Just a memory. Is the sun so bright in England?
When he opened his eyes, dapples and smears hovered a moment, to remind him that they existed.
Gavriil? No.
His visions of the angel had long deserted him.
As Kostya straightened his cap and took cigarettes and matches from his pouch, his sight cleared some more. Footsteps approached the bench: adult and child. The boy, maybe four years old, slowed his stride to admire Kostya’s uniform.
— Mama, the cap!
The mother turned to see, and fear rippled through her face. —Don’t bother him.
— I want a cap.
A click, then several clicks: a twitch had run through Kostya’s hand, and he dropped the beads. They fell beneath the bench.
— I get them!
The boy ran to the bench and bent to retrieve the beads, motions graceful. He held them out for Kostya.
Smoke curled around Kostya’s face as he took the beads. What would we have named the child? —Thank you.
The boy returned to his mother, narrating his just-completed quest. —I helped, Mama! I found the man’s beads. I found them, and I gave them back. I helped.
His voice thinned out as his mother, the breeze stirring her brown curls, hurried him along.
Kostya took a deep drag on his cigarette and stood up. —Stop.
The woman froze; the boy looked to her for guidance and copied her posture.
Kostya strode up to them. —Comrade, have I not seen you in this park before? Jumping from the parachute tower?
— Very likely. I often visit this park.
— Mama?
Kostya stroked the boy’s hair. —It’s all right.
The woman spoke with forced cheer. —Yes, it’s all right. We visit the park. We jump from towers. After all, our business is rejoicing. Am I free to go, Comrade Officer?
He nodded. —Take care of your son.
At ten to three in the morning, as Kostya sat at the little fold-down table wearing civilian trousers and an undershirt and finishing a bowl of kasha, men murmured outside the flat. They had yet to knock, so Kostya stood up, unlocked the door, and swung it open.
A team of two: Yury Stepanov, wearing a junior lieutenant’s insignia, fist raised to pound on the door, and just behind him, Matvei Katelnikov.
Kostya spoke as though greeting expected friends. —Come in, come in.
Yury looked disappointed. —Ah…thank you.
Matvei, red in the face, followed Yury into the flat and then closed the door behind them.
Yury stood by the kitchen, looking around. When he spoke, he sounded spiteful. —All this space to yourself?
Gesturing to the front room, Kostya made his way to the soft chair. —I’ll sit here while you work. You’ll want to collect some evidence. Bedrooms are that way. So is the telephone, right next to the bathroom door.
Matvei raised his eyebrows. —By the bathroom?
— Moscow flats, what can you do? Don’t get me started on the light switches.
Matvei chuckled.
Snorting, Yury pointed at Matvei, then at Kostya. —Keep him there while I look around.
As Yury opened drawers in the stenka and tossed items about, Kostya closed his eyes and told himself to remember how this chair felt. He’d be sitting in hard wooden chairs soon, perhaps bound there, hard wooden chairs before desks while struggling with consciousness and pain as fellow officers beat him. But right here, right now: the give of the cushions, the curve of the arms…
Yury strode to the bedrooms; Kostya took the beads from his pocket.
Click. Officer, or prisoner? Click. Criminal, or innocent? Click. Lover, or murderer?
His shoulder wounds burned.
Then he understood what Temerity had done. A shot in the upper arm or shoulder would cause enough of an injury to need a hospital, and from there she’d try to contact the British Embassy. The risk: if Boris Kuznets had not called an ambulance? If Efim Scherba had not been there? If Kuznets had ordered her straight to Lubyanka? A shot as risk, as defiance, even optimism?
Her duty.
He wept. I knocked her off balance, and the bullet hit her head.
Svyatogor’s wife drowned in a river while locked in a box. Vasilisa the Beautiful crafted a lamp from a skull and holy fire. Marya Morevna fought Koshchei the Deathless.
Matvei passed Kostya a handkerchief; Kostya dropped it on the floor.
Yury returned, carrying an old newsprint photo of the battleship Dobryna Nikitich docked in Odessa, a menu from Babichev’s, and the bottle of Shalimar. He passed the items to Matvei, who held them in his cupped hands. Then Yury’s face filled Kostya’s vision: snub nose, squinty eyes, three kinked hairs sprouting from the top curve of his left ear. —You’re done, Nikto, you’re fucking done. I will harness you to a chair and break your arms doing it. I will hammer your gut until you puke blood, and I will crush your cock until you can’t even piss yourself. Beg. Beg me now, because in the cells you’ll be so deaf with blood in your ears that you won’t hear your own voice. And all this from Little Yurochka.
Kostya clicked another bead. I never had her courage.
— Fucking look at me when I speak to you, Nikto. Nikto!
Kostya met Yury’s gaze. —My name is Berendei.
— What?
Matvei shut his eyes in dread. —Oh, fuck. The paperwork.
Is courage ever enough? A final bead clicked. —I am Konstantin Semyonovich Berendei, and I love her.
1957
PODMOSKOVNYE VECHERA
Moscow
Sunday 4 August
Muscles tense and defined, faces determined, arms pointing, no doubt, to that elusive radiant future, young Soviet women had balanced on angled boards attached to moving motorcycles. Considering it now, and how the image would likely haunt her, Temerity shook her head in some awe. The parade, part of the opening of the World Festival of Youth and Students, intended as spectacle, to be sure, most carefully planned theatre, artificial despite the truths of athleticism — how long had those women trained? — had somehow also presented itself as a study in defiance.
Defiance of what, Temerity asked herself, gravity? Wait. Is it joy despite command, joy in their own strength? Here?
As the fading daylight played on the faces in the crowd, Temerity felt at once exhausted and energized, even feverish. On top of the hundred thousand Soviet citizens invited to the city, over thirty thousand foreigners attended the World Festival of Youth and Students, coming from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Many of them wore their culture’s traditional clothes; others wore Western dress, collars open against the summer heat. The streets in and around Red Square smelled of sweat and musk, honey and smoke, pepper and wine, and sounded of laughter, shouts, and happy conversations. Temerity smiled as she paused near a brick wall to allow a crush of raucous and happy young people speaking in at least three different languages to pass by. This sense of freedom in Red Square, of all places, felt otherworldly, even dangerous.
Intoxicating.
Temerity wondered how her charges, two of her students from the West Language School being groomed for intelligence work, felt about this version of Moscow, so different from what they’d been taught. Both young women had stayed by her side during the festival’s opening night back on the twenty-eighth, but after that they kept getting lost in the crowds, or so they said. So long as they made it back to the hostel each night by twelve, Temerity refrained from complaint. She’d lectured them on not expecting men to remember any promises to obtain and use condoms — Soviet prophylactics did not enjoy a good reputation — or, God’s sake, to pull out in time. Temerity also made sure her students knew how to use their cervical caps, devices she’d helped them obtain without their parents’ knowledge. The students’ blushes and squirms, their frank disbelief that greying Miss West would know of such things, had made Temerity laugh.