The Year of the Comet

by Antonina W. Bouis

  The more confidently Konstantin Alexandrovich talked about posts, helicopters, and special groups, the clearer it was that he was simply calming my parents. Despite the ban, I went into the woods, wandered around the area, not knowing why, just absorbing impressions that would later prompt me to act.

  For example, when I picked strawberries on the sunny side of the railroad tracks, where freight cars were parked far from the station awaiting formation into new trains, I could sometimes sense the evil sticky smell of oil on the gravel, and how strangely predatory the berries looked, red and spattered with tiny hairs, how dark the water was in the pond, and how the forest reflected in it was also reflected in my gaze, not allowing me to see inside, as if all of nature was on the side of Mister.

  Garage … Car … Cellar … Human remains … You couldn’t say that I didn’t believe the major general, but it seemed to me that there was something he was leaving out or didn’t understand. Mister had become an otherworldly creature for me, Konstantin Alexandrovich’s logical, clear statements about a flesh-and-blood man contradicted my ideas; I thought I could see farther and deeper than the old detective.

  “The soldier patrols must have come across him,” Konstantin Alexandrovich said. “More than once. But he’s a simple good Soviet man. Can’t recognize him.”

  “You mean he looks normal?” Father asked, stressing the word “normal.”

  “Soviet, he looks Soviet,” the major general replied. “I have a theory. He must have something that makes people like him. And that shows he’s a responsible person, not in authority, but nearly so. An armband of the national volunteer force, a badge of the Green Patrol, an ID as a fisheries inspector, something like that. A socially involved person.”

  A Soviet man, I thought. I didn’t even listen to the rest. A Soviet man. Mister. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t believe in a killer finding pleasure in torture. Of course, it didn’t fit my picture of the world, but there was something else, some backstory.

  A Soviet man. Mister. Mister Soviet man.

  Enlightenment came.

  There were so many of them in children’s books—various “misters,” unremarkable fishermen, hunters, campers, soil scientists, nature photographers, herb collectors! Even the experienced eye of the border guard did not recognize them as violators of the border, spies, saboteurs, devils incarnate who crossed the no-man’s land in shoes that leave hoof prints, in order to kill, poison wells, set explosives, to sow evil that was as cruel as it was ultimately pointless, evil for evil’s sake, or to learn military secrets.

  In the twilight hour, the time without shadows, he appeared, the werewolf, the perfect changeling, more Soviet than any Soviet man. Invulnerable, like a mirror, he strode across our country, absolutely “not one of us,” an invader from the world beyond who preached the destruction of the Soviet Union, living only for hatred of the USSR. He left death and destruction in his wake, fooled sentries, tricked peasants and city folk, everyone. The only thing he feared, as the books all taught me, was the gaze of a child. Only a child, an unsophisticated child, could recognize him.

  That was why Mister killed children—they were a danger to him! With the military airfield nearby, everyone in the village knew the secret information that the regiment posted there was the first to be equipped with the latest MiG-29 fighters. “The regiment has achieved combat readiness,” my friends and I repeated variations on the words someone overheard at the station, repeating them like a spell. “The regiment has achieved combat readiness!” That’s why Mister was here, circling the airfield. And just like in the books, no one believes he’s a spy, they think he’s just a killer!

  Could I tell the grown-ups my discovery? Why bother, the narrative required them not to believe me, not to pay heed to my warning.

  I think this was the first time, with sadness and regret, that I realized the limited nature of Konstantin Alexandrovich’s power, which had once seemed boundless to me.

  Konstantin Alexandrovich was a detective, he was in the MCID, but I sensed that he was helpless here. He was a policeman, he caught thieves, bandits, and killers—humans; what could he do about the elusive, otherworldly Mister? The police don’t chase spies, and if they do, they don’t catch them.

  I was the grandson of Grandfather Mikhail, the secret agent, the grandson of Grandfather Trofim, the tank soldier; at last I could prove I was worthy of them. I joyfully sensed that I was on the right side, on solid ground.

  I began thinking what weapon I would use against Mister.

  Father kept a double-barreled shotgun in the attic; two or three times a year he would spread an oilcloth on the floor and take the gun apart and clean it. I was allowed to hold the oil, take out the dirty rag, and once, only once, to look into the barrels, separated from the butt; the two ideally round openings looked like the entrances into infinity.

  Probably, I could have swiped the shotgun, but I sensed that it wouldn’t help in the hunt for Mister. Rather, if I took the gun, there would be no hunt—it would be like a flotation device, a life preserver, that would keep me from going deeper into the space where Mister was found.

  In his desk drawer, Father had a German bayonet knife; Father found it when he was a boy in piles of military metal—smashed tanks, weapons, machines, platforms of armored trains, which were brought to the Hammer and Sickle Factory in Lefortovo to be melted down. Sometimes when Father was away, I secretly took it out, a patina covered darkened blade; but no other hand could be the master of this weapon, it would probably slip out of my grasp to be gripped by Mister’s fingers.

  There was the Finnish knife, the one we used to play knifesies, a gift from Konstantin Alexandrovich my parents didn’t know about. But it couldn’t help me in my search for Mister or against Mister—like the German bayonet knife, it would take the side of the saboteur, the man with a thousand faces, who could pretend to be a soldier or a thief.

  I was missing something, things weren’t coming together. Only a child could recognize Mister. He feared a child’s gaze.

  I understood: I had to come out unarmed and recognize Mister—my death, its circumstances—someone was bound to remember where I went, someone would see me minutes before I met Mister, notice his car—would give the detectives a sign that would lead them to Mister, make me his last victim, which would destroy him, snatch him from the other world.

  I quickly convinced myself that there was no other way; I was delighted by the correspondence of my plan with the Soviet faith in which I was brought up, which considered sacrifice the highest and noblest act.

  Still mulling over my plan, I recalled how last year they were filming a movie near the tank trial field of an army camp in a neighboring village. They set up a scaffold made of old boards on the village square; the script called for the hanging of a partisan messenger.

  The soldiers from the camp were used as extras, and dressed in German uniforms they surrounded the square; local residents were asked to wear old clothes—the ones without any were issued jackets, sheepskin coats, trousers, boots, and bast shoes. My friends and I went to watch them making a movie, but there was no film magic to be seen; however, we noticed something else: the soldiers and sergeants had very quickly gotten comfortable in German uniforms. I thought it was almost criminal to even put one on, I thought they would want to tear off the foreign uniforms before they dirtied their souls. But on the contrary, there seemed to be an evil temptation to try on “the enemy’s skin,” to be a fascist for a while.

  They readily formed a perfect encirclement, they pushed people with the butts of their guns so naturally into the square, that it couldn’t be explained just by the desire to have some fun after the boredom of the barracks, by the taste of short-lived power. I imagined what it was like—to see things from inside a German—and suddenly understood the intoxicating freedom that came with the role. All the rules, all the symbols, everything that was specifically Soviet from clothing to words was supposed to elicit hatred, or a degree lower, scorn. Here wa
s the opportunity to legally wipe their boots on the red flag—there was a scene like that, but they used a red rag rather than a flag—and that enflamed them: “protected” by the German uniform, the image of a Nazi who holds nothing dear, the soldiers probably would have burned down the village if the director told them to and forced people into the burning houses.

  The locals, herded by the soldiers, also were transformed; suddenly, without the director, but by memory and instinct, the men started taking off their hats, revealing the heartbreaking nakedness of heads, the loneliness of each head before the noose. The bodies were pushed close together, and the heads seemed to be in the stratosphere, in rarified space, where the cold winds have a shade of a razor’s raven blueness; the gesture—taking off your hat, recognizing the unity of death, the unity of destiny—cut into my heart.

  What happened next was no longer perceived as a film shoot, as something unreal, so I will not speak of acting and the suspension of disbelief.

  The executioner’s henchmen, two Polizei, Nazi collaborators, dragged out the partisan messenger. He struggled, kicked, perhaps sensing that things had gotten out of hand, that what was unfolding was much older than an episode from the Great Patriotic War, something as powerful as rebellion, as a whirlpool—it was elemental.

  The messenger was a boy, just a little older than I was—maybe thirteen or fourteen. An impulse passed through the crowd—not horror, not fear, not compassion, but the first wave of enchantment.

  The director had made a good and bad choice in the actor. Fair-haired, with perfect features, they boy was too remarkable to be a messenger. There was no confusion, fear, or shyness about him, he was proud and bold and the first sentry he passed would notice him. But in another sense, it was a good choice: holding his hands behind his back, the Polizei tried to get the noose around the boy’s head, a boy born and brought up with reserves of goodness and belief in life.

  The boy was sturdy, he would have grown into a tall, strong man—but his future was canceled by the execution. When they pulled his hair to get him to stretch his neck and stop resisting, suddenly, like a flood, like something observed secretly, his throat glowed with the tender light of vulnerability.

  I don’t know if the others standing there saw what I did. I think that if they didn’t see it in such details of imagination, they sensed it for sure.

  Thanks to that flash, that vision of the throat that would be lashed by the noose, the crowd and the victim joined in a familiar closeness, brothers and sisters, parents and children. That boy on the scaffold was so dear to each one that—with an inversion of feeling—he had to be, must be given up to the executioner.

  The point of the no-longer just cinematic action, but of existence in general, was that the best had to die, the strongest and purest shoot had to be pruned, so that his death would enter each of the others as their own death, in which everything petty, egoistic, coming from nature, personality, and education will die so that you can be reborn.

  The death of one hero gives birth to many his equal, greater than he was, that is the universal law, the only path for the creation of heroes. But the first one must die, and if he does not, the rest will die remaining just as they were without partaking of the seed of inspiring death.

  This memory of the boy actor on the scaffold is what convinced me that my conception was correct. I didn’t wonder why the other children did not expose Mister with their deaths, I had a ready answer: not every child can reveal a spy or saboteur; he has to be, for example, the grandson of a watchman, a retired Red Army soldier, or the son of the head of an outpost; heir to their skills and then surpassing his elders. And who, if not I, the grandson of combatant grandfathers, was better for the role? Who had figured out who Mister was?

  Of course, I hoped sometimes in my daydreaming that I would stay alive, that Mister would only wound me heavily—there were stories like that in my book, too. Or maybe not even heavily, just in the arm or leg, so I could talk and show where the spy had gone; but then I reproached myself for cowardice and enjoyed the anticipation of fame.

  Then fear would come over me, animal fear at the thought that I was wrong about myself, that despite knowing the true nature of Mister, I was just like all the other children, and he would simply kill me the way he had his previous victims.

  I needed an advisor, an arbitrator, who would relieve my doubts; Ivan, Ivan, he was the only one capable of understanding that Mister was not a sadistic killer but something more frightening; but if Ivan said that I was wrong and making things up, well then, I’d give up my idea, for after all I didn’t want to die. But if Ivan confirmed my supposition, then the very fact of his support and involvement would save me, give me a chance not to die, for Ivan also was not like everyone else, and maybe he knew something about Mister that I did not. Oh, this secret would make us closer than brothers, closer than friends, despite our ages!

  Ivan, Ivan, Ivan!

  A BATTLE WITH THE GENERALISSIMO

  The next day, as I wondered how to find out if Ivan was home, I walked down the dacha street toward his place. My friends had ceased their siege while the general’s car was in our yard and were in no hurry to resume; I ran into one along the way, and he said “Hi!” as if there was nothing wrong; tireless Grandmother Mara had already told all the neighbors that an MCID general was visiting us, as she did every summer. My friends, naturally, wanted the details.

  I had no hostility toward them; I told them everything I had heard from the general, but in a way that would give them no clue about the real nature of Mister.

  Ivan’s property was empty.

  Back home, I started a casual conversation with Grandmother Mara about Ivan’s family. But my grandmother, who seemingly knew everyone, and everything about them, merely shrugged, almost angry with Ivan’s people for being so secretive. Ivan’s parents worked abroad, as economists or diplomats, they hadn’t been seen at the dachas for many years. His grandfather used to be a big shot in the KGB, but then fell into disgrace, demoted and pensioned off.

  Grandmother told me this with a grimace, conveying that she disliked Ivan, disliked his family, disliked my new friendship; she tried to make sure I saw it. But I was thrilled: his grandfather in the KGB, his parents abroad—of course they weren’t economists, they were spies! And that meant I was right about Ivan: like me, he was an heir to intrigue, he would know many things; I was so sorry I had not asked Grandmother earlier, for now I understood Ivan’s aloofness, his reluctance to hang out with the dacha crowd; what a great surprise for him when he would learn that among the ordinary kids there was someone like him, his junior fellow traveler, his student!

  Late in the evening I climbed out the window, down the apple tree, crept past the fences and the sleeping lazy dogs toward Ivan’s property and climbed up onto the fence.

  A lamp was on on his veranda; it was big, spacious, glassed in on all sides, and Ivan sat in his armchair as if in an aquarium of dim yellow light. It was dark all around, midges flew at the light and bumped into the glass, and I climbed over the fence and stood in the middle of the darkness, unnoticeable by Ivan, even if he were to look in my direction.

  Ivan was alone at the dacha; he was drinking fortified wine in a thick green glass, setting it down on a tablecloth of the same green; this was my first look at the interior, I had climbed onto the wood pile by now. It was strange for me, accustomed to our dacha and the fact that a dacha is built out of whatever is at hand, furnished with whatever God sends your way, to see the heavy antique furniture, the big mirror in an ornate frame, and paintings on the walls; we all made do with paper reproductions, while these were real canvases.

  No longer aware of what I was doing, unable to resist, I came out of the darkness, walked along the paved path, trying not to step on a crack, stepped up to the porch and knocked, hiding behind the door, the only nontransparent part of the glass veranda.

  “Hello,” Ivan said, opening the door. “At last you’ve decided. You were out there, behind that birch
, right? I’ve gotten tired of waiting. Come in, come in. Have you ever tried fortified wine? Will you have some? You sneaked out, right? They wouldn’t let you out this late, your parents, yes, I understand. Come in.”

  I was suddenly embarrassed by my old, patched trousers, torn T-shirt, and sweater frayed at the elbow, but I also knew that Ivan didn’t care about such things, he was totally indifferent. A sip of the wine, which I had never tried, left a sweet tingle on my tongue, tempting me to confide in him.

  Afraid that I wouldn’t have the nerve, I started talking right away—about Mister, the general’s story, how I guessed who Mister really was and the child’s gaze he feared; about my intention to sacrifice my life for the sake of catching Mister, about Ivan who must be thinking about the killer, too.

  Ivan listened in silence, sipping the wine.

  Then he replied, as if weighing something. “I have to think about it. I was expecting something else. Go home now. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  He placed his hand on my shoulder in farewell. I walked down the dead street, where someone had marked out a hop-scotch ground, in confusion: What had I just told Ivan? Would he get in the way of my efforts? But the dark night told me: no, he won’t, you’ll be too scared alone, it will remain just a dream and someone else will catch Mister. Ivan will help, Ivan won’t let you be scared. Without him you are weak, he is your strength, your desire, your courage!

  The next morning a car honked at the gate; Ivan waved from a beige Volga, as though there had been no conversation the night before.