James Baldwin: Burn Artist

Petro’s expression soured. “Hey, just because you’re working with Rodya doesn’t mean—”

“What the hell? You brats are trying to order my soldiers around now?” A very deep voice, whiskey-hoarse and as dry and black as old tar, spoke from the other side of the room. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

My back stiffened painfully as I turned to square off with the speaker. “I’m the only person capable of dealing with this particular problem, father.”

Looking at Grigori Sokolsky was like looking at my own reflection in a funhouse mirror. I was short, muscular and compact. My father was simply enormous, with the paunchy muscle gut, thick arms, and extremely broad shoulders of a lapsed bodybuilder. We shared the same hard, square features, and most characteristically, the same piercing white-gray eyes. From that point onward, we shared little in common. I was polished, pale and polite, well-educated through a combination of merit and good luck, and intentionally well-spoken. Grigori was not. He was a thuggish alcoholic gorilla with a seaman’s tan and oily hair the color of coal. The sight of him was enough to turn my stomach.

He chuckled. “What was that? I can’t hear you up here, short stuff.”

“Wonderful, yes. Very funny. Now please leave.” I fought the urge to snap at him. “I need to work.”

“What kind of hello is that for your old man?” Grigori grinned. He had several gold teeth, several black teeth, and a couple missing. “Do you see this, Rodya? You just gonna stand there and let him order around his Kommandant ?”

“I’m going to stand around and wait for everyone to clear out so that something can be done about Slava,” Rodion said. Rodion was a big guy who’d done his time in the Red Army and in prison camps, but even he was nervous around my father. Among the rough and tumble of the Organizatsiya, Grigori went beyond the pale. He’d killed his own father as a teenager, become a wrestler for the State, was sent to the GULAG [11] Soviet prison work camps. They were notoriously brutal, and millions of people, mostly men, died working in mines or on railroads for Stalin’s Soviet Union. for nearly a decade, then had gone on to beat, strangle, knife and rape his way from Siberia to New York.

“I knew I should have stuck with jerking off,” Grisha said, gesturing to me. “After all those years spent feeding this ungrateful son of a bitch, this is what I end up with.”

“Get out,” I repeated.

“Or what?” He leered at me. “You feeling froggy, kid?”

Just those three words were enough to send a flush of adrenaline through my head and chest. I heard a creak: my gloves, as my fists tightened beside my thighs. If I backed down, no one would respect me. If I stood up to him, I was defying the law of the hierarchy. My father outranked me in social capital and by title.

“The Kommandant would let me help his cursed soldier,” I said, trying to keep the shake out of my voice. “I have a job to do. Leave.”

Finally, my father’s eyes narrowed to smoldering white slits. “Now you listen to me, you little faggot—”

“Grisha, don’t worry about it.” Nicolai came up on his right and clapped him on the arm, halting him as he began to advance. He was a dry, thin man who looked like a corn stalk beside my father’s bulk, but Grigori stopped all the same. “Leave it. Let’s go get a drink.”

“Suits me.” Petro glanced uncomfortably at me, then Vassily, and then stood back from the table.

I regarded Grigori with arrogant disapproval as shivers tried to spread through my limbs. He sneered knowingly, and then he, Vassily, Nic, Petro, Lev and Semyon left the room as one. I stared at their backs until the door slammed shut.

When I was sure they were gone, I turned on Rodion. “You knew this would happen. Why was he here?”

“Hey, don’t you give me any shit. Grisha came in with Slava.” Rodion shuffled his shoulders back under his leather jacket, his heavy features set and unreadable. “I know you and he have some personal beef with one another, but he’s got as much right to be here as you do. And he’s right. Don’t show up your Kommandant in front of the others again.”

I wanted to scream at him. He didn’t understand. My father was like a sleeping bear. When it was out of sight, it was out of mind. When you poked it – when he was reminded of something he was supposed to hate – he didn’t go back to sleep. A single personal encounter with my father led to weeks of continual abuse. He’d turn up at my apartment and shout at me from the street or outside my door and pick fights, which he still often won. He’d shit-talk me to everyone in the Organizatsiya, and tell lies about me that I would be forced to defend. Once, he’d taken a dump on my car and wiped his ass over the windshield. Eventually, he’d get bored of tormenting me, succumbing once more to the memory-wiping comfort of the bottle and the pill, but my life was going to be hell until he was over being shown up in front of his friends.

I couldn’t find the words to reply. My face felt hot, my stomach cold.

“Are you gonna help me or what?” Slava’s whining broke the ice that had frozen over the room.

Magic. Magic was the panacea. Besides Vassily and Mariya, magic was the one constantly empowering, pleasant thing in my life. Shuddering, I turned away and broke the circle of salt around Slava's chair with a toe. It was useless – salt was a good enough focus for protective magic, but it hadn't been spread around by a mage. A salt circle cast by a frightened superstitious gangster wasn't going to stop anything except slugs. “Uncover your chest.”

The scrawny man finally dropped his hands, uncovering his left pectoral. My eyebrows nearly reached my hairline when I saw what he'd been concealing. It was a kolovrat , a sun wheel, an ancient Indo-Slavic symbol related to the swastika. It was burned into his flesh like a new brand, and as I watched, the weeping wound crawled with a tiny spark of bright orange energy.

“This isn't the evil eye.” I went to one knee on the ground before him, studying the mark from half a foot away. It had a prickling resonance to it… the emanation of strong magic. “What on Earth were you doing to end up with something like this?”

“I wasn't doing nothin',” Slava replied. “I didn't see nobody, no one came near me, nothin'. I was on shift and my chest started hurting like someone stabbed me, man.”

“But you went and roughed someone up,” I said, flatly. “Who?”

Slava looked up past me, to Rodion.

“No one who can do magic, if I'm even right at all. I'll tell you about it later in the office,” he grunted.

I refocused on the injury. “Can you think of anyone else you might have ticked off over the last week or two? Anyone’s girlfriend cheat with you? Debts? Did you sell bad dope to anyone…?”

“No man. No way.” Slava shook his head emphatically. “Only thing I did was the job on Maslak.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rodion frown. His eyes darkened and went distant. You could almost hear the gears grinding inside of his skull. He had been shouting about someone before… something about Slava and Petro laying the thumbscrews on some Yankee.

“When did this mark appear?” I glanced back at the door, making sure that my father was no longer there, and pulled one of my gloves off. I kept my hands covered at all times, including during the heat of summer. Waking, sleeping… there were only three reasons I ever took my gloves off. Two of those reasons involved the bathroom; the other instance was when I needed maximum contact with fields of arcane energy.

Slava sniffed. “Tonight, about forty-five minutes ago. I was out on the floor, just walking around on the railing. Then this hit. It hurt like getting shot… and now I feel really fucking weird. Like something’s wrapped around my heart.”