by Jocelyn Parr
Inside the jar, a series of images started overlapping for the first time. There was Luria, saying that there had been no funeral and then there was the jagged edge that Sasha had noted in the brain stem and the unique way that those particular slices had curled, as if they were chemically different than the rest of the brain, which they were, because that is the way the blood-brain barrier works; it is a barrier, a real barrier — blood on one side isn’t the same as it is on the other. And then I thought of blood as a vehicle for meaning as it had been proposed in that mystical text by the lamplighter, no, the Decadents, the ones who interpreted the death of the boy just as if they were interpreting an occult text: blood for vowels as opposed to what it really was, blood in exchange for the life of a child, and none of it made any real sense. Then I thought of Bekhterev and of the Health Minister and what he had said about our work, that materialism would triumph, and what Bekhterev always said, which was not to be an outsider, and my father, work hard, but then there was the child who had been buried, and Bekhterev who had been buried, and Bogdanov who had been buried, and Lenin who had not. And I wondered where the refuge was: was our refuge in the mausoleum that people lined up to visit day in and day out, or was our refuge in the deep dark chambers that housed the witnesses to the original M and the original K? And again I thought of that jagged edge and of the relentless movement of the microtome, the solid chunk sound it made at the bottom of every cycle, and I just hoped to God, because this was what one does, one resorts to childhood superstitions in such moments. So I said, God, please don’t let me remember any of this. I was saying it to myself, but then Rima took the bell jar off my head and I heard myself saying it out loud. And then the room spun a little as I stood up and walked down the hall to the bathroom to vomit, which I did, in the hopes of eliminating something more than just the alcohol, but it didn’t work and neither did my prayers, because here I am writing this, which is a sign that even if I’d left behind my childhood superstitions, my adult superstitions wouldn’t take their leave so easily.
When I came back, the table had been cleared and the door had been opened to let in a cool breeze. The cold felt all right, except that I had been sweating, so my skin took that cold and turned it into goosebumps. Sasha looked over at me, concerned, and I smiled that I was okay, and this exchange was almost the same thing as us getting past all that had come between us. Sergei was speaking for the first time, saying that he wanted to tell a joke. Okay, everyone said. I sat back down at the table and Rima poured me a glass of water. I concentrated on the sharp cold path the water carved out of me.
So three men are sitting in a cell in Lubyanka. Beside me, Yuri’s leg tensed up. Rima’s face betrayed nothing, but her eyes flashed at me, as if to say, make him stop. Mine flashed back the question, why me? Yuri was a card holder, a man with principles. Sasha called him the automaton. When Yuri walked into a room, he held his head high, his body thick and strong. He wasn’t the sort to be nuanced about principles. If someone, like Sasha, had suggested the possibility of nuance, Yuri would have called them weak. I admired him because he was hard. Dimitri stood to close the window.
I know this one, Anna whispered to no one in particular. She was the kind of woman who, when faced with someone political, would feel poorly educated, and when faced with someone who abhorred politics, someone like Sasha for example, she would fidget then, too, like whatever political affiliations she did have were indications of her tiresome nature. She was a suspicious person; more than anything she suspected herself of being a fraud.
I knew the joke and so did Sasha, but Sasha said nothing and neither did I.
Rima stood to clear the plates.
Sergei sensed a problem. It’s just a joke, he said.
Go on, said Yuri, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. Let’s hear your joke.
Sasha wanted to know if I would admit knowing the joke; I wanted to know if he would. The room had started to fog up. I kept sipping my water.
Sit, Rima, said Yuri, in a tone that once again cleared the blur from the room.
I’ll take those plates and smash them, offered Sergei, trying to pull his legs out from under the table. He pulled up one knee and then the other but couldn’t manoeuvre them to either side without running into Anna or Kolya, and so he pulled them straight up, hiccupping the table and causing the remaining carafes to topple.
Sasha caught the one closest to him and poured the liquid down his throat.
To us! cheered Kolya, grabbing another.
Sergei was standing on his box now, fumbling with his belt.
Do something, said Rima to Yuri.
This is why we need a ban, said Yuri to Rima.
He stood swiftly, placing his kerchief in his pocket and walking neatly around to the other end of the table. He reached over top of Anna, who had cringed all the way into the wall. Sergei was making to step up onto the table, one leg lifted like a dog about to urinate, his belt unbuckled and dangling.
Yuri managed to use Sergei’s imbalance in his favour so that in less than a minute, he had been steered over Anna and roughly onto the floor where he crumpled into a heap and started to laugh and then cry. It was all impressively athletic, the way they moved, and moved while talking, and moved in the way they wanted to move.
I heard myself ask if someone might open the window again.
Perfect, said Yuri.
Anna and Kolya still thought Sergei might go on. What’s the joke? they asked.
Sergei looked up from the floor and said, So the first asks the second why he has been imprisoned, and he says, Because I criticized Trotsky.
I was getting a chill.
Sasha was waiting for the next part.
Sergei said woefully, And the second one says, But I’m here because I spoke out in favour of Trotsky!
Dimitri hadn’t said anything all night, as though he’d been biting his tongue, but then he spoke up. Best to stop there, he said to Sergei.
Sasha had also been quiet but now got offended on Sergei’s behalf. Or what? he asked and stood to face Dimitri, which was a ridiculous thing to do, and it embarrassed me.
Sergei was the most passive person in the room, but a part of him was involved in a fight.
This night is over, said Dimitri to Sasha, but also to the room in general. Sasha was still thinking about doing something, but his thinking was getting in the way of him doing anything.
We’re leaving, said Yuri, taking Rima by the elbow and ushering her to the door.
Everyone moved ever so slightly, which indicated that the room agreed with Dimitri. Rima moved so she was standing next to me, Sasha shifted toward the door, Anna and Kolya, who had been sitting on their boxes the whole time, collaborated on shunting the table out far enough to give them space to move.
The night was over.
Sergei wasn’t ready for it to end. You want the punchline or what!?! he yelled from the floor.
Everyone already knows the punchline, said Sasha as he pulled on his shoes. The third guy is Trotsky.
Sasha fished his jacket out of the pile and said to me, almost as an afterthought, I’ll wait for you downstairs.
Come on, Rima, said Yuri.
I’ll have a cigarette with Tatiana, she said, and then come home.
Dimitri’s balcony looked onto the park. Rima pulled the door shut behind us, to separate our world from theirs. Inside, Kolya and Dimitri were discussing what to do with Sergei, who had curled up into a ball on the floor and seemed to have fallen asleep. Anna was clearing the table. Yuri had left.
Rima lit a cigarette and offered me one, but my stomach was so knotted up I couldn’t smoke. I wanted her to say something, but she didn’t, and I didn’t either. We leaned on the balcony like we had so many times before, but something had changed. And so, for the first time with Rima, I didn’t know what to say.
The night was black, silver, and green. At first I saw nothing but inky darkness and the random bright glare of a moonlit puddle. Then two little firefli
es glowed bright red, then dulled. It was Sasha and Jack. The movement of their arms, the hunch of their backs. Where Jack had come from, I didn’t know, but I could recognize the two of them, their silhouettes tensed up and conspiratorial, anywhere. I turned to go back inside but Rima stopped me to see if I was okay.
I wanted to be able to explain the extent to which my entire world was disintegrating all around me, but I had no words.
I’m okay, I said, and went back inside to find my things.
Outside, the rains had cooled the city.
Sash, I called from the entrance.
I saw him look over at me.
Sasha, what’s happening? I said.
Shhhh, he hissed.
He and Jack walked over.
Night, Tatiana, said Jack, tossing his cigarette onto the pavement and going inside.
Sasha and I crossed the courtyard, and I looked back at Dimitri’s balcony. All I could see of the inside was the ceiling brightly lit and the rubber plant on the top of a shelf. If they were still talking, I couldn’t see them.
Our footsteps echoed between the buildings. Sasha was quiet at first, then asked if I was feeling better. I said yes, and now it was true because I had started thinking again, a good thing because it meant I was better, but bad because thinking always seemed to come between Sasha and me.
All his earlier bravado dissipated so that now he walked as though he had no pride at all. How closely linked pride is with its opposite, I thought. Shame was always just around the corner. Was it shame that Sasha felt? And had I caused it? No. I couldn’t be to blame for his failures. It was he who could not let go of the world that had coddled him, first his mother and then his school and then later his work, if it could be called that. Drawing. Colouring. What had he ever contributed? I thought of him and Jack, slouched together at the tables in the dark night, deep in discussion about some trivial thing. And what about Dimitri? What was I to do about him? Did Sasha know or did he sense it? I wouldn’t apologize, if he asked me to. If I apologized it would be like saying I wanted a marriage I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be his. I didn’t want to be owned, to be like property.
The whole way home I felt as though I were walking behind Sasha, even though we were side by side. As though he’d turned his shoulder on me, although he hadn’t. The truth was that I didn’t want to fight anymore, and I did, in some part of me, still want to be his.
When we got home, he said we couldn’t go inside.
Why? I asked.
Because I have something to tell you, he said, and I don’t want to do it inside.
Because you don’t want me to yell?
No.
Because I’ll yell out here, too, I said.
He pulled me across Pirogovskaya and into the park. I knew that somewhere in the dark bushes, Tobias was sleeping.
I’m going to leave, said Sasha.
I stopped walking.
We can’t stay still, he said, walking ahead.
What kind of leaving? I asked, catching up to him.
I’m leaving the country.
Is that what you were talking to Jack about? Why, Alexandr? We are fine here.
I’m not, he said quietly. Don’t you see that? I’m definitely not fine. Why can’t you see me? I feel like I am dying here. I’m worthless to this place, worthless to you.
We walked on in silence. It had started to rain, but under the cover of the trees we could stay relatively dry. There were no lights in the park. The only sound was the rustle of the trees and the rhythmic patter of raindrops landing on the canopy of leaves above us. The blacks were carbon, velvet, and oil.
Why? I asked. Why can’t you be fine?
My question angered him because it implied he had a choice.
Fuck you, he said, his voice tight. I tried.
Under a tree, I stopped, waiting for him to say something more.
I can’t live this way. Don’t you see what is happening all around you? If it isn’t safe here for people like Bekhterev, it sure as hell isn’t safe for people like me.
Very slowly, I said, You’re nothing like Bekhterev.
I thought you would say that, he said.
In my head, I mimicked Sasha: I thought you would say that, I thought you would say that, I thought you would say that.
A man was walking in our direction. As he approached I saw myself struggling to form an opinion, which was not about the man, though he occasioned it. My thoughts swung as a pendulum does, from one side to the other, between the notion that Sasha was right that Bekhterev had been killed and the idea that Sasha was wrong and something else had caused Bekhterev’s death. From the notion that the engineers were criminals to the state was turning violent. From things were missing from our collection and we would be held responsible for the destruction of scientific evidence to our collection wasn’t even science, no one would ever care about what was or wasn’t missing since science was politics and nothing about our politics had been tarnished. The man was almost upon us, but I still couldn’t see his face because what little light there was, was coming from behind him. I could see that he was tall, but also I could see that he was uninterested in us, his frame directed steadily to the left side of the path and we were on the right. Sasha took my hand to get me to move, and soon we passed the man. When we’d been walking for a minute or so, I looked over my shoulder and made out the shape of him receding into the dark.
It’s not possible to leave, just like that, I said.
It is possible, said Sasha. Jack knows a way.
Jack.
You could come, he said. He would help you, too.
How kind.
I want you to come with me, he said.
We walked on, past the shadowy trees and whoever was sleeping there. We didn’t talk over our footfalls on gravel. We walked towards the morning, towards the dead grey light that seeped into the park at its end. At the exit, we came to the end of the tramway line. It was like a graveyard of trams. All night they stayed like that, their antennae folded above them in angular misshapes like giant, desiccated insects.
I realized there was so much more I wanted to know about everything. And I knew by looking at him that he wouldn’t tell me anything else.
I know what happened between you and Dimitri, said Sasha. And the truth is, I don’t mind. I know why you did it, I mean. I know it’s important to you that you not be owned by me and that even though I’ve never acted like I owned you, you needed to prove that you weren’t. I understand. And you’ll have him once I’m gone. Which is good, because he can help you, too.
When did you find out? I asked.
I knew it years ago, probably long before anything ever happened between you. But I knew, then, that one day he would try, and that one day you would let him.
When we got inside the sun was rising, slow and white. We went to bed and held each other, my hand on his heart, its rapid beat. He rolled over to face me.
When the time is right, will you help me?
Sasha thought he was in danger because he thought the city, no, the state as a whole, was dangerous. But I was still walking along the path, still watching the man approach, unclear whether or not I believed that state violence could be justified on the grounds that it was righteous, which is a way of saying I hadn’t yet decided whether or not some violence could, indeed, qualify as righteous. And similarly, because I still believed the Revolution would be good for all, I hadn’t decided whether or not that ultimate good was tarnished by the occasional evil along the way. For some, this was a time of moral clarity; for others, moral clarity was a lie.
Yes, I said, I’ll help.
Only a few days later, Luria told me he’d found a car we could take to the country for an afternoon. I agreed to go, vaguely hoping my absence, if only for a day, would jolt Sasha, make him reconsider. Luria picked me up from a corner early Saturday morning before the cicadas had woken to the late-summer heat. We drove out along Tverskaya, past the train station and past the end of the
city until we were in dacha country, their red and black roofs poking out of the forest. Parts of the forest were charred, the result of the fires.
They look bad, yelled Luria over the noise of the car, glancing in the direction of the big black patches, but fires are good for forests, as long as they don’t go on for too long, or spread too far.
The car made too much noise for me to feel much like responding.
Kids rambled along the side of the road, aimlessly it seemed, though at crossroads they packed together, hawking fruit and brightly coloured sugar animals. I wondered how they’d gotten there as we seemed far from any one village. They yelled out to us as we passed. Farther out, there was a park. A few cars lined the street, so we parked behind the last one and then walked through the entrance, past a former mansion, and along one of the many pathways that led to the river.
The path along the escarpment gave us a good view of the whole park, from the relative quiet of the path down to the clots of picnicking families, and then to the river where a single row of birch trees obscured the water with their winking, silver leaves. Luria tramped ahead. The path, though there hadn’t been serious rain for some days, was slippery. I followed in a distracted way, my hands in my pockets, my mind wandering. Hidden in the fold of one of my pockets, my hands found the keen edge of the slide we’d found the other day, when, just then, the heel of my shoe pitched into a muddy puddle and I slipped and fell. Luria turned in time to see my hands thrown up, but I was on the ground in seconds, so by the time he was at my side I was sitting in a pile of mud, the broken slide having cut my hand.
You’re bleeding, he said with such intensity that it almost felt like a performance. Caring for someone looked like exclamation, excitement, attentiveness, so he was performing all of those. Or doing his best performance of those.