Black Sun

by Owen Matthews

  Arzamas’s Central Post Office loomed into view. Rows of chandeliers glowed in the deserted hall. Two service windows were still open for telegrams and long-distance calls. Vasin felt in his pocket for a coin and tapped the metal counter with it. The telephone operator bustled out of a back room, a bundle of floral print and peroxide hair.

  “Long-distance call. Moscow. Urgent.”

  “Personal or service?”

  “Personal.”

  The operator slapped a long form in front of him.

  “Fill this out.”

  Vasin had seen foreign travel applications that were shorter. Dipping an old-fashioned steel pen into an inkwell provided by the State for citizens’ convenience, he filled out his passport details. The name and address of the party he wished to call, the purpose of the call, his rank and address and his superior’s name, the number of minutes he wanted—six—to be paid in advance. He blotted the form and handed it back. The operator’s fingers danced on a large abacus.

  “Eight rubles thirty kopecks. It’ll be booth three.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “As long as it takes. Authorization.”

  Vasin settled wearily onto a long oak bench polished smooth by citizens’ backsides.

  What had gone wrong? He did not blame Vera. She had just become what he always knew she was, if he was honest with himself. She wanted what every Soviet housewife wanted: an apartment, a family, a new television, friends, acceptance. He’d wanted all that, too, at the beginning. They had both been twenty. Marriage had seemed a preordained stage of unfolding adulthood, like receiving one’s first passport or Communist Youth League ticket. 1947: The old world had been broken, the new one not yet born. Everyone who had called themselves young during the war had been transformed by the horror and hardship. The old-young soldiers seemed to envy Sasha’s and Vera’s youth, their innocence. And inexplicably resent them for it. At the wedding, a rowdy affair that involved dispensing free booze to their neighbors, the drunk snaggle-toothed old women toasted happiness, love, and peace in the world. Vasin wondered if they had actually known any of those things.

  For Vasin and his young wife, marriage was an escape to a room of their own. But in this room they had to learn to live with each other, as well as learn who they were themselves. In the subsequent years Vasin had changed. Something deeper than just marital boredom and the strains of the job.

  “This one wants to rearrange the world to suit him,” Vera’s mother had said one afternoon at Vasin’s in-laws’ tiny dacha as he sat drunk on homemade moonshine. “Our dreamer.”

  He’d been having some kind of political argument with Vera’s father. Anyone cowardly enough to allow himself to be taken prisoner by the Germans was an enemy of the people, had been the old brawler’s point. Screw ’em. Spies. The old man refused to believe Vasin that the world was moving on. That there were new rules. Now the nation’s battle was no longer for survival but for progress, for plenty. Apartments. Moon rockets. Washing machines. Shorter working hours. Cheaper vodka. At least they’d agreed on that.

  The ringing phone sounded like a fire alarm in the echoing marble hall. Vasin hurried to the wooden booth and closed the glass doors behind him. He picked up the receiver and heard several female voices on the line. The call had already been connected.

  “Go ahead, caller,” said the loudest of the voices. There was no click to signify that the operator had disconnected.

  “Vera?”

  “So how are you, my darling?”

  He recognized the sliding intonation at once. She’d been drinking.

  “It’s him,” she said to someone beside her.

  “Send him to sit on a dick,” said a shrill woman’s voice from the background.

  “Vera. I hope you are well. How is Nikita?”

  “Normal. And you, dearest? How’s the trip? They put you up in a nice hotel? Soft bed? Clean sheets?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “And have you found yourself a nice little tart there, Sasha?”

  “Come on, Vera. Stop it. This is a trunk line.”

  “I see. Staying faithful to your tart in Moscow? Katya? Katya fucking Orlova…”

  Vasin slammed the receiver down, wincing.

  “For God’s sake, Vera,” he said, as though she could still hear him. “What are you doing?”

  He picked up the phone again, but the line had gone dead.

  Vasin stalked out of the hall into the moonlight. The woman at the counter watched him go with a smirk.

  Would the silent listeners on the line bother filing a report? Had they heard? Vasin imagined fingers clattering out a transcript on a typewriter, the carriage jolting as it bounced into uppercase to capitalize the proper names per standard procedure. Zaitsev’s beefy fingers holding the paper. His thick chuckle. And when he reached the last words, KATYA ORLOVA, a ripe curse. The name that could cut off Vasin’s life as abruptly as a finger pressed onto the cradle of a telephone.

  Vasin forced himself to breathe and start again at the beginning. A tired operator in the bowels of some KGB listening station, eager to get back to her tea and gossip. The last of the day’s hundred domestic disputes cracking over the wires. Most likely she’d log the call and forget it. Add a sheet to the kontora’s ever-growing Himalaya of useless information.

  The windy expanse of Lenin Square opened up before him, lit by weak municipal lamps and a yellow wash of light spilling from the sheer glass facade of the Kino-Teatr Moskva. He looked up at the new moon, half-hidden in drifting cloud.

  On the roof of the cinema, something caught his eye. A face, illuminated by the streetlights. A young woman was standing on the high parapet, looking down. He recognized the fashionably cropped hair immediately.

  VI

  Vasin’s boots clanged on the steps of the fire escape, the leather soles slipping on wet steel. By the time he had reached the top he was doubled over, panting. The roof was dark and flat. In the center, at the front, stood Maria Adamova, framed in a halo of light like a tiny diva on a vast stage.

  She stood motionless, hands deep in the pockets of a vinyl raincoat. Her head hung down, as though she was asleep on her feet. When Vasin stumbled she made no sign of hearing.

  He reached the edge, about five meters away from her, and peered down onto the square. The drop was sheer.

  “Maria Vladimirovna?” He spoke softly. “We met, with your husband. My name is Vasin.” Her eyes flicked open as though a switch had been thrown. She turned her face to him, then the rest of her body. She swayed forward drunkenly before abruptly righting herself.

  “Go screw yourself, Chekist.”

  Her voice was thick as mud.

  Vasin advanced a step.

  “Get lost or I’ll jump.”

  She stepped up onto the narrow wall that surrounded the roof. Balancing herself with her arms like a child, she lurched forward toward the void. With her arms out and coat flapping in the breeze, she looked like a ballet dancer about to take a bow. She stared out onto the square, mesmerized by the drop before her.

  Vasin darted forward three, four, five paces, then seized the smooth plastic of her coat. Maria tumbled sideways, arms still outstretched. She fell with her back squarely on the parapet and attempted to wriggle her body over, into the empty air. Vasin held her coat tightly. She landed a single, despairing kick on the side of his head, then rolled, defeated, into his grasp.

  Sparks sprayed across Vasin’s vision as he watched his hat spin like a coin and tumble into space. He sank to his knees and slumped his full weight onto Maria Adamova’s slight body. Panting together, they gulped down cold air.

  “Maria Vladimirovna, you’ve been drinking.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  Vasin took Maria by the lapels of her coat and swung her
into a sitting position. Her head rolled as though it was too heavy for her neck.

  “You need an ambulance.”

  “I said…” Masha shook her head as though willing blood and consciousness to flow into it. “No bloody ambulance.”

  “You need help.”

  Masha’s small hands closed around Vasin’s wrists and unpeeled his grip on her lapels.

  “Like hell I do. They’ll send me to the nuthouse. You want me to spend the rest of my life as a vegetable?”

  A memory, sharp as a flint, chipped across Vasin’s mind. A girl, blond and frail, with a leer of pain smeared across her face. Klara. His younger sister, born two years after him, used to follow him about like a puppy. Her first seizure struck soon after their mother announced that their father would never come home from the war. His mother’s flat adult voice, clinging to dignity, speaking hollow words of sacrifice and glory. It was to Vasin, not their mother, that Klara had run to soak up her tears. And then, a few days later, the fit came with terrifying violence, twisting her body and face into a grotesque, trembling arc. We must trust the doctors, Vasin’s mother had said. Soviet science is the best in the world. They’d recommended electric shock therapy.

  Vasin never saw Klara smile again. After a few months at the hands of Soviet psychiatrists all she could do was moan incoherently, like an overgrown infant. He turned her thin hand in his and saw marks on her wrists where they’d tied her to the bed frame. In his narrow bed at night, Vasin fantasized about rescuing her. He was sixteen—old enough perhaps to pass for a doctor if he wore a white coat and stethoscope. Also old enough to wonder where they would hide, how he would look after this wreck of a girl in her urine-stained nightgown. Then she stopped eating. Her fine blond hair fell out, and they put her in an isolation ward and wouldn’t let Vasin visit anymore. “The body has already been cremated,” Vasin’s mother told him. Not “Klara,” but “the body.” It was easier for them both to believe that Klara was no longer present in her tortured body while it underwent its final indignities.

  Spend the rest of my life as a vegetable.

  “Okay, Maria. I’ll take you home.”

  “How the fuck did you even get here? You been following me? You’re not taking me anywhere.”

  Maria made a defiant attempt to shiver some life into her leaden limbs. But her strength was spent and she slumped slowly to the ground. Scrabbling his heels along the wet roof, Vasin wriggled into a position by her side, his back braced on the parapet. She subsided into his lap with a shiver, balling her fists and tucking them under her chin like a toddler. In a moment, she was fast asleep. Vasin felt the wetness from her hair soaking into his trousers. He tugged one side of his mackintosh out from under her body and covered her as best he could.

  Vasin lit a cigarette and smoked it with his left hand. He laid his right on her skinny, gently heaving shoulder. On the cushion of his lap, Maria began to snore.

  Vasin chuckled to himself. Oh, Vera, he thought. Oh, Orlov. Oh, bloody Zaitsev and Adamov and all the rest of you. What, exactly, would you make of this?

  The minutes passed. Young voices emerged from the Café Kino, their comradely goodbyes echoing around the empty square. Somewhere far away, thunder rolled over the forest. Maria’s weight was pressed awkwardly on his right leg, which began to lose sensation. The breeze freshened. There were droplets of rain on the gusting wind, and from the darkness came the hiss of rain on rooftops.

  “Okay, girl. Time to get you home.”

  Stiffly, he untangled himself from the unconscious Masha and laid her on her side, her face on an outstretched arm. Kneeling beside her, he cradled her head in the palm of his hand and slid another under her armpit.

  “Fedya?” Masha’s eyes remained closed, her voice but a whisper. “Fedyechka? Is that you?”

  Vasin tried to pick her up, but her body was a dead weight.

  “Ya.” Vasin murmured the monosyllable softly. “It’s me.”

  “They said you had been poisoned. But here you are, thank God.”

  “Ya zdes,” Vasin answered. “I am here.”

  Maria’s face softened into a smile as she sank back into unconsciousness.

  The drizzle pattered on her plastic coat and the cold rain rolled down her face like tears. Vasin shook her, but she did not stir.

  He managed to drag her most of the way across the roof to the fire escape. Exhausted, he peered at the steel staircase, winding down six stories to the ground. He thought of heaving her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift, but the stairs were too steep and slippery. Vasin propped her upright against the steelwork of the staircase.

  “Maria, I’m going to get help. I need help to get you home.”

  Her eyes fluttered open.

  “You!” she breathed.

  “I’m going to call the police. I can’t carry you.”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  Masha closed her eyes and rolled slowly onto her front with a curse. With a superhuman effort she struggled like a newly hatched butterfly to make each one of her limbs work in turn, first arms, then legs. She rose on her hands and knees and stayed in that position for a minute, head down, panting like a wet dog.

  “Okay.”

  Masha stood, very deliberately, and scraped the wet hair from her face.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  She turned unsteadily toward the stairs. By the time they had reached the bottom, her gait was rolling a little, but she stayed upright. She leaned against a wall, gasping.

  Lenin Square was deserted. Vasin checked his watch. Half past twelve. A ten-minute walk to the Adamovs’ apartment, and he would be rid of her.

  A car rumbled into view. “Shit,” Masha said and gripped Vasin’s arm with two small, strong hands.

  An old-model Volga police car entered the square from Engels Avenue, waddling on soft tires across the tram tracks.

  “Here. Quick.”

  Maria’s hands darted to the sides of Vasin’s face, closing behind his ears. She pulled his head down to hers. Vasin felt the heat of her lips on his as the yellow headlights illuminated them. Her face had a feral smell of sweat, as well as something sour and chemical. After a kiss that lasted seconds he pushed her away, staggering backward. The squad car had already swung past them and was cruising away down Lenin Prospekt.

  “What was that?”

  Masha had also recoiled and leaned against a young plane tree.

  “Insurance, Chekist,” she said eventually.

  “Excuse me?”

  “The musor—the cops—saw us. Together. What are you gonna tell them when you turn me in?”

  Vasin was speechless. He had been checkmated, perfectly, by an addled girl in a single move.

  “So you can fuck off and leave me alone, Comrade Major.” Maria Adamova turned, gripping the narrow tree trunk, and vomited almost delicately into the flower bed.

  “You can’t keep me from following you, wherever you’re going.”

  Masha wiped her mouth on her plastic sleeve and looked Vasin up and down with undisguised distaste.

  “So you’re going to stick to me.”

  “Like a tail to a vixen.”

  Masha cracked a smile, despite herself.

  “Come on, then. I know where we can get some coffee.”

  Vasin took Maria’s arm and steered her out across the buffeting wind that swept Lenin Square. His lost hat was scampering in the wind like a puppy.

  VII

  The long rows of wooden huts were unlit, and the gravel courtyard in which they stood was infused with the stink of engine oil. On the porch of the largest hut Masha fumbled for a light switch that illuminated a single, flyblown bulb.

  “Keys are in the pot.”

  She pointed to a flowerpot with old paintbrushes sticking ou
t of it wedged on a windowsill. Vasin took hold of the brush handles and found that paint and brushes had long ago dried into a single plug. He picked it out and found the key below. The padlock snapped open with a well-oiled click.

  Masha found a table lamp and switched it on. The wooden barrack was surprisingly spacious. The room was entirely lined with bookshelves, desks, and filing cabinets. To one side stood a draftsman’s sloped sketching table, with a ruler and set-square attached to its surface with wires. In the far corner stood an Army-type truckle bed with the gray blanket neatly tucked in. A row of tall military boots stood in front of an old oak wardrobe.

  “Who lives here?”

  “A good man. He lets me use it when I need to.”

  “Where has he gone?”

  “Olenya. It’s in the Arctic somewhere.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Vasin immediately regretted the question. A fragile understanding had grown between them as they had walked though the nighttime streets. Now she snatched it away.

  “Ask your colleagues, Comrade Chekist.”

  She tossed her wet, ripped macintosh onto the floor and collapsed on the bed, the fight drained out of her.

  “Well,” she said. “Coffee?”

  The tiny kitchen area was as neat as a ship’s galley. Vasin found a pair of tin mugs, a steel jar of Cuban coffee, condensed milk, a paraffin Primus stove. He shook it to check it was full and pumped up the stove’s pressure with the little plug pump. Then he tipped a little alcohol from a corked bottle onto the burning cup and lit it to produce a fine blue streak of flame. A satisfying knack, remembered in Vasin’s fingers from childhood. He opened up the vents of the main burner gently and blew them all into life, then filled a dented pot from the tap and set it on the roaring stove.

  “We all used to live like this, you know.”

  Maria’s voice sounded unnaturally loud in the dark hut.

  “Adamov. All the old scientists. The engineers. When they first started working here after the war, everyone lived in barracks like this one while they were putting up all those new buildings. There used to be partitions in them, all the way down. Tiny, little rooms. One bathroom, down there at the end. One kitchen.”