The Museum of Abandoned Secrets (62 page)

He was right: after just a few moments, he could hear hurried steps clattering from the same direction he’d come from—
clickety-clack
, check it out, the comrades make a fine racket when they walk, and we, when “the red broom” swept its hardest, were compelled to parade through the woods barefoot so a mouse wouldn’t stir—clattering close and then stopping, hesitating, not far from the darkened doorway. Has he lost sight of his object or what? You poor bastard, who sent you off like this, a calf into the woods? Alright, come on, here, brother, a little closer, don’t be scared, step another step, davai-davai, as your handlers like to say as they give you a helpful prod with the gun barrel....

The other man, as if hearing Adrian’s call, obeyed and moved ahead—that’s it, good boy!—and when the gray Mackintosh, uncertainly spinning his head about in search of a trap door through which his object may have disappeared, aligned with the doorway, Adrian sprang in a single noiseless lunge out the door, and the rest took a matter of seconds: a short confusion, a sob from a terrified human throat, like a muffled caw, cut short before it could disturb the quiet of the city morning, and in the dark pend, shielded from the street with the narrow cast-iron grating, Adrian pressed the newcomer close to himself, feeling the man instantly freeze against the gun poked into the small of
his back, and spoke to him over his shoulder, lips almost brushing the man’s frigid cheek.

“Do not move. Who are you?”

“I...
khhhh
...I...”

What a buzzard! Every time he found himself among civilians, Adrian had to remind himself how retarded they were in comparison to the guerillas—like gramophone records set to play on slower speed.

“I...
khhh
...I am a teacher, sir...from P.”

The deuce take it! An amateur snitch was the last thing he needed.

“Then why are you here, in the city? Why did you follow me?”

“I came to the school district office, for a meeting.... Our principal left middle of the year...I recognized you. I’d seen you at a wedding in our village last spring.”

This same face—only without the hat, with large, flaggy ears—now surfaced, clear and bright, in his memory, ensconced on the other side of the wedding table: the man had a fine singing voice, a tenor, resonant as a well, “Hey pity, pity, loved the girl since was little.... ” Adrian slackened his grip a bit, but did not let go; to an outside observer, this must have looked like an embrace, two men hugging each other in a pend in the middle of the day. Must be drunk.

“Did you intend to renew our acquaintance in this manner, professor?”

“I thought...your photo is up there...by the police...I saw it this morning...I thought you might not know...”

A photo? By the police? “Help find this bandit”?

“Your phiz looks so familiar,” said the captain who checked his documents. That would be why. He felt like laughing out loud: apparently, he’s on the wanted list (What price did they put on his head?), and he’s strolling through the city, not a care in the world, right under the noses of an entire garrison, the day before the Great October Socialist Revolution, when the Bolsheviks are especially vigilant—and not a feather ruffled, not a hair raised?
The invincible, elusive Adrian Ortynsky—as if cloaked by Our Lady with a magical cloud that makes his enemies look right past him.

And instantly he was covered with sweat: that was too much luck for one day! It must have been the smell of chypre that made the Soviets not see him when they looked at him, and not one of them had sensed him a stranger. Except maybe the major in the stairwell—he had to have recognized him; he saw his face up close, beyond doubt....

TICK...TICK...TICK...TICK...

He had to flee—he had drained the well of his luck to the bottom and the dregs were turning to vapor as fast as his Soviet cologne: he could already sense his own smell emanating from him like heat from a stove—the heavy, sylvan, animal smell of an unwashed body.

“Thank you very much, professor.” He stepped back, pushing his pistol under his overcoat. He believed the man now: no agent would be foolish enough to tug after him—just report him to the nearest patrol and end of story. “Please accept my apologies for being so uncivil to you.”

“No harm done; no worries.... This worked out well, actually; I was, pardon me, perspiring, following you—I couldn’t figure out how to come close enough so that no one would notice.” As any civilian would, after the shock of encountering a gun, the man, although he kept his voice down to a whisper, turned instantly and uncontrollably chatty. “And yesterday I had such fright, God forbid!—we set out for the city, on a wagon, through the forest, and there’d just been a fight right there, and the moskali stopped us, and put two wounded into the wagon, our folks, from the woods, a man and a woman.... ”

A fight? Near P.? That’s Woodsman’s territory, with the infirmary.

“When was that?”

“Late, it was dark by the time we reached the city.”

“You wouldn’t know the hour, would you?”

“No, not exactly...I don’t have a watch; moskali took mine two years since already, and I haven’t earned enough for a new one yet.”

“Anything you can tell me about those two?”

“Both young...probably married...the man died on the way. That made them very angry; they cussed like God forbid.... The one who was their boss yelled, “We need him alive!” And the woman was still alive when we pulled up to where their cars were...pregnant, about seven months. She moaned so, poor soul; I just kept praying that she wouldn’t go into labor on the way.... She’s dark, swarthy like a Jewess...”

The day went dark before Adrian’s eyes—as if, with a heavy hop and a rustle of wings through his mind, a black bird took flight from the edge of his sight. No, no, it was impossible; it wasn’t true; it could not be...

“Can you remember anything else?”

Something in his voice must have changed, because the teacher blinked at him in a kind of awe—the first time he looked straight at Adrian, at the man who, a minute earlier, had thrust a gun between his ribs. Apologies, professor. It could have been worse, much worse. More than once at night, unable to see clearly, we’ve shot our own.... But, for the love of Christ, please, anything else, professor? Give me just another detail. A handkerchief, a shred of her underwear. So I would know, so I would know for sure. The man—that must have been Orko. Lord, please make it so it isn’t true.... Seven months pregnant—and it’s November now...somehow he lost his ability to count and started folding his fingers one by one, inside his pocket, like when he was little and Mother taught him how to tell from his knuckles which month is long and which is short: May, June, July, August...

“I can’t remember,” rustled the teacher timidly. “I didn’t look very closely, I was scared...”

He was scared—and still he followed me through the city to warn me; he trembled; he hid—but followed.... Adrian felt a lump in his throat. He wanted to shake the man’s hand, but didn’t
dare, was held back by the years-old underground habit—never offer a hand.

“How did you know she was seven months?”

“Be darned if I know! Could’ve been eight. Just the way she looked—my wife gave birth not too long ago.”

“Congratulations,” Adrian said automatically—and then understood the meaning of what the man said: he had a child. “A boy?” he asked, not sure exactly why—as if he couldn’t leave just yet, as if something held him in front of this man, a last hope or a promise, some delayed message. “Or a girl?”

“A boy!” The teacher’s face glowed in the dark. “Little rascal, three kilos and a half! That’s already the second one God gave us, the older turned two on the Feast of the Intercession.”

“God bless your family,” Adrian said. Like he was caroling for the man. Like this was Christmas, the greatest of all feasts, when above cities and villages and snowbound bunkers an invisible light pulsed through the night and underground, like in Roman catacombs, kolyada, the Noel, boomed, a great buried bell lighting the faces of all who had come together with the glow of the good news: the Son of God is born! He, too, received the good news today—he, too, was to have a son born, and exactly on Christmas: November, December, January, nine months exactly, mysterious are your ways indeed, Lord—while we war and perish, somewhere in the darkness of women’s bodies new lives swarm, grow, hasten to light, into the world, to the unceasing, bloody birth feast, the Christmas of our nation that carries on and on without end in sight....

Villagers began singing a new carol: “Did you people hear sad news again—into chains they bound our dear Ukraine.... ” King Herod’s servants walked through the snow like Brueghel’s hunters, looking for newborns—somewhere, a crusted rag the color of rust in the cradle of an emptied Lemko home was a six-day-old baby shot at close range, and young men with submachine guns who had caroled at this very home not too long before—Lord bless all those who are in this home!—Thank you, boys, blessings
on you, too!—ran outside and vomited into the snow—joy to the world, joy to the land. Down, down the carolers’ hands runs the red wine, brims in goddards, spills from bullet-ridden, bayoneted skulls, but the women—they must be mad; they pay it no mind; they cling to us like roots that trap our feet, begging for love so they may bear children in pain; and God is on their side, because who, really, would remember and count the murdered newborns of Bethlehem when the whole world rejoices with the new joy, and the living from everywhere come bearing gifts for the one child that lives?

And that is good, that’s the way it’s supposed to be—let him live, let him grow big and strong—someone will grow, someone will hide in mangers, in thickets, in caves, in a forgotten village at the edge of the woods while Herod’s hunters walk and walk through the snow, single file, falling upon homes in the night, tearing the living from their warm beds—two hours to pack, two loaves of bread for each soul, and only the clothes on your back. Officer, sir, can I please change the baby?—davai-davai
, hurry up, go!—and the wagon with two not-quite-shot lives, the woman and the child in her womb—Lord, is it really my child?—bumps over forest ruts and potholes to where the prison opens its gates for them—and the prison grows, swells, gains the strength to contain the rebel blood inside it, and tomorrow the sun rises again like a pregnant woman’s belly over the skyline, as if the whole earth writhed in pain but could not bring forth its Savior, and a voice is heard in Rama, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning—Rachel weeps for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not...

He had more questions to ask—the man had to have noticed something else!—but he remembered himself: there was noise in the yard behind them, someone had left the building and was walking toward the gateway. A young, dancing walk. The walk of a person who hadn’t yet given birth to anyone. Whose body still believes in its own immortality.

“O-olya!” a woman’s voice sang out, as if through a silk veil, slicing the quiet from above.

“Stay behind,” Adrian whispered. “Ask for directions, like you’re lost. And, God forbid, do not follow me—you can’t be seen with me.”

“May God bless you,” he added or maybe just meant to add. If there was an answer, he did not hear it.

Ahead of him lay eighteen kilometers in which anyone could recognize him. The hunters walked in the snow, well-fed whippers in new shearling coats and snug leather shoulder-belts, surveying the field through field glasses—and the dogs lunged at the end of their leashes, baying, choking, barking their lungs out, and scuffed the ground madly with their back legs, kicking up fountains of black mud into the sky. The beast did not err; the beast had guessed it all as soon as he stuck his nose out of the bunker at dawn: the warm wind from the south carried on it the smell of a raid, a hunt—and he was the one being hunted.

***

Do you see it?

I see it.

He is coming.

Yes.

Don’t be afraid.

I am not.

It’s just a dream. We’re dreaming the same dream.

Is it really possible? For two people to dream the same dream?

It is. My grandma and grandpa had it happen to them once, in Karaganda. It’s actually quite simple: I’m dreaming you, and you’re dreaming me.

It is, isn’t it? So strange—how simple things can be in a dream; it seems it couldn’t be any other way.

That’s because in dreams things are the way they really are. And in daytime—the way they appear to us.

Then I really love you. Now, in this dream, it’s so obvious it doesn’t require any further proof or evidence. I can’t see you in
this dreamscape; you’re somewhere aside, close by, like a part of me—I can only feel there’s another, separate life beside me, and I love it. And I know it’s you. It is you, isn’t it? You? Is it you? ADRIAN?

***

“Adrian? Where’d you go? Why did you turn on the light?”

“Go back to sleep...I just have to write this down, or I’ll forget...”

“Write what down? The covers are all bunched up—how’d that happen? What time is it?”

“I don’t know. Four.”

“Did you feel me love you? While we were asleep? In our dream? And you just had to wake up.”

“There was something else there. Let me think.”

“Come here, we’ll think together.”

“Damn it!”

“What?”

“My knee...I just touched it...it’s like bruised or something. What did I do? Last night it was fine.”

“Did you hit the bedside table? You’ve been jumping up and down all night. Let me see.”

“How bizarre. How very bizarre.”

“No, no bruise...Does it hurt when I do this?”

“No, not really.”

“What about here?”

“It’s like it’s inside somewhere, really deep. Muffled. Really weird.”

“Well, go back to sleep then. You scared me and I lost my dream again. All I remember is that I loved you very much for some reason. Why would that be?”

“That’s good. You just go on loving me. Love me all the time.”

“And what do you think I’ve been doing?”

“Man, I am in luck.”

“We’re both in luck.”

“Uhu. Madly.”