The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (26 page)

Rachel kept silent, smart girl; he did like her, but if she’d let something slip right then he was liable to cut her off, say something sharp instead of keeping his peace, and would feel guilty afterward.... But she was a good woman, very good; must’ve been with the resistance for a long time—she didn’t ask unnecessary questions. He, on the other hand, had a question for her, and then a few: First of all, why was she still illegal? Wouldn’t it work better for her to get a regular job as a nurse at the district clinic, or in
Stanislav, or even in Lviv, since they needed people everywhere? No, she answered, mechanically as if being interrogated, that was not possible. She was legal already once, in ’45, and then last year the MGB arrested her, they knew she’d been with UIA before, and they ordered her to kill Woodsman. She came back with the news to Woodsman himself, told him everything, and he left her underground. So that’s how it was. He didn’t ask her anything else, figuring he would have a chance to discuss it with Woodsman later, and only asked, for some reason, if they’d beaten her. No, they didn’t, only the inspector cursed and screamed horribly, a Jew, too, which seemed bizarre to her—that it wasn’t a German who promised to pack her off to the camps, but a Jew; he kept screaming at her, How could you, you’re a Jew turned Bandera’s cunt, what, they...are better than our guys? She faltered; he didn’t say anything. It was unpleasant, as if that inspector had come between them and right away found the weak spot, and this moment of hesitation was to him the final proof that they both ought to erase their weakness as soon as possible, ought to forget that desperate explosion of nature that had thrown them into each other’s arms, to edit it out from their memories, as the instructions put it: not to remember too much. At the very least, do as was done with the most important documents: put them into a bottle, seal the cork with wax, and bury it deep underground. Sometime later, perchance, he could dig it up and think about it again—not for a second did he believe he’d have that chance—but now he lived again in the fleeting moment alone. The trap of arrested time that caught him when he was wounded sprang open again. He was well.

Already falling asleep on his cot, in the tenuous borderland between dream and reality, delicate like the lamb-soft lips of a woman brimming with love, he startled as if shoved. He could feel the fluffy cloud of her touch enveloping his body on all sides, like cotton padding a precious Easter pysanka, only his hands were tied behind his back and an irresistible, gale force pulled him into the open doors of a black Opel Kadett, the same as the one in which they’d taken him to the Gestapo on Pelchynska, and Rachel
reached out her arms to him, helpless, and her face was white in the moonlight like a round of sheep cheese, and he shouted back to her, over and over, as he was dragged away, lifted off the ground,
I am Adrian Ortynsky!
This was what shook him awake, in terror, sent him scrambling, heart pounding, for a fingerhold in the real darkness of the bunker, where he remembered himself and breathed again: Thank God, it was only a dream—neither one of them ever did ask the other’s real name, nor Rachel for his alias.

Completely calm now, he slept—the deep, untroubled sleep of a healthy man.

***

Finally, Stodólya came for him, with a guard and another lad, a local: they intended to move him somewhere to a more distant village, to convalesce on fresh milk in some good people’s hayloft, but he refused, declaring he was fully fit for any work already. Orko confirmed that he was out of any immediate danger and only needed the dressing on his wound changed regularly. And as far as convalescence went, really, doctor, nothing makes a man stronger than honest toil, and few things weaken him faster than forced idleness; shouldn’t medicine take this into account? They had to admit he had a point; he won. He always won.

Stodólya could tell him nothing new about Roman: no body had been brought to a village to be identified, and none had been put on display in the district town. Roman disappeared without a trace, dissolved into the green smells of a spring forest, became a dream.

Stodólya informed him that they were to spend the summer and fall together, as the Headquarters directed: due to significant losses this spring (he listed the names of fallen officers and the world went dark for a moment before Adrian’s eyes), there had been a major regrouping, and both of them were being transferred to newly unmanned terrain. He identified their new regional commander by alias, and Adrian nodded—he knew the man back
from the fall campaign of ’45, when he led a hundred. “They’ll have their hands full, and they’ll have a secretary, Dzvinya, my fiancée,” Stodólya added—very formally, as if to forestall any potential infringement, like, she’s mine, alright?—at which Adrian nodded his congratulations, hiding a smile. Of all things he could imagine, Stodólya to be in love was by far the most outrageous. On the other hand, what did he know about the man? Well, he’d learn more, wouldn’t he?

Stodólya, as if reading Adrian’s mind, suddenly reached into the chest pocket of his jacket and unfolded a paper packet much worn along the creases to reveal a small photograph, which he offered to Adrian—for an instant, it seemed even his face, always cautiously drawn to a point, with that aiming crooked nose and the sharp eyes set close to each other like a wolf’s, softened, warmed from inside, and almost smiled.

“This is she.”

But Adrian never saw Stodólya’s smile, although he was very curious to find out how an enamored Stodólya might smile. It is quite possible that Stodólya was, in fact, smiling as he held the photo in his hand, but if he was, Adrian did not see it.

The woman looking back at him from the picture was Geltsia.

H
i—hello, sweets. Here—give us a kiss.
M-mua.
Why are you all so, sort of...discombobulated? You goof, of course everything’s fine, better than ever. Yurko dropped me off right at the door, just like I said on the phone, and what did you have to dread? (Such a stupid way to use that word—he says dread whenever he means worry, and I can’t seem to break him of this habit. Dread, by the way, is a transitive verb: One has to dread some
thing
, like war or famine, and if one is talking about some
one
, then one can worry, fret, brood, agonize, lose sleep, and dozens of other synonyms, but who speaks like that anymore?)

Here, hang up my coat, would you please?
M-m-m
—what
is
that smell? Hol-y mol-y, what is going on here?—is someone coming? Wow! Look at all this stuff; it’s like a five-star restaurant in here, flowers and all.... You—you are really something.... Can I taste it? Straight from your big skovoroda here? Okay, your skillet, whatever, but I must point out that the name of Ukraine’s greatest thinker was, in fact, Skovoroda, so it’s a perfectly good word.... Alright, alright—quiet as a mouse, watch me,
z-zip
; I’m out of your way, going to wash my hands. Or should I go ahead and shower for such a romantic occasion? Dress for dinner? And perfume myself with something fabulously sexy? By the way, did you know that of all smells men find vanilla the most arousing—don’t you think this smacks of some sort of infantile fixation on their mommies’ cookies? No, really, I read it somewhere—not about fixation, about vanilla; I figured out the fixation part all by myself, with the help of my towering intellect, what else? O-oh...Aidy! That’s not where the intellect is...not even a woman’s, let go! Very well, good sir, if you find intellectual women so irresistible, I shall henceforth be known by my new pseudonym: Daryna Skillet. Pretty catchy, no?
I’ll get myself a column in
Women’s Life
. About the big stuff, and such. Only no one would ever know what a “skillet” is.... Aidy, you lummox, did you not get shampoo at the store again?

Chianti? I like
that
! I like it a lot. (Such a
guy
thing to put on this whole show, with wine and flowers, and then forget to get shampoo, which ran out two days ago!) Looks like a decent bottle too—2002—nicely done, Mr. Sommelier.... Oh, come on, the candles—that’s too much, that’s like something they’d tell you to do in
Women’s Life
—have you been reading that crap with a flashlight under the covers? Sure, over in that drawer—there should be a new pack. Yep, that one. Are you supposed to eat this with a fork or a spoon? Aidy, will you get a move on—I’m starving! Oh, it’s the candleholder you wanted to show me? Oops, I’m sorry, I got distracted by the candles—so, yeah, let me see...cool.... What is it, copper? Bronze, huh. And how do you clean it? Or is supposed to be this...pickled color? More like mold on a pickle, actually—that’s exactly the color, isn’t it? Super. I love it. Weighs a ton, too! Wow...it’s like in that Lesya Ukrainka story where the lady companion cracks the old baroness’s skull with a candelabra just like this! The one in the story is bronze, too. If you take a good aim, and really swing it...no kidding. A multifunctional piece. Alright, where are those candles? Let’s have the picture complete. Hang on, let me turn off the lights...uh-huh. Doesn’t go with our kitchen at all, but in a large house somewhere in the suburbs, where you could put it on a marble mantle—sure, it’ll look great. Or like, in a dining room, in the middle of an oak table the size of a tennis court....

Have a buyer yet? And how much do you charge for this beauty? Some more, please, I haven’t eaten.... So is that what’s paying for the banquet?
Mm-mm
, this is great! Say it again? Gnocchi? I get it—it’s like galúshki, only Italian.... Thank you, that’s good for now, or I’ll get wasted on an empty stomach...
mm-mm
. Potato dough? And then what—I’ve got spinach, cheese, garlic—and something else.... Whatever it is; it’s fantastic. And you made it all yourself? With your crafty little hands. See, Aidy, it’s like I said: you only
get better with time.... Thank you! Who’s the buyer—that big fat marmot of yours with piggy eyes? No, I actually like him—you can tell the dude’s pretty sharp and not completely without taste. He sounds like he’s really into antiques and that tells you something right there; he’s not like all the other ones, the ones that buy music halls for their sluts...yep, and TV stations. You just had to rub that in, didn’t you? Alright—
cin cin
! Nope, prosit is German, and we’re drinking Chianti, so you gotta say it in Italian.... Smell that! This wine’s alive and kicking, I tell you what.

(Please, I can’t cry now, not now—he’s been so sweet, I don’t deserve all this—and why do I have to wind myself up like this. I’m like a vibrator, pardon my French, with the off switch busted—just buzzing, buzzing all the way home, and why, one wonders? So what, he had a dream? People dream things all the time—it’s just a dream, nothing special about it; so what if his subconscious replaced Vlada in my footage with his great-aunt Gela? Put a known entity in place of the unknown one, that’s perfectly natural—all it means is that he thinks about me even in his sleep, looks for me, feels where I am and what I am doing at the time—because he loves me, my Adrian, sweetheart, sunshine, darling.... )

You know what? Your ears move when you chew. I swear they do! Do like this...see, see! That’s hilarious. Not true at all—not everyone. What, now you’re gonna say mine do, too? No, I don’t believe you, wait, no, let me see it in the mirror....

(Why did I forget—how could I forget, so it only now comes back to me: Vaddy—that was how Vlada addressed her Vadym, not in public, of course. God forbid. And not when she spoke about him in the third person—she was always fastidiously proper, buttoned-up like a graduate of a young ladies’ pensione, not for her the vulgar familiarities of mere mortals—she always referred to him by his full name, and I only heard this domestic one once or twice, when she let it slip accidentally, like when you lean forward too far, and a button comes undone on your blouse, and everyone glimpses your underwear. One of those times may have been the night when the two of them came to visit, and Vadym
brought a bottle of Courvoisier, which he proceeded to drink by himself because Vlada and I preferred wine. Something irked her enough that she forgot herself for a moment and addressed Vadym as she did at home, in private—“Vaddy!”—followed by something really sharp, angry, nothing like the nice-but-firm tone that women use to put a check on husbands who may be enjoying themselves a bit too much, those half-jokes designed to preserve the company’s good spirits and decorum. To hell with decorum! This was raw, this would make you look away to avoid staring at the exposed patch of underwear, and since I was the only one present and had absolutely nowhere else to look, I think I giggled or blurted something inappropriate. I don’t remember what exactly, only how awkward it was.... Had we been alone, without Vadym, had he gone to the bathroom, or out to the balcony for a smoke, everything would’ve been cleared up right there and then, but Vadym sat between us, rock-solid, like he was bolted down to the floor, chair and all, like the bed meant for the next victim in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
—sat there like it was his singular mission not to leave Vlada and myself alone even for a minute, no matter what, even if his bladder burst, and this monumentally benevolent solidity of his transformed our girlfriend chirping, whether or not it contained any trifling dissonance or mutual concern, into a sort of organic white noise, little waves lapping innocently at the foot of the rock, too insignificant to cause the rock any manner of discomfort.

Before that night I hadn’t had much opportunity to observe powerful men at close range—men with the kind of great power that comes from great amounts of money. All my previous experience dictated that a man brought by his paramour to be checked out by her girlfriend should fan his tail like a peacock and deploy the full arsenal of his charms, real and imagined, so I was ill-prepared to deal with the strategic advantage Vadym had instantly gained on us by holding down his position at the table, next to his cognac, and maintaining the indulgent expression of a charitably minded giant. He had complete and undeniable control over the
terrain on which his relationship with Vlada unfolded and did not allow me a single peek into that realm—left Vlada and me in the dust like greenhorns, to put it simply.