The Secret History of Moscow

11: The Boatman

Yakov had never seen a river like this. Black as soot, with a quiet matte surface, rippling slightly as if tremendous pressure had been building underneath. Thin wisps of fog floated over the dead river, moving with a will of their own, twisting like ribbons and then unwinding; they dipped closer to the surface and drifted up, coalesced into a massive formidable cloud and broke apart again in an endless hypnotic dance, and Yakov could not decide whether he was more disturbed by the apparent life of the fog or its mindless stereopathy.

The bank was devoid of any vegetation; not even the glowtrees dared to colonize the barren black basalt of the embankment, natural or artificial, Yakov wasn't sure. Even the pale grass recoiled from the black, slow water and the living mist roiling above it.

"How do we cross?” Yakov asked Zemun.

The cow looked at the river thoughtfully. “We wait for the boatman."

Yakov glanced at Galina over his shoulder. “Did you hear that?"

She nodded. “I told you there was a Styx down here somewhere. We should've taken Fyodor and his coin with us."

"How long until the boatman shows up?” Yakov said.

Koschey shrugged. “Whenever he damn well pleases. Takes his time, that boatman."

"David said Elena might send us a message,” Galina said. “With some rusalka or vodyanoy."

"And this will further our search how?” Koschey said.

"It won't hinder it either,” Zemun said.

Yakov watched the fog, hoping that a boat would appear out of it, gliding across the sooty surface, steered by a tall man on the stern, a long pole in his withered hands-he shook his head to dispel the vision. “Why did you think there would be a river?” he whispered to Galina. “How did you know?"

She shrugged. “There's always a river in the underworld. Or at least a bridge."

Yakov left her to talk to the Tatar-Mongol, and sat down on the bank, half-annoyed, half-relieved that he was left alone for a bit longer.

Yakov wasn't always like this, defeated in advance, dutiful out of habit. He once was a rose-cheeked youth fresh out of school who had wanted to be a policeman since he was a little kid, even though he didn't remember that the original inspiration and desire for the grey and light-blue uniform came from a rhymed illustrated children's book about a very tall policeman who had the ability to rescue cats from tall trees without any need for ladders or cherry-pickers.

He also was once a lover and a husband, an optimist; he looked to the future with his wife Tamara, a girl as pink and light-haired as he was, who worked at a textile factory and shared a small apartment with her alcoholic father and long-suffering mother, of whom Yakov only remembered that she had the most spectacular dark circles around her eyes that he had ever had the misfortune to observe.

They courted and married, and moved in with Yakov's mother, whom Tamara seemed to like more than her own, even if they did argue occasionally about insignificant things; Yakov had the feeling that both had a slight embarrassment about getting along so well, and engaged in perfunctory conflict (usually soup-related) superstitiously, to ward off the demons of serious fights.

Yakov did not like to think of that time; he both resented his wide-eyed idiocy and regretted losing it. He hated himself for changing, yet could not see how he could've avoided it. He still remembered Tamara's face, but only because his mother refused to take their wedding picture off the wall where it hung next to an icon of St Georgiy. He could never understand why his mother was so partial to the patron saint of this city, dragon or no dragon. Yakov was especially unimpressed because the dragon on the icon was puny, the size of a large dog, and wingless. His eyes usually lingered on the dragon, reluctant to move to the left and look at the glowing pink face of Tamara surrounded by the cloud of white veil. He always looked eventually.

It was easier to think about that time now, on the solid basalt shores of the dead river, under the watchful thoughtful gaze of the celestial cow who claimed to have made the Milky Way; it was easier to believe in the magical cow than in his own capacity for happiness. Koschey the Deathless sat on the bank, cross-legged, teasing the soul of a criminal trapped in the portly smooth body of a white rook. Galina and the Tatar-Mongol argued about the nature of memory, and whether it was possible to forgive a trespass without having to forget it.

The water by the riverbank bubbled up, and a small scale-covered vodyanoy surfaced and swam ashore with an awkward breaststroke. Its seaweed hair fanned out in the water like a halo, and its webbed hands, green and speckled with large triangular scales, splashed the pitch-black water. It clambered up on the bank, and its large bug eyes searched their faces.

"Did Elena send you?” Galina said.

The little vodyanoy nodded shyly, and dug through the festoons of algae decorating its body to produce a crumpled and wet note covered in black swirls of river water, but otherwise undamaged. Galina thanked him and unrolled the note.

"What does it say?” Zemun asked and attempted to fit her large head under Galina's elbow to take a better look.

"That she is considering sending Fyodor, Viy, and Oksana to the surface. She also says to be careful."

"Oh, great idea,” Koschey said. “I'll bet you fleshbags didn't even think of that."

"You're not as invulnerable as you think,” the rook Sergey said. “I know where your death is."

"So do I,” Yakov said.

The rook gave him a haughty look. “Did you ever watch ‘Visiting the Fairytales'?"

"Yeah,” Yakov admitted. “Every Saturday morning… or was it Sunday?"

"Sunday,” Sergey said. “We had school Saturday. Didn't know cops fancied that sort of thing."

"I was ten,” Yakov said, but found himself smiling. “I think they mostly showed movies from the forties and fifties."

"Those fairytales were disguised Communist propaganda,” the rook said.

Yakov stopped smiling. “I don't think so."

"You're so naïve,” the rook said. “They brainwashed you, and you don't even know. This is why you're a cop."

Yakov just shrugged. He didn't like it when people he had just met somehow developed the illusion of knowing him better than he did.

"Where's that boatman?” he said to Zemun.

Instead of another vague answer enticing him to patience and waiting just a bit more, Zemun pointed silently with her hoof. Through the fog that for a change remained stationary like a curtain, Yakov saw a shadow and heard weak slurping sounds.

The little vodyanoy shrieked and dove into the river, disappearing like a stone.

"What got into him?” Galina asked, and a vertical wrinkle settled between her dark eyebrows.

"He's worried that the boatman will collect from him,” Koschey said. “Stupid thing. The boatman doesn't care about spirits and gods and those who've already paid. He only takes from fleshbags, and this one,” Koschey pointed at the rook perching sullenly on his shoulder, “this one is already dead. I guess that leaves you two."

Yakov and Galina traded an uncomfortable look. “What is it that he takes?” Yakov said. “And why didn't anyone tell us?"

"You'll find out soon enough,” Koschey answered and smirked. “Maybe that'll teach you to blab about where people might want to keep their death."

"I traveled across the river once,” Timur-Bey said. “He takes memories, nothing else."

Yakov wanted to know more-what sort of memories and why-but the narrow boat made of grey wood touched the bank. The old man looked over them, at the meadows and forests they left behind. “Come aboard,” he said in the indifferent sing-song voice of a merchant, “come aboard, one memory per party, buys a round-trip."

"What memories do you take?” Galina said.

"The precious ones, the ones you'll miss and wonder day and night what it is you have forgotten,” the boatman said. “You're paying?"

"I am,” Yakov said. “I don't think I'll miss any of mine."

The boatman's deeply set eyes looked at him out of his creased leathery face. Thin wisps of white hair blew in the wind and mingled with the fog, indistinguishable from it.

Yakov felt an uncomfortable presence inside, as though the boatman's bony hand reached into him and sifted through the contents of his soul panning for gold nuggets.

"This will do,” he finally said. Yakov felt a twinge when something in him tore loose. “You want to think it one last time?"

Yakov shook his head. “Just take it,” he said, and closed his eyes.

The boatman's vision teemed with so many memories, so many visions, but this new one was a welcome addition. It had a complex bouquet-a hint of habitual misery provided a weakly bitter background to red-hot rage and feeling of helplessness that buckled the boatman's knees and made him want to forget his immediate task. The pole dug into the silty bottom, pushed away, heaved up in a familiar movement that let him concentrate on savoring his new acquisition. Good choice, he thought, good choice. Not exactly original but nonetheless exciting. Intense. Sadness so profound, his dead heart felt crimson and heavy, like a Persian rose dripping with honey and dew.

Divorce, a slow melancholy regret, swirled milky-white, obscuring the pulsing black hole in the center of the memory. The boatman marveled that there were no names here, nothing was alluded to directly-just oblique hints and sideway glances that people used to hide the pain from themselves, to swathe it in many gauzy layers of circumstance and irrelevant detail. Shivering with anticipation, the boatman pulled them back, like bandages from a wound, cringing at the inevitable febrile blooming of a gangrenous flower.

And there it was. Swaddling cloth, blue blanket with yellow ducklings and red-and-green watermelons, a swirl of downy white hair, going clockwise around the summit of a tiny skull. Wonder, the same in every adult, at how small the fingers and toes were, how diminutive the nails like small pink shells one finds on the sandy beaches of the Baltic. How small and how human and how alive-the mind refused to believe it. And accepting it (him) as your own seemed beyond the realm of possibility.

The boatman marveled briefly at Yakov's skill at self-deception-this memory had been buried so deep under heaps of irrelevant debris that the boatman almost overlooked it. He never tired of the novelty, of these strange nuggets of pain and joy he extracted so carefully, so lovingly from the souls that came to the banks of his river; he could not understand why they tried so desperately to hide them.

He rolled the image of the baby, of its squeezed-shut eyes and balled-up fists, in his mind, like a child turning a piece of hard candy on his tongue, savoring its unique scent and texture. And then the infant disappeared, just like that, leaving in its place a balled-up blanket with red-and-green watermelons and yellow ducklings, and the boatman could not understand where it went. He rifled through the memory, turning bits and images over like wilting petals, looking, searching for answers but finding only one veil after another, one discarded wrapper after the next, and only ash, ash in between.

He finally looked outside of himself, at the people crouching at the bottom of the boat. Yakov, the light-haired man who footed the bill a few minutes ago, sat with his head cradled in his arms, and the woman sat next to him, patting his shoulder in a weak gesture of support. “Come on,” she kept repeating. “It can't be that bad. Can it?"

The man just shook his head and looked up with tormented eyes.

"I'm sorry,” the woman said. “Can I do anything?"

"No,” he said.

The boatman had collected his fee; he knew he had no right to ask for more. But his curiosity had gotten the best of him. He let the pole trail in the black water behind the stern. “What happened to the child?” he asked Yakov.

"What child?” he whispered.

"Don't play with me,” the boatman said. “You know what I've taken.” The memories he extracted were not gone; they just lost the emotional meaning, but the facts, their empty exoskeletons, remained.

"I don't have to tell you anything,” Yakov said, petulant. “Leave me alone."

The boatman returned to the contemplation of his new memory. It was unlike any other, so small and yet so distorted and twisted. He ran through its labyrinth, untwisting every snag and dead end, every turn and hidden corner. He was good at it-he had been feeding on their memories ever since they first started coming here, and he could not remember what he used to do before then; the memories taken from others had subsumed his own.

He thought of the American dancer, her memories swathed in unfamiliar language; he only recognized the images of her surrounded by several children (her own? Someone else's?) trembling in the snowy night, by the black pier in some strange port, where the dark sea water was fringed with ice, and floes rubbed against each other with a slow, grating sound. He remembered the stage and the tense faces of the audience, and the red drapes, swirling in her field of vision as she swirled, arms outstretched, for eternity. She remembered the face of a yellow-haired man, once handsome but now wrecked by hard drink and late nights, and the same face later a smoldering ruin shattered by a pistol shot. These images stood as signifiers of mystery, unexplained but precious all the same.

The boatman wondered if it was a sickness, this compulsion for the taste of other people's memories. He wondered if he could take something else as his payment, perhaps food or money, or if he should just take them across for free. He did not enjoy inflicting pain; in fact, he used to believe that he was helping them, taking away the emotional torment and intensity of unfulfilled desires. He used to think that he was doing good.

No matter how much their memories tormented them, they suffered even more when these memories were removed-like wounds left by splinters, they festered and grew inflamed, and one had to wonder if they were better off with all their splinters and warts. They became a part of them, developed from foreign bodies into integral parts of the souls. He could never understand that, but he could not stop either, compelled into removing and absorbing every painful nugget, so it could become a part of him, so he could feel real just for a little while longer.

The boat touched the opposite bank, as deserted and stony and black as the one they had just left-it felt like ages ago to Yakov, though he knew that only a few minutes had passed. He climbed onto the bank on awkward wooden legs, and stretched. Galina stood by him, silent but exuding sympathy and guilt. “It's all right,” he told her. “It's not your fault."

Zemun clambered out of the boat, her hooves sliding on the wet rocks of the embankment. Koschey and Timur-Bey followed, both avoiding stepping into the black water.

Ahead of them there was a forest-Berendey's forest, and Yakov immediately guessed that this was where Father Frost spent his days. The trees and branches were covered in snow, festooned with icicles, gleaming with rime. Berendey's Forest had real trees for a change-Yakov recognized white and black-speckled trunks of birches, the slender branches of willows, the tall high-strung groups of quaking aspens. There were sturdy oaks and grey-barked ashes, red maples that swept upward with the grace of dancing girls, dense green paws of spruces, the haughty grandeur of pines… he didn't realize how much he had missed them.

"It's winter here,” Galina whispered. “Do you think it's winter on the surface?"

"Don't be silly, we've been here just three days,” Yakov answered.

"What if time passes differently here?"

"Then there isn't much we can do about it, is there?” he said with rising irritation.

"I guess not,” she said, and fell back, next to Zemun.

They entered the forest, and despite Yakov's current upset he felt like a kid who had stumbled into a real fairytale. Despite the frozen trees, the air was only slightly cooler than elsewhere underground, and the ghost of the sun shone above, lighting the hoarfrost on every surface with a prismatic glitter of blues, reds and yellows. The delicate tracery of the frost formed flowers and fantastic animals and they wound like magical canvas around every trunk.

Carefully tended paths meandered between the trees, and Yakov realized with a sting of embarrassment that he was looking for woodland creatures that usually hung out in Berendey's Forest, at least according to the movies. He noticed a white hare darting away among the trees and the heavy horned head of a moose peering between the spruce branches.

"Can I borrow your rook for a sec?” Yakov asked Koschey.

"Knock yourself out,” Koschey answered, and extracted the rook Sergey from his pocket. “Just don't let him get away."

"Where do you think I'm gonna go?” Sergey said, and fluffed his feathers. “God, it's cold here."

"It's not bad,” Yakov said, and carefully placed Sergey on his shoulder. “Does it look like you would expect?"

The rook blinked in the bright light and looked around with his red eyes. “It looks like a movie set."

"Except that it's real."

"Or so you think."

Yakov briefly considered stuffing the rook into his pocket, but decided to give him another chance. “Do you remember how to find Berendey?"

"Find him? I've only seen him in the movies. There's a scene change, a cutaway, and then he appears. I guess we wait for a cutaway."

Yakov just shook his head.

"He's right, actually,” Zemun said behind him. “Berendey knows what happens in his forest, and if there are any trespassers he won't be long."

They continued walking along the paths because it was pleasant, and the forest was so pretty it seemed a shame to leave it unexplored while one had a chance.

"How old are you?” Yakov asked Sergey.

"Twenty-five,” he answered. “You?"

"Thirty. I was just thinking… what was your favorite ice-cream when you were a kid?"

The rook squawked a laugh. “Remember the one in wafer cones, with a crème rose on top?"

"That was my favorite too. Remember those little chocolate-covered cheesecakes they used to have? I could live on that stuff."

"Me too,” Sergey agreed. “Funny how good the food was when we were kids. Now everything tastes like shit. I wonder if it's because it's all imported and comes from a can, or if it's just how memory works?"

Yakov shrugged. “A bit of both, I suppose. And not all the food is shit. Imported chicken is pretty good."

Sergey made a contemptuous noise deep in his bird throat. “Humanitarian help? They call them Bush's legs."

"So I heard."

"Those chickens are fucking monsters. What do they feed them in America?"

"I don't know,” Yakov said. Still, he felt closer to Sergey, another shared experience, as meaningless as it was, somehow making them alike. He did not like the feeling-Sergey was a criminal and a lost soul, wedged temporarily into the body of a fat white bird. He was nothing like Yakov, and not a person Yakov wanted to be friends with.

Yakov looked ahead; the crystal light and the magical forest were growing habitual, and he wondered why Berendey hadn't apprehended them yet; then he remembered the rumors of his disappearance, and his mood darkened. He started to think that they could spend an eternity wandering through this forest, and doubted if they would be able to find their way back.

"Look!” Galina said behind him, and Sergey flapped his wings in excitement.

A dark cloud coalesced over the trees, and the sounds of cawing and hooting filled the air. Black birds, brown birds, gray birds. Yakov had never seen that many birds together-they obscured the sky as far as the eye could see. “Where did they come from?” Yakov said.

"I don't know,” Koschey said, “but I'm more concerned with what they're doing."

The birds, despite their immense numbers, seemed to home in on a particular spot, just ahead, where they circled restlessly and cried.

They rushed through the wood, trees growing sparse as they approached a clearing.

"It's like a picture book,” Galina said. Yakov agreed inwardly; the house in the clearing, a trim cabin built of even reddish logs, with a thatched roof and a chimney from which curly white smoke rose, wouldn't be out of place in a fairytale, as a peaceful dwelling of a virtuous woodcutter or some other benign but slightly misanthropic character. The roof and the porch and the banister running along three steps leading to the front door were grey and black with sitting birds.

Sergey stiffened on Yakov's shoulder.

"Relax,” Yakov murmured. “They don't know who you are. They might not even be the same birds."

"Of course they are,” Galina said. She pushed him aside and ran up the steps. “Masha?” she asked every jackdaw in sight. They looked back with their shiny, black eyes, their heads with a little tuft of feathers tilted to their shoulders, but none answered the call.

Zemun and Koschey approached the closed door, and Koschey tugged on the handle. “Locked,” he said.

"Maybe he isn't here,” Zemun said.

Timur-Bey shook his head. “Dear Celestial Cow,” he said. “We cannot leave without seeing if Berendey is inside. I do not know about your kinds of gods, but the spirits of my ancestors tell me that gods are mortal. We have to see, and if you permit I'll be glad to kick the door in."

"Let's knock again,” Yakov said. “Maybe he didn't hear us the first time.” He didn't mention the thought that started bothering him the moment he'd seen the birds: what if Berendey was the entity Sergey overheard conspiring with Slava? He certainly seemed to be one of the very few underground inhabitants who visited the surface frequently to steal sunlight; he had the opportunity, and Yakov's experience taught him that opportunity often outweighed any motive.

Timur-Bey smirked. “I know what you people say. ‘An uninvited guest is worse than a Tatar', right?"

"It's just a saying.” Galina gave a sheepish smile.

This smile irritated Yakov-it reminded him of his ex-wife, of her constant desire to pacify and dampen any disagreement, smooth out the wrinkles on the surface no matter what resentment brewed inside. He turned to face Timur-Bey. “Yeah. Would you prefer we said that an uninvited visitor is better than a Tatar?"

To his surprise, Timur-Bey laughed, showing small uneven and very white teeth. “I see your point, although I still doubt the compulsion of such comparisons. Go ahead, knock."

Yakov did, and for a few minutes all of them-people, birds, the cow-listened for any sound inside the house. There was none; Yakov thought that he heard a faint buzzing, but there was no way of deciding where it originated, and whether it was just an artifact of the ear straining to hear something-anything at all.

After a while, Yakov nodded to Timur-Bey. “On three."

He counted to three, and his and Timur-Bey's shoulders made a shuddering impact with the sturdy door. It gave on the second try-the wood by the jamb splintered and the door fell halfway in, hanging by the still-locked deadbolt.

Inside, the house smelled of wood shavings and pine resin, of sun and hay. The birds poured in through the open door, as if compelled by some invisible force.

"Hello?” Yakov called through the roomy entrance hall and into a darkened corridor.

There was no answer, and he motioned for everyone to remain where they were. He had never carried a gun in his life, but now he wished he had one on him, as he moved through the corridor, his left shoulder brushing against the wall, and kicked open the door on his left. It was a kitchen, judging from the well-polished copper pots, and he wondered briefly why spirits and demigods even needed a kitchen. The recently swept floors smelled of fresh pine, and the pot-bellied woodstove stood clean, not a speck of ash in its roomy interior; neatly split fire logs were stacked in a corner, just waiting for someone to start the fire with the long curls of dry birch bark piled by the stove.

The birds that now filled the hallway and the corridor avoided the kitchen and instead mobbed the door at the end of the corridor; they flapped their wings and threw themselves against the locked door and fell to the floor, only to take wing again. Wave after a black wave crashed against the door, and Yakov had to push his way through them, wings beating against his face. Sergey's claws dug into his shoulder, as if he were afraid that the insanity of the birds around them would take possession of his bird body and fling him against the locked door in a mindless attack.

Yakov pushed through the squawking and the fluttering, soft downy feathers of an owl's wing brushing against his cheek in an almost tender gesture. It was a barn owl, and he remembered the girl Darya in the long-ago, her small and dusky apartment with the railroad just outside her window… the same railroad, he realized, that passed by his house, the same railroad that conveyed the glass granules-soul-stones-to the glass factory. He shook his head-he was stalling, reluctant to open the door, fearful of what might be inside.

He put his shoulder to the wood, and the feeble lock gave on the first try. It was a bedroom, filled with soft light filtered through the closed curtains; the bed, decorated with a surprising mound of decorative pillows, was covered with a white feather duvet, and a shiny, brassy chamber pot peeked from under it. St Nikolay and St Georgiy (and his ubiquitous lizard) peered from the icons on the wall with wizened dark eyes. And on the floor, parallel to the bed, a dead body lay stretched out as if in sleep. Dark blood pooled around it, dripping across the broad chest dressed in a mossy-green caftan from a wound over the dead man's heart; a bayonet protruded from it, and although he was no expert, Yakov recognized that the bayonet was old.

"This is a Napoleonic war weapon,” Sergey said from his shoulder helpfully. “You might want to get it before these birds swarm him."

Yakov nodded. The birds, granted access, flitted inside in an almost comically solemn procession. They settled on the floor, on the dead man's wrinkled, kind face, on his white beard that fanned across the chest and turned red in places; they lit on his green cap and his red calloused hands lying palms up on the floor, on the pointy toes of his boots and along his legs.

There wasn't much left to do, and Yakov called to the rest of his companions. When they stood in a respectful semicircle by the body of the dead demigod, Yakov yanked the bayonet out.

Koschey sighed. “I warned him,” he said. “I told him that one's much better off with one's death hidden away. I really can't recommend it highly enough."

"Shove it,” Zemun said with a force unusual for her. “Show some respect-there weren't that many of us left, and now we are one fewer."