The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

doing here? Why is Vlada in this dream?
    It’ll end soon. You have to bear it for just a little longer. We have to squeeze just a little farther through that narrow, dark shaft—we’ve got a bad bunker, with a straight entrance, and the entrance should always be angled, you should build it zigzag, so that when they throw in a grenade, no one inside gets hurt.
    I don’t see the shaft. I see myself step into water, into a stream. I am washing my legs and dirt runs down my skin.
    Maybe the dream has split at some point into separate branches, and now you’re seeing something I’m not? But water—that’s good. It’s good that the dirt is washing away.
    Such clear, black streaks on bare thighs...
    That’s everything extraneous coming off. The soul’s being cleansed, remains itself.
    I love you. And I will never betray you.
    You know, I was so jealous! For quite a while, I just never admitted it to you. Those lobsters you ate with him were stuck in my throat.
    It’s washed away, all washed away like it’s never been...I see a little girl smiling, laughing, a blonde little girl, two years old or so—and somehow I know she’s mine...I’ll have a girl?
    A girl! Of course, it has to be a girl, how did I not see that? A girl, of course, a little Geltsia with tiny blonde braids...
    And where is the boy?
    Which boy?
    The one who’ll protect her. Every girl is meant to have a boy like that—a husband, a brother, someone else.... Why do I not see where he is? Has the war taken him, too?
    What if he’s already been born? He’s among the living and that’s why you cannot see him?
    And there’s no one alive in this dream?
    Only you and me, Lolly. This is our dream. And we cannot change it...
    ***
    “Banderas, surrender! Come out!”
    Shouted, in Russian, into the vent. Above, dogs bayed, boots stomped—many boots, the commotion made the dirt fall from the ceiling, the sound growing like a shell’s whine through the air: higher, higher until it falls, explodes, buries them.
    “Come out, Kyi! We know you’re there!”
    The four looked at each other. The flashlight lit Levko’s face as the color drained from his cheeks and it turned sallow. Like Geltsia’s. And Raven’s.
    “This is it,” the voice said inside Adrian’s head—with heretofore unknown calm. And instantly a bubble of long-awaited relief burst inside him: finally! And then his whole being rebelled against it: no! He licked his lips—the lips were also someone else’s, separate.
    Who?
he mouthed without a sound, but everyone heard because they were all asking the same thing in that instant: Who brought the raid?
    Or did he bring it himself? Did the dogs pick up his trail, all the way from the city?
    “Come out, bitch, or we’ll smoke you out!”
    Oh, so they have gas. They’ve got it all—gas, dogs, all the force in the world. His throat caught in a spasm of hatred, like a burst of machine-gun fire he mentally sent up the vent. For a moment, he couldn’t see, a dark veil over his eyes. He gestured; Raven understood him first: the papers! Hurriedly, they beganto empty their knapsacks, shred photographs; Raven struck a match, the fire blazed, sent flares dancing across faces, shadows along the walls. Adrian thought he saw Geltsia’s teeth chatter. He didn’t feel the heat either; wouldn’t have felt it if he put his hand into the fire. He did, however, feel, with his whole body, the cold of his pistol, suddenly heavy—the pistol was doing the thinking for him, choosing its aim: temple or under the chin? He stepped under the vent and shouted, head up, “Go smoke your mama out the barn! Where’s the one who brought you here?”
    “What’d you want him for?”
    “Get him here; I want to talk!”
    Up above there was muttering, low, indistinct over the dogs’ racket, in several voices, light moved in the crack of the vent. They’ll negotiate, he realized; they want me alive. Personal commendations, promotions, decorations, vacations—they are drooling now, like those dogs, they won’t want such prize getting away from them. Talk, buy time for the archives to burn. And then fight it: grenades through the shaft and go. There’s always some chance, he’s been in worse straits. No, he thought, not like this. Lord have mercy on our souls, but Geltsia must remain; she must live. Rachel—that’s my sin, let me atone for it now. Let one of them survive. I am now like Orko in the fight yesterday—a guard to a pregnant woman. If it was