The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

and ceased to address him directly; were he not so consumed at this instant by going from defense to offense, the yokel would very well begin to doubt whether this character is indeed the worthless good-for-nothing the antiques-Yulka had told him he was: the yokel knows how bosses talk and ought to have recognized in Yulka’s “boozer ex’s” calm ease a boss’s professional habit of moving people around without resistance, like pawns on a board, in order to achieve a result important to all, that is demonstrated in the army by ranking officers from platoon commanders on up—but the yokel hasn’t yet caught on to what, exactly, result these two are shooting for, and this man’s question, asked of the woman, fails to sound important to him.
    “Where did you say you saw the signature?” Aidy asks.
    “Right here,” Daryna points. “She always signed this way—VlMatusevych, without a dot.”
    “I see, yes...it’s cut off in the middle—you can see the ‘u’ but the ‘s’ is questionable...”
    “This is hers beyond any doubt, even without the signature, Aidy. No need for an examination—this is one of the works that was flown in from Frankfurt. From the
Secrets
series. I saw them all, remember, at her workshop, before they went to Germany for the show. And there are slides; it can be identified.”
    “Who has the slides? Vadym?”
    “Nina Ustýmivna. She is the legal heir, until Katrusya comes of age.”
    “Splendid.”
    “I just can’t remember the title right now. It should have been on the other edge, there on the left, but that part has all been cut off...this used to be about this wide,” she spreads her arms like a fisherman showing off the size of his catch, “and it was taller too, I remember the composition well.”
    “I cut it to size,” pipes up the wife.
    Her appearance in the kitchen door has gone unnoticed, and at the sound of her voice all three turn and stare at her with various degrees of shock; before speaking, just in case, she’s crossed her arms defensively under her breasts, which are already spilling out from her overburdened bra; and her thusly proffered bust, taken together with her powerful neck and arms, looks magnificent in its way (rolls of fatty dough around the edges of her undergarment are thrown into high relief under her Lycra T-shirt). She puts this bust before her like a shield—evidently picking up on her husband’s alarm—and is rushing to his rescue before the old fool can screw everything up from here to Tuesday.
    She’ll do the cutting alright, Adrian thinks, contemplating, not without interest, this menopausal socialist-realist milkmaid in front of him. She’ll cut all sort of things. He quickly exchanges glances with Daryna, and pulls out his business card.
    “And you must be the lady of the house? Pleased to meet you.”
    The shield is shattered—the wife takes the business card, but does not know what to do with it, and walks over to the shelf where her eyeglasses sit—to read it over. Daryna gets the chills—it’s the familiar shiver that runs through the body in the presence of death, like a short circuit—and she keeps silent, afraid that her voice will fail her.
    “So where did you say you got this painting from?” Adrian casually inquires of the wife, as if continuing an interrupted conversation.
    “Found it
downa track
!” she cries out, almost pained that such a trifle could cause such a ruckus. “It just laid there in the mud, so we took it—why waste? And the spots that got mudded up—I cut those off. It just laid there downa track, ina rain. Been a while now, four years since—right, Vasya?”
    “Could be more,” Vasya confirms with gravity, happy to have reinforcements. Might all blow over yet, and dey won’t ask too much questions.
    Where?—Daryna starts to ask, but figures it out before she speaks: “Downa track” is down the road, meaning on the dirt road that runs from the main highway to the village.
    “You mean, on the highway?” Adrian asks—he didn’t understand the woman either.
    “Yeah...I mean, no,” the wife stumbles. “Ona turn,” she waves a mighty discus-thrower’s arm in the direction of the mirror-faced wardrobe, “dere, where you go from track to asphalt. I mean
the highway
,” she corrects herself quickly and solicitously, demonstrating the traditional strategy of Ukrainian rural politeness: adopting the language of one’s interlocutor. “Wherea tree-line ends, ona knoll, ona