Praise for The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Adrian all but moaned through his teeth, his old wound aching in his chest: as if it were he who was being dragged, unconscious, and tossed like a sack into the “black raven,” as they called police vans...“You, black raven, why’d you circle ov-er the hum-ble heaad of mine” went the doleful ballad, drawn out like your own guts slowly pulled by a well crank, when friend Lisovyi sang it around their campfire, the former Red Army captain, Andriy Zlobin, who perished in the Carpathians and to whom Adrian owed his papers (they only changed Andriy to Anton, but that was nothing in comparison to what it would’ve taken them to manufacture good legal papers otherwise). And now it came, the “black raven”—not for nothing did the stupid black bird haunt him But no, you bastards, the day has not yet come when you could take Kyi alive! But who, who was it? He didn’t know even their aliases. A wounded man, dying—that’s all the courier communicated. And what if they’d taken him alive?—they’ll nurse him, to be sure, patch him up in their hospital and then torture him until he tells them what he was supposed to tell Adrian.... And right from under his nose, rot it!—the MGB snatched away the secret that couldn’t be confided to a single other person on the territory, the secret he’d walked eighteen kilometers (and now had to walk as many back!) to hear, and now could only pray to God that they wouldn’t get to it, that it would perish, vanish forever, go into the ground together with whoever was its keeper...

“Beg pardon!” he blurted in Russian when he shoved past another man. Closer to the market there were more people; he couldn’t keep the same pace without drawing attention to himself, and he spotted behind him—this time beyond any doubt because it was much closer—the gray Mackintosh and the navy-banded hat.... Whoa, brother, you’re a slob to shame all slobs, who tails like that? His mouth was still dry, but his heart had returned to his chest, and his reason worked coolly and clearly as though placed outside of his body. Under different circumstances, he’d have had good fun losing that tail, would make a sport of vanishing without a trace, but now he felt unavenged wrath choking him, high in his throat where it had risen, by the law of communicating vessels. As soon as the first, dark wave of fear ebbed—he was still in that state where the body, like a well-oiled machine, acts of its own accord as it does in dreams, in love, and in moments of mortal danger—and before he knew what he was doing and could rein himself in, in blatant denial of all logic of safety that demanded he remove himself, now, at once, far from the city, he was making a show of turning onto another street, almost tripping into the arms—Beg pardon!—of another fur-wrapped missus who instantly ogled him with a purely feminine hunger—some other time, lady; I’ve no cash on me today!—a quiet and usually empty street where he knew a very good doorway, with narrow latticework like in a confessional—and he was feeling an urge to confess to someone, a powerful urge indeed! He didn’t care if it was broad daylight, as long as the dolt didn’t lose him again.

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.

***

I see it.

He is coming.

Yes.

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?”

“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?”

“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.”

“Oh...Aidy...Aidy, I love you. No, please don’t stop...oh, God...oh, you, you’re my...my...my...—my love...my beloved...”

“Here, let me wipe your tears. Put your head on my shoulder...like that. Just like that.”

“That’s even better than in my dream.”

“It’s what comes after.”

“Actually, that’s exactly what it is...because when I’m with you, I always see something. New pictures every time—like a movie...”

“You’re my picture. The best in the world.”

“I only wish you could see what I see...I wish I could show you. That would be some kind of a movie!”

“So what was it this time?”

“A flash. Just a flash, but incredibly bright. Like a searchlight straight into your eyes after coming out of a dark cellar. And a blast...a mix of terror and thrill, like flying out of your body. I wonder if it’s like that when you die...”

“The way you moaned...it scared me a little.”

“It really seemed a lot like dying.”

“You know, you just helped me understand something.”

“Something about your infinite sets again?”

“No, about that dream of mine...I realized why there’s no fear of death in it, in any of those dreams...even though they’re all, in a way, about death. Strange, isn’t?”

“You little fool...”

“Baby, what is it now? Why are you crying again?”

“Because I love you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Shhh...don’t cry. Here, do you want me to hold you and rock you?”

“Jeez!”

“Go ahead, tell me. What about the fear of death?”

“Nothing, that’s the thing, it’s not there. I don’t think he was afraid of death at all, that man. I think he was always ready for it. And that’s what made all the pictures in his head so sharply focused, intensely physical. It’s the same as in ecstasy, you know? When you said the thing about leaving your body, it made me think of this.”

“Oh God. No, it can’t be...”

“What?”

“No, nothing...just a guess. I think I know who that man was.”

“More or less...you wouldn’t recognize him, would you? In a picture?”

“No more than myself without a mirror.”

“Well, then it’s moot. No use thinking about it.”

“About what?”

“That flash. Nothing, forget it. How’s your knee?”

“Quiet now. Not a peep. You’ve healed me.”

“Aidy?”

“Do you think it’s really us? Or are we dreaming ourselves?”

“I don’t know, Lolly.”

“Sometimes I get this feeling...promise you won’t laugh at me?”

“I promise.”

“I get the feeling that we got someone else’s love. Someone’s once unfulfilled love—you know, like the imperfect tense in grammar.”

“Well, then it was meant to be.”

“No, listen...once when I was little, really little, when we still lived in Tatarka, this one girl moved out from our apartment building. The whole building got blighted; they moved us out not long after that, too, but this family was the first to go, and the whole building helped them. The truck came and parked in front of the gateway; people carried furniture out of the apartment—the same armchairs we used to pounce on together—I can see them now in that girl’s living room.... Outside, under the sky, they looked like pulled-out teeth. They let me hold the lampshade they’d had above their dinner table, with a wire frame, you know, bright yellow with little tassels.”

“I know—vintage fifties.”

“Uhu, everything they had was old...taken out of place, it stopped being a lampshade—I could pull it over my head, and it’d be a hooped skirt, like a princess’s.... And there was this one thing I couldn’t stop thinking about...we made a secret a couple days before, that girl and I. We were very proud of it, too. And so I stood there and all I could think was, now she is moving out and what’s going to happen to our secret? You see, she’d forgotten all about it. She’d moved on to other things. Maybe if we’d had a chance and snuck away, just the two of us, to dig up that secret and pledge our undying friendship over it, everything would’ve been different. More melodramatic. Or, if she had bequeathed that secret to someone else, given me permission to show it to someone else after she left, to another girl...but nothing like that happened—our secret just died; it was so clear. It died because she forgot about it. The same thing happened to it as happened to the armchairs and the lampshade—it lost its defining purpose. It was still in the same spot as the day before, and perfectly undisturbed, but it was no longer a secret—just a little pile of buried rubbish. Are you listening?”

“Uhu.”

“And I remember this very un-childlike gloom came over me. A child—she feels the same things as the adults, you know, just doesn’t have the words for them. It was like I saw all at once all those secrets we’d made and then abandoned and never checked on again—how they all were somewhere underground. All our sealed friendships, tears, pledges...our little lives under glass like exhibits in Mom’s museum. A giant museum of abandoned secrets. And people walked right over it; they didn’t even know it was there, right under their feet.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve been making much sense.... ”

“No, I understand. You are trying to say that you and I are together because we accidentally dug up someone else’s love. Like one of those secrets that got left behind.”

“Yeah...something like that.”

“But don’t you think it’s also possible that whoever made it may have, as you put it, bequeathed it to us?”

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think that man was in love with Gela. And she did something wrong. She made some terrible mistake that messed up everything. And it still hasn’t been fixed.”

“Now, that’s just your imagination...”

“No, it’s a hunch. A woman’s hunch, trust me on this one. It’s always us, the brilliant and the beautiful, who make the kind of royal mess no plain little mouse of a girl could ever dream of. It’s true. You know why? The risk is higher: plain little mice don’t get nearly as many chances to imagine they can control someone else’s fate.”

“Never really liked those plain little mice...”

“That’s the problem right there! You all want the brilliant and the beautiful. Do you think that makes our lives easier?”

“Oh, you poor, long-suffering, brilliant thing...”

“Finally, about time someone felt sorry for me. At least I’m alive—for now.”