Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

It was late afternoon when the key clicked in the lock and a guard heaved the cell door open. “Fyodor Solovyov,” he shouted. Fyodor’s head jerked up. He rose. His face looked as though it hadn’t sorted out which expression to use. He shook hands with Ears and wove his way to the door, disappearing. It was from watching Ears, left behind, that I understood this was not a scheduled rendezvous. Ears was nervous. He sat on a bunk, holding his hands. I lowered my eyes to a book about fishing. I was hungry, thirsty, tired, sad. My life in New York had disappeared so easily, replaced with these two things: a book about fishing and the short story of two teenaged thugs. Sometimes it is just strength , I said to myself. The only answer is persistence . I looked at Ears. I looked at my book.

Fyodor did not return until the next day. I was not there for his arrival. I came back from the library and found him sitting on his bunk, shrunken somehow, reduced. His face seemed emptied out, with bruises on his temples. There were marks on his hands. He noticed me and raised his eyes, and I saw an unexpected, terrible hatred. I saw fury. His face flashed pink and he lowered his gaze. I went to my spot on the floor and sat, encircling my knees with my arms. I had lost interest in my book. Fyodor and Ears were murmuring to each other, just out of view. Markevich stood in a far corner, watching. I was all alone in a Moscow prison. Was Eva Emilievna in a nearby cell, I wondered. Had she been arrested in Leningrad, hauled from her apartment, brought by a Black Maria to an interrogation cell? Who is Lev Sergeyvich? Tell us about him . Did she have enough to eat? Had she been hurt?

The evening meal passed undisturbed. Before lights-out, Fyodor appeared beside me. He crouched so silently. He ran his index finger over his lower lip. “I am going to kill you, Lyova,” he whispered.

I turned to him abruptly. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I kill rats,” he said. “You think you will go on betraying your cellmates? Cowering behind your books?” He snickered. “I kill rats.”

I swallowed. “I am not a rat.”

“When you are being beaten,” Fyodor explained, silken, “there is a lot of time to consider who told who what. There is a lot of time to consider who might lie about you to the guards, who might want to lie, which zeks in their nice shirts—”

“Why would I speak to them?”

Fyodor did not like being interrupted. His lips went white. I imagined Ears in the shadows, drawing his knife. “There is a lot of time to remember the old man who is always coming and going from the cell, prim and swaggering.”

“What about Markevich?” I said, because I am a wretched human being.

“Not this time,” he murmured. “I know, Lev. I know , you shit, and I will kill you in your sleep.”

I did not sleep. All night I listened to the breath and groans and snoring. I smelled the exhalations of imprisoned men. I lay on my back, fists clenched, staring at the hideous blue light bulb, aware of every movement, every voice. There was shouting, far away, through the walls, and men crying. There was wind in the grate, sewer scents. A man rose and urinated into the latrine beside me. Fyodor was motionless in his bunk. I wondered if he had changed his mind.

Men began to stir before dawn, anticipating the competition for the shower. The patrolling guards began their reveille. I crowded with the others by the door, furtive. Fyodor had rolled to sitting. I saw him go over to Ears. For a moment I had the instinct to go over there, to explain myself, to say that I was no informer, just a scientist, a patriot, that I wished them only well. I did not go over. I watched as Ears and Fyodor began to argue, muttering with lowered voices. Fyodor marked his knee with the side of his hand. Ears shook his head. Fyodor became more and more forceful. “Fyodor,” I heard Ears say, balefully. “Come on, Fyodor.”

The guards took us away to the showers.

Fyodor made his move at breakfast. I was sitting stooped over some gruel, my back to where the guards made tea. I heard a sound behind me. I turned. Fyodor was holding a pot of boiling water. The first drops landed scalding on my ear as I swivelled, tore upward, knocking him away. The pot fell, spilling steam and scorching our toes and Fyodor roared forward, wild-eyed, with clawing hands. He was not a fighter. I shoved his arms aside, punched him hard in the side. He wheeled and came at me again. He swung. I ducked. His huge hand grabbed my shoulder and I kneed him hard in the solar plexus, shoved him again. He slipped on his heel, fell, struck his head on a concrete block. His eyes rolled. There was blood.

Where were the guards? I do not know. Why did no one stop us? Because we were all fearful of consequences. But everyone was watching when I killed Fyodor Solovyov. The Rebbe was watching. I was thinking: My second murder is not unlike my first . Blood is blood. It pushed into the steaming water.

The crowd parted and the Rebbe stood beside me, the giant former wrestler. He blew out his cheeks. He gave me a very level look, a serious man’s look, and he kneeled and touched Fyodor’s face, felt for a pulse.

“Get out of here,” he said finally, without turning.

I took two steps backward, into the crowd.

The Rebbe stood, bent, grabbed the shoulder of Fyodor’s coat, dragged him across the red spray and against the wall. He straightened to assess us.

He said, “The boy slipped on the water.”

I WAS NOT BOTHERED again during my time at Butyrka.

The guards did not question me. Of course they did not: Markevich, our informer, did not inform.

One quiet morning, Ears sat down beside me and asked if I played chess. He had a set, made of dried pieces of bread.

Prisoners must cultivate short memories.

ON THE FIFTEENTH OF AUGUST, I was brought into an office and sentenced to eight years in a corrective labour camp.

Eight years, Clara.

It was my forty-third birthday.

I HAD NEVER BEEN so hopeful as when Lenin played the theremin. It was 1922. I was twenty-six years old. We were in a conference room, with stooped lamps and tall windows. The trees were bare but Moscow was flooded in bright spring light; the city rose up from the afternoon like a Fabergé miniature, a wonder assembled by human hands.

Fifteen people stood with us around the table. I was wearing a suit under my lab coat, polished shoes. One of Lenin’s staff had given me a telescoping metal pointer. I wasn’t accustomed to using it, kept opening and closing it in my palm. Kalinin was there, and Nikolayev, the radio commissar. And Lenin! Lenin himself, attentive and present and listening before asking questions, pinching his beard between his fingers. He was compact with a long chest, a surprisingly strong physique. Some sliver of me wondered: Another student of Shaolin?

We began with the radio watchman. I was so nervous, explaining the theory and then delving too deeply into the provenance of the components, opening and closing the silver pointer, citing journal articles by author and title. Finally, Nikolayev said, “But does it work?” and everyone laughed, but Lenin only gently, inclining his head as if inviting me into the joke. I turned on the device and nothing happened, because nothing was supposed to happen. “If someone could cross the perimeter?” I murmured. One of the commissars volunteered; he wrapped a scarf around his face and tiptoed toward the wire-clipped vase, full of poppies. We held our breath. The alarm sounded — a small bell and an illuminated bulb. Such modest magic. But the men exploded in cheers. They slapped the foiled thief on his back. The flowers shook. Lenin said, “Dmitri, I am relieved that you are such a poor burglar.”