You cannot make a revolution with silk gloves.
Josef Stalin
I have started a child, says Aksana, stroking her belly tentatively. Her stomach is still flat, the hairs below it curling, no sign of any burgeoning underneath. The oil lamp casts wavering shadows on her skin, a play of light gold, dark gold.
He is flooded with irritation. Why tell me?
Then he pauses for a moment in the act of buttoning up his shirt. A child. A slip of a person, someone he has fathered, who might have his eyes, his mouth, his head. A son, who might give him more substance, who might make him seem older, who might look up to him. For a moment, he can see a dark-haired boy, clean-limbed. My son is strong, he could say to Sidorenko.
Then he remembers — this could be anyone’s child.
I need money, she says reluctantly, picking at a seam in the green coverlet, smoothing it down, picking at it again and smoothing it down. Money to get rid of it.
Why ask me?
I’m asking all my patrons, I’m asking each one to give a little.
What about him?
He gestures with his head towards the floor above — the man who runs the place, fleshy, red-faced.
He will not pay, he will only throw me out. He says he can find another girl easily.
I will speak to him.
She shrinks back on the bed, her dark-blue eyes clouded with fear.
Then he will throw me out because of that.
Not when I am finished.
The man is more corpulent than ever, his hands pudgy.
Take care of this, barks Drozd, flashing Plisetsky’s badge.
Of course, of course, says the man, changing tack mid-air, about to reject any request. Now he is ingratiating, his face wobbling — half-afraid of the man, half-hoping for business from other officers.
Aksana looks at him wonderingly when he comes back down. She makes much of him, stroking his head, rubbing his back.
This little victory warms him. He stores it away in his mind, and over the next few days takes it out to examine over and over, nursing the moment of the man’s sudden deference, Aksana’s surprise. No matter how many times he does it, though, no matter how much satisfaction he gets from it, he ends up with the same thought.
He needs his own badge. He needs his own uniform. He needs his own gun.
···
The prisoner, says Sidorenko. Someone has to watch him.
They are short-handed again, two officers have gone back to Russia without replacements. The captain has become terser, more dour. Men needed all over, he says shortly.
The possibility of a war in Europe has been scratching at the edges of their existence. Still nothing more than a foreboding, a wind drifting in from the west, carrying faint traces of oil, smoke. But there is a sense of expectancy, of uncertainty — a foreshortening of the possible future.
Make sure he does not sit or lie down, says Sidorenko. He has been standing for four days now, I have been working with Bazhanov. Soon he will break down, soon he will confess. But Bazhanov is sick today, so this is your chance. If he starts to collapse, throw snow water on him. I will take over again in the morning.
Who is he? What has he done?
Another kulak. He resisted the farm collectivization, had labourers to plant and harvest his grain, to look after his livestock. Bull-headed. Refuses to admit his crimes. And our numbers are low.
Refuses to admit his crimes.
Article 58. Any action aimed at overthrowing, undermining, or weakening of the power of the worker and peasant soviets or the economic, political, and national achievements of the proletarian revolution.
Too undefined, too broad to be good law, says Leah, shaking her head. Constitutionally suspect. The doctrine of vagueness.
It covers everything, says Drozd smugly.
Our numbers are low. The estimates from headquarters — the crowds of traitors, out to destroy progress, to take the bread out of people’s mouths. The renegades who must be found, interrogated, executed, or sent to labour camps. The pressure is intensifying, the possibility of a war making it more urgent. The sheer number of bodies required is relentless, they are sometimes reduced to rounding up thieves, beggars, vagrants, priests. Fear has begun slipping into their conversations, their decisions, their reactions.
Fear. His old acquaintance, something he knows. An expert, he is familiar with all its shapes and sizes. And now the signs of it are becoming unmistakable — he can hear their hesitations, he can see their doubts, he watches their restless hands. Underneath the swagger, he can sense it — fear of denunciation, fear of the regional directorate, fear of new crimes or failures. Fear of allegations that might reach out and grab them, that might send them spiralling into their own machinery of torture and confession.
Trust no one.
But this is to his advantage. He starts quietly, repeating a spiteful comment to one officer, a word of praise to another, a line or two from a telegram on the captain’s desk to a third. Then he watches the effects, adjusts his tactics. He becomes a conduit, a purveyor of small tidings. Most of the officers are wary, but the condition of fear makes them hungry for information, and they are not particular about where it comes from or who is peddling it.
Comrades. If this was ever anything more than jargon, there is little in the way of camaraderie left now. Some of them have kept their old alliances, but many have been eroded or weakened. He is not surprised — he has always found the idea of friendship baffling. And a form of calcification has taken hold in certain parts of himself — has built up gradually — so that even if he understood it, he would be incapable of responding. But now, if he is isolated, they are becoming more withdrawn as well — an office full of suspicious loners. The squad itself a wolf in danger of eating its own tail.
This is your chance. The kulak.
The first night: he maintains a watch outside the interrogation room, through the tiny aperture in the door. The man shudders and sags in the cold, but stays upright through the evening, past midnight.
In the early hours of the morning, though, the man begins sinking, millimetre by millimetre, drooping, dropping in slow motion until he falls to his knees. Drozd unbolts the door and throws the bucket of melted snow over him. He screams and Drozd slams the door, waiting outside until the man is standing again. The room is so cold, he wonders if the man’s wet clothes will freeze on him. He is determined that this man will get no rest, not even a moment of sleep, until he confesses. Stoiki.
A few hours later, the man is down again. He throws the snow water over him, the man screams again, but he stays down. Another bucket. Nothing. Another bucket. Nothing.
He is furious. He drops the bucket and grabs the rubber truncheon, begins hitting the man with it. The man curls up on the floor, attempting to protect his head with his hands, his arms.
This only increases his rage, the blood singing in his ears. The miserable traitor, foiling his efforts. Anger pours through him, a small grunt of it escaping with each blow. The feel of the truncheon landing on flesh, over and over, the impact rising up through his arm. But when he stops for breath, the man is still curled up on the floor.
He lifts the truncheon again, and the electric light — always unreliable at night — goes out, leaving the room in darkness. A darkness so complete, so deep, it might be a solid thing.
Night blindness. He can see nothing. He listens for the man’s breathing, the rustle of his clothes, for any sounds of what he might be doing. All he can hear is his own panting. Perhaps the man is standing up, stealing noiselessly around behind him, poised to leap on him, to knock him down. Maybe he is gathering his strength to strangle him.
He is suddenly in a cold sweat, lashing out frantically with the truncheon.
Then the light is on again, and the man is still on the ground. Lying there, his mouth stretched open in a grimace. He looks more closely and realizes the man is laughing, a silent, mad laugh.
···
The next night: the man is still there, still unconfessed, but standing up.
I told him I would cut off his manhood with a saw, Sidorenko says, grinning, on his way out the door.
Several hours later, though, the man is drooping again, falls over once more.
One, two, three buckets of snowmelt. More screams, but he is still on the floor.
An old storage cupboard in the corner of the basement. Mops, brooms, pails, some small tools for minor repairs, a few screwdrivers, a hammer, some nails. A small handsaw.
Look, he yells in the man’s ear.
The man opens his eyes dully, sees him waving the handsaw around.
See what will happen to you? To your manhood? Look at this edge, these teeth. They will tear your skin, your organ, your veins. You will bleed to death, no longer a man.
The man rolls over, tries to heave himself up on his hands and knees, and then vomits, a thin yellow stream. He collapses again. He makes another attempt, but slips on the water-soaked floor before he even reaches his knees.
He rolls on his back again. I confess, he says thickly. Then louder: I confess. Then he is shrieking, I confess, I confess, I confess, over and over, his eyes staring, an unusual light in them. The string of words becomes incoherent, he is raving now, twisting and jerking from side to side on the floor. He screams until he is hoarse, until his voice is nothing more than a croak. Then he is suddenly limp.
Drozd has to wrap his hand around the pen, write his name for him on the paper.
···
He feels cockier, confident now. This is the beginning, he says to himself. And Sidorenko does clap him on the back, surprised. Still, he takes credit for the confession himself, nothing in the report even showing the involvement of anyone else but Bazhanov. Drozd makes sure the others know, though, telling the chauffeur about it within earshot of an officer, telling a guard who he knows will pass it along. His standing has risen slightly with the officers as a result of his snippets of information, and this increases it a few millimetres more. When he puts tea down on their desks, one or two nod at him.
If it takes a while, he thinks, it will be worth it. In the meantime, he knows how to wait.
···
The dawn air is rinsed, the light slowly turning from pink to yellow, the black mustard growing beside the hedgerows swaying a little in the breeze. He tramps through the fields, past the small forest — still dim, only a few fingers of pale sun slanting into it. The river is cold — at eleven years old he has become something of a swimmer, but there is no need here, the water is only up to his waist. He climbs, dripping, onto a flat rock in the middle of the river, and sits down, his makeshift fishing stick in hand. An early plover trills its two-note call as he threads a worm onto his hook, a bent nail. He throws out the hook, hoping for a pike or a perch, and settles down to wait, scanning the river for any signs of fish.
As he waits, the water rolls and eddies around him in whorls. He is tired, he is always tired, and after a while he dozes off, still clutching his stick.
A few minutes later, he wakes suddenly, unnaturally alert. Something has changed.
The dawn mist is rising and a silver-brown bear is on the riverbank, head erect, ears upright, testing the air. Emaciated, fur matted along one side, it must have wandered down from one of the forests to the north, looking for food.
It stands on all fours for a moment, narrowing its small black eyes, and then dips its muzzle into the water.
A tug on his stick, and he grabs for it. The bear looks up at the sound, lays its ears back on its head, and snarls noiselessly. Then it lopes off into the forest.
Another tug on the stick, and he wrestles it out of the water, hauls it up — a perch is on the hook. It thrashes about, a shining muscle on the flat rock. He tries to pull it off the nail, but the twisting fish is hard to hold. Eventually, he works it off, but he tears some skin on his palm.
It hurts, he is bleeding, but there is no point in going home, it will hurt in the barn, it will bleed in the potato field as well. He will try for one or two more fish — one or two more before the sun will be up so high that the fish will go into hiding, clustering in the dark green shallows of the river.
The next day, his hand is red and throbbing. He knows better than to complain, and goes about his chores, favouring it as much as possible. But the following day his arm is swollen as well, and the day after that he is feverish, lying on the straw-stuffed mattress. He drifts in and out of sleep, a half-sleep, filled with bleary dreams so strange he is not even sure they are dreams. He sees a bear’s head, grinning wickedly, its muzzle thickening and shortening. Then it turns into an enormous perch, head flattening, ears disappearing. The fish begins bleeding from its eyes, and starts to hit him with its energetic tail. Stop, he says, but his mouth is filled with blood.
Stop. Stop.
His grandmother is shaking him.
Drink it, she says.
He picks the mug up clumsily and takes a swallow, burning his tongue on the hot liquid. Then he falls back into his delirium.
When he wakes up a few hours later, he hears them talking.
Will he die? says his father.
Perhaps, says his grandmother. She seems indifferent.
His father swears. Useless rat.
I’ve put a poultice on his hand. There is nothing else to do.
He drifts off again.
Will he die? says the bear head, now more human than bearlike. Will he die? says the perch. He and the perch are deep in the river now, his breath a spray of bubbles floating up to the surface, the gushing of the water around him a sensation in his ears rather than a sound. He can feel the current circling his body, picking him up, swirling him around, carrying him along. The light above him is fractured by the green water, small, bright spears appearing and disappearing in the dimness. He dislodges some fine sand, the grit drifting through a shaft of sun in the water. Then he sighs and goes to sleep.
When he wakes up again, he is in the cemetery behind the chapel, the trefoil crosses on the graves streaked with moss. He is sitting on the ground, shivering, as it starts to rain. At first there is only a light pattering, a few seconds later the water comes sluicing down. He sees his arms, his legs, begin to soften at the edges, he sees them start to dissolve into the dirt.
He wakes up again — cooler this time, his arm less swollen.
Will he die?
Not yet, says his grandmother. Not yet.
···
A transport, says Sidorenko, handing him a key ring. Go and bring them from the cells. Take two of the guards.
Drozd walks down the corridor, opening doors, rousing the men inside them, shaking their limp bodies. They stand up unsteadily, their faces bruised and unshaven, hobbling on battered feet as the guards line them up in the hall.
What about the man in the interrogation room?
Get him too.
When he opens the door, he sees that the wooden bench that serves as a bed is empty. The man is hanging, hanging from a pipe in the ceiling, the noose a strip of cloth torn from his pants.
He recoils, jerking backwards. The guard looks on from the corridor, his mouth open, as the bundle twirls lazily back and forth on the noose. First one way, then the other way, one way and the other. A slow twist of death.
···
You will drive, says the serzhant, as if he is conferring a favour. The chauffeur must have gone home for the day, home to his wife, her placid manner, his dinner — she can make anything out of nothing, he says reverently.
Are they taking the prisoners to a transfer point, a place where a truck will be waiting? Or perhaps they are putting them on a train. There is a rushed, furtive air to this operation that puzzles him. And why are they taking the dead man, only a sack of cold flesh now, cut down and loaded in with the other prisoners?
But the chauffeur is still here, they are taking two vans. They load up the prisoners, along with some of the officers and guards.
The night is clear, the sky studded with white beads. He is following the other van, he can see its red brake lights bumping up and down on the rough road. They are driving out of the city — insects are blundering into the stream of the headlights, and a small owl swoops past.
Here, says the serzhant, and he pulls up in a clearing in the trees.
An odd place for a transfer.
There are several men already there, standing with shovels, shielding their eyes against the headlights. They have dug two rectangular trenches in the clearing, piled the soil to one side.
You will be doing more digging, say the officers, as they line up the prisoners in rows at the edge of the trenches. Stand there while we get the shovels.
He watches the faces of the prisoners, still benumbed with sleep, squinting in the light. Some are bewildered, others are bleak, some scornful, some despairing. As the officers line up opposite them, he sees dawning comprehension.
Run, they yell. Run.
The men begin to scatter, but the officers are already shooting, their revolvers cracking, the sudden noise echoing around the forest.
Now the faces of the prisoners are agonized, astonished as they stagger backwards, most of them falling into the trenches as they die. Some are wounded, writhing on the ground, calling out the names of their children, their wives, their gods. One is trying to crawl away on his elbows, dragging his leg, part of his jaw blown away. The officers reload their guns, and begin to pick their way around the clearing, looking for anyone still alive, kicking at the bodies. Any movement, and they shoot the man in the head.
Watch this, says Sidorenko. A crawling man is still moving, slowly, painfully, fiercely. When he gets to the edge of the clearing, the officer shoots him.
Any bodies lying outside the trenches are hoisted up by their arms and legs and thrown in, along with the body of the prisoner who hanged himself. Then the serzhant gestures towards the men with shovels, and they begin filling up the trenches.
They are almost finished when the sandy surface of one of the pits begins heaving. A man with a shovel jumps back and calls out.
Take this, says Sidorenko, handing Drozd the gun.
Heavier, warmer than he thought. He walks over and empties it into the dirt. The heaving stops.
No resurrections here, says Sidorenko, and Drozd laughs.
···
We may however mention a circumstance very little known in common life, that there are certain kinds of glass that may be dissolved in water. All glass is, chemically, a silicate of some alkaline or metallic oxide; and according to the nature of this oxide, so does the quality of the glass differ. If potash or soda be the substance combined with the silicic acid or silica, without any third ingredient, a glass is produced which, though presenting the usual vitreous aspect, is easily dissolved.
···
If anyone is not really human, Leah says, it’s you.
You know nothing, he says. You have no idea. No idea of the necessity, the urgency.
Clearly she is too slow-witted, she is not capable of understanding this. Not capable of realizing that there is even something fine about these shootings — this ability to create death out of life, to obliterate a human being, to erase a spark of existence in a second, half a second.
All with a Nagant revolver. The sleek power of it, the explosive force. He has never felt more substantial, more satiated, more complete. In this haze of death, he has never felt more alive.