The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

to parade through the woods barefoot so a mouse wouldn’t stir—clattering close and then stopping, hesitating, not far from the darkened doorway. Has he lost sight of his object or what? You poor bastard, who sent you off like this, a calf into the woods? Alright, come on, here, brother, a little closer, don’t be scared, step another step, davai-davai, as your handlers like to say as they give you a helpful prod with the gun barrel....
    The other man, as if hearing Adrian’s call, obeyed and moved ahead—that’s it, good boy!—and when the gray Mackintosh, uncertainly spinning his head about in search of a trap door through which his object may have disappeared, aligned with the doorway, Adrian sprang in a single noiseless lunge out the door, and the rest took a matter of seconds: a short confusion, a sob from a terrified human throat, like a muffled caw, cut short before it could disturb the quiet of the city morning, and in the dark pend, shielded from the street with the narrow cast-iron grating, Adrian pressed the newcomer close to himself, feeling the man instantly freeze against the gun poked into the small ofhis back, and spoke to him over his shoulder, lips almost brushing the man’s frigid cheek.
    “Do not move. Who are you?”
    “I...
khhhh
...I...”
    What a buzzard! Every time he found himself among civilians, Adrian had to remind himself how retarded they were in comparison to the guerillas—like gramophone records set to play on slower speed.
    “I...
khhh
...I am a teacher, sir...from P.”
    The deuce take it! An amateur snitch was the last thing he needed.
    “Then why are you here, in the city? Why did you follow me?”
    “I came to the school district office, for a meeting.... Our principal left middle of the year...I recognized you. I’d seen you at a wedding in our village last spring.”
    This same face—only without the hat, with large, flaggy ears—now surfaced, clear and bright, in his memory, ensconced on the other side of the wedding table: the man had a fine singing voice, a tenor, resonant as a well, “Hey pity, pity, loved the girl since was little.... ” Adrian slackened his grip a bit, but did not let go; to an outside observer, this must have looked like an embrace, two men hugging each other in a pend in the middle of the day. Must be drunk.
    “Did you intend to renew our acquaintance in this manner, professor?”
    “I thought...your photo is up there...by the police...I saw it this morning...I thought you might not know...”
    A photo? By the police? “Help find this bandit”?
    “Your phiz looks so familiar,” said the captain who checked his documents. That would be why. He felt like laughing out loud: apparently, he’s on the wanted list (What price did they put on his head?), and he’s strolling through the city, not a care in the world, right under the noses of an entire garrison, the day before the Great October Socialist Revolution, when the Bolsheviks are especially vigilant—and not a feather ruffled, not a hair raised?The invincible, elusive Adrian Ortynsky—as if cloaked by Our Lady with a magical cloud that makes his enemies look right past him.
    And instantly he was covered with sweat: that was too much luck for one day! It must have been the smell of chypre that made the Soviets not see him when they looked at him, and not one of them had sensed him a stranger. Except maybe the major in the stairwell—he had to have recognized him; he saw his face up close, beyond doubt....
    TICK...TICK...TICK...TICK...
    He had to flee—he had drained the well of his luck to the bottom and the dregs were turning to vapor as fast as his Soviet cologne: he could already sense his own smell emanating from him like heat from a stove—the heavy, sylvan, animal smell of an unwashed body.
    “Thank you very much, professor.” He stepped back, pushing his pistol under his overcoat. He believed the man now: no agent would be foolish enough to tug after him—just report him to the nearest patrol and end of story. “Please accept my apologies for being so uncivil to you.”
    “No harm done; no worries.... This worked out well, actually; I was, pardon me, perspiring, following you—I couldn’t figure out how to come close enough so that no one would notice.” As any civilian would, after the shock of encountering a gun, the man, although he kept his voice down to a whisper, turned instantly and uncontrollably chatty. “And yesterday I had such fright, God