The Secret History of Moscow

14: Napoleon

The world used to make sense; Yakov remembered that much. And yet, here, underground, he couldn't avoid the thought that the apparent sense and order was just a result of his wistful optimism. It also occurred to him that the closer he found himself to evil, the harder it was to maintain the illusion of a sensible universe.

He resented the vague and abstract quality of evil-it was always in the plural, be it thugs or communists or Chechen terrorists. It was never a person with a face and a possibility of affixing blame, at least not after some time passed; only then could evil be identified and labeled as such, but who could believe something after so much time had passed? And after living underground and hearing the denizens’ stories he started to doubt that historians on the surface ever got the real meaning of anything.

Now, he felt lost among dreams and speculations, in a dark forest so big that the initially sprawling and overwhelming underground city became but a speck lost in a mosaic of trees-some frozen and leafless, others just starting to sprout their first sticky leaves: a patchwork of seasons and-Yakov suspected-times. And somewhere deep within the forest there was a palace of the czar who had abandoned Moscow for St Petersburg. And within this palace there were birds who used to be people but were now subjugated to some unknown but menacing enemies-numerous, faceless, like any other evil.

Timur-Bey led them, following landmarks only he could see; he sometimes stopped to look closely at a tree trunk or a patch of grass, or to rub the delicate skeleton of a fallen leaf between his small dry palms.

"What is he doing?” Yakov whispered to Galina. “What is he looking for?"

"I don't think he's looking for anything,” Galina whispered back. “I think he's praying."

"Praying? Who's here to pray to?” He heaved a sigh and fell silent, suddenly overtaken by the thought that here, underground, there was no one to hear his prayers. He was never particularly religious, despite his mother's efforts to make him go to church and to consider his soul. Still, there was a certainty that if he ever had the fancy to pray there would be someone to listen; at least his mother assured him that it was so. Here, there was instead the bleak knowledge that all the gods that had any power were dead, and he was instead at the mercy of strange creatures with unclear motives. It was no wonder then that he looked to Galina for support.

But she seemed preoccupied. Ever since the dreams of her sister started, she grew more distant and anxious by the day, as if a part of her strained ahead, leaving behind the rest that couldn't keep up. “It's like a bad dream,” she told Yakov. “You know the ones when you're trying to run but can't or only move very slowly?"

He nodded. “I think everyone has those."

"It's strange, isn't it,” Galina said. “It's not like anyone ever had an actual experience of running in molasses. I wonder where this dream comes from."

"Walking through mud,” Yakov said. “The place I used to live, there was so much mud, especially after the rains started. There was construction everywhere."

"Sounds like my neighborhood,” Galina said. “There used to be an apple orchard, and now it's just dirt and railroad."

"I remember,” Yakov said. “I'm just two streets down from you, by the supermarket and the liquor store."

"And the glass factory,” Galina said. “The one Sergey talked about. Isn't it strange, how we lived so close and yet never knew what was going on there, with thugs and magic?"

"I suppose. But isn't it even stranger that there's a whole damn world under our feet, and nobody knows about it?"

"Yeah,” Galina said, her forehead furrowing in the habitual pattern of narrow lines that were getting permanently entrenched in her smooth skin. “But someone has to know. The KGB probably does-how can they not?"

Yakov shrugged; he did not share Galina's conviction although he had encountered this particular belief many times-perfectly reasonable people often believed that the KGB was all-knowing, and ascribed to them a superhuman competence. It made it easier to swallow that way, he supposed; if the evil was all-knowing and all-powerful, one could not be too hard on oneself for being a victim. And there was comfort in this belief in the omnipotence of the KGB-not always pleasant, perhaps, but better than the alternative; who wanted to live in fear of a mere shadow?

Yakov sighed. “Maybe not. This place… even if someone knew about it, who would believe it? I'm here, and even I expect to wake up at any moment. It's so weird that I don't even know how to act most of the time… I met my dead grandfather, for crying out loud. I don't get it how you can be like this."

"Like what?” Galina looked toward the ground under her walking feet.

"Like all this… like it's real. You're taking it seriously."

"I have to,” she said. “My sister is here. And you… after I saw what the boatman did to you, I think you're taking it pretty seriously too."

"I don't want to talk about that.” Yakov picked up his pace. He looked at the trees, long beards of Icelandic moss undulating in the wind, the dark needles of black spruces casting a deep shadow over the narrow path, and felt deeply unsettled, just like he did under the unblinking gaze of the boatman when the icy fingers of his mind probed and sifted through Yakov's memories. And just on the edges of them, a sound stirred-a thin piercing cry, tearing the night silence apart like a sharp needle, and then falling silent. The night seemed so much quieter and colder now than before that cry started, and the hole left by the removed memory ached, like the phantom limb of a mutilated soldier.

Timur-Bey seemed to be nearing the goal-he stopped less, and forged ahead down the path overgrown with brambles and lamb's ear. Zemun followed closely behind, trampling down the vegetation with her hooves to make the way passable for the rest, although Yakov suspected that Koschey was far too inured to such minor obstacles to pay attention, and that Zemun's effort was for Yakov's and Galina's benefit.

The forest around them changed again, as it did many times on this journey. The trees changed from spruces to birches, and light played across their golden heart-shaped leaves. The path also widened, as if it had been recently traveled. The air opened up around them, and Yakov realized how suffocated he felt under the closed canopy of the spruces. Birches were so much nicer, so much more pastoral-they reminded him of the ubiquitous sentimentally patriotic paintings, always with birches and blue skies, always about the transcendent quality of the Russian forests and other natural habitats. But right now, he was glad to see them.

The clearings gaped at them from the right and left, soft succulent meadows of long rich grass, sharp sedges fringing the wet meadow margins where a brook gurgled in its gentle idiot tongue.

"Wait,” Timur-Bey whispered, and kneeled to examine footprints in the soft ground.

Yakov was not an experienced tracker, but even he could see that the meadow was thoroughly trampled.

"These are bare feet,” Timur-Bey pointed. “And these-not quite bare, but quite close. It looks like their boots are falling apart."

Sergey flapped his wings and hopped awkwardly to the ground. He half-hopped, half-ran to Timur-Bey's side, peering at a deep oval depression filled with murky swamp water. “This is the butt of a rifle,” he said.

"Or a musket,” Timur-Bey agreed. “Didn't they use to say that the bullet is stupid and the bayonet is wise?"

"Maybe a musket,” Sergey said. “My point is, we should probably be quiet and not attract attention."

"Maybe they're friendly,” Zemun said.

"They have guns,” Koschey said. “Not that it bothers me, but you fleshbags should probably keep it under advisement. Bare-footed men with large guns are rarely in a good enough mood to chat before shooting."

"I don't like this,” Galina said.

The rook squawked with laughter. “The large gun part or the men part?"

"Oh, leave her alone,” Yakov said.

"I'm just saying,” Sergey said. “You don't like men much, do you?"

Galina shifted her shoulders uncomfortably and slouched. “No. What's your point?"

"Enough,” Yakov interrupted. “This is really not a good time.” It was true, of course; at the same time, Yakov did not particularly relish the subject. He knew Galina; she had grown up the same way he had-without a father, among women hardened by bitter life experience. She had no reason to feel any differently than she did, and yet he felt guilty the moment that ‘no’ left her lips. Like it was his fault somehow-but then again, he had left his wife. Or perhaps it was she who had left him; he couldn't remember anymore, not through the cobwebs of lies and rationalizations and retellings of the same story over and over to himself, until the details took on the shape of his words, and the words themselves became the truth and the substance, their underlying memory forever lost, like the wax mold of a death mask.

They moved along the road, under the sparse cover of the trees. The shadows of thin branches and leaves weaved in patterns of light and dark, breaking up and concealing the shapes of people and the cow that moved below them. The meadows disappeared, supplanted by patches of rough scrub-bushes and goldenrods, willow herbs growing through the charred remains of some long-forgotten buildings.

The trees receded, and they stood between the overgrown ruins and a tall palisade, made of thick and long logs fitted together side by side, their sharpened ends threatening to pierce the distant sky. They could not see what was hidden behind the fence, only a curlicue of smoke rising from behind it, and a strong smell of burnt wood tainting the air so strongly Yakov tasted it on the back of his throat.

"Something's burning,” Galina said.

Timur-Bey shook his head. “It's not burning; it had burnt, many years ago, but it still smolders. Like they do.” He pointed with a nod.

There were five men there, standing and sitting under the shadow of the fence, dressed in rags; their feet were wrapped in remnants of rough sailcloth, and muskets rested on their shoulders. But Yakov looked into their faces-red as if boiled, their beards and eyebrows singed or burned off, their eyes the blind white of a cooked egg. Their nails, trimmed with mourning black, bubbled as if melting off their fingertips. Their rags were covered in soot, but Yakov guessed them for military uniforms, even though it was impossible to see the insignia; he guessed that they were from the early nineteenth century, but could not determine their allegiance. At least, until they spoke.

"Hey, Petro,” one of them called. “What time is it?"

"Who cares what time it is?” Petro replied and spat philosophically. “Does time even have meaning anymore?"

One of the others nodded and sat down, resting the musket across his knees. “And for what sins are we being punished so?” he said. “What sins have I committed, dear Lord in heaven, to guard the fence of a burned building for all eternity? What sins, what sins are so great to merit such a punishment? Dear Lord, forgive me my trespasses, lowly sinner that I am, and deliver me from this torment."

"Shut up about your sins, Corporal,” the one named Petro said with a stifled laugh. “Who's to say sins have anything to do with this fence? And who's to say whose sins are greater?"

A general murmur of agreement emitted from the rest of the soldiers.

"I suffer so,” the Corporal said.

Collective groans of annoyance were his answer, and Yakov decided that for the past hundred and eighty years the Corporal's suffering had been getting on his comrades’ nerves.

Yakov and the rest had all agreed that a direct approach would be the most foolish one; instead, they decided to rely on an old-fashioned deception-rather, Zemun and Koschey decided on it, while Galina and Yakov rolled their eyes at each other and shook their heads in disbelief. Timur-Bey and Sergey remained neutral on the matter.

"Seriously,” Yakov said to Zemun. “Trojan horses have been done before."

"It's not the same,” Zemun said. “There's no one inside me.” She sounded hurt, and Yakov didn't argue further.

They watched Zemun as she approached the gates, her jaws moving rhythmically, and her eyes as empty as those of a regular cow. The soldiers at the gate turned to watch her with their blind white eyes.

"What's that?” the Corporal asked.

"Looks like a cow, Corporal,” Petro said, and stroked his bare face thoughtfully, as if he expected to find a beard. “A beauty of a cow, too."

The rest muttered that it was a nice enough cow, yes sir, sure was.

"I haven't had have any milk in ages,” Petro said. “Or cheese, for that matter."

The corporal stopped lamenting the cruelty of his fate, and smiled. Zemun let herself be led inside, and Yakov heaved a sigh. He only hoped that the plan wouldn't backfire too badly.

When night fell, the gate in the tall fence swung open, lit from the inside by the ghostly blue light of the celestial cow, and Zemun herself motioned for them to come in. Inside the gate there was a yard of tightly tamped dirt; every pockmark and trough stood out in stark relief, like craters on the moon's surface, illuminated by pools of light. There were stars strewn about, and their blue and white rays pierced the darkness like spotlights.

"What happened here?” Yakov asked, pointing at the globes of pure light littering the bare yard.

"They tried to milk me,” Zemun answered, and looked sullen. “But I don't think they suspect anything."

Galina exhaled an unconvincing laugh. “Of course not. Why would they?"

Yakov looked past the scattered stars and forgot about the danger and everything else, gaping at the wooden palace that towered over them. The facets cut into its smooth light walls reminded him of the palaces in the Kremlin, and the gilded onion domes topping seven slender towers appeared more beautiful than any buildings he had ever seen. “What is this?” he whispered.

"That,” Timur-Bey said, “used to be one of the oldest buildings of the Kremlin."

"It's all stone now,” Galina said.

"It used to be all wood,” Timur-Bey said, his almond-shaped eyes dark and stark in the grounded starlight. “I remember it; the Tatars burned a few of those palaces… and they kept burning throughout history. Your people rebuilt them in stone, but some of the old buildings made it here. This one… I hear that Napoleon burned it… Moscow burned for many days then."

Moscow burned for many days then. Historians argue about who started the fires. Some said it was the Russians, intent on depriving the invaders of food and shelter. They burned the houses and the food stores, the shops and the warehouses; they did not care that the privation would affect them too. Others said that the Napoleonic troops burned the Kremlin on purpose and everything else by accident, due to the windy weather and too many unattended cooking fires in their encampments. Yakov didn't know who it was, and it didn't seem important to him, but he did wonder how the soldiers they had seen-Petro and the corporal and the rest-ended up here. He could imagine it now-burned and injured, suffocating from smoke, their mouths tasting of ash, they stumbled through fire and sparks, wincing at the crashing of the great beams of the palace burning around them. They must've seen the doorway, distorted by heat and smoke, and rushed through. He thought they were soldiers, probably used to fighting and routing and shooting and stabbing, but not this, not being caught in a burning building, gilded with molten flames. He imagined a despair great enough, a fear powerful enough to pick up the ghost of the stately building that roared and collapsed in a tornado of fire and howling smoke, and to bring it with them underground… even though Yakov suspected that they were not as much underground as on the other side, in some unseen lining of the known world.

Zemun had done a bit of reconnaissance-she knew the sheds and the piles of firewood in the yard, the small barracks where the soldiers with burned hair and boiled white eyes sat in dreamless sleep all night long. She still did not know who was inside, since the palace's gates were locked tight. They decided to wait until morning, hiding in one of the sheds filled with half-rotten logs and rusted axes.

Galina kept looking up, searching for something in the molded ceiling beams.

Yakov guessed that she was looking for birds. “They're not there,” he whispered.

She nodded, still looking up, as if expecting them to materialize out of the surrounding stale air. Yakov looked too, squinting up into the cupped ceiling, where shadows grew dense in the corners, reaching for the thickly hewn supports and twining around them in an elaborate chiaroscuro. If he squinted and tilted his head, the shadows shifted and something glinted between his eyelashes, impossible to see directly but shifting to the corners of his vision and dancing and taunting, they twinkled like the stars that fell out of Zemun's udders, like large slow drops of magical milk.

Galina watched them too; she asked, “Did you have a kaleidoscope when you were a kid?"

"Of course,” Yakov said. “Show me a kid who didn't."

Sergey the rook squawked in the affirmative on Yakov's shoulder, and Yakov felt sudden and acute pity for this man, a criminal imprisoned in a bird's body, at yet another similarity, another reminder that he used to be a child too, and that he and Yakov shared many experiences, few things being unique in the mass-manufactured Soviet childhood.

"Did you ever break yours open?” Yakov asked Galina.

She smiled, finally looking away from the ceiling and meeting his eyes. “Of course. Every kid does-how can you not want to see all those treasures inside?"

Yakov smiled at the memory. There was nothing of interest inside that cardboard tube, slightly dented at the end where the plastic caps fitted, one of them with an eyepiece. There were several small mirrors inside that tube, and nothing but a button, a glass bead and several triangular pieces of colored paper. “That was messed up,” he said. “I cried for hours afterwards."

Galina nodded. “It's funny how everyone goes through this kaleidoscope thing. You think the adults do it on purpose?"

"Why?"

"To teach the kids something… I don't know."

Sergey huffed. “Teach what? The illusory nature of the world?"

Galina shrugged. “Maybe. Or the futility of beauty, or something depressing like that. I still don't understand adults, even though I am one myself."

"No you're not,” Sergey said. “You don't have kids. Neither do I, so don't feel bad. See, I figured it all out guarding the nuclear silo-I always felt like a kid, you know, just playing a game or something, like I just pretended to be a soldier with a stick for a gun. And there was a lot of time to think. So I figured it all out. You're either a parent or you're a kid. As long as you don't have kids of your own and become a parent, you're a kid. So, Yakov, what are you?"

Yakov couldn't decide which one he was-neither a child nor a parent felt right. “I don't know,” he said. “But that day when I broke that kaleidoscope, I swore that my kids would never have one of those things. Damn depressing, and a horrible toy to give to anyone. I wouldn't be one of those asshole parents that teach kids nothing but how much everything sucks and that the world is messed up."

"It is messed up,” Galina said. “In case you haven't noticed, we're underground. With a talking cow and Koschey the Deathless, about to ask a bunch of soldiers circa 1812 why on earth did they kill a beloved fairytale character with a bayonet. Also, my sister is missing."

"I'm sorry about that,” Yakov said. “That part is indeed messed up. But everything else… it's not too bad. Is it?"

"No,” Galina said. “It's not. I always dreamt of a secret place like that… I just wish I found it under better circumstances."

"You can't get here under better circumstances,” Timur-Bey said from the darkness in the corner of the shed. “Haven't you been paying attention?"

"Perhaps we should sleep a bit,” Sergey said, and hid his head under his wing.

"I don't feel like it,” Yakov said.

Galina snuggled against Zemun's flank. “Neither do I."

Zemun smiled. She seemed content now, peaceful. “Why sleep when you can talk?” she said. “Just keep it down. There are enemies afoot."

Yakov moved closer to Galina. “Sorry if it's too personal,” he said. “But you mentioned-that you were hospitalized before?"

Galina let his half-question hang, unanswered, for a few seconds as she frowned as if gathering her thoughts. “Schizophrenia,” she said, finally.

Yakov was surprised. She didn't seem crazy, at least most of the time. “You look normal to me,” he finally mumbled, and cringed. Now she would think that he doubted her veracity.

"Thanks,” she said instead. “It comes and goes. They call it sluggish schizophrenia-ever heard of it?"

He did. It was a fake diagnosis for political malcontents, as far as he remembered. A convenient way of oppression that did not require prisons. He looked at Galina with pity-she seemed like such a small woman, so hurt and broken up about her sister, so driven with the desperate resolve of the one who had very little of value in life and would fight for the last thing that was left for her.

He didn't know how to tell her, and whether he should tell her at all-that the disease they diagnosed her with did not really exist, that it was a fabrication. He wondered if it would do any good to tell a person who believed herself crippled that she was not-would it fix her, or would it become a crushing burden? He tried to imagine what it would be like, to reconsider his concept of self, to find that he was not what he thought he was-would it be liberating or devastating? “Yes,” he finally said. “I heard of it. You seem to be dealing with it well."

Galina smiled, grateful. “My mom,” she said. “She was the one who thought there was something wrong with me when I was just little. Funny how she foresaw it-I started having hallucinations after she said I had to go to a hospital."

"Uncanny,” Yakov muttered. “Do you think it's possible that being in the hospital was maybe not the best thing for you?"

She stopped smiling. “Of course I thought about it. What, do you think I'm stupid? But it doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"I guess not,” Yakov said. “Sorry I brought it up."

"It's all right,” Galina said. “But I'm tired now. Mind if I sleep a little?"

"Go ahead,” Yakov said.

Galina rested her head on Zemun's flank and closed her eyes with a sigh. Yakov remained sitting, listening to the crying of an imaginary baby somewhere in his mind, on the very edge of hearing, so that even he couldn't say whether it was a memory or just a ringing of the frayed nerves. He waited for morning.