Right now Jan almost never takes part in the executions. I’m saving my bullets, he jokes. I have a dream about shooting a countess. A real live countess.
When he told me this the first time I got scared. I imagined some high society love story: little Jan, an errand boy; the countess he lusts after (or who lusts after him); the old count who in the murk of the conjugal bedroom reveals to Jan the mysteries of homosexual love; a woman’s silhouette in the doorway; the shouts, the hysterics, maybe the police or a lashing in the stables; the vow for revenge, underground cells, the party of Bolsheviks, revolution, war, Cheka, execution lists, my tears on his shoulder…
That time Jan reassured me.
You have to understand, he said, I’ve never seen a genuine countess. Only in the movies. So I want to see how countesses behave before death, how they die, what color blood they have.
Aristocrats have blue, I joked, but Jan didn’t answer. I saw his cock stiffen up again, and in an onset of jealousy I squeezed it and Jan’s nails dug into my back. Then he loosened my fingers and laughed. What are you, jealous? Do you want me to take you along when we send her off to Dukhonin?
Since then we’ve spoken of this often. Jan’s dream has become my dream. We’ve imagined finding a countess: a spy infiltrated by White émigrés from Paris; an aristocrat in hiding who survived the Revolution in some out-of-the-way house, masquerading as a peasant, factory worker, or student. On the day of her execution she’ll be wearing a white dress, holding a parasol, wearing black high-laced shoes on low heels. Sometimes we’ll lead her down a brick corridor to the last wall, sometimes we’ll take her out into the snow in the Cheka courtyard (they haven’t executed anyone there in a long time, but in my dreams for some reason I see her walking, stumbling in the snow, across that courtyard), sometimes we’ll take her out of town, to the Gulf of Finland. Even in his dreams Jan won’t let me carry out the sentence myself—I just hand him the revolver and then he, squinting, slowly raises the muzzle and the countess turns pale, opening her parasol with a trembling hand or dropping it in the snow, covering her face in elbow-length white gloves. Jan always says, Farewell, countess!—and the seed of death bursts from his barrel, and her white dress turns red, soaked with blood, ordinary red blood, the same color as everyone else he has shot.
His dreams go no further than that shot, but in my visions I drop to my knees before him, kiss the revolver’s smoking muzzle, and then carefully take the other shaft into my mouth, a shaft poised and ready to fire.
I doze off holding Jan’s hand and think, Today it seems like he isn’t really with me, as if he’s thinking about something else, not the Revolution even, but some other young man, a year or two younger than me maybe, a twenty-two-year-old beauty with curly fair hair. Half-asleep, I see the three of us, then Jan goes away somewhere and my new lover kisses me on the lips—and then Jan’s voice wakes me, and I don’t understand right away what he’s said, but when I do I squeeze his hand even harder—and fall asleep for real.
I’ve found her, Jan says. I’ve found the countess.
There’d been a joint meeting to fight banditry—the police, UgRo, and OGPU. When they were done, Jan went outside and saw a young woman standing with her elbows resting on a fence, almost stock-still, her entire figure replete with bourgeois refinement, the aristocratism of the old regime. She was out of place there, among the strong men in leather jackets. I should ask for her documents, Jan thought, but at that moment an UgRo officer he didn’t know ran up to the girl, hugged her, and kissed her on the lips.
Jan walked away so as not to attract attention, only later he asked, Who was that kissing the woman over there?—and in reply he heard the man’s name.
All the rest was a technical matter. Jan made inquiries and found out more about the man. Some Civil War hero, a fighter against banditry, a distinguished comrade. True, he had to dig deeper when it came to the girl. A student at the university—so Jan stopped by her department and checked her documents. Everything seemed in order, a worker family, but her name put him on his guard. He went to the address where her mother and sister lived. My revolutionary instinct did not mislead me, he chuckled. When the house committee saw his warrant, they told him everything. A former bourgeoise who started at the factory recently so she could get into the university.
The street cleaner volunteered to show him where they’d lived before—in their own house, it turned out. And there, not believing his own ears, Jan heard this: The dead count’s wife and daughter.
I’ll collect some more documents, he said, and I felt his fingers trembling in my hand, and report to Comrade Meerzon that a representative of the exploiting classes concealed her origin when entering the university, and with criminal intent entered into a liaison with an officer of the workers and peasant militia. This means the death penalty, believe me, Vitya, I know how to write.
I pressed my whole body to Jan, soaking up his trembling.
Why didn’t you say something? I whispered. After all, this is a gift for both of us.
Yes, Jan replied gravely, for the Revolution’s birthday.
The anniversary isn’t until the next week, but I realize that Jan is already counting the days until his Farewell, countess!—when the crimson rose blossoms on her white dress.
He said the Revolution’s birthday, as if the Revolution is a person, a woman he’s in love with. I adore that chivalry in him, that obedience and sterility, the cold flame of unearthly passion eating him up from the inside. For Jan we are both the Revolution’s lovers, and our intimacy is just an attempt to get close to Her; for him a new attempt, after years of war and execution lists, to replace death cries with cries of pleasure and the lead seed of the revolver with the seed of our love drying on my lips.
In the morning I watched Jan dress. He turned his back to me and I gazed at his butt, rounded and resilient, gazed at the scar between his broad shoulder blades… Aroused and trembling, I ran over and kissed the back of his neck.
Jan smiled over his shoulder.
Not now, Vitya, I have to go, and so do you.
Yes, I went to work too. A boring office job. If it hadn’t been for meeting Jan, my life would have been as flat as the papers I sorted through. I despised my job, though Jan did say, This too is service to the Revolution.
I got dressed and wanted to leave with him—but Jan wasn’t going to wait for me.
In a hurry to see your countess? I asked.
Our countess—and he smiled in the doorway.
I often think those words were the greatest avowal of love in my life, a magnificent epilogue to our romance, the farewell moment in a string of nights that smelled of semen and gun grease, long nights we shared the way we shared the Revolution, that stern Virgin; the way we shared the countess, the snow-white lamb doomed for slaughter in Her name.
Jan didn’t come back that night. Sometimes he was kept late, but he always warned me in advance. After midnight, tortured by suspicion, jealousy, and fear, I ran all the way across the city to Lubyanka Square. I imagined the attempted arrest, the resistance of the counterrevolutionary conspirators, a foolish bullet, and a bloody rose on his broad, hairless chest.