The Secret History of Moscow (12 page)

* * * *

As much as Yakov tried to avoid any political involvement in his life, he had sat through his share of a variety of meetings and lectures on Marxist theory, which were just as boring and filled with the same dull rhetoric. When he was young enough to be a member of Komsomol, whose voluntary character was a bald-faced lie, he amused himself by carving obscenities into the edge of the large wooden table around which they all sat, under the watchful and blind gaze of Lenin and Marx gypsum busts. Their white eyes followed Yakov every time he lifted the green cloth covering the meeting table and carefully cut ‘dick', ‘fuck', and ‘cunt’ into the wood, the simple incantations warding against gypsum deities. He was thrilled with a mixture of joy and fearful anticipation, and cringed when he imagined the lightning bolts they could summon to strike him down. The profanities protected him.

Even here, underground, the word ‘meeting’ did not fill him with anything but a low-key ennui, even if it was a meeting summoned by the Celestial Cow. The Pub had a billiard table covered with green fabric, and its polished raised edges beckoned Yakov; he wished he had a penknife so he could carve his simple-minded charms into the exposed wood, the better to ward off boredom.

David bustled around, moving chairs and pushing together tables so that everyone could fit, including Zemun. Sovin helped, his old back and arms stiffening with the effort. He occasionally stopped to bark a cough and spit, but did not slow down. The patrons stood in clusters, whispering; Yakov wondered at first how the rumors managed to spread so fast, until he saw the group of rusalki. They had brought the corpse with them, water dripping in slow rivulets from its dark hair. Yakov had to look away from its gaping mouth and the dislocated lower jaw sticking out at a disturbing angle. The rusalki held the body up and moved its hands like a marionette's, laughing softly.

Yakov recognized some of the people and creatures present; others were new to him, and he tried to guess who they were. There was a man in a long military coat and hat with a large splayed star, the fashion he remembered from the movies about the Civil War; another one, narrow-eyed and sallow-faced looked like a character from a historical drama about the Golden Horde, and Yakov pegged him for a Tatar-Mongol circa 13th century or thereabouts. Others were dressed in less identifiable garb-checkered shirts and dark trousers that could belong anywhere in the twentieth century. The thought made him sad, that one could become so detached and lost in the stream of time.

Among the people, strange creatures mingled-besides easily identifiable vodyanoys and leshys, there were things that seemed the stuff of nightmares, or at least the fairytales he hadn't heard of. He was especially intrigued by a short stocky gentleman, flanked by two attendants brandishing iron pitchforks, with eyelids so long they brushed the ground. A large winged dog sat next to him on the floor, but seemed unaffiliated. Sovin's rats tried not to get underfoot but kept close to their benefactor, and glared a bit at the small creatures-some anthropomorphic, some not so much-who scurried about with pails of sawdust, covering up the dark spots left by water dripping off the corpse and the aquatic creatures, and Zemun's cowpats.

David touched his shoulder. “How are you making out?"

"Fine,” Yakov said, and pointed at the long-lidded person. “Who's that fellow?"

"Viy,” David answered. “What, you haven't read Gogol?"

"Sure I have. But I thought these were mythological creatures here, not literary."

"Viy is mythological,” David said. “He's a general in Russian hell."

Galina walked up to them. “We get a special hell?"

"Not a Christian hell.” David thought a bit, absentmindedly wiping his hand on the stained apron. “A pagan hell… or underworld, if you will."

Galina nodded. “He's the only one who's supposed to be here, then."

Fyodor sauntered up, and an old man in a red coat followed him. “What's going on?” he slurred.

Yakov stepped back from the assault of alcohol on Fyodor's breath. “A meeting,” he said. “We're just waiting for Koschey the Deathless."

Fyodor laughed and stopped, once he realized Yakov was not joking. He turned to his companion. “Know anything about him, Father Frost?"

The old man fluffed his white beard. “We're not friends, if that's what you're asking. But he knows a lot."

"There he is.” David left the group and headed toward the entrance, to shake hands with a very tall and thin man dressed in a black suit.

"I expected him to be scarier,” Galina whispered to Yakov.

He agreed inwardly; the villain of so many fairytales he read as a child, of so many movies that fascinated him on Saturday mornings, was always portrayed as not quite human, a deformed creature possessed of an unhealthy fascination with young women, and who invariably ended up defeated by those who could find his cleverly hidden-away death. He did not seem particularly malignant now, just stern.

"Order!” Zemun called, and shook her head from side to side; little stars swimming around her neck jangled like bells, and quiet followed on their wake.

Everyone settled at the giant table, set in the middle of the star-shaped pub, and for a few moments there was nothing but muffled coughs and shifting and scrabbling of the chair legs on the floor. House spirits started on a song somewhere in the walls, but stopped as soon as Zemun cleared her throat. Everyone remained silent except for the albino jackdaws, perched on the ceiling beams, who would not stop squawking.

The rusalki brought the corpse with them, arranging it carefully across several laps as they sat side by side. Yakov found a place between Fyodor and Elena, who rolled the blue gem from one palm to the other, the blue flashes of light playing across her high cheekbones. Koschey the Deathless, seated to her right, watched the stone too, and Yakov noticed how deep-set his eyes were. They twinkled with reflected light, somewhere deep in the dark eye sockets.

"Order!” Zemun bellowed again, and the shifting and the coughing stopped. At her signal, the rusalki rose to present the corpse.

"This,” Zemun said, “has surfaced today in the Rusalki's Lake. It was just the day after these three newcomers arrived, following the birds from the surface who appear to pass freely between the surface and the underground. Moreover, there's reason to believe that these birds are people who recently underwent transformation. We are thus forced to conclude that there's magic on the surface, and the dead bodies are able to cross here."

Yakov smiled to himself, at the cow's ability to dispense with lengthy introductions and avoid any dialectics altogether. Based on his limited experience, he expected to hear about dialectics at every

meeting. A buzz of excited conversation filled the room, and Viy's attendants used their pitchforks to lift his eyelids so he could view the dead body.

"Don't worry,” Elena whispered to Yakov and Fyodor. “His gaze won't turn you into stone. It's just a rumor."

"Thanks,” Fyodor whispered back. “I was worried about that."

"Does anyone know where this body came from?” Zemun said.

"No.” Koschey's voice crackled like a dry twig. “But I can find out."

The collective groan swirled around the table.

"Not you, with your raising of the dead again,” said a blue-skinned dripping vodyanoy, his large frog-like eyes bulging out of his scaly face.

"Why not?” Koschey replied. “At least now I have a dead body to raise. That'll shut your mouth… and aren't fish supposed to be silent anyway?"

Vodyanoy huffed, but offered no further argument.

"Has anyone else any objections?” Koschey stared at Zemun. “Maybe you, beefsteak?"

"Drop dead,” Zemun murmured.

The rest of the demigods and spirits remained quiet, and Koschey turned to the people. “Any of you fleshbags have anything to say? In the old days, I swear, I would use your skins for upholstery instead of asking for your opinion, but I guess we have pluralism now."

"Do what you must,” Elena said. “And don't get too excited-you might get apoplexy."

The rest of the humans tittered, and Yakov surmised that the death of Koschey the Deathless was a favorite joke for many.

Koschey stood, especially tall and skeletally thin in the Zemun's aurora borealis lights and the blue glittering of the gem. He commanded attention, and Yakov wondered if Koschey indeed was capable of raising the dead man.

"Give me that, sweetheart,” Koschey said to Elena and stretched out his hand, palm up.

She put the gem into it. “Do you know what it is?"

"It's a rather well-polished glass sphere,” Koschey said. “What's more important is what's inside of it."

"And that would be?” Yakov said.

Koschey looked at him for the first time, and Yakov felt as if insects were crawling under the collar of his shirt. “And that, my succulent friend, would be this man's soul. You see, I know quite a bit about hiding away souls."

"I thought it was your death that was hidden away,” Galina said.

"It's all the same, dear,” Koschey answered. “Every soul contains the seed of its own destruction. Now, if I may proceed…"

Yakov could not shake the impression that he was watching a magic show, even as Koschey pressed the blue marble under the dead man's tongue and unwound the electrical tape around the corpse's wrists. He fixed his jaw, closing the stagnant mouth bristling with chipped and broken teeth, hiding the blackened tongue that sprang like a pistil of that obscene flower.

Koschey whispered some words into the corpse's ear, and patted his pockets. Looking annoyed, he left his ministering. “Does anyone have two coins?” he said. “I didn't quite expect to perform a resurrection."

"Over here,” Fyodor said. Everyone held their breath as he offered Koschey a faceless coin on a thin golden chain.

Koschey grasped the coin, and Fyodor pulled it out. He then once again passed the coin through the bony fist of Koschey.

Yakov watched the manipulation in confusion, until Koschey unclenched his fist and showed two glittering coins. He placed the coins onto the corpse's eyes, closing them. The bruised shadows spread under them, and Koschey resumed whispering incantations.

Yakov got bored and looked around the room. A part of him still expected to wake up in his room, with his mom hollering from the kitchen to come and get his breakfast; he felt guilty for thinking of her so little. He imagined her, like she always was, tight-lipped and slightly worried, always uneasy about something, when a loud jingling snapped him back to his present, in his grandfather's pub, at the table surrounded by people who should've been dead ages ago and things that shouldn't have existed at all. He looked at the table, uncomprehending at first, at the two polished coins spinning and dancing on its rough surface. Then he looked at the corpse, who opened its filmy milky eyes, rubbed his wrists, and shivered in his wet clothes. Then, he began to speak.

* * * *

Sergey never thought that he would become a thug when he grew up-when he was growing up, thugs were not a viable career choice, and boys his age rarely dreamt beyond becoming cosmonauts or firemen; at least, once they realized that the positions of revolutionary heroes were filled long ago, and were no longer offered.

He had an obsessive love of cavalry, of Chapaev and Budyonny, and he read every book in the library dealing with the Civil War and the heroism of the Red Army. He was disappointed when he learned that cavalry was a thing of the past, and if he joined the army he would be more likely to see the golden, undulating grass of the steppes through the narrow slit of a tank than from horseback, the wind whistling by, the air saturated with the smell of dry grass and horse sweat. His love of war and horses left him alternately thinking of becoming a soldier and a veterinarian; when he graduated from high school, he applied to a veterinary institute. He failed the entrance exams, and was drafted into the army.

The army changed him-after a year of being hazed and another one doing the hazing, he decided that veterinary medicine was a passing fancy, and the life of a rural vet-a childish and embarrassing dream. He stayed in the army for the third year, not required by the draft, and started applying to military academies.

And then Things Changed, in a big way. Military spending was cut and he was sent home from his post guarding a nuclear silo. The rumor was that the nukes in there were earmarked for non-confrontational destruction, but Sergey did not really care. After privatization of everything started and co-op stores sprang overnight like shaky corrugated toadstools, something became obvious to Sergey: privilege that during his youth was reserved for the party members, that used to be won in battle before that, was now free for the taking for those with brains, business sense, and non-demanding scruples.

He knew that he had neither brains nor business sense; he only had a permissive conscience and good physical training. The co-op stores needed protection, only some didn't know it yet, and Sergey joined a group of sympathetic individuals who took it upon themselves to persuade business owners to pay for their protection from rival racketeers.

He never rose in the ranks, and he didn't concern himself with the whys or hows of it; he considered himself a simple businessman. When those who owed money did not pay, he experienced a sense of vague hurt and betrayal, and he felt righteous punishing the people who for some reason didn't think it was necessary to pay their debts. Some went so far as to deny the very need for protection-or a roof, as it was called. “You need a roof,” Sergey would try to explain. “If you don't have protection, other gangs would do what they please to you, your company, and your money. What are you going to do then, huh? Go to the police?"

The subject then understood his folly and hung his head, and forked over whatever cash was required. Only the most obstreperous cases needed persuasive punishment.

Sergey worked with some real artists in his life-given an electric iron, a set of pliers, and a roll of electrical tape, they reduced the most cocky businessmen to sniveling, simpering piles of refuse. These crude instruments went out of favor, though, once thugs discovered hexes.

They were old wives’ tales, Sergey thought initially. Potions, talismans, kabbalic symbols-they were all the same, incantations of curses and blessings; sacrifices to the unknown and too-ancient-for-names gods-silliness, he said. There were no mysterious energies, no obligingly aligned stars that would facilitate the outcome of a territorial dispute; no bunch of dried herbs would help his prehistoric car, a Volga, the sad legacy of some ex-communist functionary, start in the morning. Except they did.