The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories (30 page)

You have waited for me past the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, past each of Saturn’s rings. It’s ridiculous, so stupid, I know, to cross the entire solar system just to hear you and Galina butcher Tchaikovsky. If ever there was an utterance of perfection, it is this. If God has a voice, it is ours.

The calcium in the collarbones I have kissed. The iron in
the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long, dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.

In what dream does the empty edge of the universe hold this echo of vitality? In what prayer does the last human not die alone? Who would have imagined you would be with me, here, so far from life on Earth, so filled with its grace?

One more time through.

From the beginning.

Just give me that.

Please.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T
he following works of nonfiction were invaluable while researching the stories in this book, and I’d urge anyone interested in the region to pick them up:
Gulag: A History
by Anne Applebaum;
The Great Terror: A Reassessment
by Robert Conquest;
The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin
by Adam Hochschild;
The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia
by David King;
Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall
by Andrew Meier;
Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar
by Simon Sebag Montefiore;
It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never Happened Anyway: Russia and the Communist Past
and
Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State
by David Satter;
Allah’s Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya
by Sebastian Smith.

I’d like to thank the following people and organizations: the Whiting Foundation and the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University, particularly Eavan Boland, Adam Johnson, Elizabeth Tallent, and Tobias Wolff, for their support. C. Michael Curtis at
The Atlantic
and Tom Jenks and Carol Edgarian at
Narrative
gave first homes and first edits to several
of these stories. Steven Volynets and Olga Zilberbourg shared their stories from the former USSR and gave generous readings and remedies to mine. Alexander Maksik and Amanda Nadelberg have provided wise counsel, on the page and off. Ali Tepsurkaev, thank you. Ching-chun Shih, Ulrich Blumenbach, Stefanie Jacobs, Achilleas Kyriakidis, Diana Markosian, Vincent Piazza, and Cassidy Horn, for their friendship and creative collaborations. Without Gina and Kevin Correnti, California would be much less sunny, and without Kappy Mintie, I would be too.

My work couldn’t have a finer editor than Lindsay Sagnette, whose editorial vision never ceases to inspire. Nor could it have a greater advocate than Rachel Rokicki. My thanks to the geniuses at Hogarth and Crown Books, particularly Molly Stern, Maya Mavjee, David Drake, Kayleigh George, Jay Sones, Rose Fox, and Chris Brand. Janet Silver’s faith and guidance mean the world.

Finally, to my family, thank you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A
NTHONY
M
ARRA
is the author of the
New York Times
bestseller
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.
He received an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. He lives in Oakland, California.