“By sunset I was exhausted, but Paul was still at it, winding up the other two until they were screeching like they were in pain, and maybe they were. When you’re a kid, so much feels like pain, don’t you think? I’d had it and I just wanted to lie down for a few minutes. I told Paul to keep a lid on things and I went into the bedroom to lie down.
“I shouldn’t have taken that nap for lots of reasons. Mostof all because I always feel strange after one of those naps, like I’m not all there. My dreams that afternoon were as high-pitched and jangly as my day had been. When I woke up and walked into the room I wasn’t quite sure what I was seeing. They were all three giggling, actually more peaceful than they’d been all day.
“All three of them were sitting in the window. Paul and my two babies. All of them, my babies. More than that, they were straddling the window sill like a horse, one leg in and one leg dangling out. We’re three stories up. Paul glanced over at me and smiled, patting Joey on the head, like he was proud of what he’d done.
“‘Paul! That’s dangerous! Get them off there!’ I yelled, but not as loud as I might have. I didn’t want to startle them.
“He just looked at me and frowned. And then he said, ‘Don’t be stupid.’ That’s what he said to me, his mother.
“All I wanted was to show Paul how dangerous it was so that he wouldn’t do it again. Sometimes you have to be creative—that’s what some of the other mothers in the building had told me. I don’t know. Sometimes you get these ideas and you don’t know where they came from but they sound good for some reason. So I ran at him, saying ‘You want to fly out of that window? Is that what you want?’ Trying to scare him, you know?
“He looked up just as I got there, his eyes so big and his face so white? I had my palm out like I was going to push him. And he just naturally leaned away, and then he was gone, and the babies, and the babies were holding on to him.”
Daniel found himself taking a step back from her, as if she were something deadly. But she appeared not to notice. She was too focused on remembering, capturing and conveying every detail.
“I screamed, I guess, although I don’t think I ever actually heard the scream. My head went all white inside, like the inside of an explosion. I didn’t look out the window. I couldn’t. I just turned and ran out into the hall, and down those long flights of steps, my legs pounding like some kind of athlete.
“And on the way down, I kept thinking about how it all might turn out okay. There were some canvas awnings above the first floor, and I remembered how the upholsterer on the block used to leave his waste bin nearby, so they always might land on something soft, and the babies, babies have flexible bones, don’t they? That’s what people are always saying. But I couldn’t remember exactly where all those things were, so I couldn’t quite make myself feel better, no matter how hard I tried.”
She stopped then. He waited, but she didn’t say anything more. And although he didn’t want to ask, he finally did ask, “What did you find, when you got to the bottom floor, when you got outside?”
She looked at him with a vaguely puzzled expression, as if he should already know. “I didn’t get to the bottom floor. I didn’t get off those stairs. I woke up here. I thought maybe I’d fallen, going so fast. I thought maybe I’d fallen off those stairs and died and woke up here in Hell, not knowing, never knowing whether my babies died or not.”
Then she was up and running for the edge of the roof. He couldn’t stop her. But the roaches closed in, and she screamed when they touched her, wrapped her in their segmented legs, and bore her down.
The boy was nowhere to be seen.
9
THE TIME BETWEEN Daniel’s scenarios lengthened from days apart to sometimes a separation of a week or more. He had to wait over three weeks after his last time. He spent a great deal of time in the waiting room, watching as the others were ushered out. Sometimes he was the only one left in the room. Should he stay there or return to his bunk? He was always tired, and he knew that if he lay down on his bunk he would fall asleep, and then he would dream, and he was dreaming enough—his own dreams or someone else’s—but enough was enough.
Was he being singled out for some reason? Falstaff had seemed distant lately, reluctant to engage in conversation. Were the roaches suspicious of him now?
Then one morning they grabbed him along with the others. He’d always hated the process, but this time he was strangely excited. Whatever it was going to be, at least it would be different.
Daniel’s initial transition into this new consciousness had him confused. The mind he entered felt altered, poisoned or inebriated. A roar of words, the language wet and too much of it, awkward in both his mouth and head. Slavic. Russian perhaps. He thought of Doctor Zhivago, and some old cartoon involving spies. But this oppressive mental space and its linguistic assault were a flood of cold hatred, pouring undiminished into a reservoir hollowed out of the deaths of millions. Koba was the name floated up onto all that hate, but it was one of many this old man had used in his lifetime.
The strange notion thatKoba was aware of him produced a sensation like insects marching down his back and suddenly vanishing into his spine.
A softer, dimmer voice lingered in the background, the mind lubricated sufficiently to be heard by the juice, Madzhari, that young Georgian wine.
The poems, sometimes signed Soselo, sometimes J J-shvilli, and sometimes anonymous, were by the same man, this Koba, this man of steel, this Stalin, who now waved his forefinger in anger at the young voice, and of course it dissipated, because Stalin’s finger was more powerful than any gun, capable of disappearing millions with a single pointed gesture.
The short legs staggered forward. Despite the immense pain behind his left eye he managed to push his eyes open. He was in pajama trousers, an undershirt, some sort of vest. Daniel probed gently for clues. The body waved his arms in annoyance, as if trying to keep his questions away. Something was wrong here. Daniel wondered if Stalin had any clearer idea than he did what was happening to him.
Я закончил. Я закончил.
The words made rubble in his head until he could make better sense of them. I’m finished. I’m finished. I can trust no one, not even myself.
Я не могу доверять никому, даже себе.
Where was he? The room was large, but modestly furnished. A sofa with rounded bolsters and a high back. A large number of identical windows covered with simple, heavy white drapes. A wainscoting ran the walls, light wood, perhaps birch. Some kind of oriental rug. He walked unsteady as a child, his eyes hazed with pain, into another, smaller room, which seemed slightly more familiar.
He was having to endure the worst headache he could remember, but the answer came quickly enough: the nearer dacha in Kuntsevo. They’d had their usual film at the Kremlin, then travelled here for dinner, music, drinking and the customary foolishness. The others had left early in the morning, leaving Stalin alone with his staff. No one would come find him unless he called for them. They’d be too afraid.