The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Stodólya: he watched the man hunt down the octopus fanatically, pin it in, methodically, from all sides, setting his traps so tight a mouse couldn’t slip through, and then with one or two sudden strikes, sever the writhing tentacles with an expert surgeon’s precision. He witnessed more than the mere thrill of the hunt, as in combat such calculated, multistep operations obviously gave Stodólya his own, special satisfaction; and when, after each success his peculiarly molded face, dark as though burned from inside, with its close-set eyes and the protruding, slightly hooked nose (wolfhound, flashed through Adrian’s mind again: once he gets a hold of someone, not a hair will fall without his permission!) would assume for a short time a contentedly sated expression, lit with a quick, cunning squint—rebel, blast him!—and Adrian, however much he thrilled with their victory, felt somewhere deep in his heart discomforted as one feels in the presence of a rival who has an advantage. And this vexed him, and spoiled the joy.
    On one such occasion, Stodólya loosened up so much that he allowed them all to be photographed—this was unusual indeed because Stodólya was religious about secrecy and fastidiously controlled circumstances in which any of the rebels might accidentally be caught on camera—and now it was he himself who permitted the courier to bring a photographer to the forest, from three villages over. The photographer, however, was reliable, checked manytimes and thoroughly instructed about where and how he was to hide the negatives; he took a picture of all five of them—Adrian, Stodólya, Geltsia, and the two Security Service guards, Raven and Levko (the young man with rosy cheeks whom Adrian warned about cleaning his weapon).
    Right before that, Stodólya’s unit eliminated one of GB’s provocation groups that had been operating on their territory since winter, terrorizing civilians, and Stodólya, usually gloomy and short-spoken, uptight and buttoned-up, was openly celebrating, letting the success soften and thaw him. He told Adrian how long he’d been hunting those bandits—he found two traitors in that GB group, guys who’d been born around here. A year earlier, GB had taken them alive and recruited them in jail, so during raids they spoke like locals and the horrified peasants believed that it was really “our boys” who went on a rampage, and wished they could now hide underground themselves, not knowing what was going on and where they could turn for protection. But as luck would have it, the bandits made a mistake: got, as was their custom, drunk, and when killing a teacher’s family one night, dressed in the rebel-style mazepynka caps and embroidered shirts, failed to notice they hadn’t finished off a twelve-year-old boy, left a witness.
    At this news, Stodólya’s eyes flashed with that predatory, quick flash of wicked triumph, instantly hidden by his characteristic squint, giving Adrian the feeling of a creeping, unpleasant chill that told him they were different: Stodólya spared no thoughts for the murdered family, and the wounded boy, in his mind, had played his part once he relayed the information and gave them the lead. Stodólya enjoyed the revenge itself, knew how to enjoy it. And not the way one enjoys winning a complex combination in chess, but almost lustfully, like love. Adrian did not know how to do that. The hatred toward the enemy, by itself, did nothing for him; he didn’t know how to savor it.
    That was the first time it occurred to Adrian that Stodólya outdid him in something important. Or maybe that’s what a real counterintelligence officer was supposed to be—immuneto sentiment. When a village courier, a very young girl, sitting with them around a campfire, blurted out, like a little kid, that she dreamed of studying to be a doctor one day, “when we have Ukraine,” she touched a nerve in all of them: Raven remembered how, in Polish times, he dreamt of becoming a barrister, defending the wronged; and the rosy-cheeked Levko, when he was little, acted in theatrical performances at Prosvita and everyone said that he would make a fine actor, but what kind of job is that for a lad? Adrian tossed in his two cents with a story about how he surprised himself when he discovered he could use trigonometry in battle after having been best in his class at it in school. Only Stodólya said nothing. As if he had no life other than the one he had now, none in reserve