— I was thinking about my grandfather. I like to think he helped anyone who needed him, no matter what side they were on.
Efim nodded. —Very likely.
Kostya rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers. And Dr. Cristobal Zapatero, would he have shown a stray Russian such mercy?
Sitting up, Kostya adjusted the sheets to cover himself better. —I feel I owe you both something after that little show. I heard this joke at the office the other day. Picture one of those big houses made over into flats, where everyone uses the one main door to get outside. So they’re all sound asleep, and it’s two in the morning, and bang-bang-bang-bang-bang, knocks on the door. Everyone wakes up, yet no one moves. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! Everyone has the same thought, that it’s NKVD officers on a raid. Still, no one moves. The knocks get very loud: bang-bang-bang-bang-bang! Finally, the old man who lives on the top floor, the oldest of old men, says ‘Well, my life is over, so I might as well be the one to answer the door and be taken away.’ He gets out of bed and limps down the stairs. Everyone listens. The door creaks open. Voices murmur. The door closes. Everyone keeps so very still. Then the old man then shouts up the stairs: ‘It’s all right, comrades, nothing to worry about. The building’s on fire, that’s all.’
Efim laughed. Temerity, eyes huge, looked at the bed, the wall, the floor.
Kostya noticed. —No sense of humour, Nadia? Try this one. The Kremlin, big meeting of Politburo, and the Boss himself, our beloved Comrade Stalin, is about to give a speech.
Efim glanced over his shoulder, knowing, even as he did so, no one else stood there.
Kostya continued. —Just as the Boss straightens his papers and opens his mouth, someone sneezes. Achoo! The Boss is furious! He demands: ‘Who sneezed?’ Silence. The Boss orders the guards to shoot the entire first row. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump. The smoke dissipates, and the Boss clears his throat, ready to address his beloved comrades, when, wait for it, somebody sneezes. Achoo! Terror shoots through everyone, faster than electricity, and more than one old revolutionary fears for the state of his shorts. And the Boss glowers at the entire assembly, and he thunders out: ‘Who sneezed?’ Silence. ‘Guards,’ orders the Boss, ‘shoot everyone in rows three to nine.’ The guards obey. Bang! Too many thumps to count. And when the smoke clears, everyone can see the Boss still stands at the podium, still waits with the infinite patience of a kind and loving father. He takes a breath to speak, and once more, Achoo! ‘Comrades,’ roars the Boss, ‘this is too much! Who sneezed?’ A rustle in the silence as one man, one tiny man in the very back row who can bear his guilt no longer, stands up and waves, and he says, ‘I did.’ The Boss fixes his yellow eyes on the man…and says ‘Bless you, comrade.’
Efim laughed some more. So did Kostya. Each man’s laughter fed the other’s, and the harder they tried to stop, the harder they laughed.
Temerity stared at them both. —That’s not funny.
Efim dabbed at his eyes, deciding he now had an excellent excuse to make his accusation. —If that’s not funny, then you’re not Russian.
Kostya smirked at her.
Temerity kept her back to Efim as she smoothed some of Kostya’s hair from his forehead. —Lost in translation, perhaps.
Still chuckling, Efim wished them both a good night.
Back in his own room, about to lock his door, Efim considered what Nadezhda Ivanovna had just said about translation. He visited the bathroom, urinated, then looked at himself in the mirror.
The doctor who leapt from the train was a much younger man.
Temerity took care not to rock the bed too hard as she got back in it. —Still hurts?
— Not as bad.
— How did it happen?
Kostya let out a long sigh. —Gerrikaitz.
— What were you doing in Gerrikaitz?
— My duty.
She took the risk. —Cristobal Zapatero?
After a moment, he answered. —I lost your sketchbook in the hospital. I lost his beads, too. I left you out of my report.
She waited, knowing that if she pressed him, he’d stop talking.
— And you, Nadia, what dragged you to Gernika so you could get bombed?
— Nothing dragged me. I chose to go to Gernika so I could get a message to London.
— Misha and I forced the issue. You chose nothing.
— Not this again. I chose duty.
He turned over to stroke her face. —And you got nothing worse for it than a bruise on the forehead.
— Nothing to show. Bad dreams. Then I got to Bilbao. I had to get home, or at least report in. And, ah, well, I was hardly the only one in Bilbao. What happened to those boys?
Kostya wanted to shout at her, tell her to shut up, demand she get him some vodka. He lacked the strength. —I don’t know. It was a trial run. No one made a sound about it in the press.
— A secret evacuation?
— I was waiting for orders in Bilbao. Down by the docks I heard someone shout for anyone who spoke Russian, and I said, ‘Here I am.’ And this man told me he was a colonel and now I had to escort a dozen boys out of a war zone to Leningrad. And he just left them with me, twelve boys wearing cardboard name tags. Not one of those boys spoke a word of Russian. I hadn’t slept for three damned days, and suddenly I’m looking after all these boys. The younger ones cried for their parents. I told them and told them they’d be safe, but they kept crying. I wanted to kick them, shove them aside, fuck, call them bezprizorniki. I told myself to do that, to help them toughen up, yes? I also wanted to hold them, calm them down, listen to them. My right arm was still bruised, and the left was useless. I couldn’t even hold the pencil, let alone a crying child. Then I saw you. After you wrote their name tags, something in my mind collapsed. I was afraid of you, and I couldn’t say why. The boat set out from Bilbao, and I tried to get the boys settled. I told them in Spanish they’d come back one day, when the war was over, but for now they were on an adventure. Two of the boys spoke only Basque. Some of the other boys could interpret. Yet if I just let them cry, that worked better than words. So I let them lean on me and cry. I tried to pat their shoulders, stroke their hair with my good arm. Fuck, that hurt. Then I organized the older ones and set them up as squad leaders, and we put the younger ones into squads. I made sure we kept brothers together. I demanded the cook feed them only the plainest rations, because otherwise they’d be sick the whole damned time. They got only hard bread, boiled peas, potatoes, and Narzan, and that’s all I took as well. Solidarity, comrade. The steamer made it to Leningrad, and as we stood on the docks, swaying on our sea legs, I put them through some language drill. Then I heard the boots. The boys froze when they saw the uniforms, and my esteemed colleagues separated us. Some of the boys cried out to me, and I could not go to them. The oldest boy took this as a betrayal, and I saw the anger play out on his face. He blamed me. I got bundled onto a train to Moscow, and they got marched away. Those children are the reason I got home. It was an accident. I was in Bilbao at the right moment. The captain of that little fishing boat was Red Army Intelligence, working hand in hand with NKVD. Chance.
Temerity tapped her mouth with her fist.
Kostya touched her fist, loosened the fingers, kissed them.
She took her hand back.
He sat up, found his cigarettes on the side table, lit two, and passed Temerity one. Cigarette smoke curled around their faces, making Kostya think of both Odessa fog and a fired Nagant.
— Kostya. This can’t continue.
— I know.
— Please, just get me to the embassy.
He said nothing.
— Kostya, I’m begging. Help me.
Recalling the sensation of the ashes in Arkady’s furnace on his fingers, Kostya ground out his cigarette, unfinished, and lay down.