Deathless

by Catherynne Valente

  “I am a deserter myself,” she confessed to her sergeant one night, in a barracks near Irkutsk. “Nineteen forty-two, Leningrad. Just like an old friend of mine promised I would be. If your precious records were any good you’d know that.”

  “I do know that, Morevna,” whispered Ushanka in her long, thin bed. “But you came back. You may think I have the heart of a rat, but I believe that the coming back makes up the difference.”

  And so they went. They followed the red yarn, an idiosyncrasy which Marya marveled at Ushanka never questioning, even once. She knew nothing of the sergeant, who no longer wore a blue ribbon. But she had suspicions. We shot all the colors in the war, the officer liked to joke, but Marya did not laugh. She never laughed, really, but especially not at Ushanka’s jokes. Between them they carried little but their mutual suspicions, and never, never did they discuss the strange coincidence of their having met before the war. But the coincidence occupied space at their table, ate its own ration of bread and wine and grinned at Marya’s discomfort.

  On and on the yarn spun.

  Sometime in July they passed through a tangle of underbrush: snarls of blackberry, broken larch branches, ferns like old oars. They got out of the car to clear a path, for the yarn ran right underneath the deadfall. Marya sweated under her cap as she tugged at the limbs and grasses and glimpsed, here and there, the bleached, sun-stripped skulls of some small creatures—voles or hedgehogs, rabbits, perhaps. A bit of antler; a bit of horn. Something about it disturbed Marya, made her hackles rise. She frowned deeply and shut herself back into the car, her hands white on the wheel. Ushanka climbed in beside her, wiping her hands on her skirt, smiling her secretive little smile.

  Beyond the wreckage wall a village sprawled out before them. Not much of a village—but then, none of them were much of anything. Not Mikhaylovka, not Schirokoye, or Baburka, or whatever this miserable place was called. A broad road ran down the middle of it, dividing one row of houses from the other. Marya saw a tavern—there was always a tavern. A butcher’s shop, a dressmaker. The road seemed to lead to a fairly large building in the distance, painted black, half ruined by storm and years. An old munitions factory, perhaps. Or some reclaimed estate, from the days when estates could be borne.

  The red yarn finally spooled itself out. The frayed end lay at Marya’s feet, caked in dust. It pointed at the broken black building. Marya’s heart roused itself like an old wolf, nosing at the air, at a familiar scent.

  “Will you have a drink with me, Comrade Ushanka? I believe I am thirsty,” she said at last. She felt strangely at home here. The village tickled at her, like a cough in her throat. She wanted a drink and a rest, and to put off whatever tribunal Ushanka would insist on performing. The other officer nodded, her expression as severe as ever.

  * * *

  The tavern stood empty; tables and chairs collected a custom of dust. Three bottles of unidentifiable liquor reflected the sunlight behind the bar, and an old poster, faded and stained, warned, Elect WORKERS to the Soviet! Do Not Elect Shamans or Rich Men! Marya touched it, and the light on her hand reminded her of something, though she could not say what. Everything in her old life was hard to grasp now, like catching fish as they swim by—so fast, so fast!

  “Can I help you, Comrade?” the bartender growled affably.

  He was remarkably short and fat, not quite able to see over the bar he tended. He looked as though he had not brushed his hair in years; it tumbled down around his ears in dark tangles, and he sported a big beard, all over his cheeks like moss growing on a stone.

  “Zemlehyed!” Marya cried. Her memory plunged into cold water; it seized a fish. She put her hand over her heart to keep it in her chest. It worked, it worked; oh, Olga, thank you for the yarn, I shall never be able to repay you! “Zemya, it’s me—it’s Marya, and you’re not dead after all, and neither am I! No silver on your chest or mine. Come and kiss me!”

  “I think you have me mistaken.” The little man laughed. “That’s my name, no fear, but I’ve never seen your own self in all my days, nor your friend there.”

  No, no. No magic, no ugly curses. “But Zemya, we’ve known each other all our lives.”

  “I doubt it! But I can introduce you to a good vodka, and leave you to get acquainted. I take no offense—I have a face people take a liking to. But don’t let my wife hear you asking for kisses!”

  “Your wife?”

  “My sweet, tall Naganya, how do I love her! Like a gun loves bullets, that’s how. Half-blind without her glasses and what a one for swearing, but she’s mine and I’m hers. Only she remembers how long we’ve been married.” He poured a generous glass for both of his guests.

  “Fifteen years, Zem, and you have every one written on your belly.” A voice like the air in a flute floated through the room. Marya and Ushanka turned towards it as towards the sun. A slender, pale-haired woman with deep, elegant lines in her face laid her gloves on the bar. Her eyes were painted to match the glass of wine she poured herself. She was clearly the dressmaker whose shop sparkled outside the windows. Her cool white dress swept around her, tailored perfectly, and a fan of rather dingy, but still lovely, swan feathers gathered at her hip. “See you get home to her in good time tonight. Nasha has never learned patience, no matter how I try to teach it.”

  “Lebed!” Marya gasped, and as if she were still a girl, as if she had never starved until her stomach shriveled up, tears came, running messily to her chin. “Lebedeva, I’ve missed you so! But I’m here now, you see; it’s all right.”

  The dressmaker put an ivory cigarette holder to her mouth. “That’s rather familiar, Officer. Have we met?”

  Marya had lost all her composure, all her care whether Ushanka knew her secrets or not. “Of course we’ve met! Madame Lebedeva, you taught me about cosmetics, and magic, and we ate cucumber soup that day in the cafe!”

  “I think the heat must be on you, my dear. I can’t abide cucumbers. Or anything green, really.” The pale-haired woman sipped her oily red wine. “I do wish you’d get something good in here one of these days, instead of this endless Georgian swill.”

  Zemlehyed shrugged amiably, as if to say, We drink what we drink.

  “Perhaps you should go and see the butcher, Officer. He knows everyone in town. I’m sure he can help you find…” The lady paused meaningfully—or perhaps not. Marya could not tell. “Whoever you’re looking for. I can only assure you it isn’t me.” Madame Lebedeva tapped her fingernails against her glass, neatly excising Marya and Ushanka from her concern. “Nasha has rabbits’ hearts in a pie for dinner, Zem.” She changed the subject brightly. “She said I could join, if I brought mushrooms.”

  * * *

  The butcher shop possessed little else but a slab of cutting stone and a glassless case with a single ruby-colored steak on display, marbled with fat, quite a specimen. The rest of the place slowly fell apart around them, so slowly it managed to give the illusion of standing firmly upright. The floorboards did not fit together right; a lonely fan missing one propeller spun wobbly from the ceiling lamp.

  Ushanka rang the bell obnoxiously—but Marya found everything she did obnoxious. No one appeared.

  “Come on out or I’ll requisition that rib eye!” hollered the sergeant. Nothing moved in the amber afternoon shadows of the back room.

  “No one’s here, Ushanka.” Marya ran her hand along the case. Her fingers turned black with old dust. She still shook from seeing her old friends. And they were her old friends—she was not mistaken, could not be. Her heart hid down deep in her belly. Who will the butcher be?

  “We don’t have an assignment in this town, Major-General. If you want a bit of beef, have at it, and let’s be off.” The staff sergeant slapped a fly on the counter and held her cupped hand over it, listening to it buzz uselessly.

  A young woman appeared behind the counter, flushed, her pale gold hair frizzing out around a sweet, round face. Her pink lips made a little heart of apology and surprise.

  “I’m so
rry to have kept you waiting, Officers! Sometimes a nap lands on you and you just can’t get out from underneath.”

  “Laziness is the enemy of industry.” Ushanka sniffed.

  Marya stepped subtly but emphatically in front of her junior officer. “What is your name?” she asked.

  The girl blushed for no apparent reason at all. “Yelena,” she said with a nervous laugh.

  Marya made her face as smooth as she could. Her mind tripped over itself. Oh, the Yelenas with their terrible amber eyes! Did she know this one, among all of them? She could not remember. But she’s free, she’s speaking—something’s happened, and everything’s all right. This woman means everything’s all right, doesn’t she?

  “Where are you from, Yelena?”

  “Oh, here. Well, not here, exactly. I don’t have a very good memory! But I lived for a long time in the women’s collective on the northern border of town.” Marya knew without asking that the collective would have a horse-bone door and an iron balcony.

  Ushanka narrowed her eyes at the girl. “You did not enjoy communal living?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t understand. We ran a textile mill together, and it provided for all our needs. We ate each other’s bread, drank each other’s water. We lived like sisters, like a family with no head, no authority, only love.” Ushanka blinked slowly. Her face colored darkly. Marya stared at her while Yelena went on. “And do you know, by the most extraordinary coincidence, we were all named Yelena? This world has such strange stories to tell! My sisters still weave up beyond that hill, and I bring them candies and stewed tomatoes on Revolution Day. Some of them are old, old babushkas, with watery eyes and blue scarves. They don’t even remember how old they are, or where they were born. I wash their hair, when I don’t have to watch the counter here. I would still live there, if not for falling in love. I got married—it happens.” The girl shrugged.

  Marya frowned. But really, how could she be one of the Yelenas she knew? And whom did she marry? “How long did you live in the collective?”

  “All my life.” Yelena shrugged again, her rosy cheeks dimpling.

  “Surely you were not born in a women’s collective. Conventional wisdom holds that a male is necessary for that sort of thing,” Ushanka needled.

  Yelena’s pretty freckled brow furrowed. She tugged at her curly hair. “I don’t … It’s so hard to remember! I just … always lived there. Always. Until I met my husband. I mean, I’m sure you’re right, Officer—I don’t mean to contradict you. I must have been born somewhere else. But I was little. I don’t remember. Who remembers being born?”

  “Not a soul on this earth,” replied Ushanka coldly.

  Yelena looked as though she might cry, her big brown eyes full of confusion.

  “I don’t want to offend! Please, take some meat and enjoy the sunshine. If you want something other than the rib eye, you’ll have to see my husband, though. Times are tight.”

  “Tight as a coat; tight as a glove; tight as a shoe,” whispered the staff sergeant, her face closed up, unreadable. Marya Morevna cleared her throat. They were getting nowhere.

  “I think my comrade is suffering in the close air of your shop,” she said. What could be the officer’s trouble? “Tell us where to find your husband and we’ll leave you.”

  “I’m sure he’s with Auntie about now.” She smiled. “That’s his sister. We all call her Auntie. She runs the canteen down the road. The most amazing soups, I swear! Like gold on a spoon. You really must try her ukha. I promise, you’ve never tasted the like.”

  Marya thanked her. This is Buyan, she thought. I know it is. I can smell it. The yarn stopped here. What has happened? I am human; my memory got old and needs a cane. But them? They should know me. Why do they not know me?

  “Tell me,” said Marya Morevna, her hand on the door, the rusted bell caught half-ring. “What is your husband’s name?”

  “Koschei Bessmertny,” she said with the pride of a nesting hen. “He’ll be so pleased to meet you, I’m sure.”

  30

  The Country of Death

  They strode down a long, thin road which must be Skorohodnaya Road, which could not be other than Skorohodnaya Road—yet Marya was sure that if they could ask it, if they could whip it and curse it into sitting up and opening a dusty, stony mouth, it would profess no memory of ever having been called such a thing. The eternal twilight of summer nights in the north country splashed gold and rose onto the street.

  “Sergeant, what is wrong with you?” Marya asked. She wished the wretched woman would vanish. Everyone else had—why was she stuck with the one soul who refused to do her the courtesy? Ushanka kicked the dirt.

  “I thought you were meant to be some brilliant soldier. I thought you would have figured it out. I’m bored with walking between shitty buildings while you nosh at this town like an imbecile cow! I was told you were brilliant. I demand that you be brilliant!”

  Marya rubbed her temples, a place she had given over to Ushanka, the place that hurt whenever she talked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Ushanka stopped in the middle of the road. The sun blazed on her brass buttons, her brass medals. She took off her cap and hooked one long finger into the side of her mouth. The staff sergeant yanked hard, and Marya winced at the vicious ripping sound of her skin splitting. But Ushanka was laughing, laughing while she tore her face open, all her teeth suddenly white and bare. No blood flew or dripped or seeped. Instead, threads popped open, stitches burst, a seam in her face split, and the linens of her cheeks hung down in tatters.

  “Not a soul on this earth remembers being born.” Ushanka grinned. “But I remember coming to Leningrad for you. It took me so long to get over the mountains, but I did it. To watch you. To question you. I remember losing you when you went into the damned egg, and finding you half-dead on the barricades—not so lucky as me, no, but with your blood all coming out like stuffing. I remember you in the sniper corps, and how they never guessed, not once, that you were anything but a poor starving Leningrader like all the other poor, starving Leningraders. I got myself assigned to your detail, and I’ve done so well, so well for a suit of clothes stitched by a damned Yelena! I’ve done as I was told. I watched you, and I brought you back here. It took me longer than I thought to make you miserable enough to use that yarn. That butcher’s bitch—or one of her sisters, makes no difference—made me. Made me for you.”

  Marya had known, but she had not known. She had known Ushanka was wrong, was broken—but what human was whole? “Why didn’t you tell me, that day in the parlor? We could have been friends. We could have been a comfort.”

  Ushanka shrugged. “They didn’t tell me to comfort you.” She started walking again, towards the canteen. “Do you know what he did when you left? He stopped the Yelena mill. He pulled them all out and made them sit in a room in the Chernosvyat, all in rows like students, and he dragged Likho out from wherever she liked to slink before she died, and made her teach them. Like a skinny old black-wool-and-chalk schoolmistress. And do you know what he wanted taught? How to turn a Yelena into a Marya. He made them read that awful black book you had, and make friends with leshiyi and vintovniki and vilas, and shoot firebirds. Everything you ever did, he made them repeat, hoping one would show promise, be his star pupil. But they couldn’t stop their weaving as easy as winking, and all the while they just kept moving their hands like they were still working at the looms. Eventually, he gave up. That, quite frankly, is practically the worst thing I’ve ever heard of a husband doing, but it only goes to show what the flesh will do when it’s grieving. Better to have organdy and linen and silk, if you ask me. Silk doesn’t love; linen doesn’t mourn.”

  Ushanka banged open the door of the canteen and dropped herself insolently into a chair by a little table with one leg shorter than the others. She let her face hang open, as though it didn’t trouble her a bit. Marya wanted to strangle her until she told her everything she’d ever known. No one came to ask them what they wante
d to drink, to eat, anything. They were alone with the sunlight pouring in like the light after an air raid.

  Marya hissed at her comrade, “Why are you so angry? It’s me that’s come home to find all my dead friends don’t know who I am, and nothing as I wanted it.”

  “Who cares how you wanted it? I’m a golem, Marya Morevna. A golem with no masters left. What am I to do now? My mission is over, and all I’ve got to show for it is a dolt of a mother in a butcher shop who can’t even remember that she is my mother.”

  Marya snatched Ushanka’s hand and dug in her nails, though it couldn’t hurt her, not really, unless organdy could suffer. “Where are we?” she hissed. “It’s not Buyan, but it is.” And then she knew. She understood. The revelation moved in her like death. But it was too big; she could not hold it. She let go of the sergeant’s linen hand.

  “This is Viy’s country, isn’t it?” she whispered, afraid to say it and make it so. “And the war is over. We lost. In the end, between Germany and the wizard with the mustache in Moscow, the one I told them about all those years ago—the two of them ate us alive. The dead overwhelmed us. While we were counting our ration cards, Buyan and Leningrad and Moscow and everything was shriveling and blowing away.” And her heart recited from the black book as she had once recited from Pushkin as a girl: Viy made his country as like the living world as he could, even to building film houses where silvery images of the war showed, so that the dead might be grateful, and not wish to return to life.

  Marya put her hand on her heart. It hurt as though it were being cut out. Ushanka nodded, and for once her face grew sad and soft, like an old, oft-washed dress.

  “It’s over, Marya. Koschei’s country has passed from the face of the earth. It doesn’t show silver on the streets anymore because the streets are gone. It’s all silver. It’s all dead. When the mud came up in the spring and mired the German tanks and broke them, do you think anyone thought, That must be the vodyanoy, rising up to protect their country, to fight alongside us? No, they thought it was weather. And so it was. The future belongs to the dead, and the makers of the dead. Men like Viy, who are blind to the deeds of their own hands, who reach out for souls. Our kind belong to him, now. We wander, lost, and you cannot even see the silver on our chests anymore, because all the human world is the Country of Death, and in thrall, and finally, after all this time, we are just like everyone else. We are all dead. All equal. Broken and aimless and believing we are alive. This is Russia and it is 1952. What else would you call hell?”