by Неизвестный
The woman curled her upper lip and for a moment Evgeny thought her eyes were sparkling with tears. Instead, she squinted in the darkness and waddled toward the shadows painting the far corner of the cabin. There she fumbled for a moment in the darkness before a candle flared to life, revealing a second door at the backside of the room. She heaved a sigh and shook her head, and then proceeded through the door.
A foul stench rushed into Evgeny’s nostrils like an evil wind the moment he stepped into the other room. It was like nothing he had ever smelled before: nauseatingly sweet like rotten fruit with a thick, musky undertone. The odor was immediately accompanied with a low, raspy moan. He went stock still and narrowed his eyes in the dull glow of the candle light.
“Quiet now, my son,” the woman whispered. “Quiet.”
Rostislav responded with a wet puling sound. Evgeny grasped the door jamb and waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the lower light. As the room came into better focus, he realized that the floor was littered with feathers, fur, and small bones. The tableau looked to him as though a wolf had gotten into a menagerie. He swallowed and dragged a stinking breath in through his mouth.
The woman knelt down beside a prostrate form on the floor, bringing the candle down low. The form belonged to a man dressed in tattered brown rags, his feet bare. His wrists and ankles were bound tightly together with leather straps, his neck secured likewise and affixed by a large iron nail to the wall. Evgeny looked from the man’s startling state of confinement to his slack, pale face and gasped. Rostislav’s skin was gray and weathered beyond his possible years; his mouth hung open and mewled pathetically. He had few teeth and his eyes were wide and haunted. Only a few sprouts of thin, white hair sprang from his spotted scalp. He juddered like a drunk in need of vodka. Evgeny thought him the saddest human being he had ever seen.
The woman gently touched the top of her son’s head and cooed into his ear.
Evgeny said, “This, then, is Rostislav?”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “This is my son.”
“Why is he imprisoned in this way?”
“Did you read my letter? The man said he wrote everything I told to him.”
“I want to hear it from you, madam.”
Her face tightened and her mouth drew into a small frown.
“My Rostislav is not himself anymore. He does not know what he does, but he . . . hurts things.”
Taking another step into the room, Evgeny laced his fingers over his belly and said, “Tell me.”
“He died,” she said.
“He does not look much dead to me.”
“He did then. After. We found him in the wood, cold as the ground and white as smoke. There was no mark on him. We brought him home, my husband and me, and the father came to pray with us before we buried him. It is hard work to dig a grave in the winter, so we were waiting for men from the village.”
“So you were mistaken,” Evgeny said. “About the boy’s death, I mean.”
“Oh, no. It was no mistake. Rostislav was dead. The father made sure of it—no blood moved in him.”
The son jerked his head to the side and grunted angrily. His mother’s eyes softened as she glanced at him.
“Still his blood does not move. He is not alive, sir, but he is not dead either.”
“A revenant.”
“If that is what you call it. He was laid out in the front room, and we slept close by. It was me who awoke to see him. He was standing up, a shadow in the dying embers of the fire. I spoke his name and he groaned, as he does now. Rostislav does not make words anymore. He is not himself.”
“What happened next?”
“When I said his name, my husband awoke. He thought our son to be an intruder, so he leapt from the floor and attacked him. Rostislav went mad, shrieking and shaking all over. There was a terrible fight, and in the end my poor husband lost two fingers.”
“I noticed that,” said Evgeny. “How did that happen, exactly?”
“Why, my son bit them off,” she said as though it was evident.
“He bit them off?”
The woman nodded once. “And swallowed them.”
“God in heaven.”
“Always he is hungry now. He screams terribly when there is no meat for him to eat. Sir, he did not know what he had done. Now I give him chickens, rabbits. The poor boy, he will not eat if the meat is cooked. That upsets him the most.”
“He eats them raw?”
She snorted.
“He eats them alive.”
Evgeny stepped back again, crossed himself. The woman hefted herself back to her feet and smoothed out her plain, worn skirts. In the front room, voices arose. Evgeny leaned through the door to find Yefim with his palms turned out to Rostislav’s father, shaking his head and pleading for the man to be calm.
“Take him, damn you!” the man barked at the secretary. “Take him away. We cannot kill what is already dead or I’d have done it by now. So take him from us and be gone from here.”
A choking sob emanated from the back room. It was followed shortly thereafter by a deep, savage growl. Yefim turned his gaze from the man to Evgeny, his eyebrows raised and hands tugging at his beard.
“Did you see it?”
“I saw it,” Evgeny replied.
“What shall we do?”
Evgeny looked to the man’s right hand, curled into a gnarled fist bereft of its pinky and ring fingers. All that remained of the missing digits was a crusty mass of scabs. The man opened his fist and allowed Evgeny to see his ruined hand more clearly. A fire burned in the wounded man’s eyes.
“Bring down the cage from the carriage, Yefim,” Evgeny said. “Have the driver assist you. We are taking Rostislav to St. Petersburg after all.”
On the bank of Fontanka River, where it flowed into the colossal Neva, there stood a surprisingly modest palace of just two stories and fourteen rooms. Surrounded by a sumptuous garden, the palace’s façade was yellow and featured reliefs of subjects mythological in origin between the first and second story windows. A harbor of no great size was built up to the front entrance, permitting the palace’s owner to sail directly to the door, and the encompassing gardens were filled with flora from all over Europe, a tranquil grotto, and several spouting fountains. The Dutch-style structure, with its enormous windows and high roof, was the Summer Palace of Tsar Peter, who was nowhere to be found among its oaken panels and tapestries and ornate stoves. For it was winter still, and the only men to wander the palace’s hallways and rooms were those appointed by Areskin to inventory the Tsar’s collection of artifacts on the second floor. And among these men were Evgeny Tretyakov and Yefim Azhishchenkov, the latter poking at coals in the painted stove whilst the former pled the case for Rostislav’s addition to the kunstkamera.
“I think perhaps you misapprehend the meaning of the term,” Areskin trilled in English, causing Evgeny to bring Yefim into the argument to translate. “A freak is by definition a human being born significantly different from the normal, functioning person. A dwarf, for example—”
The Scotsman gestured with his silver-handled cane toward the small form of a taxidermied man, no taller than three feet, supported by an iron rod at the back. The stuffed corpse wore the costume of a clown; its glass eyes shone blue and stared permanently across the cluttered room.
“Or this one,” Areskin continued, clopping his elaborately buckled shoes over to a row of large jars filled to the brim with yellow fluid. Crammed into one of them was a human fetus with two distinct heads. “Two heads, Tretyakov. The very essence of freakdom.”
Yefim chattered quietly in Russian, conveying the Surgeon-in-Residence’s musical yet incomprehensible words, as Evgeny’s face reddened and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. The Scotsman was impossible; a tremendous curiosity lay within reach, ready to be met with the Tsar’s wonder and approval, yet all Areskin wanted were bones and trinkets and toys.
“This fellow Rostislav, on the other hand . . . ” Areskin screwed his
mouth up to one side and took a deep breath, permitting a moment of silence so that the incessant moaning from the adjoining room could be clearly heard. “ . . . while obviously a madman, is by no means a freak nor is he suited to this collection. That man belongs in an asylum. Or perhaps the gibbet, seeing how he gravely assaulted his own father, as you say.
“Our directive according to the code of law is to deliver unto this assemblage freaks or other curiosities found, Mr. Tretyakov. I hardly think any one of us finds a garden variety lunatic all that curious, do you?”
“That madman,” Evgeny said through clenched teeth, “is dead.”
“So you have claimed,” Areskin scoffed. “A revenant, was it not? I suppose one of your upir is what you take this poor soul to be?”
“No, not precisely, but a dead man who walks. He is cold to the touch, he does not breathe regularly. His blood does not move. See for yourself, Doctor Areskin, and you will know that Rostislav is no poor soul or any other type of being with a soul. I know not how he walks, why he cries out like one in pain. I know not the source of his rage, nor why he attacks when he does. But I do know that there is nothing human in that boy, and that he ingested his father’s digits, and that is most assuredly quite curious, indeed.”
“Rostislav the Deathless,” Yefim muttered.
Areskin planted a hand on the hip of his waistcoat, his laced sleeves flouncing as he exhaled with force.
“Firstly, this is utter nonsense. A living dead man—really, Tretyakov. Secondly, and I dare say more importantly, when the Tsar and his family return here in the summer, do you honestly expect them to live with that devilish moaning night and day? One can hear it throughout the whole of the house, and likely out in the gardens.”
“But Doctor, it was you who sent us to investigate . . . ”
“And investigate you did, Mr. Tretyakov. All such claims must be examined should the resources to do so be available.”
“You also instructed me to bring the specimen back to St. Petersburg should I deem the claim true.”
“Here you demonstrate your severe lack in judgment, sir. The claim is clearly not true—I cannot say what I might have expected, a dancing skeleton perhaps, but all you have done is bring a raving imbecile into the home of the Emperor himself. A dangerous one as well, from the looks of it. Very poor judgment indeed.”
The Scot shook his head, nearly dislodging the brown wig from its placement upon his pate, and skulked off to the windows where a pair of bright-faced young men chattered over a wooden crate packed with small skulls. Areskin pointed at one with the end of his cane and knelt down to examine it. He had clearly closed the book on the issue of Rostislav.
Yefim grabbed his beard and shot a glance to the adjacent room, whence the sorrowful mewling continued unabated.
“What shall we do with him, then?” the secretary asked.
“It will be the knout for me if he stays here another minute,” Evgeny groused.
“These foreigners,” Yefim said, pulling his thick eyebrows into a tight knit. “Ordering us all about. That would never happen when Feodor was tsar . . . ”
Evgeny slapped his secretary hard across the face with an open hand, stunning him into silence.
“You ought to be more cautious in your choice of words about our government,” Evgeny said evenly. Yefim’s eyes welled up, but he nodded and looked away. “Go retrieve those boys that brought him up so we can take him back down.”
“And then where?”
Where?
Evgeny squashed his brow into a tight knit and considered his duty. Someday, he reckoned, His Majesty might hear word of the spectacular discovery Robert Areskin had turned away from inclusion in the kunstkamera. And against that day, Evgeny found it wise that Rostislav be cared for. His lot, after all, was service to the throne, not to a foreigner who could not even converse in Russian.
“I do not know, Yefim. To my own house, I suppose, until I determine his fate. And I suspect he will be wanting something to eat, don’t you?”
Yefim’s mouth stretched down into a grimace as he turned to the stairs to fetch the boys.
Evgeny Tretyakov’s house was considerably less regal than the Tsar’s modest summer palace: wooden with no reliefs, two stories but only five rooms. He employed no servants and he had no wife to clean or cook for him. The holes in his only frock coat were patched by himself; he was his own haberdasher and cobbler. And by the time Yefim’s boys left at the purple approach of dusk, there was nobody remaining to look after Rostislav but Evgeny.
He lighted every lamp and candle in the main room as well as a pipe, a western vice only recently permitted by law, and pondered what to do about the moaning corpse upstairs.
He had spoken to the Tsar’s Surgeon-in-Residence about Rostislav’s soullessness, but he considered now that he was in no position to judge whether or not the boy remained in possession of his soul. When a person died, Evgeny knew, his soul was transported back to God, to the Kingdom of Heaven, but what became of a young man who subsequently returned to life? His thoughts turned naturally to Lazarus, whereupon he sprang up to seize the Bible from the mantle, but the Word had nothing to say on the subject. Perhaps, he thought, the Lord restored the soul of Lazarus alongside his life. The notion seemed theologically sound, yet far less so in the case of the caged boy from Nebolchi.
Rostislav was no Lazarus, and whatever power had restored life to his bones seemed to Evgeny less than the Most Holy. Whether or not dangerously so he had yet to determine.
Returning the Bible to the mantle, he let the fire warm his stocking feet for a moment before the muffled moans exploded into desperate howling. Evgeny jumped, then cursed, and bolted for the stairs with a candle in hand. He stumbled on the landing, composed himself. Drew a deep, cold breath into his lungs. With a tremulous hand he pushed open the second door in the narrow hallway and held the candle up to cast its weak, guttering light on the iron cell in the center of the room.
Rostislav remained fettered, the cage locked. In the candlelight his gray, drawn face looked more ghoulish than ever—the small flame flickered and caused shadows to dance over the contours of his jutting cheekbones. The movement was like squirming maggots. Evgeny sneered.
The revenant bellowed. His shriveled lips receded from large, rotting teeth between which a pale tongue writhed. The jaw opened impossibly wide, as though Rostislav hoped it would make his howls louder. His yellow eyes shimmered mournfully beneath a trembling brow. He gripped the bars of the cage with pale, leathery hands that were bound at the wrists and screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
“Enough, Rostislav!” Evgeny roared. “Enough.”
Though his maw remained open, Rostislav’s screams died down to a pitiful squawk before he fell silent. His fingers loosened around the bars, and Evgeny saw how only a few of them had any vestiges of the nails left on them. Rostislav crooked his head to the side and moaned softly, his foggy eyes trained on Evgeny.
“You unfortunate wretch,” said Evgeny, pursing his lips and meeting Rostislav’s gaze. “What on earth could have done this to you?”
By way of response, the wretch poked a gnarled forefinger into his mouth, groaned pitifully, and bit down with all the force he could muster. His eyes bulged as the digit snapped free of the hand, and with a tightly knotted brow Rostislav swallowed his own finger.
“Christ have mercy,” Evgeny cried, covering his own mouth with his hand and taking a few steps back, away from the cage. “Lord Jesus Christ, why have you forsaken this boy?”
The revenant boy heaved and shook, but he did not cry. Evgeny decided the boy could not cry, even if he wanted to. So in his stead, Evgeny shed tears for the both of them. And when he was nearly done, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his blouse, he whispered, “Do not do that again, you poor man. I shall bring you what you require.”
The man on the ground rose up enough to take the small copper bowl handed down to him by the Orthodox priest. He accepted the gift with both hands, smiled a
largely toothless smile, and brought the bowl up to his soot-black nose to sniff at its contents. From the safe embrace of the shadows catty-corner to the church, Evgeny observed as the man’s grin then faded away.
“Cool water and chicken fat, is it?” growled the man.
The priest, his alabaster face masked almost entirely by a thick nest of dark hair, straightened up and nodded.
“I can offer but little, my friend. But please accept this small bounty and consider the gifts of Christ.”
“Such gifts,” spoke the man, leaning back now against the wooden outer wall of the meager church. “Such miracles.”
The priest smiled and his cheeks reddened in the moments before the man hurled the bowl at the father’s head, nicking him by the edge against the forehead and digging out a broad wound that spilled a curtain of blood over the holy man’s left eye.
“Tell your Christ to fuck off, charlatan!” barked the wretch. “I do not want his shit poor gifts.”
The back of Evgeny’s neck burned at the outrage. Scampering off, the priest held both hands to the seeping gash and muttered curses through his beard as he vanished into the church. The man on the ground chortled and kicked at the air, his mirth tainted by rage.
“Chicken water!” he bellowed at the night. Men and some few women detoured in wide arcs to avoid his immediate sphere of hate and madness. “Christ piss!”
There were, Evgeny knew, a multitude of such wasted souls staggering the streets and alleys of Muscovy’s cities, in St. Petersburg and Moscow. Madmen and women, the sick and the forgotten. Worse still for them if they were foreigners or Jews, but this man appeared to be neither. Merely an angry rascal, too hateful to take an offer of sustenance from a man of God on high. Filthy and unkempt, the man nonetheless looked well enough to work, to push a plough or carry a musket. It was the wretch at home who could not care for himself, whose infirmity relegated him to another’s charge. This man, conversely, cried foul at the loving assistance of Christ’s own proxy. A wastrel. Unrepentant.
Ideal.