The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

caroled at this very home not too long before—Lord bless all those who are in this home!—Thank you, boys, blessingson you, too!—ran outside and vomited into the snow—joy to the world, joy to the land. Down, down the carolers’ hands runs the red wine, brims in goddards, spills from bullet-ridden, bayoneted skulls, but the women—they must be mad; they pay it no mind; they cling to us like roots that trap our feet, begging for love so they may bear children in pain; and God is on their side, because who, really, would remember and count the murdered newborns of Bethlehem when the whole world rejoices with the new joy, and the living from everywhere come bearing gifts for the one child that lives?
    And that is good, that’s the way it’s supposed to be—let him live, let him grow big and strong—someone will grow, someone will hide in mangers, in thickets, in caves, in a forgotten village at the edge of the woods while Herod’s hunters walk and walk through the snow, single file, falling upon homes in the night, tearing the living from their warm beds—two hours to pack, two loaves of bread for each soul, and only the clothes on your back. Officer, sir, can I please change the baby?—davai-davai
, hurry up, go!—and the wagon with two not-quite-shot lives, the woman and the child in her womb—Lord, is it really my child?—bumps over forest ruts and potholes to where the prison opens its gates for them—and the prison grows, swells, gains the strength to contain the rebel blood inside it, and tomorrow the sun rises again like a pregnant woman’s belly over the skyline, as if the whole earth writhed in pain but could not bring forth its Savior, and a voice is heard in Rama, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning—Rachel weeps for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not...
    He had more questions to ask—the man had to have noticed something else!—but he remembered himself: there was noise in the yard behind them, someone had left the building and was walking toward the gateway. A young, dancing walk. The walk of a person who hadn’t yet given birth to anyone. Whose body still believes in its own immortality.
    “O-olya!” a woman’s voice sang out, as if through a silk veil, slicing the quiet from above.
    “Stay behind,” Adrian whispered. “Ask for directions, like you’re lost. And, God forbid, do not follow me—you can’t be seen with me.”
    “May God bless you,” he added or maybe just meant to add. If there was an answer, he did not hear it.
    Ahead of him lay eighteen kilometers in which anyone could recognize him. The hunters walked in the snow, well-fed whippers in new shearling coats and snug leather shoulder-belts, surveying the field through field glasses—and the dogs lunged at the end of their leashes, baying, choking, barking their lungs out, and scuffed the ground madly with their back legs, kicking up fountains of black mud into the sky. The beast did not err; the beast had guessed it all as soon as he stuck his nose out of the bunker at dawn: the warm wind from the south carried on it the smell of a raid, a hunt—and he was the one being hunted.
    ***
    Do you see it?
    I see it.
    He is coming.
    Yes.
    Don’t be afraid.
    I am not.
    It’s just a dream. We’re dreaming the same dream.
    Is it really possible? For two people to dream the same dream?
    It is. My grandma and grandpa had it happen to them once, in Karaganda. It’s actually quite simple: I’m dreaming you, and you’re dreaming me.
    It is, isn’t it? So strange—how simple things can be in a dream; it seems it couldn’t be any other way.
    That’s because in dreams things are the way they really are. And in daytime—the way they appear to us.
    Then I really love you. Now, in this dream, it’s so obvious it doesn’t require any further proof or evidence. I can’t see you inthis dreamscape; you’re somewhere aside, close by, like a part of me—I can only feel there’s another, separate life beside me, and I love it. And I know it’s you. It is you, isn’t it? You? Is it you? ADRIAN?
    ***
    “Adrian? Where’d you go? Why did you turn on the light?”
    “Go back to sleep...I just have to write this down, or I’ll forget...”
    “Write what down? The covers are all bunched up—how’d that happen? What time is it?”
    “I don’t know. Four.”
    “Did you feel me love you? While we were asleep? In our dream? And you just had to wake up.”
    “There was something