by Niles Kovach
We drove to my apartment in silence. Vasily seemed preoccupied. So was I.
Frank, Louis, and Misha were waiting downstairs.
Misha opened my door. "Well?" he said to Vasily.
"She is clear."
"She had better stay that way."
Vasily did not answer. Misha addressed me. "I will walk you upstairs."
"Please, don't bother."
"I'll walk her up," said Frank. He shifted on his feet from side to side, as if preparing to run. I knew he would not run. He was just a nervous man.
They had a discussion. Frank said he needed me to sign some papers. Misha was impatient, with Frank, and with me.
"Give me the forms," he said, and he grabbed the papers from Frank's hand. He pulled me out of the car and pushed me up the stairs in front of him, ushering me into my apartment in a hurry.
"I hope you are not so stupid that I must tell you to be discreet," he said.
"I'm not stupid." I was shaking again, but more from anger than from fear. "And I don't like you at all."
He almost smiled. "Why don't you like me, Alex?"
"You are evil."
"I suppose you are a saint?"
"No. But at least I don't kill people."
"The difference between us, Alex," he said, "is not that I kill and you don't. It is that death surrounds me; it only puzzles you."
I scrunched up my eyebrows at him, puzzled.
"When death is no longer an idea in your philosophical little head, when you see it and smell it and are faced with only evil alternatives regarding it, perhaps you will have some claim to moral superiority. But I doubt it. Until then, little girl, I advise you to hate me less intensely, because hate is the next thing to murder and murder is not appropriate in an aspiring saint. Now sign these for Frank," He put the papers on the counter and handed me a pen.
"What do they say?" I asked.
"Your government is informing you that if you say anything, the best thing that will happen to you is that you will go to jail."
"It says that?"
"It says some of that. I say the rest."
I understood him perfectly, but took my time reading it anyway. I wanted to irritate him. He snatched the forms and pen from me as soon as I signed, and let himself out without another word.
Good riddance.
Midnight is an odd time to run errands, I admit, but it was the best time for me — some things must be done without witnesses. After a check of the surrounding streets, I drove to the church and used Louis' tools to open the door. He had taught me well. I had no trouble. I quickly finished the two things I wanted to do and went home knowing the bag of money was safe, but accessible.
I spent the next day expecting to see Vasily. I attended all my classes, a rare enough event, but it did me little good. My mind was on the cars driving by, looking for a black Mercedes. I concentrated on the people in the hallways, not my books, looking for a sandy-haired man of medium height with a solemn demeanor and a hint of exceptional strength. I was disappointed. I told myself I was being silly. I tried to convince myself that this was a foolish preoccupation with a man I was better off without.
When my last class ended, I avoided the narrow walkway I had taken the day before. I wanted no more surprises. I stayed on a well lit path that wound around the biology building and was about midway down the walk when I heard steps running behind me. As I turned to see who it was, something hit me squarely in the chest and sent me sprawling backward to the ground, my books scattered under a path light. That light was my only company, and it did me precious little good.
"You think you're something," my attacker said. "I'll show you something."
Boris was on top of me, grabbing at my skirt, pulling it up, tearing at my panty hose. I struggled with everything in me. I fought him with a fury I never felt before. It was a question of power, all right, a struggle for power that I had to win. He was determined to "show me" and I was equally determined to prevent him.
I was winning until he cheated. He pulled out a knife and held it to my face, then moved it to my throat. I could see the bruise under his eye where I had hit him. I saw weakness and malice in his fleshy, unshaven face and I hated him intensely.
"I'll cut you," he said through his teeth.
"Cut her, and I cut you." It was a foreign voice, and it came at the same moment that another knife flashed between our faces, razor edge toward Boris.
"Drop your knife and get up," said Misha's voice. I recognized it, and I was glad the edge of his knife faced away from me.
Boris got up and dropped his knife.
Louis pulled me up, helped to smooth my skirt, and brushed the dust from my clothes and hair. I saw Misha standing in the light, the point of that knife under Boris' chin. Boris babbled, hands raised, chin as high as he could hold it. Vasily stood to one side.
Louis led me away and Misha put the knife away and walked toward us. He walked on my left, Louis on my right. I heard Boris mumble something, then a dull thud. I turned to see where Vasily was, but Louis put his arm around my shoulder and led me firmly away.
"He won't kill him, will he?" I asked, not really wanting an answer.
"No," said Louis. "Nick will live."
We crossed a grassy area in the science quadrangle. The campus was emptying after the last class of the day. A steadily diminishing stream of cars left the surrounding parking lots. We sat on a bench and waited.
"I thought you didn't speak English," I said to Misha after a few minutes.
"I speak enough to know that is not a gracious thank you."
"Where is Vasily?" I asked.
He did not answer. We were silent for another minute until Vasily joined us. We walked to the parking lot, Misha and Louis in front, Vasily and I lagging behind.
"About Saturday," he said, "I will not be here and must break our date."
"Oh." I tried to act unconcerned. "Everything is going all right now?"
"No. It is still not right, but we should finish by tomorrow and be gone quickly." He stopped, took my arm, and turned me to face him. "I never had any intention of being here on Saturday."
I waited for him to finish, not really wanting him to say anything. I wanted him to leave right away so I could cry privately.
"But I would like to have dinner with you," he said. "Without Misha there to make you tremble, eh?"
He smiled and humpty dumpty was put back together.
"Yes."
"It may be some time before I can come back. Your government does not often welcome me. Will you have dinner with me when I come back?"
I nodded, and he kissed me. It was my first kiss. (I do not count the incident with Misha as a kiss for obvious reasons) To dinner? I would have gone to Mars with him. What I knew about him, what he was, what he was about to do, what he could have done, disappeared in the joy of holding him and of being held by him. There were no other considerations, no other facts. There was only his kiss, his touch, and it was enough for me.
The Mercedes was already behind my car when we reached the parking lot. Vasily watched as I started my car before he joined the others. Then the Mercedes turned onto the street, pulled over briefly for a passing ambulance, and left the campus, and me, for what I thought would be too long a time.
I settled down to wait for him, though, and spent the next day in a dream world of first love, attributing everything noble to my lover, blaming every nagging reminder of reality on the evil influence of Misha, and supplying the required miracle of righteous change in Vasily from my own fertile imagination.
That evening, the evening of the day after my first kiss, at about six, my comfortable dream world of gentle miracles turned into a nightmare. In one of my nightmares, I am most terrified not by what happens to me, but by the part I play in it. If I am attacked in my dream, my inability to scream is what makes it a nightmare. If I fall from a great height, it is the last step I take before the fall that is most disturbing, because it is most regretted.
I was aglo
w with virtue and good intentions as I made a frugal supper in my tiny kitchen after school that evening. There was a knock at the door; it was Father Paul. In retrospect, I find it appropriate that it was a priest who broke my pious reverie and introduced me to a night of hell.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN