The Secret History of Moscow (6 page)

"It's possible,” Yakov said. “But-"

His words were interrupted by a soft whistling that came from every direction at once. A second later, a great cloud of birds entered the yard, their wings beating against the thick night air. Galina covered her face and hunched over-the birds on the roof were too fresh in her memory.

The birds gave her no notice, and flew straight through the puddle, disappearing without a trace; only a few crows still hung in the air, their voices harsh.

"Now what do you think?” Galina straightened.

"All right,” Yakov said. “They're connected. But we can't go in there-when you reached into the puddle, nothing happened, remember? It was just a puddle."

"Exactly,” Fyodor said. “You reached into the puddle. You saw it, not the door. But anyway, this one would be too small for us."

Galina looked over the reflection. “Where would we find a bigger one?"

"I know a place,” Fyodor said. “It's big. Only I never saw anyone going in or out of there."

"Where is it?” Yakov asked.

"Not far,” Fyodor said. “In a subway station-Arbatskaya, I think. Or Smolenskaya, who the fuck knows the difference."

"On the dark-blue line, or the light-blue?” Galina asked.

Fyodor only shrugged and headed out of the courtyard, under the arch, his back lopsided in the wind.

Subway, Galina thought. She always knew it would be a subway, and once again she lamented her lack of persistence. All this time she thought she was delusional, while in reality she wasn't delusional enough to keep the hope alive.

Yakov caught up to her; the flap of his messenger bag gaped open, as if distraught. “It was just a crow I found,” he said. “Not a pet."

"And the puddle was just a puddle,” she replied. “Do you always backpedal like this? Every time something significant happens you just tell yourself it isn't important?"

He thought for a bit. “Yes,” he admitted. “It's easier that way."

Galina nodded. “It is. I do it too, sometimes. Sorry."

"I am here in the middle of the night, ain't I?” he said.

His defensiveness surprised her. She was used to the police as enforcers, at least in the old days. Now, they seemed superfluous and helpless, struggling against the tide all of them were struggling against, with little success. How could things change like that? How could the world go upside-down overnight? They were promised a future, and having it yanked from under everyone's noses just didn't seem fair.

And now, this. They walked across the cobbles of New Arbat, the pink glow of its streetlights too pink, too sick. Voices came from the side streets-drunken and rowdy, and Galina quickened her step instinctively. There was no smell of leaves in this part of the city, just smoke and gasoline that

singed the back of her throat. The pink light painted long ugly streaks across the facades, and occasional gusts of wind brought with them a faint smell of the McDonald's restaurant that has just opened downtown. It was the death smell of the world she used to know, and Galina frowned.

They approached the subway station, and Galina recognized the building of the Ministry of Defense the station was built into; Arbatskaya, then. Fyodor led them inside, deftly hopping over the turnstile. Galina and Yakov exchanged a look but paid. They passed under the giant circular candelabra hanging from the ceiling like an underground sun, and headed toward the escalator. Galina paused, transfixed by the sudden light and the white marble of cupped ceiling, and stepped onto the escalator with the trepidation of someone entering a waterfall; they paused for a brief second at the highest point, and plunged downward, in a dreamlike, dignified descent.

The underground portion of the station waited for them with its low ceiling, cold and ornate like a sarcophagus. The columns, leaning away from the train tracks, met the ceiling in soft arches, like the ribs of an upside-down funeral barge. Galina tilted her head up, to better take in the station closing softly around her. The train roared in the tunnel, getting nearer; a few passengers on the benches stirred and stepped closer to the tracks, as if fearful that the train wouldn't see them and pass them by.

"Where's a reflection?” Yakov asked Fyodor. “I thought we needed a reflection."

"The train is coming.” Fyodor stabbed out his cigarette on one of the columns; in the cold fluorescent light his face appeared even more angular and wild, with sharp shadows jutting under his jaw, the stubble bristling, the eyebrows drawn over the red-rimmed eyes. He stepped closer to the platform, to the center of one of the arches that connected the station to the platform, and motioned for Galina and Yakov to join him. They flanked him silently, and Fyodor's shoulder's tensed. No wonder, Galina thought; she didn't like being surrounded like that either, crowded by pretend kindness.

The train pulled into the station, its sleek shape hissing to a stop. The door opened, letting people out and others in.

"Are we getting on?” Galina asked.

Fyodor shook his head. “Watch the glass,” he said.

The doors sighed closed and the train came into motion. In its windows and doors that went by quicker and quicker, Galina saw the reflections of the arches and her own wide-eyed face, distorted by the streaks of light and shadow, the concave glass. She stared into the arch-as the train sped up, the reflection blurred and solidified, sliding from one pane to the next with barely an interruption. She watched the faces of people inside blur and disappear, subsumed by growing darkness between white marble arches.

"Here goes nothing,” she heard and felt a strong tug on her hand. She flailed, lost her balance and fell forward, cringing in anticipation of impact with the quickly moving train or a third rail, but keeping her eyes on the wobbling white arch. Cool air blew on her face, and she finally fell on her hands and knees, something warm and wet under her fingers.

* * * *

"Are you all right?” Yakov asked. He crouched down next to her, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the dusk.

"Yes.” The moisture was seeping through the fabric of her jeans and she stood up, her knees wobbly and her stomach queasy.

Fyodor caught her elbow, steadying her. “Took a spill, there."

Both men fussed over her, as if to avoid having to look around and notice the white arch cupping above them and a dim road stretching in every direction. She fantasized briefly that it was just an abandoned tunnel, a secret subway station compartment she had fallen into, and she laughed. “We're actually here,” she told both of her companions as they looked at her, worried. “This is real."

"If we only knew where ‘here’ was,” Yakov said.

"Underground,” Fyodor said. “Isn't that obvious?"

The road they stood on stretched before them, a single dirt lane worn deep in twin ruts. Tents, wooden shacks, abandoned haylofts lined the road non-committally, sometimes tucked back under the clumps of gangly black bushes with twisting long branches, sometimes crowding it.

"It looks like my home village,” Fyodor said.

Yakov laughed. “No offense, but congrats on getting out."

Fyodor's gaze lingered over the road, and a slow smile stretched his lips, black in dim underground. “Thanks. Same to you, limitchik. What, you thought no one noticed?"

Yakov's face darkened, and his fists grew large and heavy. “Don't you talk to me like that. I'll fucking arrest you."

"Oh, a cop.” Fyodor laughed. “What, you think if you bark louder than everyone else and protect their shit they'll treat you like a man and not a dog? Keep dreaming, mutt."

Galina frowned. “What are you talking about? Who are ‘they'?"

Both men whipped around. “You,” they said in unison.

"You have something against Muscovites?” she asked, surprised. And laughed before they could answer. “And why are you discussing it now?"

"As good a time as any,” Yakov said. “But this ain't Moscow, so we can leave it for now."

Fyodor shook his head. “You're sure we're not under some KGB dungeon? This road probably leads to the Lubyanka or a secret prison or something."

"I thought you blamed gypsies,” Galina said.

Fyodor lit another cigarette. “I blame everyone."

Galina quelled another argument before it broke out by starting down the road. “I wonder if it leads to a river,” she said. “Like the Styx."

Yakov walked next to her, pointedly leaving Fyodor to bring up the rear. “I'm expecting more of a hovel on chicken shanks situation,” he said. “You know, like in the children's tales."

"I don't,” Galina said. “All my childhood books were translated-English stories. Jack the Giant

Slayer, and others I can't remember."

"Huh,” Yakov said. “That's weird. I also had a bunch of English books when I was little, from my grandfather. When we left Serpuhov, my mom threw them out."

The shacks and tents gave way to trees, a park of sorts. The trees stood tall and bare, their skeletal branches phosphorescing with a weak light. They crowded the road and the branches touched above their heads, forming a lacy canopy against the black backdrop of non-existent sky.

"Definitely Baba Yaga territory,” Fyodor said. “I'd like to see you try to apprehend her."

"Simple. Citizen Yaga, you're under arrest,” Yakov responded, and all three snickered uneasily.

The road meandered and almost disappeared, thinning to barely visible tracks in the fat white grass the sight of which filled Galina with irrational disgust. White birds-starlings and rooks-studded the trees like pimples. Galina wondered if they were different from the birds outside, or if the regular birds gradually changed color underground, shedding their dark feathers and growing new ones, white like shrouds.

A faint noise that grew for some time finally crossed into her awareness, and she listened to the quiet but powerful throb. It sounded as if it came from a great distance, and she guessed that close by it would roar, deafening. Like a waterfall, she thought, the waterfall of the escalator that brought her down to the overturned skeleton of the funeral barge-the subway station had foreshadowed what was concealed below, and she had to wonder if it were intentional.

People outside, the people that used to run things back in her remote pioneer childhood and who still seemed to be running them now, must have had a hand in the identical design of the above and below ground; suddenly, Fyodor's words about the secret KGB dungeons did not sound as ridiculous. It made sense that the communists would find and harness the river Styx, perhaps turn it around and plop a hydroelectric station on it, squatting like an ugly cement toad and polluting cold black waters. Charon was dead, rotted to nothing in a labor camp some years ago, and his barge, raised to the surface, was cynically used as the skeleton of the train station below, and nobody ever knew. They probably still charged for the crossing though, and she dug through her pockets.

"What are you looking for?” Yakov said.

"Coins,” she answered. “In case we need to pay to cross Styx."

"I have it covered,” Fyodor said from behind. “Don't worry about coins. But why are you so hung up on Styx?"

"Listen,” Galina said. “Doesn't it sound like a waterfall?"

They listened. The thrumming and the distant roar were growing louder.

"That doesn't sound like a river,” Yakov said. “It's-mechanical."

"Hydroelectric station,” Galina said.

"That's a station all right,” Fyodor said, and pointed at the clearing before them. The trees stepped away from the path, clearing the view of something huge and undoubtedly manmade, gray and low to the ground. It looked like an abandoned construction site, with irregular planes and smokestacks jutting upwards and covered with sailcloth in places, as if to protect the impossibly large thing from rain.

They approached the construction cautiously; in the gray underground light, it seemed especially dead. They circled around the base, all the while looking for people. The thing shuddered with some internal torment, producing a hum so loud they had to yell to hear each other; fortunately, there wasn't much to say except an occasional exclamation of surprise.

The walls of the contraption were cracked with age, and thick white grass stems had invaded the fissures; a black shrub hung out of an especially large crack, and its roots, thick as ropes, crumbled the cement around it trying to reach the ground.

Galina circled the foundation as the sailcloth flapped over her head like a pair of sluggish wings. She looked away from the construction, and called to Yakov and Fyodor to come and see. Previously concealed from their view, a town hid in the shadow of the humming monstrosity-the first wooden buildings and pavements started just a hundred meters away or so. More importantly, there were people in the streets.

They entered the town; at first Galina thought that they had stumbled upon a secret underground prison, but the people seemed too well fed and lacked that haunted spiritual look she usually associated with political prisoners.

Except one man. Dressed in a thick sailcloth jacket, hol-low-cheeked and old, he stopped in the middle of the narrow street, his deeply-set eyes catching Galina's. “New here?” he asked in a low rumbly voice.

Galina was about to answer, but Yakov interrupted her. “Yes,” he said. “We are searching for missing people…"

"My sister,” Galina interjected quickly.

"Yes. People turning into birds-do you know anything about it?"

The old man chewed the air with his empty mouth. “Birds,” he said. “Don't know about them. Sovin's my name. I can show you around.” He looked over Galina and the rest, as if appraising them. “Funny we don't see more young people around here these days."

"Here?” Yakov said.

He motioned around him, vaguely. “Yeah, here. Where the fuck else? You're underground, and that's all anyone ever needs to know. As I was saying, not many young people come here these days; I'm really surprised."

"Why?” Galina asked.

"It's always more when things turn shifty on the surface,” Sovin said. “I hear in the thirties and forties we were getting refugees in droves. In the sixties it was better for a bit, but then in the seventies and eighties, there's always been a steady trickle. We were taking bets on how much the traffic will increase in the nineties, what with all the fucking insanity that's going on. But nothing, imagine that."

"What about birds?” Yakov said.

"That's the errant magic, and I really don't know much about it. Don't care about that shit-I'm a scientist."