Privideniya - Chapter 10
Notes: Just one cultural note. The blue magazine in the flash back is an issue of Novi Mir, a progressive literary journal published under Khrushchev. It contained stories and articles by many writers who were critical of government policies.
Groznyj Grad was full of children. Ocelot knew this was a suicide mission, and he didn't resent that. He didn't resent the ghosts that clung like scraps of cobweb to the rafters of his sub-conscious, tied to him like serfs were tied to the land. He didn't resent the sullen scientists and the secrets they kept from him. Didn't resent the newspaper that he hadn't even gotten a chance to read.
Christ, that was how John used to think. Always obsessed with the details.
All Ocelot did resent was being surrounded by all these goddamn kids. Their smooth, unlined faces; their clear eyes; their lean waists and steady hands and the decades they had ahead of them.
Vulich was the worst of the bunch. His burning contempt for authority was the most irritating kind of youthful arrogance. That wasn't to say, though, that Ocelot was looking forward to another conversation with Dr. Novikov. Even Kolya's guileless, implicit trust grated on him.
Blind faith was a luxury Ocelot had never allowed himself.
It was only for the Gurlukovich boy that Ocelot felt anything but deep disdain. He liked Innokenty's quiet obedience, and his sharp gaze that seemed to miss nothing. He had killed the boy's mother, and it was very likely that Innokenty knew this. Ocelot wasn't sure what he thought about that, but he knew he wasn't about to start feeling guilty now.
And so later that afternoon, when he returned to the subterranean cool of the underground laboratory, he had no trouble meeting the boy's clear blue gaze. Innokenty looked pale, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but he was unwavering and alert.
Ocelot felt awkward amidst all the humming machinery down here. He could hide that he was poor fit for office work, but it would never be a deception that ran as deep as it should have. He would never be able to adapt entirely; like the ancient aurochs of the Caucuses, wiped out by domestication and the encroachment of civilization.
If he lived another 75 years, he still wouldn't be as comfortable in this place as Novikov was.
The young Doctor was currently bent over one of the lab's computer terminals, scowling as he jabbed at the keyboard. "Kesha," he said without looking up. "Tilt your head."
Innokenty, who was seated ramrod straight in a chair next to Novikov's computer, did as he had been told, cocking his head as though trying to listen to a far-off voice.
Novikov's deep frown faded. "That's more like it." He glanced up at Ocelot. "Damn wireless networks. Technology is more trouble than it's worth, don't you agree, Shalashaska?"
"If you say so," Ocelot muttered. He was in no mood to deal with Novikov right now. His hands ached dully and clumsily, and his head was starting to throb as well.
He was still angry that he had lost his chance to read the paper that morning. He had never put much faith in the media, but without that flimsy tether to the outside world, he felt as though he was trapped in time. Mired in the past while the years screamed by him with a sound like the distant lament of a train whistle.
Ocelot's eyes darkened.
Novikov noticed, raised a pale eyebrow, but said nothing. It was Innokenty who spoke up, "Is something wrong, sir?"
Ocelot glanced at the boy, startled momentarily by his clear steady voice. "I'm fine," he said. "I just want to get started."
"Of course," Novikov said, waving his hand dismissively. "We're nearly done. They're preparing the sensory deprivation chamber now." He glanced over his shoulder, back into one of the small offices lining the lab.
He excused himself, and then Ocelot was alone with the boy.
Innokenty stared up at him, but said nothing. Ocelot was the one to break the silence. "Are you all right?"
Innokenty's blue eyes widened. "Yes, sir."
Ocelot leaned back against the computer desk, folding his arms. He had told so many lies already, it shouldn't have felt as though Innokenty could see right through him. Just like he was a ghost…
"You took a nasty fall this morning."
"Yes," Innokenty replied. "I remember. Don't worry about me, sir. Dr. Novikov says that my symptoms will pass in time."
"Has he been working you too hard? That looked like clinical exhaustion to me."
"No," Innokenty said. "My psychiatric examinations have all come back clean." His eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward a little, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's the radiation."
Ocelot was quiet for a long moment, struggling for something to say that wouldn't tip his hand. Wouldn't betray what he was only now beginning to realize: he didn't really know what was going on here.
"Ah, yes," Ocelot said at last. "That's right."
Innokenty smiled faintly. "Of course, I've had the nanomachines, but Dr. Novikov says that my body isn't fighting the infection like an adult's would."
Ocelot raised an eyebrow. "Does it frighten you?"
"I don't understand what you mean, sir."
"It's dangerous, isn't it? Do you know what radiation sickness does to a person?"
"Yes," Innokenty said. "At first, Dr. Novikov wouldn't tell me what I had, so I asked someone I trust."
"Who do you trust, Innokenty?"
A wan, prosaic smile fluttered across the boy's lips. "Matryona."
The way Innokenty said that made something cinch tight in the pit of Ocelot's stomach. He didn't dare not to take the boy's words seriously.
"Matryona?"
"She knows a lot. She told me she could see my medical file, and I shouldn't be afraid. It's not cancerous."
"The machine told you all this."
"She needs me. She won't let anything happen."
Ocelot shifted on his feet, his spurs clicking softly against the side of the desk. He didn't want to believe what Innokenty was saying. He was just a child, after all, and lonely; he had an overactive imagination. But the boy's voice was so serious and his gaze so steady that Ocelot knew it would be a mistake to not listen.
"Innokenty. What is that machine?"
Innokenty stared at him quietly for a moment, and then he broke into a smile. "This is a test, isn't it, sir?"
"Yes," Ocelot replied easily. "Just a test."
He glanced past Innokenty. Novikov was making his way back to them, cutting around the computer terminals. "Never mind, Innokenty. Forget it. You're doing a fine job here."
"What's this?" Novikov looked them over, setting a hand on his hip. "Kesha, I never thought I'd see you smile like that."
His eyes drifted to Ocelot. "Shalashaska, you must have a very capable hand indeed."
"Are you nearly ready?" Ocelot muttered.
Novikov chuckled softly. "Nearly. There's no need to be impatient."
Ocelot snorted, grabbing one of the desk chairs and pulling it out. He paused before he could sit down. A thick paperback book had been left on the chair; its pages were stained and dark with age, its cover creased and lined with faded white veins.
Ocelot picked the book up, turning it over in his hands. "Brothers Karamazov." He held the book out to Novikov. "A little beach reading, Doctor?"
"Actually," Novikov said, "that belongs to Kesha. I don't have any patience for fiction."
"Neither do I." Ocelot glanced at Innokenty; the boy was staring at the book in his hand desperately, as though he expected Ocelot to confiscate it.
"You like this sort of thing?" Ocelot slapped the book against his palm before handing it over to Innokenty.
The boy snatched the book from his hand, pulling it to his chest. "Yes Sir. But I don't like it as much as Turgenev. Do you know who he is?"
Novikov folded his arms. "Careful, Shalashaska. If you get him started, we'll never be able to turn him off."
"It's all right." Ocelot liked that this line of conversation annoyed Novikov. Men like him couldn't stand being made to feel ignorant. "When I was his age, we weren't allowed to have books like these."
"Yes!" Innokenty's eyes lit up. "I read about that! Did you know anyone who went to prison, sir? In Siberia?"
"A few. No one I was close to."
Innokenty's eyes were big. "Were you scared?"
"Not particularly." But Ocelot couldn't remember anymore if that was really the case. "I probably should have been, though."
"I wouldn't have been scared." Innokenty shrugged. "It's really easy, just to do what people tell you. I'd miss the books, though."
"You could get books back then. You just had to know where to look."
"Sir," Innokenty said. "Do you know why they wouldn't let people have them? The books, I mean."
"Haven't you figured it out yet? It's because they all said different things." Ocelot tapped the top of Innokenty's book. "Quite a bit different from Turgenev, isn't he?"
"I guess," Innokenty said. "I didn't really notice that before."
"And does that make one of them wrong?" Ocelot asked.
"Or just a liar," Novikov snorted.
Innokenty glanced between them, and his pale brows drew together. "No. Not exactly. At least, I don't think-"
Ocelot nodded. "You see? That's the problem."
"Thinking?"
Ocelot's eyes met Innokenty's. "That's right. No government really wants its people to think. Some are just more honest about it."
Novikov stepped forward and set a hand on Innokenty's shoulder. "That's quite enough of that. Shall we get started?"
"Yes, Doctor." Innokenty slid out of his chair. He still clasped the thick book protectively against his chest, but he hesitated before he turned to follow Novikov, and then thrust the novel in Ocelot's direction.
"Sir? Would you like to read it? I'd really like someone to talk about it with."
Innokenty chewed his lip nervously; the book, held at arm's length, looked very heavy in his hands. Ocelot stared down at the boy for a moment. He knew that a long story like this, one that spanned so many years, would only make him more keenly aware of all the decades he had behind him. But Innokenty had information he needed, and if this book would bring him close enough to the boy to get it out of him perhaps it had practical uses after all.
Ocelot took the novel, and slipped it into one of his coat pockets. He caught sight of Novikov's expression out of the corner of his eye; cold and reproachful, as though the doctor knew that a deal had just taken place.
"I'll give it a try," Ocelot said.
"Thank you." It seemed as though Innokenty was trying very hard not to smile.
Novikov took the boy's shoulder, steering him toward the back of the laboratory. "Don't go anywhere, Shalashaska. I'll be back to deal with you."
Ocelot watched them go, and when they had vanished into the small office, out of sight, he reached down and touched the book in his pocket with two fingers. It wasn't heavy, not exactly, but it weighed enough that he had to take notice of it. It made his coat hang a little bit awkwardly. Something that had so little use shouldn't have been so adamant about making its presence known.
How easily, he thought, Novikov had dismissed writers as liars. But perhaps it wasn't untrue.
It must have been in people's very nature to lie. If it wasn't, then why did it come so effortlessly? He had only spoken to Innokenty for a few minutes, but he had lied to the boy calmly, out of habit.
He had told Innokenty that he hadn't known anyone who was sent to the Gulags. It wasn't true, and he wasn't sure why he had said it. He didn't know what he had been trying to protect. Back then, everyone knew someone who had vanished. A family member, a lover, a friend, a coworker… One day they were there, and the next they were gone. No one talked about it. The empty bunk or desk was occupied almost immediately, a warm body to fill the cold, aching emptiness.
He remembered them now, all the names he held as close as his secrets, that he hadn't been able to bring himself to say in front of Innokenty and Novikov. Beregovoi and Kirygin from the old Ocelot unit. Yuri Tabanov, one of his contacts at the Kremlin; Ocelot had spoken with him many times, but never seen his face. Comrade Pravda, that ruthless KGB agent who had first instructed Ocelot in the art of interrogation. Dr. Beria, who worked in the infirmary at Groznyj Grad. They had taken him, Ocelot learned later, because of some distant relation to a politician who had fallen out of favor.
Even Colonel Volgin – there was a name Ocelot hadn't thought of in years – had done his time at hard labor. He had never talked about it, of course, but he didn't have the savvy to keep it a secret, either.
Ocelot recalled very little of his youth with any clarity. Faces had changed almost daily, as men died, were promoted, or simply disappeared. In those days, the official explanation was that they had "gone abroad".
It must have been very nice abroad, Ocelot used to think. No one ever seemed to want to come home.
Back then, the only constant companions had been the kick of a gun in his hands, and the hollow, dry burn in his chest after a long workout. Most men remembered their first kiss. Ocelot remembered the first time he had shattered a row of empty vodka bottles at 200 paces.
But he did recall very clearly one young artillery sergeant with a scarred face and a faded tattoo of a bear above his left wrist.
Ruska Doronin had hollow eyes, haunted by twelve years spent first in the Moscow lubyanka, then the Gulags of Siberia, then in exile in the deserts of the Southern provinces. But when he smiled, it was bright and easy and boyish, as though there was a part of him that hadn't aged a day past eighteen. Something inside him had crystallized and been preserved on that warm summer night more than a decade ago when he had been arrested for the first time; tucked away in storage, waiting for the day he was released.
There were whispers in the ranks that the sergeant had survived prison by working as an informant. A rat. Ocelot wanted to ask if there was any truth in those rumors, but he could never seem to find the right moment.
Ocelot was the youngest person on the base in those days, and he sometimes got the feeling that Doronin was more comfortable with him than with the other men. Sometimes, in the evenings, Doronin sought him out, set a hand atop Ocelot's head and gave his cropped hair an affectionate ruffle. Doronin gossiped like a schoolgirl, in the same hushed and excited tones, and most nights he was ready with a joke or an anecdote he had overheard.
Most of their conversations were gone now; Ocelot remembered them only in fragments. But they had spoken once in the library of the old Groznyj Grad. Construction of that wing had finished only recently, and the air still smelled of wood and paint.
Ocelot was hunched over one of the little tables, sliding a wire brush into the barrel of his handgun to clean the weapon. He was so intent that he didn't see Doronin approach, but he did distantly register the sounds of his footfalls, so he wasn't surprised when the sergeant spoke.
"Adamska." A little smile quirked Doronin's lips. People had smiled very easily back then, it seemed. Or maybe Ocelot had just been quicker to notice.
Ocelot looked up. Under the fluorescent lights, the scar that dripped from the corner of Doronin's left eye was a hard, pale punctuation mark. A blue magazine with a creased and folded cover jutted out of the pocket of his uniform coat. Ocelot had seen copies of that magazine before – left unattended in the dining hall, making the rounds in the barracks before the lights were turned out – but he hadn't paid much attention to them.
"Good evening, Sergeant," Ocelot said, setting his gun aside. "What's on your mind?"
Doronin sat on the table, sliding back so his feet hung a few centimeters off the ground, swinging freely. "I've been hearing your name around, Adamska."
"Only good things, I hope." Ocelot didn't doubt that, but it was always nice to have confirmation.
"Without a doubt." Doronin winked, reaching up to tap his shoulder where silver stars gleamed against his dark-colored uniform. "They're going to promote you soon enough."
"They said that to you?"
"Not to me exactly."
"You were eavesdropping."
"That's an ugly word, Adamska Ivanovich. It has nasty connotations, you know." Doronin tried to look stern, a valiant effort, but one that lasted only a moment before he burst into a grin again. "If they didn't want me to know, then they should have said it more quietly."
Ocelot nodded solemnly. "You're right, Sergeant."
Ocelot knew that Doronin had never had any problems exaggerating for the sake of a good story before, but this time he was certain he believed the sergeant's words. He had never doubted that there was a set of silver stars in his future. Even when he had been a child – so young that his name couldn't even appear on any official military rosters – he had known that one day he would be an officer. Ocelot awaited that day eagerly. He had no desire for social status, and the thought of becoming a politician filled him with dread; even the knowledge that one day he would lead the men at this base as he saw fit bored him. For Ocelot, the stars were only a destination, a single landmark on a much longer journey.
His expression must have changed, because Doronin leaned over him, setting a friendly hand on his shoulder. "You're not as excited as I thought you'd be."
Ocelot shook his head. "It's not that…"
"I understand," Doronin said. "You want to be a boy forever, Adamska. Don't pretend it isn't true."
Ocelot lowered his eyes, hiding his expression behind long lashes. "Now you're just making things up."
"Not at all!" Doronin said brightly. "I was your age once. That was the summer I was on the run, living under an assumed name…"
"On the run?" Ocelot looked up abruptly. "From who?"
"Shh!" Doronin lifted a finger to his lips. "I'm trying to tell a story! Don't interrupt."
"Sorry, sir."
Doronin went on. "I was getting pretty good at living like that. I had learned to forge ration coupons and go under a fake passport. But do you know what did me in, Adamska?"
"What?"
"I missed my mom. I had to go home and see her, just one more time. And as soon as I walked into that house, they grabbed me."
Ocelot was quiet for a moment, waiting for Doronin to go on. "And then what happened?"
"What do you mean? That's what happened. Are you listening to anything I'm saying, Adamska?"
"Of course, sir." Ocelot shook his head. "But there's a big difference between us. I don't have a mother to go home to."
"You don't sound very upset about it."
"Why should I be?" Ocelot said. "I never knew her. I don't know what I'm missing, because there was never anything to miss."
Doronin sighed, hopping off the edge of the table and onto his feet. "Oh, Adamska, I almost forgot. I wanted you to have this." He pulled the blue magazine out of his coat pocket, tossing it on Ocelot's lap.
He picked it up, thumbing through the yellowed pages, covered with spidery black type. "What's this?"
"Proof we've come a long way."
Ocelot pursed his lips."It looks boring."
"Don't you understand how important it is? People being allowed to say what they think without being afraid?"
Ocelot looked up at him, his eyebrows drawing together into a kind of frown. "I always say what I think, Sergeant. And I'm not scared. What's so special about that?"
With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the blue magazine back to Doronin, and without a word, reached over to pull gun he had been cleaning back to him. After a moment, Doronin turned on his heel and left.