The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

momentary grin, and, at the same time, a sharp, wary look of the territory’s mistress who is about to leave an untrustworthy guest alone with her male: this is mine, don’t touch it. Wow. Did he really find the time to put his stakes down here, too? She’s pretty stylish, Mashenka is; she could’ve been a model...wow again. What about the massaging Svetochka now?
    “At least you still have taste,” I tell Vadym vindictively, following his little black giraffe with my eyes as she leaves the room.
    He pretends he didn’t hear, and pours me more wine. He does stop laughing, though. Only breathes heavier and louder than before. Exercise, you need to exercise more, Vadym—what kind of shape are you in, breathing like that at your age? While Vlada was alive, he and I always used to be a little caustic with each other, but back then I wrote it off to the natural jealousy every man feels toward his wife’s girlfriend, an owner’s reflex—so now I keep pushing. “You own this restaurant, don’t you?”
    “What if I do?” Vadym replies, looking slyly around the brightly lit, black-lacquer cave and squinting like a cat that’s trying to get you to pet him. “Do you like it?”
    Now, this is a look I remember exactly where I’ve seen before—that’s what my boss looked like when he waited for me to praise him at his housewarming, signaling at me with his eyes across a giant room full of people: applaud me now, go ahead, applaud,confirm to me that it hasn’t been all in vain—give my marathon swim through shit its long overdue justification.
    So is this what Vadym’s brought me here for—to show off his new acquisition, to get my approval—you’re on the right path, comrade? Now I finally catch on to something I should’ve caught on to long ago (for the smart woman Vadym believes me to be, I can sometimes be incredibly daft): for him, I have replaced Vlada in the bar-setter’s role—if I approve, she would have approved, too. And then everything’s okay, and Vadym’s life is back in tiptop shape. That’s what he wants; that’s what he is trying to extract from me. He doesn’t miss a beat, this guy. He’s a bull!
    Do you have to be a toothless old hag to stop falling into the same trap—to stop mixing up
strength
and
resilience
in men? In every war there is but one law: the strong die and the resilient survive. There’s no special accomplishment in that, no credit to be given them; it’s the genetic programming they were born with—to survive: like the lizard that grows back its tail, or the earthworm that regenerates its lost segments. Vadym, who so recently appeared to be utterly annihilated by Vlada’s death, has put himself back together like the damaged Terminator—by disassembling his dead wife into the various critical functions she performed for him and redistributing them to other women: N.U., Katrusya, several Svetochkas and Mashenkas, to each her own, like in Buchenwald, and only the niche of the bar-setter (“How am I going to live now? She set the bar for me...”), the one to whom you bring your life like homework to be graded, to receive, in return, a clear conscience and untroubled sleep—this extraordinarily important niche in every Ukrainian man’s life has been, for Vadym, unfilled, and he must be feeling a constant discomfort emanating from that spot. No one will tell him the truth now—he’s got too much money for that. But I—I’m always there. I’m Vlada’s closest friend, and I want nothing from him; I’m the perfect fit. And should I be inclined to blurt out something contrarian—well, that’s exactly why he’s given me, completely for free, his very valuable piece of advice: keep quiet.
    Now I am supposed to pay him back for this favor, tit for tat, a fair trade! I am supposed to applaud his new acquisition without interrogating him about where he found the dough for the new glam digs (especially right now, when the powers that be are taxing everything that moves to fund their anti-Yushchenko campaign, which is beginning to look like an actual war and not just a publicity war, and Vadym’s ostensibly part of the opposition, if I’m not mistaken, so what fairy godmother waved her wand and conjured this restaurant?). I should praise the interior design and Mashenka and whatever else, whip up a bunch of compliments and ensure for him the aforementioned clear conscience and untroubled sleep. And I should not, God forbid, ask what the hell he wants from