The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

by Oksana Zabuzhko

  So about the tombstones.

  I wonder if it is time we dig into exactly how she died. Under what circumstances. ’Cause it would be a crying shame to stick into the film that sorry claptrap of an MGB excuse you guys’ve been hanging on to since ’54; that’s one. And two—no one has really looked into it yet: after 1991, when you finally could, there wasn’t anyone left, was there? Grandma Apollinaria had passed already…. No, sweets, stop it. I’d never mean it like that—of course, there’s always something else; that’s life. It’s what always happens when there’s no immediate family left—the children, they care what actually happened to their parents, because it affects them directly, it ricochets into their lives, although even then, depends on the children…. And who’s she to you—Grandma’s sister, big deal, plenty of families don’t even remember kin like that. You should thank Granny Lina that she managed to pass it on at all! Oh absolutely, you don’t even have to mention it—of course Lina looked up to her since she was little; Gela was her icon, the older for the younger—sure thing. Gela’s brilliant, Gela’s beautiful, Gela joins the Plast, Gela joins the Youth Assembly, boys tail Gela in packs wherever she goes—that kind of stuff stays with you for the rest of your life; even if Gela had lived, and she became a hero and died heroically on top of all that…. Basically, you got lucky. No, not with her dying and all—with Granny Lina, she could’ve kept mum, you know. Secure a happy Communist childhood for her grandson. Many did, nothing wrong with that.

  So, Aidy. We’ve no other choice; we need intel. Not from the family, but from the twilight zone. The other side of the moon. From the underground, yep. From her last years. That’s where we gotta dig.

  We’ve got the lead, too. A tiny one, but enough to latch on—her death was recorded by the MGB; we know this from that ’54 epistle. I bet you anything a few folks earned themselves new stars for that operation. That’s where I want to start: where, when, under what circumstances did she die. Documented precisely. And then we’ll go from there. It’ll work.

  This, naturally, won’t be easy. Nothing’s easy in this ghetto country of ours. But at least it’s not 1954, and our own Ukrainian Security Bureau does give up their archives bit by bit at the rate of their honorable retirees’ relocation to the Lukyaniv Cemetery, or wherever it is they bury them these days…. Yep, to avoid traumatizing anyone…. You can scoff all you want; I think they must be really vulnerable right now. If you’re gonna break women’s fingers in the doors or, you know, crush testicles with your boots, you’ve got to be, among other things, a hundred percent sure that you would never ever be held responsible for it, and by the time you’re old, after you’ve lived all your life with that certainty—heck, the idea alone’d give you a heart attack!

  Okay, whatever, to hell with those—let their underworld colleagues take care of them, the ones with the pitchforks…. These archives, basically, have the same setup as the spetskhran storage in the good ol’ USSR, when you needed to read some pre-Brezhnev issue of Pravda “for work,” and you brought a note certifying that you were a PhD in history, and that was your topic, so this was something the government actually tasked you to do—go read Pravda from such-and-such year. (Wait, how do I know all this? Oh yeah, from Artem again.) Only here instead of Pravda, or some writings by Hrushevsky, or whoever, you’ve got the basic biographical data for the person you need: Dovgan Olena Ambroziivna, year of birth—1920, place of birth—Lemberg/Lwow/Lvov/Lviv, year of death—1947, place of death—and that’s where we appeal to you, our kind and valiant record keepers…. It’s like, you know, it’d be nice to find Grandma’s grave, do it all up neat and proper. I’ve heard they let the family have the case files without a fuss; Irka Mocherniuk’s mom made an inquiry about Irka’s gramps, what, five years ago maybe, and got to take it all home, with all the denunciations written about him bound neatly. Said she learned all kinds of interesting things about old family friends.

  Because if I try to go there with an official letter from my channel—all doe-eyed and innocent, I’m just looking to make a movie here, I won’t be any trouble at all, can I just take one little peek in there, please?—they’re sure to go all hot under the collar and turn vigilant on me like they’ve been taught in their KGB school. They’ll sift through the case and cut out anything that could compromise their colleagues who are still alive, and all I’ll get instead of a fat binder will be a manila folder with two pieces of paper glued into it. You can bet your life on that. You, as a direct relative—her, you could say, descendant—have a much better chance.

  So, whatddya say? Can we hold ’em up or what?

  Aidy, Aidy… you’re my bunny rabbit… warm and fuzzy.

  Nope, you don’t have to go anywhere—it should all be in their central archive, here in Kyiv, all the important UIA cases are here, I’ve asked. The files on the Supreme Command—those got shipped to Moscow, they took loads of Ukrainian archives, in 1991 most recently, after August 24, right after the independence—cleaned the stacks out like in ’41 before the German army, people say, burned papers right there in the yard for several weeks—covered their tracks, you know. Of course there are things we’ll never learn—but it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. It’s not like they went anywhere; we’re still living with them. Only it’s like walking in the middle of the night through someone else’s place—you keep bumping into furniture.

  Speaking of which—we should blow out these candles. Could you turn on the light, please—not the main one, just the pendant above the table?

  Yeah, I am… really tired.

  O-oh, fuzzy-duds… you’re so warm…

  No, before we turn in, would you mind watching that interview of mine with Vlada? Yes, that’s the one I told you about—you didn’t see it air, did you? That was before our time. I didn’t have Diogenes’ Lantern then—my pieces ran as individual interviews with some editorial cuts. And here on tape it’s all raw footage, as it went. No, I’d rather not; I’ve seen it today already. I don’t want to do it again. Just don’t have it in me, Aidy. Honestly. Watch it alone, in the bedroom, okay? I’ll go ahead and accept my fate—do the dishes here.

  That was a glorious dinner you fixed. Thank you, toots.

  You’re so nice—what would I do without you?

  Just leave it, leave it. I’ll take care of it.

  Aidy, Aidy, did you play with girls when you were little?

  No, I just wanted to ask if you remembered this game we used to have—dig a little hole, line it with flowers, tinsels, beads, make it like a picture, cover it with a piece of glass and bury again? A secret, it was called.

  You don’t, do you?

  * * *

  UIA SOLDIER QUESTIONNAIRE

  1. RANK AND ALIAS: Officer cadet {Zirka} Dzvinya

  2. LAST NAME NAME: Dovgan Olena

  3. NATIONALITY: Ukrainian

  4. DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH: 1920, Lviv

  5. EDUCATION: Three years of physics at the university in Zurich

  6. DESIGNATION: Radio operator/radio engineer

  7. SITUATION: Unattached (single)

  8. SERVICE IN OTHER ARMIES:

  9. TERM OF SERVICE IN UIA: Since March of 1944

  10. PROMOTIONS: [response illegible, form stained]

  11. COMMENDATIONS: [response illegible, form stained]

  12. WOUNDS AND HOSPITALIZATION: [response illegible, form stained]

  13. DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS: [response illegible, form stained]

  14. BLOOD TYPE: [response illegible, form stained]

  15. SUPERIORS’ OPINION: [response illegible, form stained]

  * * *

  Her name is Anastasia, and she’s my intern—I’ve got interns now, can you believe it? That’s how it all begins, isn’t it? And then one fine day you realize that everyone around you is younger than you are, and not just younger, but like a pack of teenage wolves—nipping at your heels waiting for you to make room for them. They are the first generation that won itself the new Europe—the one whose tender minds, their y
oung and gelatinous brains, got steamrolled by the whole megaton bulk of American media. It’s just like in the old days with the poster of the glaring Red Army soldier pointing his finger at you: “Have you enlisted in the Army?” Only the questions are different now: “Have you vacationed in the Canaries?” “Have you bought a Mercedes?” “Are you shopping at Gucci?” And they fall over each other in their mad rush, wherever the gigantic finger on the screens sends them at the moment, snapping whatever seems like an obstacle in their way. I can just see the spike on the suicide graph that this Internet generation will deliver our sociologists in ten years or so—whoosh, like the Independence Square fountain.

  This one’s decked out in a Gucci blouse, a pair of Bally boots, and a tote bag to match the boots. She’s a pointy-nosed little doll with eyes like a pair of plastic buttons and a permanently gaping mouth, already marked with a pair of lines emerging on each side, a bit soon for her very early twenties, but I bet that sensuous little mouth of hers has worked over more thick masculine stubs than I have in my entire life. Unless, of course, it’s Daddy who dresses her. Actually, the two are not mutually exclusive.

  Whenever Gucci Nastya aims her moist gaping beak at me (at me!), I have to fight back a strong urge to inquire, with great concern, whether she, by chance, is suffering from severe sinusitis. Such is the new crop cultivated for the profession by the Journalism Institute right under our noses, here in the old Syrets’ neighborhood, in the snow-white sarcophagus the Communist Party built for its own spawn right before the ol’ USSR’s demise, because their old place on Rylski Street, also a not-too-shabby Secession villa with lions, which Gucci Nastya and I happen to be passing right now, was getting uncomfortably crowded for the Party’s lush cabbage patch.

  The villa is now a bank and the lions have to sit encircled by pink granite, as if in the middle of a skating rink. I ask the future Ukrainian journalist if she knows what this building housed a mere fifteen years ago—not that distant a past, really, she must’ve been going to school already—if she knows that her alma mater is genetically related in the full sense of the phrase to the establishment that used to rule from here and, judging by the prostituting proclivities of national journalism, a place’s karma is indeed something that gets passed on like genes, only I don’t tell her that.

  Anastasia (that’s how she introduces herself—by her full name) keeps me in the crosshairs of her plastic-button eyes and her blow-job-ready little maw—no, she doesn’t know what used to be here, and it is obvious that she doesn’t give a flying fuck either. But I am the one who will sign her TV-internship report, and later she’ll be telling everyone that she interned with Goshchynska herself, so, after a momentary hesitation, she dares to offer an obsequious giggle—meaning, that’s cool. Guppy. Goldfish in a bowl. Why, for God’s sake, journalism? Why not some business management, with the prospect of a job at a foreign firm where she could marry someone Swiss, or Dutch, or, worse comes to worst, American? Why’d she choose this?

  “Nastya,” I say tenderly, “would you mind me asking why you decided to become a journalist?”

  I can almost physically sense the balls my question sets in motion as they roll and clack inside her skull—she’s calculating which answer would score the most points. Like in a computer game. A small, agile, ferreting kind of a brain, tuned to promptly locate food.

  “I’ve always been good at writing.”

  See Business, Natalie, Elle Ukraine—the advice column: How to Succeed at a Job Interview. Be confident; try to convey the impression of a person who knows the value of her professional accomplishments. And, of course, the American TV shows—Melrose Place, Project Runway. And I have to put up with all this because she’s attached herself to me like a piece of chewing gum on the sole of my shoe, because I, when we left the studio together, was foolish enough to offer the child a ride downtown, and then the child climbed out of the studio car with me, and to my tactful “Where do you go from here?” twice already responded with “I’ll walk with you,” not blinking an eye. What was it that Russian said: my generation’s shit, but yours is something completely incomprehensible.

  “Writing—meaning spelling?”

  I’m not holding back anymore.

  An actual emotion finally flashes through the plastic eyes—anger, a lurking predatory enmity, even her little lip instinctively pulls up into a snarl—only the growling is missing. Alright, we’ve got contact now. In another year, armed with her diploma, she’ll write in some toilet-paper-yellow tabloid that Goshchynska hates women. Especially young ones, beautiful ones. And intelligent ones, naturally. And, if on top of that the girl gets paid a couple grand a month, she’ll see no difference between herself and me whatsoever, except the fact that I am older and thus, in her understanding, of lesser quality, like yogurt past its use-by date.

  The more I watch them—this savage new undergrowth—the less motivated I feel to have a child. And all the more relieved that I haven’t had one yet—you can’t keep them, protect them, from this. You can’t lock your flesh and blood in a room and feed them organic spiritual product through a little window in the door. I can’t imagine how the ones whose parents did manage to raise them like that navigate this jungle. Especially if, God forbid, their parents can’t quite shoulder Gucci and Bally.

  “Journalism, Nastya, is not just good writing.”

  Who gives a damn? Why am I saying this? To whom?

  The important thing is that here, next to Bohdan Khmelnytsky monument, I really have to shake her off in a hurry; I am about to cross paths with Aidy, who should be just leaving the Security Bureau’s public office on Volodymyrska Street (the former townhouse of the Hrushevsky family, by the way, I think automatically—How’d I get on this “former” properties trip?), and least of all do I wish to have this future golden quill as a witness. Only I’ve run out of ideas of how to rid myself of her gracefully. What a stupid mess.

  “Excuse me,” I say, and pull out my cell, pressing, underhand, Aidy’s button. He sounds busy, responds monosyllabically, something’s not going according to plan over there; and here I go, with my idiotic, utterly unnecessary questions about where it’s best for me to wait for him, complete bullshit, but I can’t very well just tell him that the single purpose of my call is to allow me, once I press the end button, to turn back on my intern (I do wonder which one of those bosses of mine saddled me with her?) and extend a polite yet decisive hand.

  “Well, Nastya, it was a pleasure to take a stroll with you, but someone’s waiting for me.”

  Without the cell—that helpful crutch—I’d never have disentangled myself with such dignity. That’s what cell phones are for—to mask our rapidly progressing helplessness vis-à-vis the real world when we find ourselves face to face with it. A kind of a safety net for interpersonal communication without which we can’t really make a single step anymore—have to hang on to it at all times. Like babies in playpens.

  Rejected but indomitable Nastya struts off down Sofiivska, swinging her little tush, packaged into two discrete halves inside her pants. (I bet she’s already got early cellulite in there, physically all these kids are somehow incredibly rickety, the Chernobyl generation—maybe that’s where their wolf grip comes from: snatch off your share in a hurry, because in another ten years you won’t have anything to snatch with?)

  I turn onto Volodymyrska, its first hundred yards cheerful along St. Sophia’s white monastery wall under old chestnuts, and the next hundred gloomy—a shadow cast diagonally from the opposite side of the street where the KGB’s, now the Ukrainian Security Bureau’s, gray facade rears up at the top of the block, splattered on the face of the hill like a monstrous toad that’s pulled itself upright to St. Sophia, squatting in the middle of the city’s historical center, in the heart of Grand Prince Yaroslav’s ancient city. And I could have told Nastya that as late as the 1930s a charming little church stood here, St. Irene, dating back to the thirteenth century, as radiant and feminine as St. Sophia, white-walled under a dar
k-green chaplet of its dome (I’ve seen pictures). But the monstrous toad with a jail in its gut squashed it, crushed it with its weight till its bones—its walls—literally cracked, and today the only trace that remains of the little church is the name of a side lane—that’s all we get, names; that’s all that’s left to us, like rings with precious gems pried out of the settings.

  Only Nastya, of course, doesn’t give a damn about all that, and in any case her interests will always be aligned with whoever did the crushing and not with whomever got crushed, because the crushed, as she learned from her mommy, daddy, school, and television, are the losers, has-beens, and screw-ups, so I can take my little church and go hide in a dark, quiet corner. I don’t like walking on that side of Volodymyrska—and I’m not the only one. In the Soviet days it was always empty, vacuumed clean—people have loosened up since then, lost the bit and the rein, but I still don’t like walking there. I’ll have to, though.

  And right there, on the crosswalk before Reitarska, my cell rings: Aidy.

  “It’s not here,” he says, and I’m almost run over by an especially nervous Toyota that jerks off before I quite make it all the way to the sidewalk. (I stick my tongue out at the driver.) Their archives, turns out, are not here but across the street, on Zolotovoritska. And that’s where he is right now. And that’s where I am to go; he’ll tell me everything.

  “They’re all going to lunch now; I just made it!”

  I turn around—like the indomitable Nastya, like a tank; I dash between moving cars not waiting for the green light. Zolotovoritska is a street I like: cozy, quiet, one of the few streets in the center that retains its true old-Kyiv charm, and even the recently sprouted cohort of granite-plated bankomorphic high-rises can’t do anything to destroy its spirit. And right on the corner of this agreeable street, in front of a flowerbed, on a little knoll, in the sun, stands my good lad—like a beacon to show me the way—and it’s instant: a hot wave of utterly inane joy at the sight of his lanky-colt figure, his close-cropped head, his smile that beams from afar like a discrete source of light in the cityscape. He’s seen me!—but I did first! I did!—and while this distance between us—this bisector not found on any maps of the city, called forth for just this minute beside this flowerbed, this line that’s made this empty corner of Zolotovoritska and Reitarska alive, buzzing and pulsing for this one minute, shrinks at the speed of the intercepted glance (the knee-buckling, head-spinning kind that makes your heart drop into bottomless tenderness), while this “crosswalk,” invisible to all but the two of us (and no city in the world has road marks more important than these!)—counts down the seconds that remain between us—seven, six, five, four—I see, with peripheral vision (like a black gangster-mobile that pops up out of nowhere in a cheap action flick, and next a window’ll roll down to let out the muzzle of a submachine gun)—an incursion onto our bisector, from somewhere behind me on the sidewalk, of someone else’s black shadow. Not a casual brush but a frontal attack, resolutely aimed to wedge itself between the two of us, keeping us both in its sights. And when I step onto the sidewalk, a step away from Aidy, instead of touching him, finding him in a quick tangle of hands, shoulders, cheek, I run into the wall of that foreign look, sprung up suddenly beside us, short and hard, as if from under a frown. Prominent black eyes set in fleshy eyelids, an appraising look, but not in the usual men’s way, different, so that you want to shake it off right away, like a black spider; before this instinctive impulse can reach my brain, the look scrambles its aim by leaving only a vague unsettling residue, a slimy trail—and Aidy, taking his hand off my shoulder in an interrupted gesture, turns his head and smiles starchily in that direction as to someone he knows—barely, but enough that the person deserves a few niceties, even if he’d turned up at a bad time.