Temerity knew that to be apocryphal nonsense. She also knew that Neville had mispronounced Ivan. Too weary to argue, she faked interest by nodding.
Neville smiled, pleased to get such a reaction. —Chin up. You’ll be fine. Just mind your own hands and tongue. That’s a joke, Miss West. Perhaps you’ll appreciate it when you’re feeling better.
DOG’S HEADS AND BROOMSTICKS 1
Moscow
Tuesday 25 May
Grey and green, grey and green, grey and green: the colours of the room looked like phlegm coughed up during flu. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the bench where he slouched stripped interest and desire from Kostya’s mind and seemed to press, press, press. This tedium only sharpened the pain in his shoulder. Several hours now with no food, no water, no cigarettes, no toilet, no one to speak with, nothing to read: just him and this locked room at Moscow-Leningradsky Station. It didn’t look like an office. Or a broom closet. Or a tiny canteen for workers to eat meals. It looked like an interrogation room, and waiting here, for the first time the prisoner and not the secret police officer, fake identification confiscated, all certainties upended, reminded Kostya of how he felt the day he nearly drowned as young child. He’d not understood that he was drowning. Bubbles surrounded him, wobbling in their ascent to the surface, and as he followed their path, he saw tree branches and sky. When he reached for a bubble and missed, his fingertips now ten, twenty, thirty centimetres from the surface, he recognized first the reversal of expectations and then his peril. I can’t touch the air, he thought, and I can’t feel the bottom. Is this dangerous? Then, as he panicked, a fury of bubbles flew past his face and broke the surface, and his grandfather reached into the water and hauled him out.
For what seemed like the hundredth time, Kostya pushed his long hair out of his face and combed through his beard with the fingers of his right hand. His left arm, out of the sling but still weak, lay close to his side. His body and clothes still smelled of delousing gas, and his skin felt itchy and bitten.
Time slugged past.
Despite his fears, he dozed.
The scrape of a key in the lock woke him up.
An NKVD captain entered, his tailored uniform obscuring his growing paunch, his body language speaking of old discipline and graceful strength. His close-cropped hair, blond with some grey, looked as coarse as beard stubble; his hazel eyes, surrounded by squint lines, seemed gentle. He carried nothing in his hands.
Kostya stood up and saluted.
Boris removed his cap and placed it on the table. —At ease, Konstantin Arkadievich. Sit down.
Startled by his first name and patronymic instead of surname, this captain a stranger, after all, Kostya obeyed.
— I’m Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznets, and I’m sorry. I meant to be here hours ago.
— Am I under arrest?
— Whatever for?
— Comrade Captain, I—
— We’re alone. You may call me Boris Aleksandrovich.
Kostya had never invited a prisoner to call him by name and patronymic. —Ah, thank you, Boris Aleksandrovich.
Boris studied him. —Are you ill?
— I’m fine, just concerned.
— Why?
— My recall from Spain.
Boris shook his head. —Your gift with languages was recognized and put to use. Later, it was felt you’d served long enough and deserved to come home. It’s been ten months. You did want to come home?
— Of course.
— Very good, but keep it all quiet, for now. Consider your little evacuation a rehearsal.
Kostya blinked several times. —With respect, we got children free of a war zone. How is that theatre?
— Now we know Spanish children, or at least the boys, will survive the journey this far north. Some of our scientists thought a Spaniard with his southern blood might freeze to death on the way. There are still concerns about the winter, but now that we know they’re hardy enough to travel we can save many more of them and show the Western powers how to treat refugees. I don’t understand why you’re upset. It got you home.
Kostya felt himself bare of old expectations. NKVD agents did not form emotional connections. If they did, they could not best perform their duties. Admitting why he felt upset meant admitting a weakness. He said it anyway. —I didn’t say goodbye.
Boris leaned forward, eyes concerned. —Goodbye?
— I sailed with those boys for two weeks. I got to know them. I told them stories, I taught them to say Russian phrases, and I started them on the alphabet. And I told them that no one, no one, has the right to call them bezprizorniki, because a human being is not now, not ever, a stray dog. When we got to Leningrad, NKVD officers separated us. I got searched, and the boys got marched away.
— Anyone who returns get searched, Konstantin Arkadievich.
— It wasn’t the search. I just…
— You’re tired. Do you need a moment? Tell me about the injury to your arm.
— Shoulder. Almost a month ago. Gerrikaitz.
Boris held out his hands, asking for more.
— The twenty-sixth of April. The Luftwaffe bombed Gerrikaitz in the morning, then Gernika in the afternoon. It’s in my preliminary report. I know it’s brief, but it’s hard to write at sea.
— That’s fine. And Minenkov?
Kostya traced his fingertip around a whorl in the table. Misha.
— Konstantin Arkadievich, I know what you wrote, but I need to hear you say it. Where did you last see Mikhail Petrovich Minenkov?
— Gerrikaitz. The morning of the bombing.
— And after the bombing?
Kostya shook his head.
Taking a deep breath, Boris shifted his weight on the bench. —I need you to come into Lubyanka tomorrow, for a more formal debriefing with myself and another captain. Paperwork. As for me, I’m quite satisfied. Your father’s waiting outside.
— Who, Balakirev? With respect, Boris Aleksandrovich, Arkady Dmitrievich Balakirev is not my father.
For just a moment, Boris looked alarmed. —The way he speaks of you, I assumed he was.
— Many people do. He’s looked after me since I was twelve. I was a bezprizornik, after all.
— But you told the boys—
— Not now, not ever, a stray dog. Yes, I told them that. Just like Arkady Dmitrievich told me.
Boris placed his cap back on his head, and Kostya admired the shade of blue, familiar, yet alien. He owned two such caps. Like the rest of his uniform pieces, they waited in a closet at Arkady’s house. Sitting here, detained for interrogation, however gentle, he felt that he’d never worn such a cap. He had, of course, almost every day for thirteen years now, yet that past self felt as distant as the sky, as the surface of the water on the day he’d nearly drowned.
Boris looked stern. —A word of advice, Konstantin Arkadievich. You’ve endured hardship in the name of duty, but this is no excuse for allowing emotions to flood the mind. I can tell from your manner of speech you’ve been abroad. You sound loose, and—
— I—
— And you interrupt. Don’t.
After a moment, Kostya nodded.
Boris reached into the pouch on his portupeya, took out a red leather wallet, and slid it across the table. —Now, let me be the first to welcome you home.