Drawing on his cigarette, reading the cell number, Kostya raised his eyebrows. —Balakirev? Must be languages.
— I only know what I was told, Comrade Senior Lieutenant.
— You’ll go far. Wait, you had night duty. Go home.
Matvei looked at the floor and whispered. —She’s still unconscious.
Elena Petrovna. Kostya offered him a cigarette. —So you’ve not left Lubyanka at all?
Matvei struggled to light the match. —I sat with her.
Kostya studied him a moment. —You’re no doctor. Now go home and rest. That’s an order.
Underground, Kostya navigated the maze. The corridors, designed to confuse and contain anyone who might escape confinement, could also baffle the most experienced officer. Kostya, who found these corridors easier than the Odessa catacombs, took note of scarce numbers, chipped paint, and leak stains: trail marks. Go I know not whither, he thought, and fetch I know not what. Why can’t I stop thinking about stories?
The laughter of Vasily Blokhin floated on the air, spontaneous this time, joyful. Then a gun fired.
Kostya flinched, resumed walking. Fucking Tokarevs.
Noise faded as Kostya walked to the farthest cells. Not certain he had the right spot, for the unguarded cell door hung open a few centimetres, Kostya knocked and called out. —Comrade Major, you sent for me?
The heavy door opened a little further and Kostya stepped inside, just managing to avoid the large puddle on the floor. The puddle reflected back the image of the usual desk and two chairs, one for chief interrogator, one for prisoner, and the terrible brightness of one caged light bulb.
Arkady pulled the heavy door almost shut, then wedged a tiny opening with a ruler. —Is she still there?
— What?
— Your whore. I tried to send her on her way.
— Arkady Dmitrievich—
— The stool’s behind you. Get up there.
Kostya looked around again, found no prisoner perched on the high stool. Arkady’s voice unsettled him, too. He’d not spoken to Kostya quite like that, in tones of disappointment and contempt, for many years.
Arkady backhanded Kostya across the face. —I said, get on the stool.
Stunned by the violence, suspended in that cold moment of accepting the blow and yet believing no pain would come, not this time, Kostya obeyed. Steel touched his haunches, and his struck face blazed. —What the hell was that for?
Arkady backhanded him again, same cheek. —Don’t make this harder than it needs to be. And lower your voice, unless you want to get us both fucking killed right here, right now.
Tears clouding his vision, Kostya slowed his breathing and calmed his voice. —How shall I explain this bruise?
— I don’t give a goat’s rancid fuck what you explain to others when first you must explain something to me.
Kostya slipped down from the stool. —I am not some adolescent you may beat when annoyed. I’m—
He staggered backwards until he hit the wall, and he wanted nothing more than to slide down to the floor.
Because Arkady had punched him in the belly.
Arkady rubbed at his knuckles. —Annoyed? I beat you because sometimes the only way to reach you is to pound the truth though that thick skull. You will get back up on that stool and perch there until I instruct you otherwise.
Spitting, Kostya obeyed. —Arkady Dmitrievich, please…
— Please what? What? Shall I not hit you? Shall I not worry about you? Shall I not wake up in a cold sweat from dreams of you packed in some shit-filled cattle car for a fucking month as it inches towards Kolyma? Look at me when I speak to you. Look at me!
Tears running down his face, Kostya looked.
Arkady cradled Kostya’s face in his hands, and his voice dropped to a whisper. —What have you done to yourself? Intersections of power, Kostya. The steppe gives up in patches to forest, and the forest gives up in patches to tundra, yet in places where you see no change, all the differences blend. Survive. I taught you that.
Kostya said nothing.
Arkady caught some of Kostya’s tears on his fingers. —You took her home from my party.
Voice quiet: —Yes.
— In the car Stepanov had signed out.
— Yes.
— And that’s why Kuznets wanted to see the garage logs. Fuck. Kostya, you need to come up with a reason why you took a car signed out in another officer’s name and then returned it in your name. A good reason.
— Stepanov was too drunk to walk straight, let alone drive. I did him a favour by bringing it back.
— Not bad, not bad.
Kostya wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and struggled to think. —Are you under investigation?
Arkady spat on the floor. —Do you know who sits in his own shit just a few cells away?
Kostya knew. He waited for Arkady to tell him, because Arkady needed to say it.
Somehow.
Arkady mouthed the name. —Yagoda. And do you know who’s going to shoot him?
Kostya nodded. Vasily Blokhin.
— So no, I am not under investigation, not officially, yet I am. And so are you. NKVD purges the country, and it purges itself. You know this. So do not give Boris Kuznets, or that stunted little weed Yury Stepanov, any more reasons to come after you.
— Kuznets? He gave me a gift. The perfume.
— Kinder to give you a kulich bomb. Come on, Little Tatar, did you really think that was a gift? It was a warning. Here, take my kerchief.
Kostya looked to the floor as he dried his face. —Warning me of what?
— Warning me, Kostya. Warning me that he knows you took Stepanov’s car and is willing to press the issue.
— What the barrelling fuck has perfume got to do with the car?
— That woman! I know what she is, and I am trying to protect you!
— By beating me?
— When necessary, yes!
Kostya shook his head. —And if I told you I love her?
Fast and hard: the blows, the fall off the stool, the water in his nose and mouth, the kick to his back. Kostya curled up tight, and the shame of this treatment magnified the pain. He couldn’t fight back. Not Arkady. Even as the pain paralyzed him, devoured him, he told himself he had a theoretical choice but could not, ever, fight back against Arkady.
Puddle water splashed.
The blows ceased. Kostya had no idea why. Perhaps the old man got tired. Or perhaps Kostya’s squealed plea embarrassed them both.
— Steal me, steal me, steal me.
Arkady dragged Kostya away from the puddle and propped him against the desk. Then Arkady leaned next to him, and they both gasped, wheezed, grunted.
Wept.
Arkady shifted his weight, then put his arm around Kostya’s shoulders. Flinching, Kostya wrenched his thoughts from the chaos of fury and pain as a drowning man might launch his face at the surface of the water: a sliver of a moment, desperation. Anything. Anything to breathe.
He smelled Arkady’s vodka flask beneath his nose, took several good swallows. Then, as on the train to Moscow in 1918, he snuggled into Arkady’s side.
Arkady almost whimpered. The memory of that long journey and its clear purpose felt so distant now. Time grinds me down. Please, keep this moment still.
Then Arkady recalled the wounds in Kostya’s left shoulder and eased the pressure of his arm there. —Get rid of her. Your duty—
Kostya spat the word. —Duty.
— That alone could get you twenty fucking years. Yes, duty, if to nothing else, then to your own safety. How many times, over and over…Should I have left you in Odessa? Left you for the Germans who cleaned the streets? I saved you, Little Tatar. I fed you. I made sure you had a warm bed, and I got you new identity papers and an education. I navigated the intersecting planes of power with you, for you. Konstantin Arkadievich Nikto, bright star in NKVD, and you’ll piss all over it?