Dogs whined and barked. Tractors idled. The sergeant dipped a tin cup into the vodka barrel and raised in a toast. —To your stamina, comrades.
Feet shuffled; prisoners and executioners got into their final queues. Kostya checked his Nagant for the third time: loaded, ready.
Noises of clunking switches and electricity: outside, searchlights shone.
The sergeant blew a whistle.
Kostya looked to Lev. —Is that new?
— A few weeks ago he lost his voice shouting orders at us, and we got behind schedule.
Another whistle, and the men of the squad stretched fingers and limbs, touched their toes, ran in place.
Warm-up at the gym, Kostya thought, and he rolled his shoulders, stretched his back, turned his head from side to side.
Third whistle: the executioners marched into the bright light.
As Kostya’s vision adjusted, the squad formed before a new open grave, and the first line of prisoners joined them.
— Kneel!
The prisoners knelt.
— Aim!
The squad lifted weapons.
— Fire!
Noise and smoke.
A whistle blew. The next line of prisoners took their places.
The scene played out seven times; the Nagants reloaded while the Tokarevs mocked; another row; the Tokarevs reloaded while the Nagants jeered.
Again, again, again.
Kostya recognized Friesen and Fontana, the women from the morning’s interrogation.
Just this morning?
Kneel. Aim. Fire.
Kick a corpse.
A recess: return to the stone cottage for vodka and cocaine, no shortage. Celebrating this bounty, some of the men sang ‘Yablochko.’ —Ekh, little apple…
Lev turned from his sniffing as someone called to him, and the powder fell from the back of his hand. Alerted to this loss by another man, Lev only laughed.
Telling himself this would not, must not, become a habit, Kostya sniffed some more of Lev’s gift. A numb clarity returned, a great comfort: purpose and duty, unsullied by emotion, shone as clear beacons.
It didn’t last.
A whistle.
A return.
— Kneel!
On Kostya’s left, the gaunt form of Pavel Ippolitov, tall even as he knelt…
— Aim!
On his right, a flash of purple silk near a woman’s neck…
— Fire!
The purple left his line of sight. Vodka and bile shot into his mouth; he swallowed it back.
A whistle…
Blood and clots gushed as Temerity sat up and so tilted her pelvis; the flow soaked the padding. Efim had left to find more bandages, more wound dressing, more of something, anything, she might use.
As instructed, she rinsed the bloodied wads in the shower, wrung them out, then wrapped them in layers of Izvestia. Setting aside the last of the clean padding, unsteady, she stepped into the shower. She did not linger, careful to be thrifty with the soap, and, once dried off, packed, padded, and dressed again, she placed the package of Izvestia in a suitcase that Efim kept under his bed. He would dump the bundles in the incinerator at the lab.
No stains on my skirt, at least.
Finding the walk to the front room taxing, she sat in the soft chair. She dozed for a while, waking when Kostya stumbled into the flat. Fear jumped in her belly; fatigue pinned her down. That stink again: cordite and cigarettes and cologne and sweat and blood. His face and gymnastyorka looked dark grey, almost sooty, and his hair, which often shone with pomade, seemed dull as a shadow. He lurched toward the bathroom.
Temerity waited for him to call to her.
Not a word.
Instead, he strode back to the front room, fumbled in the drawers of the stenka, returned to the bathroom, and flicked on the electric light. An odd noise then, interrupted, brief, something between a hiss and hush.
Then Kostya yelped. —Ow! Nadia?
— A moment.
— Nadia, please.
— Yes, I’m coming.
Illuminated before the mirror, Kostya pried clippers away from a clump of hair on his now patchy head.
Bloodied hair.
He shook the clump free and resumed cutting. Rough. Random. The clippers made their shushing noise as Kostya left some spots incomplete, others bare, still others alone.
He glimpsed Temerity in the mirror. —The fucking showers don’t work!
Hush-hush-hush.
— The work we do, and no showers?
Hush-hush-hush.
— And now the car’s got to be taken out of service to be cleaned.
Hair fell to the floor. Temerity studied the waves and curls, and she wanted to cover the bloodied clumps with a towel.
Kostya dropped the clippers into the sink.
Wincing at the noise, Temerity rubbed her belly. She knew what she should ask. She also knew he might hit her again. —Where were you?
He took up the clippers again. —The poligon.
As Temerity struggled with the word poligon and considered geometry, the clippers jammed on another clump, and Kostya wrenched the lock of hair from his head.
— Fucked in the mouth!
— Let me do that.
— Don’t touch me.
— Kostya, please. You’ll hurt yourself.
— I don’t feel a thing. Oh. Look at that. More filth. More fucking filth on this filthy fucking night.
She said it in English. —God’s sake, you’re bleeding.
Tears cut little paths on his face, startling him when he looked in the mirror. —My name is Konstantin Arkadievich Nikto, and I am a senior lieutenant of state security. Tell me you love me. Tell me it’s still possible to love me. I’ll never be clean.
Temerity met his gaze in the mirror.
Behind Temerity, Kostya saw Gavriil, tall and fair, wearing a black peaked cap, little round spectacles, and a Chekist’s leather coat like Lev’s, like Arkady’s. He looked like an effete intellectual desperate to prove his revolutionary devotion and credentials, except he looked like nothing of the sort. Revolutionaries might have long and thin faces, and the old Chekists might wear those coats, but Gavriil, for all the order of the disguise, meant chaos. Gavriil shed the coat and revealed NKVD uniform, then shed that so that he looked like the ikon of the Novogord Gavriil, only with eyes of flame.
Kostya’s knees buckled, and he caught himself on the sink.
Temerity’s voice reached him. —Get in the shower and get that mess out of your hair. Then I can finish the cut.
— Get rid of it. Clip it off. All of it!
— Fine, but you’ll have to wash it first. I’ll turn on the water, get it warm.
She did this, disgusted with herself. Shall I hold Tam Lin tight?
Kostya watched the water flow from the shower head. —Nadia, I’m sorry about your face.
— Yes, I’m still quite angry about that. The water’s warm now. Get in.
He stood there.
Sighing, she tugged at his gymnastyorka and portupeya. —Take these off.
He writhed out of his uniform, dropped the lot on the floor, and stood beneath the water. Temerity glanced at the holster, then at the scars on Kostya’s shoulder.
— Nadia, pass me the soap.
She did. Then she put the toilet seat down and perched there.
Water ran, ran, ran.
— Nadia, I’m so sorry I hit you.
Staring at the wall, she said nothing.
— That will never happen again. I swear it.
She studied the clumps of hair on the floor.
— I’ve not been my best self. I don’t even know who that is. I’d like to think he’s better than the man who hit you.
She moved some of the locks and clumps aside with her toes.