Eye of the Red Tsar

by Sam Eastland

  It was with their expressions that his father took the greatest care. An air of calm needed to surround the dead, as if they welcomed this next stage of their existence. The expression of a poorly prepared body might appear anxious or afraid, or—worse—might not look like the same person at all.

  It fascinated him to read, in the hands and faces of the departed, the way they’d spent their lives. Their bodies, like a set of clothes, betrayed their secrets of care or neglect. As Pekkala held the hand of a teacher, he could feel the bump on the second finger where a fountain pen had rested, wearing a groove into the bone. The hands of a fisherman were stacked with calluses and old knife cuts which creased the skin like a crumpled piece of paper. Grooves around eyes and mouths told whether a person’s days had been governed by optimism or pessimism. There was no horror for Pekkala in the dead, only a great and unsolvable mystery.

  The task of undertaking was not pleasant, not the kind of job a man could say he loved. But he could love the fact that it mattered. Not everyone could do this, and yet it needed to be done. It was necessary, not for the dead but for the memories of the living.

  His mother thought otherwise. She would not go down to the basement, where the dead were prepared. Instead, she stopped halfway down the basement stairs, to deliver a message or to summon her husband and son for dinner. Pekkala grew used to the sight of her legs on those steps, the round softness of her knees, the rest of her body remaining out of view. He memorized the sound of her voice, muffled beneath a lavender-oil-scented cloth she held against her face whenever she stood on the stairs. She seemed to fear the presence of formaldehyde, as if it might seep into her lungs and snatch away her soul.

  His mother believed in things like that. Her childhood on the barren tundra had taught her to find meaning even in the smoke rising from a fire. Pekkala never forgot her descriptions of the camouflage of a ptarmigan hiding among lichen-spattered rocks, or the blackened stones of a fire whose embers had burned out a thousand years before, or the faint depression in the ground, visible only when evening shadows fell across it, which marked the location of a grave.

  From his mother, Pekkala learned to spot the tiniest details—even those he could not see but which registered beyond the boundary of his senses—and to remember them. From his father, he learned patience and the ability to feel at ease among the dead.

  This was the world Pekkala believed he would always inhabit, its boundaries marked by the names of familiar streets, by tea-brown lakes reflecting pale blue sky and a sawtoothed horizon of pine trees rising from the forest beyond.

  But things did not turn out that way.

  THE MORNING AFTER THE COMMISSAR’S VISIT, PEKKALA SET FIRE TO his cabin.

  He stood in the clearing while the black smoke uncoiled into the sky. The snap and wheeze of burning filled his ears. The heat leaned into him. Sparks settled on his clothes and, with a flick of his fingers, he brushed them away. Paint buckets stacked by the side of the cabin sprouted dirty yellow tongues of fire as the chemicals inside them ignited. He watched the roof collapse onto the carefully made bed and chair and table which had been his companions for so long now that the outside world seemed more dreamlike than real.

  The only thing he saved from the fire was a satchel made from brain-tanned elk hide and closed with a button made of antler bone. Inside lay the gun in its holster and the book and the unblinking emerald eye.

  When nothing remained but a heap of smoking beams, Pekkala turned and started walking for the trailhead. In another moment he was gone, drifting like a ghost among the trees.

  Hours later, he emerged from the pathless forest onto a logging road. Cut trees were stacked ten deep, ready for transport to the Gulag mill. Strips of bark carpeted the ground and the sour reek of fresh lumber filled the air.

  Pekkala found the car just as the Commissar had promised. It was a type he had not seen before. With rounded cowlings, a small windshield and a radiator grille that arched like an eyebrow, the machine had an almost haughty expression. A blue and white shield on the radiator grille gave the car’s make as EMKA.

  The car doors were open. Lieutenant Kirov lay asleep in the backseat, his legs sticking out into the air.

  Pekkala took hold of Kirov’s foot and shook it.

  Kirov gave a shout and clambered into the road. At first, he recoiled from the bearded ragman who stood before him. “You scared the hell out of me!”

  “Are you taking me back to the camp?” asked Pekkala.

  “No. Not to the camp. Your days as a prisoner are over.” Kirov gestured for Pekkala to get in the back of the car. “At least, they are for now.”

  In a series of jerky turns, Kirov reversed the Emka and began the long drive to the settlement of Oreshek. After an hour of slipping and bumping over washer-board road, they emerged from the forest into cleared countryside whose openness filled Pekkala with a nameless anxiety.

  For much of the drive, Kirov did not speak but kept an eye on Pekkala in the rearview mirror, like a taxi driver worried about whether his rider could pay the fare.

  They passed through the ruins of a village. The thatched roofs of izhba huts sagged like the backs of broken horses. Bare earth showed through the coating of old whitewash on the walls. Shutters hung loose on their hinges, and the tracks of foraging animals studded the ground. Beyond, the fields lay fallow. Stray sunflowers towered over the weed-choked ground.

  “What happened to this place?” asked Pekkala.

  “It is the work of counterrevolutionaries and profiteers of the so-called American Relief Administration who infiltrated from the West to pursue their economic sabotage of the New Economic Policy.” The words spewed out of Kirov’s mouth as if he’d never heard of punctuation.

  “But what happened?” repeated Pekkala.

  “They all live in Oreshek now.”

  When they finally reached Oreshek, Pekkala looked out at the hastily built barracks which lined the road. Although the structures appeared new, the tar-paper roofs were already peeling. Most of these buildings were empty, and yet it seemed as if the only work being done was the construction of even more barracks. Workers, men and women, stopped to watch the car go past. Masks of dirt plated their hands and faces. Some pushed wheelbarrows. Others carried what looked like oversized shovels piled with bricks.

  Wheat and barley grew in the fields, but they must have been planted too late in the season. Plants that should have been knee high barely reached past a man’s ankle.

  The car pulled up outside a small police station. It was the only building made from stone, with small barred windows, like the beady eyes of pigs, and a heavy wooden door reinforced with metal strapping.

  Kirov cut the engine. “We’re here,” he said.

  As Pekkala stepped out of the car, a few people glanced at him and hastily looked away, as if by knowing him they might incriminate themselves.

  He walked up the three wooden steps to the main door, then jumped to one side as a man in a black uniform, wearing the insignia of Internal Security Police, came barreling out of the station. He was hauling an old man by the scruff of his neck. The old man’s feet were wrapped in the birch-bark sandals known as lapti. The policeman pitched him off the steps and the old man landed spread-eagled in the dirt, sending up a cloud of saffron-colored dust. A handful of corn kernels spilled from his clenched fist. As the old man scrabbled to gather them up, Pekkala realized that they were, in fact, his broken teeth.

  The old man struggled to his feet and stared back at the officer, speechless with anger and fear.

  Kirov set his hand on Pekkala’s back and gave him a gentle nudge towards the stairs.

  “Another?” boomed the policeman. He gripped Pekkala’s arm, fingers digging into his bicep. “Where did they dig this one up?”

  Six months after Pekkala’s brother left to join the Finnish Regiment, a telegram arrived from Petrograd. It was addressed to Pekkala’s father and signed by the Commanding Officer of the Finnish Garrison. The telegram con
tained only five words—Pekkala Anton Rusticated Cadre Cadets.

  Pekkala’s father read the fragile yellow slip. His face showed no emotion. Then he handed the paper to his wife.

  “But what does that mean?” she asked. “Rusticated? I’ve never heard that word before.” The telegram trembled in her hand.

  “It means he has been kicked out of the regiment,” said his father. “Now he will be coming home.”

  The following day, Pekkala hitched up one of the family’s horses to a small two-person cariole, drove out to the station, and waited for the train to come in. He did the same thing the next day and the day after that. Pekkala spent a whole week going back and forth to the train station, watching passengers descend from carriages, searching the crowd, and then, when the train had departed, finding himself alone again on the platform.

  In those days of waiting, Pekkala became aware of a permanent change in his father. The man was like a clock whose mechanism had suddenly broken. On the outside, little had altered, but inside he was wrecked. It did not matter why Anton was returning. It was the fact of the return which had changed the neatly plotted course Pekkala’s father had laid out for his family.

  After two weeks without word from Anton, Pekkala no longer went to the station to wait for his brother.

  When a month had gone by, it was clear that Anton would not be returning.

  Pekkala’s father cabled the Finnish Garrison to inquire about his son.

  They replied, this time in a letter, that on such and such a day Anton had been escorted to the gates of the barracks, that he had been given a train ticket home and money for food, and that he had not been seen since.

  Another cable, requesting the reason for Anton’s dismissal, received no reply at all.

  By this time, Pekkala’s father had withdrawn so far inside himself that he seemed only the shell of a man. Meanwhile, his mother calmly insisted that Anton would return when he was ready, but the strain of holding on to this conviction was wearing her away, like a piece of sea glass tumbled into nothing by the motion of the waves against the sand.

  One day, when Anton had been gone almost three months, Pekkala and his father were putting the finishing touches on a body scheduled for viewing. His father was bent over the dead woman, carefully brushing the eyelashes of the deceased with the tips of his fingers. Pekkala heard his father breathe in suddenly. He watched the man’s back straighten, as if his muscles were spasming. “You are leaving,” he said.

  “Leaving where?” asked Pekkala.

  “For St. Petersburg. To join the Finnish Regiment. I have already filled out your induction papers. In ten days, you will report to the garrison. You will take his place.” He could no longer even call Anton by name.

  “What about my apprenticeship? What about the business?”

  “It’s done, boy. There is nothing to discuss.”

  Ten days later, Pekkala leaned from the window of an eastbound train, waving to his parents until their faces were only pink cat licks in the distance and the ranks of pine closed up around the little station house.

  PEKKALA LOOKED THE POLICE OFFICER IN THE EYE.

  For a moment, the man hesitated, wondering why a prisoner would dare to match his gaze. His jaw muscles clenched. “Time you learned to show respect,” he whispered.

  “He is under the protection of the Bureau of Special Operations,” said Kirov.

  “Protection?” laughed the policeman. “For this tramp? What’s his name?”

  “Pekkala,” replied Kirov.

  “Pekkala?” The policeman let go of him as if his hand had clamped down on hot metal. “What do you mean? The Pekkala?”

  The old man was still on his knees in the dirt, watching the argument taking place on the steps of the police station.

  “Go!” yelled the policeman.

  The old man did not move. “Pekkala,” he muttered, and as he spoke blood trickled from the corners of his mouth.

  “I said get out of here, damn you!” shouted the policeman, his face turning red.

  Now the old man rose to his feet and started walking down the road. Every few paces, he turned his head and looked back at Pekkala.

  Kirov and Pekkala pushed past the policeman and made their way down a corridor lit only by the gloomy filtering of daylight through the barred and glassless windows.

  As they walked, Kirov turned to Pekkala. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  Pekkala did not reply. He followed the young Commissar towards a door at the end of the corridor. The door was half open.

  The young man stepped aside.

  Pekkala walked into the room.

  A man sat at a desk in the corner. Other than the chair in which he sat, this was the only piece of furniture. On his tunic, he wore the rank of a Commander in the Red Army. His dark hair was combed and slicked back on his head with a severe parting which ran like a knife cut across his scalp. The man kept his hands neatly folded on the desk, poised as if he were waiting for someone to take his photograph.

  “Anton!” gasped Pekkala.

  “Welcome back,” he replied.

  Pekkala gaped at the man, who patiently returned the stare. Finally satisfied that his eyes were not playing tricks on him, Pekkala turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

  “Where are you going?” asked Kirov, running to catch up with him.

  “Any place but here,” replied Pekkala. “You could have had the decency to let me know.”

  “Let you know what?” The Commissar’s voice rose in frustration.

  The policeman was still standing in the doorway, looking nervously up and down the street.

  Kirov placed a hand on Pekkala’s shoulder. “You have not even spoken to Commander Starek.”

  “Is that what he calls himself now?”

  “Now?” The Commissar’s face twisted in confusion.

  Pekkala turned on him. “Starek is not his real name. He has invented it. Like Lenin did! And Stalin! Not because it changes anything, but only because it sounds better than Ulyanov or Dzhugashvili.”

  “You realize,” blurted the Commissar, “that I could have you shot for saying that?”

  “Find something you couldn’t shoot me for,” replied Pekkala. “That would be more impressive. Or, better still, let my brother do it for you.”

  “Your brother?” Kirov’s mouth hung open. “Commander Starek is your brother?”

  Now Anton emerged from the doorway.

  “You didn’t tell me,” protested Kirov. “Surely, I should have been informed—”

  “I am informing you now.” Anton turned back to Pekkala.

  “That’s not really him, is it?” asked the policeman. “You’re just kidding me, right?” He tried to smile, but failed. “This man is not the Emerald Eye. He’s been dead for years. I’ve heard people say he never even existed, that he’s just a legend.”

  Anton leaned across and whispered in the policeman’s ear.

  The policeman coughed. “But what have I done?” He looked at Pekkala. “What have I done?” he asked again.

  “We could ask that man you threw into the street,” replied Pekkala.

  The policeman stepped into the doorway. “But this is my station,” he whispered. “I am in command here.” He looked to Anton silently appealing for help.

  But Anton’s face remained stony. “I suggest you get out of our way while you still can,” he said quietly.

  The officer drifted aside, as if he were no more than the shadow of a man.

  Now, with his eyes fixed on Pekkala, Anton gave a nod towards the office down the corridor. “Brother,” he said, “it is time for us to talk.”

  It had been ten years since they’d last seen each other, on a desolate and frozen railway platform designated for the transport of prisoners to Siberia.

  With his head shaved and still wearing the flimsy beige cotton pajamas which had been issued to him in jail, Pekkala huddled with other convicts waiting for convoy ETAP-61 to arrive. Nobody spoke.
As more prisoners arrived, they took their places on the platform, adhering themselves to the mass of frozen men like the layers of an onion.

  The sun had already set. Icicles as long as a man’s leg hung from the station house roof. Wind blew down the tracks, stirring up whirlwinds of snow. At each end of the platform, guards with rifles on their backs stood around oil barrels in which fires had been lit. Sparks flitted into the air, illuminating their faces.

  Late in the night the train finally arrived. Two guards stood beside each open wagon door. As Pekkala climbed aboard, he happened to glance back at the station house. There, in the light of an oil drum fire, a soldier held his rosy-tinted hands over the flames.

  Their eyes met.

  Pekkala had only an instant to recognize that it was Anton before one of the guards shoved him into the darkness of the frost-encrusted wagon.

  PEKKALA HELD THE CUT-THROAT RAZOR POISED BESIDE HIS BEARD-COVERED cheek, wondering how to begin.

  It used to be that he shaved once a month, but the old razor he had nursed finally snapped in half one day as he stropped it against the inside of his belt. And that was years ago.

  Since then he’d sometimes taken a knife to his hair, sawing it off in clumps while he sat naked in the freezing water of the stream below his cabin. But now, as he stood in the dirty bathroom of the police station, a pair of scissors in one hand and the razor blade in the other, the task before him seemed impossible.

  For almost an hour, he hacked and scraped, gritting his teeth with the pain and rubbing his face with a gritty bar of laundry soap he had been loaned along with the razor. He tried not to breathe in the sharp stench of poorly aimed urine, the smoke of old tobacco sunk into the grout between the pale blue tiles, and the medicinal reek of government-issue toilet paper.