“‘We know all about you,’ this dirty little spy says. ‘We know you have sung at funerals and know the Georgian laments. We’ve gotten word from Moscow that they want you to keen for the Great Leader.’
“I don’t know the first thing about it, of course. I’ve sung at many funerals, but Christians don’t sing these pagan laments. It’s just wailing, not true song. Well, never mind, I think, I’ll go anyway! How could I deny myself the pleasure?
“It’s impossible to say how many of us there were altogether. Enough to fill an airplane, at any rate. Some of the others were weeping, some were proud, but all of us were shaking with fear. I admit, I’d never been on a plane before, and I’d never agree to do it except in that kind of situation.
“We landed in Moscow at night, and they took us in buses to some sort of hotel outside the city. They didn’t let us sleep our fill; some Georgian comes to fetch us. A musician, he tells us. He’d be directing us. His face looked familiar, I felt like I’d seen him somewhere before. I stare and stare, and he calls me over and whispers: ‘I’m Mikeladze’s brother.’ Oh, that Satan, how many died at his hands!
“So we wail and lament all day, wail and lament all night, wail and lament all the next day. I’m already sick of it. And we’re only just rehearsing!
“On the evening of the eighth, they announce that plans had changed, there would be no keening. Why they wanted it in the first place, then stopped wanting it, God only knows! Then they loaded everyone into the buses and took us to some godforsaken place. And I lie in bed, screaming to beat the band, ‘Oh, lord! The pain is unbearable! I’m having some kind of attack, oh, the pain!’ I’m thinking there’s no way I’m going back home until I see the two of you. Some bigwig tells me, ‘You’ll have to buy your own ticket, then.’ ‘Owwww!’ I cry. ‘The pain is too much for me to bear! I’ll buy my own ticket.’
“Pour me another glass, Vika. This is the first time in my life I’ve drunk vodka, the first time in my life I’ve ever lied, and the first time in my life we’ve buried a great villain.”
“Not so loud, Nino,” Ksenia Nikolayevna said, touching her shoulder.
Nino nodded and placed her lovely hands over her lips. Victor took her right hand in his left one and kissed it. Something in life was changing. For the better.
CHILDREN OF THE UNDERWORLD
Ilya dashed through the city, trying all the while to figure out where this extraordinary demonstration was headed. He had established that it had many tails, and one of them began—or ended—at Belorussky Station, while another started at the point where three boulevards meet: Petrovsky, Rozhdestvensky, and Tsvetnoy. He pushed his way there, then realized he didn’t have enough film, and, when it was already completely dark, he groped his way home. In one spot, next to the Central Post Office, he had to crawl over a fence. No one, not even the police in that precinct, knew the terrain like the local boys. For years they had played Cops and Robbers here, and they knew all the shortcuts, the back alleys, even the sewage drains and manholes, by heart. There were back stairs in many buildings. If you went in through the main entrance of the building, you could ring the bell at the apartment of one of your classmates, slip in and make a dash down a long corridor, and end up at a door that led to the back stairway, down through another courtyard altogether, and finally into another street.
On the morning of March 7, he loaded his camera, and as soon as his mother had left for work, he hit the streets. That morning, the crowd of people was even denser than it had been the night before. Now Maroseyka Street, where it runs into the square, was blocked not only with trolleybuses, but also with a second line of trucks. It was possible to reach the Hall of Columns only from the direction of Pushkin Square—but you could get there only through Pushkin Street, not Gorky Street. Later they let the crowd onto Neglinnaya Street.
All three of the neighboring boulevards were jammed with people, but at midday the crowd seemed to thin out. The mass of bodies that had been pressed from all sides started to move, and then to run. Some side streets and lanes were opened up and people streamed into them. No one ever found out who laid these traps and ambushes, who contrived these dead ends that people were herded into like cattle; but they eventually squeezed into the back alleys and passageways, through connecting courtyards. They poured in and poured in like water gushing from a burst main.
Imposing Studebaker trucks blocked the streets, and there were countless soldiers and police. Ilya, pressing his camera to his stomach, slipped in and out among the cars. He crawled under one of them, and when he emerged on the other side, he ran right into Borya Rakhmanov, an eighth-grader. Borya was determined to maneuver through the pandemonium to get to the Hall of Columns. For Ilya, it was the pandemonium itself that was most interesting.
This was not unlike the annual May Day and November 7 celebrations, with their serried ranks of vehicles and uniforms, cordons, and barricades. Boys who lived in the center of the city had long been familiar with this kind of holiday turmoil and never missed a chance to mingle in the throng. But this time something truly monumental was unfolding. Ilya wanted terribly to clamber up above the level of the crowd, so he could get a shot looking down on it. He tried to get Borya to come with him to a roof he knew of, but Borya didn’t want to.
Idiot, Ilya thought. I’ll get to the Hall of Columns faster by rooftop than he will on foot.
He decided to go by way of Krapivensky Lane. Just then the crowd staggered, then surged, carrying him off toward Neglinnaya, while Borya was swept off in another direction.
Ilya caught one last glimpse of him—his face gone red, his mouth agape. He was shouting something, but Ilya couldn’t make out what it was above the din. The air was filled with a strange, haunting roar—a composite of howls and screams, and something resembling song. For the first time in two days, Ilya was suddenly beside himself with alarm.
He had to make it to an archway that he knew led into a courtyard with a toolshed. From that roof he could easily climb up to the roof of the building next to it, a four-story structure. Ilya lurched off in the direction of the archway, but realized that people were trying to stay away from the buildings, keeping well within the throng so as not to be crushed against the trolleybuses lined up bumper to bumper along the edge of the street. People were thrashing and struggling on the road right next to the trolleybuses. Some people, crushed and lifeless, were slumped against the sides of the buses; others trampled them underfoot. In order to made it to the sidewalk, Ilya had to squeeze between these bodies—could they really be dead? No, it can’t be true. But there was no other way. He realized he would have to duck for cover immediately under the big belly of the trolleybus or get smashed against the side of it. All the while he looked after “Fedya,” his trusty camera—he didn’t want the lens to get smashed. He stamped out a tiny space for himself next to the wheels, then dove underneath. There, under the bowels of the trolleybus, it was pitch-dark and stuffy, crammed with bodies, arms and legs entangled, wearing heavy overcoats. He crawled over them, struggling through the dank stench. Someone moaned. He emerged on the other side, landing right in the arms of a fat soldier with a trembling, moist face. A little boy of about five, pale and immobile, dangled in his arms.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“This is where I live.”
“Scram. Go home, and stay there.”
The soldier shoved him toward the archway, and Ilya darted into the courtyard. The toolshed was still there, where it belonged, a wooden garbage-can shed flush with its outside wall. Ilya climbed up on the shed, then onto the roof of the toolshed. He knew that above it there were some convenient ledges and niches—he remembered them from the last time he had played Cops and Robbers—that made it easy to clamber up to the roof of the “spotted house,” made of alternating red and white bricks, provided that the third-floor window was still smashed and he could wriggle through.