Steve Tem - Ubo

The sudden bolt of pain hit him in the left side of the head. He thought he might have been shot or struck by lightning. But he had not given his permission for such things to happen. He stumbled forward. He felt an increased weakness in his legs, and a stab that shot through his shoulders, followed by a profound feeling of loss. His right arm stiffened. He attempted to stretch out the hand. But he lost the borders of himself. He could not be sure where he ended. He fell. He could feel his own piss pooling beneath him, but there was nothing he could do.

For a brief time he forgot who he was, but remembered what he had done and still had to do. There was an increasing coldness in his limbs, but nothing like the cold that, by his own choosing, smothered his heart. He became an infant in an old man’s body, possessed of only a vague understanding, but an infant capable of a profound hatred. Hate fueled his determination. But there was nothing he could do with that determination. There was nothing he could do.

He was aware later when someone else came into the room. The man leaned over and looked into his face. One of his guards. He tried to tell the guard what was happening to him, as best he understood it, but again the “Dzu… dzu. Dzu… dzu.” The imbecile failed to understand.

Then Stalin could hear himself snoring. His mind was wide awake, and yet here he was snoring. He was aware, too, when others came in, their incomprehensible voices obviously alarmed. They sounded like chickens who’ve found a dead wolf lying in the coop. They picked him up and carried him to the sofa in the large dining room.

And later, when his subordinates stood over him, talking, he could feel their panic. They were afraid to do anything, and so they did nothing. Beria was alternately kissing his hand then cursing him. Once he stirred and tried to look at this betrayer. Beria dropped to his knees and begged for forgiveness.

Stalin was aware, but he could not respond. Still, it filled him with great satisfaction.

He could hear Nikita weeping in the background. He could not see him, but Stalin was sure he was making a spectacle of himself. A crocodile’s tears. Nonsense. Stalin, he was the only crocodile in the room.

He opened his mouth and shouted at them, blood showering his undershirt.

At some point a doctor, perhaps more than one, came in, sounding frightened, unsure. Do not hand me over to these idiots! But the order never reached his lips. He felt someone fiddling with his lips, prying open his mouth with shaking hands, taking out his plates. Careful! They tore his shirt off. They fiddled half-heartedly with his arm. Was his situation boring them?

Finally he could feel them placing leeches behind his ears. This did not disgust him. They were like old, true friends. Perhaps they would bury the leeches with him, suitable companions for the long nights alone.

Later he heard his weak son Vassily in the room, screaming that they had killed his father! But Stalin had no family—he was talking of someone else. Stalin, the real Stalin, would live forever.

At the end his sparrow entered the room. She kept trying to speak to him, but he was too busy choking. Her voice sounded like insects buzzing inside a bag. He was in agony, and yet it was as if it were happening to someone else, Ivanovich perhaps, or Sosa. Finally he opened his eyes and shook his terrible finger at them all. He could not see their faces, but he knew that they were all dead.

DANIEL BELIEVED HE woke up several times during the night. It was difficult to tell, half-awake or half-sleep being so close to the mental state experienced while wandering around inside a scenario. He remembered a great deal of buzzing, as if his nerves had short-circuited.

Was this what dying was like? It seemed entirely possible, the noise memories made as they disintegrated.

His time as Stalin still disturbed him. The lack of human caring always loomed, just on the other side of a fragile membrane. And it didn’t require that much effort to cross over—a series of significant losses, disappointments, disillusionment, or maybe just a night of poor, interrupted sleep so that you temporarily forgot how to do the things that good people do.

The werewolf was howling again. It sounded closer, pounding through the floor right under his feet. He wondered if they had moved the werewolf, or if it was some acoustic trick of the architecture.

Again, this howl longer and lower than the rest, as if they were torturing him and he was giving up. But the roaches didn’t torture, did they? A matter of definition. Around him the other residents were stirring, rising, talking to themselves as they often did. He wondered whether the boy from the roof had to hide again this morning.

Daniel was the last one of their group to enter the waiting room. He found them arguing, a common occurrence of late. Before joining them he stopped by the large window, thinking of the coin the boy had found. Examining the crumbling horizon line, he felt a mirroring disintegration within himself. What he saw out there would not have seemed alien to certain residents of Detroit or Kosovo.

“The Catholic Inquisition, the Puritan witch hunts, the Mormon massacre at Mountain Meadows—“ Gandhi ticked them off on his narrow fingers, bending each back as far as possible and wiggling it for good measure. “—Aztec human sacrifice, the Indian thuggee murders, the Crusades, not to mention all the children molested or abused under the cloak of religion. The greatest crimes in history, all committed in the name of religion.”

“Of course, those are terrible, terrible things.” Charles/Lenin looked flustered. “But look at Nazi Germany’s Jewish Holocaust or Stalin’s Great Purge. We all know about those things, right? We’ve played the roles. Those people were atheists. Certainly atheists have committed more than their fair share of atrocities.”

Daniel seldom involved himself in those kinds of discussions. People rarely changed their minds, so what was the point? Especially when there were far more immediate concerns, such as survival, such as the absence from your family.

But if he had said something, he would have told them it was about collective belief. Groups of people believing the same way, in a god, in a cause, in a particular way of life. But perhaps that was too broad—fear made him exaggerate. Belief could be a great thing—people did heroic things because of belief. Belief without generosity, without compassion destroyed people. Daniel didn’t go to church—just stepping inside a church filled him with anxiety. But he felt the same way stepping into a filled meeting hall where people planned their perfect world.

The werewolf howled again, and the others stopped what they were doing. “Can’t somebody do something about that?” Gandhi was angry. “We should do something about that.” No one replied. He scowled, emphasizing the bony, gnome-like quality of his thin face.

“Well, I believe in divine retribution, and punishment for sin,” Lenin said, sitting on his bed now. “I don’t know why else we’d be here, except for punishment. And those roaches, they look like the very Devil, don’t they? And this place, you can’t tell me it isn’t some kind of Hell where we’ve been sent to recreate the wicked lives of the damned.” He waited, perhaps to see if there would be any objections, and hearing none, went on. “I run a Bible study group, or I did, before I was sent here. It was more than Bible study, actually—we talked about all kinds of things. It was extremely important to me. I used to say it saved me.