The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

consecratin’ to do.”
    There’s something about the way he says it that brings on an awkward pause, the way it happens when a conversation slams on the breaks at a crossroads trying to decide whether to go on or to make a U-turn and head back. The woman ventures, “There ona other sidea track, back ina starvation, they hada grave...drove bodies froma village there and buried em. We, when we were kids, useda run over there in spring—to look: where it’s shallow, the dirt settles and sometimes human bones come up...humongous grave, they say it was! It was later they rolla asphalt over it.”
    “Over a cemetery?!”
    “Dat’s no cemetery!” the man cuts in, almost as if he’s angry. “Who’d go ’bout settin’ up a cemetery back in da ’30s? Dey just piled dem all into a hole, covered it with dirt, and left no signs. Da old people, dey just remembered da place, da ones who’re still alive.”
    “Yeah, the old Moklenchykh woman, who died last year, she useda go there every spring the week after Easter to light acandle...she’d just put it down ina dirt, and it’d burn. Once it burned all day till night, remember, Vasya, we seen it alla way over here through our window.”
    “You got no better business dan bringin’ dat up?”
    But it’s too late to try to rein her in.
    “And once, when we were kids, tha boys found a skull over there and kicked it around to play soccer...”
    “Now you’re full of it!”
    “Fulla what? What?” The wife pouts and again assumes her defensive position, arms under bust. “You count ’em: Lionka Mytryshyn—that’s one!”
    “Lionka was drunk...”
    “Were you dere drinking with him? And even if he was, then what?” she objects, not in the least concerned by the mild inconsistency of her dual objections. “Just think,” she turns back to her guests, “boy served in Afghanistan...the one who founda skull. Graduated military school, got the rank already, and no bullet could get him! And then came on leave to visit his parents—and bam! Drowned. Went to a pond for a swim...”
    “He was drunk, I’m telling you—dat’s why he drowned,” her husband persists. “You people just live to wag you tongues...”
    “Didn’t end with that, did it tho’? Allose boys who kicked the skull back then with him—all toa last one, none of em alive! Kol’ka Petrusenkiv smashed to death on his motorcycle; I was still in school then. Fedka got trampled over by horses one day when he was drunk—took him three days to die ina hospital, poor bastard, and Vit’ka Val’chyn—that’s way beyond even...”
    “Dat’s a separate story altogether.”
    “Just think—man dranka poison for Colorado beetles!”
    “Drunk, wasn’t he?” Adrian inquires stupidly, having fallen, unwittingly, under the spell of this macabre graveyard litany.
    “Nope, was not, dat’s another thing with him: got mighty insulted. Ninka, his neighbor, went missing a wallet, so she went after dis Vit’ka. Meaning, like he took it. And he got mighty insulted. Drank da poison at work, went home, and says to hiswife, Valya, I’ll be dying here. Folks rushed to call da ambulance, but ’twas too late, dey couldn’t flush him.”
    “Ana wallet later turned up!” the wife triumphs. “Ina pasture. Ninka herself dropped it, the scatterbrain!”
    Daryna feels an urgent need to sit down. Her legs have suddenly turned to straw; this has happened to her before. When? Yes, of course, that night in Vlada’s bathroom, when she was washing the warrior-maiden makeup off her face.
    “So what’s dat soccer got to do with it? Like dat’s what killed dem! People talk nonsense—just to wag dem tongues!”
    Somehow, the yokel finds his wife’s mystical interpretation of the story decidedly unnerving. That’s weird, Adrian thinks—he’s the one who first brought up “dat special spot.” Or, perhaps, the man himself kicked around human skulls when he was little—and, like most, remains receptive to the idea of a metaphysical payback only for as long as it is
someone else’s
—never his own car that crashes on a defiled grave? As long as it is strangers’ blood being washed off the asphalt—that’s a reality show, same as on TV. But when it’s folks from his own village who are found guilty on the same count, that means you yourself aren’t completely safe and secure either, and that is something you shall deny with vehemence, right, Vasya?
    “Razing a church—dat’s another matter, I get