The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

him,” she said as if to justify herself. “It won’t do any more harm if you turn yourselves in.”
    Only then did he see the pistol in her hand.
    “Shoot me, Adrian. I beg you.”
    “No!” he said.
    “For the love of God, do it. I’m afraid my hand will err.”
    “You must live.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Gela,” he said.
    She jerked her chin sideways, in torment, as if not having the strength to complete the gesture of refusal. “I don’t want to...carry his blood,” she whispered the last words.
    He didn’t know what to say to that. He was not a woman. The life force that was in her differed from the one he felt, the one that urged him into his last battle. He could only repeat, “You must live. You can bear it, Gela. You’re strong.”
    “I don’t want to surrender to them. I have grenades, too, two of them, in fact.” At once and without words they all remembered how they gave her an RGD grenade for her name day in September, and she must’ve remembered it, too, because she sobbed, or perhaps chuckled nervously. “Goodness, I clear forgot—I’ve got Christmas presents prepared for you all!” And next she was tossing some bundles into the gathering darkness from her knapsack—mittens? socks?—something white fluttered and fell like a wing. Scooping up heat from the cinders, she caught it, shook it out. “This one’s for you, friend commander, will you wear it? Lina, my sister, asked me to give it to you. I was saving it for Christmas.”
    It was a shirt—a blazing white shirt with dense embroidery, lush as a row of marigolds, down the front. The kind girls embroideredfor their betrothed—and the sight of it made the three men’s breath catch in their throats. The shirt glowed in the dark as though alive; it wanted to be worn into marriage, not into death. And suddenly Adrian knew why it was there.
    “Geltsia, bless your heart!” he said, no longer surprised by anything. Everything was the way it had to be; life, aimed at its end like a bullet sent down the stock, ran smoothly along its course as though guided by a supreme will, and everything fit into its proper slot. And the little girl in the sailor suit, who had, without knowing it, embroidered his last weapon, was also there and looked at him with love. He would use the shirt to come out.
    He explained his plan: he would announce they were giving themselves up. He’d come out first, under a white flag—this one, he took the shirt into his hands, but it had no smell: he could no longer perceive smells, could only sense the smoke. He’d use the shirt to hide a grenade—they won’t see it until they close around him. Then, with three blasts at once, they’d be able to destroy at least a dozen enemies. More if they were lucky.
    And Stodólya with them, he thought but didn’t say out loud. That was his last mission, his alone, not to be delegated to anyone else: he had to kill the traitor. He dared not die without it; he wouldn’t be able to look them in the eye in the other world. And Geltsia had to stay here, in the bunker; Geltsia had to live. Someone had to raise our children.
    “Friend commander.” It was she again, only her voice had changed unrecognizably, became low, as with a cold. “Allow me to go with you.”
    But he wasn’t listening—a giant dark wall was rising before him, bigger than anything he had ever scaled before, and he said to the one who wasn’t letting him go, who was tethering him to life, “No,” and stepped up to the vent.
    “Wait!” Her hair had come loose; she looked deranged. “Listen to me! They’ve come for you, friend Kyi, but
he
has come for me!”
    The men looked at her as if they’d seen her for the first time.
    “He’ll survive,” she said; hysterical notes rang in her voice. “He’ll slip out, he’s wily. You won’t be able to do anything to him. The Area Council of Security Service Command is in two weeks, and he’ll go there—with new troops. And that’ll be the end. Lord,” she almost cried, “don’t you understand that
you
won’t kill him? You won’t fool him with your show, and he’ll escape; he’d escape even if you had a bomb here instead of your grenade and took half a garrison with you! I have to come out. And first, just like he wants! That’s the only way he’d believe you—if I’m standing next to you!”
    Silence. Through the ringing in his ears Adrian thought he heard thin children’s voices singing in chorus, far away, a