— Ah…
— Run out and get some butter. What about bones? Have you got any bones to make a broth? Shall I fetch you some?
— I’ll wait and see what he’d prefer.
Vadym kissed her hand again. —Keep being good to him, yes? Delighted to meet you, dear.
Still holding the packet of mushrooms, Temerity walked Vadym to the door and watched him haul on his boots. When he opened the door and exposed a dim hallway of other doors, she almost lunged.
Right, tell one NKVD officer how I wish to escape another. That would end well.
Vadym prepared to lock the flat again from the outside. —Please don’t trouble yourself, dear. Give Kostya my love when he wakes up, the lazy cat. Goodbye.
As the door closed and the lock clicked, Temerity held the packet to her nose and smelled earth. Then she strode to the bedroom, where, curled on his right side and naked beneath a sheet, Kostya remained asleep. His holster and the amber beads peeked out from beneath his pillow.
Temerity coughed, cleared her throat.
Kostya shifted onto his back, opened his puffy eyes, and tugged the sheet farther up his chest.
Temerity shook her head. —I’ve seen it before, remember, when it dripped with gonorrhea. Here, Minenkov brought you mushrooms.
Kostya tore a corner of the packet, sniffed it. —Dima? Oh, my God. Mushrooms. I’ve not gone mushroom hunting in years.
— Your God is a little fungus on a rotten log?
— If you ever ate these cooked properly, you’d consider them sacred.
— I do know what a mushroom is, thank you.
Laughing, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, the sheet draped over his belly and thighs. Then he patted the mattress to his left. —Yes, of course you do. Britishers know everything. Sit here.
She did, unsure where to look: the hair on his chest and forearms, the stubble on his face. —Your toe looks much better.
The scars on his ear, neck, and shoulder flushed deep red, and the skin over them seemed very thin.
— Are the scars painful?
He gave a half-smile. —Hurt like hell. At least, what I used to imagine hell to be, back when I could study a beauty wall. Now, these mushrooms. Wait, I told you not to go to the door. How did he get in?
— He had a key.
— Dima has a key? Then Arkady Dmitrievich loaned it to him. Fucked in the mouth, can the old man not even give me this much peace? Loaning out a key to my flat so he can check on me. I don’t loan out my key to his house. I suppose all of fucking Moscow can get a key to my flat. Has all of fucking Moscow got any butter?
— Minenkov suggested bones.
Kneel, aim, fire. —What?
— For broth.
— We need an onion.
Temerity rubbed her temples. —An onion.
— Yes, an onion. What’s wrong with that? Do you not have onions in the British Empire? If the onion turns blue in the broth with the mushrooms, then we’ve got poisonous ones, and if you eat them, you’ll die frothing at the mouth, like this, fffffff…are you all right?
— Fine, fine.
— I’ll get some butter, and some wine. We’ll feast tonight.
He placed his left arm around her shoulders: heavy, stiff.
Warm.
Temerity kept still.
Kostya took his arm back.
Temerity shifted her weight. —Onions, butter, and bones. Does Minenkov always bring you groceries?
— We’ve all gone hungry. We shared everything during the last round of food difficulties. Look, Vadym Minenkov’s lovely, but don’t assume that means he’s weak. And he can tell you stories about Dzerzhinsky himself. Just don’t ask him; you’ll be there all night. Now, butter. What are you smirking about?
She dropped her voice to almost a whisper. —I once saw the Prince of Wales made of butter.
— Who?
— Edward VIII, before he was king.
Kostya waited for her to stop giggling. —The one who abdicated?
— Britain’s better off without him. He has no understanding of duty. Back in 1924, at the Empire Exhibition, the dear Canadians sent us a life-size statue of the Prince of Wales made of butter.
Her laughter broke free, and though he loved the sound of it, Kostya squinted at her. —Wait, a statue made of butter?
— The Canadians are farmers, wide open prairies and whatnot, dairymen, lots of milk. Sturdy children. Like your Ukraine, I expect. They’re certainly proud of their butter. And so, the Canadians’ gift: Wales, in butter. Life-size, with a horse. Three thousand pounds of it.
— That’s just over thirteen hundred kilos. What happened to it?
Temerity dragged her thoughts from a memory of the Duke of York, now George VI, stammering and gagging through his speech to close the exhibition. —Ah, well, we got a replacement statue, I know that. The exhibition lasted for some time.
— No one ate it?
— I don’t think so. I expect the butter turned rancid.
Kostya discarded the sheet and rushed off the bed, all muscle and speed. Then he bowed with great flourish and straightened up, grinning. He did not look happy. —Should I not be taller?
— What?
— Thirteen hundred kilos of butter, Nadia. In 1924, two years, two fucking years after the…food difficulties, when I was nineteen years old, I still wore the same size clothes as when I was twelve. I had a growth spurt at age twenty-two. And you greedy and arrogant British propped up your empire with art made of butter.
Her cheeks burned as she thought of her grandfather’s wealth. Looking down, she straightened her skirt. —Please put some clothes on.
Sighing, Kostya sat beside her and covered himself with the sheet. —Truce. Dima is right. Butter and broth are the best things for these mushrooms.
— Very thoughtful of him.
— He’s good that way. He nursed me through the worst flu I’ve ever had.
— What, 1918? You told me the truth about that?
— I told you the truth about many things. How much have you lied to me?
— Not about that flu. I did dream about skull lights as nightingales sang, and the fever locked me in a trunk and threw me in a river.
Kostya could smell the disinfectant in the clinic in Spain. —Like Svyatogor’s wife when he punished her for adultery.
— Yes, except I escaped the trunk. When I did, I found that my mother and brother had died.
— Nadia, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.
He means it. —Thank you.
Kostya made to kiss her forehead, stopped. —How many languages?
— Now, why would I tell you that?
— I’ll go first. Seven, including Russian.
— I find that hard to believe.
Kostya sounded younger, like a boy eager to prove himself. —No, really, I told the truth. Spanish, Italian, and French but then if you’ve got one of those, you’ve got them all. German, Ukrainian, some Kazakh…
— Kazakh?
— And English.
— And where did you hear all those tongues?
— Odessa, to start. Oh, and some Yiddish.
— Lucky you.
He leaned close, and his stubble scraped her cheek. —You’d get French at school, yes, nice British girl? French is the gateway.
— Indeed, it is not. Latin is the gateway.
— You’ve got Latin?
— Ancient Greek, too.
He snorted. —Spare me the talk of the dead.
— You’re jealous.
— The languages people speak now, Nadia.
— The word gonorrhea is Latin. It means flow of the seed. Of course, it’s not semen that leaks out of the head of your cock but pus.