The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

die and no one ever finds out what it was that gnawed on us as we lay on our deathbeds.... )
    Aidy? Aidy, listen to me.
    No, I didn’t understand any of that, I’m sorry. Honestly? I wasn’t really listening. I was thinking about something else entirely. Don’t be upset. You know what it was?
    Here, cin cin, to us, and let everything be great. Let it all go smoothly, you know—with your deal, and generally...listen.
    It’s your dream that made me think of this, the one you had earlier today—about me interviewing your great-aunt Gela at a table in the Passage. Actually, I brought you a tape to watch with an old interview of mine—take a look at it later, okay? It’s in my tote, in the hallway. You can turn the sound off, so it doesn’t distract you, the picture’s the thing—you’ll see what I mean when you watch it...Aidy, listen, I’m serious. Something’s going on here—both with my film and with these dreams of yours. They’re connected somehow. And the two of us are somehow involved in it all.
    There’s another plot behind all this, a different story. I am sure of that, dead sure. Feel it in my gut. No one really knew her, this Gela Dovgan. Even while she was alive.
    How do I explain this...promise not to laugh at me, okay? All that stuff we recorded with your dad, what he remembered his mom and Grandma Apollinaria telling him—it’s all very good, no doubt about it. I can use a lot of what’s on those three tapes we have of him talking: Gela’s childhood, the Gymnasium, her joining the Youth Assembly, the Ukrainian student community inZurich, and then the whole family going to the gulag “for Geltsia,” and your dad’s own memories of Karaganda, when he was little—how they rode the train for a month—it’s all important; I’ll use it, and all the family photos are really cool too. I’m just thinking about going to the woods to shoot some footage of old bunkers that are still there, but that’s when I have the shooting script—I’ll read it live against the backdrop of the woods.... Nah, no worries, I won’t climb into any bunkers, nothing’ll cave in on me—would you quit being like my mom, talking to me like I’m five! Only all that doesn’t quite cut it, Aidy. It’s all wonderful, but it’s not it. Not quite. She wants something different from me.
    What do you mean who? Gela, who else? Olena Dovganivna. Olena Ambroziivna Dovgan, may she rest in peace.
    You don’t think I’m losing it, do you? Thanks, ’preciate it.
    Please, don’t take it the wrong way—I am really grateful to your dad and to you, for coming with me—he would’ve been totally different with me if you weren’t there, wouldn’t have talked to me like that, relaxed like with family—but your dad had seen her once in his entire life, and he was mostly asleep in his cradle when she came to see them in the middle of the night that time.... You see, Aidy—only, please, don’t laugh, this is really serious. I mean it. Basically the entire time she was in the underground she was among men. Except maybe those radio operators’ courses in ’44, but that was still under the Germans, and from then on, until she died in ’47, it was all woods and bunkers for three years straight—without a female soul beside her. And I’m not even talking about their draconian conspiracy in which they didn’t even know each other by name, never mind sharing anything personal.... That she presumably confided to the family during that visit about some guy she’d secretly wed doesn’t change anything, Aidy. Does not, trust me. Whatever kind of guy he was.
    She had something in her heart—and no one to tell. Something only a woman would have understood.
    You said it. Exactly. That’s exactly what I’m thinking.
    Yes, please, a bit more. Thank you.
    I think it’s still tormenting her—whatever this thing is that she died with, not having told anyone. And she wants me to help her unburden herself.
    She needs me. And you too, Aidy. That’s why we’re together. Well, of course it’s not the whole reason. I remember it perfectly—you were smitten at first sight by my legs in black jeans, a first-round knockdown, a kick in the gut, of course.... Only I am not kidding, Adrian Ambrozievich. I am as somber as a fresh-cut tombstone.
    So about the tombstones.
    I wonder if it is time we dig into exactly how she died. Under what circumstances. ’Cause it would be a crying shame to stick into the film that sorry claptrap