Less frightened than repelled, Chemayev drew a pistol from his shoulder holster, rolled down the window, and fired into the air. Instead of fleeing they edged forward, clumsy and tentative as zombies, confused by the brightness of life but full of stuporous menace. What did they intend to do, he wondered. Curse him? Puke on him? He poked his head out the window and aimed the pistol at the closest of them, a balding man whose seventy-inch-waist trousers appeared to support his upper half like a dessert cup filled with two scoops of yellowish cream pudding, the smaller topped by sparse hanks of white hair like shredded coconut, his sweatshirt proclaiming allegiance to the Central Soviet hockey team. He displayed no fear. And why should he? Who’d be fool enough to kill one of Yuri’s people? Perhaps he was dead already. Chemayev ducked back into the car. Set the pistol on the dash. He had surrendered so much, he stubbornly refused to admit this last formal measure of defeat. But then the army of the krushovas came shuffling forward again, and he understood that he had neither the confidence nor the force of arms to stand against them. He shifted the Lada into gear and pulled out along the row, going slowly to avoid hitting the shabby creatures who stood everywhere throughout the lot. They pressed close as he passed, like animals in a preserve, peeking in through the windows, and he had a surge of panic… not true fright, but a less disabling emotion fueled by a shameful recognition of his relationship to these lusterless clots of anti-life, these exhibits in the existential sideshow. Sons and Daughters of the Soil. Old ragged male monsters with the hammer-and-sickle stamped on every cell of their bodies. Boring meat-eaters, ferocious farters, grunters, toilers, industrial oxen, blank-eyed suet-brained party trolls. Old lion-faced women with gray hair sprouting from every pore, ugly with the crap they’d eaten all their lives, their filth-encrusted nails as strong as silicon, breeding warmonger babies in their factory wombs, dead now like empty hangars, cobwebbed, with wheelmarks in the dust… You couldn’t hate them, that’d be the same as hating yourself, you could only say goodbye to all their grim Russian soul shit. You had to cut it out of yourself somehow, you had to sit down and pinch a roll of fat and slide a knife in, probe for that special Russian organ that made you such a bear for suffering, that prompted you to sit up with your mouth open when God came round with his funnel and his tube of black bile to forcefeed all the Russian as-yet-unborns he was fattening for some conflagration on the far side of infinity. You had to put some distance between yourself and this dirt with its own soul that reached up through the bottoms of your feet and moved you like a finger puppet. You had to find some way not to be like these relics, even if that meant killing the most vital part of your spirit. You had to run to America, you had to drown in its trivialities, bathe in its chrome wavelengths until all the scum of Mother Russia was washed off your skin, until your pores were so open the black oily essence of your birthright came seeping out like juice from a cracked bug. That’s what you had to do. That was the only thing that could save you. But it was probably not possible.
Once clear of the krushovas, Chemayev accelerated along the access road leading to the Garden Ring. Headlights penetrated the Lada, revealing patched brown plaid seat covers, a littered dash, bent ashtray stuffed with candy wrappers. The radio dial flickered, the heater whined and yielded up a smell of burning rubber. The crummy familiarity of the car consoled him, molding itself to him like a friendly old chair. He wanted a cigarette, but Larissa had made him quit. Shit. He rapped the top of the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. Not angrily. A call-to-order rap, a wake-up notice. He banished the feeling of unsoundness that had plagued him most of the night, took stock of his reserves. He pictured them straggled across a parade ground, the survivors of a force that had once numbered four million. He’d have to start over. He’d have to put tonight behind him. Approach tomorrow as if everything were normal. He’d permit himself to make no goals, not even where Larissa was concerned. He’d simply do his job and see what developed. He sped out onto the Garden Ring, merging with the stream of traffic headed for the city center. There was an ache in his chest that seemed part bruise, part constriction, and he knew it would worsen during the weeks ahead. Whenever he stopped for a solitary drink or tried to sleep it would send out fresh tendrils of pain, seeding despair and distraction; but he’d overcome those enemies before, and he could do it again, he would rise to the challenge. That was half of life, the way you dealt with challenges. Maybe more than half. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that his obsession with Larissa was partially fueled by the challenge she presented, but as always he refused to diminish the purity he accorded the relationship by defining it as a logical consequence of his compulsiveness. He brushed the idea aside, concentrated on the road, and soon his mind began to tick along with its customary efficiency, plotting the day ahead. Call Larissa. See where things stood with her. Then business. What had Polutin said? The Italians. His office. Chemayev decided to set his alarm for eleven o’clock. That should give him plenty of time. No, he thought. Better play it safe. He’d set the alarm for ten. It would not do to be late.
Copyright
ETERNITY AND OTHER STORIES
Published by
Thunder’s Mouth Press
An Imprint of Avalon Publishing Group Inc.
245 West 17th St., 11th Floor
New York, NY 10011
Copyright © 2005 by Lucius Shepard
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 1-56025-662-1
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Book design by Jamie McNeely
Printed in the United States
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