Moscow Noir полностью

The anniversary isn’t until the next week, but I realize that Jan is already counting the days until his Farewell, countess!—when the crimson rose blossoms on her white dress.

He said the Revolution’s birthday, as if the Revolution is a person, a woman he’s in love with. I adore that chivalry in him, that obedience and sterility, the cold flame of unearthly passion eating him up from the inside. For Jan we are both the Revolution’s lovers, and our intimacy is just an attempt to get close to Her; for him a new attempt, after years of war and execution lists, to replace death cries with cries of pleasure and the lead seed of the revolver with the seed of our love drying on my lips.

In the morning I watched Jan dress. He turned his back to me and I gazed at his butt, rounded and resilient, gazed at the scar between his broad shoulder blades … Aroused and trembling, I ran over and kissed the back of his neck.

Jan smiled over his shoulder.

Not now, Vitya, I have to go, and so do you.

Yes, I went to work too. A boring office job. If it hadn’t been for meeting Jan, my life would have been as flat as the papers I sorted through. I despised my job, though Jan did say, This too is service to the Revolution.

I got dressed and wanted to leave with him—but Jan wasn’t going to wait for me.

In a hurry to see your countess? I asked.

Our countess—and he smiled in the doorway.

I often think those words were the greatest avowal of love in my life, a magnificent epilogue to our romance, the farewell moment in a string of nights that smelled of semen and gun grease, long nights we shared the way we shared the Revolution, that stern Virgin; the way we shared the countess, the snow-white lamb doomed for slaughter in Her name.

Jan didn’t come back that night. Sometimes he was kept late, but he always warned me in advance. After midnight, tortured by suspicion, jealousy, and fear, I ran all the way across the city to Lubyanka Square. I imagined the attempted arrest, the resistance of the counterrevolutionary conspirators, a foolish bullet, and a bloody rose on his broad, hairless chest.

I asked the guard whether Jan was there and in reply I got, Get out of here, contra!, words that are doubly frightening on OGPU’s threshold. Lost, I wandered off; turning the corner, I heard the sound of an engine. A car was pulling up and behind the wheel sat a young boy. I knew him; he’d brought Jan home a couple of times after nighttime operations.

Are you Viktor? he asked.

I nodded, hesitant to ask about Jan. But he told me without waiting for my question. Later I thought they might have been lovers too. The boy’s voice held a sadness, and he told me the truth, which an OGPU agent isn’t supposed to share with an outsider—unless, of course, something more connects him to that outsider than the nighttime street, the predawn hour, and the dim glow of the streetlamps.

We got a warning, he said, that Jan is supposedly linked to the SRs and is planning a terrorist act. An UgRo agent reported that some petty thief happened to give testimony about this during a roundup.

What nonsense, I murmured. Jan has nothing to do with thieves.

I don’t know, the boy said. They killed the thief when he tried to escape. But the UgRo agent is such a distinguished comrade—he fought in the Civil War and can’t be doubted. He spoke with Comrade Meerzon in his office for two hours, and Meerzon personally signed the arrest order.

In the camps people sometimes talk about how they learned of the arrest of their near and dear. Usually they say, We believed they’d sort things out there and release him. I grinned ever so slightly. That night I had no illusions. I knew how this machine worked. I knew I’d never see Jan again. I knew it was pointless to go see Meerzon and tell him that the UgRo agent’s lover was a former countess and he had slandered Jan when he realized Jan was getting close to her. Yes, I knew it was all pointless. Pointless and dangerous.

If there had been roosters in Moscow, that night they could have cockadoodle-dooed without end. I renounced my love in a flash—I said, Well, Comrade Meerzon knows better—and hunched up, went to meet the graying dawn.