He’d forgotten.
The old man’s dessert party. Shit!
In his bedroom, he hauled on civilian clothes. Snub Arkady and avoid the party? Unthinkable. All those years, Arkady would say, all those years that you begged me to invite you, and now you forget?
Kostya strode and swayed through the flat door and locked it behind him, and as his shoes swished on the steps, so much quieter than his boots, he thought of his veins and how they rose to the skin and announced their presence after an injection, never before. In the lobby he nodded to the watchwoman. She rocked in her chair. Then he ran to Vasilisa Prekrasnaya — with some grace, he thought — paid his fare, and descended the steps. The train rumbled its arrival, the driver looking skeletal though the shadowed glass. The tile mosaic of Vasilisa, all her many pieces, shimmered.
As Arkady eased through a haze of tobacco smoke, laughing at the end of a joke and swatting one of his cats down off the dining table, he spotted Kostya’s arrival at the front door. Kostya nodded to him, then answered a hearty greeting from another guest. Fifteen NKVD officers, old Chekists and a few favoured up-and-comers like Kostya, filled the parlour; male voices shouted and laughed and cursed, told stories, made toasts. Glancing around at his house, at the decor unchanged since 1903, Arkady could not decide which felt more bourgeois: keeping all the frills and stripes and curving lines of his parents’ youth, or spending time and money on new and plain decoration. Busy with his career and then with raising Kostya, Arkady had ignored the house. Many visitors commented on how Arkady’s house felt like an old photograph, a refuge from sharp lines and paperwork.
The men glanced at the closed study door, then pretended disinterest. Knowing what waited inside the study, Kostya smirked. The study had once been his bedroom, and he’d completed hours and hours of language drill there. At fourteen, he’d announced to Arkady and Vadym that he wished to become a Chekist like them, and surely his gift for languages would be useful there, just as Arkady had said for two years now. Arkady made the plans and arranged for more language tutors. Some of those tutors had asked Kostya when they might expect to see him at the university, and Kostya had never known what to say. Just before starting as a cadet in NKVD, Kostya considered changing his mind and instead attending university, perhaps studying to become a translator or even a doctor, like his grandfather. He chased the thought away, hardly able to admit it to himself, let alone voice it to Arkady. So the plan remained in place, and Cadet Nikto graduated and took up his duty. No doubts then, he told himself, and tonight, standing in Arkady’s house with other officers while confined women waited in his old bedroom, and no doubts now. He shook his head. No, no doubts.
He gulped vodka, and the alcohol soon collided with the morphine. He felt calmer.
Arkady embraced a friend and colleague, and then he called Kostya over. Others heard this, and the older men joined in to welcome Kostya home, to offer congratulations on the promotion, show curiosity about his wounds, and then congratulate Arkady on raising such a fine man. Kostya, silent in deference as Arkady thanked everyone for their compliments, took in the scents of cologne, sweat, tobacco, and wine. Then, at a nod from Arkady, Kostya remembered his role as assistant host, excused himself, and ensured other guests had something to drink. He swayed a little. No one noticed.
Some of the men sang now, something from a movie they’d all seen a dozen times or more because Stalin liked it. Kostya, grateful for the darkness in cinemas, had yawned his way through the tiresome love story. Sunburnt collective-farm workers, the men all clean-shaven, no hairy kulaks here, and the women all young and slim, broke into frequent song and dance involving rakes, scythes, and combine harvesters. No conflict, not even the smallest problem of a balky tractor engine, threatened the finally consummated celebration of harvest and collective. Teeth, Kostya had noticed, all the actors possessed strong teeth — so many smiles. Years before, watching Battleship Potemkin with Arkady, Kostya got dizzy with a sense of exile. Eisenstein’s weirdly lit Odessa split Kostya’s present, rubbing his face in the fact he was no Muscovite, no matter how much he might consider Moscow home. Kostya from Odessa? Another lifetime, another Kostya. At the movie’s sequence on the steps, as the untended pram bounced away and the baby imprisoned within cried, Arkady had whispered in his ear: That’s you. Kostya pretended not to hear. He much preferred movies set on the moon, or Mars, or in the safety of the past, like Lieutenant Kizhe. Of this, he said nothing.
Satisfied everyone had a drink, Kostya leaned in a corner by the kitchen, a spot where he used to sit and daydream. When he glanced up, he noticed Arkady striding toward him.
Arkady murmured in his ear. —You’re in pain.
— I’m fine.
— You can’t hide it from me, Little Tatar. I know you too well.
A bump and a crash: something fell over in the study.
Kostya stepped out of the corner. —I’ll check that.
— Just let them out.
Kostya followed Arkady into the parlour and sidled over to the study door. Arkady cleared his throat and clapped his hands, begging his comrades’ kind attention; the men looked only too happy to grant it. Some of the younger officers smirked and nudged one another.
At a nod from Arkady, Kostya unlocked and opened the wooden study door. He gave it too hard a swing, using the strength needed to heave open a cell. The study door smacked off the wall, and Kostya looked to the floor, wondering if the morphine had affected him more than he thought. The contents of the study, however, distracted the guests from his gaffe.
Twelve naked women stood there. Some had crossed their arms over their chests; others waited with their arms and faces slack. All of them stared into some middle distance. Kostya knew why. On arrival, the women had been offered drinks laced with calmatives, and those who declined the drinks received an injection. Arkady took deep offence at refusals of his hospitality and resented the need for injections.
For many years, Arkady had barred Kostya from these parties. His attendance, finally permitted after he completed his NKVD courses, came with an understanding that no one spoke of these parties, which did, from time to time, get out of hand. With luck, and with the female guests showing a bit of common sense, Arkady’s parties could end well for the men. Work hard, play hard.
Two of the women hugged each other, twin sisters, their blond and frizzy hair fringed across the forehead and bobbed at the jawline in a style that Kostya disliked.
A man laughed in Kostya’s ear: Boris Kuznets. —My first time here, and I am not disappointed.
Nodding, Kostya recalled Boris’s nickname at Lubyanka: the Sound Man. Comrade Captain Kuznets so loved his work that he would take time away from his desk to assist in interrogations. Later he might attend a concert, or an opera. The subtleties of sound delighted him, and he explained this via comparisons. Fist to face versus book to face. Boots to ribs versus chair to ribs. Penis to vagina versus truncheon to vagina.
Boris laughed and pointed to the study. —Look at that gooseflesh. We should warm them up.
Kostya noticed the pile of women’s clothing on his old bed, a terrible mess of linen and cotton and lisle, hems and stockings and frills. The shoes and boots lay in a different pile on the floor, up against the wall, and Kostya suppressed a sigh. The shoes made him feel sad, even lonely, and he could not explain to himself why. Then, remembering his role, he bowed to the women, wished them all a good evening, disciplined himself to look only at their feet, and invited them to join the men.