The Secret History of Moscow (14 page)

"Some,” Oksana said. “I'll show you when there are more around-they work better in groups."

The rats settled, sniffing at Oksana and sometimes turning to Fyodor, testing his scent with their whiskers; they smelled Oksana's luck on him.

"You want to go for a walk?” he said, just to get away from the acute discomfort that intruded upon his idyll.

"Sure,” she said. “Do you mind if the rats come too? They need exercise."

"Not a problem.” He nodded to Galina. “I won't be long. Hope your cop friend finds something."

She nodded, without looking up, and Elena twined her arm around Galina's shoulders, whispering quick reassurances in her ear.

It was dark outside, and glowtrees dimmed, flashed and sparkled with seconds of brilliance, and dimmed again.

White jackdaws and rooks slept in the branches, their heavy beaks tucked under their wings, and only occasionally a ruby eye opened to give the passing people and rats an indifferent look and closed again, filming over with leathery eyelids.

"Did you want to ask me something?” Oksana said.

He nodded. “I want to know how you got here-and you know, what it was like for you. On the surface."

* * * *

Oksana knew the sense of misplacement before she could talk. As long as she could remember, she knew moving trains and changing landscapes, with the only constant of women sitting on their parcels, and children crying and playing under the wary eyes of their mothers.

She was lucky, she said, when her family received reparations from the Holocaust-an event she had a vague concept of, but because of it money was sent by some foreign humanitarian agency, and it was because both of her maternal grandparents had perished in a gas chamber. But the money was good, and they bought a house-a shack with no running water or indoor plumbing, but still a real house where they could stay in one place and Oksana could attend school. This experience only increased her confusion-other children asked her questions that had never occurred to her, and she struggled for answers.

She had to explain that she was a gypsy and that gypsies spoke a legitimate language, not any thieves’ argot. She explained that her mother really could tell people's fortunes. That the movies about gypsies really weren't that accurate, and the songs that sold on shining black vinyl records, even though they were called “Gypsy Romances” were neither. And with every question the distance between her and her classmates grew. She started to hate her Ukrainian name, given to her because she was born in Kiev.

Then the money ran out, and they joined their old tabor again. Her mother ailed and told fortunes increasingly bizarre and dark; Oksana had to find a source of income more substantial than what walking the bear on a leash could provide. She started doing private parties at expensive restaurants, where she danced and played her guitar and sang the Gypsy romances. These songs were just like the real ones, with the point and the soul taken out of them-she could not understand why it was necessary to kill the germ of something alive and genuine in everything intended for mass consumption. It was the same with matryoshkas, the dumb soulless chunks of wood which enterprising artists sold everywhere; it was the same with sex.

They needed the money, but at first she balked when at the parties one or the another drunk businessman, red and sweating, his jacket unbuttoned and his tie long gone, asked her if she had lice and when she answered in the negative offered her a thin stack of large bills for something extra. Eventually, she could not afford to say no, and really, it wasn't that bad, just follow them to the bathroom or the backroom, close your eyes, chew your lip, and really, how was that different from what Fyodor was doing, selling her painted and repainted picture, her features just a smudge of dusky skin and black eyes and red lips, blurred by repetition of the movement, how was that different? How was that different from a cracked needle wearing a groove through old vinyl, going round and round and never arriving, how was that different from the birch stump spinning under the sharp incisor of the carver's knife until it acquired the pear shape of the stupid nesting doll?

The world spun them all around, in circles that bore an illusory similarity to spirals, until they were worn and stripped of all identifying features, like her coin, like a lollypop in a greedy child's mouth. She span in the dance, her skirt flying about her in a brightly desperate circle, she sang, she took it from behind, all accompanied by a dreadful feeling of being hurled into the gray void of an empty October sky.

She only felt balanced that day on the bridge, when on a whim she peered over the angular shoulder of the man with a notepad and saw the bridge and the church across reflected in paper just like the water reflected them-the same yet different, not defiled but honored. And right then, she wanted to see herself as he saw her, as others couldn't.

And when he painted her, she felt real. She felt less like an assemblage of exotic features but a

primal creature of color and light, of primal planes and sharp angles. She was broken down and reconstructed on paper, not quite herself, but real, with the gravity her actual body lacked, free of binding spirals and the sandpaper fists of the world.

She gave him her luck and she showed him Misha, hoping that Fyodor would recognize them for what they were, that he would realize that Misha was a soul at the last stages of being ground down to bare bone and splinters of broken teeth and claws. That he was what awaited her if she remained in this life. Instead Fyodor walked away, and nothing was ever right.

Oksana did not blame him, not directly; after all, no one owed anything to anyone else. She wasn't looking for a savior, just for someone who would understand. She was mad at herself for her failure to explain. Her singing acquired a cracked quality as her throat grew dry and something in her chest shattered. Her fingers slid limply off the strings of her guitar. Misha died in October.

They had moved from the train station then, and took residence in Tsaritsino-the park was under construction, large parts of it were closed off, and a gypsy tabor and a bear could hide there until winter, when they would head for the warmer climes or overwinter, cold and huddled but stubborn like crows. But now, they had a dead bear on their hands. Cremation seemed like the best option, and Oksana, grieving more than the rest, found something proper and almost poetic about it.

They built a funeral pyre from loose branches and a few small birches and lindens they assumed no one would miss, and the body of the bear, shrunken and desiccated, was rolled on top of it. It was night, and the leaves still clinging to the branches stood black against the indigo sky and the large pale moon.

The yellow flames licked the branches and crackled, drying the sap in a cloud of pungent black smoke, tainting the air with the taste of true autumn and bitterness. Their tongues twined around birch trunks, and the long curls of white bark whispered and lit easily like paper, every mark on their surface outlined in red for just a moment and then gone in a flash of pure orange flame. The flames reached for the dead bear's body, and the smell of leaves was supplanted by the stench of burning hair.

The rest dispersed then, satisfied that the flames burned hot and bright, and in the morning nothing would be left but a few ash-colored bones, easy to break apart into long sharp splinters and bury. Only Oksana remained, her eyes watering from the stench. She hugged her shoulders as the wave of heat slammed into her again and again, and greasy soot settled like fat black snowflakes on her hair, eyelashes, cheekbones, lips. The bear on top of the pyre seemed to come to life-his limbs contorted in the heat, as if he were waving to her to join him. She understood that the movement was the result of the contractions of drying muscles, before they turned to cinders. But she also understood that there was no point in waiting until she was as old and broken as Misha, her body heaved on a funeral pyre of her own. Or perhaps they would bury her, and the thought filled her with disgust-she did not relish darkness or the wet smell of earth, or the inevitable worms. She would rather go now, in a burst of flames like so many gypsy women of bygone days. It would be her only act of defiance-to confound fate by embracing it too early.

Oksana took a few deep gulps of breath, as if she were about to dive underwater, not into the roaring flames with the sizzling corpse of a dead bear inside. The flames surged upward, licking the pale moon with their red dog tongues, and curved inward, opening a dark glowing passage between them. Oksana closed her eyes and stepped through, buoyed by the blindingly hot gust of air from the pyre's heart; her feet left the ground and for a while she hovered, surrounded by gleaming walls of solid fire, her arms outstretched, flying like a bird, until it hurled her with the force of an ocean wave toward the dead bear, and she felt the two of them-burning, burning-hurled into the empty ocean of the dark

October sky.

* * * *

Fyodor remained quiet-what could he say? He didn't give any promises, he was blameless and yet guilt nestled somewhere close to the surface. He watched the rats streaming in a small dark rivulet around Oksana's walking small feet. There seemed to be more of them coming from the cracks in the pavement and out of houses, joining the glossy throng of brown fur. He looked up, at the white birds in the trees.

"All we see here are those albino things,” he said to break the awkward silence. “I wonder where all the black ones went."

"There aren't any,” Oksana said.

"I meant the ones that flew in from the surface. The ones we've followed."

She nodded. “I heard David and Sovin talk about that but I never saw any myself. That girl's sister is one of these birds, isn't she?"

"So I heard,” Fyodor said. “But isn't it strange? These birds go here and disappear."

"It is strange,” Oksana agreed and fell quiet.

He knew that she didn't want to talk about the birds or the thug, of everyone's agitation. She was remembering a private pain, and at the moment it eclipsed everything else. Fyodor had no comfort to offer, and had he done so it wouldn't have mattered-she didn't want to be comforted.

"Do your rats have names?” he asked.

She nodded. “That one's Alex, and this is Sasha, and Sonya and Masha and Artyom."

"How can you tell them apart?"

"They are different,” she said. “And they tell me their names. They try to tell me more but I don't understand."

"One of them was looking at the coin you gave me. I think it smelled you."

She gave a small rueful smile, briefly transformed into a naked skeletal grimace by the flaring of a glowtree. “They like me, and Sovin doesn't mind if they spend time with me. Want to see the tricks they can do?"

"Sure.” Fyodor was eager for anything that would distract her from dark thoughts and self-pity. “There must be a hundred of them here."

Oksana whistled to the rats and they fell into formation-the blur of rat bodies acquired a shape as they parted like the Red Sea and formed neat rows, their eyes glittering red coals in the dusk.

Oksana whistled some more and the rats obeyed-they jumped on each other's backs, forming tall columns instead of rows. Fyodor admired their organization and architectural cleverness-each column had a base of several dozen rats, and grew slimmer as it grew taller, with only one rat crowing the taper of the column.

"Neat,” Fyodor said.

She smiled. “Look at this.” She whistled a low sad note that hung in the air a moment too long, trembling, and the rat columns twisted, falling toward each other. The rats formed chains, made of rats twining their tails back to back and holding hands face to face; the chains grew thicker, writhing,

rising away from the ground, coalescing into shape-Fyodor recognized two stout legs and a bulky body, two long arms and a round head with a long snout. The creature stood before him, tottering a bit. And he laughed. “This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen,” he said. “That's a bear made entirely of rats. Can it walk?"

Through a miracle of coordination, effort, and desire to please, the creature took one laborious, shuffling step forward, its arms swaying freely, giving a disturbing impression of broken bones.

Oksana tilted her head to her shoulder, looking the creature over critically. “What do you think?"

"It's impressive,” Fyodor said. “I'm always amazed at how smart those things are-rats and crows. And they're just vermin, you know?"

"I know,” she said, and stopped smiling. “Like gypsies-isn't it what you're going to say?"

"No,” he said. “I know how people see you. But when I was little, my mom was telling me how gypsies would steal me."

"Sure,” she said. “Blame it on your upbringing."

"I think I wanted to be stolen,” he said. “And yes, I know you don't really steal children, but that's not the point. You complain that they treat you differently…"

"And you do."

"I just wanted something magical,” he said. “I'm sorry. I didn't know that different is always bad."

"Of course. Admitting that different can be better is actually a confession of inferiority; who would agree to that?"

The bear made of rats took another stumbling step forward. Oksana judged that it was safe to resume walking, and the rat-bear stumbled behind.

The sleeping albino birds woke and suspiciously watched the bear glittering with a myriad of rat eyes and festooned with dangling naked tails. Some even joined along, hopping from tree to tree, exchanging quiet caws.

They turned back to the pub, the white birds still following.

"At least this bear is not going to die,” Fyodor said. “You made yourself an immortal pet who'll never leave you."

She nodded, smiling, and walked faster, her skirt swishing around her ankles. Good, Fyodor thought. He had finally found the right thing to say.

10: Timur-Bey

Galina could not sleep that night-in Sovin's'warm house smelling of animals and the suffocating comfort of hay, it should've been easy to sleep. But every time she started to drift off she dreamt of Masha, sometimes human, sometimes a bird. Masha cried and reached for her with her jet-black wings and called in her sweet voice. “Where are you, Galka? Why aren't you coming for me?"