by Jocelyn Parr
No, I said. Yes.
Yes? she said.
You have had some sort of traumatic experience, she said. We know.
No new boyfriend? she asked. A little cat won’t do you any good, you know. No extra space allotted for cats. I was allotted five and a half square metres. She handed me one end of the measuring tape.
Hold it against the corner. No cheating. Flush against the corner. And then to herself, No extra space for rats.
Our space was five metres wide, with the bookshelf included, and four metres long.
Too much space for a little nut like you, she said. This is big enough for a family and their cats and rats. And it is better for you to change.
I would be assigned a room in a hotel. A new family would move into our apartment, and they would smoke on our balcony and look at our night sky.
Later that day, I went to see Dimitri. In the past months, he, too, had moved. Now he lived in a hotel behind the theatre. He answered the bell immediately. His room was on the second floor, the top floor. I thought I might ask him to help me stay in my apartment.
His room was simple, but big. In my mind, I measured its size as I walked towards the window. Nine largish steps. Bigger than mine, I thought. He had a window, a single bed, a commode, a tin wash table, and a small desk. On the desk there were three books standing upright as if they were the beginning of a library. Beside the books were two framed portraits, one of Lenin and the other of Stalin, both standard issue, the kind you’d buy in any bazaar, along with two red candles, which Dimitri also had, but had never lit. I knew that sitting in the top drawer of the desk, he had a gun. I knew because Sasha had told me, but I didn’t know how Sasha knew. Lined up on the windowsill, in increasing size, was a teacup, a glass, and a single bottle of brandy. He rinsed the glass and cup at the wash table; the faucet squeaked when it was turned. As he organized himself, I looked out the window onto the dark street I had walked up.
Only the small window opens, he said, gesturing to the trap window. Under the transom, there were two windows, both of which had been sealed shut for the winter.
He had changed. Whatever sensitivity he had once possessed had disappeared in the months since I’d last seen him. In its place, he had hardened. I hadn’t noticed the change at the funeral, but it was clear in how he held himself in a way that reminded me of Sarkisov. Imperious.
He handed me the teacup half filled with brandy, then leaned back against the wash table. I sat on the chair that went with the desk.
And now you’re here, he said, as if he’d already said something else, though he hadn’t.
I looked towards his books but couldn’t read their titles from where I was because I’d left my glasses in my bag.
Do you miss him? he asked.
Of course, I said, keeping my eyes on the books.
You looking for a book? he said.
No, no, just resting my eyes, I said.
Can you read the spines from there?
No.
His dress was semi-military — the tunic, the belt — as it always had been, but its meaning had changed. In the early twenties, such dress could mean he was aligned with Rodchenko; now it was the unofficial code of party membership. We all play roles, I thought. Always wanting to belong somewhere.
Outside, a horn sounded in the street.
Dimitri put down his drink and walked towards me, pausing halfway. There are hot spots in the floor, he said. Take off your socks.
In my bare feet, I walked across the floor to where he stood. My toes spread out to feel the warmth of the wooden floor.
How does that happen? I asked.
Hidden fires, he said.
I wondered if he knew how it happened but didn’t want to tell, or if he didn’t know but wanted to give an answer, any answer, anyway.
I stood still and shut my eyes. I hadn’t been barefoot for years, it seemed. When was the last time? Perhaps one of those late summer nights when Sasha and I still climbed atop buildings to drink and smoke, and we would find the day’s heat trapped in the metal that encased the top of the walls. We’d lie down on the cooling roof and rest our feet against that still-warm metal, our eyes on the darkening sky.
Dimitri misread me. I opened my eyes just as he was about to kiss me, and I ducked away.
He shrugged and stepped back.
I went back to the desk, my feet cold then. I leaned forward to pull my socks back on, wishing I’d not taken them off before.
You came here for something, he said.
I picked up my cup and swirled the brandy around, letting my gaze drift over the desk and an open book. He’d been reading someone’s speeches, studying them. In my cup, the brandy settled.
No, I said, not really.
The housing department came today, I said, but I was sure even then that I didn’t want his help.
He stepped closer to me. And they want you to move, he said.
I’m not sure, I said.
I drained my cup and set it down in the wash basin.
You don’t need to be alone, you know.
But he was wrong, or rather, the kind of not alone I’d have had to be with him would have been lonelier than the kind of alone I’d be without him.
I’m not alone, I said.
Yes, you are.
After I got off the tram, I walked through the park. Where the trees were thickest, the snow didn’t always make it to the ground, so the mud paths had frozen into gnarled shapes that resembled the exposed roots of trees. At that time of year, the body has lost all memory of heat. On the way through the park, I heard a struggle coming from the bushes. Instinctively, I turned to look and just as quickly I looked back to the path, but I’d seen a woman lying on her back and a man standing over her, looking back at me. I kept walking.
A few minutes later, a different man intercepted me.
Did you see anything back there? he said.
No, I said. Nothing.
I kept walking. He followed.
It is a mark of stress, or a mark of history, that there are times when to walk alone and to be followed is to be immediately aware of three potentialities: robbery, rape, murder. Fear reduces our capacity to imagine.
For years, the image of that man standing over that woman haunted me.
Before, when Tobias was alive, the park had seemed safe. Now it seemed haunted.
After the funeral, I had returned to the institute within days. Luria found me there one afternoon, after almost everyone else had left for the day, and that was when I realized how my feelings for him had evolved. It was something like I how I felt towards the oak tree that grew at the end of Arbatskaya when I was a child. I’d watched that tree for years. I’d seen it from my window, the way it got full in spring and went bare in winter. How the shape of its thickest branches always made a perfect Y frame into which the shoemaker, across the street, would step when he went outside for a smoke. How I’d see the shoemaker only in the winter because in the summer the leaves would hide him, or most of him, so that if it was summer and he was smoking, I’d see a patch of him — his shoes or his elbow — and imagine the rest of his body by how well I knew it in winter. Is it possible to say I loved that tree? I can say that when it was slated to be cut down to make way for the clock tower, I’d spent one night sitting below it, peeling off its gnarled bark, taking in the smell of its age with a kind of tenderness I’d never felt towards even my own mother.
When she’d spotted me sitting there, under the tree, she’d called me moony. Grow up, she’d said.
But still, towards Luria I felt the kind of tenderness one could feel towards a sunset or a pebble you could pocket, towards the arch of a bridge, or even an anatomical structure whose infinite variations never varied so much as to make the thing unrecognizable (think of the sea horse–shaped hippocampus at the centre of the brain). This was the kind of tenderness one feels towards anything that seems permanent and that, thankfully, cannot feel back. Uncomplicated. So it suddenly dawned on me, t
hat afternoon, that in all of Moscow, the only person for whom I could feel that way was Luria because I had never lied to him. That, and I hardly knew him. I knew what he thought about. But I didn’t know him.
His visit that day had a purpose. I could feel it in his stride. The long, strong steps that showed a renewed vitality.
He had begun to study a man he would later refer to only as S—.
I knew his name, but he shall be S— to you.
S— had been introduced to Luria through a friend who had temporarily employed S—, until it became clear that S—’s talents were less suited to newspaper reporting than they were to something, anything, else. Luria’s friend was the editor at the Evening Standard, a well-loved rag. S— had been hired as a low-level reporter, but early on the editor had noticed something strange. Every morning, when the reporters were assigned their tasks for the day, S— never took notes. The assignments were complicated: the reporters were told the names of sources, addresses, leading questions, and so on. The editor, himself, read the assignments from his own tangle of notes so that he wouldn’t lose track. At first he had thought S— was being insolent, but when he returned every night with full reports of the murders, robberies, scientific cures, train wrecks, and alien sightings, the editor had realized there was something unusual about him. He called S— into his office to ask him why he didn’t take notes. S— had said he couldn’t imagine it, taking notes would be too distracting. The editor asked what he meant. S— had said that seeing the words on the page would prevent him from remembering. He explained that he couldn’t see two things at once: he couldn’t simultaneously see the objects in his mind and see the words on the page. His memory was better than photographic. His mind’s eye so powerful it created the images just as soon as the words were uttered. For him, there was no separation between the word and its image, a word was an image.
Standing before the exhibits that afternoon, perhaps both Luria and I were asking the same question: what architectonic feature could explain such a skill? The thrill of the question heralded a brighter future. Luria was overjoyed.
He hadn’t seen the exhibit on Bekhterev yet, so we walked towards it.
Who did the slicing? he asked.
He didn’t hold back when I told him I’d been put in charge. He found it offensive that I’d been involved at all.
Are we alone? he asked.
He’s gone, I said, by whom I meant Sarkisov.
You had no experience, he said in quiet exasperation.
What could I do? I asked, feeling reprimanded when what I’d hoped for was praise.
It’s not your fault. They wanted you to be inexperienced.
Right, I said. And in that way, in that moment, I became an accomplice to the erasure of Bekhterev and to the erosion of the institute itself.
We stood quietly together for a moment as I realized what I had done.
Do you believe in geniuses? I asked.
There are two types of people who believe in genius, said Luria. Those who hope they are one, and those who want an explanation for why they aren’t. The rest of us believe in hard work. He said this angrily, but it was the most hopeful thing I’d heard in years.
Soon after that, he said he needed to leave, so I followed him to the front entrance where he shrugged into his coat. He hadn’t said anything about Sasha. I knew he knew, because everyone knew. That he hadn’t said anything seemed kind, as though he knew he didn’t need to. But then I saw it creep into his eyes. The sudden quiet that took over.
Please don’t say anything, I thought. Please don’t make me a liar. Please don’t make me have to lie to you. Please.
Tatiana, he started, taking his hat off.
Don’t, I said. It’ll make me too sad. Please don’t say anything. Please.
All right, he said.
He put his hat back on.
Listen, he said, I’ll introduce you to S— if you’re curious.
Sure, I said.
After that, I returned by myself to the grand salon, but I didn’t feel alone. It was as if I had walked into the salon behind someone or in front of someone and we had been courteous to each other, allowing the other to go first through the doorway. I knew that I was the only person left in the building. Yet I could feel Sasha standing beside me.
This is a nice church you have here, he said.
Don’t, I said.
I’ve always loved the lives of saints, he said, and I felt him drift towards the musicians’ brains. I was never crazy about Borodin, he said. But Rubinstein was a genius. These are good Soviet saints, he said.
They aren’t saints, I said.
Sure they are, he said. These are holy relics, he said. We pilgrims come to worship them, he said.
Stop it, I said.
Don’t say it’s about science, he said.
I told you it was! I said. We have found out about the dominance of the frontal cortex in the minds of analytical thinkers, the predominance of the small sulci—
But how do you know? he asked, interrupting me.
We know because we see it, I said.
But an iceberg lies beneath the surface and is mostly invisible to us as we float upon the oceans of this world, and like the Titanic, we risk striking it and sinking to the bottom of the sea with our lovers and our children, draped at long last in the pearls and perishable satins, not to mention the seashells or perhaps the timbers of a poorly navigated lifeboat that was crushed beneath the bow of the sinking ship as it was pulled under along with us. Imagine you and me, he said, lying there at the bottom of the sea, all because we did not see what lay beneath the surface.
But that’s it, I protested. We are seeing precisely that, that thing beneath the surface.
No, he said, this sliced-up object is not what is beneath the surface. Where is the blood? Where is the life? What we see here is an iceberg that has melted and that is hardly the same. This, he said, is a place of worship.
Perhaps it is language that is failing us now, I said. In any case, I have never seen the ocean.
As I stood there, wondering what would become of me and the institute, I remembered the elements of our collection that were missing. It seemed that just as we’d brought the collection to a kind of whole, an outside force had caused it to fragment. Zhanna and I had started paying closer attention. What had emerged was a pattern. Something was missing from virtually every exhibit. This meant two things: first that there was a shadow exhibit that existed somewhere other than at the Institute Mozga, and second, that someone working at the institute likely knew how this had come to be. The consequence of this second aspect was that Zhanna and I started watching everyone else, sure that one of ours was stealing things away, though we couldn’t imagine why. Any institution populated with intellectuals will be defined by paranoia, which was why even though Zhanna and I were in on the secret together I also wondered if the missing items weren’t, actually, her doing, and she, no doubt, wondered the same about me. The shadow institute, wherever it was, started to seem like the shadow country that was forming elsewhere, in places like Berlin, if that was, indeed, where Sasha and people like him had gone.
Over the years, one by one, most of the lights on the chandelier had burned out. That they didn’t burn out all at once must be due to some mystery of circuitry. We didn’t immediately try to replace the lights, and when we finally did, they were no longer stocked in Moscow, such items considered too bourgeois for Soviet taste. The missing specimens were like those lights — at some point they’d disappeared without us noticing, and now it was impossible to replace them. When the bulbs were finally shipped to us from a supplier in Paris, we had ordered too few to brighten the grey light they cast in the formerly glorious room.
I was curious, but it was springtime before I went to Luria’s office to meet S—. The day was unusually warm. I remember being embarrassed by the sweat stains beneath my arms, stains I endeavoured to hide, especially from Luria who would notice.
Hello, said the gu
ards, which made me wish I knew another way into the building.
The door to Luria’s office was open, spilling natural light into the dark hall. I heard voices as I approached. Luria was at his desk, and S— was sitting in a chair facing Luria, so his back was to me. Luria looked up, smiled, and motioned for me to come in. S— turned to look. What struck me first about his appearance was the ashy pallor of his skin, its surface so oily it reflected the light pouring in through the window. His eyes darted up to meet mine in swift, shy acknowledgement.
Luria came to the front of his desk, saying, Tatiana is the one I’ve been telling you about, the one who runs the Institut Mozga that you like so much.
With an artist husband, said S—.
Luria smiled and looked at me, hoping, I think, that I wouldn’t react.
He died, I said.
Oh, said S—.
You’ve been to the institute? I asked.
Eight times, said S—.
A silence ensued.
Now that I was inside, I noticed how much cooler it was and wished I’d kept my jacket.
Luria motioned for me to sit.
Well then, said Luria, Let’s show her what we’ve got, shall we?
S— treated the question as if it were rhetorical and didn’t answer.
Go ahead then, said Luria, prodding him, give us the first list I gave you. It was on a Monday, in this office, over a year ago.
Actually, said S—, the first series was in your apartment. You were sitting at the table and I in the rocking chair…You were wearing a grey suit and you looked at me like this, and then he tilted his head to the left and adopted a quizzical expression.
I had to laugh at the accuracy of his impression and the seriousness with which he undertook it.
Yes, said Luria, smiling. Right you are.
Now then, continued S—, I can see you reading from a list. It began with an accordion, then a hard-boiled egg, then a red flag, five children, a lock of blond hair like that from a child, a man’s fingernail…