The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

Yes, the entire war. A hero: twice decorated with the Order of the Red Banner. And then to spend years laid up in sanatoriums—what kind of life is that? For an officer?
    Oh! Shhh! Aha! Got ’im!
    I gotcha right here brother, don’t even try it...a perch! That’s alright, he’ll go into soup. Let’s get him in here, in the net—holdit out for me, would you please? Yes, to keep them underwater, fresh—see what beauties I got here? There. Thank you.
    Yes...so that’s how it goes.
    Turns out I really am a bastard. Only from a different woman. Who my father was is unknown. She never told them...my birth mother. I was fifty the first time I saw her picture. These pictures, taken in prison—a person looks different in them than she does outside, you know. Especially women. Did you see our star, Yulia Tymoshenko—the way she came out of the Lukyaniv Prison? That’s about the stage when you can take the pictures—when you can already see the way the woman is going to look in the camps. The eyes change...the look...but still, you could see she was a beautiful girl.... Lea Goldman. Davydivna was her patronymic. I understand she went by Rachel. She was just shy of twenty-three. I, soon as I laid my eyes on that picture, told myself: Nika must not see this, ever. God forbid. Especially that profile...it just stands before my eyes.
    That was a mistake she made, of course—not telling them who the father was. Worst mistake she could have made. If she’d told them, she’d have had a chance. Had she said anything, anything at all...made something up, done something...to cooperate with the investigation. They would have tried to use her again, of course—you didn’t just write off people like that in Western Ukraine at the time. My father—Boozerov, that’s what he said about it, he called it sabotage. It was criminal negligence to lose an agent with such experience. Two and a half years among the banderas—that’s not nothing! In any case, the MGB would have let her live, that’s for sure. Yes, they were angry at her, of course they were—they’d sent her into the enemy camp with a mission, and she’d disappeared! For two and a half years—vanished, as if the ground swallowed her whole, not a trace. Of course, what’s the first thing they thought—that’s she’d sided with the bandits...but still, they would’ve kept her, agents like that were highly valued.
    Beg pardon? Well, whether they trusted her or not—that’s, pardon me, just sentiment, pink snot.... They didn’t trust anyone!There wasn’t a single agent in Western Ukraine at the time who was trusted. And they were right not to, I’ll tell you. Remember what happened with Stashynsky? Well, there you go. But you don’t need me telling you this—your own families fought...on that other side. So what if they didn’t trust her! Until he or she is deactivated, an agent is active, on duty, you could say. That’s what Father told me at first...Boozerov—he told me that my mother was killed in the line of duty.... He actually may not have known everything himself, and if he did, he wouldn’t have thought so much of it; they had a different view of things—men from the front, you know, those who’d gone through Germany. They were used to, you know, not being soft on the enemy. But this was different. She was Soviet citizen already. An agent with a special mission. Her death was a gross institutional error. She had to live. Two and a half years, so much information. She could have lived. If only she hadn’t kept silent. That was the one thing she absolutely could not do. She should not have riled them up like that...young men.
    Are you getting cold? No? Mind the breeze, watch you don’t catch a cold...
    Yes, they were interrogating her. And weren’t doing it right. Now, my father—he was a first-class interrogator! Back when I was little, he’d put me through one of his wringers every so often—whether you wanted to or not, you’d tell him everything as good as under oath. And he had this way of twisting your ear—make you go down on your knees! Now, I don’t want you to think he was some kind of...sadist. I think, he loved me in his own way, was proud of me. Just—times were different, the methods were different.... And it worked, you know! It worked...
    That I survived is entirely his doing. His exclusively. However things were, you know what they say: she’s not the mother who brought you forth, she’s the mother who raised