Charlie Huston - A Dangerous Man

She brings her hands to her forehead and turns her back to me. She stands like that, hands pressed to her forehead, holding something terrible inside. The blond walks to her, starts to whisper in Russian, but she takes one of the hands from her head and holds it out, silencing him. He shrugs, bends, picks up the gun she dropped next to the couch, puts it in his pocket and goes to stand behind the chair.

The guy with the widow’s peak just sits there watching, chaining cigarette after cigarette.

Mickey’s mother drops her hands to her sides. She is still now, only her eyes move, skipping around the room, occasionally touching on me, but never looking into my own.

– I went to see him yesterday. To apologize to my brother-in-law. To my son’s godfather. To tell him that things had gone too far. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Since my son died, since he was murdered, I have not been able to think clearly. I.

She’s starting to lose it again. She stops for a moment, gets it back.

– And I walked past a man in the hall. Then I looked. And, you were looking at me. And I. Something. But. How could I think? Impossible. I talked to David, but I told him nothing. Nothing. And when I came home, I looked at this again.

She’s pointing at the photocopy.

– And I looked and I looked. But I couldn’t see it. And I can’t sleep. I can never sleep. I want to. When Mickey…I would dream about him. And it was. He was with me. I could feel him. It was the only time he was with me anymore. But I can’t sleep now. I have to take pills and they won’t let me sleep. And I take other pills and I sleep, but they don’t let me dream. And I want to sleep. I want to dream about my son. I. I. I.

Tears again. She is furious at them. She presses the heels of her palms into her eyes and whisks the tears away.

– But last night. I slept. And I dreamt. But it was about you. You son of a bitch. I can’t dream about my son, but I dream about you. You. And this morning. I see that.

She points at the page of torn newsprint.

– I sit with my tea and I flip the pages of the newspaper. I see nothing. Flip, flip, flip. Nothing. Until I see this. And I looked. I looked at that picture. And I looked at the other pictures of you. And I.

She presses her hands flat together and holds them in front of her chest.

– I knew.

She squeezes her eyes shut. Muscles on her forearms flex as she pushes her hands one against the other.

– I knew.

She opens her eyes and drops her hands. Air sighs from her mouth.

– I knew.

She bites her lower lip.

– But I can’t kill you. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. And I want to. So badly I want to. I. But I can’t. But you.

She points at me.

– You can kill David.

– She’s our aunt.

She left without saying another word. Picked up her bag, went to the door, waited while Spiky opened it, and went out with him following. She never looked at me again, and I never had a chance to tell her what me trying to kill David would mean to my parents.

Then Widow’s Peak gets up and starts pacing back and forth in front of the couch. A pair of legs in very blue jeans, bleached nearly white down the fronts of the thighs, scissoring past me. As he paces and talks, he smokes, flicking ashes, letting them drift onto the carpet.

– Tetka Anna. Our mother’s sister. A beautiful woman. Even now.

His hand dips in his pocket and comes out with a flick-knife. The blade pops open. He bends over my back and there’s a snap as he cuts the plastic bindings on my wrists. I sit up slowly, a rush of blood making my hands tingle and my head throb even worse. I sit and massage the deep red welts on my wrists.

– She brought us over last year.

He takes a seat in the flowered armchair.

– We had to leave Russia.

He takes another Marlboro Light from the box on the table next to him, sticks it in his mouth and lights it from the butt of his last one.

– Trouble.

He stubs the butt in a glass dish full of glass marbles.

– Our father. Our mother. Do you know what a Shakhidki is?

I shake my head.

– It is a Russian word for a word in Arabic. It is a female word.

He has one of those thin beards that trace the line of the jaw, a moustache just as thin arches from it to cross his upper lip. He traces it with a fingertip.

– You know anything about Chechnya?

I shake my head, still massaging my wrists.

– But you know what it is? A country? Part of the old USSR?

I nod. I press my hand to my forehead and find a residue of saliva. I wipe it off.

– You know there are rebels?

I nod.

– Yes. It is like the Middle East for Russia. Shit. It is a great pile of shit.

I gently run my hand over my face. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it eases the pain. Not this time.

Widow’s Peak points at the door Mickey’s mother and Spiky went through.

– My brother, his name is Martin. I am Adam. Those are our American names. In Russia, we would be called something different. But here, these are our names. Tetka Anna thought of them for us.

He blows a smoke ring, watches it dissolve, thinking of his real name maybe. He stops thinking about it and looks back at me.

– Our father. My brother Martin and me, our father. He was an intelligence officer. In Chechnya. Very high up. Very important. He. Everybody must serve in Russia. Not like here. Everybody. My brother and me, we did not wait to be drafted. We served. Volunteers. In Chechnya. With our father. Intelligence.

He picks up the box of cigarettes. Holds it out to me. I shake my head. It hurts.

He shrugs and chains another.

– Intelligence. Interrogation. An interrogation unit we worked in. Our father put us there. To keep us out of combat. But it was.

He smokes.

– It was hard work. I think sometimes. Sometimes I think we would rather have fought. Martin would rather have fought. I know this.

He pulls the knife from his pocket and his thumb snaps it open and shut. Open and shut.

– OK. So. Yes. It was hard work. But it was over. Like all things. It was over.

Open and shut.

– I know English. I was almost. I could have taken another post. In Moscow. Somewhere. A city. I could have stayed in intelligence. But no. When we had served, we were done. Our father. He understood. Chechnya.

Open.

– He stayed. His duty. And our mother.

And shut.

– She stayed. Of course. And. There are people there. These women. They have lost husbands. Sons. So.

Open.

– So one of these women. She has a bag. A knapsack. She walks into a cafe. She sits at a table. She takes off her knapsack. She reaches inside of it. And the bomb inside goes off. And the intelligence officer sitting at the next table is blown up. And his wife he is having lunch with is blown up.

And shut.

– And this woman had lost men. Her husband and her boys. And so she became a Shakhidki . A holy warrior. The newspapers, they call them also black widows.

He slips the knife back in his pocket.

– And now you know what this is. And you know also.

He draws the last cigarette from the box and lights it.

– You know also, I think, that she is one, too.

He points at the closed door.

– Tetka Anna. A Shakhidki .

THERE’S MORE.

– Martin wanted to stay. To fight. He wanted to reenlist and fight in Chechnya. No interrogation this time. Guns. Battle. But he would have died. We both would have died. They knew who we were. The rebels. They knew our father. We would have been assassinated as soon as we returned. Anywhere in Russia we would be assassinated. And family. We still had family. Here. Tetka Anna.

Out of cigarettes, he has begun pacing again.