The Secret History of Moscow (28 page)

Koschey sighed too. “Everyone knows where my death is,” he said, addressing the direction of Slava's flight. “What no one understands is that it doesn't matter."

"How do you mean?” Yakov said. He had remained silent until then, his head cocked to one shoulder as if he was listening to some distant whispers rather than the goings-on. “Why doesn't it matter? Aren't you afraid that someone will find it?"

Koschey took the white feather out of his pocket. “They can find it,” he said, “but they can't destroy it. How do you destroy a negation?"

"Metaphysics,” Elena interrupted. “Come on, turn the birds into people."

"Wait,” Galina said, anxious. “Are you sure they are all there?"

"As sure as we're going to be,” Elena said. “The mermaids and the First Cavalry scoured every corner and shooed them all here."

"I thought you said they were symbols,” Fyodor said.

Elena tossed her head impatiently, letting loose a long serpentine coil of her smooth hair. “What does that have to do with their ability to scare up birds?"

Koschey stepped to the lights that now burned brighter. The white feather in his fingers trembled and stretched, shooting long tendrils of blinding-white fog that stood against the darkness around the cabin like the flares of the aurora borealis.

The birds, invisible in the black branches of the trees, rose as one to meet the wrapping of the tendrils; the fog spread until Fyodor saw nothing but white, and then he had to look away.

* * * *

When he looked back, he saw people like any others. Their feathers turned into black and gray and brown clothes with only occasional splashes of color. They looked around them as if waking from deep sleep; Fyodor tried to imagine what was it like for them-were their lives as birds just vague ghosts now, things one remembers in a dream? Did they wonder how they got there? And, most importantly, what was it like, waking up back in one's body, and finding oneself in Kolomenskoe at the very break of dawn?

He tried to imagine it now-their lives, their dreams. They were just like everyone else; Fyodor thought about the time when everything changed. He was glad then that he'd chosen to live in the streets, painting the overly-expressive gypsies and sentimental landscapes, and not having to deal with the shifting economic and political climate. He could ignore the fearful glances of the people who suddenly felt that the very fabric of reality had been yanked from under them as the oil industry became privatized and classified ads bristled with scary and foreign job titles-copywriter, realtor, and manager. The techy kids, marked from childhood by their glasses and pasty complexion for the engineering careers, dropped out of colleges and opened their own programming companies, while the engineers, suddenly finding themselves on the brink of starvation, sold cigarettes through the tiny clear plastic embrasures of the subway kiosks.

Fyodor remembered the conversation he had overheard in the street once. Two men, both small, slender and unremarkable-likely engineers or junior researchers-stopped by Fyodor's paintings. Not to buy (he had a pretty good instinct in that regard) but to stare at the inviting cloudless azure of the summer sky on one of the canvas.

"I have to take another job,” one of them said. He looked the epitome of the Soviet engineer, a gray harmless creature, timid to the point of invisibility. “Sveta wants to privatize the apartment, and Grandma is ailing and her pension only pays for the fish for her cat."

"You can work for me,” his companion said. “You can sell shawls-we have a joint venture with those folk-masters from Vologda. Nice lace too."

"Sell?” his interlocutor repeated with a note of candid fear in his voice. “I can't. I don't know how."

"There's nothing to know,” his friend reassured. His distracted gaze slid over Fyodor as if he were as inanimate as one of his paintings. “Easy; just hold those things up and be loud."

"I don't know how to be loud,” the presumed engineer said, desperation edging into his voice.

As Fyodor watched the group of people outside, as they looked at each other and shook their heads, trying to remember, and cried silently, he realized what they had in common. The bird people were the ones who did not know how to be loud, in any sense of the word-they only tried to carry on as best they could, holding to the memory of a dignity that didn't seem to be allowed in the new capitalist jungles that sprouted around them, lush and suffocating and seductive but blocking the view of everything but themselves. He felt acute pity for their voicelessness, for their inability to adjust or to turn back time.

He watched as Galina and Fyodor stepped outside and mingled with the crowd. Oksana nudged him. “Do you want to go to them?"

"Why?” Fyodor said. “What can I do?"

"It doesn't matter,” Oksana said. “Can't you see? They need someone to tell them it's going to

be all right."

Fyodor followed her down the steps of the cabin, which seemed to have reappeared from the dimmed lights, outlined anew against the gray dawn sky. He promised himself never to go back to this place, to avoid every memory of Peter the Great and his blasted cabin that harbored rather more than he was willing to take on. He wondered if it was possible to simply forget such things, and smiled to himself lopsidedly-his drinking would surely take care of that, and who needed a liver anyway.

Oksana approached an older woman, her head covered by a kerchief patterned in lurid red roses, a wide-mouthed handbag clutched in her hand. Oksana whispered to the woman, and it must've been something soothing because the woman's shoulders relaxed and her crooked fingers lost their desperate bone whiteness.

Fyodor looked around until his gaze met that of a middle-aged woman. During her ordeals her eye makeup had smudged, giving her a battered, haunted look. Fyodor stepped closer, noticing the fresh stitches on the seam of her light coat and her old-fashioned shoes with square toes and heels and that orthopedic look one usually associated with much older women.

"I'm Fyodor,” Fyodor said. “Are you all right?"

"I'm not sure,” the woman said. “What happened? I was going to work, and…"

"Where do you work?” he asked.

"Biryulevo,” she said. “Meat-packing plant. Where are we?"

"Kolomenskoe,” he said. “You'd have to take the subway back."

"And a bus,” she said, looking straight through him distractedly. Still, he had a feeling that talking about routine matters grounded her.

"Route 162?” he asked.

She nodded. “There are a couple of new ones, too. What am I doing here?"

"Don't you remember anything?” he said.

"I remember a man,” she answered. “The man who followed me to the plant. And then…” She ran her hand over her face. “I had strange dreams-I dreamt of flying through the water, through a dark black river, and white pale faces stared at me-and I remember the city's rooftops-as if I were looking at them from the air."

"It sounds like a nice dream,” he said. “Do you have anyone waiting for you at home?"

"Just my daughter, Darya,” the woman said and smiled a little. “Good girl, very clever. Says she wants to be a mathematician. Want to see her picture?"

"Sure,” Fyodor said and waited as the woman rifled through her roomy handbag, shuffling combs, compact cases, coin purses, plastic baggies, scented handkerchiefs and whatever other arcane objects female bags of such size contained. He was surprised at how calm everyone appeared-no one seemed to have gotten hysterical or distraught, like the woman before him. Her movements seemed sluggish, as if she just awakened up from deep sleep (he supposed she did), or if she deliberately avoided any thought that would make her panic. He also thought that a crowd of people had to be reassuring, even if she didn't remember how she got here. Out of the corner of his eye he saw some of

the former birds take off down the path leading to the exit, and he sighed with relief. They would get home and find some way to explain the dreams and the missing time.

She finally fished out a small black and white picture mounted on cardboard and covered with a clear polyethylene sheet, taped at the edges. The girl in the picture appeared utterly unremarkable, but Fyodor nodded and made an appreciative noise. “Cute kid,” he said. “Listen, maybe you should head home, to tell her you're all right? She must be worried sick."

The woman looked around her, perplexed. “It's winter?"

"No,” he said. “Still October. Just a really fucked up one."

He heard Galina's voice calling out, “Masha, Masha!"

"Excuse me,” he said to the woman. “Let me see what's going on there."

She nodded, already looking after the people heading down the path. “Don't worry about me. The subway must be open already, so I better go. Beat the rush hour.” She smiled. “Thanks for stopping to talk to me."

"My pleasure,” he said, and turned to see Galina, panicked now, running from one cluster of people to the next. She looked anxiously into women's faces, grabbed sleeves. Yakov followed behind her.

Fyodor caught up to them. “What's going on?"

Galina mopped her sleeve at her tear-filled eyes. “Masha…” she whispered, all fire gone out of her. “My sister. She isn't here."

19: Masha

The silent park came alive with the chirping of birds as the sun's first rays filtered through the naked black tree branches that stood against the watercolor-pale sky. Galina listened to the sounds absentmindedly-these were small ordinary birds, tits and nuthatches and wrens. She heard the cawing of crows off in the distance, but no Masha. She snuggled into the snow, finally exhausted, and hugged her knees to her chest. Everything had been useless. The transformation of birds back, hundreds that went home to their families-just now, before her very eyes-did not matter. Masha was not here, and everything was pointless. She couldn't fathom returning home, and she thought with indifference that she could freeze to death, die here in the snow, and it would be as fitting an end as any.

Yakov sat down next to her. Her heart fluttered for a moment when she saw a bird in his hand, and slowed down just as quickly-the bird was an ordinary crow, who cawed at Yakov demandingly.

"Imagine that,” he said by the way of explanation. “This crow was the only real one in the whole bunch-my Carl."

"Your pet,” she remembered.

He didn't argue. “I'm so sorry,” he said. “Elena said they would search underground once more."

"What's the use?” she said. “The charm is gone, and Alkonost has no more feathers to give."

"Koschey…” Yakov started.

"Can't do anything without the feathers,” she concluded, determined to wallow in her misery with as much abandon as she could muster in this low-spirited moment. “And how do you know she wasn't on this side, somewhere?"

Yakov remained silent, his fingers caressing the crow's shining black head absentmindedly. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I know how it feels-but really, you shouldn't sit in the snow, you'll freeze."

"That'd be just fine,” Galina said darkly, but couldn't help but feel ridiculous and small, and her eyes grew hot again with unbidden tears.

"Come on,” Yakov said and nudged her to get up. “It's warmer in the cabin."

Galina sighed and followed him inside.

Elena smiled at her, but stopped once she noticed Galina's face. Elena gave her a quick warm hug. “I so wish I had some tea here,” she said.

Galina nodded. “Tea would be nice."

Oksana, Yakov, Fyodor and Koschey stared at them, and Elena wrapped her arm around Galina's shoulders and turned her to face the window, their backs to the others. “Don't pay attention to them,” she whispered. “They mean well, but they don't know what to say. Frankly, neither do I."

"Where's Zemun?” Galina said. “And Timur-Bey?"

Elena waved her hand. “Underground. You can come back with me, if you want. It's not so bad there, and you can forget things you want to forget. If it's especially bad, you can always give it to the boatman."

"I know,” Galina said. “Yakov met him; he didn't seem too happy."

Elena shrugged. “It's funny how it goes. But the boatman, he can help you, really. And it is-quiet. It'll be quieter still with Likho and Zlyden gone. We can drink tea and talk all day."

Galina nodded. “It sounds nice.” Better than the alternative, she thought. She remembered the story of Sirin, of the power of her voice to lull people into quiet contentment that was worse than death-at least, so the stories went, but they never explained why it was so bad. The heroes were meant to struggle and persevere, to fight, to not give in. But after the fight was done and one still lost, why not let the contentment take over? There was nothing for her on the surface.

She heard Yakov and Fyodor murmuring behind them, and turned to see what was going on. She had decided to abandon hope because hope would only hurt more, but she couldn't help it.

Fyodor was showing Yakov and Koschey a jackdaw, and Sergey, still in the body of the white rook, looked on skeptically. Galina's heart squeezed in a painful spasm.

"No,” Fyodor said quickly. “It's not your sister, sorry. It's that guy, Vladimir-or rather his soul, see? It was in another one of those glass spheres, Oksana's rat stole it from Slava-so we jammed it into the jackdaw. Koschey said that he might be able to bring Sergey back, so I thought maybe he'd help Vladimir."

Vladimir the jackdaw gave a strained squawk. “Are you really Koschey the Deathless?” he asked Koschey.