Martin Smith - Three Stations

"How long are you going to try this?" Victor asked.

Arkady heard a gasp and caught Zhenya and Maya standing in the doorway. Maya's hand was over her mouth.

Victor whispered, "The longer it takes, the less likely she can be revived. You can't raise the dead."

She wasn't dead, Arkady thought. He wouldn't allow it.

"Arkady." Victor tried to pull him up.

"Wait," Maya said.

Squeeze and release. Squeeze and release.

Anya's first breath was harsh and ugly. Arkady continued to pump until her respiration was steady and the blue cast of her skin gave way to pink.

Arkady had put Anya in his bed. Light hurt her eyes, and he had turned off all the lights except a reading lamp that he turned low. He expected her to fall into a deep sleep, but adrenaline was still racing through her system.

"Half the time I think I'm dead again."

"You had a traumatic experience. I would guess that being dead, even for a short time, qualifies as traumatic."

"It wasn't what I expected."

"No white light?"

"Nothing."

"No family or friends?"

"Zero."

"Let's talk about whoever tried to kill you."

"I don't know who it was. I don't remember anything from this afternoon on." Anya shifted for a better view of Arkady. "You knew what to do. You've seen someone in shock before. Was it a woman?"

"Yes. I didn't know what to do then. I do now."

Overlap was the last thing he wanted. No spilling of memory from one woman to another. Yes, he had helplessly witnessed anaphylactic shock before. This time at least he had a chance to save someone. Arkady had taken no chances. He had concentrated on the bulb and mask as if they were a rope out of an abyss, and hadn't even noticed when life first began to creep back into her body.

"This was different, someone tried to kill you."

"They did kill me."

"But you're alive now."

"Maybe."

"I heard two separate sets of footsteps leave your apartment, and you say you didn't have any guests?"

"I don't remember. Could I have a cigarette now?"

"Definitely not. Somebody left a glass with a residue of milk in your kitchen sink. Can you tell me who that somebody might be?"

"I'm a journalist. Don't you know it's open season on journalists?"

"And you don't want to call in the police."

"Why should I when I have you?"

"Well, I have been dismissed. How much I can help is debatable."

"I'll take my chances." In a different tone, she asked, "How long was I dead?"

"Comatose."

"Dead," she insisted. "In other words, am I swimsuit ready? Sasha Vaksberg has asked me to go to his dacha tomorrow." She pulled back the sheet from her leg to examine the dark bruise left by Arkady and the needle.

"I don't think you've lost anything," Arkady said.

"The dacha is enormous. Sasha has two swimming pools, tennis courts and a ring for horses. Sometimes I think he pays people just to walk around."

"I'm sure it's very grand."

"You think I should go."

"You might be safer there than here."

"Do you have a dacha?"

"A shack." He tried to return to the attack. "As a journalist, do you keep an appointment book?"

"Is your shack on a river or a lake?"

"Just a pond."

"Describe it."

"Ordinary."

"In what way?"

"A cabin with three rooms, half of a kitchen, bad paintings, a stone fireplace, a family of hedgehogs under the porch, a canoe and a rowboat on a dock. My father was a general, but after enough vodka, he thought he was an admiral."

"That doesn't sound so bad. Was I dressed?"

"Excuse me?"

"When you found me, was I dressed?"

"Not completely."

"How did I look? Is blue in fashion?"

"You're asking the wrong man. What about Sasha Vaksberg? He must have called in reinforcements by now. He could have given you a hundred bodyguards."

"Maybe he would have. He's an unpredictable man."

Anya took in the high ceiling, a monstrous armoire, light patches on the wall where photographs and paintings had been removed.

"Did you grow up here? It must have been something at one time."

"It was where the 'party elite' lived, and it was a great honor to be assigned an apartment like this. On the other hand, it was full of false walls and secret passageways for the KGB to listen. And once a month or so, some famous face would disappear. So it was an honor with a certain risk. While no one could refuse to live in such a luxurious establishment, they always kept a suitcase packed."

"Did they ever listen in on your father?"

"He was very accommodating. He would tell the agents his itinerary for the day. And night."

"Did it affect you to live in such a haunted house?"

"I'm embarrassed to say no. I did find the wall that the agent sat behind. I had a rubber ball and I bounced it against the wall a hundred times, two hundred times."

"I don't think you were cut out to be a policeman."

"It's a little late in the day to learn that. What does it mean, 'God is shit'?"

She yawned. "I have no idea."

He said, "I understand 'God is dead.' 'God is shit' escapes me."

He waited but Anya had fallen into a deep, enviable sleep. Arkady got as comfortable as he could in the chair and dipped into the book he had taken from Madame Spiridona. The diary of a ballet dancer promised to be tame enough. After the triumph in Paris, we opened in Monte Carlo… That sort of thing.

Instead, the pages fell open to God is Dog, Dog is God, Dog is Shit, God is Shit, I am Shit, I am God.

And I am a beast and a predator… everyone will be afraid of me and commit me to a lunatic asylum. But I don't care. I am not afraid of anything. I want death.

Itsy had picked a trailer with a stove that, however small and miserly, kept her family warm. She swaddled the baby in her blue comforter and hardly gave her a chance to cry before a bottle was put to her mouth.

Itsy emphasized safety. Girls should beg in pairs. Boys might beg alone but in sight of each other. The problem was that the rain made any begging impossible; people lowered their eyes and bulled ahead. Although Itsy had a rule about not sniffing glue, it was difficult to enforce after hours of idleness. The silence was stranger for hearing through the wall the rush of passengers and the coming and going of trains. Sometimes a locomotive sounded as if it were coming right to their laps. The PA announced arrivals and departures in round, unintelligible tones.

Going to the children's shelter was out of the question. Not because the people who ran it were mean; most were kind. But the family would be split up according to age and sex and Tito would probably be shot.

Mainly to give the kids something to do, Itsy took them to the video arcade behind Leningrad Station, leaving the sleeping baby in the care of Emma, Tito and the two oldest boys, Leo and Peter. Itsy was barely out the door when the boys put Tito on a leash and took paper bags and cans of air freshener from their day packs. They dragged a mattress out of the trailer to sit on.

Emma piped up: "I know what you're doing."

"But you're not going to tell anyone, are you?" Leo said.

"Depends. Itsy won't be happy."

Peter said, "In case you haven't noticed, Itsy's not here. We're in charge."

"And we're bored," said Leo. "Everyone else has fun while we babysit you and the brat. Here." He offered her a cigarette.

"I can't. Because of the baby."

Peter smirked. "That's if you're pregnant. Jesus, you're stupid."

Emma, affronted, climbed into the trailer. If boys were so smart, how come they didn't know how to change a diaper? She considered the argument won.

Outside the trailer, Leo and Peter sprayed the freshener inside their paper bags, lifted the bags like cups of gold and breathed deeply. Almost instantaneously aerosol chemistry entered the bloodstream and breached the brain.