House of Many Gods

by Kiana Davenport

  “Eric Dancer is my mother’s friend. She’s trying to help me. She said he would contact me in Moscow.”

  They stared at her, and then Volodya responded.

  “If this is so … we need you to confirm this. To meet with him. Here is his card. If he is legitimate, we take him to Niki.”

  “Can’t you take me to Niki first?”

  Silence fell while a waiter cleared the plates.

  Katya spoke again, but softly. “Ana. Every step you now take … very crucial. One stupid move. You put him in prison.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You think you are not watched? Your guides, bus driver are not watched? You think you are not seen leaving tour group, asking for Niki, up, down Old Arbat? You think Russia suddenly wide-open? Free? A joke!”

  “Just tell me … is he nearby? Does he know I’m here right now?”

  “Not important.”

  Unable to control herself, Ana suddenly broke down and wept. They looked away, allowing her time to pull herself together.

  “I have to see that he’s all right. I need to tell him I’m … carrying his child.”

  The men sat motionless. Katya closed her eyes. After a while she opened them, and slapped her hand on the table like a warden.

  “Okay. Now we begin to mobilize. Ana, no more horseplay. You are not seeing your child’s father until he is outside of Russia. Or. We finish with you now. We walk away. Agreed?”

  She would not remember clearly what happened next. She remembered only calling Eric Dancer’s number for hours until they finally reached him.

  IN THE CAR, VOLODYA INSTRUCTED HER. “WIPE YOUR EYES. COMB your hair. A little lipstick. We will be in hotel bar across from you. Any problem, you call out my name.”

  Katya pulled a small, elegant handgun from her bag and slipped it into Ana’s.

  “My God!” she cried. “I don’t want a gun.”

  “Darling. It’s Russia. A status thing, like cell phones.”

  As they pulled up to the National Hotel, Ana gave Katya a letter she had written Niki. “If anything goes wrong, tell him …”

  “Shh. Nothing going wrong.”

  The hotel had been refurbished from a shabby Soviet-era pile of rocks to a monolith of glass and steel. Security at the door was tight. They checked her handbag and smiled, relieving her of her handgun as if it were a toy. A man in an expensive suit took Ana’s name, then guided her to an area of deep, plush chairs. Snapping his fingers at a bellboy, he spoke in rapid Russian, then stayed at Ana’s side until the American appeared.

  “Ana? Eric Dancer.”

  He guided her to a table in the bar. “What would you like?”

  “Nothing. Tea.”

  He ordered two teas, letting her observe him. Average height. Forty, forty-five. Hair close-cropped, blond going gray. An all-American face, nice-looking, almost bland. A face that would not stand out in a crowd. His clothes well made, his fingernails immaculate.

  “Ask me anything,” he said. “But remember, time is of the essence.” He nodded to the group entering the bar. “Your friends must know the jokers at the door.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked.

  “For your mother. In a roundabout way I owe her.”

  “What did she do for you?”

  “Her husband, Max, once saved my father’s life. They worked together at Los Alamos, the midforties.”

  He explained how, after Hiroshima, when Robert Oppenheimer refused to make more bombs, Washington had pegged him a Communist and drummed him out of the business. Dancer’s father was one of the physicists who had dropped out with him after seeing what bombs could do to humans.

  “During the Red Scare no one would hire Dad. He drank, tried suicide a couple times. Then Max McCormick took him on. His family had money, laboratories. He gave my father his own labs, worked with him in the field of immunology.”

  In time, Hubert Dancer’s research papers were published. He won recognition and finally regained his dignity.

  “Thanks to Max, he died a proud man.”

  This was not rehearsed. Ana could tell by the sudden flush on Dancer’s cheeks, the dead calm of his voice, that he was speaking with emotion.

  “Then, when Max got sick I went to see him regularly. He asked me to look after your mother. She was what kept him going. He said she was pretty much alone in the world. I guess … you two were never close.”

  Ana looked away.

  “I call her every week or so … visit when I’m in San Francisco.”

  “Are you her lover?”

  Dancer smiled. “Your mother’s got about ten years on me, though she’s still beautiful. But no, I’m not her lover. I wouldn’t choose a woman like her. Too damned independent. By the way, we’re getting sidetracked.”

  “We’ve only been talking seven minutes.”

  His eyes narrowed, half-amused. “I see you take after her. Look, Ana, we can drag this out. We can do lunch and shop while you decide if I’m legitimate, or if I’m scouting for the Russians. Meanwhile, they’re closing in on your boyfriend. I understand he’s got a health problem. You leave, what? Tomorrow? Next day? I lose track of him, you might never see him again.”

  She gripped the handle of her cup. “Exactly what is it you do here?”

  “I import food. Silly luxuries. Nouveau riche Russians crave New Zealand lamb. Pineapples from Costa Rica. They love California wines. California anything. I bring them that.”

  “And what do you export?”

  “Bodies, Ana. Innocent people who need to get out.”

  “Why did you go to the Arbat? You scared his friends. Why didn’t you contact me first?”

  “You didn’t pick up your messages yesterday. Besides, I needed to move things along. You see … we don’t really need you to get your friend out. I’ve been busy waltzing certain Russians, trying to set things up. Frankly, you would have been in the way.”

  She sat back and studied him. “How can you move around so easily? Are you some kind of agent?”

  He played with a book of matches. “Look, this isn’t about espionage. It’s about love. A wonderful thing. Your story has a slightly different spin. Now all we have to do is locate your friend and buy off a few bureaucrats with holes in their socks. Which will get us a passport, and exit visa. And your Nikolai is free. Your mother’s already signed papers to sponsor him. The U.S. Consulate has offered a work visa.”

  “What about the men who are trying to find him?”

  “I would say that qualifies him for political-exile status. It also means we’ve got to find him quick.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table, waiting.

  “My mother never described you,” Ana said. “How do I know you’re … really you?”

  He grinned. “You do take after her. Sometimes, sweetheart, you just have to go on faith.”

  OUTSIDE, HIS VOICE TOOK ON AN URGENT, ALMOST MILITARY TONE as he shook hands with the group.

  “Volodya, you need to take me to Nikolai right now. There are things he has to do. Katya, take Ana shopping, anything. Don’t let her out of your sight.”

  He turned to Ana and took her hand. “You will not see him in Moscow. Understood? You will not see him till he’s safely out of Russia.”

  She sat in Katya’s car in shock, watching the four men drive off in a cab.

  Katya glanced at her. “Is going to be all right. I promise. You are going to have your Niki.”

  As they drove down boulevards, Ana asked, “Do you know Niki well?”

  “We all know Niki. Very smart. Very kind to others. At one time, very good gangster.”

  “Did you know his wife, Irini?”

  “Yes. Tragic. All Russians have such stories. Even now.”

  “So much for your ‘new democracy.’ ”

  “Democracy! Russia’s final penance. Is only for gangsters, privateers. What you see in Moscow is not real Russia. Ana, you know what is pornography? You ever watch pornography? Longer you watch,
less you feel. History of Russia is pornography. No feeling. No reacting. So we make up own history, own reality. Is how we survive without going mad. For Russians, lying very important, is highly crafted skill.”

  “You haven’t lied to me, have you?”

  “Only a little. Volodya and me … we are not just being friends. Look at him! Who could not love this man so handsome. One day I marry him.” She patted Ana’s stomach. “Have little babies.”

  “What about your gangster?”

  “I finish with him soon. When, like Russia, I find my soul again.”

  She had begun to like this Katya, her toughness that hid a sensitive, reflective nature, her wild extravagance in the way she shoved large wads of rubles at old babushki in the street, the reckless way she drove the BMW, showing a certain disdain for the car and for the life she led.

  They drove to a park where, from a terraced café, they watched swans attack a swimming dog. After an hour Katya tapped buttons on her cell phone, talked in Russian, then hung up and ordered them a meal.

  Ana felt desperate again. “Are they with Niki?”

  “All is well, Ana. Is only about right people to be paid.”

  Later, as they slid back into the car, it occurred to Ana that Niki’s freedom depended on someone paying someone off, that everything hinged on money.

  “How are they paying them?” she asked. “Where is the money coming from?”

  Katya looked at her as if she were inordinately dense. “From who Dancer is doing this favor for. Your mother. No?”

  In the silence, they passed a hard hat with a bullhorn shouting at four women pouring tar.

  “Look those women,” Katya said. “Bright red lipstick! Peroxide hair! Even if Russa dying, they are dressing up. Maybe female vanity will save us.”

  She suddenly veered left, then right, down several alleys. “Wait. I show you something special.”

  They drove to a narrow street where Katya parked and entered a building, guiding Ana up three flights. The halls smelled of steamed cabbage and fried kasha. She unlocked a door, and Ana was swept with the clean scent of bergamot and lavender. It was a small, cozy room exuding privacy and secrecy, a sanctuary deep inside the great stone crypt of Moscow.

  Floorboards groaned underfoot, dishes in a tiny cupboard rattled. Small mirrors gave the room imagined depth. A room that could be crossed in eleven steps, life lived on an intimate scale. A hot plate on a desk, bottles of wine, ripe fruit. A fireplace for burning wood. Ana saw dark windows veiled with spectral drapes. But she imagined how, in winter, the panes would be flower-scrolled in hoarfrost. Firelight would gleam on a large bed covered in red satin, causing the satin to shimmer and dance.

  She saw snapshots coming unstuck from a wall—a teenaged Katya in uniform holding a rifle. An older Katya in an ore-smelting factory, in headscarf and overalls, her perfect face near black with soot. And everywhere, books—under the bed, spilling from chairs, piled high to the ceiling. A room filled with thought, and with a strange vitality.

  Katya gestured toward two sets of tapochki, carpet slippers, beside a pair of men’s shoes.

  “This room, my real life. Boyfriend finds out, he kill me. So what? Without Volodya, I am dead.”

  Ana stared at the slippers, imagining the two of them lying together, engaged in long conversations while they gazed at the ceiling. Hopes and dreams that never crossed the threshold.

  “Imagine, Ana. To climb a stair. Know he is listening for my footstep. To be taken in, and held. Close the door, world melts away. What better thing for humans? We are so alone.”

  In that moment she saw how, in her search for Niki, she had stumbled on this other life. And this life now revealed itself as precious and terribly fragile, a thing to be fought for, to give up one’s life for.

  At her hotel, Katya embraced her. “Now I take your letter to Niki. You go upstairs. Lock door, no calls, no conversations. Yes?”

  “God bless you, Katya.”

  “Is nice feeling. God blessing me.”

  SHE SAT IN THE DIMNESS OF HER ROOM, THINKING OF KATYA AND Volodya, Viktor and Darya, and all of them. Their lives, their country in such chaos each day brought new convulsions. Yet here were people so wrenched by life, they had decided to strike back, to prove there was something more to human existence than suffering.

  MANA ‘OLANA

  Hope

  THE NEXT MORNING KATYA CALLED, INSTRUCTING HER TO JOIN HER tour group, make herself highly visible. By now Ana’s clothes looked dingy; even her fellow tourists had begun to look worn down by grime, bad food. They no longer trusted what they saw. Two Cuban women who had joined the group in New York had disappeared. A man wearing gold chains was robbed by prostitutes. While he slept they cleaned out his room, even his American condoms.

  The day was a blur, more cathedrals, and galleries. A performance at the Bolshoi Ballet.

  That night Eric Dancer called. “Tomorrow is your last day, right? Go out with your group again. It’s important you be seen. Do not wander from the group.”

  “But what about …”

  “Ana. All is well. Katya will contact you in the evening.”

  The next day they drifted across squares, desultorily snapped photos of each other. They stood in a kind of field where statues of Stalin and Lenin had been deposited by refuse trucks. They lay in great pieces, a head, a leg. Inside a large wire cage, hundreds of human heads sculpted from stone were piled one atop the other, the expression on each face one of abject horror. A plaque below the cage read SIXTY MILLION. Ana’s group stood silent.

  Leaving the dining room that evening, she saw Katya in the lobby surrounded by thuggy security men. They laughed, hunching their shoulders and flirting with her.

  Katya waved her over. “Ana! We go for a nightcap?” Her face looked tired, almost devoid of makeup. As they slid into the car, she lit a cigarette, then tapped her nails on the steering wheel.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” Ana said.

  “So far is okay. But these mudaks, shmucks! Stupid, greedy bureaucrats. Takes one minute to sign documents. But they are changing minds. Wanting more money, then more. Until Niki is out, I trust no one.”

  “Katya. Can’t you at least tell me where he is?”

  “He is fine. A little cough. No more questions.”

  They stopped somewhere for a drink, then drifted aimlessly across Red Square, a place Ana was now familiar with. They gazed up at flamboyant cupolas and spires of St. Basil’s Cathedral, like giant swirling Dairy Queens.

  Katya shook her head. “A metaphor for our mad country.”

  “I could never have imagined Russia,” Ana said. “My islands are so small. My town is just some red-dust roads along a coastal highway that goes nowhere.”

  Through the days she had talked about her homelands to Katya, about her people’s struggle to find themselves.

  “But you have blue and warm Pacific sea. And family,” Katya said. “You say you have many family. All together, laughing, crying. Living life. What is it like, I wonder?”

  She had momentarily lost her bravado and her humor. Now she seemed merely sad. “I have no family no more. And friends are leaving. Now Niki goes. Only Volodya means anything.”

  “But, could you live the old life?” Ana asked. “Could you be happy?”

  “Ah, Ana. What is happiness? Maybe just to eat ripe pear with man you love. Maybe just to know he is well. Volodya gives me grief. Make me feel like ashes from his cigarette. But I cut off my hand for him.”

  “You remind me of someone,” Ana said. “Gena Mele, a good friend. She would lay down her life for my cousin, Lopaka. I’m here because of her.”

  “Like in Russia, always women helping women. Men only move their lips. Poor things, what can we do but love them?”

  “Katya, would you ever leave? I mean emigrate?”

  She looked out at her city. “Nyet. Every human have one country only. Good or bad, I love my Russia. For Niki, is important for his health he goes. And because
he have such love for you. And now, the child.”

  “Were you there when he read my letter?”

  She nodded slowly. “He sat in room alone, and wept. My God. I heard.”

  Ana trembled, trying to imagine it. Then she pulled a small velvet bag from her pocket and handed it to Katya.

  “I want you to have this, from me.”

  She opened the bag and took out a coral-bead rosary Ana had carried with her. “Oh, Ana! Is very beautiful.”

  “The coral comes from my ocean. You might just want to hold it now and then.”

  Katya slid an expensive-looking watch from her wrist. “And this for you, Ana.”

  “No! I couldn’t …”

  She took her arm, sliding the watch over her wristbone. “Of course! Is very Russian, exchanging sentimentals. When you look at watch, you think of Katya. You remember this Russian time.”

  At the hotel, her demeanor changed. “Now you go upstairs to sleep. In the morning, I await you. Airport bus is leaving eight o’clock.”

  She panicked. “Suppose something goes wrong? Suppose …”

  “Nothing you can do, Ana. Now is time to trust.”

  IN THE MORNING, WHEN SHE CAME DOWN WITH HER LUGGAGE KATYA was waiting in the lounge. The tour group slowly moved outside to their bus.

  “You will be calm. You will be getting on the bus, no?”

  She felt panic rise again, felt tremors run across her cheeks. “I still don’t know what’s happening. Dancer didn’t call last night.”

  “Everything is moving, in good progress. That is all what I can tell you. See woman in beige suit? She is on your flight. Trust her.”

  Katya drew her off to the edge of the crowd and put her hands on Ana’s shoulder

  “Ana Kapakahi. I like you very much. You are good ambassador for your people. Maybe Russians, Hawaiians, not so different. Both struggling to live. Find dignity. You go home, tell them Russians not all gangsters. Not all caricatures. Okay?”

  She fought back tears. “How can I thank you and Volodya?”

  “Bring our Niki back to health. Make him happy. He has suffered enough.”