Sometimes during the lulls between the dunkings, Aurora would be vaguely aware that words were coming out of Shpak’s mouth. She would ignore them. Not because she didn’t care—he was obviously the most important person in her life, and during the last hour or so he had grown more and more fond of playing with his jackknife, teasing her by letting its bright, honed edge play along the thin strand of rope that was keeping her alive. No, she ignored him because her mind simply couldn’t follow what he was saying. Her mind couldn’t really do much of anything except stumble around in an attic of dim hallucinations and memories. Maybe Shpak knew as much and was just talking as a way to find out whether she had regained consciousness to the point where further interrogation and more dunking would be worth the effort.
But on one such occasion, as she was coming to, she started to get the increasingly firm and definite impression that Shpak’s words were interspersed with another man’s voice. Her eyes were closed but there was a faint scent of gasoline in her nostrils, as if a car had pulled up outside.
Yes, she could hear its engine idling. Then she heard the door of the ice house open and close. Boots crunched on snow. The car’s door slammed. But the car stayed where it was, engine running to keep it warm.
She opened her eyes and looked into the face of the man who, the other day, had peered at her through the cracked-open door in the jail. He had taken Shpak’s place in the chair. He was leaning back, knees spread apart, in an attitude that struck her as so informal as to border on tasteless. He was gazing at her through the round, heavy-framed lenses of his eyeglasses. Not making much eye contact though. So she was able to study him for a bit before he noticed—or perhaps before he cared—that she was awake. His hands were plunged deep into the pockets of his overcoat. Which was fine with her; they couldn’t operate the winch, or the knife, in that position. But then she realized that under the coat he was playing with himself. It was one of those coats with slits behind the pockets that made it possible for the wearer to reach through and gain access to his trouser pockets. Which this man had done, and then some. She could see the bulge of his hand moving rhythmically.
He looked into her eyes and knew that she knew.
“You needn’t worry,” he said. “You’re too old for me.”
She couldn’t think of a comeback to that.
“I was just imagining you a couple of years younger,” he said dreamily, “getting fucked by Patton. Yes, getting fucked up the ass.”
“He didn’t fuck me.”
“I like to think he did.”
“Don’t get me wrong. He’s abhorrent. He killed my dad. But he wouldn’t have done what you’re imagining.”
“Oh, let me guess,” the man said, “it would go against his honor. His sense of bourgeois propriety.”
“Exactly.”
He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “Ah, that makes it even more delicious! Him debasing himself—and you—in one act. In the stables, I think. With all the horses watching. Stallions too. With their big, hard—”
He closed his eyes and made the noises, and the expressions, that men make at such times. Then he let all the air out of his lungs. Then drew in a deep breath. After a few moments, he began to stir. He snapped a handkerchief out of his pocket with the hand he hadn’t used, and did some wiping up. When he was done he found himself holding the maculated cloth out at arm’s length, pinched fastidiously between thumb and index finger, trying to decide what to do with it. His eyes passed across Aurora’s midsection and she flinched, wondering what ideas might be going through his head. But in the end he squatted down in front of the potbellied stove, opened the door, and tossed it in there. For a moment it cast bright-yellow light on his face as it flared, and his eyes became amber disks as the lenses of his glasses caught it. He rested his forearms on his knees for a few moments, staring into the flames contemplatively.
“You know what river this is?” he asked.
“The Ural.”
“Yes. Still fixated on the flames, he pointed one direction with his left hand. “To this side, Europe.” His right. “Asia. We’re right on the boundary. It’s one of the things that makes us different—culturally, spiritually different—from Europe. I was thinking about it when I was reading Shpak’s report. What you had to say about Chicago and how it was on a similar boundary between the eastern United States—more of a European kind of place, I gather—and the west. A big place. Full of savages and savagery. Making America different too. In a similar way perhaps to Russia.”
He seemed to remember now, even through his post-ejaculatory reverie, that his interlocutor was naked and lashed to a steel bed frame. “I’m satisfied,” he announced, slamming the stove’s door shut.
She didn’t think he was talking about satisfaction of the carnal kind. “Of what?” she asked.
“First of all that you’re not crazy. Though that issue hasn’t really been in doubt since I talked to Proton.”
“What did Proton Fizmatov have to say regarding my sanity?”
“What you had was a genetic birth defect caused by X-ray exposure during the early stages of pregnancy. Not a monster.”
“And?”
“Oh, secondly? That you are not a plant. Not a spy. You must understand that the fact that you are too perfect—too good to be true—aroused suspicion.”
“Perfect for what?”
He ignored the question. “But your story is too idiosyncratic. Not what they would have concocted. You are too”—he let his eyes travel down and up her body, beginning and ending with her face—“conspicuous. They’d have picked someone more bland. Given her a less remarkable story. And they wouldn’t have sent her to Magnitogorsk.” He snorted. “Who the hell goes to Magnitogorsk?”
Both of us, apparently, she might have said.
The man checked his watch. “I’ll have them cut you down. We’re going to be late for dinner!”