“Marvelous,” he says. “You sound truly maniacal.”
The procurator makes a few slight corrections to my testimony, and then one by one the officials file out of the room, until I am alone with the Polish teacher.
“That was quite a performance,” she says. “You should have written for the theater.”
I’m still elated from the minister’s applause. “I’m so glad they approved.”
“I’ve never met a man more eager to load the gun that will kill him,” she says. “Tell me, honestly, for my own understanding, in your own words. Are you guilty?”
For a moment, I’m stunned. Her dissenting voice, so unexpected amid the chorus of approbation, moves through me as light moves through a lens. It is the last question I would expect to hear in an interrogation cell.
“You coauthored my confession,” I tell her. I’d give anything to see how she looks at me, whether it is with disgust or anger, or with concern for how I will live my last days.
“They will shoot you, no matter what you say or do,” she says.
You see what I am, I want to shout. You have seen how easily, how eagerly, I debase myself. Why now, when we have reached the end, do you expect me to be a better man?
“You should leave,” I suggest. “Go back to Poland. Go somewhere.”
“Why?”
“Because when they run out of students, they will start on the teachers.”
She laughs. “They will never run out of students.”
She gathers her papers. I want to ask if she will be at my trial, but I fear what I might do if I know she is watching. Before she leaves she places her hand on my neck. Her skin is warm and she gently kneads my flesh. It’s the first time in many weeks that the touch of another has not inflicted pain. I try to remember the face of my brother’s wife but it’s gone.
“I’ve had several students in Kresty,” she says. “You might be my favorite.”
“I love you,” I reply. Absurd, sentimental, maudlin, I know, but the warmth of her hand on my neck, the consolation in her voice, it makes me feel as if I’m still alive. Whatever pleasures or punishments that await in the afterlife, if there is one, must feel fainter than those that fill any given day here on earth. “We have built something real together here.”
She gives my shoulder another squeeze. “Kocur.”
“What?”
“Kocur,” she repeats. “The leopards at the zoo.”
Only once the door closes do I see the golden-haired, black-peppered cat sulking behind the bars of the Petersburg Zoological Gardens. Kocur. I whisper the word—kocur, kocur—each iteration rattling the tin box inside my chest. I tap the word in code against the table with sharp raps of my fist. It’s remarkable to know a new word to name such an old memory. A weary leopard in a zoo. What could be more simple? Yet this vision I shared with my brother has grown into mystery so unlikely and lasting I can only describe it as a mercy granted by some magnificent wholeness to the world that was already breaking between us.
LATER I walk to the wall and sit down, my back to it.
tomorrow is the trial, I tap. tell me what to do.
i’m only a seminarian, he taps back.
then tell me how you keep faith.
i know that belief is the last thing I own.
even when everything is gone?
that’s the point, the seminarian taps. not everything goes.
i’ve been a loyal bolshevik, I insist, tapping so furiously it’s a wonder he can assemble the knocks into words. i’ve given them my work, my devotion, my brother’s life. they’ve scripted the confession. they want me to prove my allegiance by breaking it.
you might question a belief that so readily betrays its believers.
this is no time to be clever, I tap.
He doesn’t respond. I continue: how do i confess when every word means what they tell it to mean?
The seminarian answers with silence.
THAT night, like every night, I return to the tunnel. I trudge through with my brush and jar, but this time the dream is different. A light winks at the tunnel’s end, growing larger and brighter. An approaching train. It careens toward me. Its headlight floods the tunnel. I turn and see for the first time what I have been painting for these months of night. Across kilometers of tunnel, I have painted every husband, wife, daughter, son, sister, and brother I have ever erased. In the flickering light they are cave paintings. Primordial. Before the edge of history. I try to touch the nearest face, a boy, but before I reach him the train slams into me and I wake.
It is morning. They feed me eggs and kielbasa, the best meal I have had since arriving. I am the eighth of twelve tried for espionage. The first seven traitors recite monotonous confessions of their crimes. In comparison, mine will be a work of brutal beauty, resounding with the vehemence and desperation of a true dissident. But when I am called before the procurator, I say nothing.
The procurator, assuming I haven’t heard him, again asks, “What was your history with the disgraced dancer?”
Again, I say nothing.
Realizing my silence is intentional, the procurator stamps his foot, a gesture that will likely be repeated on my face when this is all over, and shouts the question.
I say nothing.
Imagine the judge turning to the procurator, the procurator to the minister, the minister to the bailiff, then all turning to me. What if my brother’s wife could see me? Or the Polish teacher? Would they have watched with trepidation, with surprise, with approval that might one day deepen to pride? The procurator’s voice trembles; with rage, yes, but also fear, because my failure to confess implicates him. He demands to know my relationship with the dancer, the extent of our saboteur network, what her hand, amputated and floating over the stage, signifies.
Her portrait is perched as evidence on an easel. In it Vaska must be staring out at the court, invisible to all, even me.
I say nothing.
Let the descendants of our glorious enterprise find my silence in the official record. Let them fall into the lacuna. Let them see my omission for what it is: a silence as pronounced as a hand hovering in midair, the error in the lie that is the truth. Let them know that here, on this day, a guilty man began living honestly.
I am not blind enough to believe anything I have done today will last. As the bailiff leads me out by my shackles, I can already hear the court stenographer typing into the official record a transcript of the confession I refused to recite.
A GUARD hits me with his truncheon again and again. He soon tires, leans back against the cell wall. I want to tell him: I understand why my pain is required. I want to tell him: The truncheon will break my rib just once, but it will go on breaking you.
The interrogation has succeeded; I am now an enemy of the state. My mouth is filling with blood. It’s been so long since I’ve been given water that I hesitate to spit it out. The guard shakes his head, disgusted. I have become a violent act of reality inflicted upon the fiction of which we are both citizens. I want him to know that I understand this, that every thump of his truncheon hardens my resolve, that he has my permission. But I haven’t the breath in me to speak.