Kostya felt the old surprise at standing tall enough to see the crown of Vadym’s cap. When they’d first met in 1918 at the train station, Vadym’s hair, already white, looked so strange against a face so young, and Kostya, burning with fever, wanted to pull Vadym’s hair from his head. Then, despite some stifled small voice warning him to keep quiet, Kostya told Vadym how the train carriage had transformed into Baba Yaga’s house, the racket of the rails caused by the running of fowls’ feet, a racket which in turn became a chant, and Baba Yaga’s voice filled his head: Welcome home, bezprizornik, welcome home. But home was Odessa, Kostya continued, and in Odessa they kept Baba Yaga contained and confused in the catacombs. Then Kostya glanced up past the worried faces of Arkady and Vadym to study a clock. A terrible man stood beneath it. The second hand on the clock thunked into place, a slow heartbeat, and the terrible man adjusted his sleeve, exposing black feathers on his arms. Arkady and Vadym hurried Kostya along, Arkady muttering about unwanted quarantine. Kostya remembered nothing after that until he awoke in someone’s bed, propped up on pillows and drenched in sweat. Vadym sat beside him, introduced himself, and explained how Kostya and Arkady both had flu. Kostya asked Vadym his age, and Vadym laughed as he placed a cold compress on Kostya’s forehead. It’s my white hair, isn’t it? Everyone gets confused. I’m thirty-one. I had flu in 1890, when I was a boy, and I took such a fever that my hair fell out. It grew back white. Kostya slept a long time after that, and when he woke next, Arkady sat beside him, dark-eyed and pale. Kostya slipped in and out of a fever dream of a train with no light bearing down on him in the Odessa catacombs as Arkady muttered a story about Fyodor Basmanov and the Oprichniki, how they decorated their horses’ tack with dogs’ heads and broomsticks, because the tsar’s hounds would sweep the country clean.
When Kostya recovered, Vadym introduced him to his nephew, Misha, an only child. The boys became good friends and called each other brother. On the awkward nights when Arkady would host a party and send Kostya to spend the night at Vadym’s flat, Vadym would also invite Misha over, and the three of them would play games and talk politics, music, and the irritating mysteries of girls. Vadym, very fond of the boys, invited them to address him as Dima. Arkady disapproved and insisted on the more formal and respectful Arkady Dmitrievich for himself.
Paperwork completed, Vadym slapped down the clipboard and embraced Kostya. —You’re home. You’re safe. Arkady’s Little Tatar wins the day.
Kostya allowed himself a smirk. —I am not Arkady Dmitrievich’s anything, little or otherwise. Not even to you, Dima.
— I don’t like those scars. Lucky to keep your ear, yes?
— It’s nothing.
Vadym shook his head. —You’re too bony. Have you been ill?
Surprised, Kostya recognized that Arkady had told Vadym nothing of his return. —Coming around, thanks. It was a long trip home.
Vadym took the clipboard and tucked it beneath his arm, then poked Kostya in the ribs. —I’ll have you and Arkady over for supper, put some flesh on you. I’m due back in my department. Walk with me?
In the corridors, Kostya and Vadym alternated the volume of their voices as they navigated past dozens of other people and struggled to continue their conversation about what Vadym might cook. NKVD officers, civilian support workers, military officers, and Party members proceeded in all directions, carrying dossiers, briefcases, boxes, and loose papers, intent on their own missions.
Stopping near the stairwell that led to his own department, Vadym wagged his finger in mock rebuke. —And tell Arkady I won’t hear any excuses this time. The evening after next, yes? At my flat.
— I’ll tell him.
Vadym opened his mouth to ask something else, thought better of it, and instead sighed.
— What is it, Dima?
— Let me embrace you again.
— Here?
— Please.
Kostya leaned in, and Vadym hugged him hard.
— Dima, are you all right?
Vadym murmured in Kostya’s ear. —Misha’s listed as missing.
Kostya’s back stiffened.
Vadym let him go, patted him on the good shoulder, and started his ascent up the stairs. In seconds, so many people filled the space between them that Kostya lost sight of Vadym.
Then someone jostled Kostya’s bad shoulder, sending that wretched pain down his arm. It felt like an electric zap. Of course it does, Efim had explained. Electrical impulses drive the human body. Think of your nerves as wires. Your nerves are damaged, like exposed wires, and the electrical impulses cause not spark but pain. Then he’d added, voice calm, face serious, either mocking or supporting propaganda, perhaps both at once: All the energy for the state comes from the human body. The New Soviet Man is a human dynamo.
Kostya shut his eyes. The steady noise of conversation, the clicks and taps and shuffles and scrapes of shoes and boots, invaded his ears and annexed his head. Jostled some more, he surrendered, opening his eyes and navigating the crowd. After his solitude in Spain, he found the crowding in Moscow a tiresome study in how to suppress cries of rage: so many people in so many queues. It’s gotten worse, he’d told Arkady. You’re imagining it, Arkady had said.
A younger man, a sergeant, addressed Kostya by rank and surname. The new rank still sounded odd to Kostya, like a mistake, much as his surname no doubt sounded like a mistake to the sergeant. —Yes?
The younger man saluted. —I am Katelnikov, Matvei Andreivich Katelnikov. Comrade Ismailovna asked me to keep an eye out for you and remind you to check with her for paperwork.
— We’ve never met, yet you know me by sight?
Matvei pointed to his own left ear, then thought better of it and lowered his hand. —I…
Smirking, Kostya clapped Matvei on the shoulder. —I shouldn’t tease. Good work, Katelnikov.
The scent of smoky tea guided Kostya to Evgenia Ismailovna’s desk. Evgenia worked two jobs in one, both as a general secretary for the department and as a private secretary to the department head. Piles of paper and dossiers covered her desk and threatened avalanche, yet somehow she kept the paper moving. Shelves loomed behind her desk, shelves holding the samovar, a tea tin decorated with red stars, tea glasses and podstakanniks, and yet more paper and files. In her mid-twenties, Evegenia affected the stern maternal manner of some of the older female Party members, and she would ask even the department head to wait in silence until she’d finished typing a sentence. Many new officers tried to flirt with her; she tolerated none of it. Experienced officers might take the new man aside and explain how much power Evgenia could wield. She had the ear of the department head, yes, of course, any fool could guess that. Far more important: Comrade Ismailovna tended the paperwork.
A dizziness took Kostya, a sense of disorientation deeper than what any day off or even a hospital stay might ease. He felt like he’d woken up in the wrong story. Not quite solid, these floors and walls of Lubyanka. Not quite right, the clock behind Evgenia reading eight minutes after ten, nor these fever-bright colours: Comrade Ismailovna’s green eyes behind her black-rimmed pince-nez, for example, and her purple crosstie, that little strip of silk she wound around her buttoned collar. Shot silk, Kostya now noticed. At certain angles, a jade green showed. He studied her face. Apart from one small mole on her right cheek, she had no marks, freckles, or scars. Nor did she wear cosmetics. She kept her hair in a short wedge bob that bared the back of her neck, and that haircut, like the line of dark down on her upper lip, only made her seem more feminine. Kostya recognized in that moment how much he admired all her contrasts. The old-fashioned manners and pince-nez, the short hair and insistence on her equality with any man: for Kostya, she almost shimmered.