Praise for The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

So that’s how it goes.... Another one? To our children.... You should have your own, have them soon, don’t put it off, someone has to help the demographic situation in the country! I’m kidding, of course. Alright, here we go! Uff...down it goes.... My father-in-law used to say, if work gets in the way of drinking, time to quit working. He, my father-in-law, was also from the military, rest his soul. Retired in the rank of lieutenant colonel, even made it to Afghanistan. And wished to be buried where he was born, in the Cherkasy region...in the village both he and his wife came from. He and I went fishing there. He was such a character, you know...always kept himself busy. He retired in ’91—and became a taxi driver. A Soviet Army lieutenant colonel—working the wheel like a common cabbie! Why not? he’d say. I’ve got my own car; I’ll make enough to cover the gas, and the passengers share cigarettes—so I’m ahead all around. That’s the kind of man he was...humble. That works better in the army; we had it a bit differently in our organization. He helped me a lot in this life. I was fortunate to have him. I’m lucky, I’m telling you.

My mother-in-law—she got bent out of shape a little when she learned I was adopted by the Boozerovs. With her, it was a simple, rural thing, you know—she wouldn’t have people say she let her daughter marry a Jew...a Jew, please! She got her daughter worked up against it, too. The wife got scared they’d ship me somewhere provincial, just to be on the safe side, and she’d already got a taste of the good life. Good thing my father-in-law didn’t fall for it, set them both straight...my wife and my mother-in-law, too. After Father, Boozerov, told me...if it weren’t for that, he may not have told me the whole story. But the way things went—he had to interfere...reveal all his inside information, so to speak. Yes...

I think that’s what did him in. In a certain sense, so to speak...cut him down. That fact that his life’s work—everything he did, raising me—didn’t do anyone any good. His service. I was a captain already. The youngest captain in Republic’s entire KGB! If you see things from the government perspective, he really should’ve been made a Hero for that...only no one appreciated it anymore. They used the old man up—and spat him out, forgot about him. And it was quite a shock to me—when he told me.

So that’s how it all started...because of the Jews.

Dear, dear Daryna Anatoliivna...ask your matinka—she ought to remember, it was a colleague of hers. Yeah, yes. They worked at the same museum...it was a Jewish woman who applied for emigration to Israel. And I was working with her...talked to her. Spent two months talking to her, and all for naught. And how did you think it worked? That we just let them leave?

Ha...we have a whole field branch there, in Israel. Even Vysotsky had a song, do you remember? “We missed our chance with Golda Meier’s spot, but one man of every four is our former folk.” A joke? Well, in every joke there’s a seed of truth, as they say...a grain. He cooperated with the organization too, Volodya Vysotsky did. What, you didn’t know?

What did you expect? Of course, they were not trusted...the Jews. There were cases when veterans from among them applied for emigration, even Heroes of the Soviet Union. So many scandals! Who knew it would all end...so soon.

Aha! I got something! Come on, come to Daddy...gotcha!

Darn it, another roach...such a little thing, might as well throw him back in.

This moment here—this is the fun: when you’ve got something on the hook, but you don’t yet know what it is! The most important moment, this. And back then I was still young, I hadn’t seen real fire, so to speak, and pulled up with that Jewish woman a whole, pardon me, cabal.... She talked to someone somewhere—they had their networks working like clockwork to help their own—and they found a way for her to get out...to slip off the hook, basically. They thought, you see, that I was also one of their own, only closeted—that maybe I changed to a Russian last name, when the government was fighting the rootless cosmopolitans. And such closeted people—they were rarely accepted into the corps, they worked as agents mostly, and worked hard. You’d work hard too, if, for instance, your mother was Jewish and your father was in the Nazi-sanctioned police! A schutzman, yeah...you’d spend your life bending over backwards. Pardon? Well, we won’t name names, these are respectable people now, in high posts. It’s not important. So anyway, back then they decided among themselves that I must be one of those people—that I covered up, you know, some stains on my biography and got into the organization with a perfect record. They thought they’d found a weak spot, and that’s where they hit—to take the fire off their woman and put me on the spot...the best move. It couldn’t fail.

Beg pardon? Oh...that, you know, is just something that people think—that the KGB was omnipotent and no one could get around it. In fact, the organization was as much of a mess as everything else...bureaucratic, backstabbing...I, too, had to write an explanatory report to my bosses to account for the two months when I didn’t get anything done. And then a thing like this hits—a complaint from your target, plus an anonymous letter—and that’s it, you’ve been marked! The shadow’s been cast: Jew won’t cross a Jew, you know, and that I’m probably getting help from some Sochnut of theirs, their Jewish till...for protecting my own from the KGB. What’s the first thing? To cast shadow on a person—and you go prove yourself an upstanding citizen after that! Go prove you weren’t double-dealing. That was a good, smart plan they had—they just miscalculated a bit. No one knew what really happened, remember...I didn’t know anything myself yet.

And I was in law school by then, about to get my degree. Long-distance...got promoted to captain. Things were just starting to go well.

It was hard, you know...it’s always hard when you are not trusted. When behind your back, people are happy that you’ve stumbled, because there’s a line waiting for your spot already. And at home—there was the same emptiness, nothing to lean against. The old man drank himself numb...my father, Boozerov. That’s how he told me—he was drunk; Mom just cried. He didn’t live much longer after that. He had a hard time dying, too—he had a grudge...against the whole world...cirrhosis—that’s not a walk in the park. Nika didn’t know him; she was born later...when he was already gone.

Are you getting a draft there? No? Your feet warm enough?

A stretch like that...you don’t want to go on living, don’t want to go home at night. What’s the point, you ask yourself? Just push the button, and that’s it. I didn’t know everything back then...but it was a shock, a real shock. And the thing of it was—it was all like the world conspired to mock me, you know, that yes, I am a Jew after all! A bastard. And that my mother, the woman who gave birth to me, was also under suspicion, same as I...in double-dealing. It’s like...a curse or something. You start thinking these thoughts and...God forbid.

This fear...I don’t fear for myself anymore, I don’t want you to think that...but it’s inside me somewhere—since then, sitting there. In my gut. Thank God Nika doesn’t know everything. She’s got her own life. A clean slate, so to speak...let it be....

I think Father didn’t know everything either. But it cut him down. Finished him off, it did, that he had to go explain things—because of me. He had to go all the way up to Moscow, because here in Kyiv, people just looked at him like he was nuts. No one wanted to take responsibility for the decision, they were all too scared for their own hides...and, well, they wouldn’t miss a chance to bite off a chunk of someone else’s. He was a stranger here. An outsider to the very organization he’d given his life to. Old fart who had no more influence anymore. So what, he was a distinguished pensioner? If all his service, everything he’d given his life to, just think—blew up like...like feathers—from a single fabricated denunciation. How he yelled when he’d had a drink: Cursed...Rats!—he yelled. He said that thing about the banderas once, I won’t forget it as long as I live—that he envied them the way they stood up for what was theirs! For thirty years he hadn’t spoken a word of it—and now it came back. I looked at him with new eyes then. That was before the ’91 coup, you must remember, before all the changes....

It’s all very complicated, you know. And you want things to be just cut-and-dried, nice and tidy! Like now—you must be sitting there, listening to me talk and wondering, what’s all this about. Yes? I can tell...everyone’s in such rush, can’t wait.... You want the archives opened, want your documents brought out to you on a silver tray, want them declassified before the fifty-year term runs out.... Do you know how many waves like this I’ve lived through already? And you with your film are just the same. And the consequences—have you thought about that? People’s children, grandchildren. What have they done to deserve that?

Eh, Daryna Anatoliivna...I very much would have preferred it that way—not to know everything. Sometimes, you think—here I am, I survived.... But for what?

Only Nikushka...my girl. She’ll always need me.

You’re cold now? Well, that means we need to drink some more. My father-in-law used to say—“Let’s save ourselves...we’re getting sober!” Come on, don’t be shy.... Your health! Uff.

He was the one who rescued my family...saved it, I mean. My father-in-law. Nika was born later. If it hadn’t been for him, who knows how it all would have turned out. Such emptiness there was...like a black hole...such a dark stretch. At work—gloom, and at home—gloom. What’s the way out? What could there be? Once you’re in the system, you, my dear, have only two options—up or down! You don’t get a third choice. Those are the rules. Until then, things were going up for me, but when they head down—you whole life goes down the drain. And I was only thirty! And not a glimmer of light at home, I had nowhere to go. My better half was pissed at me. She was afraid they’d pack us off to the middle of nowhere, where she wouldn’t be able to buy the shearling coat she wanted...from our chancery—she’d just put her name on the waiting list for one. My father-in-law later shipped in a whole container of those shearlings from Afghanistan, but those weren’t the right kind for her, either, because everyone already had one like that—llama fur they were called, with those white tails like snot. Eh, why am I telling you this! All women are stupid. Sorry. That’s what I thought at the time. Meaning—that that’s what everyone’s life was like. I’d never met a different kind of woman. And they only showed the Decembrist wives in movies....

So that was when I met your mom. That was a first for me...in my experience. And, well, the last. After Stalin, they no longer used this method, but right at that time we got instructions to start again—“if the husband, then the wife”...one woman got time that way—her husband was sentenced for anti-Soviet agitation, and she went to visit him...to the camps. But—that was Fifth Department’s turf; I never touched anything like that. Our job was to prepare the soil for them, so to speak, yes, I knew which way the wind was blowing; I read the instructions, too. All such methods were first tried out with us in Ukraine, and only then expanded to the other republics...to the whole Union. Of course, it’s illegal, but what can you do? You got your orders from above—go execute them! That’s our job.

There was a time when this idea used to help me. Mobilized me. When I was young. Helped not to lose shape, not to start slipping...spinning. Not to think...maybe it would have been even better in the army. But—what’s the point now? It’s good things worked out the way they did. I am not complaining, and my conscience is clear.

Cognac for you? It’s good cognac, Transcarpathian. Good for the blood pressure...prevents hypertension.

So peaceful out here! So quiet...

You know, I had never met a woman like your mother before. Or after. Sometimes, that’s the way it happens in life; there are such times when everything comes together at once, and it’s just one thing after another. I had just learned about my birth mother for the first time...and that she never told them who my father was...didn’t give them the name...and then, when I was working with your mother—I understood, finally, how that could be possible. I believed it. I believed that it could happen. And that you could take anything for having been loved like that...camps, prison, loony bin...everything! You don’t care. You could go out there onto the Senate Square, without a second thought—and be demoted for it, from officer to private. That’s why the Decembrists came out...that’s how they could do it. And I was inside a different system. From the day I was born—I was born in prison, wasn’t I? I knew how to put a person on his knees...before the whole class...I knew how to find people’s weak spots. I’m not just telling you this—I was talented; it wasn’t only the people who knew people who got promoted to captain by the time they were twenty-eight! But that’s another matter.... The way those men were loved—no one ever loved me like that. And no one would have waited for me.

That’s a big thing, you know—when someone is waiting for you...

He was lucky...your dad.

Ehh, Daryna Anatoliivna...I don’t want you to think that I...I thought so at the time. The older I get, the more I think about this. There was a movie back then, in the ’70s, about the Decembrists’ wives, do you remember? I forget what it was called. It had this actress in it, from Kyiv—Irina Kupchenko...she looked like your mom...I went to see the movie again, when it was in the second run, and I was at the archives already. But that’s another matter. Yes.

Beg pardon? Yes, they transferred me. Trusted me. That’s to my father’s credit—Boozerov’s; it’s all his effort. He renewed my...background purity, so to speak—went all the way to Moscow, to his postwar bosses...found everyone who was still alive—those who were informed of my...adoption. Up till then, my service record was spotless—until that museum. And who’d have thought—a museum! You’d think it’s a nice place...quiet, mostly female staff...and look how it turned out. So, I got transferred. From field operations, from working with people to working with documents. That was for the best, too, as it later turned out. In life, it’s often like this—you think: this is it, I’m done, and later you see—it’s even better. Because that was the second time in a row that I...my second failure, with your mom—right after that Jewish woman. Except that with your mom, I did it myself; I made the decision. I didn’t start the case on her, and wrote it like that in my report—that it would be a waste of resources, so to speak. Wrote up her profile. My boss read it—he got mad: “What are you doing here?” he asked. “Recommending her for the Communist Party?” But they put the brakes on it anyway, didn’t pursue it any further...changed their minds. And the hook was already cast...

Nikushka hadn’t been born yet then. She came later. And you were going to school already. You were such a skinny little thing, pale—I once saw your mom pick you up from school...I wouldn’t have recognized you now! No way. When I first saw you on TV, I thought—that can’t be right...

So, yeah, that’s how it goes.

You know, in the army things are simpler, they have a clear line: there’s home, and there’s work. And the aggression is strictly localized in time: at seven a.m.—drills, you screw up—get a boot in your face. Hic! Excuse me...so with my father-in-law you did better to leave him alone on weekend mornings. In NKVD, under Stalin, they worked nights—with the same idea—but in our times it no longer worked that way. My father, Boozerov—he was still old school...he fought the banderas, after all...fought with the dead, and it was to them he kept making his point for the rest of his life. Raised me to be meaner...but careers weren’t being made on aggression anymore; you didn’t get ahead by being mean. Knowing you had been chosen—that’s what kept you in the services! The feeling of being initiated...to the services...to the state’s holy of holies...a great state’s, one that makes the whole world tremble! The might! The mystery of power, as this one man said, a director of a Moscow institute, he came to speak to us recently...the mystery, yes! When you’re young, it’s hypnotizing; it can replace both home and family.... And then one blow like that—and you find yourself...naked. Naked. And you don’t, it turns out, want anything, nothing at all—only to be loved...for someone to be waiting for you...even to have you back from the loony bin. Hic! Knowing in what shape people came out of our loony bins and wanting you back anyway. I made sure I told her. Your matinka. I warned her...

Yes, I did.

Sometimes I wonder who he was, my father. My birth father, I mean.... Why did she love him so much? My mother? She could have survived...she was so young then; she wouldn’t even be eighty now...my mother-in-law’s eighty-two...she could have lived this long, too. How could she have done that? Sometimes you think—she was just foolish, a silly girl. She was too young; she didn’t understand...life...and then I remember your mom...Olga Fedorivna, yes, I remember. And? How did her life go...afterward?

Well...that’s good...good that it went well. Only, you know, when you have a daughter of your own...when you have your own children, you’ll understand me. It’s only in your movies that everything comes out so pretty. And I’ll tell you from my experience: as soon as you read a document that’s so pretty, so smooth, reads like Leo Tolstoy or something, not a word out of place—you should know it’s fake...it’s all fake, written for the reporting purposes. You can be ninety percent sure. Don’t think that as soon as you have a document in your hands, you’re done.

And you just wait, what’s your rush?.... They’re just starting to bite now.... Last Sunday I pulled a champ of a zander here, a twelve pounder! This big! Don’t worry, I won’t knock it over...let’s put it over here, that bottle, closer this way.... Hic! Excuse me.

Have a pickle, it’s homemade...my wife marinates them! You won’t find another one like it. She’s really stupid, of course, but runs a great house! Father-in-law’s schooling. And Nika takes after me. Thank God. Some girl I have, no? Knock on wood...she’s my blood!

My conscience is clear, Daryna Anatoliivna. And please don’t go enlisting me in the shtrafbat. You think I don’t understand? You think I’m too dumb to know? I’ve done my time, thank you. My father knew it too...Boozerov. He knew he got spat out. We all got spat out. Right, wrong...wherever you stood with the organization. All the same! Your father and mine, the same. Yes, the same! Only mine realized it first. Boozerov did. Long before the Union fell apart.

You know, I once heard this writer speak, she’s the one—forgot her name—who wrote about sex...under field conditions...some-thing like that. I don’t remember exactly the way she said it, but the main idea was that if you’re born in prison you grow up either prisoner or guard. No other choices, so to speak. And I disagree with that! I flat out disagree. I myself was born in prison—and what would have come of me if it weren’t for him...my father, the man who raised me?

No, you didn’t understand. Hic! You can’t just be so black and white.... What do you mean, either prisoner or guard? So what then, a whole generation is guilty merely by virtue of the time they were born? Those who survived—they’re guilty? And they should all have hung themselves...to come out clean, is that how it is? A noose around your neck—and you’re out? Then you’re a hero—fit for the movies? That’s what you’re doing, with your film, too. Okay, alright, I understand, let them be heroes—they fought...for Ukraine’s independence. We have independence now, times have changed—so we should honor them. Put up monuments and such...fine. But why do you insist on digging in these...deaths? On bringing back these death lovers? Is that a good example for the young people? Why do they need to know these things?

They need to live, Daryna Anatoliivna. Live! Not look back. You know what people say: the less you know, the better you sleep. I, for one, am very glad that Nika did not know old Boozerov while he was alive. My mom, our Grandma Dunya, may she rest in peace—she just bloomed after he died! Shed years. Lived another two decades. Raised Nika, had that joy in her old age...Nikushka loved her too. She’s always taking flowers to their graves at Lukyaniv cemetery...we all go, as a family...Memorial week, Victory Day...and the Cheka Officer’s Day, of course! I’ve given her what I could. She has what I didn’t have. My daughter grew up in normal family! Like regular people have. If it were up to me—I wouldn’t have told her anything at all, let her think she is Boozerova, like her grandparents. But my mother-in-law just had to get in there, the snake...and what would you have me do? Tell my child that her birth grandmother hung herself in prison after three men raped her during an interrogation?

Yes, she did. Hung herself. In her cell, on her own braid. Hic! Used her braid to...strangle herself. I myself didn’t know until a couple years ago. I dug it out...spent twenty years digging—to find that. Was that a good idea? You tell me, was it?

They were men from the front, my dear, men from the front.... You’ve got to understand. It was okay with German women in ’45; war wrote it all off. And the banderas—they were basically considered as good as the Nazis: the Ukrainian-German nationalists, that’s what they called them. The Germans had Ukrainian-Jewish nationalists and we had Ukrainian-German ones. That’s the lot she drew...my Jewish mom. If not Jewish during the war, then—sign here, please!—you’re German afterward. And no one told her, poor girl, not to aggravate young men who’d conquered half of Europe, went all the way to Berlin! Wrote their names on the Reichstag. You know what the biggest thing was my father—Boozerov—saw written on a Reichstag wall? Letters this big! Excuse my language, I’ll say it as it was: I FUCK YOU ALL!

What did you think was going to happen? That I’d find piece of paper for you—and you’d have it all? They don’t write things like that on those pieces of paper, my dear...

The investigator? He was disciplined, yes. And those other two, as well. All got demoted in rank...for two months. A suicide in prison—that’s a severe breach, worse than an escape. How did she pull that off? A perfect escape. Escaped from me, too...my own mother. Like in that song: “Dearest mother of mi-ne, tell me why you aren’t sle-eping.... ” Sorry...if only I knew where she’s buried, I’d have carved these words on her tombstone.

And you come to me to see about your relative’s grave. A grave! Where they took bodies from prisons, where they buried them—who’s going to tell you? Those who did the burying are not talking...if they’re still alive. There was this veteran, from Russia—he came out not long ago—he was on the team that processed Shukhevych’s body after the MGB killed him. A special operation; the team got extra leave afterward. They took the body out, burned it, and spread the ashes—in a forest, overlooking the Zbruch river. There was no trace left to be found! Do you understand? No trace at all, and that’s how they do it now, too...in Chechnya: after they secure a place—total erasure. You won’t find anything! And I won’t find out either...where my own mother was buried. So now what? Huh? You can’t tell me...I’ll tell you! I will. When you have your own children—you’ll understand. Because a child needs to have a...a place, a memorial, a cemetery in the city, where she can go when all her friends go with their parents and then talk about it at school. It’s not like she’s from somewhere else—she’s a Kyivite. These are her roots, basically. If you have graves—you have roots. Grandfather, grandmother. Everything I didn’t have—I’ve given her. My daughter is not an orphan! When she was little, I showed her the portrait on the headstone, taught her to say, Grandpa, Grandpa—she still says it like that. And God forbid...God forbid...Hic! Excuse me. No, I’m just...something in my throat.