The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

later.... ”
    “There’s only one thing I don’t understand: Why did he say four? Why don’t they have the fifth man on their lists? He couldn’t possibly have survived a bloodbath like that.”
    “Don’t you think it’s possible that our dear Pavlo Ivanovych did not tell us everything?”
    “I don’t think he was lying. No, love, I believe him. A gang rape, a suicide—that’s not something a normal person would ever make up about his own mother, even if he’d never seen her.”
    “Operative word there being normal. Not so much with his background. God, if only we could play that recording! There were all kinds of things that didn’t jive.”
    “Yeah, he threw me off royally, catching me with my dictaphone like that...I felt like one of those fish he kept yanking out of the water.”
    “You poor fishy! You worked so hard with that thing. My homegrown conspirator.”
    “Well, I knew that if I asked him up front he wouldn’t let me record him. And it’s not like I wanted to publicize what he said—it’s just for me, to help remember things. I can’t get over it—how did he figure out I was recording him? That I had a dictaphone in my pocket?”
    “He smelled it! What if he really is—talented?”
    “No kidding. Nika said he wanted to pursue mathematics when he was young. But he does have a beautiful voice, did you notice?”
    “You bet. Our special attraction—a singing KGB man!”
    “Not KGB—SBU.”
    “Same shit.”
    “I wouldn’t say that.... But you’re right; it sort of threw me off every time he’d start singing. Gave me the heebie-jeebies. It’s like his whole self is patched together from different pieces, no? With the frame sticking out here and there. What kind of things would you say didn’t jive?”
    “All kinds of stuff. You can’t quantize so much bull to the proper bit rate.”
    “Sweetie, could you please use words I can understand?”
    “Sorry. He wore me out, that guy. The whole time, ever since I first met him, I have had this nagging feeling that I’ve seen him somewhere before—I told you—or if not him, then maybe someone who looks like him, and I can never see him clearly with this weird feeling in the back of my mind, the picture’s always doubling up on me.”
    “Same here. Could it be because he’s lived someone else’s life?”
    “There’s that, too.... Who from his generation
has
lived his or her own life?”
    “My dad. Your mom.”
    “They
haven’t
. They
died
. That’s the thing.”
    “Still, Aidy. You shouldn’t compare his lot with anyone else’s, God help him...”
    “Well, whatever, that’s not my point, actually. The whole time he was talking I tried to figure out where he was going with it—and he’s got more logic gaps in his tale than you can count; it messes up your algorithm. Take his mother, again. If she was in the Przemysl ghetto, then back in ’42, it couldn’t have been the Red Army that freed her, I’m sorry. She had to have escaped somehow—so how did she run into the NKVD? And what on earth possessed them to send her, a Jewish woman, under cover into Bandera’s underground? Nonsense, it doesn’t add up. And he just kept hammering on his ‘she was a Soviet citizen!’ As if every Soviet citizen automatically had to be an agent. Like fucking serfs.”
    “C’mon, that was just the natural logic of that government. That’s what a citizen was for them—a serf, a subject. Like in the feudal days. You don’t remember it—you were little then...”
    “Yeah, and the new government just thinks we’re morons. Go vote for whoever we tell you to, and don’t make a fuss. If you’re not nickeled, you’re dimed.”
    “Yep. Sounds about right.”
    “Are you feeling sorry for him, or something?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    “I thought you might be. He doesn’t seem to bother you...”
    “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
    “Finally there’s an answer that explains it all. Thank you.”
    “What are upset about, love? You’re not jealous, are you?”
    “Me? Of him? You’re crazy!”
    “No, wait a minute, you actually are.... Look at me, come on, you goof...now. What’s wrong? Captain, my captain—what’s bugging you?”
    “I don’t know, Lolly. It’s...it’s all weird. Weird. The whole time back there, he was talking to
you
—just you; I might as well not have been there, a fifth wheel, you know, the lady’s escort. Someone to pour the vodka, sure, lend a hand. And the way you listened to