leonid translated for Nadya.
“At least this one didn’t propose to me,” Nadya replied.
Ignatius translated for the guide, who laughed again, a fine and honest laugh, Leonid thought. He liked this gentleman, and thought maybe of inviting him for a drink at the hotel bar. Leonid had endured nothing but formal interactions for the whole of the tour, and the thought of casual conversation with a friendly stranger seemed supremely appealing. His thoughts were interrupted by Ignatius’s hand on his shoulder.
“You two should get some rest before dinner,” said Ignatius.
“What about you?” asked Leonid.
“I still have energy left to burn.” She hooked her arm through the crook of the guide’s elbow and led him into the hotel. The bellhops closed the great doors behind them.
“Her energy is admirable,” said Nadya.
“Do you think she’d care that I had a drink at the hotel bar?”
“I think she’d forbid it. Fortunately, she’ll be otherwise occupied for at least the duration of a drink.”
“Will you join me?”
“I’ve never drunk, and I don’t plan to start today. I need to lie down for a while, anyway. You’re right, it takes too much energy to play the part of hero.”
She hooked her arm through his, and they entered the hotel. Inside, they parted. Leonid found the bar while Nadya took the elevator all the way to the top.
Bohdan, Ukraine—1950
A short way up the north rise of the valley, the forest cleared in a near-perfect circle. The ground there, sere and pebbly, tolerated only the shortest weeds,
a sparse spattering of green. Trees rimmed the perimeter like a fortification. Wind gusted in from the south, carrying unfamiliar scents from beyond the mountains. At night, the clearing was the best place to view the stars.
The children of the village played a game of Dragon, forming a line, hands on the shoulders of the child in front of them, running. The line’s leader circled around and tried to catch up with the child at the back, the head of the dragon chasing its tail. There was not much to the game besides that. It mainly served to kick up the dry dirt, which glommed to the children’s sweaty skin and clogged the weave of their homespun clothes. Kasha sat in the shade near the edge of the clearing, barking from time to time as if to offer encouragement. Whenever the line neared her, she would leap up and join the chase for a lap or two, her limp tail flopping behind her.
The older Leonid was at the front of the line. He quickly circled back around and tagged Mykola, a boy with shocks of wiry hair and a round face. Mykola muttered a curse as he took over his place as head of the dragon. He was too young to be cursing. Had his mother been around, she surely would have struck him. But cursing had become a common occurrence. The Leonids heard the adults of the village using words aloud that before had been relegated only to whispers.
The younger Leonid was now the dragon’s tail, and Mykola could not catch him. Every time Mykola got close, Leonid would dodge. When Mykola began to anticipate the dodges, Leonid would simply feint, dodging in the opposite direction as if he could read the older boy’s mind. Usually a round of Dragon lasted a minute at most, but this one went on for many minutes and seemed no closer to completion. All the children panted. One of them in the middle stumbled, fell, and dragged the rest of the line down with her. At the last moment, Mykola dove after Leonid, the tail, and out of the shoulder grip of the older Leonid behind him. The dive broke the twin rules of Dragon: hold on and remain held. Even cheating, Mykola had not come close.
The older Leonid slipped free of the grasp of the child behind him, avoiding falling with the rest of the line. The Leonids were the only two left standing, the only two with clothes not streaked with a fine grit of gray dust. Mykola cursed again, pushing himself to his knees. He dropped back into a seated position.
He said to the Leonids, “If your grandmother didn’t eat all the food, then maybe the rest of us wouldn’t be too hungry to run.”
“What did you say?” asked the younger Leonid. He stepped forward.
“Easy,” said the older Leonid.
Grandmother had kept her roundness even through the lean times. The Leonids knew, though, that she had thinned just like everyone else in the village. She simply had more girth to begin with.
“Maybe you two hoard food, too,” said Mykola. “But I don’t think you’d be able to get even a scrap away from that fat b—”
The younger Leonid lunged at Mykola, knocking him onto his back. They grappled and threw errant punches and disturbed the dust into a cloud around them. The older Leonid rushed over and groped for his brother to pull him away. One of the older girls, Oksana, did the same from the other side. As they pulled the fighters apart, Mykola flung one last wild punch, finally connecting with Leonid’s face, but not the Leonid he had intended. The older twin palmed his cheekbone and stumbled back. Everyone else stood stock-still. The only motion was Kasha, circling the scene of the fight, whimpering.
Mykola looked shocked. He muttered a curse.
The younger Leonid trembled, deep rouge rising on his cheeks.
“You upizdysh,” he said, and formed his fists into clubs. He started forward.
“Stop,” yelled the older Leonid.
All was still again. The younger Leonid spat.
“Go fuck your mother,” he said to Mykola.
The older Leonid leapt forward and slapped the younger across the cheek. Several of the other children gasped.
Mykola stood and stalked away. “I’d say the same to you, but you’d have to dig her up first.”
“Mykola,” said the older Leonid.
Mykola stopped but did not turn around.
“If you ever mention my mother again,” continued Leonid, “I won’t be stopping my brother, but helping him.”
Mykola entered the shadow of the trees that rimmed the clearing. Kasha trailed at his heels. The younger Leonid rubbed his cheek where he had been slapped. The older placed his hand on top of his brother’s.
“Forgive me,” said the older Leonid.
“That really stung,” said the younger. He smiled.
The brothers laughed, and then the other children joined in. They re-formed the line to continue the game of Dragon, the Leonids adjacent in the middle. Eventually, one of the twins would be forced to chase the other.
* * *
• • •
GRANDMOTHER HADN’T EVEN looked at them before she asked what happened. The twins stood inside the doorway, smeared with gray-black mud. This type of filth was not unusual, so she could have only been referring to the older Leonid’s eye, already swollen half shut and turned a putrid shade of purple.
“Mykola,” said the older Leonid.
Grandmother turned from the stove, her face set in a grimace. Her dress hung loose. Everyone’s clothes hung loose.
She said, “That boy’s an ass.”
“Grandmother!” said the younger Leonid.
“Get yourself cleaned up,” she said. “We’ll eat shortly.”
A pot on the stove steamed, and that’s what it smelled like: steam. The stews they ate had been gradually lightening in color, now just water with a few frail vegetables tossed in.
The twins stripped off their dirty clothes in the corner, and then each grabbed a rag from the basin and wiped himself down. A small gash had opened under the older Leonid’s eye, and the water stung. He donned clothes somewhat cleaner than those he had shed and took a seat opposite his brother at the old pine-topped table. The surface was covered with dents and scrapes.
“It’ll be a few minutes more,” said Grandmother.
Leonid could not imagine what difference a few more minutes would make in the quality of the stew. One might as well drink warm water and eat the vegetables raw.
“Have I ever told you about the man our village was named after?” asked Grandmother.
Grandmother only had one story, the life of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, from which she plucked and repurposed snippets. She had told every snippet, though, a dozen times. The twins could have told all the stories themselves.
This did not stop Grandmother from telling one of the stories again.
* * *
• • •
“BOHDAN ZINOVIY MYKHAYLOVYCH KHMELNYTSKY joined the Cossack army when he was still barely a boy. He’d been a scholar before that, studying with the Jesuits in faraway lands. He could have gone anywhere in Europe and done anything he wanted. In the face of all that possibility, he came home and became a soldier. And not a very good one, at least not at first. He was captured and enslaved by the Turks in his first battle, but that’s not the worst of it.
“He was then still fighting with the Poles, long before he rebelled against them. Along with his father, he traveled with the Polish forces to Moldavia, where the Ottomans had amassed a vast army. The Ottomans then were the greatest force on Earth, as mighty as the Soviets now. The Poles and the Ottomans hated each other, but I don’t know why. I don’t know that they were really much different. The Ottomans were heathens, to be sure, but are the Catholics any better? Of course, we have no religion. That’s what the Soviets tell us. But we used to, and it was neither in service of the Turks’ god nor the Catholics’. Of course it’s more similar to the Catholic god. Or it was, when we still had religion. Before it was all declared false. I think even then Khmelnytsky didn’t believe. How else could he have picked one side only later to betray it? He was a pragmatist. Do you know what that means? He did the thing that was
most beneficial to him in the moment. But it turned out not to be. It turned out to cost him more than a bruised eye.”
She thrust her cooking spoon toward the older Leonid’s injured face.
“On the day of Khmelnytsky’s first battle, only five thousand men had turned out for the Poles. Barely a regiment, much less an army. The Turks, on the other hand, had over twenty thousand, more than four times as many. I wonder what Khmelnytsky saw looking over the battlefield, if he could see from his place within the ranks that his own force was so much smaller, or if his perspective was skewed. I wonder if he thought he had a chance. Because he didn’t, despite the fact that he took his first steps toward becoming a hero that day.
“The Turks advanced, or the Poles did. I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter. Who throws the first stone is less important than who throws the last. And the last stone was definitely from the sling of a Turk. Among the stones thrown in between, one felled Khmelnytsky’s father. They’d been battling side by side, holding their own, fending off wave after wave of attackers. His father, a skilled swordsman from whom Khmelnytsky learned the same skills, greeted each approaching Turk with the edge of his blade. Turkish bodies piled up in front of him, and a similar, if slightly smaller pile formed in front of his son. The Turks had to climb over their dead comrades to even mount an attack. But all around the Khmelnytskys, the Polish lines faltered, the outnumbered Polish soldiers not so deft with their swords. They fell, one by one, until the younger Khmelnytsky’s flank was revealed. A new swarm of attackers came from his side to join those who advanced from in front. Even the best soldier couldn’t fend off so many shimmering crescent blades. Khmelnytsky was wounded and fell. Even from the ground, even with part of his body split open, he kept on fighting. When he grew too weak to raise his sword, he slashed the enemies’ ankles. Then his father sprung to his side, defending his own flank and Khmelnytsky’s as well. He plucked a second sword from the clawed grip of a felled Turk, and extended one in each hand and swung them like the spokes on a wheel. The Turks who tried to get close lost their heads or were chopped clean in two. But they kept coming, and the pile of defeated enemies grew so high and dense he could no longer move. The Turks climbed over this wall of their fallen brothers, dozens of them from all sides, and pounced on Khmelnytsky’s father, and rent the swords from his hands and broke his fingers and his arms and beat him until all that was left of the man who had been Khmelnytsky’s father was a shattered, bloody lump. From underneath a pile of dead Turks, Khmelnytsky could just peek out through a gap in the tangled limbs, watching his father fall, and he memorized the events, and he muttered ‘Goodbye, Father,’ and his consciousness left him.