Praise for The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Vaddy—gosh darn it, I am so sorry—I meant Aidy, of course...can’t talk today. Who did you say called? Oh that one.... (He doesn’t see it; he sees nothing—neither puffy, rabbit-pink eyes, nor my anxiety over this Freudian slip—he just goes on shining like a new penny, because of what he’s just heard on the phone. He’s rushing to tell me, now, right away; he’s eager to share and, of course, to get the benefit of my encouragement and approval: our candelabra just got another buyer, can you believe that? Some hotshot, hot enough to desire his own independent appraisal; he’s got an expert too, flies him in from Moscow because he doesn’t trust our homegrown Ukrainian ones.) So does that mean you can have them bid against each other—your marmot and this new one—set up a little private auction of sorts? Is that how it works? Wow, that’s awesome, Aidy! Congrats!

(There are more details; he keeps piling them on with that same forthright, barnstorming tempo of male business talk, and it takes all I’ve got to scrape together enough attention to hang on, almost wrinkling my forehead in concentration in order to stay with him, but I feel such a heroic effort is beyond me. I am really tired. I can’t muster the grace my mind needs to leap from one thing to the next, one stone to the next across the stream, especially when I know what dangerous craggy rocks lie hidden under the surface, and how hard it is to lift them from the bottom. He doesn’t even notice. He’s just chirping on, a merry little bird, oblivious, like he isn’t the reason I’m suddenly able to see underwater with this bizarre second sight that catches glimpses of the terrifying depths we skim so innocently. He is just a guy dreaming his mind-twisting dreams; he unloads them on me and goes on with his day. He is always at ease when I’m around, within reach, but as soon as I make to leave the room, I hear his indignant Where are you going? behind me, as demanding as the howl of an unattended baby. Although, maybe, there’s a bit of a protective instinct in it too, and a touch of that anxiety that you always feel when you let a piece of yourself go into the unknown, like if you forget a document folder in an empty train compartment, or something like that. For as long as I’m out of reach he is prey to all kinds of fearful troubles, like the hordes of hungry-eyed men he thinks of, as he once confessed to me, every time he goes out without me—he notices them in the crowds, these pushy, predatory types with their teeth-baring leers, ready to sink their fangs into their pretty prey, and always shudders at how many of them prowl out there, and how I have to walk among them like Little Red Riding Hood in the woods.

And that’s why he is only truly content and happy when I am at his side. It’s even true when he sleeps: when we are in the same bed, he either doesn’t dream at all or get the same regular crap I do, just like everybody else, stuff not worth retelling, but when I’m gone, even if I get up and leave without waking him up, that’s when Adrian Vatamanyuk’s private screenings begin. Click—and a tape of unknown provenance slides into his unattended head; up until now these have featured totally unfamiliar characters in a period drama, but now, apparently, it’s my turn to star since the most recent installment has me interviewing Olena Dovganivna—and that’s just perfect, what can I say, a real séance. Like a hundred years ago, before people had TV, and various loons also set up interviews with the dead, spinning tables and all, “Spirit, spirit, are you here?” To which any self-respecting spirit naturally responds with “Fuck off,” or something along those lines, and rightly so, because really, leave the man, I mean the spirit, alone. You’ll all be there, in your own good time, and will certainly find out whatever it is you’re after.

I’m totally with the spirits on this, only our situation is a tiny bit different, a rather big bit, actually, if you really think about who started it and who doesn’t leave whom alone. I personally never bothered anyone, no spirits, no nothing. I’ve got enough trouble without them, and so does he, by the way—he’s running around with those antiques of his like a chicken with his head cut off. Thank God, he’s banking a bit of change here and there, but it’s not like I can’t see how much he misses his physics, all those alternative energy sources he can’t bring himself to part with, can’t quit on that dissertation of his even if no one else gives a flying hoot about it. He keeps futzing with it just so he can keep one foot in that door, not even a foot, a toe, a pinkie, even after his business started making enough to pay the bills—but still not enough, I don’t think, to move out of these boonies into a decent neighborhood, not to mention any murky plans regarding our future.

I don’t know really—one could, I suppose, get a loan to buy a place, but that takes connections at the bank. Maybe one of his clients could help—all our banks start their own collections these days. What about this new candelabra candidate who’s supposed to be such a hotshot, what if? Aidy may have had the same idea, that may be why he’s so wound up about it, why he’s so inspired to keep on about all the details of the deal he’ll make, while it takes all I’ve got just to keep staring at him, as if opening my eyes wider will help me hold on to at least the gist of what he’s saying.

And where, I ask you, do spirits fit in all of this? In what itty-bitty crack? It’s no wonder he just dumps them all off on me, shakes them off like a dog come in from the rain—watch out when they fly! It is my job, after all, nothing to be done about that, and the film about his great-aunt is also mine to make—no man would ever make that movie, wouldn’t even think of it. It’s like Yurko said—he’s our Bluebeard who, whenever he’s not embroiled in the many challenges of his domestic life, likes to show off his feminism like a rented Brioni suit—“Who’s that poor thing you’ve dug up? If you were going to mess with UIA, go find yourself a real ace, some daredevil who mowed down the bad guys like hay, first Germans, then ours, pardon me—Russians—and then roused a revolt somewhere in the Gulag. Now that would be something—and you picked some wallflower with a typewriter. What kind of story is that?”

Sure, I agree, not much there, but I’m not the one who did the picking you know—this, the story, picked me, knocked me down and had me, did, in fact, have me quite literally, which, of course, I shall never tell Adrian, and of all my friends could only maybe tell Vlada—she would appreciate it, but by the time this happened Vlada was no longer among the living, and now it’s all guys all around me, at work, at home, wherever I turn, that’s just the way the cookie crumbled, and I go around censoring myself to accommodate them.

So there you have it: I’m smiling and nodding at him, all dutiful, because I know he needs my encouragement, and support, and regular watering, weeding, and feeding. Every woman must cultivate her little garden with the proudly erect phallus at its center, like a Mexican cactus—these are very demanding crops, these phalli; they wither and die without constant care and attention, and if I need to call off my guards, let my hair down, and just be myself for a little while I have two options: soak myself into a pruney-fingered blob in a pine-scented bubble bath, or, more radically, perfume myself with vanilla all over, pounce on him, and drag him to bed growling like a panther to buy myself a relaxing half hour of complete abandon. Only, unfortunately, the second option is not really an option when I’m exhausted like now—the kind of exhausted that wears your nerves down hair-thin and makes you want to cry—and I would really be happiest right now if I could just sit with you, Aidy, without either of us saying anything. I’d sit and finish this Chianti you found—it’s really wonderful—pour more for myself, and you won’t even notice—the wine glows beautifully in the glass I hold against the candlelight, burns with a dark garnet fire. I know you can be quiet, Aidy.

You’re one of the few people with whom it’s been easy and natural from the start to be quiet—there was never anything foreign or alien in your presence. And that may be what I love most about you—a man with whom it is nice to be quiet, what a gem!—because there are things you really can’t talk about with men, and all these things settle in us, accumulate and calcify like scum inside pots or plaque on teeth, and itch and itch, and then begin to oppress us—vaguely, so we can’t even name them and don’t even know what’s wrong with us until one day we die and no one ever finds out what it was that gnawed on us as we lay on our deathbeds.... )

Aidy? Aidy, listen to me.

No, I didn’t understand any of that, I’m sorry. Honestly? I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about something else entirely. Don’t be upset. You know what it was?

Here, cin cin, to us, and let everything be great. Let it all go smoothly, you know—with your deal, and generally...listen.

It’s your dream that made me think of this, the one you had earlier today—about me interviewing your great-aunt Gela at a table in the Passage. Actually, I brought you a tape to watch with an old interview of mine—take a look at it later, okay? It’s in my tote, in the hallway. You can turn the sound off, so it doesn’t distract you, the picture’s the thing—you’ll see what I mean when you watch it...Aidy, listen, I’m serious. Something’s going on here—both with my film and with these dreams of yours. They’re connected somehow. And the two of us are somehow involved in it all.

There’s another plot behind all this, a different story. I am sure of that, dead sure. Feel it in my gut. No one really knew her, this Gela Dovgan. Even while she was alive.

How do I explain this...promise not to laugh at me, okay? All that stuff we recorded with your dad, what he remembered his mom and Grandma Apollinaria telling him—it’s all very good, no doubt about it. I can use a lot of what’s on those three tapes we have of him talking: Gela’s childhood, the Gymnasium, her joining the Youth Assembly, the Ukrainian student community in Zurich, and then the whole family going to the gulag “for Geltsia,” and your dad’s own memories of Karaganda, when he was little—how they rode the train for a month—it’s all important; I’ll use it, and all the family photos are really cool too. I’m just thinking about going to the woods to shoot some footage of old bunkers that are still there, but that’s when I have the shooting script—I’ll read it live against the backdrop of the woods.... Nah, no worries, I won’t climb into any bunkers, nothing’ll cave in on me—would you quit being like my mom, talking to me like I’m five! Only all that doesn’t quite cut it, Aidy. It’s all wonderful, but it’s not it. Not quite. She wants something different from me.

What do you mean who? Gela, who else? Olena Dovganivna. Olena Ambroziivna Dovgan, may she rest in peace.

You don’t think I’m losing it, do you? Thanks, ’preciate it.

Please, don’t take it the wrong way—I am really grateful to your dad and to you, for coming with me—he would’ve been totally different with me if you weren’t there, wouldn’t have talked to me like that, relaxed like with family—but your dad had seen her once in his entire life, and he was mostly asleep in his cradle when she came to see them in the middle of the night that time.... You see, Aidy—only, please, don’t laugh, this is really serious. I mean it. Basically the entire time she was in the underground she was among men. Except maybe those radio operators’ courses in ’44, but that was still under the Germans, and from then on, until she died in ’47, it was all woods and bunkers for three years straight—without a female soul beside her. And I’m not even talking about their draconian conspiracy in which they didn’t even know each other by name, never mind sharing anything personal.... That she presumably confided to the family during that visit about some guy she’d secretly wed doesn’t change anything, Aidy. Does not, trust me. Whatever kind of guy he was.

She had something in her heart—and no one to tell. Something only a woman would have understood.

You said it. Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.

Yes, please, a bit more. Thank you.

I think it’s still tormenting her—whatever this thing is that she died with, not having told anyone. And she wants me to help her unburden herself.

She needs me. And you too, Aidy. That’s why we’re together. Well, of course it’s not the whole reason. I remember it perfectly—you were smitten at first sight by my legs in black jeans, a first-round knockdown, a kick in the gut, of course.... Only I am not kidding, Adrian Ambrozievich. I am as somber as a fresh-cut tombstone.

So about the tombstones.

I wonder if it is time we dig into exactly how she died. Under what circumstances. ’Cause it would be a crying shame to stick into the film that sorry claptrap of an MGB excuse you guys’ve been hanging on to since ’54; that’s one. And two—no one has really looked into it yet: after 1991, when you finally could, there wasn’t anyone left, was there? Grandma Apollinaria had passed already.... No, sweets, stop it. I’d never mean it like that—of course, there’s always something else; that’s life. It’s what always happens when there’s no immediate family left—the children, they care what actually happened to their parents, because it affects them directly, it ricochets into their lives, although even then, depends on the children.... And who’s she to you—Grandma’s sister, big deal, plenty of families don’t even remember kin like that. You should thank Granny Lina that she managed to pass it on at all! Oh absolutely, you don’t even have to mention it—of course Lina looked up to her since she was little; Gela was her icon, the older for the younger—sure thing. Gela’s brilliant, Gela’s beautiful, Gela joins the Plast, Gela joins the Youth Assembly, boys tail Gela in packs wherever she goes—that kind of stuff stays with you for the rest of your life; even if Gela had lived, and she became a hero and died heroically on top of all that.... Basically, you got lucky. No, not with her dying and all—with Granny Lina, she could’ve kept mum, you know. Secure a happy Communist childhood for her grandson. Many did, nothing wrong with that.

So, Aidy. We’ve no other choice; we need intel. Not from the family, but from the twilight zone. The other side of the moon. From the underground, yep. From her last years. That’s where we gotta dig.

We’ve got the lead, too. A tiny one, but enough to latch on—her death was recorded by the MGB; we know this from that ’54 epistle. I bet you anything a few folks earned themselves new stars for that operation. That’s where I want to start: where, when, under what circumstances did she die. Documented precisely. And then we’ll go from there. It’ll work.

This, naturally, won’t be easy. Nothing’s easy in this ghetto country of ours. But at least it’s not 1954, and our own Ukrainian Security Bureau does give up their archives bit by bit at the rate of their honorable retirees’ relocation to the Lukyaniv Cemetery, or wherever it is they bury them these days.... Yep, to avoid traumatizing anyone.... You can scoff all you want; I think they must be really vulnerable right now. If you’re gonna break women’s fingers in the doors or, you know, crush testicles with your boots, you’ve got to be, among other things, a hundred percent sure that you would never ever be held responsible for it, and by the time you’re old, after you’ve lived all your life with that certainty—heck, the idea alone’d give you a heart attack!

Okay, whatever, to hell with those—let their underworld colleagues take care of them, the ones with the pitchforks.... These archives, basically, have the same setup as the spetskhran storage in the good ol’ USSR, when you needed to read some pre-Brezhnev issue of Pravda “for work,” and you brought a note certifying that you were a PhD in history, and that was your topic, so this was something the government actually tasked you to do—go read Pravda from such-and-such year. (Wait, how do I know all this? Oh yeah, from Artem again.) Only here instead of Pravda, or some writings by Hrushevsky, or whoever, you’ve got the basic biographical data for the person you need: Dovgan Olena Ambroziivna, year of birth—1920, place of birth—Lemberg/Lwow/Lvov/Lviv, year of death—1947, place of death—and that’s where we appeal to you, our kind and valiant record keepers.... It’s like, you know, it’d be nice to find Grandma’s grave, do it all up neat and proper. I’ve heard they let the family have the case files without a fuss; Irka Mocherniuk’s mom made an inquiry about Irka’s gramps, what, five years ago maybe, and got to take it all home, with all the denunciations written about him bound neatly. Said she learned all kinds of interesting things about old family friends.

Because if I try to go there with an official letter from my channel—all doe-eyed and innocent, I’m just looking to make a movie here, I won’t be any trouble at all, can I just take one little peek in there, please?—they’re sure to go all hot under the collar and turn vigilant on me like they’ve been taught in their KGB school. They’ll sift through the case and cut out anything that could compromise their colleagues who are still alive, and all I’ll get instead of a fat binder will be a manila folder with two pieces of paper glued into it. You can bet your life on that. You, as a direct relative—her, you could say, descendant—have a much better chance.

So, whatddya say? Can we hold ’em up or what?

Aidy, Aidy...you’re my bunny rabbit...warm and fuzzy.

Nope, you don’t have to go anywhere—it should all be in their central archive, here in Kyiv, all the important UIA cases are here, I’ve asked. The files on the Supreme Command—those got shipped to Moscow, they took loads of Ukrainian archives, in 1991 most recently, after August 24, right after the independence—cleaned the stacks out like in ’41 before the German army, people say, burned papers right there in the yard for several weeks—covered their tracks, you know. Of course there are things we’ll never learn—but it doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. It’s not like they went anywhere; we’re still living with them. Only it’s like walking in the middle of the night through someone else’s place—you keep bumping into furniture.

Speaking of which—we should blow out these candles. Could you turn on the light, please—not the main one, just the pendant above the table?

Yeah, I am...really tired.

O-oh, fuzzy-duds...you’re so warm...

No, before we turn in, would you mind watching that interview of mine with Vlada? Yes, that’s the one I told you about—you didn’t see it air, did you? That was before our time. I didn’t have Diogenes’ Lantern then—my pieces ran as individual interviews with some editorial cuts. And here on tape it’s all raw footage, as it went. No, I’d rather not; I’ve seen it today already. I don’t want to do it again. Just don’t have it in me, Aidy. Honestly. Watch it alone, in the bedroom, okay? I’ll go ahead and accept my fate—do the dishes here.

That was a glorious dinner you fixed. Thank you, toots.

You’re so nice—what would I do without you?

Just leave it, leave it. I’ll take care of it.

Aidy, Aidy, did you play with girls when you were little?

No, I just wanted to ask if you remembered this game we used to have—dig a little hole, line it with flowers, tinsels, beads, make it like a picture, cover it with a piece of glass and bury again? A secret, it was called.

You don’t, do you?

***

UIA SOLDIER QUESTIONNAIRE

12. WOUNDS AND HOSPITALIZATION: [response illegible, form stained]

***

Her name is Anastasia, and she’s my intern—I’ve got interns now, can you believe it? That’s how it all begins, isn’t it? And then one fine day you realize that everyone around you is younger than you are, and not just younger, but like a pack of teenage wolves—nipping at your heels waiting for you to make room for them. They are the first generation that won itself the new Europe—the one whose tender minds, their young and gelatinous brains, got steamrolled by the whole megaton bulk of American media. It’s just like in the old days with the poster of the glaring Red Army soldier pointing his finger at you: “Have you enlisted in the Army?” Only the questions are different now: “Have you vacationed in the Canaries?” “Have you bought a Mercedes?” “Are you shopping at Gucci?” And they fall over each other in their mad rush, wherever the gigantic finger on the screens sends them at the moment, snapping whatever seems like an obstacle in their way. I can just see the spike on the suicide graph that this Internet generation will deliver our sociologists in ten years or so—whoosh, like the Independence Square fountain.

Whenever Gucci Nastya aims her moist gaping beak at me (at me!), I have to fight back a strong urge to inquire, with great concern, whether she, by chance, is suffering from severe sinusitis. Such is the new crop cultivated for the profession by the Journalism Institute right under our noses, here in the old Syrets’ neighborhood, in the snow-white sarcophagus the Communist Party built for its own spawn right before the ol’ USSR’s demise, because their old place on Rylski Street, also a not-too-shabby Secession villa with lions, which Gucci Nastya and I happen to be passing right now, was getting uncomfortably crowded for the Party’s lush cabbage patch.

The villa is now a bank and the lions have to sit encircled by pink granite, as if in the middle of a skating rink. I ask the future Ukrainian journalist if she knows what this building housed a mere fifteen years ago—not that distant a past, really, she must’ve been going to school already—if she knows that her alma mater is genetically related in the full sense of the phrase to the establishment that used to rule from here and, judging by the prostituting proclivities of national journalism, a place’s karma is indeed something that gets passed on like genes, only I don’t tell her that.

Anastasia (that’s how she introduces herself—by her full name) keeps me in the crosshairs of her plastic-button eyes and her blow-job-ready little maw—no, she doesn’t know what used to be here, and it is obvious that she doesn’t give a flying fuck either. But I am the one who will sign her TV-internship report, and later she’ll be telling everyone that she interned with Goshchynska herself, so, after a momentary hesitation, she dares to offer an obsequious giggle—meaning, that’s cool. Guppy. Goldfish in a bowl. Why, for God’s sake, journalism? Why not some business management, with the prospect of a job at a foreign firm where she could marry someone Swiss, or Dutch, or, worse comes to worst, American? Why’d she choose this?

“Nastya,” I say tenderly, “would you mind me asking why you decided to become a journalist?”

I can almost physically sense the balls my question sets in motion as they roll and clack inside her skull—she’s calculating which answer would score the most points. Like in a computer game. A small, agile, ferreting kind of a brain, tuned to promptly locate food.

“I’ve always been good at writing.”

See Business, Natalie, Elle Ukraine—the advice column: How to Succeed at a Job Interview. Be confident; try to convey the impression of a person who knows the value of her professional accomplishments. And, of course, the American TV shows—Melrose Place, Project Runway. And I have to put up with all this because she’s attached herself to me like a piece of chewing gum on the sole of my shoe, because I, when we left the studio together, was foolish enough to offer the child a ride downtown, and then the child climbed out of the studio car with me, and to my tactful “Where do you go from here?” twice already responded with “I’ll walk with you,” not blinking an eye. What was it that Russian said: my generation’s shit, but yours is something completely incomprehensible.