Anthony Marra - A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

“Okay.” He didn’t know what else to say. The commanding officer beamed gratefully. Afraid the man would kiss him, Ramzan made the first move to the jeep. His captors followed.

The soldiers led them down the hillside, tenderly, so they didn’t lose their balance. The commanding officer opened the jeep door for Ramzan and cut the zip-strip with the serrated edge of a hunting knife.

“Watch your head,” cautioned the commanding officer, who would never tell another soul of his military service. The woman he was to wed in three and a half years would know him as a hundred people — a husband, a father, a churchgoer, an elementary school teacher, a charity worker — and would never find a commanding officer in that population she so dearly loved.

Ramzan slid to the far side of the seat. Dokka sat beside him. A few uncomfortable minutes passed before the commanding officer reappeared in the passenger seat with a Marlboro Red, the rebel field commander’s favorite brand, dangling from his lips. The officer and other soldiers watched him expectantly.

“What?” Ramzan asked.

“You haven’t fastened your seat belt,” the commanding officer observed.

“My seat belt?” He glanced around. All the soldiers were wearing seat belts.

“We’re not going anywhere until you buckle up,” the commanding officer said.

Ramzan nodded, yes, of course he was required to wear a seat belt, just as he was required to give directions to a torture camp, because stupidity was the single abiding law of the universe. He buckled up, and took a compass from his jacket pocket. “Turn around,” he said. “The Landfill is behind us.”

Within an hour Ramzan directed the jeep to the road that would take them to the Landfill. Ovals of melted snow appeared in the fields. Strangely curvaceous patches of damp dirt. The sun shone. At one point he yawned and felt the nudge of Dokka’s elbow. The hollow-cheeked, grease-lipped soldier dozed beside him.

“I think Akhmed is sleeping with my wife,” Dokka said. Ramzan turned back to the window. Silvery branches darted past. The following summer would be beautiful. He had heard all he cared to hear about Dokka’s wife.

Early December 2004. Two weeks before Dokka disappeared. In the cabin of the abandoned logging truck. The first conversation with the Cossack colonel.

“Ramzan Geshilov?”

“Reporting, sir.”

“Do you recognize my voice?”

“I don’t, sir. Are you filling in for Captain Ivan Fyodorovich?”

“Is he the officer you report to?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, who?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I have fucked the wife of your superior officer eighty-seven times, and only the first three were before they married. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am told you are among our less incompetent assets in the Volchansk region. Is that true?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“At last, someone who tells the truth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the weather like in Eldár Forest?”

“It is … it’s sunny. And cold.”

“That’s what the meteorological report states. I’m glad that the meteorologists are honest, at least for today.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are you this very moment?”

“The cabin of an abandoned logging truck. Three kilometers from the village proper. Sir.”

“Good. You are speaking with me rather than the cuckolded captain because a situation has arisen of the utmost importance. Since the captain can’t solve the case of his missing wife, who disappears into my bed each Thursday, I wouldn’t trust him with this. You see, the ballistics report has come back on a gun used in the assassination of an FSB colonel last year.”

“Last year?”

“Yes. A year to get a simple ballistics report. It’s December 2004, and it’s just come in. When I was last in Moscow I read that Chinese assembly plants can produce a new car in a few hours. And it takes a year for us to produce a ballistics report that connects the bullet in the head of an FSB colonel to the gun lying meters away.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The report has come back, and I want you to find where the gun came from.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“Did you break wind?”

“No, sir.”

“Then don’t waste a request for my pardon.”

“Yes, sir. It’s just that I’m not sure how I’ll find the origin of a gun fired a year ago.”

“It’s one of those needle-in-a-haystack situations, is it?”

“With all respect, sir, it’s a needle in a needle-stack.”

“On that account, you’re in luck. It’s one of your needles.”

“You must be mistaken. I haven’t run so much as a toothpick in the past two years. Ask the captain, sir.”

“How about I ask his wife instead. No, I’m not concerned about what you claim not to be selling, but rather about what you’ve already sold. You see, the serial number on the Makarov pistol used to kill the colonel in December 2003 corresponds sequentially with the serial numbers of the Makarov pistols found in the back of your truck when our brave lads ambushed you and took you to the Landfill in January 2002.”

Silence.

“Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Sir.”

“This puts us in a rather difficult situation. In seeking information on the supplier of a gun used to assassinate an FSB colonel, we are immediately led to a person whom we pay to provide us with just that information.”

“I swear I had nothing to do with it, sir. Who was the assassin, sir?”

“A Black Widow. A shahidka . A separatist trained and sent by those animals in the mountains.”

“Was she taken alive … sir?”

“The shahidka was detained at a filtration point. Cleverly, she seduced the colonel, a man, I am told, so very well endowed that only the cavernous cunt of a Chechen has the latitude to accommodate him. No doubt hearing of the colonel’s great girth, the shahidka used her powers of seduction. When they were alone, she shot him.”

“But, sir, why wasn’t she checked for weapons?”

“If you still had a pair of stones between your legs, you would know that the average cunt of your womenfolk is capacious enough to conceal a rocket launcher. The colonel was a fool, no doubt, but nonetheless, he was still a colonel.”

“Yes, sir, but wouldn’t it be more prudent to trace the shahidka , rather than the gun?”

“A gun can be identified more easily than a person. There is a lesson in that.”

“But the shahidka …”

“Irrelevant.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“No, you will not do what you can do. You will do what you are told.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Numbers are the amoral language of absolute truth. These serial numbers do not lie. At some point you were in possession of that Makarov, and I will know the name and location of the next hands who held it. I was promoted to replace the departed colonel. I now hold his rank and command, and so, understandably, it is my chief priority to kill the architects of his assassination. Should I fall victim to a similar fate, and should the cuckolded captain be given my rank, I truly fear the fate of the Russian nation.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see from your file that you have a father.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And he lives with you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He turned seventy-nine this year?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He survived the Great Patriotic War?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the deportations to Kazakhstan?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And eleven years there on the steppe?”

“Twelve, sir.”

“And you would like him to see his eightieth birthday?”