Instead, he eased it shut.
Then locked it.
The early evening gave no respite from the heat. Standing in the kitchen, his jacket and tie in a heap on the hinged table, Efim plucked his sleeves from his sweaty skin, rolled them up, and told himself the heat was no bother. Neither was his likely sentence of twenty-five years when found guilty of providing an abortion. His attempts at self-deception provided no real distraction. Once NKVD hauled him in, he’d confess it. He knew this. A matter of time, and perhaps of pride, but mostly time. I’ll babble it in the car before we even reach Lubyanka.
As he sterilized his gynecological instruments by boiling them on the stove — he’d not dared to use the autoclave at the lab — Efim confronted a deeper recognition. Not only had he broken several laws, but he’d chosen the safety of this patient, however desperate, over the safety of his wife.
What kind of man am I?
He’d asked that question earlier in the afternoon at Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two, testing refinements on a new formula with which he and the other doctors murdered two young women, twin sisters with frizzy blond hair, each pleading pregnancy.
He told Temerity he must examine her.
On Kostya’s bed, towels beneath her, Temerity sweated in embarrassment and fear: the difficult pragmatics of tilting her pelvis at a good angle to allow Efim a view, of exposing, once again, a part of herself both violated and loved.
— No sign of infection, Nadezhda.
— I need to be sick.
— Did this come on suddenly?
She rolled on her side and retched.
Efim took a thermometer from bag and shook the mercury down. —Once you’re done, we’ll see if you’re feverish.
Her temperature reading normal, Temerity tugged sheets up over herself. I’m going to die here.
Efim studied the bruise on Temerity’s face. —I think you fell in love with the wrong man.
She sat up, making her nausea worse. —You think I chose this?
— Shh, your voice.
— My voice? I should scream. Isn’t that what captives do? I should have stabbed him after I kneed him. I should—
The telephone rang; they both flinched.
Temerity listened to Efim answer the caller’s questions: yes, yes, no, no, no, yes.
He stood in the doorway. —I have to leave.
— Wait, I need money.
He shut his medical bag and shook his head.
— Efim Antonovich, please, just thirty kopeks.
— You shouldn’t be on your feet yet. Get some rest. Doctor’s orders.
He left the flat.
After a moment, she checked the door.
Locked.
She arranged fresh bandages for herself. Then, in the front room, she switched on the radio. A shrill report on production quotas for iron concluded and gave way, for the education and betterment of all, comrades, to a live performance of the first movement of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E Major. —Please welcome violinist Comrade Orlova.
Temerity knew the piece well. Bach’s vigour and clarity in this partita always made her heart beat faster, and she gasped in pleasure. Static interrupted yet failed to obscure the insistent, almost frantic beauty as the violinist reached beyond the state-induced Stakhanovite aesthetic of faster-faster-faster, more-more-more, and begged — dared — the listener to keep up.
Temerity felt her ribs ache, her lungs twitch, as if she’d forgotten to breathe. She’d last heard the piece performed at a concert three years before, accompanied by her father and Count Ostrovsky. Tears pricked.
A click: the announcer informed the audience that he held a stopwatch close to the mic. The first movement of that partita often took three and a half or even four minutes to play. Comrade Orlova had just finished in three minutes and thirteen seconds.
— Have you anything to say, Comrade Orlova?
— Oh. Ah, just thank you.
She sounded much as Temerity imagined Amelia Earhart would: not frightened, but exhilarated. Despite the menace and threat of the Purge, despite the risk of drawing the attention of those who might sense her resistance and strength and so wish to harm her, Orlova had reached for beauty. In this moment, she could be both loyal and, for those who had ears to hear it, subversive. Of course, she pursued excellence for collective joy and the glory of the motherland, nothing self-interested, bourgeois, or formalist here. And yet, in the same moment, she pursued excellence as a private devotion to something greater than mere survival. In that decision, perhaps more instinct than choice, she stood defiant.
Patting her left shoulder, Temerity smiled.
— No sign of him?
Efim placed his medical bag on the sofa. —None.
Pacing, Arkady gestured to his large table: cheese, bread, and some cold roast fowl, little bowls of chopped cucumber in yogurt, and three bottles of wine. —Leftovers. I hosted a funeral reception today. Help yourself.
Resenting Arkady’s hospitality after his command to come to the house, no explanation given, Efim studied the table and its offerings. —Please accept my condolences once more.
— I told Kostya to stay at the flat and call me.
— Nadezhda Ivanovna says he got upset and left.
— Nadezhda Ivanovna can rot in Kolyma and then take a holiday in hell. Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova: you do know that’s not her real name. At least, you suspected. And she’s not Soviet, either. I’ve seen her passport.
Efim felt dizzy. How could I not know what I know? —Why do you tell me this?
— So that now we shall all tumble into the meat grinder hand-in-hand, singing folk songs that celebrate the triumph of the workers. Drink?
Nodding, Efim sat down. A cork popped; wine splashed; Efim looked up. As Arkady returned to Efim, passing through patches of shadow and light, a sheen glistened, then dulled, on his forehead, like a salt stain, like a frost.
Efim accepted the wine. —When did you last consult a doctor? For yourself?
— You’re here now, aren’t you?
Efim peered at him. This big Chekist, free of his uniform, seemed smaller. His cheeks sagged, and his eyes betrayed something new, something besides fear and corruption and expectation of command: sacrifice. Balakirev, Arkady Dmitrievich, Major, NKVD, his desires and motives wrinkled and obscured, had reached a decision.
Arkady sat near Efim. —Let me tell you how my father died.
Efim listened to this story as he studied Arkady’s face, eyes, hands. Then he asked permission to listen through his stethoscope.
The lungs crackled and wheezed, air fighting with fluid. The heart beat too fast.
Arkady shuddered as though chilled. —I itch all over. Worse at night. Get that thermometer away from me.
Efim stroked Arkady’s cheek with the backs of his fingers and found no fever. To make sure, he pressed his lips to Arkady’s forehead. As he retreated, he tasted his lips: salty, uric, foul. —You’ve no pain with this, Comrade Major?
— None.
Efim washed away the taste with a sip of wine. —That may change.
— I don’t care.
Efim believed him.
— I don’t care. I just want Kostya looked after, and for the first time in my life since I became a man, I can do nothing. Too much works against him. I cannot save him. And I’m afraid he cannot save himself.
Efim’s practised speech for the dying, his gentle encouragement to detach from worldly concerns and visit the church of the mind, failed. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to use the diminutive, for in this moment he’d intruded on something intimate, as a doctor must. —You need to let Kostya worry about himself.
— Kostya, alone? Him, and that whore? Even if I can’t save him, I will still protect him. I know him well; I know how he thinks; he’ll be here soon. And then I may need you all the more. I don’t want him to know you’re here, though, so when I tell you, wait in the study.
— What?
A wheeze sharpened Arkady’s sigh. —Efim Antonovich, I’ve been presumptuous. I ordered you here instead of inviting you. Vadym said I treat every encounter as an interrogation. I think he was right. Will you stay a while?
Not a command but a plea, a plea from a sick man. Confused, Efim nodded. —Of course.
As Arkady topped up their drinks and started telling a story of Kostya as an adolescent, the trouble he caused with a friend called Misha, Efim saw how he must counsel two violent Chekists on the inevitability of death. He laughed at the thought, just at a moment where Arkady’s story invited laughter. Then he recognized a deeper truth: he must prepare a loving son for the loss of his father.