Genius Loci

by Edited by Jaym Gates

  “Yeah!” she said, running over to the log. She had a little trouble getting to the top—it was still a huge log, despite the passage of decades—but once she did her imagination took over. Dylan looked on as she pretended to drive it, ran back and forth along it while monsters chased her, or simply sat and watched the creek flow underneath it. It shocked him to realize he hadn’t thought about himself or the disease for at least ten minutes.

  But even the biggest fallen log in the forest couldn’t hold a child’s attention forever. “What else is there around here?” she asked, jumping down onto the creek bank. Dylan winced a little, thinking how that kind of stunt would hurt his ankles these days.

  “Want to know where to find the best mud for making mud pies in the whole forest?” he said.

  “Yes!”

  They continued east down the creek. In a few places branches and silt had clogged up the stream, slowing the water and creating deep pools. Maybe I should bring my rake down here and clear some of that gunk out.

  “See here?” he said when they reached the spot he remembered. “That part of the bank is perfect: soft mud, and no tree roots in the way. Anytime you want some mud, this is the place to get it.”

  “Okay!” Sylvie said.

  “Hey, check this out,” Dylan said, crouching down for a closer look. “Do you know what kind of animal made these tracks?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “Squirrel?”

  “No, squirrels’ feet aren’t that big, and they don’t weigh enough to leave such deep marks. They’re raccoon tracks. You know what a raccoon is?”

  Sylvie nodded.

  “People think they come down to creeks like this to wash their food, but really they’re just foraging or playing. This raccoon was probably trying to catch himself a crayfish for dinner.”

  “Yuck!” Sylvie said, making a face.

  “Well, raccoons like ’em,” Dylan said with a grin. As he watched her play by the creek a little piece of her sense of wonder settled into his soul, bringing with it a tranquility he hadn’t felt in years. This is far, far too fine a place to leave behind, he thought, then realized to his chagrin that he’d stolen from Dickens.

  “This is for you,” Sylvie said, holding out a water-smoothed stone. She’d carefully washed it in the creek, then dried it on her dress. He took it in his hands. Green, smooth, cool to the touch, it looked and felt nothing like any of the dozens of stones he’d found down here as a boy. “Thank you,” he said softly. “I’ll treasure it.”

  A flash of red caught their eyes. A cardinal with some strands of grass in its beak flew past them and landed in a nearby tree. “Look, he’s building a nest!” Sylvie said.

  “He sure is. That means there’ll be some baby birds soon.”

  “I can’t wait to see them!”

  “Neither can I,” Dylan said, surprised to discover that he meant it. He stood there for a moment, thinking about those birds… and the fruit on the blackberry patches later in the season… and the glorious tapestry of colors in autumn. It’s things like the woods that make life worth living despite the pain.

  Like a demon summoned by his thoughts, the pain chose that moment to stab him in the gut. He hadn’t taken any painkillers since late yesterday.

  “Are you okay, Dylan?” Sylvie said.

  “I’m fine, sweetie, but I need to get home. Can I take you back to your mother?”

  “No, I’m gonna stay and play some more. Will you be here tomorrow?”

  “I will,” he said with a smile. “We can look for turtles. Would you like that?”

  “Yes!” she said, jumping up and down and then giving him a hug.

  “See you tomorrow, then. Be careful down here, okay?”

  “I will.”

  Dylan climbed back up the hill, sometimes holding onto trees to get past the steepest places. At the top, before he left the forest and walked up the street to his house, he turned and looked back at Sylvie. He waved, and she waved back. He smiled and headed home.

  #

  When Dylan had gone, Sylvie walked over to a huge old beech tree, one whose roots reached many feet from its thick trunk. She put her hand on the silvery-grey bark—and slowly faded away, like a dream upon waking.

  The leaves of the beech tree rustled as if in the wind, speaking a language no human had ever understood or ever would. This man has given of himself to save us. Now we will save him, and the circle be maintained.

  Throughout the woods, all the other trees rustled their agreement.

  IRON FELIKS

  Anatoly Belilovsky

  One of the most controversial statues in Russia is known as Iron Feliks. The statue was built in 1958 by Yvgeny Vuchetich. It's a statue of a man who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people—Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the first Soviet secret police organization (it was succeeded by the KGB).

  Felix Dzerzhinsky was born in 1877 in what is now Belarus. He devoted his life entirely to Marxist revolution, spending years in brutal prisons and in exile in Siberia because of his revolutionary activities. After the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, formed the All-Russia Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-revolution and Sabotage, better known as Cheka. Cheka's mission was to eliminate counter-revolutionary elements, and Dzerzhinsky was put in charge.

  During the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution, Cheka, which earned the nickname "The Red Terror", tortured and executed thousands of prisoners without trial. The estimated number of people murdered ranges from thousands to hundreds of thousands. Dzerzhinsky and Lenin were unrepentant about the methods of Cheka, claiming that they would eliminate any opposition by any means necessary. "We represent in ourselves organized terror," said Dzerzhinsky.

  Dzerzhinsky was nicknamed "Iron Feliks", and the statue made in his honor was an iron giant, weighing fifteen tons. The statue was toppled in August 1991, during the massive protests that followed an attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. The statue, along with other fallen monuments, ended up at Muzeon Park.

  Since 1991, there have been many attempts to restore the statute to the park, most recently in 2013. To date, lawmakers have rejected all proposals, fearing that the statue will attract protests. Dzerzhinsky never saw himself as a villain. He saw himself as the guardian of a beleaguered state. Today he is hated, feared, and, by some people, loved.

  ***

  The old man looked both ways before crossing Politekhnichesky Street. His dog waited, the leash slack between the collar and the old man’s hand. When the old man stepped off the curb, the dog followed.

  A flock of pigeons worried at a heel of bread in the middle of the street, and as the old man and the dog walked past them toward Lubyanka, and as the birds fluttered into the air, a little girl peered out from behind one of the spruces. She followed the pigeons’ flight until they disappeared behind the trees, then turned toward the dog.

  “Babushka, look!” she exclaimed. “Sobachka!”

  She jumped in place, looking from the dog to the old man and back again.

  The old man looked as if he had been carved all in straight lines and acute angles, and as the pair approached she danced aside as if to keep from cutting herself against the edges of his shadow-colored silhouette.

  An elderly woman emerged from the shade of the spruce.

  “Some sobachka this is,” the old woman said to the girl. “Everything is diminutive for you now, isn't it?” She reached for the girl, pulled her into a protective embrace. “A sobaka will bite your face off,” she said, “but a sobachka will just lick it.” She turned to the old man. “This sobachka looks like he's done his share of biting.”

  “Not when he is with me,” the old man said, and to the old woman’s ear it sounded as if it came from deeper places than most.

  The old woman's eyes turned to the dog. The dog returned her gaze.

  The old woman looked away first.

 
; “Good thing that leash is strong, for a dog with eyes like this,” she said and looked down at the little girl, relaxing her hold.

  The little girl slipped free and took a step forward.

  “What breed is it? I've never seen its like,” the old woman added.

  “Georgian Mountain dog,” the old man said.

  “Don’t trust Georgians,” the old woman said. “Though I suppose dogs are different. Nothing but savages in those hills. You sure the dog is safe?”

  The old man lifted his hand. The leash wound three times around it.

  The old woman turned to look behind her, at the black bulk of Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky's statue that stood watch over Lubyanka square. The sun shone upon it, as always in Moscow between Lenin’s Birthday in April and Victory Day in May, summer-bright and winter-cold. It brought a blue glow to spruces whose branches had spent the winter peering greenish-gray from under mounds of snow, and dabbed the roundabout under the monument in decadent pointillistic swirls of pansies. Behind the statue, the beige facade of the FSB Headquarters (but no one ever got used to calling it that, and still referred to it as the KGB more often than not,) turned a delicate shade of peach.

  “I don't suppose you'd consider walking with us toward Iron Feliks?” the old woman said. “My granddaughter wanted to go play in the pansies at its feet. I am afraid of the cars in the square, they drive like the possessed here, but maybe for the four of us they'd slow down?”

  “Yes, yes please,” the little girl said. She pirouetted toward the old woman. “Can we go to Iron Feliks?” She turned her head toward the old man. “Please?”

  The old man looked at the dog, then nodded. “We can do that,” he said. “Did your grandmother teach you how to cross the street correctly?”

  “Yes,” the little girl said. “You look both ways,” she said and turned left and right with slow exaggerated bows. “And you keep your feet on the ‘zebra’ and you hold on to an adult at all times.” She patted the dog. “He’s an adult, right?”

  The old man nodded again, his wrinkled face creasing into a half-smile.

  “So I’ll hold on to him,” said the little girl. She stepped forward and took hold of the dog's collar. “Why do they call Dzerzhinsky the Iron Feliks?” she asked. “Babushka says that’s because he’s a statue, but then she crosses herself every time we pass him, and he isn’t even a saint…”

  The old woman crossed herself again. “How do you explain such things to a child?” she said. “She's never even been to a funeral, the lucky girl, and on a good day can maybe count to a hundred. How do you tell her what 'Revolutionary Terror' means when she's not afraid of a dog with fangs the size of my pinkie? 'Fiery Felix,' 'Sword of the Revolution.' Rivers of blood in basements.” She glanced at the statue again, sighed, raised her arm and brought it down again dismissively. “All she knows is skazki,” she added. “Everything starts with 'Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away…' and ends with 'To the wedding I went, mead and beer I drank, down my mustache it flowed and none in my mouth.' Nothing but fairy tales.” She ran her hand across her lips as if wiping an imaginary mustache, smiled, and sighed.

  The dog's head rose. He turned to look at the old man. The old man cupped his chin, turned to the little girl. The little girl raised her eyebrows; her eyes went wide, twin circles of blue.

  “Perhaps,” the old man said, “a fairy tale is what we should tell her?”

  “Yes yes please,” the little girl said, her hands reaching, one to the old man, one to her grandmother. “Please tell me a skazka. Please please!”

  The old woman turned and started toward Lubyanka. “Why not? She can listen on the way,” she said. “As Pushkin wrote, 'A skazka is a lie—'”

  “'—but in it is a hint, and a lesson,'” the little girl quoted. “But mostly I hope it's interesting. And maybe a little scary.”

  The old woman sighed. “Interesting and scary,” she said. “Yes, that's Iron Feliks all right.”

  The little girl ran to catch up with the old woman, took her hand. The old man and the dog took longer steps until they drew abreast with them. Under the little girl's questioning stare they walked another few steps in silence.

  The little girl drew a breath to speak, opened her mouth. The old man spoke first.

  “Once upon a time…” he said and paused a moment, looking at the old woman “…there was great wickedness in the land—” he continued.

  “That’s what Grandma says,” the little girl interrupted. “Except she says there’s great wickedness in the land now.”

  The old woman's shoulders convulsed again.

  “Be as it may,” the old man said. “Now, do you want to hear the story or not?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “There was,” he repeated, “great wickedness. And the people said that the wickedness comes from some people thinking they are better than others…”

  “But some people are better than others,” the little girl said. “Everybody says so.”

  “Yes,” the old man said. “And that, they said, is at the root of wickedness, and everyone must be equal and then everyone would be good. And for that, you need a Revolution.”

  “Lenin made the Revolution, right?” the little girl asked.

  “With a little help,” the old man said. “And Lenin’s friends could only be people with fiery hearts, cool heads, and clean hands.”

  The little girl looked at her hands. “Babushka always makes me wash my hands,” she announced. “Especially before I sit down to eat.”

  “That means your grandmother cares about you,” the old man said. “So Lenin decided he'd keep his hands clean, and he built Iron Feliks: At his front a hammer to beat down heads that stick up, and a sickle to cut off ones that won't bend; at his heart a steam engine like a parovoz, and the rest of him is cast iron: feed him coal, let him drink water, and he'll go all day and all night, with a fire in his heart.”

  They reached another curb and stopped. The four looked left and right, their turns almost comically simultaneous. The old woman tightened her grip on the little girl's hand before they went into the square.

  “What about the cool head?” the little girl said. “Who got that?”

  “That was Stalin,” the old man said.

  The old woman nodded, sighed, and crossed herself again. “Oh yes,” she said. “Cold. He was the one who drove Iron Feliks, used some people as cogs, some people as rails, some people as fuel." She looked up, her eyes distant. "You'd give anything to be a cog,” she added quietly.

  The dog stepped forward onto the flower bed.

  “Look, we are here!” the little girl exclaimed. “Look at all these pansies!" She bent down. “Babushka, I’m going to make you a buketik,” she said. “I’ll only pull up the nicest pansies. All kinds: red, purple, white. Just for you.”

  “See what I mean?” the old woman said. “At this age, it's all diminutives. Buketik, not bouquet. Ah, to be young again.”

  The little girl drew herself up to her full height to look up at her grandmother. She put her hands on her hips.

  “But, babushka,” she said, drawing out her words, “these are pansies. They are tiny tsvetochki; you can make a big bouquet from big tsveti like roses or peonies, but from little pansies you can only make a little buketik.”

  “And an answer for everything,” the old woman said. “Children,” she said, and gave another bark of mirthless laughter.

  “But do you know,” the old man said, “when to stop pulling up pansies?” The old woman and the dog both looked up at his voice, but the girl squatted and reached down.

  “Well,” she said, “I have to make a buketik for Babushka, and for mommy and for daddy and one for Grandpa’s grave—he died in the War—”

  “And soon there won’t be any pansies around Iron Feliks, and won’t he be cross then?” the old man said.

  “You can’t make buketiki without pulling up tsvetochki,” the little girl
said. She chose a purple flower to add to the red and yellow flowers already in her hand. “But do go on,” she said. “What happened to Iron Feliks?”

  “He pulled up too many flowers,” he said.

  The old woman's head whipped around to face him. Her hand flew to her open mouth.

  The little girl looked up. “How's that?” she said.

  “He was supposed to pull up weeds, but he pulled too many flowers instead,” the old man said. “Soon, there was no one to do the work.”

  “Well, I can understand him,” the little girl said with an inflection clearly copied from an adult, and reached down again. “Weeds are so much harder to pull, and they are useless. Can't make a buketik out of weeds, right?”

  “No,” said the old man. “No, you cannot.”

  “But did they punish Iron Feliks?” the little girl asked. “What did they do to him? When I misbehave, my mother puts me in a corner…” She trailed off, her mouth quirking downward.

  “They didn't do anything,” the old man said. “Just let him rust.”

  “And what about the others?” the little girl said. “What are their names?”

  “Lenin died and went into the Mausoleum,” the old man said. “He is under glass, his hands will never get dirty. And Stalin…” He hesitated.

  The dog looked at him.

  “Please please,” she said. “Tell me about Stalin! Did he gather flowers, too?”

  The dog's tail stopped wagging.

  The old man sighed. “I think I’ll let your grandmother tell the story,” he said and clutched the dog’s leash.

  The little girl straightened. “Here, take these!” she said and handed her grandmother a bouquet of pansies. “Can you tell me about Stalin?” she continued. “Did he make proper bouquets?”

  The old woman chuckled. “Proper bouquets? That’s one way of putting it,” she said. Her hand went to her temple. “Must be this sun,” she said. “I'm getting a headache. Let's go back.”