So, Kostya reassured himself, after a detention, a hospital stay, and a recovery, he now had a modern flat just a few minutes’ walk from Vasilisa Prekrasnaya on the new metro line, a promotion with a raise in pay and prestige, and a promise that the Spanish boys would be looked after. Life looked good. At his new Lubyanka desk, one with a locking drawer, Kostya had faced his first task with vigour, then irritation, then rising dismay: the review of junior officers’ paperwork. He corrected spelling and grammar. He double-checked quotas. He asked himself how reliable NKVD records could be with so many errors. He also chewed his nails down to the quick and discovered he could not sleep for visions of ink-smutched forms spewing like steam from the wounds in his shoulder.
After a few days of this disorienting misery, of new questions and doubts about NKVD procedure and possible reasons for it, Kostya had scraped up the courage to ask the acting department head — the second man to fill this position in a week — when he might expect a return to more active work. Within the hour, he received an order to report for night duty. Arkady, visiting Kostya’s office when the order arrived, read it and just shook his head. Be careful what you wish for, Tatar. At least it’s not poligon duty.
Night duty: a tiresome chore and one which did not rotate across departments as often as it should. Junior officers carried out much of the work of raid and arrest under the supervision, often nominal, of a slightly senior officer, while the more senior officers relished their day shifts of paperwork and interrogation assistance. The younger and fitter men did much of the physical work in an interrogation, though exceptions occurred. Sometimes an old Chekist took over, eager to prove, if only to himself, his vigour and zeal. Kostya, as yet unsure what his injured shoulder could handle, had told himself to hide behind his new rank and order subordinates to carry out the beatings. Besides, his expertise lay elsewhere.
Still staring up at the block of flats, Kostya sighed, and a long stream of cigarette smoke wafted round his head. Electric lamps burned in various windows, giving the block the broken appearance of a censored document. In some of the lit rooms, people stood behind curtains, reduced to shadow and silhouette. Some shapes darted away; others kept their place.
Guardians, Kostya thought.
Gleb took another swallow from his flask. —Did I tell you about the ass I hauled in last week? When I knocked on the door, he greeted me with a smile so big I could see his tonsils. ‘Where have you been, comrade?’ he said to me. ‘Why, I’ve been waiting for weeks now, my bags all packed and ready to go.’ I played along, asked him what he’d done. ‘Nothing at all,’ he told me, ‘which is precisely why I’ve been expecting you.’
Aware that Gleb might be shot for such a careless utterance, such a recognition and acknowledgement of the absurdities of the Purge, Kostya feigned distraction. Another NKVD car arrived, and two more officers joined Kostya and Gleb. The last shapes at the lighted windows flitted away.
Kostya tapped his watch. —You’re late. And you left the garage first.
— Construction, Comrade Senior Lieutenant, detours.
Gleb smirked.
Kostya took papers from the pouch on his portupeya and passed them around. —Here are your lists. They’re…
He noticed a pattern: even-numbered floors, odd-numbered flats.
Coincidence.
Such a pattern, if it existed, would signal, in a written record, a deep and hurried cynicism: citizens arrested to fill a quota.
Quotas he double-checked.
No, we’ve not fallen that far. No.
Gleb’s voice reached him. —Nikto, we’ve got more names here than room in the cars.
Kostya lit another cigarette. —So I see. Just pick one each. We’ll send the other names back for another squad.
Gleb noticed a tremor in Kostya’s hands and spoke in his old manner, teacher to student. —You smoke too much.
Exhaling, Kostya looked Gleb in the eye and then mimed drinking from a flask. —You have a better regimen?
— At least I’ll die old and well-preserved. Those little chimneys of death will kill you before you’re fifty.
— Make it forty. I’ll take the top floor, Gleb Denisovich. I wouldn’t want you to get winded on the stairs.
Gleb raised the back of his hand in mock-threat. —Get out of my way, child.
The other two officers looked mystified. That old workhorse Kamenev, pretending he’d strike a commanding officer, even in banter? What a night, what a night.
Grin fading, Kostya yanked open the lobby door, noticed the absence of a watchwoman — it was so often a woman, older, perhaps widowed — resumed an expression of stern officialdom, and loped up the stairs. His boot soles gave a gentle tap. Harsh smoke trailed behind him.
At the fifth floor, glad to be alone, Kostya slowed down to catch his breath. A pit of pain yawned open in his bad shoulder, and little jolts shot down his arm. He leaned on the railing, almost bending too far back to keep his balance — not that he recognized how he nearly fell. Pain stupefied him. He reached into the pouch on his portupeya, fearful he’d forgotten Arkady’s long-ago gift of the amber worry beads. Amber met his fingers, reassured him, and as he rubbed the beads, his heartbeat slowed and his shoulder pain eased.
Below, his colleagues banged their fists on doors.
Kostya walked the final flight of stairs and emerged from the stairwell. Dim lights burned in the ceiling, naked bulbs dangling from shoddy fixtures. A third of the way down the corridor, the builders had run out of wallpaper, and the papered section ended on a crisp line: a border. Beyond it, the exposed plaster, grimy from the touch of many hands, seemed to shimmer in the poor light. It reminded Kostya of fever dreams, and he fell into the long stare. That’s what he called them now, those spells when he seemed to sleep with his eyes open. One of the doctors at the hospital said Kostya had suffered concussive shocks from bombardment and must expect difficulties as his brain adapted. Breathe, the doctor instructed, making it sound so easy, always remember to breathe, because you start to hyperventilate in this state. Pinch yourself, bite your lip, break the spell. Stay in the present. Your past is your enemy, and your enemy attacks you. Do not surrender to your enemy.
The racket of his own heartbeat cramming his head, he pinched his left forearm. Hard.
Electricity hummed.
Stay in the present, good, good. The list, what did it say? Even-numbered floors, odd-numbered flats? Oh, just pick one.
He dropped the beads into his pouch and raised his fist to knock on flat number sixty-seven. Something seemed to shift in the air, as though several people moved at the same moment in the start of a dance.