Anthony Marra - The Tsar of Love and Techno - Stories

A single gunshot launches him from dreams of his wife and into stark morning light. His pulse leaps with jungle-cat acceleration. He’s just behind the tree line, where he passed out in the night. When he figures out that the gunfire isn’t directed toward him, he examines his foot. The wound has clotted into a black slit from toes to arch. Another spurt of gunfire. He drags himself until he can see a half-dozen rebels standing at the bottom of the mined hill. The spindly one angles his Kalashnikov skyward and fires another shot. Beside him, the old man smooths his rebellious mustache with one hand and holds a large, unwieldy book in the other. Marooned alone in the middle of the hill, thirty meters up, Kolya kneels.

For a moment, Danilo assumes the rebels are firing at Kolya, but the gunman has his rifle pointed at the morning sun and shoots to encourage Kolya, rather than kill him. On his knees, Kolya claws at the ground. He seems to take direction from the old man, who uses the fat art book as a map. They’re making him dig for mines, Danilo realizes. But no, that’s not it either, because Kolya pulls a handful of something from his pocket — dill seeds? — sprinkles them over the holes he’s dug, and begins repacking the dirt.

A cement-thick heaviness hardens in Danilo’s stomach as he realizes that Kolya is being made to extend the herb garden up the mined hill. As punishment for Danilo’s escape? He doesn’t want to know. He bandages his foot with folded green leaves. During the next spray of gunfire, he slams the trowel head into his leg cuffs. The rusted metal chain snaps on his third try. He spreads his legs for the first time in months and a wonderful relief seeps along his tendons. The undergrowth cushions his wounded foot and he hobbles away as fast as the pain allows. The scent of butter-fried potatoes hangs sweetly in the air. His wife is setting the table for lunch. An explosion echoes from the mined hill and enters the forest, but it’s nothing, only a plate falling from the table. Little pieces of flowery porcelain lie everywhere. His wife tucks in her apron and drops to one knee. With open arms she gathers them all.

1

Galina called to say she had bought me a first-class ticket to Moscow, and then she said that my brother was dead. I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d never even received first-class mail since the postal service introduced it six years ago, let alone a first-class train compartment. As for Kolya, well, he’d been dead for years.

She lived in a top-floor penthouse with a chest-tightening view, lined with thick white carpets that may have been polar bear pelts. Wealth announces itself with what’s easy to break and impossible to clean. The chairs were all curvy works of art that turned sitting into yoga exercises. Jasmine and plum perfumed the air. A crooning tenor went into histrionics on the Bose. Dozy bronze Buddhas meditated on the bookshelf. I was wondering if artsy-fartsy types in Tibet fetishize crucifixes when Galina returned, her loosely tied kimono yawning at the chest and knees.

“My. God. Who is your hairstylist?” she asked.

In truth, I’ve never had a haircut that’s fit my head. One-Eyed Onegin used to give my head the once-over with the clippers, but depth perception isn’t his strong suit. Plus I’m pretty sure he uses them to shave his pubes.

“I don’t really have one.”

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it. Very avant-garde.”

If a stopped clock is right twice a day, a bad haircut is right twice a decade.

It had been longer than that since I’d last seen Galina, since my brother left for his first tour and she became a celebrity and they never saw each other again. It’s easy to forget what someone really looks like when you see them everywhere. On billboards her face is airbrushed as smooth and shiny as an inner organ, and she has a bust-waist-hips ratio that is found in nature only inside the mind of a Dr. Frankenstein with Adobe Photoshop training. But the Galina standing there in a slab of noon light, made up and manicured, in a fancy kimono that ten million silkworms gave their lives for, looked more person-like than the Galina of the billboard, tabloid, or screen.

“It’s been the most brutal morning, Alexei,” she said. People who have it easy are always telling you how hard it is.

“You’ve been following the earthquake in Indonesia?” I asked.

“What? No, a trollop from the Royal Shakespeare Company landed the Russian seductress-spy role in the new Bond film. Probably shagged Leo the Lion to get the part.”

“I’m sure you’d have gotten it if anyone in Hollywood had seen Deceit Web ,” I offered encouragingly. Her gaze dive-bombed to the floor. Some people you just can’t cheer up.

“I know I should count my blessings, but that’s what accountants are for.”

“Must be weird being you.”

“It’s a strange thing, Alexei. When we were teenagers, I’d never even imagined living in a penthouse with a chauffeur and a chef and a butler. But now that I have it, it’s nothing. Am I aw ful for saying that?”

“Just a little.”

“Life’s a little awful, I’m afraid. Pitiful creatures spinning on a senseless rock around a dying sun in a cold and uncaring cosmos and they still won’t give me the Bond movie. Fighting over matches while the world burns, no?”

“Sure,” I said. But I was trying to decide if it was rude to take a fifth konfeti when she still hadn’t taken one. Nope, definitely not.

“So how’ve you been? You’re not still in university, are you?”

“I am,” I beamed. Through sheer grit and tireless effort, I’d managed to stretch a five-year philology degree into its tenth annum. It was a loaves-and-fishes variety of miracle. The universe may be cold, dark, and indifferent, but in university you get to take club drugs all night and sleep all day. “I’m working on my thesis paper. On Odessa Tales . I have my title, ‘Babel’s Babbles,’ but that’s about it.”

“Any good?”

“I haven’t read it,” I said. “I don’t want the text to influence my interpretation.”

A sixth confection dissolved into a starchy paste that sopped the saliva from my tongue. We were quiet for a little while.

“You heard about Lydia?” I finally asked.

All the blush in a beauty box wouldn’t’ve brightened Galina’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said. Her eyes fixed on a safe, vacant patch of wall over my left shoulder. “Alina told me about her and her mother, and of course your brother. Then Olga told me. Then Lara. Then Darya. Then Zlata. And Tamara must’ve told me a dozen times”—the six-member gaggle that feasted on crumbs fallen from the table of Galina’s celebrity; Lydia had been their seventh member—“I don’t even know how they get my number. I change it every few months, mainly to avoid them, and they still somehow find it. The Americans should hire them to track down Al Qaeda. Ten minutes on the phone with Tamara is enough to make anyone disavow their most sacred beliefs”—she lit an incense stick that smelled of lavender fields doused in sunshine— “but anyway, Lydia. Let’s be honest, never the sharpest bayonet in the battalion, was she? I’m not saying she should’ve known better than to confide in them. But, come on . You could confide a secret to a megaphone and it would stay quieter. I’ve tried to make a film of her murder, but it’s easier coaxing a mouse down a cat’s throat than a decent script into production.”

“It’s a tragedy,” I said. “For Lydia, for Vera, for Kolya, for—”