Catherynne Valente - Deathless

“Everyone endures hard things.” I endure them. There was never any choice because it is hard here and hard there. Hardness everywhere.

“I refuse,” he whispered

“No one can refuse.”

“Is life here so filled with bliss?”

Marya Morevna sank to her knees, her dress spreading out over the threshold like a pool of blood. She pressed her forehead to Koschei’s.

“What about the war?”

“The war is going badly.”

Ivanushka, this is my house, whatever the papers say.

Yes.

“My name is Ushanka,” said the woman with the blue hatband, smoothing her crisp brown skirt as she seated herself, “and certain irregularities have come to light which I must ask you to make regular, Comrade Morevna. Answer my questions, and you may go about your afternoon as you please. Stroll by the river, make rolls.”

Marya sat lightly in a threadbare green chair, wishing she were elsewhere, longing to spring away like a deer. But Ivan Nikolayevich had said that if anyone came asking questions, she had to answer; it was not about wanting or not wanting. “All right.”

“I work with your husband; did you know that?”

“No. We do not discuss his work.”

“Ah! What a balm is the conduct of a good citizen. Still, I keep returning to these irregularities.”

“Oh?” Marya did not move any part of her face. She was better at interrogation games than this woman could ever be.

“Well, surely you admit the oddness of a man appearing out of nowhere, after a long absence from duty, and suddenly having a wife where he had none before.” Ushanka’s smile stretched very wide, very frank, as if they were old friends.

Marya willed her fingers not to fidget. She stared straight ahead. “Surely soldiers often meet women in foreign parts.”

“Are you a foreigner, then? Your Russian is excellent.” Her pen scratched against her notepad.

“No, no. I was born here, in Leningrad. Before the Revolution, of course.”

“Of course. Allow me to ask an obvious question, Comrade Morevna. Forgive me for insulting your intelligence, but it is only my job. Are you, in fact, married to Comrade Ivan Nikolayevich Geroyev?”

Ivanushka, if you break this promise it will be like breaking a very old crystal glass. Nothing will be able to be put right again.

I understand.

“Come back with me,” insisted Koschei. “Hide inside me, as you did before. I will pile such jewels on your lap. Viy can burn this world, if I have you. Already the Chernosvyat is his. Already my country hoists a silver flag. Come with me. I will take out my death and smash it under a hammer and Viy can have us and in his silver country I will fuck you until the end of the world.”

Marya brushed his nose with hers, two affectionate beasts.

Koschei the Deathless shut his dark eyes. “I can take you anyway, if you say no.”

“I know you can.” She felt his words in the basement of her belly.

“But I will not. It would be sweeter to pay him back with the same currency.”

“I do not wish to be dragged back and forth between the two of you like a bone between two dogs. You promise the same things, and neither of you delivers.”

Ivanushka, it will be difficult for you to keep this promise. You will have to build the keeping of it like a chimney.

Tell me what I must do.

Ushanka leaned forward, putting her notepad aside. She had a long, Byzantine nose with a bump in the middle of it. “We already know, Comrade Morevna. There will be no punishment if you simply admit what is already a matter of public record. It is too late for Geroyev, but no blame need attach to you for this incident.”

Marya blinked. “What is it you think you know?”

Ushanka shrugged luxuriously. “Who is to say what I know? Maybe I know something now that I will not know when I leave. It all depends on you, Comrade.”

The queen beyond the sea tried to remember how Naganya liked to play this game. No, no, Masha! You can’t avoid my eyes like that! Then I’ll know you’re lying! You’re doing it wrong! Now, tell me you’re innocent, and I’ll pretend to pull out your thumbnail.

“I assure you that whatever you think I have done, I am innocent of it.”

“Do you now?” Ushanka tapped an unlit cigarette on her knee. “I am absolutely certain you’re right. Do you mind?” Marya Morevna demurred, but the young officer flicked a brass lighter anyway, waving around the terminus of her cigarette. “Which is why you and I can be so convivial. We are just having a conversation in the afternoon, as ladies will. A cup of tea, a cigarette? All these little niceties, and no lies between us. Now, Comrade Geroyev reports that he met you in the vicinity of Irkutsk, near the Mongolian border. Is that correct?”

“That sounds right.” She had no idea. Geography was fungible, fluid, unreliable.

“And what brought you to such a distant city, when you say you were born in Leningrad, in this very house? And why have you no traveling papers? No identification? You see, I know you, Comrade Morevna—or is it Geroyev? I notice you did not answer my previous question. Silence, is of course, its own answer, and I will not embarrass you further by repeating myself. You see how quickly we progress!”

Marya smiled faintly.

“Something amusing?”

“You remind me of an old friend, that’s all.”

Ivanushka, I know you will break your promise.

I will not.

“Take it,” sighed Koschei.

It weighed so heavy in her hand: a black egg, embossed in silver, studded with cold diamonds.

“You rolled this over my back. To soak up my nightmares.” Marya stared at it, how it caught the light.

“It is my death. Oh, my volchitsa, don’t you see? I have always been in your power. I have always been helpless.”

“What about the butcher in Tashkent?”

The corners of Koschei’s mouth quirked. “He sends his regards.”

Marya turned the egg over in her hands. The diamonds pricked her; blood welled. Down in the dark of her, a door opened. She stood, her eyes blank, imperious, as strange as he had once been. She knew, finally. What she could become.

“Come with me, Koschei.”

Ivanushka, do not go down into the basement of this house.

Do not open the door. Do not peer into the lock.

Is that all?

“Comrade Morevna, allow me to show my cards. When something is amiss in the life of a citizen, it is as though he walks around all day with his shirt inside out. To the casual observer, all may seem normal, but in truth, the natural order of things has been upset. Even if he wears a coat, even if for all the world he appears the picture of a man, something within him is backwards. I suggest that during his disappearance Comrade Geroyev associated with antirevolutionary elements, and continues their work even in the depths of Leningrad.”

Marya laughed out loud. “Is that what you think?”

“Either that or you yourself are a spy, having attached yourself like a lamprey to a good man, and harbor even now—in the attic? in the basement?—seditious persons of great interest to myself and those whom I represent. Tell me, Comrade. What would I find if I looked in your basement right this very moment?”

Ushanka extinguished her cigarette on the windowsill.

Ivanushka, for you, this house has no basement.