The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

excitement alit in him, growing brighter and hotter as the fire that swallowed their archives. Someone was coughing; he wiped his eyes and saw a smudge of soot on his hand: It was his own hand but he could not comprehend it.
    “Should we burn the newspapers, too, friend commander?”
    “Leave them. Let them read.”
    “Come out nicely, Kyi, or are you done living?”
    “And who would you be to order me around like your pig herd?” he shouted, listening to the movement above ground. Just as he thought, they were taking positions on the ground behind the trees, away from the entrance in case grenades came flying out of the bunker; Stodólya showed them where the entrance was. “Or are you all pig herds yourselves? Then go fetch me Colonel Voronin, I’ll talk to him!”
    “Yeah, sure! No colonel for you—I, Captain Boozerov, am in charge of this operation!”
    He thought, there, my death introduced itself. From a thousand possible anonymous faces it had chosen this one. And I wished so much for this to happen in Kyiv—and I never got to see the city. That’s a shame. That was one thing he regretted, a single thing, and the regret was already too small to touch anything inside him. Lord, help me. This is the last time I’ll ever ask You.
    He heard a bolt click: Levko sent the bullet into the stock. And stood up, for some reason—the low ceiling kept him half-bent and he stood like that, pistol in hand, as if holding the entire earth on his shoulders and swaying a bit under its weight.
    “Friend commander...friends...”
    “Hold on, Levko,” Adrian said. “While we’re still armed, it’s no good rushing into the next world without taking a few Bolshevik souls with us. Captain Boozerov’s already in a hurry, can’t you hear it?”
    “Kyi, surrender! I’m giving you five minutes to think!”
    “Grenades?” Raven asked hoarsely, ravenously.
    Adrian looked at Geltsia. She was awake. She sat, unmoving, and shone her eyes at him straight through the darkness. For a moment, all sounds disappeared and the only thing he heard was blood ringing in his ears. A high, dangerous whine.
    “Forgive me, Adrian.”
    She knew, he realized. Knew that he loved her. She is here, with me. Hand in hand. My love, my happiness. Wonder lurched inside him, tore free, and burned high and even like a torch.
    “May the good Lord forgive you,” he answered in Father Ortynsky’s voice. “And you forgive me, Gela. And you forgive me, boys, for however I sinned before you, Raven...and you, Levko...”
    “Lord forgive...”
    “I forgive you, forgive me, friends...”
    “And you forgive me...”
    “May the good Lord...”
    Awkwardly, like strangers, they kissed each other: each was already alone with his or her fading life and the touch of another’s body struggled to reach their awareness—a stubby cheek, a hot cheek, a cold one, a wet one.... That’s Geltsia’s, he realized: she is crying, her tears returned. Tears ran down her cheeks in grooves or moist glitter, and he suddenly regretted not having had the chance to shave one last time—felt like he was leaving a camp untidied.
    “I said five minutes, Kyi! Did you hear me?”
    He heard fear in that shout. Now’s the time, he thought. Like in that fairytale where the shrew kept asking the girl to dance and she tarried and tarried, until the roosters called. Only the roosters won’t call for us, and help won’t come. His clock was about to stop; the hand counting seconds almost ran its last circle. The thing for which he’d been preparing himself all these years was rising before him as a humongous, menacing wall, more magnificent and menacing than anything he had known before. Even the feeling he had when stood in formation in 1943 with four Insurgent Army companies, just sworn in, and sang “Ukraine’s not yet perished,” could not match this. Nothing could. And no matter how much you prepare yourself for this, you can’t ever be ready.
    “Dzvinya, you stay,” he spoke. “Stay here. Come out later...when it’s all over. That would be best.”
    She opened her mouth spasmodically, as if about to yawn. And instantly the sharp pity he felt for her—for leaving her alone,tearing her away, as though he were ripping out of her, full of love, his aching flesh—caught him and entered him like a knife under his ribs—and he shuddered, scorched by the boundless, infinite mass of life that was hidden inside him.
    “They already know everything you know—from