Red Russia

by Tanya Thompson

  Hidden behind the parlor palms is Demyan. “Touch her and die.”

  Next is the Polar Bear. “I am not a fucking beast. I will ask.”

  And then Felix. “Like, ‘Will you beat your head against my stick?’ ask?”

  “Who would accept such fuckery? She will not.”

  “She will not have a choice.”

  “She will kick you right in the khren.” Khren = horseradish = dick.

  “Who is this contentious she?” I interrupt. “And what are you asking of her?”

  The only sound now is the snake retching in the fountain and the soles of my shoes clacking across the tiles.

  Demyan emerges from the foliage to grab my arm and spin me to face the stone wall of the house.

  In the first shadows of late evening, one shadow jerks and trembles into the eastern gallery, and the other disappears outside.

  “Is the she me?”

  I don’t know if Demyan is puzzling over the truth, or if I said that too fast. Whichever, he’s changing topics. “I want you.” Then pushing me against the wall, “I cannot wait for night.”

  His palms slide from my arms over the hourglass of breasts, waist, and hips. He pulls at my clothes to get at my flesh.

  His hands are strong and rough, the fingers short, thick, and squared along the tips. The hands of a farmer, a toiler, of manual labor. Hands of purpose. Nothing will slip through his grip. The hands of an Earth sign. The Devil. Capricorn. A goat.

  Not at all the sort of thing you’d have inked on your skin in a Russian prison, where the goat is a bitch. Better to go with the bull, Taurus, the Prince of Coins, like Peter.

  You can try to disguise one cloven-hoofed ruminant as the other, but there’s no mistaking the Devil is Pan, and Pan is a goat. A very randy goat.

  And a goat’s passion will lead them into all sorts of mischief.

  He says, “Here, against the wall. I want to fuck you against the stones.”

  “We will be caught.”

  “I know. It will be azart.”

  With Demyan’s mouth on my neck, I glance over his shoulder to see if anyone could be watching. Densely layered foliage conceals us from the backyard, but through the glass panes of the nearby gallery doors I see a trembling shadow stretched long across the interior wall. As the ethereal hand spastically jerks, cigarette ash floats past the glass. I require no psychic third eye to see it’s Felix. He’s spying.

  I try to disentangle, but Demyan’s hands are roving under my shirt. I whisper, “Wait a minute,” but he growls back, “First, I want to touch your naked flesh.”

  “Hang on. There is—”

  “The silk of your bra.”

  “—someone in—”

  “The skin of your breast.”

  “—the gallery.”

  “The heat of—What is this?”

  Dammit.

  “What is this?” He pulls the packet from my shirt.

  “Don’t open it.”

  He opens it anyway and runs his smallest finger through the contents. “Is this coke?”

  “Uh, coke? Yes. Yes, it is coke.”

  He immediately dives in.

  Before he can hurt himself, I clamp my hand over his in the packet, and his face questions the over-aggressive action.

  Hand still wrapped around his, I step in closer and whisper, “This is for us.” With my cheek against his, I murmur, “For later.” Then taking his lower lip in my mouth, I gently suck, “I promise you,” and bite, “we’re going to need all of it,” and seduce, “for what I’m going to do to you later.”

  The next bite is hard enough to reclaim the packet and for Demyan to growl, “You excite me.”

  “You like that?”

  “I like.”

  “Good, because I’m going to excite you in ways you never expected.”

  “I want to say to hell with later and do it now, but first I must do something. Until later.” And he presses his face into my neck while breathing long and deep, running his lips across my flesh until he’s able to kiss the hollow between my breast. “Until later you do us both favor and stay beside Peter. Yes?”

  “Peter?”

  “Stay with Peter.”

  With both Volikov and Demyan wanting me at Peter’s side, I have to ask, “Why?”

  He pauses to think, to lie and persuade. “Nothing to worry about. You do this for me. For me”–he puts my hand over his heart—“and for later. Yes?”

  I need no time to think, to lie or persuade. “Yes, of course. Anything you ask. Find me later.”

  He waits for me to start crossing the floor for the backyard before moving off for the western gallery. But as soon as I hear the conservatory door close behind him, I spin midstride, intent on returning to the eastern gallery, and plow right into Felix.

  The soft-footed sneak-thief is knocked backward. Stumbling sideways, he grabs for me, and I grapple with the flailing limbs and flapping robe, hoping to catch him, but the slick soles of the Armani slippers slide on the tiles.

  Everything about his appearance makes him seem like a ward in a nursing home, far too frail to survive the impending fall. My heart actually flutters with fear. I feel it try to jump from my shirt.

  His voice pitches high as he clings to my chest. “Auryea!” Arrghh!

  Leaning back, I try to balance his weight. We spin around. Then next I’m falling. And Felix displays a surprising and quite unexpected strength in stopping it. It’s almost startling to be standing still, facing each other.

  He smiles. “And they say the barynya is dead.”

  Barynya = Russian folk dance = stamping, kicking, and spinning.

  Velvet smoking jacket in disarray, and slippered left foot scrapping along the tiles, he shuffles outside to join his brothers.

  * * *

  Not even in a GTA mod-shop will you see decency flouted like it’s flouted in Konstantin’s driveway. Never mind the faux marble Maserati or any of the other atrocities from the airport—the pin-striped Bentley lowrider, the metallic gold Land Rover, the stretch six-door Jaguar, or the Unimog draped in camouflage net—because we picked up a few new aberrations at Demyan’s sagging mansion. Now we have a Porsche Spyder with a three-tiered chrome exhaust the size of a British Mini, and also a Cadillac with white walls, curb feelers, and two-foot mermaid hood ornament; there’s an A8 with a flame painted cowl induction hood, and even a Mercedes S with Fendi embossed leather fender flares, but the coup de grâce on modesty is the 50’s Studebaker with smoky glass T-tops and rear spoiler.

  The Russian word for shame is pozor. Don’t worry, the nouveau riche in the backyard aren’t familiar with the word either.

  So secure they are in their wealth and numbers, they’ve left the keys to their kingdoms unguarded. And I’m going to hide them.

  Starting at the iron gates and looping around the circle drive, I remove keys from ignitions, center consoles, sun visors, and cup holders. I find them on the floorboards, under the seats, and beside the grenade launcher. Stretching into the Bentley, I take the keys clipped to the rosary around the rearview mirror, then crawl into the Land Rover to find the keys beside the weapons crate with the RPG. Finally, I scale the four-foot tires of the Unimog to scramble into the cab.

  The minimalist interior doesn’t offer many places to look, and the keys are in none of them.

  Possibly problematic, but there’s really no time to dwell on it.

  Back in the castle, I figure the safest place for the keys is in the living room, in the monstrous cabinet in the corner, the one with six drawers and a dozen locked doors, the cupboard you find in almost every Russian household, the hulking heirloom you never see anyone use, not at any time, not ever. It exists solely to loom and bequeath.

  Being raised in an orphanage, Konstantin starts this particular legacy, and he’s chosen to encumber future Zomanov generations with a heavily carved and gilded Louis XIV replica.

  Dumping nine sets of keys into the lowest drawer, I notice a stack of playing cards.


  Russian cards.

  I can’t resist.

  Scooping them up, the deck feels light, but that’s expected. Centuries ago Russia dispensed with one through five, so the deck holds only thirty-six cards. Six to ten and four in the court: the Ace, the King, the Dame, and Valet.

  The cards are old. Older than anything in the house. And they’ve been used and used again, shuffled and dealt until the paper is soft, the original satin finish nothing more than a detail known to collectors.

  I want to see what fortune they reveal, but the tattered edges would make an overhand shuffle rough. And a riffle would be sacrilege.

  Instead, I hold the deck in my left hand and let the fingers of my right gently displace the weight of cards, from the bottom to the top, feeling for the place the deck wants to cut. They all want to break somewhere. They all have something to say.

  Cards like this carry history. They’re infused with the places they’ve been, the events they’ve been through. It affects them. Some decks become too optimistic, some only tell the worst kinds of truth, but none of them lie. They can’t lie. They can only show the future and the past as their handlers experience it.

  That’s why serious diviners always have a deck that no one touches except themselves. I have three: one for friends, one for family, and one held only by me.

  The cards from Konstantin’s cabinet feel like they’ve been through the hands of many. I’m guessing a memento from prison.

  After testing the weight of the cards three times, I let the deck split where it wants. Turning the stack in my right hand, I look at the bottom card.

  The ten of swords, Ruin.

  Definitely prison. Coming from or going to is about the only question.

  Another question might be: Is this Konstantin’s past or my future?

  And also: As the card is ruled by the Sun (Leo/Konstantin) in Gemini (me), could it be our fates are twined?

  And maybe: Would imprisonment include—

  “You know why farmer always kills fox?”

  Alyona. Turning around, she’s in the archway to the living room with the right corner of her mouth slightly higher than the left.

  “Fox can never take just enough. You ever see chicken house after fox comes?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Chicken house is nothing but feathers and shit. Feathers and shit everywhere.”

  “Thank you for the image.”

  “Fox sees opportunity and loses mind. Fox cannot stop killing. Fox will spend all night burying bodies. More than fox can ever eat. Why? Because fox always goes too far.”

  “Is that from Aesop’s?”

  “Konstantin thinks you could be fox.”

  “And I think Demyan is the Devil and you’re the Queen of Swords, but we won’t know for certain till it’s over.”

  The left side of her mouth rises to meet the right. She’s flattered. And who wouldn’t be with a title like Queen of Swords?

  Before making the deck whole again, I look once more at the ten of swords. Ruin is part of this queen’s arsenal.

  Behind her in the foyer, nearly a dozen women in heels clack across the polished marble for the stairs. Alyona throws an offhanded gesture toward the bedrooms on the second and third levels, and says, “We dress for dinner. Maybe you stop breaking into chicken house and join us?”

  “Wait a second.”

  With only Alyona in sight, and only Alyona in mind, I run my fingers over the edge of the cards again, displacing the weight, and letting the deck break where it will.

  I don’t even have to look to know it’s Ruin. But I do. And it is.

  The decks all have something to say, and if you’re listening correctly, they say it over and over. The only thing that will stop them repeating themselves is to pack them in salt. But as these cards aren’t mine to wipe clean, I replace them in the lowest drawer with the keys while casually mentioning to the queen, “So, umm, listen… maybe don’t drink the vodka.”

  Turning around, I notice her eyes have widened in alarm.

  Racing to Ruin or avoiding it, I’m no longer certain what I’m doing, but it still seems responsible to add, “And maybe don’t let your girlfriends up there drink it either.”

  When the queen’s brows rise with unspoken questions, I say, “Don’t make a big deal of it,” which leaves her lips to twist in disbelief.

  While her posture demands answers I can’t possibly give, it seems prudent to offer, “I’ll transfer another Bitcoin, shall I?”

  “Make it two.”

  * * *

  The armorer from the never-ending Renaissance fair that was my childhood taught me more than just Russian. He also showed me how to produce steel by combining carbon with iron. The fair’s potter taught me to make porcelain by adding bone to clay. And one of the acrobats had me make a speedball by chopping heroin into coke. Combining Ambien and alcohol also results in something unique. It’s called a Sleep Stalker.

  It sounds a little creepy, but such is the outcome: people will get weird.

  It’s been nearly a year since I last went sleep stalking, and slinking through an unknown kitchen stirs a distant memory of looking for a hair dryer, of wet braids, and an electric whisk…

  Best not to dwell on it.

  In Konstantin’s kitchen, a member of staff washes dishes and another grinds meat, and neither takes notice of me slipping into the storage room where the vodka is stored.

  Taking two bottles from an open case, I set them on a shelf, remove their caps, and then reach into my shirt for the Ambien.

  It is not over my heart chakra.

  Or under my heart chakra.

  Or anywhere near the Tree of Life.

  As my hands roam over my body with a desperation greater than Demyan’s, I ignore the angry slam of the kitchen door, the aggravated entry of someone stamping across the granite floor, the whisk of steel, and the clash of pottery, but there’s no way to miss the enraged explanation: “As if throwing a damn table in the pool is not enough, Konstantin is fucking a whore in the sauna, and goddamn Felix has taken both my marble pastry board and knife to cut out lines of coke.”

  Felix…

  Lines of coke…

  Oh. Dear. God. Please let the flutter of my heart have been fear and not a pickpocket with Parkinson’s.

  Death

  There’s Ambien-in-alcohol weird and then there’s Ambien-mistaken-for-cocaine weird. The first seeps pleasantly into your blood, while the other rips across your neurons like synaptic Pop Rocks.

  Hurrying from the kitchen, down the eastern gallery, and through the conservatory, I’ve only just stepped foot on the grass, but it’s obvious I’m too late to do anything but watch.

  On the picnic table is the marble pastry board, the chef’s knife, and what looks like eighteen one-gram lines of coke. There’s also Demyan’s crumpled cigarette packet, which most recently contained thirty-six crushed Ambiens.

  One of the assembled Bratva has just chopped out lines of pharmaceutical-grade magic realism, and they all plan to rail it. Right up the nose and directly to the brain, a bullet train of surreal.

  Crowding around the table, eighteen heads drop in quick succession to the board.

  “It burns.”

  “I do not think this is snow.”

  “Horse?”

  Vicious comes up snarling from the experience, “Fuck no. Horse does not kick like that.”

  “Peter, what the fuck is it?”

  “Give him the straw.”

  “Do a line, man.”

  “Fuck. Me. On. Fire. What is this shit?”

  “Peter snorts it, so is not poison.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Stand aside. I will tell you. … Fuck your mother. Burn.”

  “Do you feel it?”

  “I do not feel anything.”

  “Maybe that is good.”

  “Maybe it is.”

  “Is good?”

  “Is something.”

  “Stop
whispering.”

  “No one whispers.”

  “Stop.”

  “Whoa.”

  "This is the most I have ever been."

  “Huh?”

  “I am surrounded by distance.”

  “What?”

  “The lag is bad.”

  “Speak up.”

  “I have over five hundred ping right now. Fuck, I will be kicked from EU server.”

  “Those European pedophile bitch motherfuckers. I fucking hate Euro cocksucker on EU servers.”

  “I think I’m starting to understand Russian.”

  “Did you hear that? I must be on US server. Oh shit, boi, waddup!”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to understand—”

  “Mid or feed. Pick up gem. Farming Divine. This is all the English I know.”

  “—but it sounds like DOTA.”

  “Is fucking GG for us. Pink is noob.”

  “Is this a game? Are we in a game?”

  “My graphics are pixeled. My ping is shit. My rig is overheating. Restart.”

  “Did you fucking yodel? You know I fucking hate yodeling.”

  “I’m starting to think more like I did when it began than I do now.”

  “Turn it on and off. Turn it on and off! Turn it on and off!”

  “You motherfucker, you know I hate yodeling.” The Strongman turns the screaming Elvis off with a punch to the face.

  In the long silence that follows, the brothers stare down at him until James Dean finally asks, “How do we turn him back on?”

  “Put him in pool.”

  “He was running hot.”

  “Pick him up.”

  “He is fucking heavy.”

  “Everyone, pick him up.”

  “Hurry, he is hot.”

  “Get him in pool.”

  Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Louis Vuitton, Felix, the Fat Man, the Ken Doll, the Mongolian with a Mohawk, and one of six tattooed men splash into the pool carrying Elvis.

  “Put him on table.”

  “Take his feet.”

  “Get his head out of water.”

  “Hold table still.”

  “You will drown him.”