Tom Smith: The Secret Speech

— Zoya…

Before he could finish, Fraera called out:

— Zoya!

Zoya ran off, obeying the call of her new master.

Following behind, entering the living room, Leo came face-to-face with Stalin. A vast oil portrait hung from the wall, staring down, a god keeping watch over his subjects. Fraera drew a knife, offering it to Zoya:

— There’s no one to denounce you now.

Knife in hand, Zoya stepped up onto a chair, her eyes coming level to Stalin’s neck. In the perfect position to mutiliate his face, she did nothing. Fraera called out:

— Gouge out his eyes! Blind him! Shave off his mustache!

Zoya stepped down, offering the knife to Fraera:

— I don’t… feel like it.

Fraera’s mood switched from elation to irritation:

— You don’t feel like it? Anger doesn’t come and go. Anger isn’t fickle. Anger isn’t like love. It isn’t something you feel one minute but not the next. Anger stays with you forever. He murdered your parents.

Zoya raised her voice in reply:

— I don’t want to think about that all the time!

Fraera slapped her. Leo stepped forward. Fraera drew her gun, pointing it at Leo’s chest but continuing to speak to Zoya:

— You forget your parents? Is it that easy? What has changed? Malysh has kissed you? Is that it?

Fraera walked toward him, grabbing Malysh and kissing him. He struggled but she held him fast. Finished, she pulled back:

— Nice, but I’m still angry.

She fired a shot between Stalin’s eyes and then another and another, emptying her gun into the oil portrait, the canvas shaking with each bullet. With no bullets left, the trigger clicked against the chamber. Fraera threw the gun at his face, the weapon bouncing off, clattering to the ground. She wiped her brow before laughing:

— Bedtime…

The statement was loaded with innuendo. She pushed Zoya and Malysh together.

STARTLED, LEO WOKE, shaken by one of the vory :

— We’re leaving.

Without any explanation Leo, Raisa, and Karoly were rushed to their feet. They’d been locked in the marble bathroom, using towels to make a bed. They couldn’t have snatched more than a couple of hours of sleep. Fraera was outside by the gate. Malysh and Zoya were beside her, everyone exhausted, except for Fraera, jittery with chemical energy. She pointed downhill, toward the center of town:

— Word is that they have found the missing AVH officers. They’ve been hiding in the Communist Party headquarters all along.

Karoly’s expression changed. His exhaustion disappeared.

It took an hour to descend the hills and return across the river, approaching Republic Square where the Communist headquarters were located. There was gunfire and smoke. The headquarters was under siege. Tanks under insurgent control shelled the outer walls. Two trucks were on fire. Windows were smashed: chunks of concrete and brick were falling to the ground.

Fraera advanced into the square, taking cover behind a statue as bullets whistled overhead, fired from the rooftops. Held back by the crossfire, they waited. Abruptly the gunfire stopped. A man with a handmade white flag stepped out from the headquarters, petitioning for his life. He was shot. As he collapsed, the foremost insurgents rushed forward, storming the premises.

In the safety of the lull, Fraera led them from behind the statue across the square. A crowd of fighters gathered at the entrance beside the smoldering trucks. Fraera joined them, Leo and the others around her. Under the truck were the blackened bodies of soldiers. The crowd waited for the captured AVH officers to be fed out to them. Leo observed that not all of the crowd were fighters: there were photographers and members of the international press, cameras hanging around their necks. Leo turned to see Karoly. His earlier expression of hope that he might find his son had transformed into dread, longing for his son to be anywhere but here.

The first of the AVH officers was pulled out, a young man. As he raised his hands he was shot. A second man was pulled out. Leo didn’t understand what he was saying but it was obvious the man was pleading for his life. Mid-plea, he was shot. A third officer ran out and, seeing his dead friends on the ground, tried to run back into the building. Leo saw Karoly step forward. This young man was his son.

Infuriated at his attempt to run from justice, the fighters grabbed the officer, beating him as he clung to the doors. Karoly pushed forward, shrugging Leo off, breaking through the fighters and wrapping his arms around his son. Startled by the reunion, his son was crying, hoping somehow that his father could protect him. Karoly was shouting at the mob. They were together, father and son, for less than a couple of seconds before Karoly was pulled away, pinned down, forced to watch as his son’s uniform was ripped off, buttons popping, the shirt shredded. The boy was turned upside down, rope lashed around his ankles, carried toward the trees in the square.

Leo turned to Fraera, to petition for the boy’s life, only to see Zoya had already grabbed hold of her arms, saying:

— Stop them. Please.

Fraera crouched down, as a parent might when explaining the world to a child:

— This is anger.

With that, Fraera took out a camera of her own.

Karoly broke free, staggering lamely after his son, weeping as he saw him strung up, hanging upside down from the tree, still alive — his face bright red, veins bulging. Karoly grabbed his son’s shoulders, supporting his weight only for the butt of a rifle to be smashed in his face. He fell backward. Gasoline was poured over his son.

Moving quickly, Leo strode up to one of the vory , a man distracted by the execution. He punched him in the throat, winding him, taking his rifle. Dropping to one knee, Leo lined up a shot through the crowd. He’d get one chance, one shot. The gas was lit. The son was on fire, shaking, screaming. Leo closed an eye, waiting for the crowd to part. He fired. The bullet struck the young man in the head. Still burning, his body hung still. The fighters turned, regarding Leo. Fraera already had a gun pointed at him:

— Put it down.

Leo dropped the rifle.

Karoly got up, clutching his son’s body, trying to smother the flames, as if he could still be saved. He was now burning too, the skin of his hands bubbling red. He didn’t care, holding on to his son even as his own clothes caught alight. The fighters watched the man grieve and burn, no longer boisterous in their hate. Leo wanted to call out for someone to help, to do something. Finally a middle-aged man raised his gun and shot Karoly in the back of the head. His body fell on top of the fire, underneath his son. As they burned together, many in the crowd were already hastening away.

BACK IN THE APARTMENT, among the hungover vory and joyous Hungarian students, Malysh tried to find some space, retreating to the kitchen, making a bed under the table. He took hold of Zoya’s hands. As if rescued from a freezing sea she could not stop shaking. When Fraera entered the room he could feel Zoya’s body tense, as if a predator were nearby. Fraera had a gun in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. She crouched down, her eyes bloodshot, her lips cracked:

— There’s a party in one of the squares tonight, thousands of people will be there. Farmers from the country are bringing in food. Pigs will be roasted whole.

Malysh replied:

— Zoya isn’t feeling well.

Fraera reached out, touching Zoya’s forehead.

— There will be no police, no State, just the citizens of a free nation, and all of us without fear. We must be there, all of us.