The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

weekend mornings. In NKVD, under Stalin, they worked nights—with the same idea—but in our times it no longer worked that way. My father, Boozerov—he was still old school...he fought the banderas, after all...fought with the dead, and it was to them he kept making his point for the rest of his life. Raised me to be meaner...but careers weren’t being made on aggression anymore; you didn’t get ahead by being mean. Knowing you had been chosen—that’s what kept you in the services! The feeling of being initiated...to the services...to the state’s holy of holies...a great state’s, one that makes the whole world tremble! The might! The mystery of power, as this one man said, a director of a Moscow institute, he came to speak to us recently...the mystery, yes! When you’re young, it’s hypnotizing; it can replace both home and family.... And then one blow like that—and you find yourself...naked. Naked. And you don’t, it turns out, want anything, nothing at all—only to be loved...for someone to be waiting for you...even to have you back from the loony bin.
Hic
! Knowing in what shape people came out of our loony bins and wanting you back anyway. I made sure I told her. Your matinka. I warned her...
    Yes, I did.
    Sometimes I wonder who he was, my father. My birth father, I mean.... Why did she love him so much? My mother? She could have survived...she was so young then; she wouldn’t even be eighty now...my mother-in-law’s eighty-two...she could have lived this long, too. How could she have done that? Sometimes you think—she was just foolish, a silly girl. She was too young; she didn’t understand...life...and then I remember your mom...Olga Fedorivna, yes, I remember. And? How did her life go...afterward?
    Well...that’s good...good that it went well. Only, you know, when you have a daughter of your own...when you have your own children, you’ll understand me. It’s only in your movies that everything comes out so pretty. And I’ll tell you from my experience: as soon as you read a document that’s so pretty, so smooth, reads like Leo Tolstoy or something, not a word out of place—you should know it’s fake...it’s all fake, written for the reporting purposes. You can be ninety percent sure. Don’t think that as soon as you have a document in your hands, you’re done.
    And you just wait, what’s your rush?.... They’re just starting to bite now.... Last Sunday I pulled a champ of a zander here, a twelve pounder! This big! Don’t worry, I won’t knock it over...let’s put it over here, that bottle, closer this way....
Hic
! Excuse me.
    Have a pickle, it’s homemade...my wife marinates them! You won’t find another one like it. She’s really stupid, of course, but runs a great house! Father-in-law’s schooling. And Nika takes after me. Thank God. Some girl I have, no? Knock on wood...she’s my blood!
    My conscience is clear, Daryna Anatoliivna. And please don’t go enlisting me in the shtrafbat. You think I don’t understand? You think I’m too dumb to know? I’ve done my time, thank you. My father knew it too...Boozerov. He knew he got spat out. We all got spat out. Right, wrong...wherever you stood with the organization. All the same! Your father and mine, the same. Yes, the same! Only mine realized it first. Boozerov did. Long before the Union fell apart.
    Hic
! There’s water right by you, would you mind passing? No, I’m fine; it’s just to wash down my pill...thank you.
    You know, I once heard this writer speak, she’s the one—forgot her name—who wrote about sex...under field conditions...some-thing like that. I don’t remember exactly the way she said it, but the main idea was that if you’re born in prison you grow up either prisoner or guard. No other choices, so to speak. And I disagreewith that! I flat out disagree. I myself was born in prison—and what would have come of me if it weren’t for him...my father, the man who raised me?
    No, you didn’t understand.
Hic
! You can’t just be so black and white.... What do you mean, either prisoner or guard? So what then, a whole generation is guilty merely by virtue of the time they were born? Those who survived—they’re guilty? And they should all have hung themselves...to come out clean, is that how it is? A noose around your neck—and you’re out? Then you’re a hero—fit for the movies? That’s what you’re doing, with your film, too. Okay, alright, I understand, let them be heroes—they