The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

sweetness—that blissful, triumphant unclenching of brain cells that used to come in abundance fromlab research and that can never be fully replaced by the satisfaction of a well-done business deal, no matter how complex the scheme. Nothing to write the Nobel Committee about, to be sure, but the thrill is just the same—and perfectly sufficient. The world can be explained. Specifically, somewhere out there lies buried a humongous, immeasurable—infinite, that’s it—vault, an archive of things once witnessed, of footage that wants to be watched. How, by whom, those details are not important. This, one must admit, is a comforting thought. An idea that offers a man, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, a shot at non-lonesomeness (that’s a Lolly word). As in: my memory, in its entirety, I bequeath to Daryna Goshchynska/Adrian Vatamanyuk (choose one). Okay, maybe not in its entirety; that may be too much, but wouldn’t this make for a great sci-fi story? I’m full of ideas; I’m shedding ideas this morning. Spawning. A morning of high ideation. A high-yield morning. I’m Ideating Adrian. Mister Adrian Ideatov. No, better, like an emperor—Adrian the Idea Bearer. Wow. Watch out, Boryspil redneck, I’m gonna get your clock and your little cuckoo, too!
    Snickering at myself (no one else to snicker at in the empty apartment), I rub into my cheeks a pleasantly cool squirt of silky Egoist (never did find that aftershave)—soon as I get to the office, I’ll desire a double espresso from Yulichka. Pull on a brand new, just-out-of-the-plastic, crinkly Hugo Boss shirt—a T-shirt won’t look respectable enough—snip off the hateful plastic whiskers that stick in the seams where labels had been attached, straighten cuffs, admire the package; cool and style all around, good to go to Sotheby’s, or to a Swiss bank, yes, definitely, Sotheby’s first, then to the bank to unload the cash—and then it finally catches up with me, like late-night heartburn, this very simple, little tail end of my earlier idea, sudden and undeniable like a door slamming into a face: Why me?
    Sweet Jesus, why me? Why did he, the one that gets shot in the dream, whoever he was, choose
me
to sit through his archival reels—if I didn’t ask for it?
    And, while we’re at it...who was he?

Black Woods, May 1947
    “F ather,” he said, and wanted to say again,
Father
, but his voice failed him and only a low groan came out. Someone shone a battery lamp at him; the circle of its light swung back and forth across the wall, a log wall like that of a village church; and in the shadows, outside this circle of light, he thought he saw a priest’s dark cassock. This made him happy: Papa’s here, he thought, and the overwhelming joy of it almost brought him to tears—he felt so weak and tender, softened with love and gratitude to his father, so worn out he couldn’t even get up to kiss his father’s hand and ask for absolution as he’d longed to do:
Father, I killed people, I abandoned my studies back when the Germans first came—how many fell at my hand? I did not forget, Dad, what you said to me when I left, when you gave me your blessing: Do not shame us, son. I was a good soldier and I am clean before Ukraine; forgive me, Father, my blood-spilling sins.
But then he remembered, the gash of the memory clean and sharp in his mind like a knife wound, that it had been three years since they sent Mom and Dad to Siberia, and he moaned again and closed his eyes, still feeling, like a blind man, the tightly packed, hard-breathing human mass all around him. The air was heavy—the animal pall of human flesh mixed with the acerbic tinge of medicine and disinfectant; it wheezed, mumbled, and bubbled; it heaved like a dog coughing up a bone; once, a young voice rang out from the dark, wild and loud, “Throw the grenade!”
    “Shhh,” a whisper rustled toward the voice, soothing, comforting. He heard clothing move, sensed the air stir around him, and the circle of light lifted from his eyelids, went to the young voice, but still he felt like the Holy Father remained at his bed, not leaving him. The other smell, that’s what it was—sap, or as they say around this country, firring, the woods. Pine trees. The logs ofthe wall, he noticed when he opened his eyes, also seemed fresh, stained with sap. An infirmary then, not a jail.
    He was safe—someone was looking after him: his body was immobilized, swaddled and feeble, blissfully freed of the need