Fantasy: The Best of 2001 Read online

  Eventually Nataliya and Chemayev forced their way into a large relatively under-populated room. No more than fifteen or sixteen people standing in clusters, some occupying the grouping of couches and easy chairs that dominated the far end. Nataliya drew Chemayev aside. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “For all I know we’re fol­lowing Yuri about. Sit down and I’ll try to find him.”

  Oppressed, mentally fatigued, Chemayev was in no mood to argue. Once she had left, he collapsed into an easy chair, let his head fall back and closed his eyes. The workings of his mind were clouded, murky. It was as if the contents of his skull were the interior of a fishbowl that hadn’t been cleaned for weeks, the water thickened to a brown emulsion in which a golden glint of move­ment was visible now and again. Though not altogether pleasant, it was an oddly restful state, and he became irritated when a man’s voice intruded, telling a story about two young friends who’d come to Moscow from the north. He tried unsuccessfully to ignore the voice and finally opened his eyes to discover that the room had filled with decrepit, illclad men and women, typical denizens of the krushovas. The storyteller was hidden among them and his voice—a slurred yet authoritative baritone—was the only one audible.

  “There was a special bond between them,” the man was saying. “They were both misfits in the life they had chosen—or rather that had chosen them. They were ro­mantics and their circumstance was the very antithesis of the romantic, suppressing the natural expressions of their hearts and souls. Nicolai—the livelier of the pair—he was more grievously affected. He fancied himself a poet. He aspired to be a new Mayakovsky, to give tongue to the millennial monsters taking shape from the funeral smoke of Communism. A talented, personable fellow. Blond, handsome. For all his bloody deeds, he had something inside him that remained untouched. A core of . . . not innocence exactly, but a kind of youthful arrogance that counterfeited innocence. That made innocence un­necessary. Who knows what he might have achieved in a more forgiving age?”

  This reference to someone named Nicolai and the ac­companying description charged Chemayev with new anxiety and caused him to shake off his malaise. He sat up and peered about, trying to locate the speaker. An old woman fixed him with a baleful stare, then turned away. Her faded print dress was hiked up in back, re­vealing a raddled, purple-veined thigh; one of her grimy stockings had sagged about her calf in folds, like a seven league boot.

  “The morning in question,” the man went on, “they got up well before dawn and drove to an open market north of the city. You know the sort of place. A muddy field where vendors set up stalls. Farmers selling vege­tables and such. An old bus was parked at the edge of the field. It served as an office for Aleksander Fetisov, the small-time criminal they’d been sent to kill. Fetisov had grown dissatisfied with picking up the crumbs that fell from the table of the big shots. He had grand am­bitions. But neither his strength nor his ingenuity had proved equal to those ambitions. When he stepped out of the bus with his bodyguards our heroes opened fire from behind the bushes where they had hidden themselves. The farmers ran away.

  “Nicolai knelt beside Fetisov’s body. He needed proof that they’d done the job. A watch, a ring. Some identi­fiable token. As his friend searched the dead man’s clothing Viktor moved up behind him and aimed a pistol at his head. It would have been merciful if he had pulled the trigger right at that second, but he wasn’t committed to the act. He was still trying to think of a way out . . . even though he knew there was none. He couldn’t un­derstand why Polutin had ordered him to kill Nicolai. But for Viktor, lack of understanding was not sufficient cause to break ranks. In this he differed from Nicolai. And of course, though he couldn’t see it at the time, this was the reason Polutin had ordered Nicolai’s death—he had too much imagination to be a good soldier.”

  Bewildered and full of dread, Chemayev stood and began making his way toward the sound of the voice. He knew this story, he was familiar with every detail, but how anyone else could know it was beyond him. The elderly men and women shuffled out of his path clumsily, reluctantly—it seemed he was pushing through a sort of human vegetation, a clinging, malodorous thicket comprised of threadbare dresses, torn sweaters, and blotchy, wrinkled skin.

  “Nicolai glanced up from the corpse to discover that his friend had become his executioner. For an instant, he was frozen. But after the initial shock dissipated he made no move to fight or to plead for his life. He just looked at Viktor, a look that seemed fully comprehend­ing, as if he knew everything about the moment. The mechanisms that had created it. Its inevitability. And it was the composition of that look, the fact it contained no element of disappointment, as if what was about to occur was no more nor less than what Nicolai might have expected of his friend . . . that was the spark that prompted Viktor, at last, to fire. To give him due credit, he wept profusely over the body. At one point he put the gun to his head, intending to end his own life. But that, certainly, was an act to which he was not com­mitted.”

  Standing near the door, his back to Chemayev, the center of the krushova dwellers’ attention, was a squat blackhaired man in a blue serge suit. Chemayev stepped in front of him and stared into the unblinking eyes of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria, his clothing identical in every respect to that worn by the painted image in the ele­vator, complete down to the pince-nez perched on his nose and the red blossom in his lapel. Flabbergasted, Chemayev fell back a step.

  “If it were up to me,” Beria said, “I’d have you shot. Not because you betrayed your friend—in that you were only carrying out an order. But your penchant for self-recrimination interferes with the performance of your duty. That is reprehensible.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth and regarded Chemayev dourly. “I suspect you’d like to know how I came to hear the story I’ve been telling my comrades. No doubt you’re trying to rationalize my presence. Perhaps you’ve concluded that if Yuri could create doubles for himself, he might well have created a double for Beria. Perhaps you’re thinking that when Lev Polutin sent you and Nicolai to kill Fetisov, he also sent a spy to make certain you did the job right, and that this spy is my source. That would be the logical explanation. At least according to the lights of your experience. But let me assure you, such is not the case.”

  Having recovered his poise somewhat, Chemayev seized on this explanation as if it were a rope that had been lowered from the heavens to lift him free of earthly confusion. “I’m sick of this shit!” he said, grabbing Beria by the lapels. “Tell me where the fuck Yuri is!”

  An ominous muttering arose from the crowd, but Beria remained unruffled. “People have been trying to talk to you all evening,” he said. “Trying to help you make sense of things. But you’re not a good listener, are you? Very well.” He patted Chemayev on the cheek, an avuncular gesture that caused Chemayev, as if in reflex, to release him. “Let’s say for the sake of argument I’m not who I appear to be. That I’m merely the likeness of Lavrenty Pavlovich Beria. Not God’s creation, but Yuri’s. Given Yuri’s playful nature, this is a distinct possibility. But how far, I wonder, does playfulness extend? Does he only create doubles of the famous, the notorious? Or might he also create doubles of individuals who’re of no interest to anyone . . . except, perhaps, to Viktor Che­mayev?” A meager smile touched his lips. “That doesn’t seem reasonable, does it?”

  There was a rustling behind Chemayev, as of many people shifting about, and he turned toward the sound. An avenue had been created in the ranks of human wreckage from the krushova and sauntering toward him along it—the way he used to walk when he spotted you at a bar or on a street corner, and had it in mind to play a trick, his head tipped to the side, carrying his left hand by his waist, as if about to break into a dance step—was a blond, slender, blue-eyed man in a fawn leather jacket, gray silk shirt, and cream-colored slacks. His boyish smile was parenthetically displayed between two deli­cately incised lines that helped lend him a look of per­petual slyness. In fact, all the details of his features were so finely drawn they might hav
e been created by a horde of artisan spiders armed with tiny lapidary instruments. It was the face of a sensitive, mischievous child come to a no less sensitive and mischievous maturity. He looked not a day older than he had on the last morning of his life three and a half years before.

  “That’s right!” Nicolai said, holding out his arms to Viktor. “In the flesh! Surprised?” He wheeled in a circle as if showing off a new suit. “Still the handsome twenty-two-year-old, eh? Still a fucking cloud in trousers.”

  Logic was no remedy for this apparition. If the floor had opened beneath him to reveal a lake of fire, Che­mayev would not have been more frightened. He retreated in a panic, fumbling for the pistol.

  “Man! Don’t be an asshole! I’m not going to give you any trouble.” Nicolai showed Chemayev his empty palms. “We’ve been down this road once. You don’t want to do it again.”

  Guilt and remorse took up prominent posts along Chemayev’s mental perimeters. His breath came shal­lowly, and he had difficulty speaking. “Nicolai?” he said. “It . . . it’s not you . . .?”

  “Sure it is. Want me to prove it? No problem.” Nicolai folded his arms on his chest and appeared to be think­ing; then he grinned. “What’s that night club where all the whores dress like Nazis? Fuck! I’m no good with names. But you must remember the night we got drunk there? We screwed everything in sight. Remember?”

  Chemayev nodded, though he barely registered the words.

  “On the way home we had an argument,” Nicolai said. “It was the only time we ever got into a fight. You pulled the car off onto the side of the Garden Ring and we beat the shit out of each other. Remember what we argued about?”

  “Yes.” Chemayev was beginning to believe that the man might actually be Nicolai. The thought gave him no comfort.

  “We argued about whether the goddamn Rolling Stones were better with Brian Jones or Mick Taylor.” Nicolai fingered a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket, tapped one out. “Stupid bullshit. I couldn’t chew for a fucking week.” He fired up his cigarette and exhaled a fan of smoke; he closed his right eye, squinted at Chemayev as if assessing the impact of his words. “Want more proof? No problem.”

  He dropped, loose-limbed, into a nearby chair and began to reel off another anecdote, but no further proofs were necessary. His unstrung collapse; his languid ges­tures; the way he manipulated the cigarette in his left hand, passing it from one pair of fingers to another like a magician practicing a coin trick—the entire catalogue of his body language and speech were unmistakably Ni­colai’s. No actor alive, however skillful, could have achieved such verisimilitude.

  As Chemayev looked on, half-listening to Nicolai, a consoling inner voice, a voice of fundamental soundness and fine proletarian sensibilities that had been there all the time but only became audible when essential to mental stability, was offering assurances that beyond the boundaries of his temporary derangement the world was as ever, humdrum and explicable, and no such thing as this could be happening—drugs, alcohol, and stress were to blame—rambling on and on with increasingly insane calmness and irrelevance, like the whispered litany of a self-help guru suggesting seven simple methods for maximizing spiritual potential issuing from a cassette playing over a pair of headphones fallen from the head of gunshot victim who was bleeding out onto a kitchen floor. Yet simultaneously, in some cramped subbasement of his brain, urgent bulletins concerning zom­bie sightings and karmic retribution were being received, warnings that came too late to save the iniquitous mur­derer of a childhood friend . . . .

  “Viktor!” Nicolai was staring at him with concern. “Are you all right? Sit down, man. I know this is fucked up, but we’ve got some things to talk about.”

  Unable to think of an acceptable alternative, Che­mayev sagged into the chair opposite, but he did not lean back and he rested the pistol on his knee. Overwhelmed with guilt and regret, he had the urge to apol­ogize, to beg forgiveness, but recognized the inadequacy of such gestures. His heart seemed to constrict into a dark nugget of self-loathing.

  “You know it’s me now, right?” Nicolai asked, “You don’t have any doubts?”

  Called upon to speak, Chemayev was unable to repress his urge for apology and emitted a sobbing, incoherent string of phrases that, reduced to their essence, translated into an admission of responsibility and a de­nial of the same on the grounds that he’d had no choice, if he hadn’t followed Polutin’s orders, Polutin would have killed him, his family . . . .The shame of the act never left him, but what else could he have done?

  Nicolai shifted lower in his chair, reached down to the floor and stubbed out his cigarette. He watched the embers fade. “I never expected to last long in Moscow,” he said gloomily. “That’s one of the differences between us. You always thought you were going to win the game. Me, I knew it was only a matter of time before I lost.” He tapped out another cigarette. “I can’t help how you feel. And believe me, I know. I saw your face when you pulled the trigger. I see your face now. You’re not hard to read.” He lit up again. “You’ll never forgive yourself, no matter what I tell you. So why don’t we put the sub­ject aside for now. We’ve more important things to dis­cuss.”

  Once again Chemayev could think of nothing to say other than to abase himself, to offer further apology. Tears streamed from his eyes, and though the tears were validation of a kind, evidence that his spirit, albeit tar­nished, was still capable of normal reactions, they also infused him with shame. He struggled to control himself. “I don’t understand,” he said. “How is this possible? How can you be here?”

  “With Yuri all things are possible,” said Nicolai; then his glum mood lifted. “You know those American jokes? The ones with the punch lines that go, ‘I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news’? It’s like that. I’ve got good news, and I’ve got bad news. Which do you want first?”

  This was the old Nicolai, always joking, trying to make light of things. Chemayev relaxed by a degree from his rigid posture.

  “Come on!” Nicolai said. “Which do you want?”

  “Good.”

  “Okay. The good news is there is an afterlife. The bad news”—Nicolai made a sweeping gesture that, for all Chemayev knew, might have been intended to include the apartment, Russia, the universe—“this is it!”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “This place.” Nicolai gave a sardonic laugh. “This fucking night club. Eternity.”

  There must be, Chemayev thought, more to the joke.

  “You still don’t get it, huh? Christ!” Nicolai leaned forward and gave Chemayev a rap on the knee, like a teacher scolding—fondly—a favorite pupil. “For such a genius you’re not too quick on the uptake.”

  “Eternity?” said Chemayev, incredulous, “Yuri Le­bedev’s Eternity . . . that’s the afterlife? You’re not seri­ous?”

  “Serious? What the fuck’s that? Is Moscow serious? Starving people camped in the subways. Generals selling tanks on the black market. That old fart in the Kremlin swilling down a quart a day and promising us the cap­italist paradise. It’s no less serious than that.” Nicolai wriggled in his chair like a kid with an itch. “Yuri, man . . . he’s . . . .” He gave his head a shake, as if to signify awe. “You don’t have to hang around the party long before you learn things about him.”

  “You mean that horseshit about he’s a fucking wiz­ard? A Master of the Mystic East?”

  “They’re things a guy like you might not be able to swallow. But for a guy like me, with what I’ve been through, I don’t have any choice.”

  Chemayev looked down at his hands.

  “Have you ever met anyone who knew Yuri?” Nicolai asked. “Any of his friends, his associates. Not just someone who used to work for him.”

  After giving this due consideration Chemayev said he had not.

  “That’s because they’re dead. Grenkov, Zereva, Ash­kenazy. All those guys. They’re all dead and they’re all at the party. Man, you wouldn’t believe who’s here! It
’s the goddamn Communist Hall of Fame. Yuri’s a big fan of those power-mad old bastards. Lots of generals and shit. Not many poets, though. Yuri was never much of a reader.”

  “Oh. So it’s the party that’s the afterlife!” Chemayev gave a scornful laugh. “This is bullshit!”

  Nicolai’s face hardened. “Bullshit? Well, maybe you’ll think this is bullshit too! When you shot me, I went out. One second I was staring at you. At your dumbass face! It looked like you were going to start whimpering. I had time to say to myself, ‘Oh, fuck . . . yeah . . . of course . . . .’ I figured things out, you understand. The way you were pouting—I knew it meant you’d scrambled over whatever pissy little moral hurdle the job had posed. And then”—he snapped his fingers—“I wasn’t there anymore.” He allowed Chemayev time to react and when no reaction was forthcoming he went on: “I don’t remember much afterward. But at some point I began to hear a voice. I can’t tell you what kind of voice. It was all around me . . . this enormous sound. As if I was inside the mouth that was speaking. Sometimes it seems I can almost repeat the words it was saying—they’re on the tip of my tongue. But I can’t spit them out.” He made a frustrated noise. “The next thing I remember for certain, I’m walking down a dingy corridor toward a door. Toward the party. I’m wearing nice clothes. Cologne. It’s like I just got out of the shower and I’m ready for a night on the town.”

  Nicolai took a hit of his cigarette and let smoke leak out between his lips, as if too enervated to exhale prop­erly. “I suppose it does sound like bullshit. I can’t explain it. Everybody says that while Yuri was building the club he was hanging out with some strange people. Experts on the Kabbala. Computer scientists. He even brought in a shaman from up near Archangel. They say he went through some drastic changes, and I believe it. Whatever he was like before, I’ll bet it wasn’t much like he is now.”