The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

law of large numbers: many, many small Calvaries...”
    He kisses her behind the ear and raises his head.
    “I tell you what, Lolly. Think simpler: a deeply depressed woman went for a drive, not even knowing where, on an empty road, just went for the sake of going. Her reactions were dulled, the road was wet, it was raining, and then a critter ran across the road in front of her, a dog or something.... She slammed on the brakes at great speed, the car swerved, it was probably pretty slippery too—and that’s it. Shoulder, ditch. The end.”
    She raises her head, not taking her eyes, wide and childlike in their incredulity, off him. “Is that what you really think?”
    “No,” he says. “But it doesn’t make the least bit of difference—neither what I think, nor what you do. Or anyone else. The statement is unprovable within the system. It’s a Gödel theorem. And now, let us go and eat something. As long as we remain within the system, we certainly have to keep doing that.”
    Finally she smiles—he’s managed to make her smile for the first time after that fit of hysterical laughter.
    And only on the path from the parking lot to the porch does he notice that she is carrying a white plastic bag bulging with the edges of a canvas rectangle wrapped in several layers of newspaper.
    “Oh no.” She shakes her head when she sees him looking at it, and smiles, a bit sheepishly this time. “Say what you want, but I’m not leaving it in a car again.”

Room 8. Blood in Kyiv
    A nd just like that, it’s spring outside!
    The sun blasts from everywhere, like an orchestra that’s been waiting, bows poised, for me to emerge from the SBU archive as its signal to launch into a thunderous fanfare—a moist glow with a little blue mixed into it blazes from every crack, every gap between the buildings, and every puddle on the asphalt, and the asphalt along Zolotovoritska gleams like a freshly bathed seal’s back: while I was having my audience with Pavlo Ivanovych Boozerov, the world got rained on! Wet tree trunks drip with sweat like the bodies of happy lovers, a whole new stream sprouts cheerily out of a downspout, and the faces of passersby—who had been looking increasingly oppressed and gloomy of late, as though the imminent elections were bringing with them a front of oppressive air into the city—have acquired the silly and joyful expression of those missionaries who call out the good news about Christ in courtyards, in Russian with an American accent, without a clue that they’re about twelve centuries late bringing this news to us; and new grass is so vigorously bright on the lawns it makes you want to turn into a rabbit and hop over to nibble it, and the buds on the trees have been instantly transformed into a visible stubble, into that translucent goldenish mist that envelops the trees in a gentle glimmer like the fuzz on a newborn’s head. Life does, yes, it does have its bright side—as, for example, in Kyiv, in April after a thunderstorm! How did I not hear it roll in? It must’ve come down in torrents—the puddles are still rimmed in white foam—I heard absolutely nothing...it’s totally soundproof in there, like a dungeon.
    And it is a dungeon, that archive of theirs. Artificial lights, eternal dusk. Coming out feels like breaking free from a bomb shelter.
    Two characters, clearly from the same building, smoking on the sidewalk, look up as one and follow me with their eyes. They might be from a different building, too; there’s some sort of a bank next door. Bank employees have the same eyes as the rank and file of secret services. And the same manner: false friendliness and a cold secretiveness. They all looked at me that way—everyone we passed as Pavlo Ivanovych escorted me out: down a hallway, up the stairs, another hallway, another set of stairs, all the way to the check-in turnstile. Return your pass, please. Of course, or else, God forbid, I’d keep it for myself and then what? The signature of the SBU check-in lady on that pathetic piece of paper would be acquired by foreign intelligence agencies?
    There are things that do not change. Names of countries, monuments, language, money, uniforms, military commands, even ways of waging war—these all change. But secret services do not, they are always the same. Always and everywhere, in every country. One out of every six men convicted in the USSR after the war for working in the Nazi police had been an NKVD employee before the war. Had