Arkady whispered back. —Yagoda?
— Indirectly. Kuznets knows about the day we visited Yagoda at his dacha and I shot with the Tokarev. He told me he knows about that for a reason.
Arkady’s face took on a matte and sickly cast, like cooled fat. —Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznets is nothing but a cockroach to cram down Trotsky’s throat, and he thinks he can wrench my balls? He…oh, Kostya.
His voice wavered on the diminutive. He whispered it twice more, eyes shut.
Kostya stared at him.
Arkady beckoned Kostya closer, and his lips brushed Kostya’s ear. —Please. Say what you must, do what you must, to keep Kuznets happy.
Both men leaned away; Kostya ground out his cigarette.
Arkady got up and fussed in his kitchen, calling out he would fetch those pickles he mentioned, and the dark bread, and oh, he’d still got some butter.
Smiling, Kostya shook his head. He and Misha had often joked about Arkady’s almost pathological hospitality. Argument? Arkady offered food. Bad news? Arkady offered food. Good news? Food. Visiting girlfriend? Some wariness, yes, but still, food. Roof falling in, wolves tearing at your throat? Arkady Dmitrievich would empty his cupboards and offer food — to the wolves, as well.
Misha had teased Arkady about it once, and the tone of the gathering slipped from jovial to sour. Even Vadym frowned. Arkady fixed Misha with his cold stare. Should I then lock my door to you in times of famine? Is that what you want, boy?
Kostya had thought Misha might cry.
Misha…
As Arkady clinked and clanked items onto a tray, Kostya stood up, stretched his back, and adjusted the tiny framed photographs on the mantel. Arkady’s parents. Arkady and Vadym in a posed studio shot in those long Cheka leather coats against a backdrop of painted mountains and meadows. Kostya at graduation. The charwomen always disturbed them. He turned and sat down again as Arkady’s voice and the familiarity of his words soothed him.
— Eat, Little Tatar, eat.
Kostya smiled. He is still Arkady Dmitrievich, and I am still Konstantin Arkadievich.
Efim mopped sauce from his lips. —Delicious.
Gnawing a piece of beef, Temerity nodded agreement. The shashlyk Kostya had bought as promised that morning was redolent with garlic, vinegar, and pepper. The accompanying salad of boiled potato chunks tossed in sour cream and dill gave contrast, filled her belly, and dulled her fears. She’d only eaten a piece of bread since the kasha that morning, and now she eyed the remaining shashlyk with greed. She even forgot the reason for the odd and suffocating quiet in the building: an electricity cut.
Kostya sat back and gestured to the feast on the table. —Eat, eat. I’m sorry the shashlyk’s on brown paper. The Georgian wouldn’t let me take his skewers. Oh, Scherba, I need your help before I go out.
Temerity gave Kostya a sharp look, then tried to hide it. —Out?
— I’ve got to work.
She said nothing to that. Efim had accepted this announcement without comment; perhaps she should as well.
Kostya poured vodka for the three of them and gave a long toast to the man who’d cooked the shashlyk. He knocked back his drink, poured another, and knocked that back, too. Then he pointed at a section of bare white wall. —Some people still keep beauty walls. Historical interest only, of course. No one prays to ikons anymore. Arkady Dmitrievich calls them fairy tales.
Efim licked the last juices of his fingers. —Who is he to you? You never call him father.
— He’s looked after me since I was twelve.
Temerity thought of Spartan boys and their mentors.
Kostya offered Temerity a cigarette. —Here, let me light it. My grandparents had a beauty wall with three copies of the Novgorod Gavriil, small, medium, and large.
Exhaling smoke, Temerity thought of the ikon, a golden-toned medieval painting of the Angel Gabriel, as she called him, with plaited fair hair and huge brown eyes. Her father had kept a copy on a wall of his study at Kurseong House. Then she considered the stained-glass window her grandfather had paid for as a gift to the parish church: a blond and pale Christ not so much in agony on the cross as muscular repose, surrounded by panels of blue, yellow, and red.
She’d decorated her London flat in shades of blue, yellow, and red similar to that window.
And that other stained glass in the church, Judith on her knees, studying Holofernes’s throat. Is that all I believed in back then, pretty windows?
She caught Efim staring at her; he looked away.
Kostya crammed some more potato salad into his mouth, stood up, and adjusted his portupeya. —I have to go. I hope the electricity comes back soon.
It did, at that moment, and the radio resumed its blare: another report on another trial.
He smirked. —If only all my wishes came true. Nadezhda, I’ll bring you something nice. If I’m not too late.
— Too late for what?
He wanted to kiss her. Instead, he patted his holster. —Out too late, I mean. My day slipped out from beneath my feet. Scherba?
The men retreated to Kostya’s bedroom.
When Kostya returned, alone, his eyes seemed dull. He stroked Temerity’s face, then tangled his fingers in the curls of her hair. —Kiss me goodnight? Your mouth, this time, not your knee? On my face, I mean, not…
She shoved his hand away.
He took a few steps back and bowed to her. —Pleasant dreams, my sweet angel of Comintern.
Smirking, he left and locked the door behind him.
Efim returned with pen, ink, and paper. —Do you mind if I use the table, Miss Solovyova? I wish to write to my wife.
Temerity stared at the corridor leading to the door for a moment, then faced Efim. —Please, call me Nadezhda Ivanovna.
— Efim Antonovich.
She pursed her lips, then nodded. —May I keep the radio on?
— Yes, of course.
As Temerity sat in the front room facing to the radio, Efim drew ink into his pen. You’d think mine are the first friendly words she’s heard in days. He glanced at her as she crossed her bare legs at the ankle. Why is she barefoot?
The chugging lorry, cab covered in a tarpaulin, idled before Lubyanka. Dusk bent the light glaring off Lubyanka’s windows into beautiful pinks and gold. The lorry driver pitched the remains of his cigarette as he picked out the dark shape of an NKVD officer: the graceful lines of gymnastyorka, galife pants and peaked cap, and the confident walk, shoulders back, left arm perhaps a little stiff, right arm swinging while still covering the holster. As the officer emerged from the shadows, the colours of his insignia showed.
The driver saluted. —Comrade Senior Lieutenant, good evening.
Kostya nodded to the driver and, as a courtesy, showed his identification. He could have signed out a car and driven himself, perhaps even requested a driver. No, he’d decided, better to keep my head down.
At Kostya’s feet, the ember of the driver’s discarded cigarette cooled from orange to red, the heat of it winking twice before a surrender to black. Kostya recalled one of his own discarded cigarettes, the embers fading on Spanish ground, where blood pooled.
The driver read the identification, blinked, and gestured to the tarpaulin. —Full and ready, Comrade Senior Lieutenant.
Prisoners travelled to the poligons in such trucks. Under tarpaulin. Bound, sometimes gagged.
This tarp rippled and bulged.
Just the wind, Kostya told himself.
A male voice escaped the tarp: tenor, his tone as clear and crisp, Vadym might say, as water about to freeze. —You can come and go at a country inn as in a fickle woman’s cunt…