The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

juices of life, the fiery contour in the dark—as though these seven months had never been—he couldn’t hold on to separate faces, they came together in his mind and melded: the barely visible stain of Geltsia in the dark between fir branches; the white face, like a round of sheep cheese, of Rachel thrown back to the moon, upper lip bitten down. He was blind; he simply wanted to embrace the Woman, a pregnant woman with a taut round belly. To squeeze his head between her milk-laden breasts, to breathe in her smell.
    Sobs shook him hard, once, like wind over a dried tree—dry sobs, tearless like a soundless scream. Like the mute roar of a beast with its tongue nailed down.
    Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh
—she was coming back. He could hear her heavy breathing: she was short of breath. He felt happy to have her coming back and to have her miss his moment of weakness. (He watched yellowish circles swim in place of the fiery contour, as if someone had thumbed him on the eyes.)
    “It’s beautiful in the forest right now, don’t you think?” she exhaled into the back of his head in a single spasm, like she’d also just cried. And instantly sensed the change that had come overhim—a woman must sense these things, as a doe senses a deer buck, from afar. As long as she doesn’t decide to touch me right now, he thought. Anything but that soothing touch of her hand. As long as she doesn’t, I’ll bear it. He faltered a bit as he stepped aside to let her pass and remained standing like that, feet wide apart, his hand instinctively planted on his gun, as if prepared to defend himself.
    “And did you know,” she suddenly laughed very softly, and it was almost like a touch, only not the kind he feared, “that my Lina is also a mama? Three years already!”
    “Who?” he asked, confused.
    “Lina, my sister!”
    Her sister? Oh, yes, she has a sister...
    “She married a very nice young man, one of ours, a student at the Polytechnic. And they already have a little son, named Ambroziy—in honor of our dad.”
    “Aha,” he said. “Congratulations,” thinking, who was it that I already said this to today? Quite a day I’ve had—full of other people’s children. Lina? That little girl in a sailor suit that used to run around with her dog? She had that comical way of blushing whenever he brought pastries for her, as a present. He held back a big fir branch, so that Geltsia wouldn’t have to bend too low. As they walked, her quiet twitter continued to envelop him like the stream’s babbling: she’d visited her family recently, in October, when she was in Lviv on a mission. They still live in the same house on Krupyarska; the house now belongs to the Soviets, and they’d been moved to the ground-floor room. They all went crazy when she rapped on the window that night—they hadn’t seen each other for three years! And the boy is very handsome, looks like Lina—she’d taken a good look at him while he slept.
    “We talked about you, too. Lina was very happy when I told her you were alive. You were her first love, did you know that?”
    “No,” he said, “I did not know that.”
    Life was full of things he didn’t know. But it did not matter anymore, he did not change his mind, she didn’t convince him. They had to get out of the bunker. The clock was ticking.
    “She was head over heels in love with you. In Gymnasium, she had a picture of Clark Gable pinned above her desk—with his mustache covered up, to make him look more like you. I think she was probably a little jealous of me.”
    Oh no, he thought, I won’t fall for this. Does she mean to soften me up with this? A covered-up mustache—what notions women have sometimes! They’ve always fallen head over heels for him, that’s the son of a bitch he is: women have always fallen for him hard and fast, lined up wherever he went and threw flowers (or more than that, some threw themselves) at his feet—all except one.
    His soul no longer perceived the meaning of what she was saying (she’s gone lost her wits for Mykhailo; it’s like she’s lost her bearing without him and doesn’t understand anything!). He only thought, at the pace of a ticking clock, of sparks of tiny bubbles rising through wobbly water, boiling the dark outline of fear: she’s playing me; she’s playing me however she pleases, like a piano, and I am letting her. I am responsible for a woman who has more power over me than I do over her, and this is bad, it is no good at all, friend