The Secret History of Moscow (15 page)

"I am,” Galina told her. “I am looking for you."

"Don't leave me here,” Masha pleaded. “Please don't leave me, don't forget me."

"I would never leave you."

"Find me beyond death, beyond the river."

Masha's eyes grew huge and wide and human in her bird face, and Galina woke with a start, Masha's high voice still ringing in her ears. She sat up on the inflatable mattress that was already sagging; must've been a leak. She was alone in the room-the years of privation and a habit of hard work prompted Sovin to build big when he got a chance, and his house sprawled, irregular, in a maze of small angled rooms. The naked beams of the walls, warm and worm-holed, felt rough and reassuring under her fingers.

She thought about what Yakov told her, and she felt uneasy. The darkness surrounding Sergey's associates’ plans and their underground allies worried her. There was an expectation she learned in her childhood that the universe was essentially predictable, even if the life didn't always work out the way it was supposed to. She didn't expect to be diagnosed in high school and prevented from going to college; but things turned and she could find a job without any formal education, just a good working knowledge of English, French and German acquired through studying by herself, in the mental hospital, just to pass the time. Back then, foreign words and strange letters warded off the heavy breathing of stygian beasts that crouched around her bed. They were her talismans, those words, those varied shades covering the same meaning like masks. There was order in the world, even if it was occasionally disguised. It chased away the monsters.

She sat down on the floor, her back pressed against the door, and whispered her protective spells-she whispered the words for bread, earth, air in all four languages in turn. Water. Grass. World. The nightmares subsided, leaving only the sense of longing and confusion.

She knocked on Sovin's door-he didn't sleep during the nights out of old habit; she could see the weak light from the tallow candles seeping through the uneven crack under the door.

"Come in.” He wore long underwear, and his thin old man's legs reminded her of a stork; a padded jacket over the stained shirt hung like a pair of atrophied gray wings.

"I dreamt of my sister,” she said. “She told me to find her beyond the river-do you know what that means?"

"There is a river nearby,” he said and sat on the padlocked chest at the foot of his narrow pristinely made bed that reminded Galina of the hospital. “Have a seat, dear."

She sat on the edge of the bed, for lack of any other arrangements. “You live so sparely,” she said.

He nodded. “The less you have, the less you lose."

"Or the more you lose the less you have,” she answered.

"Could be. But the river… we don't cross it all that much-the vodyanoys and rusalki don't like people mucking it up. And getting across can be problematic. Berendey's forest is on the other shore."

"No one has yet seen him, right?"

He shook his head and hacked wetly. “Not that I know of. Zemun's worried, and Koschey is raring to go. Now everyone thinks that he's up to something, so he's eager to pin it on someone else."

"You don't think it's him?"

"I don't,” Sovin said. “He's a chthonic figure, and they are always demonized without good reason. People just don't like anything associated with death and dirt. Do you even realize how different you and I are from everyone on the surface? Most people would rather die than live underground, without sun."

"I don't want to stay here forever. Just as long as I need to find my sister."

Sovin opened his mouth to say something but then thought better of it and just sighed.

"Thank you,” Galina said. “I know it might take forever. I just don't want to think about it right now."

"This place sucks you in,” Sovin said. “It's comfortable here, and at first you want to see what else is here, you want to explore-and then you just settle and build a house and spend your days playing checkers."

"It won't happen to me."

"I suppose not.” He chewed the air with his toothless mouth. “I suppose you do love your sister."

Galina nodded wordlessly. She'd forgiven Masha for marrying and having a baby; she just wanted her back now. “I'm so sorry,” she whispered, forgetting about Sovin. “It's all my fault."

"Just be careful,” Sovin said. “Look at David if you need reminders-he did love his wife and yet he never did anything to get her back. Now is a good time for you; everyone's talking doomsday and how the surface is going to overtake us; everyone's scared. Maybe you'll get someone to come with you across the river. And if you want my advice, go tomorrow, go while the pain's still fresh enough to egg you on. The day your heartache dulls, you'll be living here and drinking tea with her majesty Elena."

"You don't like her?"

"Not just her. It's the aristocracy I don't like."

"She seems nice."

"Oh, she is. But it's about the principle."

"How can you hate someone on principle alone?"

Sovin sighed and closed his eyes. “It is easier than you think."

Galina stood. “Thank you. I'll leave tomorrow. I guess you won't be coming with me?"

He shook his head, dejected. “I feel old. I don't want to explore. You're welcome here anytime, but that's all I can do for you, sorry."

She returned to her room whispering Je ne sais pas and Ich weiß nicht to herself to guard from confusion. There was a river, then; did it mean that Masha's appearance in her dream was real? But she had been expecting a river all along, a dark twisting river smelling of dust, with a lone oarsman who

would accept a copper coin in his palm, solid and crevassed as if carved from dark wood-and did it even matter? There were signposts, and she would be a fool not to follow them.

With that thought, enormous fatigue came, and she lay on her mostly deflated mattress; even before she closed her eyes, the dark waters rolled before her, and a small speck of light grew larger, as the boat moved closer toward her, guided by the uneven light of the lantern mounted on its prow.

* * * *

The next morning, she asked Fyodor and Yakov if they wanted to go. Yakov nodded, dutiful. Fyodor thought a bit and shook his head.

"Zemun will go with us,” Yakov said. “Yesterday, she was agitating that we need to do something. If you ask her, she'll have to go. Ask around, see who else is game."

"I think we need to bring that thug along, Sergey,” Galina said. “He'll be able to recognize the voice he heard."

"It's not a bad idea,” Yakov said. “Only he is a dangerous man, even if he was recently raised from the dead."

"Just take his soulstone,” Fyodor said.

"Won't work. How will you talk to it? Through a medium?"

"Maybe put it into something else,” Fyodor said. “A rat maybe."

"They can't talk either,” Galina observed.

"Oh, fuck me.” Fyodor slammed his palm on the table. “Just trying to help here."

"If you want to help, come along,” Galina said.

Fyodor made a face. “I do what I can. I didn't have to lead you here, you know."

"Enough bickering,” Sovin said. “Zemun and Koschey will figure something out."

They found everyone at the Pub. Galina wondered to herself if anyone ever went home, or if they sat behind the wooden tables, upright and silent in the darkness, all night long.

"I'm leaving to go across the river,” Galina told Zemun. “I'll need someone to come along."

"We'll find someone,” Zemun promised. “But we also thought that we need to mount an expedition to the surface."

Galina saw her point, but the thought made her unease flare up. If Sergey was telling the truth-and she had no reason to doubt his veracity-then who knew what his former friends were up to. A vision of the empty city came to her mind, deserted streets with garbage blown across the pavements, flocks of birds studding the power lines and turning the sky black; she imagined them watching from the roofs, looking through the windows of their former residences, longing for the lives they had been forced to abandon. She thought of her mother, an old grey crow, and Masha's baby-it would be just a hatchling, unable to fly on its own.

And what of her grandmother, locked in the hospital, among the walls covered with cracking, piss-colored paint? What of the old woman alone, her wrinkles flowing around her eyes and mouth in a fluid pattern, sitting on a hospital bed, wondering dimly why no one comes to visit her anymore, not even her daughter-didn't she have a daughter? She remembers pigtails and cheap patterned dresses, she remembers mending white bobby socks, but the girls all blur together, daughter, granddaughters, nieces, grandnieces, extended family and friends; she could never remember Galina's name, and always tried a few others first.

Galina pitied the old woman in that abstract way one reserves for the old-a general pity for decrepitude and decline, recognition of one's inevitable fate in another. She pitied the old women who timidly waited by the benches where young people laughed and drank beer, until there was no one

around so they could quickly snatch the empty bottles and turn them in at the recycling centers for pennies each, but they added up to enough for a bottle of milk and some cheap fish for the cat, they added to the destitute existence on government pensions that remained the same as the prices doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in a single day. She pitied the old men who pinned their medals to the threadbare jackets to hide holes on their lapels and who grew thinner by the day.

Most of all she pitied the chronically ill, confused, broken, incapable of taking care of themselves, stuffed into hospitals four or five to a room. She used to visit her grandmother in the beginning, when they still expected her to come home. As it became clear that she was there forever, Galina stopped, unable to face her guilt. Now, she wondered if the old people would turn into birds too, or if they would still sit in the hospital, forgotten, abandoned, wondering at first why there was no lunch, and then simply accepting it as they accepted all the unfathomable but ultimately cruel turns of life.

Yakov, Zemun, and Koschey conferred, with Sovin and David listening closely but not saying a word. Fyodor wandered around the Pub, looking for something-the gypsy girl he seemed so taken with yesterday, Galina assumed.

"Excuse me."

She turned to see the Medieval Tatar-Mongol warrior. She had to look down on him; not only was he quite short, but also his bandy legs detracted from his already unimpressive height. The hem of his long felt coat brushed the floor, almost concealing his soft-soled boots.

"Yes?” she said.

"My name is Timur-Bey. I heard about your sister,” he said. “I am sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?"

"You can come with me,” Galina said. “But why? Everyone here seems to want to stay, not go traipsing through Berendey's woods."

His expressionless narrow eyes looked up into hers. Galina realized that the man in front of her was very, very old-five hundred years? Six? “Redemption,” he said. “I have yet to atone for my crimes."

"You mean the Golden Horde?"

He shrugged. “We did what we had to. But there are cruelties I've done without compulsion."

Galina smiled. “My name's Galina,” she said. “I do appreciate your help, whatever it is you think you've done wrong."

He gave a curt nod, tossing the long sleek braid of black hair shot through with a few silver threads over his shoulder. Galina thought that he looked just like the Tatar champion on the famous painting depicting the battle at Kulikovo Field-only the copper helm and armor were missing. She imagined the small man armed, battling the Russian champion, a giant monk named Peresvet. The image was almost comical, and she shook her head. It was a long time ago; still, her own slightly slanted eyes and cheekbones sweeping up like wings were the heritage of the Golden Horde's occupation. The marks that Masha had avoided somehow, with her button nose and wide gray eyes. Masha, she reminded herself. She mustn't be distracted; she mustn't try and learn everyone's story, see how they all fitted together; it didn't matter how history had abused or forgotten these people. They won no wars, they showed no valor; the winners didn't spare them a second thought, and neither should

she. Masha was her only concern, her sister was her only obligation.

* * * *

Soon it was time to go. Galina, Yakov, Zemun, Timur-Bey and Koschey were to go to the river, which, so Zemun asserted, was less than a day away. David packed them a parcel with bread, beer and some dry fruit. “Sorry,” he said. “Didn't have any fresh ones-without Berendey around, there's no one here to bring sunlight to my garden."

"Don't worry about it,” Galina said. “But have you seen Elena?"

He nodded. “She left this morning. Said she wanted to talk to the rusalki and the vodyanoys about something. Don't worry, I'll tell you when she gets back, and maybe she'll send you a message with one of her watery friends. Look for them when you get to the river-it's crawling with all sorts of water spirits, and they sure do talk."

"Thank you,” Galina said.

Yakov took the parcel from David. “We'll be back soon,” he said.

David nodded. “Just be careful there, grandson.” He got the word out with some effort, as if he was still getting used to it.

"Of course,” Yakov said. “It's not like anything can go wrong there, right?"

David shrugged. “It's not a safe place,” he said. “There's no such thing as a safe place. Like there's no such thing as a good czar, no matter how much people want to believe it."