“And little TJ, well, I’ll be honest, I drank a bit after Joey’s dad left. I don’t know who TJ’s father is. Listen to me, I sound like a damn soap opera.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“I sound like I’m just talking about ordinary crap!” She started crying. “I’m talking like nothing terrible happened!”
“Really, you’re okay. You’re just trying to tell your story. We all sound like that when we’re just trying to tell our stories.”
She nodded hesitantly, but he could tell by her eyes she didn’t really agree. He thought she might even be trying to offer him a smile, but she couldn’t quite pull it off. “I don’t know why I thought I could be a good mother—I guess I thought once the kids were there it would just come out of me naturally. I kept thinking about how it was going to be with them, how I’d make them happy and content and how appreciative they’d be, and the loving things they’d say. And even when they weren’t like that—Paul had such a rotten mouth on him, and Joey was always throwing tantrums and breaking things, and TJ, that baby just couldn’t stop crying—I kept telling myself that one day we’d be this unbelievable family I’d imagined, if only I did the right things.
“But I didn’t even know what the right things were.”
“I know—there’s no rule book. You just have to do the best you can.” She looked at him again as if surprised he’d spoken, surprised he was even there.
“They’d been driving me crazy all day,” she said again. “Paul was in one of his aggravating moods. He was always so bright, so clever. Math was easy for him, and he was always taking things apart, putting them back together again. He could fix pretty much anything. Smarter than me, and he knew it. He only listened to me when it suited him.
“He’d been doing this thing all day. Working up the two little ones, tickling them, then making them cry, then tickling them again. Between the tickling and the crying and the screaming they were so red-faced I thought they were going to pass out. He really knew how to play them, like they were his instruments. And they let him. If he let them rest for just thirty seconds they’d say ‘more’ or ‘again,’ so out of breath you could hardly understand them. They loved it. They loved it.
“But I’d had enough. I was ready to scream. All day, you know? All damn day. I told him nicely at first to cut it out, and he did for a little bit. He even said ‘sorry.’ But he didn’t mean it—fifteen minutes later he started up again. I used to spank him when he pulled that crap, when he was smaller. It never stopped him for more than five minutes. Joey too—never did a bit of good. It became a part of their game—it was just part of the story of the day. You scream, you run around, Mom spanks you and you cry and rub your behind, and then you run around screaming even more than before. Joey’s eyes would get all puffy from crying, and his face bright red. I swear sometimes he’d be laughing and crying at the same time, like some kind of crazy person. I’d still spank him—I didn’t know what else to do. And when they pulled that crap in public—which they often did—I just couldn’t take it. I’d just lose it, and spank them as hard as I could. Paul would usually just laugh, but the others would bawl. I never wanted them to be afraid of me, but they have to be a little afraid of me, don’t they, if they’re going to obey? One time one woman even called the cops on me. Made me furious, but later, I couldn’t really blame her.”
She stopped then and he looked around. The sun was going down. The distant ruined city glowed red. Most of the residents had gone back down inside the building. It would be feeding time soon, and that was the last thing you wanted to miss. But Daniel didn’t believe she was thinking about eating. A few roaches still wandered the edges of the roof, gazing at the residents, gazing at the uneven tear of the horizon.
“By sunset I was exhausted, but Paul was still at it, winding up the other two until they were screeching like they were in pain, and maybe they were. When you’re a kid, so much feels like pain, don’t you think? I’d had it and I just wanted to lie down for a few minutes. I told Paul to keep a lid on things and I went into the bedroom to lie down.
“I shouldn’t have taken that nap for lots of reasons. Mostof all because I always feel strange after one of those naps, like I’m not all there. My dreams that afternoon were as high-pitched and jangly as my day had been. When I woke up and walked into the room I wasn’t quite sure what I was seeing. They were all three giggling, actually more peaceful than they’d been all day.
“All three of them were sitting in the window. Paul and my two babies. All of them, my babies. More than that, they were straddling the window sill like a horse, one leg in and one leg dangling out. We’re three stories up. Paul glanced over at me and smiled, patting Joey on the head, like he was proud of what he’d done.
“‘Paul! That’s dangerous! Get them off there!’ I yelled, but not as loud as I might have. I didn’t want to startle them.
“He just looked at me and frowned. And then he said, ‘Don’t be stupid.’ That’s what he said to me, his mother.
“All I wanted was to show Paul how dangerous it was so that he wouldn’t do it again. Sometimes you have to be creative—that’s what some of the other mothers in the building had told me. I don’t know. Sometimes you get these ideas and you don’t know where they came from but they sound good for some reason. So I ran at him, saying ‘You want to fly out of that window? Is that what you want?’ Trying to scare him, you know?
“He looked up just as I got there, his eyes so big and his face so white? I had my palm out like I was going to push him. And he just naturally leaned away, and then he was gone, and the babies, and the babies were holding on to him.”
Daniel found himself taking a step back from her, as if she were something deadly. But she appeared not to notice. She was too focused on remembering, capturing and conveying every detail.
“I screamed, I guess, although I don’t think I ever actually heard the scream. My head went all white inside, like the inside of an explosion. I didn’t look out the window. I couldn’t. I just turned and ran out into the hall, and down those long flights of steps, my legs pounding like some kind of athlete.
“And on the way down, I kept thinking about how it all might turn out okay. There were some canvas awnings above the first floor, and I remembered how the upholsterer on the block used to leave his waste bin nearby, so they always might land on something soft, and the babies, babies have flexible bones, don’t they? That’s what people are always saying. But I couldn’t remember exactly where all those things were, so I couldn’t quite make myself feel better, no matter how hard I tried.”
She stopped then. He waited, but she didn’t say anything more. And although he didn’t want to ask, he finally did ask, “What did you find, when you got to the bottom floor, when you got outside?”
She looked at him with a vaguely puzzled expression, as if he should already know. “I didn’t get to the bottom floor. I didn’t get off those stairs. I woke up here. I thought maybe I’d fallen, going so fast. I thought maybe I’d fallen off those stairs and died and woke up here in Hell, not knowing, never knowing whether my babies died or not.”
Then she was up and running for the edge of the roof. He couldn’t stop her. But the roaches closed in, and she screamed when they touched her, wrapped her in their segmented legs, and bore her down.
The boy was nowhere to be seen.
9
THE TIME BETWEEN Daniel’s scenarios lengthened from days apart to sometimes a separation of a week or more. He had to wait over three weeks after his last time. He spent a great deal of time in the waiting room, watching as the others were ushered out. Sometimes he was the only one left in the room. Should he stay there or return to his bunk? He was always tired, and he knew that if he lay down on his bunk he would fall asleep, and then he would dream, and he was dreaming enough—his own dreams or someone else’s—but enough was enough.
Was he being singled out for some reason? Falstaff had seemed distant lately, reluctant to engage in con
versation. Were the roaches suspicious of him now?
Then one morning they grabbed him along with the others. He’d always hated the process, but this time he was strangely excited. Whatever it was going to be, at least it would be different.
Daniel’s initial transition into this new consciousness had him confused. The mind he entered felt altered, poisoned or inebriated. A roar of words, the language wet and too much of it, awkward in both his mouth and head. Slavic. Russian perhaps. He thought of Doctor Zhivago, and some old cartoon involving spies. But this oppressive mental space and its linguistic assault were a flood of cold hatred, pouring undiminished into a reservoir hollowed out of the deaths of millions. Koba was the name floated up onto all that hate, but it was one of many this old man had used in his lifetime.
The strange notion thatKoba was aware of him produced a sensation like insects marching down his back and suddenly vanishing into his spine.
A softer, dimmer voice lingered in the background, the mind lubricated sufficiently to be heard by the juice, Madzhari, that young Georgian wine.
The pinkish bud has opened,
Rushing to the pale-blue violet
And, stirred by a light breeze,
The lily of the valley has bent over the grass.
My soul seems happy,
And the heart is tranquil,
And yet, will this hope hold true
That overfills me today?
The poems, sometimes signed Soselo, sometimes J J-shvilli, and sometimes anonymous, were by the same man, this Koba, this man of steel, this Stalin, who now waved his forefinger in anger at the young voice, and of course it dissipated, because Stalin’s finger was more powerful than any gun, capable of disappearing millions with a single pointed gesture.
The short legs staggered forward. Despite the immense pain behind his left eye he managed to push his eyes open. He was in pajama trousers, an undershirt, some sort of vest. Daniel probed gently for clues. The body waved his arms in annoyance, as if trying to keep his questions away. Something was wrong here. Daniel wondered if Stalin had any clearer idea than he did what was happening to him.
Я закончил. Я закончил.
The words made rubble in his head until he could make better sense of them. I’m finished. I’m finished. I can trust no one, not even myself.
Я не могу доверять никому, даже себе.
Where was he? The room was large, but modestly furnished. A sofa with rounded bolsters and a high back. A large number of identical windows covered with simple, heavy white drapes. A wainscoting ran the walls, light wood, perhaps birch. Some kind of oriental rug. He walked unsteady as a child, his eyes hazed with pain, into another, smaller room, which seemed slightly more familiar.
He was having to endure the worst headache he could remember, but the answer came quickly enough: the nearer dacha in Kuntsevo. They’d had their usual film at the Kremlin, then travelled here for dinner, music, drinking and the customary foolishness. The others had left early in the morning, leaving Stalin alone with his staff. No one would come find him unless he called for them. They’d be too afraid.
He’d slept on the couch in the small dining room all day, then gotten up that evening and turned on the light. He was confused—he normally didn’t sleep this long. He wasn’t even sure what day it was.
He felt somewhat dizzy, but he’d been feeling that now and then for weeks. His blood pressure had been high, and yet there were always good reasons for high blood pressure. He had to do everything himself.
Had he hada steambath yesterday? He thought so, a long one. He remembered the way it had melted his thoughts, leaving tired, empty spaces behind. Perhaps the worst of his memories had vanished. They’d warned him it was bad for his heart, but who knew if that was true. He trusted his doctors least of all.
Still he moved forward, but so slowly, as if time itself were on its last legs. His own legs had become so weak, so shaky, he did not recognize them. They appeared to belong to someone else. He could barely struggle across the rug of the small dining room. It was Persian. Was this the one given to him by the Shah? It troubled him that he did not immediately know the answer. In Siberia men older than he was now had been riding horses and starting bar fights, bedding women half as young. The troubles of leadership had sapped his vitality. Once he’d been a cowboy, a bank robber, a Robin Hood robbing the rich and giving to his leader Lenin. He’d been like some highway bandit, his saddlebags full of money.
It had been up to Stalin to keep the revolution financed, and every time he had stepped up to the job. He’d not only been a man of steel, he’d also been a man of action. He’d exerted his considerable personal power over people, and he’d gotten things done.
He still had the power, of course. More now than ever. But it was all at considerable remove. He’d become like Gorky—he wrote the story that made his characters dance. He did nothing himself, and yet he made the orders that did everything. He outlined the plot, and then everywhere mayhem occurred. There was a certain satisfaction in that—it allowed him to be clever.
He remembered that army officer, not that long ago. The fellow had the temerity to visit Stalin himself at his office in the Kremlin. Stalin had been flabbergasted—had the man no friends to warn him against such a plan? He said there had been complaints about him, some dereliction or other, and he wanted Stalin, their great father, to know that these complaints were not true. Stalin had almost laughed in his face—he was too bold—then had him arrested two days later. It amused Stalin to play this way, to create some tragic story out of someone’s life, some dark comedy. He actually couldn’t remember the officer’s name or what the supposed complaints had been about—he’d never even seen them. The man might be perfectly happy today if he hadn’t bothered Stalin with his troubles.
Before Stalin had had the great hero D.F. Serdich arrested he had toasted him at a reception. He had pretended to be so impressed by the man. If he hadn’t been burdened by the demands of leadership perhaps Stalin could have been a great actor!
And in 1938, he believed, the winter I. A. Akulov, secretary of the central executive committee,had fallen while skating, almost dying from the resulting concussion. Stalin had taken great pains and expense to bring in great surgeons from abroad to save the secretary’s life. After a long recovery Akulov returned to work, whereupon Stalin had him arrested and shot.
Stalin had done these things, and he was Stalin, as he was so many other names. People did not understand why he did such things. It was simple. He was at his most powerful when no one felt safe.
He broke them. He broke every one of them. But now perhaps his run had ended. He had had these moments of pain and confusion before during these past few years. But this was different. Never for so long, and this feeling as if he were locked inside himself. A cramped, stinking cell with poor windows.
What had happened? What had happened last night? They’d watched their usual movie—Beria, Khrushchev, Malenkov, Bulganin, the usual bunch—but which movie had it been? Had he already been so drunk he hadn’t paid attention? He had been thinking about horses, cowboys, so perhaps it had been one of his John Ford movies, Stagecoach perhaps. He hated the ideology of those cowboys, but could not stop watching these films. Even though his sympathies lay with the Indians, who had to struggle against the expansionist policies of the imperialist white settlers. Why hadn’t the KGB yet carried out his orders to assassinate John Wayne? Incompetence and betrayal were everywhere. Wayne might be justan actor, but his ideas were a threat to the cause.
But very soon he would drop the bomb on the Americans. That would take care of his John Wayne problem, and all the rest.
Was Comrade Bolshakov still alive, or had he already had him shot? He should know this, and it somewhat frightened him that he did not. And yet it was also a somewhat amusing game. If the man was dead, who was choosing the films? Who was alive and who was dead? It only mattered when he lost track. Who might he order killed tod
ay? He would make them all think it could be any one of them, and of course this was true. All they had to do was step the wrong way. This was how a leader leads—no one should know what his next move might be. A great leader was a Lord of Mayhem. Gospodin Bespredela. Perhaps that would be his next name.
Whoever was in charge at the Great Kremlin Palace cinema, he would have him put on Volga Volga tonight. Stalin needed to sing. Stalin needed to dance, or die trying. He would make sure that Nikita was there. He’d make him perform a Ukranian folk dance for them all, squatting on his fat haunches and kicking out his heels. That fat fool, he reminded him so much of that bureaucratic clown Uncle Byvalov in the movie. Hilarious.
The vague aroma of cooking meat was in the air. He hated the smells of cooking. What were his guards up to? If necessary he would get rid of them all. Death solves all problems-no man, no problem. Svetlana said he had no heart, no gratitude. His own daughter! Her mother had called him a murderer before she’d shot herself. They simply did not understand how a leader must be, what he must do. Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs. It made you weak.
Everything was his business, to the kind and number of cars his associates had to the number of urinals on the streets of Moscow.
It had been his own weakness to marry, to have children. So he had to minimize the damage his family could cause him. A true Bolshevik had no business having a family. He’d said this many times. A family distracted, softened you. He should have taken his own advice. His Svetlana, his sparrow. When she was a child in her letters she pretended she was dictator of Russia and Stalin would pretend to obey her orders. And yet however precious she had been to him, she would betray him as they all had. She had visited him when? Yesterday or the day before. He’d been clipping pictures of the happy Russian children from the magazine Ogonyok. He’d given her one. “See, they love me,” he’d said, and pointed the scissors at her the way he sometimes pointed his finger, as if he might snip snip her out of the air, out of the world.
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