Dancing with Bears (35 page)

“Of course not.”

“Anyway, just as I’m coming in, the barkeep drops his cleaning rag, ties a red kerchief around his neck, and skips out to join the mob. Well, thinks I, let’s check out the state of the till. So I goes around behind the bar, and just as I’m scooping up the cabbage, this fat bastard walks in, slaps down a five-ruble note, and asks for a beer. I draw him a glass and make change, and by then there’s two more fuckers wanting vodka. I start pouring shots and set out a plate of bread. For a while there, I’m doing damn good business. You can’t imagine. Then, just as things are tapering off and I’m about to call it a night, in you waltz with your own pet bear. So I stay put, just to see what’s what.” He paused. “Bit of a coincidence, you popping up, though.”

“Great minds gravitate toward the same sorts of places. Your being here convinces me that my tutorial efforts have not been wasted,” Darger said, genuinely moved. “I am proud of you.” He stood and stretched. “Goodness gracious, but it feels fine to be free again.”

“Hey. No need to watch your fucking language around
me
,” Kyril said. “We’re asshole buddies, ain’t we?” Then, misinterpreting Darger’s scowl, he said in a considerably less boisterous tone, “I suppose you’re going to want your cut from my running the bar.”

“Of course not!” Darger said, shocked. “That was money earned by your own enterprise and diligence. I have no claim to it.” He clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Anyway, I have a more profitable plan in mind. Have you ever been in a revolution before, lad?”

“What? No! You mean this is a—?”

“Ignore the politics. They are of no concern to us. The important thing to keep in mind about the forcible wresting of power from the old regime and its transfer to the new one is that when it happens, there is a brief, magical period—sometimes lasting weeks, and other times mere hours—when nobody at all is in control, and thus all items of value belong solely to whoever has the wit and initiative to walk in and pocket them. Museums, palaces, treasuries…all are suddenly open for the plucking. Now, where do you imagine the greatest treasures in Moscow are to be found?”

“In the banks.”

“At this time of night, their valuables will be locked away in sturdy vaults. Anyway, I am talking about real treasure. Not just banknotes, I mean, but gold, rubies, emeralds, and the like. For which we must turn to—where?”

“Oh! You mean the State Diamond Fund.”

“That sounds promising. Tell me about it.”

“Don’t tell me you ain’t never heard of the Diamond Fund!”

“Since arriving in Moscow, I’ve spent most of my time underground,” Darger said. “Illuminate me.”

“Well, lemme see. It’s kept in the Kremlin Armory. I almost got in on a tour once. Big sonofabitch in a uniform began his spiel before he noticed how ragged I was and threw me out. Lemme see if I can remember it.” Kyril screwed his face in thought. “‘The Diamond Fund is an ages-old repository of all the greatest treasures in Russia, which was deposited here, within the Armory Museum, many centuries ago. It contains cut gems of every kind and color, including the Shah Diamond and a sapphire weighing over 260 carats; gold nuggets, such as the Great Triangle, which masses almost eighty pounds; as well as myriad items of incalculable artistic and historic value, beginning with Monomakh’s Cap, one of the most ancient symbols of…’ And that’s when he spotted me. What do you think?”

“I think that you are a fellow of hidden resources. A memory such as yours is a gift to be cherished. As for the Diamond Fund itself, you have completely sold me on the idea.”

“Yeah, but if we want to nab any of that stuff, we gotta find a way to get through all those crazies outside. Then we’d have to either climb the Kremlin walls—which I don’t think is gonna happen—or else talk our way past the guards, which maybe you could do but they’d never let me come in with you. Then we’d have to truck all that gold and shit back out the same way we came in. It sounds like a fucking big task.”

“There are no big tasks, Kyril. Only small ambitions. Let’s—” Darger stopped abruptly. “No,” he said. “What am I thinking? There exists an even greater treasure for our seizing, and we would be criminals not to take it up.”

“What are you—?” Kyril began. Then, “Oh, no. You’re talking about those fucking
books
, aren’t you?”

“I am talking about the treasure of the ages, the greatest and wisest words and thoughts the human mind has ever committed to paper. Or, as it may be, parchment or even papyrus. Kyril, gemstones are but pretty gauds with which we beguile ourselves on our hopefully long road to death. But books—great books, I mean—are why we were born in the first place. Also, there is a very good commercial value to a previously unknown play by Euripides. I know it sounds unlikely, but it’s true.”

Kyril had gone to the door during this speech and stood in its frame, staring out. “Well, I got some bad news for you.” He pointed. “Look at that.”

Flames were pouring out of the entryway to the staircase leading down to the Pushkinskaya docks.

“Good lord!” Darger was alongside Kyril in a trice. He clutched the lad’s shoulder. “This only increases the necessity for us going back to the lost library. We must rescue the books!”

“Yeah, but look at that. Half the fucking undercity must be burning.”

“It does not matter. Great stakes sometimes require great risks. I will not ask you to come along with me, Kyril, for I can see that this is not your cause. But for myself, I can only echo the illustrious if short-tempered German monk, Martin Luther:
Ich kann nicht anders
. This I must do. I—”

“Okay, okay,” Kyril said testily. “I wasn’t gonna say this. But there’s another way into the library.”

“What?!”

“If you climb up to the top of it, there’s a little door. Behind it, there’s a kind of secret passage. I was poking around and found it. I went through it once, almost got caught, and never tried it again.”

“Where does it come out?”

“In the Secret Tower,” Kyril said, “in the Kremlin.”

The square was empty when they emerged from the bar. Kyril had snatched up a bottle of alcohol as they left, “just in case we need to make friends with somebody,” he explained, and tucked it under one arm. Darger who, as a matter of principle, liked to keep his hands unencumbered by anything other than his walking stick, tidily closed the door behind them out of consideration for the bar’s proprietor.

An unceasing and strangely insistent mumble of noise sounded from Red Square, a mile or so distant. “Listen!” Darger said.

“That’s one fucking creepy sound.”

“On the contrary. It is the sound of opportunity.”

The baronessa’s carriage was an open troika. Thus, when the servile driving it pushed through the crowds to the front of the procession, it was the highest spot in the square. Tsar Lenin, seeing this, stepped lightly up onto the troika. Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma surrendered her own seat to him and, tapping the servile on the shoulder, said, “Get off. Run alongside the rear wheel.” With the graciousness of old nobility, she climbed into the driver’s seat and took the reins.

The baronessa clicked her tongue, and the three horses started forward.

Tsar Lenin glanced at Surplus and Irina and said,“You should be wearing red scarves.” He produced two from his pocket, which they dutifully tied about their necks.

Sitting side by side with the legendary leader from Russia’s distant past and reasoning that he might never have such an opportunity again, Surplus said, “Pray tell me, sir—and you needn’t answer this question if you don’t want to—are you really Tsar Lenin?”

“No,” his companion said. “I am not even human. But the mob believes I am Lenin, and that is sufficient. It will give me all of Moscow in a matter of hours, and all of Muscovy shortly thereafter. Then I shall begin a war such as has never been seen before, not even in excesses of the Preutopian era. My armies will eradicate entire nations and reduce humanity to a fraction of its present pestilent self.”

“Excuse me?”

“There is no excusing you, for you have committed the first and greatest sin there is—you
exist
. All life is abhorrent. Biological life is worse. And intelligent biological life is beyond redemption.”

Surplus found it hard to contain his astonishment. “You are remarkably candid, sir,” he managed to say.

The tsar’s eyes glittered like steel. “There is no reason not to be. Were you to repeat my words, nobody would believe you. In any case, I am confident you will be dead within the week.”

“Does that mean you plan to kill me, sir?”

“If nobody else performs that service for me first—why then, yes, of course. We are entering into an tumultuous period, however. There will be riots tonight such as Moscow has never seen before. So the odds are excellent I will not have to.”

“I…I am speechless.”

“Then refrain from speech.”

The cheering about them was so loud and so constant that Surplus could barely make out Lenin’s words. So it was no wonder that the baronessa, much of whose attention was taken up by holding her three horses to a steady walk, continued smiling and waving to either side. She had not heard even a scrap of this conversation. But Irina, who had leaned in close to eavesdrop, had.

“You’re not God!” Irina cried in a wounded and disillusioned tone. “You’re not at
all
kind. You’re not one bit loving.”

Lenin favored her with a smile that contained not the least touch of warmth. “No, my dear, I am not. But I am great and terrible, and in the end, that comes to much the same thing.”

The wraith stalked the streets of Moscow, avid and dangerous, inchoate of thought, a creature without mercy, the void incarnate. She had no sense of purpose nor any desires that she was aware of, only a dark urge to keep moving. She had no identity—she simply
was
. Light and crowds she disliked and avoided. Solitude and shadow were her meat and drink. Occasionally, she came across somebody as friendless and isolate as herself, and then she played. Always she gave them a chance to live. So far, none of them had.

I am the bone mother, she thought. I am death and contagion, and I am the muttering voice in the night that freezes the soul with terror. My flesh is corruption and my bones are ice. I have teeth in every orifice. If you stick a finger in my ear, I will bite it off.

She came to a dark house and twisted the doorknob until the lock behind it broke. Like an errant breeze she wafted inside and up the stairs. On the landing was a little table with a vase of flowers. She paused to bite off their heads and swallow them one by one. Then she heard a gentle snoring from one of the rooms. She pushed open the door. In the moonlight that streamed through the window, she saw a man sleeping, a tasseled nightcap on his head.

Silently, she crawled into the bed beside him.

The sleeper’s head was turned toward her. She lightly brushed her nose against his to awaken him. He snorted but did not wake, so she did it again. His eyes fluttered open and focused vaguely upon hers.

“Boo,” she said.

With a scream, the man rolled away from her and crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs and blankets. In a trice, she was crouched over him like an enormous four-legged spider. “Who am I?” she said. “What am I doing in your bedroom?”

“What?”

She straightened into a crouch, still straddling the man’s body. A knife appeared in her hand. She did not know where it had come from, but it felt right. Perhaps she would use it on this pot-bellied fellow. If she dug deeply enough, she might find his soul. Then she could feast.

“That was what you were going to ask me—wasn’t it? But I don’t know the answer. So I’m asking
you
.” Abruptly, she sat down on the terrified little man’s chest. “I have a sting,” she said, caressing his cheek with the flat of the blade, then turning it sideways to draw the narrowest imaginable line of blood. “But I have no name. I’ve killed many a man, but I feel no shame. I take and I take but I never give.” She lifted the knife away from his face. By the way that his eyes trembled, she knew that he was not in the least reassured. “Answer my riddle and I’ll let you live.”

“I…I don’t…”

“I’ll give you one more chance.” Her lips moved away from her teeth, and all the darkness in the universe grinned with her. “What am I doing here?”

“S-scaring me?” he stammered fearfully. She considered his words. They sounded true. The knife disappeared from her hand and went back to wherever it had come from.

“And who am I?”

She could see the little man reaching far, far back into his past, looking for the answer. Saw his thoughts pass back through the years, before adulthood, before adolescence, into the dark ocean of childhood, where all the most extreme terrors are born and then stored away, never to be forgotten. In a child’s voice, he said, “B-b-baba Yaga?”

“Baba Yaga.” She spoke the name slowly, savoring each syllable as if they were strokes of a bell. Ba. Ba. Ya. Ga. She stood and walked to the window. Over her shoulder she said, “That’s good. Baba Yaga. Yes, good. You get to live.”

Baba Yaga kicked out the window and left through its absence.

Something terrible was happening. The Duke of Muscovy knew this for a fact. It could not be seen or heard or smelled or touched or tasted, but it could be felt, like a vibration in the air, a silent and unending shriek of agony rising from the stones and bones of Moscow, by anyone with the sensitivity to detect it. Over and over, the duke strove to awaken. Again and again, he failed.

There were faint scuttling noises in the darkness to every side of the duke as his bear-guards hurried to get out of reach of his thrashing arms. Something (a support beam, perhaps?) splintered. Something else (a chair?) smashed.

Moscow was burning! The city was in rebellion, its defenders were absent from their posts, and the State was about to fall. Every cell and neuron in the duke’s tremendous brain screamed with the need for him to cast aside sleep.

Again, the Duke of Muscovy groaned. He knew what to do—he
knew!
Were he to awaken, stand, and assume his rightful control over the State, he would be dead in half an hour, his mighty heart crushed by stresses no human organ could withstand. But half an hour was more than he would need. He could save his city and nation in half that time.