The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

by Oksana Zabuzhko

  Take a pickle. Go ahead, have one, don’t be shy….

  I’m not done telling you about Ivan Tryfonovych, though. I promised you, didn’t I—about your case… about those who died… the woman who died on November 6, 1947—just as you wanted. No, Daryna Anatoliivna, I can’t help you there—I couldn’t find you a document like you wanted. But I’ll tell you something else… about Ivan Tryfonovych again; I think you’ll find it interesting. Hang on just a second; let me get a new hook tied on here. Do me a favor, Ambrozievich, pass me that little jar. Yeah, that one over there, so I don’t have to get up again… thank you.

  Plop! I love that sound—“Fishy, fishy in the brook, Papa catch him on a hook.” Isn’t this a great spot I showed you? So quiet—do you hear it? Every rustle… you’d never guess you were in the center of a city. It’s because of the monastery, or else they’d have carved all this up into developments long ago. A little further that way, by the South Bridge, they’ve already got a few little palaces going, did you see? You can’t get to the water anymore—it’s all fenced off. I won’t live long enough to save up for one of those, but hey.

  Yes, so…

  So I’ll just tell you like this, without any documents. What was it you said—“it’s not a needle in a haystack”—was that it? You were right; it’s not a needle, by any means. So, dear Daryna Anatoliivna… on your day of November 6, 1947 my father who raised me, Ivan Tryfonovych Boozerov, was in command of a combat mission on the territory of the Lviv Oblast. That’s where he was wounded, subsequently discharged. At the seizure of a dugout bunker occupied by four, as they were called then, bandits, as we now say—partisans. Or rebel fighters—however you please. Four: three men and one woman. And you were looking for five, yes? Well, that depends… you could count them as five. The woman, it later turned out, was pregnant. Yes. They found out later, when they collected all the remains—it turned into a bloody meat grinder there; Father was lucky he stood far enough away. Of the guys who were out front, he said, there were only arms and legs left, strung around the trees. Like in that kids’ song, Nika used to sing when she was little, to a cartoon tune, “Off with your arms, off with your legs, out go the eyes, and we lay you to rest…”

  That’s the story I have for you, Daryna Anatoliivna. A family saga, so to speak…

  Now, who those four people were and what their names were—I’m sorry I can’t help you with that. Father, may he rest in peace, he might have remembered… but there’s no one left, except myself, who is aware of this fact from his biography. So it’s all just between you and me… among friends… so that you wouldn’t go looking for something you may later not be so glad to have found.

  The documents are gone, long gone. I checked.

  Well… I suppose, you could put it that way—I made sure.

  Well, what do you want from me? I had a young child. What good would it do for the girl to find out, when she got older, that her gramps—albeit adoptive, but still her gramps, as good as her own—the man who left us his apartment, secured our position… everything we have, all thanks to him… what good would it do for her to learn one day how he fought pregnant women?

  And I’ll tell you what: it’s harder to build than to break. So much effort… you spend all your life working, trying hard to put down some roots, make a home, a life—and to have it all ruined with a single blow, whoosh!—and down it goes? A single shove?

  You don’t want it, trust me. It’s better this way… for everyone. I’m the one to know.

  “And now,” Pavlo Ivanovych said in a surprisingly sober voice that made both Daryna and Adrian jump, “pull out your dictaphone. And erase this recording.”

  FILE DELETED

  * * *

  “I should have known it right away. From the first time I saw her. I can’t believe how stupid I am.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Gela, of course. The fact that she was pregnant. You could tell at a glance. The smile she had—a DaVinci smile, a Mona Lisa smile. That’s what the secret was. She was pregnant. Now it all makes sense.”

  “I wonder—did Granny Lina know?”

  “I bet she did. Yeah, she should have—it was October when Gela went to see them… I bet that’s why she went, actually—to tell her family. To share. Alone in the woods, among men, being pregnant for the first time—that’s no picnic. And plus—of course!—she needed to make arrangements for the family to take the child. Her sister was already married; your dad was a toddler—they could have easily made it look like Gela’s baby was theirs, their second. That’s it, Aidy; that’s exactly what happened! Any woman in her shoes would have run home like that, disregarding any danger, and no MGB would’ve stopped her.”

  “You women are something else.”

  “Why?”

  “Nothing… it never ceases to amaze me.”

  “What about it? It’s very simple, really. Elementary, my dear Watson.”

  “Still, think how she kept silent about it her whole life… Granny Lina.”

  “A fantastic granny you had. A beast!”

  “Beast?”

  “Yep. She’s the one I should be making a film about, only no one would appreciate her quiet heroism, the feminine heroism—there’s nothing spectacular about it.”

  “No, I mean, you said beast, and it rang a bell, somehow, in my mind…. Something linked to that word… hmm. Well, that’s alright, it might come to me later….”

  “There’s only one thing I don’t understand: Why did he say four? Why don’t they have the fifth man on their lists? He couldn’t possibly have survived a bloodbath like that.”

  “Don’t you think it’s possible that our dear Pavlo Ivanovych did not tell us everything?”

  “I don’t think he was lying. No, love, I believe him. A gang rape, a suicide—that’s not something a normal person would ever make up about his own mother, even if he’d never seen her.”

  “Operative word there being normal. Not so much with his background. God, if only we could play that recording! There were all kinds of things that didn’t jive.”

  “Yeah, he threw me off royally, catching me with my dictaphone like that… I felt like one of those fish he kept yanking out of the water.”

  “You poor fishy! You worked so hard with that thing. My homegrown conspirator.”

  “Well, I knew that if I asked him up front he wouldn’t let me record him. And it’s not like I wanted to publicize what he said—it’s just for me, to help remember things. I can’t get over it—how did he figure out I was recording him? That I had a dictaphone in my pocket?”

  “He smelled it! What if he really is—talented?”

  “No kidding. Nika said he wanted to pursue mathematics when he was young. But he does have a beautiful voice, did you notice?”

  “You bet. Our special attraction—a singing KGB man!”

  “Not KGB—SBU.”

  “Same shit.”

  “I wouldn’t say that…. But you’re right; it sort of threw me off every time he’d start singing. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. It’s like his whole self is patched together from different pieces, no? With the frame sticking out here and there. What kind of things would you say didn’t jive?”

  “All kinds of stuff. You can’t quantize so much bull to the proper bit rate.”

  “Sweetie, could you please use words I can understand?”

  “Sorry. He wore me out, that guy. The whole time, ever since I first met him, I have had this nagging feeling that I’ve seen him somewhere before—I told you—or if not him, then maybe someone who looks like him, and I can never see him clearly with this weird feeling in the back of my mind, the picture’s always doubling up on me.”

  “Same here. Could it be because he’s lived someone else’s life?”

  “There’s that, too…. Who from his generation has lived his or her own life?”

  “My dad. Your mom.”

  “They haven’t. They died. That’s the thing.”

  �
�Still, Aidy. You shouldn’t compare his lot with anyone else’s, God help him…”

  “Well, whatever, that’s not my point, actually. The whole time he was talking I tried to figure out where he was going with it—and he’s got more logic gaps in his tale than you can count; it messes up your algorithm. Take his mother, again. If she was in the Przemysl ghetto, then back in ’42, it couldn’t have been the Red Army that freed her, I’m sorry. She had to have escaped somehow—so how did she run into the NKVD? And what on earth possessed them to send her, a Jewish woman, under cover into Bandera’s underground? Nonsense, it doesn’t add up. And he just kept hammering on his ‘she was a Soviet citizen!’ As if every Soviet citizen automatically had to be an agent. Like fucking serfs.”

  “C’mon, that was just the natural logic of that government. That’s what a citizen was for them—a serf, a subject. Like in the feudal days. You don’t remember it—you were little then…”

  “Yeah, and the new government just thinks we’re morons. Go vote for whoever we tell you to, and don’t make a fuss. If you’re not nickeled, you’re dimed.”

  “Yep. Sounds about right.”

  “Are you feeling sorry for him, or something?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought you might be. He doesn’t seem to bother you…”

  “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Finally there’s an answer that explains it all. Thank you.”

  “What are upset about, love? You’re not jealous, are you?”

  “Me? Of him? You’re crazy!”

  “No, wait a minute, you actually are…. Look at me, come on, you goof… now. What’s wrong? Captain, my captain—what’s bugging you?”

  “I don’t know, Lolly. It’s… it’s all weird. Weird. The whole time back there, he was talking to you—just you; I might as well not have been there, a fifth wheel, you know, the lady’s escort. Someone to pour the vodka, sure, lend a hand. And the way you listened to him… wait, let me finish! I understand, he played a very meaningful role in your life. Your mother’s life. But you cannot forget that it was an exchange and not just an act of charity for which you must forever hang on to his every word. You don’t need to be a genius to see that your mom made something big click in his head, too—it’s obvious. A gear without which he may not have survived at all. He’s pretty hung up on the suicide theme, did you notice?”

  “I did, sure. I actually think that’s his greatest fear as far as Nika goes. Lest she find out that her grandmother killed herself, I mean…. He let something slip about a curse, remember?”

  “Of course, and Nika’s another thing…. He is making her your responsibility, no? Didn’t you see—passing her on to you, so to speak, as your inheritance! For you to take her as your friend, or who knows what… your charge. By the same old curatorial logic, from the KGB. So basically, he and you have your own story. And I’m just sitting there, pouring vodka into plastic cups. Meanwhile, it was his old man who carried out my great-aunt’s death sentence—and Boozerov has been aware of this ever since I first submitted my inquiry to the archives, last fall. But if it weren’t for his daughter, the concert—like hell he would’ve told us this. Or that Gela was pregnant.”

  “You know, I can’t shake that off—this must have been done in some office of theirs, right? The examination, the analysis of the remains…. It was someone’s job to do that, can you imagine? Collect the mangled bodies, sort them: ours over here, the other side’s—over there… the mother here, the fetus—separately, over there….”

  “Hang on, you’ll make me lose my point. It’s not the different pieces, as you said, that are patched together—it’s as if there were three different processes, and all of them nonlinear, oscillatory, a wave system—the Schrödinger equation. That’s why he’s out of focus, you know, that’s why he sort of… flickers—there are more dimensions than you or I can each individually perceive. Do you understand?”

  “Honestly, no.”

  “Okay, did you take advanced geometry in school? Do you remember how to represent a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional plain?”

  “Draw three different views, from three sides?”

  “Something like that. So what I’m saying, it’s the same here. The world I—we—live in has fewer dimensions than we need to get an accurate representation of the process, so all we get is a set of random views, and not even a complete set. And the views you get don’t match the ones I get—like, say, if you had the front view, and I got the plane view… and I don’t fall into your dimension, I’m not inside that field.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “I’m just a go-between, Lolly. Like a semiconductor, you see? And occasionally, a catalyst. And that’s how it’s been for me the whole time, from the beginning: I function as an add-on to your project. Your project that involves my family and for which you needed a guide. A go-between…”

  “Weird…”

  “No shit.”

  “No, it’s weird because sometimes I feel precisely the opposite. That it’s my project that functions as a go-between—between you and me.”

  “And I’ve had enough of this going between. I want there to be the two of us, together, and no one else. I want to be your man, period. Your husband, not a go-between. Do you see the difference, or do I have to explain that too?”

  “You goof… that’s who you are.”

  “I’m not sure, baby. I’m not sure.”

  “I am. You cover me. You have my back, all the time; you don’t even notice it because it comes so naturally to you. This is why you got so worked up, too—because you took the whole Pavlo Ivanovych, the brunt of him, and now the aftershock of it is rattling you.”

  “Hm. You think?”

  “Can’t you feel it yourself?”

  “I don’t know…. He really got under my skin, that’s for sure. Like I got some virus from him and it went running through my bones—smashing everything in its way… bowling. And on top of that, I had to swallow it all as I listened. Just think: I’ve been working like a fucking ox for seven years, kissing up to God-knows-who, fighting for every little old tchotchke tooth and nail, trying to save at least a bit of our past, and underwriting the SBU’s fucking budget with my hard-earned coin on top of that; and there he sits, paid, again, with my hard-earned coin—after he burned the archives! And the thing is—he’s still convinced he did the right thing, and you can’t get through to him!”

  “Leave him alone, Aidy, others have gotten through already—left plenty of holes in him. He’s a colander.”

  “Sure, someone tells you a sob story about his difficult childhood, and you’re ready to feel sorry for him!”

  “Someone has to do that, too, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Alright, don’t take it the wrong way.”

  “I’m not. All I’m saying is he didn’t have any other choice. None of them did—those who were raised on lies, with the natural course of life violated. Arbitrarily warped. Can you imagine what a flimsy existence he must lead—without roots, up in the air? A sort of a show that he plays for himself over and over and over. And there’s no way to keep it going other than to guard, sledgehammer in hand, against the natural order of things reasserting itself, because if you miss a blink—it’ll break through, like mud through that dam….”

  “Yeah.”

  “His dam will break too, one day… and sweep away the whole house of cards he’s worked so hard to build around his child. It’s leaking already—first his mother-in-law, then it’ll be something else: the further his child ventures into the world, the more risks there are. That’s why he’s so afraid.”

  “So much wisdom. So much understanding. Where can I get myself some of that?”

  “Why? You disagree?”

  “You women just kill me… just sit there, philosophizing, like it’s all water off a duck’s back!”

  “It’s all because you covered me. Shielded me bravely with your own body, you could say. Took the b
runt of the negative-energy assault. Or, maybe more appropriately, of the informational assault?”

  “You just keep kissing up to me…”

  “I’m not kissing up; I’m telling you like it is. You are my hero. My knight in shining armor. My Chip and Dale. My Ninja Turtle.”

  “Shut up. You’re mean.”

  “But wise—you said so yourself.”

  “You know I’ve got a whale of a headache… from back there, on the water.”

  “You poor thing. Take an Advil.”

  “Nah, a cup of hot tea—and off to bed. Lord. Some freaking day we had… I have to say, you seem to be just generally super calm recently. Sort of distanced…”

  “I must be slowly developing the ability not to give a damn. What else can I do?”

  “No, I’m serious. I noticed it back when you came home from your meeting with Vadym, and I was telling you about Yulichka. Things don’t seem to get to you the way they used to; they don’t affect you as much….”

  “Is this a bad thing? That they don’t?”

  “Hey. Kiddo. What if you are pregnant?”

  “Oy!”

  “What’s to oy about? What would be so terrible about that?”

  “My dictaphone!”

  “What about it?”

  “I just saw this… apparently, I left it on—after I erased the stuff…. Or did I not lock it, and it came on accidentally in my purse?”

  “You mean, it was recording the whole way home?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, look, it’s on! It’s still rolling…”

  “No shi—”

  CLICK.

  * * *

  Daryna is sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding the test stick in her fingers—carefully, like a rare insect, a wingless dragonfly with a delicate blue fuselage. She sits and looks, unable to take her eyes off of it: to her, the strip seems to be alive. About to move. Or do something else to reveal itself, something completely unpredictable. Especially since, as the instructions claim, after ten minutes, the reading can disappear. Still, what she is seeing is beyond doubt.