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Walking through the door alone gave people chills, not him, he waltzed right into the place, expectant. It’s been over five years since graduation and he hadn’t gotten to see his friend. He walked into the prison hallway with his head high, staring the prisoners on either side of the hallway in the eyes. He had never been one for fear, he didn’t understand what it meant.
He paused at reception and stared at the jailer, a fair woman, with blonde hair, skinny, and carefree. She was chewing gum and blowing bubble gum. He waited for her to notice him. Someone told him one time to speak only when spoken to. She ignored him for a good while.
“Who are you here for?” she asked.
“Sergey Kravchenko,” Ivan said.
She opened her leger and flipped through the pages. After a while, she paused and turned her eyes to Ivan who was still standing in his characteristic way, almost like he would like to disappear. His hair was already thinning at the top and the odd shape of his head made him look like something out of a comic book.
“A warder will take you in and show you to a room,” she said. He shrugged and made his way towards the entrance where the warder is meant to be waiting. A young-looking officer in spiffy clothing was there to lead him down the hallway to a small, dark room. He sat, waiting. He recalled the only time he managed to have a word with Sergey, the case had taken a turn and he was on the ropes. His lawyers weren’t as bullish as they had been at the beginning.
A single piece of evidence had emerged and it was enough to put Sergey away. When Ivan met him, he laughed. Ivan was taken aback by the laughter and the apparent carefree state of his pseudo friend.
“Is the evidence not serious enough?” Ivan had asked.
“It is, it will put me away for life, except, of course, I find someone else to take the fall for me, and then I can make my way out. If that doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter, either way, I have lived better in the few years I have been here than most people will do all their lives,” Sergey had said.
“That doesn’t mean you get to throw it away,” Ivan replied.
“Live every day to its fullest and you won’t worry when it doesn’t go according to plan,” he advised. It was the last words they shared. The next thing Ivan heard was that he had been sentenced to life. In the days leading up to the trial, he had constantly feared politsiya bursting into his room and whisking him off to prison. He feared Sergey will put him in the middle of it all but he hadn’t, instead, he had copped to the murder, admitting that the bodies of Alek and Valentina will never be found.
He had done something to the bodies. This will keep Ivan awake for many nights after the conviction, after the fear that Sergey will sell him down the river had dissipated, he wondered what had happened to the two unfortunate individuals. How did Sergey make these bodies disappear? He wanted to know, but all the books in the library wouldn’t tell him what he wanted to know. He spent weeks on end thinking about the possibility, about what might have happened. He had a general idea and read some reports on possibilities but he couldn’t find the actual recipe he was looking for. It kept him awake for weeks before he began to plot this meeting with Sergey.
It didn’t work out. For the last three years of his academic life, he sought to make the discovery, to find the answers he so desperately sought. It had kept him awake for longer and the more he sought, the more worried he became that it may never materialize. He tried rodents, bathing them in several concoctions he cooked up but nothing seemed to be as effective as he wanted. He could take the skin off his rodents, but he couldn’t make them disappear. There was only one person who could show him what he wanted to know, Sergey.
When he walked out with the guard and made his way towards his table, Ivan stood. The man looked much better than he did. He had been in here for years, yet he looks more robust than a man who had been out there in the world all these years. A few weeks-old beards covered his face but a smile lit up his face when he saw his visitor. Ivan stood, wavering on one leg when he saw the man. He tried something that looked like a smile, it was a poor imitation but that was all he could offer.
“I didn’t think I will ever see you again, Ivan,” Sergey called.
“Me neither, I tried to get to see you a couple of times, but they wouldn’t let me, you were at the Minsk Detention center at the time,” Ivan stated.
“Yeah, they thought I was some kind of death chemist and blacklisted me. I couldn’t have visitors, I couldn’t get conjugal visits, my balls grew purple from all the jerking off I was doing, and there is nothing else to do in a prison anyways.”
“You don’t look so bad,” Ivan commented.
“Yeah? My old man, he says he can’t bend the law to get me out, but he can bend it to make sure I am living my best life in prison,” Sergey chuckled.
“I guess he is keeping his word,” Ivan replied. He didn’t laugh with Sergey. There was a certain light in his eyes, something evil. He had seen it that night at the hockey pitch, and that day at the Rector’s office. It was something akin to zero remorse. He seemed proud of what he did and was almost certain that he would get away with it.
“I heard about Vlad, I am sorry,” Ivan said.
“What about him?” Sergey asked.
“Oh, you didn’t hear?”
“I hear a lot of things in here, but one thing I didn’t try to keep any tabs on is Vlad,” Sergey said. There was that look again and I knew there was more to this than he was telling me. Vlad had died in a ghastly accident. He had fallen onto the railway at a bad time, and the train had taken him a good few minutes forward before it stopped. They couldn’t identify the man by his facial appearance.
“He was in a train accident, died on the spot,” Ivan said, intuitively understanding that he had to finish his news.
“That’s a shame, he was a good man, although I wonder who will mourn him,” Sergey said. There was a pregnant silence between the two of them. “There are a couple of people, detective Fyodor for one, who want me to face the death penalty, and finding a crime that could be added to my charges will definitely give them what they are after. I remember telling you I was ready to end this journey of life but I lied, I am not ready yet. I promise, Ivan, there is so much beauty to this world,” he stated.
“Yeah? What are those?”
“I recently took up poetry, both the reading and writing of it. There is a certain beauty to it, a beauty you cannot lay a finger on but it is right there, in your face, abstract and tangible at the same time,” Sergey explained.
“I think poets are made men. They see colors in the air and hear voices in the echoes of emptiness,” Ivan dismissed.
“If you ever happen to be locked in solitary with nothing except the voices in the echoes and the colors in the air, you will understand that madness is a much different proposition. Poetry is a river running slowly downhill, I tell you my friend, all you have to do is jump in, let it carry you where it will and you will find at the end that the journey was worth it,” Sergey said.
Ivan was quiet, watching the man. That thing was in his eyes again. Maybe it is a certain madness, an unhealthiness on which he couldn’t lay a finger.
“Tell me, Ivan, do you have a girlfriend, a fiancé, or a wife?” Sergey asked.
“I have none. I have spent the past few years working in Moscow. What a fiancé or girlfriend or wife will do is leave you in the end. When that happens, a part of you dies and you are left to roam the world, like a lunatic. You know what’s worse, Sergey?”
“What?”
“Everyone else will see the empty shell left behind after the war on your heart except you.”
“Are you saying... never mind, this life is too beautiful, my friend.” He said this with a wave of his hand and Ivan could see that glint in his eyes again. It hid in the corners, in the crevices of his lashes. In the dimple of his cheek when he grins.
“There is something I have not been able to figure out even though I have spent the last few years trying to figure it out,” Ivan said.
“I knew she was cheating before you told me. I had suspected that when you are connected to someone, you feel it when they pull away because they tug at a part of you too, but I didn’t pay it much heed, I didn’t want to partly because I knew what would come next. I didn’t suspect anyone. Not Alek, definitely not my buddy. But looking back I could see why he would think my girlfriend was fair game.” Sergey explained.
“Why is that?” Ivan asked.
“Now and then, a girl comes around. It is casual, nothing serious, but there is something, you know?” He raised his brows, adjusted himself on the seat and that glint came back into his eyes again. “But he had his woman, he had a plethora of other women around campus, why should his eyes go to mine?”
Ivan shrugged, he didn’t know what to say and didn’t want to say what he was expected to say. Sergey waited a while before he spoke again.
“When I had the gun pointed at him and asked him to climb in the tub and do it again right before my eyes, I had tears in my eyes. He said no, he begged, she begged but there was nothing to say anymore. The time for words was over. He was inside her when I shot them both and made sure no one will ever smell a part of them.” Sergey explained. “It wasn’t the cheating, I can always forgive cheating, it was the broken loyalty that tore me to bits. She should have told me my buddy was making moves on her, he could have told me my girl was making moves on him. Maybe if they had asked, maybe I would have stepped away for them, but now we will never know.”
“How did you do it?” Ivan asked, his focus returning to the main purpose for which he had come. It was this thing that had brought him and he didn’t want to miss it.
“Oh, you have a problem you need to make disappear?” Sergey asked. Ivan didn’t say a word, he just stared. Sergey nodded and shook his head. “There is a little bedroom at the Olana Motel, in a small crevice in the roof, you will find a small suitcase, call that my gift to you,” Sergey said. Ivan nodded, feeling his heartbeat quicken at the possibility that lay ahead of him. This elusive thing is about to come to him. He smiled and stared at Sergey wondering what had drawn him to it. Maybe it is the glint in the eyes. The madness is more than an isolated incident.
He got up to leave, paused, and sat back again. He stared at Sergey who was smiling still.
“What?” Ivan asked.
“Well, I have always pegged you for a nutter, but I like oddballs and semi-crazy people. The genius-level evil people who appeared to be harmless. It was why I sent the boys to bring you to me that night and why I wanted you in my corner.” Sergey said.
“What did Vlad do wrong?” Ivan asked.
“Someone conveniently found Alek’s clothing and that of Valentina and sure enough, they had my DNA on them.”
“Where did they find the clothing?”
“I might have kept them as a memento. Funny, they would have melted away even before it gets to the skin, but then, there is always that one mistake,” he said.
“The one mistake was not making Vlad take the blame in the first place because he knew about the affair and didn’t tell you about it. See what I told you about brotherhood, they are little less than a congregation of people lying to each other,” Ivan said and rose, shaking Sergey’s hand and making his way out of the prison. Before he walked through the door, Sergey called out to him.
“One of these days, I will send you a gift my friend. What you do with her after you’ve had your fun is up to you, but please, before you die, try the poison that is woman!” Sergey said.
He went straight to the hotel and booked the bedroom Sergey had told him about. He didn’t have to tell him the room number, he already knew which room to go into. He sat on the bed for a while, imagining what had gone on here that night. No one knew where the murder took place, Sergey lied about that.
Ivan grabbed the coffee table and helped himself to a bit more height. He found the loose ceiling board. No one had been here since. He grabbed the suitcase and made his way out. As he walked out of the premises he wondered what they thought he was carrying in that suitcase. There was a note in there, a recipe for the thing he had sought for several years now. Then there were a few other things. Four army knives, two handguns, and some tools for torture. He wondered what Sergey was doing with the torture bits.
The thoughts of the lovers didn’t leave Ivan. For months afterward, he could still see that glint in Sergey’s eyes. That elusive bit that would have told him what the man was going through, what he was about.
There is one advantage the man has, he has a powerful family that continues to ensure he doesn’t feel the weight of the prison walls. There was something else Ivan realized, Sergey’s family knew they birthed a monster, and the best way to keep him from hurting others was to keep him locked up. Maybe Vlad had nothing to do with that evidence after all.