— Perhaps you’ll tell me the secret of your lovely skin?
Buttoning her jacket, she smiled at Boris, unaware of how defiant she looked to him, yet quite aware of how much Boris would enjoy crushing such defiance into shame.
THE AIR RAID AND THE SNEEZE
Monday 26 July–Tuesday 27 July
— Just tell me.
— It doesn’t matter, Nadia.
— Kostya, the scars write a story on your skin.
— How poetic. It’s nothing.
— Will you just listen to me?
He finished his third glass of vodka. —What is it you wish to say?
— How did you get those scars, and how did you not bleed to death?
— Shrapnel in Gerrikaitz, and I’ve no idea.
— But it hurt.
— Of course it hurt.
— Like a gunshot?
— What?
— I said, like a gunshot?
Kostya could smell the lorry in Spain, the grease and oil, the dried sweat of both Misha and Cristobal. —Most of the gunshots I’ve seen are fatal. The head. Fucked in the mouth, why do you even ask me that?
— Kostya—
— Please! Shut up. Just shut up.
The bottle clinked against the glass. He poured another drink, knocked it back, and swallowed hard as the vodka shot back up his throat.
A few hours later, pain woke him. A hot bolt bore through his shoulder and pinned him to the bed. As Temerity slept beside him, her breathing regular and deep, the ceiling surrendered to the Spanish sky, and the low Junkers growled, the noise steady, mechanized, nothing like an animal’s. So many planes. He stood outside an abandoned barn and farmhouse in Gerrikaitz, squinting in the sunshine. Dust-dimmed light of interiors: he’d been working inside the barn for many hours, working hard. Struggling with duty. Ready to scream. Misha had already screamed. Their conflict, their ordeal, now interrupted by the growl of those planes, fell away.
Luftwaffe? What the barrelling fuck?
Even as Kostya asked himself that question, he saw the answer; dark shapes fell from the bellies of the planes.
The whistle, the squeaclass="underline" Kostya ran not from the sight of bombs and planes but from the noise.
The abandoned farmhouse was boarded and locked. The barn held problems of its own. The nearest other buildings stood a good half mile away.
The ground shrugged, threw him off.
Mouth crammed with dirt, Kostya rose on his elbows and craned his neck. Wood and metal and earth fell on him, cut him, beat him down.
Coughing, spitting, weeping, he crawled out from beneath the rubble and discovered silence, yet the planes still fouled the sky. He screamed at them. He heard nothing.
Pressure in my ears.
In the bed next to him, Temerity’s breathing changed.
Deaf on his knees in Gerrikaitz, Kostya stared at the sky.
I acted like a panicked animal. I left someone behind. He said that to a nurse in Bilbao. She stroked his hand, saying, These are difficult times. Then, reminding him of the shrapnel and splinters embedded in the flesh of his left shoulder and ear, as if he could somehow forget that pain, the Bilbao nurse ordered him to swallow these few sulpha pills, and he laughed, laughed, laughed so hard that the nurse told him to lie down. When another patient asked what he found funny, and what he’d done to merit a scarce cot when so many in the clinic sat huddled on the floor, bloodied and miserable, he shouted about knowledge and destruction. After a moment he recognized that he shouted in Russian. Two men seized him by the arms, and the nurse injected him in the back of his left hand.
When he woke up, he felt the jostling progress of the wheeled cart beneath him. The man in front of the cart explained he must remove debris from this patient’s shoulder, and the man pushing the cart pointed out that the clinic lacked any general anaesthetic. The first man growled in his throat, in disgust more than aggression, then said He’s Russian, most likely NKVD, and that means he’s hunting and killing people. And we have to treat him. Mother of God. Get those rosary beads out of his hand. Where in hell’s name did he get rosary beads? Fill him up with as much bromide as you can without stopping his heart, and I’ll see what I can do.
Never any mistreatment. Nothing of the sort. They gave him back his clothes and papers, all intact, yet Kostya knew no one at the clinic would believe his stories. Mr. MacKenzie the Canadian volunteer for the International Brigade, Tikhon the Russian war correspondent, Ivan the Russian volunteer: no one would believe him at all.
Kostya himself no longer believed. Not in his fake identities, not in his own identity, not in his entire purpose in Spain. Torture and murder meant only torture and murder, not love of country, not duty. Yet how could he stop? How could he disobey clear and direct orders? By my own free will, he thought, gagging as someone helped him drink water bitter and salty with bromides, yet twice as much by compulsion.
Despite medical advice, he insisted on standing soon after the procedure, then walking, however much he shook in this overrun clinic in northern Spain, a clinic reeking of blood and then, as days passed and other patients’ wounds took infection, corruption.
Misha.
He caught the scent of Shalimar.
Temerity laid her hand on Kostya’s chest. —Breathe. Breathe. In, out. Nice and deep.
Sweat broke on his skin. —Those fucking planes!
The bed rocked as Temerity got up and tugged on some clothes. —Breathe, my love. I’ll get Efim. Just breathe.
My love? —Stay with me.
Temerity glanced over her shoulder at the man struggling to catch his breath, then darted to the hallway to knock on Efim’s door.
The knocks hauled Efim out of an anxious dream of seeking bandages. —What? What is it?
— Kostya’s shoulder.
Thoughts settling, Efim discovered Kostya on his back, pale and sweaty, scowl lines cutting deep into his face. —When we skipped your dose earlier this evening, I’d hoped you could do without it.
— The wounds are old. Why must they hurt so much?
Efim held the filled syringe to the light, tapped it. —One of my teachers in med school believed a chronic wound could become a prison for pain. If the wound can’t heal, then the pain runs in a cage, burrows in on itself. Not a useful metaphor, I admit. Then there’s the psychology of it. When we worry about pain, it can create a feedback loop, like that noise a microphone can make.
— How can I not worry about this pain? I can’t fucking think past it. It’s my own fault if it gets worse? That makes no sense!
Efim found a vein, gave the injection. —It may take a while now to get this settled down.
One-two, three-four, five-six…—Just give me a bigger dose.
— No.
— Please.
— Konstantin, I said no. If I give you more, then I make it all worse.
— Make what worse?
— The need.
Kostya shook his head. —I can’t be addicted already. It still hurts.
— Keep still. Let the morphine work. There, some relief?
Kostya’s voice sounded looser, less connected somehow. —Yes. Thank you. It’s not enough, but thank you. Must you help everyone? Medically, I mean. If someone comes to you wounded or sick, and you don’t like their politics, do you still help them?
I am the doctor who leapt from the train. —Why would you even ask me that?