Tom Smith - The Secret Speech

There was a flash. Zoya’s legs buckled, she fell. Breathless, unsure whether she was hit, she rolled onto her side, staring into the eyes of the girl who’d linked arms with her. The bullet had struck the girl in the neck.

The officers continued advancing. Zoya couldn’t move, unable to pull herself away. She had to get up. The officers would trample her underfoot. They would kill her. Yet she couldn’t leave this girl. Suddenly Fraera crouched down, scooping up the dead girl in her arms. Malysh helped Zoya up — the two of them running. Behind them, the officers stopped their advance, holding position.

Fraera laid the girl down, crying out in raw anger, as if she were her mother, as if she loved this girl. Zoya stood back, watching as men and women knelt beside the young victim, drawn in by the sound of Fraera’s cries. Was this grief a performance? Before Zoya could think about it further, Fraera stood up, drawing a gun and firing at the line of officers. It was the cue her vory had been waiting for. From both sides of the street, they drew their guns, opening fire. The formation of officers began to break up, retreating to the station, no longer certain that they could maintain control. The officers had presumed, like men fighting beasts, that they’d been the only ones armed with guns. Under attack, they hastened back to the safety of the radio station.

Zoya remained by the dead girl’s body, staring at her lifeless eyes. Fraera pulled her aside, offering her a gun:

— Now we fight.

Zoya replied:

— I killed her.

Fraera slapped her across the face:

— No guilt. Just anger. They shot her. What are you going to do about it? Cry like a child! You’ve been crying all your life! It’s time to act!

Zoya grabbed the gun and charged toward the radio station, aiming at the figures in the windows, pulling the trigger and firing all six shots.

DAWN, AND ZOYA HADN’T SLEPT. Far from being dulled by fatigue, her senses seemed heightened, her eyes picking up every detail of her surroundings. To her side, broken coffee cups, hundreds cracked and chipped, were inexplicably heaped in the gutter, piled knee-high as if marking a burial spot. In front, the remains of a fire composed entirely of charred books, copies of Marx and Lenin, looted from bookstores. Fragile flakes of gray ash rose up toward the sky in a reverse of snowfall. Cobblestones were missing, wrenched out of the ground to serve as missiles, gaps in the street’s teeth. It was as if the city itself had been in a fight and Zoya had fought on its side. Her clothes smelled of smoke: her fingertips were black, her tongue tasted metallic. Her ears were ringing. Underneath her shirt, pressed against her stomach, was her gun.

The radio station had fallen shortly before sunrise: smoke bellowing from the windows. The timber doors had finally been broken open. The resistance inside had weakened while the attack outside had consolidated with a supply of weapons, rifles from the military academy, fired by cadets from the same academy. Fraera had found Zoya and Malysh and ordered them not to take part in storming the building. She didn’t want them caught in a pitched battle, fighting in smoke-filled corridors where desperate AVH officers lurked behind doors. She’d given them a different objective:

Find Stalin.

ARRIVING AT THE END OF GORKII FASOR, a street that led out onto the city’s main park, the Varosliget, Malysh and Zoya were shocked by the absence of its landmark. At the center of Heroes Square the vast statue of Stalin — a bronze colossus as tall as four men with a mustache as wide as an arm — was gone. There was the stone plinth but no statue on top of it. Malysh and Zoya approached the mutilated monument. Two steel boots remained: the Generalissimo had been cut off near the knees, a twisted steel support jutting out of his right boot. His body and head was missing, his statue had been murdered and the corpse stolen. Two men were busy on the plinth trying to affix a modified Hungarian flag into Stalin’s hollow boot.

Zoya began to laugh. She pointed at the space where Stalin had once been:

— He’s dead! He’s dead! The bastard’s dead!

Malysh pounced, slamming his hand over her mouth. She’d shouted out in Russian. The two men on the plinth stopped and turned. Malysh raised his arm, punching the air:

— Russkik haza!

The men nodded halfheartedly, distracted as their flag fell over.

Malysh led Zoya away, whispering:

— Remember who we are.

In reply Zoya kissed him on the lips — a quick, impulsive kiss. She pulled back and before he could react she pretended that nothing had happened, pointing at the deep scratches in the street:

— That’s the direction they dragged the body!

She set off, heart pounding, following the marks where the bronze had rubbed against the cobblestones:

— They must have dragged it with a van or a truck.

Malysh didn’t reply and, unable to play it cool any longer, Zoya stopped:

— Are you annoyed?

He slowly shook his head. Her cheeks began to burn.

Changing the subject, she gestured at the scratches:

— I’ll race you. First to Stalin’s body! On the count of three…

Before a single number had been uttered, they both broke into a run, cheating in perfect synchronization.

Malysh tore ahead but stopped as he lost track of the scratches in the street, forced to run back, searching for clues as to which direction the bronze corpse had been dragged. Like hounds hunting, they paused at the first intersection, heads down, circling the possible turning points. Zoya found the trail, setting off, Malysh now behind. They were heading south and turned down toward Blaha Lujza Square, a large crossroads, a junction lined with shops.

Up ahead they saw the bronze body, lying flat on its belly, as wide and as long as a tramcar. Both of them accelerated, running flat-out. But Zoya had more in reserve, having paced herself, exploiting Malysh’s earlier miscalculation about how far they’d have to run. She was ahead of him but only barely, she strained forward, stretching — her fingertips touching Stalin’s bronze calf. Panting, smiling, she glanced at Malysh and saw that he was genuinely annoyed. He hated to lose and was trying to think of some reason to annul the race.

To seal her victory Zoya climbed the statue, her flat-soled shoes slipping over Stalin’s smooth bronze thighs until she wedged her toes into the imitation folds of his coat and pushed herself up. Standing on top she saw that Stalin’s head was missing, severed at the neck, a crude decapitation. She walked the line of his back, one foot carefully in front of the other — a trapeze artist pacing a tightrope. Malysh remained on the street, hands in pockets. She smiled at him, expecting him to blush. Instead, he returned her smile. A burst of pleasure exploded inside her chest, and in her mind she performed celebratory cartwheels along Stalin’s spine.

Reaching the bronze neck, she ran her fingers over the rough edge where the head appeared to have been chipped and smashed and blowtorched off. Standing up, hands on hips, conqueror, giant slayer, she surveyed the square. There was a small crowd on the opposite side near Jozsef korut. As they moved she caught a glimpse of Stalin’s head. Supported on the remains of his zigzag neck, he seemed to be staring at her, stupefied at his humiliation. A hole had been smashed in his forehead, buckling his hairline, out of which protruded a street sign: 15KM. The truck that had dragged the statue into the district had also dragged the head from the body. There were chains still attached. Zoya lowered herself to the street, peeking into Stalin’s dark stomach — hollow and black and cold, just as she suspected — before hurrying to the assembled crowd.