'Illya. Illya.'
Was that his mother calling his name, calling him awake? No. He struggled closer to the light. No. His mother's voice was never like that. She would never pronounce his name so badly. No.
'Illya. Come on now, Illya.'
It was Napoleon. He blinked and blinked again. His head ached, and he was so hot. The mattress felt sticky with sweat along the length of his back. His chest was wet with sweat, and he felt terrible.
He focussed on his surroundings. They were still in the same place, still in that odd, dusty nursery where they had taken refuge. The ceiling was high above him, and stained with damp. He could see the laths under the plaster as little lines where the damp had spread from them. Perhaps there were tiles missing from the roof above, but he had hardly been looking as they pushed through the brush to gain entry through that broken downstairs window. He had been coughing so hard that his lungs burnt, staggering over the ground, thinking how he would prefer to be shot or stabbed or tortured than at the mercy of an unthinking virus.
'Illya,' Napoleon said again.
'M'awake,' he said. 'Awake.'
His throat was so sore it was hard to get the words out. He coughed phlegm into his mouth and swallowed, and it hurt all the way through to his ears. His stomach was clenching. There was a hollow feeling in the centre of him. He tried to remember when they had last eaten. Maybe it was that meal in the stolovaya back in the city, when he had first started to feel the back of the nose feeling of an incipient cold. But then they had been forced to flee the city, and there had been hours of walking, and a night sleeping under the trees, and not a thing to eat in all that time.
He looked about again, seeing the shafts of autumn sunlight through dusty air that were slanting across the room.
'You've slept for a long time. You could do with drinking something,' Napoleon said.
'I could do with eating something,' Illya murmured.
His throat felt as if someone had been filing it in his sleep. Eating would feel like swallowing broken glass, but he was so hungry that he didn't care.
Napoleon held something out on his palm; a long, flat tin. He read the writing on it without thinking. He had been immersed in his native language for days. Сардина. Sardines.
He coughed again, and sniffed, and Napoleon passed him a torn scrap of sheet to use as a handkerchief.
'Where did you – ?' he asked, pressing the cloth against his nose, eyeing that dirty old tin.
'Our predecessors had squirrelling instincts,' Napoleon said. 'I found a little store.'
Illya started to sit up, and Napoleon reached to pull the pillow up against the wooden bedhead. The bed was small, but it was quite adequate. It gave him such a strong memory of his own childhood, of his own small bed squeezed into his parents' bedroom in their Kyiv apartment. When papa had been away at war he had slept with his mother, and his own bed had stood empty. He remembered it, though, so well.
'A store?' he asked.
Did Napoleon mean a shop? Had he gone somewhere? He felt so muzzy.
'A loose floorboard,' Napoleon told him. 'I don't know anything about the children who resided in this lovely place, but they must have been like kids anywhere. Raiding the pantry. Hiding things away. I found a few cans. It's not much, but it's enough for a few days, as long as the contents are sound.'
He held out a tin cup of water.
'First, drink that,' he said. 'I got the old pump working.'
Illya drank. The water was cold and it didn't taste good, but it was pleasant on his throat. It was ridiculous to be struck down with illness when they were behind the iron curtain, on assignment, trying to get back to safety, but there was nothing he could do about it. Napoleon was firm on that. They would garner more attention by trying to travel with Illya in that state, so he had broken into this abandoned country house, and here they had stayed.
'Those sardines,' he said.
It was an old, dull tin. How long had it been stored under the floorboards? This house had been abandoned for a long time. Windows were broken and furnishings were mouldering. It looked as if a lot of the stuff had been robbed away, and this nursery had been the only habitable place. It felt as if it were full of ghosts.
Napoleon peeled back the lid from the can, and Illya watched, his eyes wide, his stomach clenching. He felt like an eight year old in wartime, half-starved, appreciative of every crumb. He prayed that the contents of the tin would be edible after all this time.
'God, Napoleon, just give me the – ' he began, because Napoleon seemed to be taking an interminable amount of time in removing the lid.
Napoleon tutted. 'It's coming, impatient Russian,' he said.
The lid peeled off completely with a little click.
'There,' Napoleon said. 'Looks okay. Smells okay.'
He held the tin out to his partner. Illya pushed his fingers into the oily mess, pulling out meat and shoving it, dripping, into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, not bothering about the rather metallic taste. The fish was edible, and he ate. He licked the oil from his fingers and eyed the rest of the fish in the tin.
'You have some,' he said.
Napoleon wrinkled his nose, but he took a piece of fish and ate it delicately, reminding Illya of nothing so much as a cat. He wiped his fingers on a piece of rag, and turned the tin towards his partner again.
'Gourmet dining,' he said. 'Can I tempt you to another, sir?'
'You eat your half,' Illya said, because he was afraid he might just scoop the lot into his mouth if he were given the chance.
'I think I've had my half,' Napoleon said, his nose wrinkling again. 'Go on. Eat it. You need to keep up your strength.'
'It's only a cold,' Illya said, but he took the tin anyway.
'Influenza can kill,' Napoleon said very seriously. 'Eat the rest, Illya, then get some more sleep.'
'You sound like a public health commercial,' Illya complained, but he ate, pulling each flaking piece of fish into his mouth, licking his fingers, drinking the oil. Then he sank back against the musty pillow, head aching, chest aching, lungs burning. Maybe Napoleon was right. Maybe it was the 'flu. It was miserable to be ill.
He remembered sitting at the table in the apartment in Kyiv, his mother on one side, him on the other, his father's place empty. He remembered her putting bread down, and two bowls of thin soup, and splitting the bread unevenly. She always took the smaller part. Illya always looked to his father's chair, and missed him, and felt glad there wasn't a third mouth to eat the bread. He always felt tangled and hot with confusion because he missed his father but was glad he wasn't there to share the food. What if he were killed? Would they even know if he'd been killed, with the Germans all through the city? How could papa leave them alone, with Germans all through the city? But he was fighting those men. He was just fighting them in another place. Perhaps he was already dead, and they just didn't know. He would eat the bread and although he was hungry his throat would feel narrow and constricted, and when he went to bed he would lie against the warm softness of his mother's body, and miss papa so hard that he cried.
'Illyusha, Illyusha,' his mother would whisper. She would turn over in the bed, hips first, shoulders twisting afterwards, making a little grunt because her back always ached. She would press her lips against his forehead and pull his head in towards her soft breasts, and push her arms around his body. He had never caught her crying, but in adulthood he realised that she must have cried. Maybe she had pulled him in against her warm body and held him and soothed him into sleep just so that she could cry alone, without him knowing.
There was a hand stroking his forehead, ever so softly. He could feel the heat prickling through all of him. His joints ached. His head ached. He was on fire, and then he was shivering, and then he was on fire again. The fingers kept stroking over his forehead, and sometimes his skin felt too sensitive to be touched, and sometimes it was a blessed balm.
'Мама,' he murmured, but the soft chuckle wasn't his mother. It was Napoleon. He blinked and saw the nursery ceiling again, and when he turned his aching neck he saw Napoleon sitting by the bed.
'Go to sleep,' Napoleon said.
((O))
There were footsteps across the floor. He opened his eyes with a snap, seeing dimly the ceiling above him. He was hot still, his head ached still, his whole body ached. It must be the middle of the night. Perhaps there was a moon because there were shadows on the walls, black on the walls. But it was night, and he couldn't move, and there were footsteps across the floor, hollow and heavy and hard.
That was the sound of a soldier's boots coming down on the floor. That was – God, he could see him. He could see the silhouette, a man walking across the room, coming across the room and standing, looking down at him. He could hear voices in German, distant somewhere, maybe outside. Somewhere there was the rumble of gunfire. He was pinned to the bed and he was terrified, because he was eight years old and a soldier was there in his room, standing there, a silhouette against the moonlight, just a great black monolith with the outline of the helmet on his head, the outline of the rifle in his hands.
He tried to open his mouth, tried to cry out, but there was something wrong with his body, and he couldn't move. He tried to reach out to mama's body, to wake her, but he couldn't move. He could feel her there next to him, but he couldn't move. The soldier just stood there, looking down at him, and he couldn't see his face. His terror was an eight year old's terror. He'd seen them killing people on the streets just for looking at them in the wrong way. He'd seen someone crumple from a single shot. He tried to scream and he couldn't move, and the soldier stood there, looking down at him. Then, slowly, he turned away.
He lay there, panting, the bed wet with sweat, staring at the ghost of the ceiling above him, the breath grating in his lungs. He could feel the mattress under the palms of his hands. He watched that dark silhouette moving about the room, probing into corners, poking his rifle at unseen things. He walked about, the floor creaking, his footsteps hollow. What was wrong with the room? The room seemed bigger than it should be. This wasn't mama and papa's little bedroom, with his bed along the foot of theirs. It was bigger than it should be. The floor shouldn't be bare…
Suddenly his voice managed to get its way out of his throat, and he was crying out inarticulately, trying to say something but not knowing what. A light flared, a candle was burning, and someone was there shaking his shoulder, shaking him hard.
He burst up out of the bed, his limbs working at last, and he was halfway across the room before he knew what he was doing. He bumped into something hard, and flailed. He saw the moonlight through the window, casting dark shadows on the walls. He stumbled over there, pressing his hands on the sill, staring out over the flat, monochrome farmland that stretched for miles, all vague and ghostly under the light of the moon. Where was that soldier? Where had he gone? There was nothing out there, nothing in the room. No soldiers. No guns. No burning buildings. The wind was buffeting at the walls of the house, and somewhere, far away, thunder rumbled.
He panted, and his lungs hurt, his head swam. He had thought he was hot, but suddenly he was shivering, and Napoleon's arm was around his shoulders. Gently, he was saying, 'Come back to bed, Illya. You had a nightmare. No wonder. You're burning up. Come back to bed.'
'There was – There was – ' he said.
He followed Napoleon's gentle push towards the bed.
'It was a dream, Illya,' Napoleon said.
'A soldier,' Illya managed to say.
'There's no one here,' Napoleon promised him.
The candle was burning on the little table near the bed, so low in the holder that rivers of wax were pooled around it like lava from a volcano. The little light felt like the only real thing.
'There was a soldier,' Illya insisted. 'Standing over me. A – '
A German soldier, he wanted to say. How ridiculous. That was twenty five years ago, and there never had been German soldiers in their apartment. They had stayed out in the streets, thank god. Inside there had only been the dreams, his mother waking to his panicked cries, soothing him until he fell back to sleep.
'Sit down,' Napoleon said.
Illya sat on the wooden chair next to the bed, shivering so hard that his teeth were clashing together in his mouth. Napoleon was shaking out the blankets, turning them over so that the damp of sweat could evaporate, and trying to plump some thickness back into the old feather pillow.
'Come on,' Napoleon said gently, turning back the blankets of the made bed. 'Get in. Try to warm up.'
'I'm so cold,' Illya said, and his voice was plaintive.
He remembered that winter, one of those winters under the occupation, the frost in beautiful swirls on the windowpanes. He remembered being so cold, so hungry, his mother's arms around him in bed as they tried to stay warm, tried to stay in bed for as long as they could, just to stay warm. He looked about for the figure of the soldier again, but there was nothing there. There was no one there. He wondered dizzily if ghosts really existed. Maybe the soldiers had come into this house. Maybe they had walked around this nursery, and walked around the nursery every night now as formless shadows. Perhaps the house had been empty since the war...
'Get in,' Napoleon said again.
Illya climbed, shaking, onto the damp mattress, shaking so hard that his arms and legs were jerking, his teeth were clattering like old bones.
Napoleon tucked the blanket over him and brushed his fringe from his forehead.
'Is that better?'
'Cold,' Illya gritted through his clashing teeth.
Napoleon sighed and clambered into the narrow bed, fitting himself alongside Illya, naked but for his underwear. Illya burrowed against him, caring about nothing but finding heat. Napoleon's arms folded warmly around him, rubbing warmth into his back, holding him as the shaking slowly subsided.
'Do you believe in ghosts?' Illya asked, his voice muffled against Napoleon's shoulder.
'No,' Napoleon said, 'and neither do you. Not God, not ghosts. Just facts. Why. Do you think you saw a ghost?'
'I – thought I saw a soldier,' Illya said, his eyes closed. 'A German soldier, from the war. He was standing in this room.'
'You were dreaming,' Napoleon said softly. 'No ghosts. You were just dreaming. You're burning up. If I had any tylenol, I'd give it to you.'
Illya would have taken anything Napoleon offered him, but they didn't have any drugs at all. They had nothing but their clothes and guns, and a few necessary items in a bag. As it was, he just took the comfort of Napoleon's arms around him, slowly warming him, slowly sinking back into sleep.
((O))
'How are you feeling this morning, котик?' Napoleon asked.
Illya blinked. There was sunshine in the room. Napoleon was standing beside the bed, fully dressed, smiling down at him. His suit was a little creased, but he didn't look as if he had spent the night in an abandoned house.
'I thought – Weren't you in the bed?' he asked groggily, moving his hand under the blankets. All his joints still ached, his head felt stuffed full of cotton, and his lungs still burnt.
'I was for a little while,' Napoleon confirmed. 'Until you turned into your own brand of Soviet heat pump again, then I moved back into the other bed.'
'Oh,' Illya said.
He closed his eyes, remembering the confused dreams. Running, crawling, screaming and making no noise. That man in the room. The soldier in the room… It had seemed so real. He snapped his eyes open again, staring around him. This room was just the same as it had been yesterday; large, half bare, a tattered rocking horse motionless near the window, a wardrobe with a broken mirror on its door. There were no soldiers. There was no one here but himself and Napoleon.
'I woke you up, didn't I?' he asked. 'I'm sorry.'
Napoleon smiled. 'Well, there's nothing like hearing your partner screaming in the night to make you come to with a jolt. It's all right, Illya. You had a fever. You were dreaming.'
Illya shuddered. He felt a little better, though. He didn't feel so hot. His throat wasn't quite so sore.
'That store of food,' he said, and Napoleon grinned.
'Why don't you sit up?' he asked. 'Do you feel up to sitting?'
'Yeah, I feel up to sitting,' Illya murmured, pushing his hands against the mattress.
He felt dizzy, but he could sit up, and he sat there, leaning against the musty pillow, looking at the window on the other side of the room. It was filmed with dirt, and the sunlight sparkled against it. Last night he had looked out over that land, hadn't he? He had seen it all spread out before him in the moonlight.
'I have a morning feast,' Napoleon said, and he presented another can of sardines and then a tin of condensed milk, the label browned and peeling, the lid hacked into jagged edges.
'Did you open that with a chainsaw?' Illya asked, frowning.
'Penknife,' Napoleon said. 'I wasn't exactly sure what was in there, but I recognised молоко. Doesn't quite look like milk...'
'Condensed milk,' Illya said, peering into the tin. The contents were brownish, and congealed.
'I don't know if it's edible,' Napoleon apologised.
He offered up the tin, and a tarnished spoon. Illya took both, dipped the spoon in, and tried a bit.
'Sweet,' he said. It was sweet and creamy, at least.
Napoleon was watching him cautiously. 'I'm just waiting to see if it kills you,' he said.
'It's a bit metallic,' Illya told him, 'but it's okay.'
'Hmm, I'll take your word for it,' Napoleon smiled. He opened the sardine can instead, and started to dig into the contents.
'During the war – ' Illya began, and then stopped.
'Hmm?' Napoleon asked, wiping sardine oil from his lips.
Illya shook his head. 'It doesn't matter,' he said.
Suddenly he didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to think about the small, hungry, terrified boy he had been then. His father had come home alive. Kyiv had been liberated. He hadn't starved, quite. Not quite. He didn't want to tell Napoleon about some of the things he had been forced to eat. He wasn't sure that he'd understand.
He took another mouthful of the congealed condensed milk, and savoured the fullness of it in his mouth. Back home he would have thrown it straight in the bin, but back home there were restaurants and shops on every street, and an U.N.C.L.E. salary was a good one.
'During the war,' Napoleon prompted him.
'It doesn't matter,' Illya said again. 'It was just a hard few years. We were hungry a lot of the time. That's all.'
'That's why you like your food so much, huh?' Napoleon asked him, softness in his brown eyes.
Illya turned his gaze to the window opposite. There wasn't much to be seen out there but pale blue sky. The land was so flat and this nursery was right at the top of the building. He thought he remembered hearing thunder in the night, but no rain. Perhaps the thunder had been far away.
'Have you ever experienced not having enough to eat?' he asked.
Napoleon shuffled his shoulders uncomfortably. 'Outside of missions? Other than for a few days? No, Illya, I haven't. I know a lot of people suffered during the Depression, but my family wasn't among them.'
'No,' Illya said, resisting the urge to say, Of course. It wasn't Napoleon's fault that his family were well off. 'It's hard, Napoleon,' he said. 'It's hard being an eight year old and knowing that every day you'll go to bed hungry, that the whole city is full of hungry people, and you're utterly powerless to do anything about it. It's an ache that nothing will fix.'
'Nothing but food,' Napoleon murmured, holding out the sardine tin.
Illya smiled, taking the tin and carefully lifting some fish into his mouth. Food did fix the physical ache, but something of the mental ache was still with him, even now.
'How are you feeling, Illya?' Napoleon asked.
'Like hell,' Illya replied, but at least he had food in his stomach.
'There's enough food for another couple of days here, if we're careful. You can spend a little while getting better. I've picked out our route for when we're able to leave. We just need to get another ten miles, then there's a contact who can help us with new identities and transport.'
'I'll make ten miles,' Illya promised.
'You'll have to,' Napoleon said seriously. 'You're the native. I'm the one who stays quiet in the background. I can't get out of here without you, Illya.'
Illya smiled. He imagined that he might be able to walk for a distance in a few days, and present himself adequately to strangers, but he didn't think he'd be able to do much else.
'I can't get out of here without you,' he countered.
He wouldn't have got anywhere without Napoleon. He would probably be curled in fever under a bush somewhere, waiting to be picked up by the authorities and sent to a labour camp, since he couldn't reveal their mission. He had hardly known what he was doing for the last couple of miles, getting to this place. It had all been Napoleon's doing, getting him here. They would need each other to get any further.
((O))
He was there in the apartment, looking out of the window at smoke drifting up through still air. There was black smoke everywhere, running up into the air in dark columns, like twisting fingers sticking up all over the city. His heart was going to burst with the agony of it all. The soldiers had gone after every beautiful place and torn it apart. They had taken everything apart. They had ripped his world apart. Domes he had walked past, had gazed up at while holding his mother's hand, had been shattered like Christmas baubles. Churches had been turned to dust and ashes. The university library had been set alight and all those books had drifted into the air as smoke. He wept, and dust settled on his wet face.
He could hear children playing. He tried to blink, to see properly through the smoke, and he came to realise that he wasn't in the little apartment, but in this dusty, deserted nursery. It was deserted, but there were children there. He could hear them playing. Someone was counting. Someone was reciting a familiar rhyme, so familiar it sent shivers down his spine, but he couldn't grasp the words. He couldn't see any children. His eyes were full of smoke and he could hardly open them, and he pulled himself across the floor, his legs so weak and shaking, feeling the roughness and dirt of those bare floorboards under his fingers.
Where were the children? He tried to see the children. He strained to open his eyes, and he could see silhouettes at the window. There were three of them, he thought, standing there at the window. There was moonlight beyond. He had thought it was daytime, but there was darkness and moonlight beyond. Everywhere were those fingers of smoke pushing up into the sky, black against a lighter black. One of the children was singing that rhyme, his, her, voice thin against the darkness. He needed to tell them to run. He needed to tell them to get out of here, but he couldn't make his voice work. He tried to shout, and his voice wouldn't leave his throat. What language was he speaking? All his languages seemed caught up in his throat. They'd understand Russian, he knew, but he tried to think of the words, and French and Spanish and English all milled in his mind. He couldn't think of the right Russian words. Perhaps the Germans had taken that away too. He could have shouted in German, but that would terrify the children, and he could feel their terror already growing, because they knew now that he was behind them, a shapeless, crawling thing on the floor, and they didn't know he was a friend.
There were footfalls in the room, boots treading across the floor. The terror crawled up and down his spine. The children were at the window and they didn't seem to know there were men in boots walking across the floor. They kept looking out of the window at the smoke, singing their rhymes, counting, looking at the smoke. He lay there on the floor, trying to crawl, and he could see the dark shadows of their boots moving, their boots close to his face. He wasn't afraid they would kick him. He was afraid for those children, and he tried to crawl towards them across the floor, but they couldn't see the soldiers, they could only see him, they were afraid of him, and –
'Illya! Illya, wake up!'
He drew in air so hard his throat hurt. He was gasping, thirsty, his throat and chest aching and sore. He stared around at the empty room, stared at the window. There was no moonlight. There was hardly any more light out there than there was in here. He stared around, searching for the soldiers, but he couldn't see anyone. There was just Napoleon, bending over the bed.
'You know, you need to stop doing this, IK,' Napoleon said seriously. 'I could do with some sleep.'
He panted. His entire body was wet with sweat. The backs of Napoleon's fingers touched his forehead, and his partner tutted softly.
He sat up, head swimming, staring around the room, trying to distinguish the black shapes of objects from the darkness of the walls, searching instinctively for anywhere that might hide children, soldiers, anything.
'The children,' he said dazedly.
'No children,' Napoleon said in a very calm voice. 'No men, no children, Illya. Just you and me. You have a fever. You're dreaming.'
'They burnt everything. They – '
His legs were over the edge of the bed, and Napoleon was trying to stop him getting up. He pushed past him, blundering across the room with his hands held out. He found the door and pressed his hands over the wood, down to the handle. He turned it and shook it uselessly against the lock.
'I have the key,' Napoleon said from behind him. 'I've locked us in for safety, remember? So we can both sleep, or try to sleep.'
He stared around again.
'There's no one here,' he said.
'No,' Napoleon told him. 'I told you that. Just you and me. You were dreaming. There's no one here. Go back to bed and go back to sleep, at least so I can get some sleep.'
'They're hungry,' he said confusedly.
'They're not real. You're hungry. You can have something to eat in the morning. Now go to sleep.'
He followed the push of Napoleon's hand. He climbed back into bed, under the damp sheets and blankets, shivering.
'I'm sorry,' he said.
'Don't be sorry,' Napoleon told him. 'Just go to sleep.'
((O))
In the morning there was sunlight slanting across the floor again, silence in the house, the soft sound of wind from outside. The leaves on the trees were becoming dry with autumn. The rustling noise they made grated on Illya's ears as he slowly crawled out of sleep. His head was tight with pain and his throat was so sore he could hardly swallow.
He looked around, trying to get a grasp on his surroundings. It felt late. He looked at his watch and his eyes wouldn't focus properly. His reading glasses were back on the sideboard in his Manhattan apartment and his head was aching too much for him to be able to force his eyes into focus, but he got a blurry sense that it might be near midday.
'Napoleon?' he murmured, but there was no answer.
His throat was thick with phlegm, and he coughed painfully, pushing himself up against the headboard. Napoleon was nowhere in the room. He got out of bed, shivering as the cool air hit his sweaty skin, looking down at his shirtless torso. He wondered where his clothes were. Napoleon must have put them somewhere. He'd insisted on Illya stripping to his underwear to keep his clothes clean enough, so that when they did finally move from this place he didn't stink of sweat and illness. A shower would have been wonderful. He craved a shower so strongly for a moment that he almost cried.
His legs were shaking. He stood, stepping carefully over the tired, carpetless boards. There had been children in here last night, hadn't there? It was such a strong feeling, like a deep memory of swimming in water, as if the air surrounding him now was the same air as in the dream, as if those children had been real and alive, and he was more in that dream place than he was in the here and now.
He looked around, blinking, trying to see footprints on the floor. Wouldn't there be prints in the dust left by children's feet? Wouldn't there be the marks of heavy soldiers' boots? But he could only see marks left by his and Napoleon's shoes, and later by his own bare feet. They were faint, hardly discernible, but he could see how he had moved about the room on his bare feet, over towards that chipped and tired rocking horse, over to the door, to the window.
He tried the handle of the door, and it was locked. Napoleon must have left the room and locked him in. It was sensible, he supposed. He wasn't up to any kind of fight. That door was his only safety. He turned the handle once or twice in a lacklustre way, then turned and walked over to the dirty window. It was an autumn landscape out there, all soft browns and yellows and brownish greens. The earth was turning to mud and the grass was wilting away. The leaves on the trees were turning, making that awful rustling noise every time the wind blew.
He rested his hot forehead against the glass of the windowpane. It felt so beautifully cool against the fevered headache, but he was beginning to shiver again, his body going from too hot to far, far too cold. He turned away from the window and moved back to the bed, brushing his hand over the smooth back of the tattered rocking horse as he passed it. The children in his dream had played with that rocking horse. It wasn't a supposition, but something he felt he knew without question. They had played on that horse.
The bed felt wonderful. He had only been standing for a few minutes, and when he had got up the bed had felt lumpy and hot and damp, but when he lay down again it felt wonderful. He pulled the covers back over himself, shivering, and fumbled for the scrap of cloth he had been using as a handkerchief, because his nose was streaming again. He would have given a lot for a bowl of borsch, or – oh, kasha. Of course kasha.
Oh… He remembered lying in bed in the Kyiv apartment, fevered with illness, and his mother bringing him kasha and sitting down by the bed and feeding it to him, spoonful by spoonful. The nutty scent of the grains rising, the comfort of the warm milk, and perhaps sugar. Something warm that would fill his stomach. Something warm would be amazing.
He pulled the blankets up until they were almost over his face. There was a shaft of sunlight coming through the window, magnified by the glass, and the warmth pressed beautifully into his aching sinuses. He closed his eyes. Napoleon wasn't here. He must be out doing something, and there was no point in staying on the alert, waiting for him, so he just let himself sink back into the tired, fevered aching, trying to feel that sunlight on his face, trying to imagine himself back in the bedroom in Kyiv, his mother in the kitchen cooking something that would fill his stomach and make him feel better.
He could hear those footsteps again. Light, little footsteps. He could hear the children running about in the room, their feet padding sometimes on floorboards, sometimes on carpet or rugs. A girl was singing, her voice high and wavering, singing some song he thought he remembered from his childhood. He heard the others talking, boys, he thought, their voices just a little lower. He couldn't make out what they were saying. It was as if he were listening to a foreign language, as if they were just a little too far away. It was Russian, he was certain, but somehow he couldn't understand the words, even of that familiar childhood song. He lay there, feeling the sun pressing into the bones of his face, listening to that prattle going on, not disturbed at all by the children's presence. It just felt right.
'Hey.'
He blinked and focussed. He couldn't hear the children any more. Napoleon was there, crouching by the bed, a hand on his shoulder.
'How are you feeling, partner?' Napoleon asked.
'Ill,' Illya croaked.
'You do look like death warmed over,' Napoleon told him, touching his fingers to Illya's forehead. His fingers felt unbearably cold.
'Where were you?' Illya asked. 'I got up. The door was locked.'
'Er, yeah, I went out on a little scouting mission,' Napoleon told him. 'You were fast asleep, so I locked the door behind me. I figured you were – '
'Safer that way,' Illya murmured. 'Yes, I suppose I was.'
He remembered hearing the children singing and talking and pattering around the room. Was he safer locked in? There seemed to be two worlds, this real world, with Napoleon, and the dirty window, and old food from old tins, and that other world that he saw through blurred eyes, heard in distorted sounds, where there were children living in this room. It felt so real. It was all his fevered mind, he knew, but it felt so real.
'Couldn't risk taking anything too large,' Napoleon was saying. 'We need to get through this without anyone knowing we're here. But I managed to get a bit of bread.'
He showed Illya the half-cut loaf, and Illya's stomach clenched.
'How did you get that?' he asked.
'Reached in through a window,' Napoleon shrugged.
'Someone will get into trouble,' Illya said darkly. 'There isn't a lot of food to spare in these parts.'
'You want me to take it back?' Napoleon asked him, making as if to stand.
'No,' Illya said quickly. 'But be careful, Napoleon. Suspicion is rife here, and every bit of food will have to be accounted for. You're not stealing from a Westchester mansion, you know.'
'Illya, unless you can shake off this 'flu and start walking, I'm going to have to steal more than a loaf of bread,' Napoleon said seriously. 'Do you feel up to walking?'
Illya laughed weakly. 'I walked to the door of the room and over to the window. That was enough. I don't feel up to hiking cross-country.'
'Then I'll have to do more stealing. The other option is to turn ourselves in to the authorities before we starve.'
'And then we would end up in a prolonged, unpleasant interrogation and then a labour camp – with a high chance of starving – or, more likely, there would just be a single bullet to the back of the head,' Illya said. 'We're on our own, Napoleon. You know we are. No benevolent U.N.C.L.E. to pull us out of trouble.'
'Then I need to steal food,' Napoleon said.
They had gone around in a circle. Napoleon pushed himself to his feet and Illya lay in the bed and tried to will himself to feel better, for his lungs to stop burning and the phlegm to stop forming, the headache to subside and the aching in his joints to fade away. None of that happened, though. When Napoleon came back with a tin lid as a tray, and a meal of oily sardines on roughly cut slices of bread, Illya felt almost too ill to eat.
'Come on,' Napoleon encouraged him. 'Sit up a little, huh. I wish I could make you something warm to drink...'
'Can't risk making smoke,' Illya murmured, raising himself up enough to eat and taking a hunk of bread. He wished he could have something warm to drink, but the bread was proper black bread and it at least added a new dimension to dining on canned sardines. It filled his stomach in a way that the protein alone hadn't.
'I might go out tonight,' Napoleon said once they had eaten, wiping crumbs from his mouth. 'If I can get enough for a few days in one raid, it might just be passed off as a random theft. I can't risk setting up a routine.'
'Tonight?' Illya asked. For a moment his heart skipped a little. Night meant fever and dreams and waking in panic in the dark, and Napoleon had been there every time so far to bring him back to reality.
'Tonight. Under cover of darkness, IK. You know, the way that agents do things.'
'Thank you, Napoleon. I do understand how our job works,' Illya said, trying to keep his voice just on the good side of irritated. He didn't feel quite well enough for Napoleon's sarcasm.
'Well then, you'll be tucked up in bed like a good boy, and I'll leave the door unlocked, just in case,' Napoleon assured him. 'There'll be nothing for you to worry about.'
Except, Illya thought. There was a whole raft of excepts. Napoleon being caught and not coming back. Someone coming into this place and discovering Illya when he didn't have the wherewithal to put up a defence. The dreams…
He couldn't say to Napoleon, I don't want you to go at night because every time I sleep I dream of the war. He smiled and said, 'Well, I suppose you could do with some practice in sneak thievery. Maybe you should start by trying to reduce your resemblance to a shire horse clomping about on a tin roof.'
'Maybe you can practice being a functional agent, huh?' Napoleon retorted, but his voice was gentle.
'I would give a lot to be a functional agent,' Illya said with great sincerity. 'At the moment I'd give a lot just for clear sinuses.'
'Try and sleep,' Napoleon said. 'The more sleep you get, the better.'
'Yeah,' Illya murmured. Sleep meant fever and dreams. Did he want to dream of soldiers again? Did he want to dream of those children? He knew he never wanted to dream about the soldiers, but the children; they were different.
'Go to sleep,' Napoleon told him again. 'Mother has chores to do. That chamber pot won't empty itself.'
Illya wrinkled his nose. He didn't envy Napoleon that task.
((O))
Illya drifted in and out of light sleep, and sometimes Napoleon was in the room, and sometimes he wasn't. He came back once with his arms full of bruised apples. Illya watched the slightly surreal sight as Napoleon crept across the room with his bounty, thinking Illya was sleeping, and put the apples away out of sight. Then he came back and saw Illya was awake, and said quietly, 'Windfalls,' before coming to feel his partner's temperature.
'Drink some water,' he said, giving Illya a cup, and he drank deeply, although he craved something hot, not cold.
'Eat some apples if you're hungry,' Napoleon told him, but he felt like apples less than he felt like cold water, so he murmured a non-committal reply, and lay there with his eyes half closed as Napoleon left the room again.
He couldn't sleep. He had spent far too long sleeping. The mattress felt lumpy underneath him, and his head ached. He felt wretched, exhausted but not sleepy, ill but restless. He got up out of the bed, wrapping the moth eaten blanket around his shoulders, and walked aimlessly about the room. He caught sight of himself in the broken mirror on the wardrobe door. Hair like hay, cheeks red with fever, nose red with soreness, eyes bright in hollow sockets. He looked as bad as he felt, and he turned away.
There was nothing to be seen through the window. He couldn't see Napoleon out there, but then, he didn't know if he were in the house or not, and if he were outside he would be trying not to be seen. Somewhere fields away smoke was rising. There were a few little houses out there. Not rich pickings for Napoleon. Doubtless the people living in them didn't have much to begin with.
He swallowed. His throat hurt, and he wanted water again, despite craving warm fluids, not cold. He went into the little anteroom that joined this nursery, where Napoleon was keeping the pitcher of water and the food he managed to find. If only he had been able to find aspirin. There was a plant, he thought, that reduced fever, but he couldn't remember the English name, didn't know if it would be growing at this time of year, or how he could describe it to Napoleon for him to look for. The effect was probably placebo anyway.
He desperately wanted to feel better. He had to feel better soon. Every day they spent here they were at risk, and he knew enough about his mad, beautiful country to know that things wouldn't go well for them if they were caught. Even though the Soviet Union was a signatory to U.N.C.L.E., some missions couldn't be revealed to general law enforcement, and, as Waverly often took pains to remind them, agents were not indispensable cogs in the machine. The price of two agents was far less than the price of this mission becoming known.
He picked up an apple, pocked and bruised, and turned it in his hands. He put it down again. He was hungry, but he couldn't stomach the thought of it. He wanted a bowl of his mother's hot kasha. He wanted soup. He wanted something that would soothe his throat and warm his chest.
He felt ill enough again that the lumpy bed felt like a better prospect than standing up, so he went back and dropped down onto the mattress. He lay there, face down, his arm hanging over the edge of the bed listlessly, his fingers brushing over the floorboards. His fingertips rustled over something, and he pushed his head sideways to see what they had felt. It was a little corner of paper, just a sliver sticking up from the crack between two boards. He worked at it, getting it delicately between his fingernails, and teasing it out. It was a yellowed sheet of paper, and he withdrew it with great care.
It was a child's drawing. A simple thing, just grey pencil on a reused bit of paper. The other side had scribbled ink writing on it, and the date of 1942, but on the back someone had crudely drawn a family, two parents and three young children, standing holding hands. A childish hand had signed it Matya.
Of course there had been children in this room. He had known that. One only had a nursery if one had children. The family who lived here must have had good connections, despite the ideal of all citizens being equal. The children had probably gone to the best schools. Maybe the family had even had a car and a driver. The thought of that gave him a strange feeling in his stomach, when he remembered his own cramped apartment, his mother making him clothes from his father's cast offs, the narrow little bed at the foot of his parents' bed. But whatever their privilege, the children must have been real. Being actually faced with such personal evidence of the children who lived here, one of whom must have slept in this bed, felt very strange. There was that feeling again, the feeling of being visited by a ghost.
He must have drifted asleep again, the picture still loosely held between his fingers. The leaves of the trees were whispering and rustling outside, and the children were standing at the window, huddled there, looking out. The girl's hair was long and straight and dark. The boys' hair was short and dark, very neatly cut, identical to all the boys' haircuts Illya had seen around him as a child, identical to his own cut at that age. They were watching something, all three of them, and Illya was walking across the floor, trying not to make the boards creak, trying to be quiet on bare feet, because he knew there was danger somewhere outside.
He stepped to the window. Outside, the susurration of autumn leaves was unheard behind the shrill of mortars, the staccato bark of guns, the shuddering reverberation of explosions. The land was orange with fire, zinc white in flashes, all the trees and grasses black and burnt. The little girl turned to look at him and he saw how dark and wide her eyes were. She put her finger to her lips.
He was terrified. It was an eight year old's terror. His heart felt like a stone in his chest. They needed to hide, because there were men out there, marching, and there was no way to defend themselves. They were like shell-less snails against the sharp force of those men.
'We need to hide,' he whispered, crouching down and holding out his hands. 'Listen, we need to hide.'
They stared at him, the boys turning too now, their eyes wide in fear. He realised he was speaking German. God. He had whispered to them in German. No wonder they were terrified. But he couldn't grasp the Russian words. Where had his language gone? He groped for Ukrainian, for his mother tongue, but the only language that came was German. How could he make them trust him if he couldn't speak to them in anything but the language of their enemy?
'Please,' he whispered, his hands open, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. 'We must hide. There must be a place to hide.'
They stared at him still. He closed his eyes hard, fighting to remember his language. The sound of gunfire was getting closer to the house. He could hear shouting outside. There had to be somewhere to hide. The smoke was so thick in the air that he could feel it in his lungs, sharp and bitter. His throat hurt so much, he could hardly breathe through his nose, he was so thirsty. He looked around for cloth that he could dampen and wrap about his mouth, but there was nothing.
'Please,' he whispered again, and at last it was Russian in his mouth. Thank god. Thank god, he thought. 'Come,' he whispered. 'We have to hide.'
The little girl was saying something to her brothers. He didn't catch what she said. But she took his hand, and she felt so warm and alive and real. He tugged on her hand and she spoke to her brothers, and together they walked, creeping, crouching, through the room. Was he leading her or was she leading him? He had no idea where he was going. It was so hard to see through the smoke. She led him through the room. The old rocking horse was there, but the paint was brighter. The beds were made up with pretty covers. There were pictures on the wall. There above the bed he had taken was a picture of Lenin, stern and unsmiling, looking out over this perfect child's room. Grandfather Lenin, calmly watching them. He felt such a sense of reassurance.
The girl was pushing at the wardrobe. Her brothers helped her. 'Here,' she was saying. 'Here, here.'
He helped her push, and behind the wardrobe was an alcove. But how could they hide in the alcove and pull the wardrobe back in front of them? Someone would have to stay outside to push the wardrobe back.
'Go in,' he told them.
They hesitated. His sense of panic was rising. Grandfather Lenin was looking over his shoulder, but he couldn't help. He could hear footsteps on the stairs. The gunfire was closer.
'Go in,' he hissed at them, his voice breaking in his fear.
He pushed them. They scurried into the alcove like mice, and he fought to push the wardrobe back against the wall. He felt so ill, so weak. His throat hurt and he could hardly breathe, and he was so, so thirsty. He opened his mouth and the smoke filled it like cotton wool. He couldn't breathe through his nose. He pushed at the wardrobe, shoved it back against the wall. The door burst open, and there was the silhouette, there was the soldier standing there, his rifle ready in his hands, the wicked bayonet glittering. He tried to be still, tried to be part of the wardrobe behind him, but the soldier was raising his gun, it was aiming straight at his head, there was the explosion of the shot, and –
He was screaming, his voice coming out in an odd, cracked, strangled sound. He was so hot and so thirsty, panting and trying to scream and staring around into the bright daylight, staring at the stained walls and the dirty window and the wardrobe with its broken mirror on the door. His heart was thudding against his ribs, and he staggered to his feet, throwing back the sweat-drenched blanket, stumbling across the nursery to that little anteroom where the water was kept. He poured water into a cup and gulped at it, letting the cool sink through his mouth, sink into his body. He poured another cup, draining the jug, and drank again. Whenever he swallowed his ears ached. His nose was so stuffed up he couldn't breathe, and drinking felt like drowning, but he needed the water. He could have drunk another ten cups, but there was no more water.
'Illya, we need to make ourselves scarce,' Napoleon said.
Illya almost dropped the cup.
'God, you look terrible,' Napoleon said, tousling his already tousled hair.
He took the cup from Illya and pushed it and the empty pitcher under the worm-eaten chest of drawers that was in the room. He disappeared for a moment, then came back with a blanket. He piled the little heap of apples into it, then opened one of the drawers and took out the meagre stock of tins in there. He bundled them all together in the blanket, scooped Illya's clothes and shoes from the next drawer, and nudged Illya hard on the shoulder.
'Come on,' he said.
'Dream,' Illya murmured. 'I keep having those dreams...'
'Never mind that now. We need to disappear. There are militsiya outside. I think someone's kicked up a fuss over the food I've pilfered, so they're doing a rudimentary search. They're right outside the house and I haven't found anywhere in this place we can hide that wouldn't be obvious to a child. We could go under the beds, but – '
The little beat of panic made itself felt in Illya's chest. He pushed it away. He needed to stay calm. If they were caught it could mean death, or life in the labour camps. He barely thought. He moved quickly back into the main room and over to that wardrobe, and started to shoulder it aside.
'Illya, we don't have – ' Napoleon began, but then he saw the odd little alcove in the wall. It was low, too low for a man to stand in, but it was just wide and deep enough to fit the two of them.
'We won't be able to move it back, though,' Illya muttered. 'I'll have to stay outside...'
'Will you hell,' Napoleon replied tartly. 'Get in there. Come on. The two of us should be able to do it. Look. They've put handles on the back.'
They had. Someone had screwed two solid bits of wood onto the back of the wardrobe, shaped so they could be gripped. Illya ducked into the space and tried to help Napoleon pull the wardrobe back into place, but Napoleon brushed his hands aside and did it himself. An almost total darkness fell.
'Come on,' Napoleon murmured.
They were both absurdly crouched in the space, and the blanket full of tins clunked as Napoleon moved.
'Let me shove this down here. Now, come in front of me,' Napoleon said, and together they sank into sitting positions, Napoleon behind Illya, his legs either side of him. Illya was starting to shiver, and Napoleon's arms closed around him from behind.
'Have they got dogs?' Illya asked.
'I didn't see any. Try to stay still, okay?' Napoleon asked.
Illya didn't need to be told, but he was so cold, and he felt the ridiculous need to sneeze. He pushed his tongue hard against the back of his teeth, trying to quell the feeling. He could hear noises in the house now, boots stamping against bare floors, feet stamping up the stairs. Napoleon's arms were firm around him, his head resting against Illya's bare shoulder. It was a comforting but bizarre position to be in.
They sat there for a long time, while the footsteps moved about the house. Finally the door to this room opened, and the boots sounded on the nursery floor. Illya kept breathing softly and slowly, feeling Napoleon's breaths against the side of his head, holding himself utterly still in the tiny space. The feet moved back and forth, the floorboards creaked, voices spoke. They were talking about something else, one of them talking about his girlfriend, it seemed, the other one laughing at what he said. They came close, closer, right up to the wardrobe. They opened the door on creaking hinges and something knocked at the wood inside. Illya held his breath as those fumbling noises reverberated through the wood, but then they stopped. The men moved around the room a little longer, and then the steps moved back down the stairs.
Illya exhaled slowly.
'Stay still for a bit,' Napoleon murmured.
'Do you think I'm going to get up and start tap dancing?' Illya murmured back.
He was starting to feel warm again now, with the sweat evaporated and Napoleon's arms around him. He rested his head on his knees and just sat there, letting the feeling of illness envelop him. He felt very tired. He wished he could lie down.
'You awake?' Napoleon asked after a long while.
'I could hardly sleep, in this position,' Illya replied. He had been getting sleepy, but he wasn't going to admit that to Napoleon.
'All right, let's get out of here,' Napoleon said, and they repeated their ridiculous shuffle in reverse, getting in a position so that they could push the wardrobe away from their hiding place. It teetered and almost fell, but Napoleon held it and pulled it back upright, and they both slipped out, back into the room.
'They're not very good at their job,' Illya remarked. To him, two of the beds showed clear signs of recently being slept in, and their footprints were visible on the floor. 'Did you hear what they were talking about?'
'I heard them talking. I didn't catch the drift,' Napoleon replied.
'One of them has a girlfriend. Very pretty, very plump. He also has a wife. He was talking to his comrade about bringing the girlfriend here.'
'How romantic,' Napoleon said drily. 'Well, we have to hope he doesn't try that while we're here.'
'His comrade thought the girl would leave him if he took her to a dirty place like this. The kind of place where tramps would sleep,' Illya told him. He lay down on the bed tiredly. 'Much as I appreciate this dirty place, I hope we won't be sleeping here much longer either.'
'Well, that's up to you, tovarisch,' Napoleon said with a wry smile. 'Or at least up to the virus in your system. Illya, how did you know about that alcove? You haven't been moving furniture around while I've been out looking for food?'
Illya turned his head to look at the wardrobe. He hardly wanted to say, I saw it in a dream.
'I – don't know,' he said. 'A lucky hunch, I suppose.'
Napoleon went back over the room to look at where the wardrobe stood.
'Hmm,' he said. 'There are marks on the floor where it's been moved. I suppose you picked that up subconsciously. What a good little agent you are.'
'Well,' Illya murmured. 'We are trained for these things.'
It was a rational explanation. He had dreamed of three children because there were three beds. He had dreamed of two boys and a girl, with dark hair, because there were two boys and a girl, their hair pressed in darkly in graphite, in that drawing. He had lain here for far too long with nothing to look at but the room around him, and he had noticed, however subconsciously, the slight marks on the floorboards where the wardrobe had been moved. It wasn't the kind of thing most people would notice. Most people wouldn't notice the little signs of footprints that the militsiya had missed. Most people wouldn't look at those scrapes on the floor and think if a wardrobe had been moved, it might have been moved to reveal a hiding place. Those were the thoughts of an agent, and of a child who had been through wartime in an occupied city.
The little drawing was still there on the bed, and he picked it up and rubbed the paper between his fingers.
'I don't think those tins were hidden away by children hoping to have a midnight feast,' he said, his eyes on the naive little drawing. He passed the paper to Napoleon.
'No,' Napoleon said gravely, looking at the drawing, then flipping it over to look at the writing on the back. 'No, I don't think they were.' He sighed. 'I found a menorah out in the garden, half buried in the weeds. I guess they were a Jewish family.'
'Of course,' Illya murmured, looking at the figures on the paper. 'They'd probably be about my age now, if – '
'Lots of people survived the war,' Napoleon reminded him. 'You did.'
'I did, yes,' Illya sighed. 'Yes. I was a nice blond haired, blue eyed child, and I was very lucky. I didn't starve and I wasn't shot, and I wasn't taken away. Millions were, though. Not just Jewish children, Napoleon. I mean, they slaughtered Ukrainian Jews without pity. Almost a million of them. Don't ever doubt that. But they killed us in droves, regardless of religion. Some of my countrymen welcomed the Germans in at first. They fought alongside them, because they thought they would liberate us from Russian oppression. Some of them were glad at the thought that they'd rid us of the Jews. But imagine their surprise when they found out the Nazis considered Ukrainians subhuman too. They took my people and turned them into slaves, made them wear badges so they could always be identified as subhuman. It was terrible, Napoleon. Beyond words. I was just young enough to escape being taken.'
'Just young enough?' Napoleon echoed. His eyes were wide with sympathy and shock. 'Illya, you would only have been – what – eight? Nine?'
Illya let his eyes move over the water stained ceiling, following those little patterns, making out shapes in them.
'At the end they were taking children as young as ten. I was just young enough, Napoleon. Some of my cousins – ' He bit that off, and turned back to the general, not the specific. It was so much easier to bury oneself in facts and statistics, instead of thinking about the real, live, smiling faces of the people he had known. 'So, they killed millions, they enslaved millions. They raped the women and the girls and they killed their slaves by shooting them, starving them, working them to death, blocking them from the bomb shelters when the bombing raids came. When they were finally repatriated – '
He trailed off. He felt so tired and ill, and it made him sick to think of it. Those poor people who had returned to their country after the war were treated so terribly, with such suspicion, that he couldn't bear to think of that, on top of everything else they had suffered. They had been his friends, his neighbours, his family. There had been people that he loved that he had never seen again. He was afraid he was going to weep.
'I'm sorry,' he murmured. 'I'm sorry. It's this damn 'flu. You know what it's like when you're ill...'
Napoleon just put a hand on his arm. 'Have you ever heard of survivor's guilt, Illya?'
Illya exhaled sharply, and tried to get control of his voice before he spoke. 'Yes, I have. It's a new theory, isn't it? But I'm not a psychology experiment, Napoleon. I'm just ill, and this place is bringing back a lot of memories.'
'All right,' Napoleon said softly. Illya got the sense he was being humoured.
'I'm tired,' he said. 'I've been feeling wretched for far too long, and all I want is a hot drink and a good meal, and to go home.'
He wasn't sure which home he meant. The little apartment in Manhattan, with his jazz records and his books and his instruments and the fridge full of food, or the even smaller place in Kyiv, with his mother and father there with him, the scent of perogies and borsch and sour cream rising into the air, and feeling that no matter what might happen outside their walls, in here was safety and comfort.
'I can't get you a hot drink, I'm afraid, but there's more water in the pump,' Napoleon told him. 'I can't exactly promise a good meal, but I'll do what I can. As for going home...'
'Thank you, Napoleon,' Illya smiled. 'I know, that bit's up to me. I think I'm feeling a little better, you know.'
Napoleon pressed his fingers to Illya's forehead.
'You're not too warm. You sound pretty stuffed up, though.'
'I feel like my head's in a pressure chamber. But, honestly, I do think I'm a little better.'
'Hmm,' Napoleon said. For a moment he reminded Illya strongly of his grandmother. 'Well, we'll see how you are in the morning, yes?'
((O))
The morning light was thin and clear, and it was the first morning that Illya had awoken without a night torn by nightmares. He lay there on his bed, blinking at the light, thinking how quiet it was here compared to home. The sirens and car sounds were so ubiquitous back in New York that he hardly noticed them any more. All he could hear now was the soft sound of wind, and birds singing. A fly was buzzing against the window, a last hold-out from summer, perhaps.
He sat up in the bed and saw that Napoleon was still asleep, curled on his side on his own bed, the blankets pulled up to his neck. He looked more like a boy in his sleep, less like a man who could shoot another man dead without a qualm. Illya watched him for a moment, just pondering on Napoleon's life. He hadn't lived through war in the same way, but he had his own ghosts haunting him. Through these last few days Napoleon must have been so worried. He had been left to manage everything.
He got out of bed and padded softly over to the window. The whole countryside out there was golden in the dawn light, the sun lying low on the horizon, making the shadows of trees long and thin on the ground. There was no burning out there, no gunfire. It was hard to believe that there ever had been warfare and destruction in this land. Perhaps if one looked hard enough, one would be able to see grassed over shell holes. Perhaps there were burnt ruins of houses covered in weeds, and other houses like this one, left empty. But his people had worked with a superhuman effort at restoring what the Germans had destroyed. They had proudly rebuilt their land.
His little swelling of pride was mixed uncomfortably with the knowledge of everything else his country did to its people. He looked back at the bed he had slept in, where he had seen that portrait of Lenin in his dream, where there was a shadowed mark on the wall where a picture had protected it from the bleaching of the sun. He had felt such reassurance in those pictures at home and in school and in every public institution when he was a child. Some of that feeling had been destroyed after the war, though. He had grown more cynical with age. He hardly knew what to think now about the country that he loved.
He exhaled. His nose was almost clear, and his joints and head weren't aching any more. He went into the little anteroom and drank deeply from the water jug in there. He picked up the chipped chamberpot that Napoleon had found, and sighed as he relieved his bladder. That was a good feeling, one of the best simple feelings that there were. It was odd what simple things could make a man feel good. A satisfying bowel movement, a long piss, a good meal, sex. It didn't matter where one was, if those things were in reach, there were good little moments in life. Simply not feeling so ill was blissful in itself.
He looked in the drawers and found his clothes. Napoleon had been a very efficient housekeeper with the little they had had over the last few days. He pulled on shirt and trousers, knotted his tie, and folded his jacket over his arm. He thought Napoleon had a razor and comb somewhere, but he could deal with the days' worth of stubble later. Right now he just wanted to surprise Napoleon, so he went back into the main room and bent over his bed, shaking his shoulder gently.
'Do you feel like a walk today?' he asked.
Napoleon blinked blearily, rubbing his eyes like a child, focussing slowly. He had never been a morning person. Then he said, 'Well, it's nice to see you with your clothes on for a change. Feeling better, partner?'
Illya sat down on the edge of the bed, nudging Napoleon over a bit with his hip.
'I wouldn't say I'm up to any marathons, but it's a sea change from how I have felt.' He grinned. 'I think we can move on today. Maybe there will be perogies by dinner time.'
'I'd settle for a hamburger and French fries, smothered in mustard and ketchup,' Napoleon said, but Illya knew that he would devour perogies with as much zest as Illya would himself.
Napoleon sat up and unceremoniously shoved Illya off the bed so that he could get up. He disappeared into the anteroom himself, and came back wearing his trousers and trying to get a lather on his face from an ancient bar of soap.
'You astonish me, Napoleon,' Illya said. 'It doesn't matter if we're in an abandoned Ukrainian house or the Ritz, you always manage to make yourself look as if you're walking down Saville Row.'
'It's a talent, mon cher,' Napoleon said with a twinkle in his eye. 'Anyway, you know that's not true. You've seen me at my worst.'
'You've certainly seen me at mine,' Illya returned.
Napoleon clapped an arm around his shoulder and kissed his ear with a lather-covered face.
'That's what partnerships are all about,' he said.
Illya grimaced and wiped the foam from his ear.
'Don't use too much of that soap,' he said. 'I haven't shaved in a week.'
He sat back down on Napoleon's bed to wait while his partner shaved. Then he took possession of soap and razor and removed the week's worth of stubble from his chin. It felt so good, even shaving with old, cracked soap and cold water, to finally be something like presentable. He turned the marbled piece of soap in his hand, wondering if it had sat in this house since the war, wondering if those children had used it. They felt so real, even if their reality had been fleshed out only in his dreams.
'How are you doing, IK?' Napoleon called into the room.
He dropped the soap back into the bowl and dried off his hands on a scrap of cloth.
'All finished,' he said. 'I suppose we're going to throw this stuff out? I'd like to leave the place as we found it.'
Napoleon gave him a smile of understanding as he came back into the room.
'I'll get everything put back where it came from, and empty out these pots. We'll take some sardines along for the journey.' He looked down at Illya's feet. 'I'd get your shoes and socks on, if I were you. It'll be hard going in bare feet.'
'Thank you for that sage advice,' Illya returned, deadpan.
'Here,' Napoleon said then, reaching into his inside pocket and taking out a scrap of stiff paper. 'I found this downstairs when I was doing my rounds last night. I thought it might interest you, but you were already asleep.'
He passed it to Illya, then hurried on to sort out the various pots of liquid in the anteroom.
Illya looked at the photograph that Napoleon had given him. It was creased, torn at the corners, and yellowed. It was a posed portrait of three children; two boys, and a girl a little older, looking out at the camera, with dark, straight hair and dark eyes. The image of them made him shiver.
'Sweet kids,' Napoleon said, passing back his way.
'Yes,' Illya murmured.
He tucked the picture into his own pocket, feeling a weird confusion of tenderness and grief for those children, a weird confusion of tenderness and grief for his own wartime self. He would take the picture back to New York with him. Maybe he could find something out about them, maybe even discover their fate. Against all rationality, he had a feeling that those three children had saved his life.