Arm outstretched, Temerity offered him the compress, snatching her hand back as he touched and almost dropped the damp towel. Kostya unfastened his pants, applied the compress, winced and hissed.
Temerity noticed his bitten nails.
Kostya adjusted the compress. —You’re stronger than you look.
She snorted.
— Did you find his bicycle? That day in Spain, did you find his bicycle?
Her eyed widened, for just a moment.
— I wanted you to find it. I wanted many things that day.
She stared at the wall, the white, white wall.
He leant on his right elbow. —Have you not asked yourself how, or why, we’ve met, over and over? The chances. It’s ridiculous.
She pushed her cuticles, refusing to look at him.
— Or is someone who hates me using you to trap me? The beautiful woman, oldest trick we’ve got.
— You think I’m a plant?
— I don’t know what to think of you. Beyond purpose, I mean.
Her attention remained on her fingernails. —What purpose?
— Destiny. You’re here for a reason.
— I’m here by accident.
— Well, I don’t protect you by accident. You’re some test for me, some gift. For my redemption. If I save you—
She glared at him. —Your redemption?
Plucking the compress away from his scrotum, Kostya rose to his knees. His pants slid down. —I mean…
The radio announcer, voice assured and self-important, if a little tired after the long manufacturing report, introduced a newscast.
Kostya hauled himself to his feet and fastened his pants. —The time. I can’t be late. I’ll get the papers. Look, I need to talk to some people first, and I need to do that very carefully. Be patient. And if anyone knocks, do not go to the door. Simple, yes?
She turned her back and strode away from him to stand before the front room window. Arms crossed, she tried to ignore the other building and focus on the sky.
Behind her, fabric rustled and boots tapped as Kostya got ready to leave. Then the door, and its lock, clicked shut.
At a urinal in Lubyanka, handling himself with some care, Kostya remembered that he’d not shaved. Second morning in a row. Fuck. He could, if reprimanded, plead shortage and ask a superior officer where he’d last found razor blades. And who will hassle me about stubble today: Tsar Pyotr Velikiy? The department head won’t even be awake yet.
Evgenia’s greeting made him feel a bit sick. —Comrade Senior Lieutenant, there you are. Did you forget to shave? The new department head wants to see you.
Kostya glanced toward the head’s office. The door hung open, and outside, pressed close to the wall next to the jamb, stood several boxes. The former head: arrested, drunk, dead?
Evgenia poured zavarka, then added hot water. —The new head’s name is Kuznets. Captain Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznets.
Of course it is.
— And he said for you to report to him the moment you arrived.
Distracted by the intricacy of the podstakannik filigree, its practicality and beauty, Kostya accepted the tea. —Should I bring this to him?
— He’s got some. Piece of sugar?
— No. I think I’d better have my mouth clear for this conversation.
— With the Sound Man? You’ll not get a word in edgewise.
Kostya sipped the hot tea to hide both his amusement and his fear. —Don’t let him hear you say that.
Evgenia looked down at her paperwork.
Considering where to leave his tea, deciding to balance it on a stacked cardboard box, Kostya knocked on the department head’s open door.
Boris’s voice sounded mighty, yet detached, a man comfortable with his power and feeling no need to prove it: the theatricality of nonchalance. —Yes, comrade?
Kostya stepped inside, saluted.
Seeing Kostya, Boris stood up, and his voice sounded much kinder. —Konstantin Arkadievich, come in. No tea?
— I left it outside, Comrade Captain.
— Well, you can’t drink it if it’s outside. Fetch it, and then close the door behind you. Good. Sit down. Why do you limp?
— I pulled a muscle, Comrade Captain.
— As long as that office door is shut, you may call me Boris Aleksandrovich. And have you run out of razor blades?
Kostya lied once more, the ease of deception surprising him. —Yes, Boris Aleksandrovich. I apologize.
— My father spoke in proverbs. I would get so irritated with him, but now I find the proverbs useful. Look after your clothes when they’re new, and look after your honour when young. Your face, I mean. Your uniform is fine. A raven won’t peck out another raven’s eyes; I’ll overlook it this time.
— Yes, Boris Aleksandrovich. Thank you.
Boris described the location of the market stall where yesterday he’d found both sharpeners and fresh blades. Then he picked up his own tea from the crowded desk; condensation dripped down the glass. —Do you know that some departments use Western cups and saucers for tea? Here, in Lubyanka? I was astonished.
Kostya raised his eyebrows in sympathetic dismay. How far might this hostility to teacups go? Would one’s loyalty be tested by tea? Could a man call himself Soviet if he preferred a cup and saucer? Samovar, zavarka, and podstakannik: signals of orthodoxy? In these difficult days, might a man’s choice of how to drink his tea become the rubric which parted innocence from guilt?
It’s just tea, Kostya wanted to say.
He knew better.
— You like your tea, Konstantin Arkadievich?
— I can take it or leave it, though I confess, Comrade Ismailovna makes it well.
— It’s good to have women around. I can’t get started in the morning without it. Sometimes I get quite indulgent and take it with jam. Tea, I mean.
Taking a deep breath to kill his chortle, Kostya smelled something floral in the tea, like roses, then honey. Then he smelled smoke.
Boris patted one of the dossiers on his desk. —You’re an excellent shot, even by our standards.
— Thank you.
— Your wounds don’t interfere?
— I’ve not done much target practice since I returned.
— Get to it. You’ve practised at the Butovo poligon, the shooting range. And such a privilege you enjoyed one day, that visit to, ah, well, our former chief’s dacha.
Fucked in the mouth, he means Yagoda.
How to explain it, explain that beautiful spring afternoon in ’33, Arkady dizzy with the honour of an invitation to the chief’s dacha, Kostya tagging along in some dismay. He’d skipped his community work, broken a promise to the boys at Home of the Child of the Struggle Moscow Number Two Supplemental Number Three to visit and read stories that day, and he felt queasy, first with guilt over the boys, then with embarrassment as Arkady bragged about him to Yagoda. No, not my son, Arkady said, ready to explain, but Genrikh Yagoda cut him off and challenged Kostya to shoot as well as Arkady claimed he could — but with a new weapon, the just-released Tokarev 33 pistol. Yagoda pointed to a dry spot of earth and told Kostya to stand there. Kostya glanced at the targets, which stood anywhere from ten to seventy metres off, took the pistol, and looked it over. Shoot with this monstrosity? Then he looked up and caught the flicker of despair in Arkady’s eyes. If Kostya failed to live up to Arkady’s boasts, then Arkady would look a fool before the chief. Arkady knew it, and Genrikh Yagoda knew it.