Hack:Moscow (5 page)

Luka drove six blocks away before he slammed the brakes and pulled his gun out. “It’s your fault.” He shoved the muzzle into my ear. “Why did you get out of the car?” he shouted.

I felt nothing. Flat.

“You’re shivering,” he said, suddenly uncertain.

No, I’m not. I’m frozen. I can’t move, so how can I shiver?

Luka tucked his gun into his waistband and rubbed his face with his hands vigorously, as if he could awaken from a bad dream. When he lifted his hands from his eyes, nothing happened. “No, no,” he said. “It’s me. I was careless.” He touched my shoulder and I flinched. I don’t like it when people touch me. “Andrei, forget it. Forget it all happened?”

Forget. A command. I tried to empty myself out, flushing everything away like an unwanted cache. “I’m ok.” I heard the words come out funny, all echo-ey, like I was hearing myself from someplace else, a distant stereo.

Luka reached for my neck, then drew his hand back. The hazard lights ticked, a constant and comforting sound. His seat creaked like a rusty spring as he shifted uneasily.

I tried speaking again. This time, my voice sounded closer. “Is what he said true?”

Luka took a deep breath. “Half,” he said. “My wife—she never told me what she was up to. I’d have stopped her. Her friends got her into it. Those idiots.” I heard his teeth grit. “I’d have gotten rid of them, if I knew what they planned. She kept it from me. But none of that concerns you. You don’t have to get involved.”

The emotion in his voice filled the vacuum in me. I touched my neck and felt it ooze. “Do you have a plaster?”

He took out his wallet and fumbled inside for a crumpled plaster. He peeled it. He pressed the plaster to my wound. The fake skin felt warm from his body heat. Soothing.

“I’m ok,” I repeated like a mantra. I’ll be ok, I’ll be ok.

We drove until we reached a seemingly endless road. We were in the northeastern outskirts and we passed a lit sign for the metro station. On a side alley, people huddled around a smoking trashcan, basking their hands in its shimmery heat. One of them glanced over as we pulled over before them, then he nudged the trashcan with his foot, as if afraid we’d steal it. The hazard lights ticked on the car’s dashboard hypnotically.

Luka looked at me, as if wondering whether I’d get off. We never shared where we lived, and he didn’t know that my home was at least an hour away from here. That wasn’t why I felt reluctant to get out. “Who is Boris?” I asked.

“Andrei…” Luka said, as if warning me not to ask. I stared at him, until he spoke. “He’s a middleman. When he told me my wife was alive, I agreed to the deal. If anyone can arrange this, it’s him.”

I thought of the way Boris looked at me as I rubbed my neck, his eyes curious, yet bored. “Why?”

“Why,” Luka repeated, not understanding my question.

“Why is he like that?” Behind it was a hundred other questions crowding against it.

“Why? He just is. In this game we play, people climb to the top only if we can set aside bits of themselves. We have to, to justify the things we do.”

We
, he said.

He continued, “Once they’re there though, they realize their lives haven’t changed. They feel resentful of all they’ve given up. Those bits and pieces of themselves they can never recover.”

They
, he said this time. He didn’t notice the switch, a single word which divided his life into two halves for me, both at odds with each other. He gazed at the trashcan fire, as if he saw something in the haze of heat, a sign, an answer. “Boris probably thinks that what he does, who he is, is normal. That everyone is like him.”

“Are you?” I said. A memory nagged at me.
Don’t trust anyone
, Luka always told me. Half of what Boris said were lies, he said just now. Which half? Doubting Luka made me feel guilty, but I had to know. In the distant skies, a gray head of clouds roiled, a storm hammering into the western part of Moscow, pounding it free of dirt and grime.

Luka’s expression was inscrutable. “Those years I spent in the F.S.B.—tap this person’s phone call, read that person’s email—I believed in what I did. Until they took my wife. That was when I realized my life was a lie. I’ve been looking for her for a long time since. Now, I know she’s alive. I have the chance to do something for her.” His voice was thick with emotion. He pounded the steering wheel slowly as he spoke. The Matryoshka doll hanging on his rearview mirror wobbled, its smiling face swaying. “I should never have let you come along. Stupid. It was stupid. But…I need your help, Andrei.”

He needs me, he said. Something in me glowed bright and brighter. Pride. Belonging. How could I have doubted him? How could I have thought he was to blame? I was the one who insisted on going, I had jumped out of the car. I was to blame.

The hazard lights continued ticking.

Luka drew out a metal-capped flask from his jacket and offered it to me. “Drink,” he said. He tucked a cigarette into his mouth, then lit it. His lighter rasped like the
schnick
of knives. I pressed the flask to my lips. It’s my first time drinking vodka neat. After a few sips, the glow in me surged. It browned my insides and toasted my bones. It felt good. I eyed Luka as he leaned his head back and puffed out. He wagged the cigarette at me. “No, no, you’re too young for this.” He handed it to me anyway. I took a puff and held the smoke in my lungs for as long as I could.

I exhaled, then threw the dead cigarette out the window. I wasn’t certain I liked it.

“You didn’t cough,” he sounded approving. The old Luka was back, calm, reassuring. “Listen, Andrei. I’ll handle Boris. Do as I say and you’ll never see him again.” He squeezed my shoulders. “Your birthday’s coming.” He remembered. “Fifteen—that’s special. You become an adult. I’ll get you a present, a special book. Books are good teachers. They ask the right questions.”

“I don’t need anymore questions.”

“Of course you do.” The joviality strained his voice. “You need them to find the answers. Tomorrow, don’t go to the warehouse. Rest. Forget. And don’t tell Anton anything.” Luka leaned over to open my door. The last light of dusk cut into the car and I couldn’t see his face clearly. My hand clutched the car door handle.

“Everything will be fine, right, Luka?” I had to ask.

The Matryoshka doll wobbled slightly as he leaned over to look me in the eye. Behind his head, the tethered figurine spun like some truth hidden inside another truth and another truth.

“I promise.”

When I got home, there was cabbage soup. I told Old Nelya I tripped and she changed my plaster. As we ate, she talked about how Alexei Vavilov, the painter, had impregnated the butcher’s daughter, how the Tajik construction workers were suspected of eating stray dogs so there’s talk of a neighborhood watch committee being formed although nobody wanted to lead, how the price of pork was up again, as if the pigs had learnt to fly.

The cabbage soup was reassuringly bland. She had forgotten to add salt.

Then, she mentioned that Grigory had taken a switch to Anna earlier in the day, and all the neighbors had cracked their windows open to hear the commotion.

“That drunkard accused her of being a shame to their family, a slut like her mother, oh, his mouth is as black as his heart, but that mother is just as bad as him. She said nothing when that man shamed her and her daughter, no one did. Only I stood up to him! I threatened to call the police, but I didn’t dare do it…Andryushka?”

I started tearing.

Old Nelya stood up hurriedly, bent and bewildered. “Is my Andryushka alright? Of course you’re alright. Whatever it is, I’m here.”

I’m not crying, I’m just tired.

She shuffled over and stroked my back. Her hand was bony and light, like a frail wing too small to cover me.

Later, after she went back downstairs, I hid in my room, on my bed, the sheets over my head. I pretended the room, Moscow, the world, didn’t exist, especially the events that happened today.

It didn’t work.

So I went online. I found the latest puzzle, a zero-day hack attempt others were collaborating on for lulz. I downloaded a piece and tackled it. As I worked, I felt like I was gradually regaining control. After I finished, I was about to upload the piece, when something made me delete it. Who are these faceless people to ask anything of me? Why should I give anything away? Who are they? Who am I? What did it matter? What did anything matter?

I looked at my laptop screen, seeking the girl who lived in one of the windows, wishing we could chat. A woman with an acid-etched frown stared at me. I had seen her before. She had a long thin nose and her cheekbones resembled the girl—her mother, I assumed. She was sifting through the latter’s emails again. I felt disgusted by her, then myself, because I was spying on the girl too. What is right? What is wrong? Does God ever wonder about that? Does He care, that Great Programmer upstairs?

I had a few of Luka’s books piled near my bed, so I picked through them until I found one I liked.
Crime and Punishment
, the embossed title promised, but a few pages later, I took a break by the window, wishing I had a cigarette. Something to burn. I thought of Anton. He had an elegant way of smoking, this trick he has of making the smoke curl around each finger. Nothing ever gets to him. Could I be like that some day? Or would I be like Luka? An unbidden thought of Boris. He was evil—which means we’re the good guys, Luka, Anton, and me. We’ll punish him some day, some way. It’s a comforting thought.

Below me, someone hummed, a muffled sound.

“Anna?” I whispered into the dry, still night. There was a tremulous pause. “Anna, is that you?”

“Andrei?” Her reply was tentative, mistrustful.

“You sound…Are you alright?” I began, then felt dizzy. I wasn’t sure what I’d do or say if she told me she told me she wasn’t alright. My hands tightened on the window sill and I wanted to rip it out. My knuckles cracked, I was squeezing so hard, but the wood didn’t yield. I felt helpless.

Then, she spoke. “I caught a cold. Don’t worry about me. I’m strong. I’m fine.” She laughed softly and the anger sieved through me. “I saw you coming back. You looked…in a bad way.”

“I’m alright too.” I didn’t want her to worry.

“Are you? I feel like we’re becoming strangers these days. What have you been up to?”

“Birds,” I said. “It’s something I do. It’s work.”

“You’ve never been the talkative kind. You’ve never told me where you work.”

I didn’t know how to explain my life—it was becoming something I barely comprehended myself. “I write about birds. I can tell you everything about them.”

“Birds,” she said. “Birds,” she repeated, then giggled. “Birds,” she repeated a third time, like some spell. “Have you ever dreamed of flying? Sometimes, I wish I had wings.”

“Where would you go?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.” I opened my mouth to tell her she could go anywhere, except I’d never been outside Moscow myself. It’s a city so big one can’t walk its length, nor breadth. A big cage. A boundless dungeon. She continued, “It doesn’t matter. I’m not a bird. I’ll never be one. I’m going to sleep now. May you have good dreams, Andrei.”

After she closed her window, I looked outside, feeling the breeze cool my thoughts. Outside, there was no moon, only a gray concrete wall, like an insurmountable bluff that would always be there. Below, the weak copper crown around the street lamps revealed layers of gray piled on black.

I went back to bed and picked up the book again. I didn’t want to sleep, not yet.

Whenever I need to think, I go to the park near the Moskva River. Father used to bring me here all the time. Today, by the river, I saw a family picnicking on a paisley blanket. Beside them, a woman sunbathed on the grass. It’s late Spring and the weather had turned warm. As I walked, the afternoon sun nuzzled against me like a cat. Last night, I dreamt I was atop Boris, my knees pinning his shrunken chest, sawing his throat with a bread knife. I’d thrown the blade away and woken up, but each time I went back to sleep, I held the knife again until Dostoyevsky walked by, in a studded leather jacket. “Get it over with,” he told me.

In the daytime, nightmares like that almost seem comical.

Don’t come in today
. Luka messaged earlier. A few minutes later, he added,
You ok???

I didn’t respond.

I walked by two grandfathers playing chess on a stone table, each move drawing the next, the yellow ivory pieces clacking on the board to some invisible shot-clock. I thought of another chess board, its pieces scattered.

“Check,” one of the clockwork chess players called out.

“You’re blind, Vladimir Bolshakov,” his partner grumbled, “That’s a rook, not a queen.”

“Eh? My bad, my bad.”

Father used to say his best ideas came when he walked. The botanical gardens outside Moscow State University in the evening hush, before the groundkeepers harry stragglers out. Izmailovsky Park where the city stopped, barred from the dark grove. His favorite was here, within sight of Novospassky Monastery. Decaying stone walls, seven blue and gold domes. He was the one who told me about the old tale, how a princess was trapped in one of the towers, waiting to be saved. It had amused me no end when I was young, to imagine that something like that was true.

Grow up, grow up
, a flock of crows cawed overhead. They were looking for shelter. I looked at the birch beside my bench, as bald as it was in winter. Trees killed by frostbite take months to die as the decay hollows out the inside.

I remembered another day here, after the police brought news of Father’s accident. I’d came here, sat on a bench, and waited for him, thinking it was all a mistake, that he’d stroll over to me.

When he didn’t, I’d walked for hours, a countless number of steps, on and on. I wasn’t even aware my fists were clenched the whole time. The crescent marks on my palm are where my nails had bit into flesh.

I touched my neck. The scab begged me to peel it so I did. Anton said scars taught people lessons. The stinging pain promised strength and wisdom. Now, I just had to find it, so I kept walking and thinking.

Before I came to the park, earlier in the morning, I’d waited under Anna’s window. There was no sound, nothing, so I threw a pebble. Nothing. So I threw another and her window opened. She’d looked out, eyes rimmed red. She’d seemed surprised to see me, but her smile was genuine. We stood there for a quiet moment, a four-four beat. “Are you ok?” I spoke first, resuming the conversation from last night. Instead, she pointed at my neck, as if to point out a lie. She didn’t ask anything, so I didn’t need to answer anything. “Did you dream of a place to fly to?”

She nodded. “Are you going to work today? Stay, just a little while. I’ll play you something.” She disappeared inside and a stately, peaceful melody began, part of Dvorak’s
New World Symphony, Largo
. As she played, I leaned against the wall, feeling the music tunnel through its bones into mine. I wish I could have listened to that song forever.

But I couldn’t. No one can.

One of the chess players smacked the table. “This is it, Vladimir Bolshakov. Your center broke here.” He took a large bite of a
pirozhki
, the crust and stuffing dribbling all over as he spoke, “That move just now, right here—everything fell apart.”

In my dream, I had laughed as I slit Boris’ throat, and so had he, our bloody smiles stuffed with delight.

“I disagree. My mistake was this move here.”

They began playing the game backwards, just as two children raced past their table, ringing around another skeletal tree. I used to believe trees were replanted upside-down during winter and their branches were roots digging into the sky. If they climbed high enough, I’d fantasized, I could go up and save the princess in Novospassky Monastery.

“Another game?”

“You always want to play again when you lose.”

“That’s life, no? That’s life.”

“You and your nonsense.”

The pieces reset. A veiny hand plucked a knight, circled it in the air like a hand bell before smacking it down. What role do you play, Andrei Yaklova? I’m not a prince, I know that. A knight? A rook? A pawn? Who says I have to be a chess piece?

I felt my nails against my palm, the hardened skin, willing them to be tougher.