The Secret History of Moscow (18 page)

The birds, despite their immense numbers, seemed to home in on a particular spot, just ahead, where they circled restlessly and cried.

They rushed through the wood, trees growing sparse as they approached a clearing.

"It's like a picture book,” Galina said. Yakov agreed inwardly; the house in the clearing, a trim cabin built of even reddish logs, with a thatched roof and a chimney from which curly white smoke rose, wouldn't be out of place in a fairytale, as a peaceful dwelling of a virtuous woodcutter or some other benign but slightly misanthropic character. The roof and the porch and the banister running along three steps leading to the front door were grey and black with sitting birds.

Sergey stiffened on Yakov's shoulder.

"Relax,” Yakov murmured. “They don't know who you are. They might not even be the same birds."

"Of course they are,” Galina said. She pushed him aside and ran up the steps. “Masha?” she asked every jackdaw in sight. They looked back with their shiny, black eyes, their heads with a little tuft of feathers tilted to their shoulders, but none answered the call.

Zemun and Koschey approached the closed door, and Koschey tugged on the handle. “Locked,” he said.

"Maybe he isn't here,” Zemun said.

Timur-Bey shook his head. “Dear Celestial Cow,” he said. “We cannot leave without seeing if Berendey is inside. I do not know about your kinds of gods, but the spirits of my ancestors tell me that gods are mortal. We have to see, and if you permit I'll be glad to kick the door in."

"Let's knock again,” Yakov said. “Maybe he didn't hear us the first time.” He didn't mention the thought that started bothering him the moment he'd seen the birds: what if Berendey was the entity Sergey overheard conspiring with Slava? He certainly seemed to be one of the very few underground inhabitants who visited the surface frequently to steal sunlight; he had the opportunity, and Yakov's experience taught him that opportunity often outweighed any motive.

Timur-Bey smirked. “I know what you people say. ‘An uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar', right?"

"It's just a saying.” Galina gave a sheepish smile.

This smile irritated Yakov-it reminded him of his ex-wife, of her constant desire to pacify and dampen any disagreement, smooth out the wrinkles on the surface no matter what resentment brewed inside. He turned to face Timur-Bey. “Yeah. Would you prefer we said that an uninvited visitor is better than a Tatar?"

To his surprise, Timur-Bey laughed, showing small uneven and very white teeth. “I see your point, although I still doubt the compulsion of such comparisons. Go ahead, knock."

Yakov did, and for a few minutes all of them-people, birds, the cow-listened for any sound inside the house. There was none; Yakov thought that he heard a faint buzzing, but there was no way of deciding where it originated, and whether it was just an artifact of the ear straining to hear something-anything at all.

After a while, Yakov nodded to Timur-Bey. “On three."

He counted to three, and his and Timur-Bey's shoulders made a shuddering impact with the sturdy door. It gave on the second try-the wood by the jamb splintered and the door fell halfway in, hanging by the still-locked deadbolt.

Inside, the house smelled of wood shavings and pine resin, of sun and hay. The birds poured in through the open door, as if compelled by some invisible force.

"Hello?” Yakov called through the roomy entrance hall and into a darkened corridor.

There was no answer, and he motioned for everyone to remain where they were. He had never carried a gun in his life, but now he wished he had one on him, as he moved through the corridor, his left shoulder brushing against the wall, and kicked open the door on his left. It was a kitchen, judging from the well-polished copper pots, and he wondered briefly why spirits and demigods even needed a kitchen. The recently swept floors smelled of fresh pine, and the pot-bellied woodstove stood clean, not a speck of ash in its roomy interior; neatly split fire logs were stacked in a corner, just waiting for someone to start the fire with the long curls of dry birch bark piled by the stove.

The birds that now filled the hallway and the corridor avoided the kitchen and instead mobbed the door at the end of the corridor; they flapped their wings and threw themselves against the locked door and fell to the floor, only to take wing again. Wave after a black wave crashed against the door, and Yakov had to push his way through them, wings beating against his face. Sergey's claws dug into his shoulder, as if he were afraid that the insanity of the birds around them would take possession of his bird body and fling him against the locked door in a mindless attack.

Yakov pushed through the squawking and the fluttering, soft downy feathers of an owl's wing brushing against his cheek in an almost tender gesture. It was a barn owl, and he remembered the girl Darya in the long-ago, her small and dusky apartment with the railroad just outside her window… the same railroad, he realized, that passed by his house, the same railroad that conveyed the glass granules-soul-stones-to the glass factory. He shook his head-he was stalling, reluctant to open the door, fearful of what might be inside.

He put his shoulder to the wood, and the feeble lock gave on the first try. It was a bedroom, filled with soft light filtered through the closed curtains; the bed, decorated with a surprising mound of decorative pillows, was covered with a white feather duvet, and a shiny, brassy chamber pot peeked from under it. St Nikolay and St Georgiy (and his ubiquitous lizard) peered from the icons on the wall with wizened dark eyes. And on the floor, parallel to the bed, a dead body lay stretched out as if in sleep. Dark blood pooled around it, dripping across the broad chest dressed in a mossy-green caftan from a wound over the dead man's heart; a bayonet protruded from it, and although he was no expert, Yakov recognized that the bayonet was old.

"This is a Napoleonic war weapon,” Sergey said from his shoulder helpfully. “You might want to get it before these birds swarm him."

Yakov nodded. The birds, granted access, flitted inside in an almost comically solemn procession. They settled on the floor, on the dead man's wrinkled, kind face, on his white beard that fanned across the chest and turned red in places; they lit on his green cap and his red calloused hands lying palms up on the floor, on the pointy toes of his boots and along his legs.

There wasn't much left to do, and Yakov called to the rest of his companions. When they stood in a respectful semicircle by the body of the dead demigod, Yakov yanked the bayonet out.

Koschey sighed. “I warned him,” he said. “I told him that one's much better off with one's

death hidden away. I really can't recommend it highly enough."

"Shove it,” Zemun said with a force unusual for her. “Show some respect-there weren't that many of us left, and now we are one fewer."

12: Pogrom

Fyodor spent the whole day with Oksana, the gypsy girl as he still referred to her in his mind. No matter how he tried to explain how terrified he was of the gypsies and how it wasn't his fault, she refused to show any sign of sympathy. It was as if she didn't realize how much effort it took for him to even talk to her.

This predicament occupied most of his attention-and Oksana, no matter how much she scoffed, still sought his company, as if expecting something from him, and her retinue of rats tagged along as they went for another long walk. They returned at suppertime, to discover that there was another assembly in progress.

Fyodor felt bitter-after so many years, there finally was a place where he belonged, where he felt happy, where he didn't have to claw a living out of the fissures of life, even though even here the ghosts of his past in the shape of Oksana haunted him. The surface world managed to intrude, forcing its preoccupations on Fyodor, never letting him be.

He slid behind a table next to Sovin. “What's happening?"

Sovin moved on the long bench to give him and Oksana a place to sit. They wedged close together, and Sovin whispered to them, “Berendey's dead."

"Are they back?"

Sovin shook his head. “They sent a note with a vodyanoy-one of Elena's pals, I reckon. They said they wanted to follow some ‘lead'. I guess your friend the cop wrote that one."

"He ain't no friend of mine,” Fyodor said. “I like the cops as little as you do."

Sovin smirked. “That's always been a problem, see? Can't like the thugs, can't like the law. Just the other day I was talking to some folks, and you know what? No matter what period you look at, the cops and the secret police and the thugs all worked together; sometimes you couldn't even tell them apart."

"Nowadays cops aren't that bad,” Fyodor said. “Sure, they take bribes… but they're nowhere near the KGB's level of evil."

"Level of evil,” Sovin repeated. “I like that. And you're right, I suppose. That Yakov seems like a decent guy, and David's grandson to boot. He means well; the trouble is, he tries to work with a fucked-up system."

Zemun was not there to run the meeting, and Elena took over that role. Fyodor envied her confidence, the way she could just stand and speak in front of dozens of people and creatures and god-knows-what-elses. “This is a more dire situation than any of us had anticipated.” Her clear voice carried through the smoky air, reaching every table in every tucked-away corner of the pub. Even the little domovois who usually bustled around with drinks and buckets of sawdust stopped in their tracks, listening with grave expressions on their small bearded faces.

"The vodyanoys tell me that they found other things from the surface world in the river-weapons, knives, handguns. They tell me that there are more soulstones in it everyday, and they tell me that the rusalki don't go to the surface anymore, even when the moon is full and they should dance on the embankment. And now we hear that Berendey is dead."

A whisper traveled over the crowd, like a gust of wind stirring the grass and falling silent again. Fyodor waited for her to tell them what they should do-go deeper underground, retreat and run to environs unknown and unexplored?

"It is clear what we must do,” Elena said. “We must take the fight to the surface; it wouldn't be the first time and I assure you that it won't be the last-at least if we are successful."

"What does she mean, not the first time?” Fyodor whispered. “I thought it was the whole point, to stay as far away from the surface as possible."

"That is true,” Sovin said. “As long as I had been here, it was the case. The old ones do meddle, but they're usually subtle. But I heard about times when the interference was more direct, and even people got involved."

Fyodor settled, his head resting on his folded arms, ready to listen to another story.

"What are you looking at me for?” Sovin grumbled. “Ask them.” He pointed at the table almost hidden from Fyodor behind a corner. He could only see the dark jacket of a man and the feet of a little girl in laced-up boots that generously showed her toes in a wide yawn. “Who are they?” Fyodor asked Oksana.

"Jews,” Oksana said. “Come on, I'll introduce you. I usually sit with them."

"Why?” Fyodor stood and followed her.

"Because,” she said. “When you have no country, no one thinks you have a right to be your own people. Like if you have no land you should have no language either, like it's your fault. Jews and gypsies, and no one else is like them."

The people at the table-a family it seemed, the men dressed in long severe jackets, the children in well-worn hand-me-downs, the women in grey and black-looked at him with dark eyes, and smiled as if uncertain of his intentions. “This is Fyodor,” Oksana said. “Probably the only man alive who doesn't know what a pogrom is."

"Have you heard of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?” the man with a long beard and a kindly scattering of wrinkles around his eyes asked him.

"I heard something about them,” he said. “Weren't they a fake?"

The man sighed. “Has it ever stopped anyone?” he said.

* * * *

They used to live in the Pale of Settlement-the Pale for short, in the town of Vitebsk. Hershel's family lived in that shtetl for generations, ever since the Pale was established. They were merchants and butchers, clerks and occasionally soldiers. They had large families, and were pious when the circumstances allowed-as a young man, Hershel studied Torah, and eventually got admitted to the University in Kiev. He came back to Vitebsk as soon as he graduated, a trained doctor, able to do good work for his community. He married Rosa soon after. It was 1876; his first son was born in 1877.

In 1881, things had changed. Hershel found it rather pointless to speculate as to hows and whys, but Alexander the Third, the successor of Alexander the Second the liberator and all-around good czar, just had it in for the Jews. Moreover, for reasons unknown, everyone seemed to blame the Jews for Alexander the Second's assassination. It did not surprise Hershel-he had lived long enough to know that if there was trouble, sooner or later the culprit would be found, and the culprit would usually be of Semitic origin.

The secret police, Okhranka, was never openly involved; but when the Jewish stores were ransacked all over Vitebsk, Hershel did not wait for the Black Hundreds to work their way to the private homes and bodily violence. He decided to move to Moscow, hoping that there, among millions, they would be hidden from misfortune. They could've converted or emigrated to the promised shores of America, but, much like Sovin, Hershel did not believe in emigration-can't run from yourself, he told his wife when she brought up the possibility, and can't run from your fate.

"Isn't moving to Moscow running?” she asked skeptically, and stroked the hair of the youngest of their daughters, who clung to her mother's long skirt.

"No,” Hershel said. “Russia is our home-we're moving to a different room, but not leaving the house."

Rosa muttered something derogatory about the quality of the home, and suggested that when a house collapsed it was only wise to step outside. Hershel pretended not to hear. America was too far, and he was not convinced that the distant land would be really worth months on the boat. He looked around his clean, small dining room, its freshly whitewashed walls, and hated saying goodbye to it. He hated leaving behind the talkative neighbors who had grown quiet and subdued lately, and he felt guilty for his privilege-as a doctor, he was allowed to leave the Pale. The world to the east was unknown and terrifying, but so were the steep hills of Vitebsk and its narrow, twisty streets.

Moscow greeted them with cold and severe frozen stone. They settled by the river, in a dank and small house. They missed their clean and dry house in Vitebsk, where despite the overall poverty Hershel had achieved respect; here, they had to build it all anew. There were few Jews in their new neighborhood, and Hershel ministered to them and-on occasion-their cows and horses.

The youngest of his six children was born in the fall of 1890. The cleansing of Moscow Jews started in 1891.

Their neighbor's house was burned, and Stars of David were painted up and down the street in ash. They complained to the gendarmes, but the disinterest of the authorities was palpable. They were advised to convert.

"Perhaps we should,” Hershel told Rosa.

She heaved a sigh and adjusted the baby in her arms, patting her back. “And what good will that do?"