“The KGB waged war on us, which told us we were hitting a nerve, that word was getting out beyond our borders. They searched our homes, offices, anywhere we might have papers. Once they stormed in on me and I had to dump a bunch of papers into a pot of soup boiling on the stove. I knew it was only a matter of time before I got into really hot water. Then I was sent to work on a project at Zvyozdny Gorodok and I met Andrei.”
She looked down at her small hands. Jamie waited in silence. She would continue her tale, or not.
“I would not have you think I went lightly into the affair with Andrei. You are not Russian, so perhaps you do not believe in Fate as we do—the knowledge that your life is meant to have these meetings, these interstices where things are supposed to happen—and you cannot avoid them no matter if they are going to break your heart or ruin you entirely. This is what I felt when I saw Andrei. Fate. I knew I was meant to love him, to sacrifice my entire being to him if that was what he wanted. Oh, I know it sounds very dramatic, but that is Russian love. I was fully prepared to love him in vain, to have no return of my affections. But then a miracle—he did.”
She looked at him openly, grey eyes dark in the old chapel. “Sometimes it has felt like all my life has been a suppression of feeling, of avoiding emotion, of not longing for that which was not possible, of never allowing yearning to take root in my soul. When I met Andrei, I decided that I was not going to suppress anything, no matter the price. So I am here in this camp, for that sin—for feeling when I should not have. They used my ties to The Record as an excuse.”
“Does your family know what happened to you?”
Another shrug. “For myself,” she said slowly, “there is no one left to mind. My father died in a gulag much like this one. My mother disowned me, and Masha went to her God long ago.”
She took a deep breath, and smiled, a gesture he felt more than saw.
“We have holey memories in Russia. So much is lies in this country and we are fed the Party line from our cribs. We are also taught to look the other way, to be quiet, to keep our mouths shut. It does strange things to your mind after awhile. You can’t remember what was true and what was false about a given incident. It is better sometimes to just believe as you are told to believe. It makes life more livable.”
“Does it?” he asked, for the night was one of those oddities that allowed such questions as daylight would not.
“No, but it is better not to admit that too often,” she said and stood, leaving him alone in the church. There had been both admission and warning in her words.
Chapter Thirty-four
June 1973
Gregor’s Story
Jamie and Nikolai had cut above quota for a month straight, earning them extra rations for a week. The bread was hard and the meat stringy, but it was edible. Still, he put away part of the bread and meat for Volodya, whose meals were even smaller than the norm. Volodya often cut under quota, as the skill of sawing seemed to be something he could not learn, and each day in the forest was a struggle for him.
He took the opportunity of his extra rations to sneak off to the showers during suppertime. To have a moment alone was as rare and precious as stumbling over a hillock of diamonds and he had no intention of wasting it. He intended to get decently clean for a change. Gregor held court at the supper table, he and his vor, taking up one long table entirely, eating their meals like the wolves they were but lingering afterwards unless they had business to attend.
He had decent soap from a trade with Vanya who had access to mysterious channels of black market goods. Jamie had given three cakes of it to Violet and kept one for himself. It was dense hand-milled soap and heaven only knew where the man had found it, but Jamie wasn’t going to look this particular gift horse in the mouth.
The water, heated in the cistern by the day’s sun, was hot enough to sluice the dirt from his skin in great waves, rolling down his body in blissful comfort. It made him long for the ocean, to be totally immersed in water, to have the force of it sweep him away, to take him home.
He scrubbed his hair, which had grown out to a downy half inch upon his scalp, until it squeaked, and then lathered his body with what seemed a sinful amount of soap.
The night before he had dreamed of the forest maiden. She had, as before, remained in the shadows but this time she had spoken to him in the ancient language of water and woods and she had touched him, her fingers smelling of green and movement, of the dark light that lived within water and the thickness of cold amber in the trees. Her touch had been both dreamlike and real on some shifting level, and his body had responded to her with an ache he had not known in some time. She had felt as fresh and raw to his flesh as the first flicker of green upon a spring willow bough, as sweet as a cold green apple, fetched from a well.
His dreams, other than the strange dream language of the rusalka, were beginning to speak to him in Russian.
The dream of the water woman had lingered with him all day, like webbing around his senses that he could not shake.With the extra rations restoring some of his strength, he had found some of his other hungers returning. Even now, the memory of the forest maiden’s eyes meeting his and her mouth opening to speak sent a surge of warmth through him.
His body, starved as it was for touch of any sort, stirred at the dream memory and he was grateful to be alone for the moment. It wasn’t uncommon in the camp to see men in various states of arousal. Men, after all, were men. Even half-starved and worked to the point of collapse, the desire for sex still somehow rose to the top and flouted itself, looking for any sort of release. He had experienced bouts of abstinence before, but never one quite this long.
“Now that is what I call a proper welcome,” said a thick, lazy voice behind him.
Jamie turned slowly, wiping the water out of his eyes one-handed. Inwardly he cursed himself for letting his guard down.
Gregor stood at the edge of the showers, Jamie’s towel swinging from the end of one hand. He would have to brazen it out. There was nothing to cover up with anyway, and he couldn’t afford any show of weakness with this man.
“I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage,” Jamie said, certain he had never felt more naked in his entire life. He was also very aware that the last time he and this man had been in contact, he had been holding a knife to Gregor’s throat.
“Ah well, Jamie, as long as I have you,” Gregor purred, “I am not fussy about the terms.”
“Could I have my towel?”
“Mm,” Gregor pulled the towel suggestively across his mouth. “You look like you would taste good, all clean skin and golden hair. I have wondered, you know,” he looked directly at Jamie’s erection, “if you would disappoint, but I see now that things are even more pleasing than I had hoped. You are, as your good book says, ‘most fearfully and wonderfully made’. So what do you want? You need Gregor to be the peduh for you? It has been many years since I was any man’s bitch, but for you I will make exception. You want to be on top, is okay with me.”
“Is there anything, aside from the obvious,” Jamie said dryly, “that I can do for you?”
Gregor sighed. “It is a shame to waste such a thing, but this I did not come here for. He tossed the towel at Jamie. “Get dressed. We need to talk.”
Ten minutes later, dry, clean, clothed and more than a little irritated, Jamie joined Gregor who was waiting for him, minus his minions, outside the bathhouse.
“Come,” Gregor said, tossing aside the clover he’d been chewing on. “Take a little walk with me.”
“Where?” Jamie asked, wondering if an ambush was waiting for him in a secluded spot.
“Not to worry, Yasha. Your virtue,” Gregor smirked unpleasantly, “such as it is, will remain intact tonight.”
“It’s not my virtue I’m worried about as much as my ability to breathe,” Jamie retorted.
“The only
weapons tonight will be those of words. Now, will you come along?”
Gregor strode toward the camp boundary and Jamie followed, wondering what sort of reckoning awaited him, because even if it did not come tonight, he knew it would eventually.
The evening held remnants of the day’s warmth, the sun filtering through the fir trees at a low angle. The nights were not as long; the change perceptible by several minutes each day.
Gregor and his vor had a meeting place to which everyone else gave a wide berth. It was only a scrubby ring of pines that had somehow survived the mowing down of everything else within the fences. Here they held meetings, drank themselves senseless, and occasionally were permitted bonfires. To Jamie’s knowledge, no one else was ever allowed to enter this sacred ring. He wondered if he was about to be offered up as a virgin sacrifice or if something less ominous was brewing.
“Sit,” Gregor said, as expansively as if he were offering Jamie the depths of a buttery leather armchair, rather than a fir stump bleeding sap.
Jamie sat, glad there was a solid tree trunk behind him to guard his back. Gregor sat across from him, clasping his large hands together and leaning forward so Jamie could feel the aura of brute menace.
“So you are brave, maybe crazy. I see this now—after you sticking that knife to my throat.”
Gregor fished a flask out of his back pocket. “Here. It’s vodka, though it should be fucking poison for what you did to me.”
Jamie took a swallow, knowing it would be one step too far to refuse the drink. A Russian might tolerate a knife to his throat, but a refusal to drink with him was a far graver insult.
“So I tell you this. First I am wanting to kill you—for no one has had the nerve to put a knife to my throat, crawl into my bed and threaten to gut me like a pig before. I am furious, thinking who does this fucking Irishman think he is? But I am not a fool. I see how others are drawn to you. I see that if I do not make truce, that even if I kill you, someone then will kill me. Probably the old man, maybe the whore. The whore I can manage, the old man I am not so certain about. Because the old man has those eyes. They see right into and through you, and he does not care any longer if he lives or dies, which makes him very dangerous.”
Jamie made no comment, for it was an exact and unsparing portrait of Nikolai.
“I owe you for sparing my life that night. You could have killed me, but you don’t. This makes me a little worried. For what, Gregor, I ask myself, has this man spared you the knife? And I cannot find the answer, and this itself worries me more, so that I am losing sleep.”
“Really? I slept like a baby after threatening to gut you like a pig.”
Gregor threw his head back and laughed. “You are bastard, Jamie. I am liking this very much. Don’t look scared, my friend, I am liking this in a man—not a peduh.”
“You promised to be the peduh, if you remember correctly,” Jamie said.
“You are making joke, no? This is good. You are relaxing and understanding Gregor better now.”
“Are you going to tell me what you want? Why we’re out here?”
“Not to rush, good man. Talk takes time. Have another drink first.”
Jamie sighed, but took the drink. If the bastard wanted a pissing match, he would give him one. He’d practically been suckled on whiskey and Connemara Mist carried a punch more subtle than vodka but no less lethal. Some men needed to go toe to toe in this way, or they would never trust you. Though Jamie was not thrilled about having to prove his manhood by drinking himself into a paralytic state, he understood the psychology behind it and knew he couldn’t afford to walk away from this challenge, for there was more than a hangover at stake.
Gregor, it seemed, was in a conversational mood.
“I am bezprizorni—this is a word you are knowing, Yasha Yakovich?”
“Yes,” Jamie replied, for he knew his Russian history well.
The Bezprizorniye were originally the ‘wild children’ who had roamed the roads and forests, the cold cities and abandoned byways of Stalin’s Russia after the purges began. Children who had been orphaned by Stalin’s fist coming down on thousands of people: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters… for Stalin’s fear and rage knew no boundaries and no one was safe under the aegis of Papa Joseph.
The Bezprizorniye had morphed through need, and the feral anarchy that will come with abandonment of all social mores and parental affection, into a criminal underclass from which the urkas would often pluck promising candidates to come up through the hierarchy of the ruling mafiya. The Bezprizorniye formed their own mafia as well, and such criminal enterprises became the only family these children knew. The ties were forged, literally and figuratively, in blood. They were also unbreakable outside of the release of death.
“I am pickpocket when I am small. Children make the best ones for their fingers are soft and light. But I also have a wolf. She makes me stand out, so I have to leave her each morning chained up. She howls like I am killing her but I can’t take her into the city with me. I work the streets of Kiev, but I live like animal on the outskirts. This suits me though—I am half wild thing, much as I am now. Then one day I pick the pocket of the wrong man. I do not know that he is a feared gangster, that he is the vor y zakone, the vor that rules over all other vors in Kiev. His name is Viktor and I think he will kill me when he catches me with my hand in his pocket. At the very least, I know he is going to break my fingers. Suddenly my wolf shows up out of nowhere, growling and walking slow toward him, threatening, making it clear she will rip out his throat. Viktor tells me to call her off, but I just shrug and say, ‘No, because then you kill me, or hurt my hands and my hands are my bread.
“He swears he will not hurt me but I still am not trusting him so I make him let go of me and back up behind my wolf. Then she and I, we walk backwards, keeping an eye on him and finally when I think we are out of harm’s way, we run. I am a fool to think this man will not find me, but I do not know he is the Vor, and that many shake in fear at the simple utterance of his name.
“He does find me a week later. This time I know I am dead. There is no way out from such a man. But he is impressed with my nerve and wants me to work for him. He offers me a place at his table, a bed under his roof. I say yes, though I am still, you understand, a fierce thing from growing up in the woods with only a wolf as my companion.
“Once Viktor Dmitriovich takes me under his roof I am treated as family, as a member of the vor, whose ties are stronger than blood. I have to wait until I am much older to be sponsored in, and to become a prince among thieves takes even longer.
“I am sent to school. I find it very hard to sit still in the desks and I cannot abide the discipline and authority of the teachers, so Viktor Dmitriovich has me tutored. I still pick pockets, and once I am older, I move to larger theft, bigger crimes. Always, I defer to Viktor Dmitriovich, for I owe him the loyalty of blood.
“This is how I grow, this is what makes me a man, and so I know no life but that of thief and enforcer. I spend much time in prison. This too makes man’s shell grow harder. I am strong though. The bastards put me in chains for a year. I cannot walk far enough to piss without having to sit in it later and there is not enough chain to lie down for sleep. This does not break me. Because the vor are my family and I will not betray those ties and I do not recognize the authority of the Soviet. The vor and my own strength are all I have. Now only strength is left. So I make family wherever I am, with those that gather round a man such as myself, a man such as yourself.”
They had come, Jamie saw, to the crux of what Gregor wanted to say to him. The subtext being, ‘I see you as a threat and I take threats very personally.’
“I am a vain man at times. This I know about myself—vain of my power, vain of my position, but I am no fool and so I see that you are a man who draws others without effort. I see the camp dividing along these lines already, slow
ly, but it is happening. I decide that I have two choices—to kill you, or to call a truce. I kill you and I am going to spend much longer in this hellhole than I am already condemned to. And I am man enough to admit where my weakness lies—and such as you are is a very big weakness for me.”
“Such as I am?” Jamie said, and took another swallow of the vodka before passing it back to Gregor. He knew what the weakness was. He had seen it in the man’s eyes clearly.
“Uncle Viktor is always saying to me to stamp out all weakness, to take that which lures you most and put fire to it. For others this is drugs, alcohol, gambling, women. For me, it is beauty—all beauty is my weakness—buildings, music, art, men, women. I crave it, want to take it into myself, have it for my own soul. I want it like a junkie wants heroin. I cannot stop the craving in my veins. I think if I can consume enough of it, with my eyes, with my mouth, with my body then I will be satiated, will know some peace, will perhaps have beauty always inside, will be beautiful myself. This is not how such a drug works, of course, it only makes me want more and more and I can never fill that place that yearns for beauty.”
He stretched his arms out, flexing them as though the ghost of the chains he had once worn still lay there, heavy upon his wrists.
“Your beauty has heat, it has passion. You have done and seen many, many things and yet it has not jaded you, I am thinking.”
The statement seemed to be in the form of an observation rather than a question, so Jamie didn’t answer to it.
“And this beauty, this experience,” Gregor sighed, “is only for women.”
“Yes,” Jamie agreed firmly, “it is only for women.”
Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3) Page 39