Night Soldiers

At the top, tables were packed together on a balcony. “Nikko!” Omaraeff was beckoning violently. “Over here.” He moved sideways through a sea of people-eyes rising to meet his own-talking, gesturing, observing his progress, all without missing a bite.

“Zdrasti!” Omaraeff greeted him as he sat down. “May you live a hundred years- don’t eat the lamb.”

Khristo stared at the hand-scratched Cyrillic on the ragged piece of paper that served as menu. A waiter filled the cloudy glass at his side with yellow wine that smelled like resin. “What, then?”

“Try the shkembe.”

Beef kidney cooked in milk. He ordered it, and the sweating waiter flew away. The room was dense with clouds of strong smoke from the black tobacco.

Omaraeff smiled. “Just like home, eh, Nikko?”

“Yes,” Khristo said. “Just like home.”

Omaraeff described himself, with a smile, as a circus Bulgarian. His enormous head was shaved smooth, and he wore a grand Turkish mustache, waxed to a fine point on either end. He looked like a strong man in a circus, an appearance that gave him great cachet as the headwaiter at Heininger. To this, for luncheon, he had added a pale gray linen suit and vest, set off by a lavender silk tie fixed in place by a stickpin of ruby-colored glass, the entire ensemble overlaid by a cloud of cologne that smelled like cloves. He took a long sip of the resinous wine and closed his eyes with pleasure. Suddenly, a dramatic melancholy fell upon him. “Ah Nikko, how sadly we wander this world.” He raised his glass before Khristo’s eyes, a symbol of good times gone away.

“That’s so,” Khristo said, not wanting to be impolite. But he could see Omaraeff, in his mind’s eye, taking supper in the Heininger kitchen before the late evening crowds arrived. A slice of white Normandy veal washed down with a little Chambertin. Surely he made the most of his exile.

“Mark my words, boy, our time is coming soon enough.”

The shkembe arrived, a vast plateful of it, reeking of rose pepper and sour milk and the singular aroma of kidney. Khristo poked it about with his fork and ate a boiled potato. “I’ve brought you a Radom,” he said, gesturing with a glance toward the brown parcel by a dish of raw onions.

“Good. It will speak for us. Speak to the world.”

“Oh?”

“Mm,” Omaraeff said, his mouth full of stew. He swallowed vigorously. “The Bolsheviiki press us too hard, eh?” He wiped his mouth with a large napkin and lifted his glass. “Czar Boris!”

“Czar Boris,” Khristo repeated. The wine was thick and bitter.

Loud voices flared suddenly to life. He looked over the railing of the balcony and saw two old men with white beards who had risen abruptly from their table, upsetting a plate of yellow soup, which splattered on the floor. “A prick on your grave!” one of the men shouted. “And on yours!” the other answered, grabbing him by the throat. Diners on all sides cheered as they choked one another. Waiters came rushing in to separate them, the table went over with a crash, several people wrestled in a heap amid the spilled food on the floor.

Omaraeff shook his head with admiration. “Look at that old fart Gheorghiev, will you? All for honor. Hit him, Todor,” he called over the balcony. “Break the bastard’s head!” He turned back to Khristo and punched a thick index finger into the brown package. “It’s come to this now. You’ll see.” His fingernails were perfectly trimmed and had the opalescent shine produced by a suede buffer.

“Perhaps you ought not to tell me too much, Djadja Omaraeff. Some things are best done in secrecy.” Everyone called Omaraeff Uncle.

“Not tell you? Not tell Nikko? Hell boy, you are the one who’s going to do it!”

“I am?”

“You’ll see.” He raised his glass. “Adolf Hitler.”

“Adolf Hitler,” Khristo repeated.

They waited at a corner of the Boulevard St.-Michel, the flics would not let them cross the street. Close ranks of marching men and women swept past them, chanting and singing.

Omaraeff wore a topcoat that matched his suit, and the stiff wind toyed with the flaps as he stood at the edge of the pavement, eyes smoldering, hands jammed in pockets as though he feared they might reach out and smack a few heads. Khristo was bundled in his battered sheepskin jacket, and they looked for all the world like a well-to-do uncle and a wayward nephew, the latter having just recently been treated to a morally instructive lunch.

“And which are these?” Omaraeff asked. His voice floated on a sea of contempt.

“Medical students, I believe. The stethoscopes …”

“Ah-hah. Doctors.” The word spoke volumes.

A young man with an artist’s flowing hair turned to them and raised his fist. “Red front!” he called out proudly. A thin fellow by his side added, “Join us!” His friend completed the thought: “Bring peace and mercy to all mankind!”

Khristo imagined them in a room with Yaschyeritsa and smiled sadly at the thought.

“Come on,” the young man urged, observing the smile.

A group of women in uniform-white hats and gray capes-marched below a banner stretched across the street: NURSE WORKERS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE.

Omaraeff growled deep in his throat. “Go look up Comrade Stalin’s rear end and see if you find justice,” he said-Khristo laughed despite himself-“and powder his balls while you’re at it.”

The nurses wore their hair severely cut, and their faces were plain and pale without makeup. He found them very beautiful. “Comrades,” one of them called out, “have courage.” So God speaks to me, Khristo thought. He would need courage to contend with Omaraeff. You might know a man fairly well, he realized, then suddenly he revealed his politics and turned into a werewolf before your very eyes. Could not one be just a waiter?

The nurses were followed by the municipal clerks, angry, shabby men and women with grim faces. One imagined piles of tracts in their houses, learned by rote, and shotguns in closets. The day is coming, their eyes said. They would, Khristo knew, rule the world under Bolshevism-formerly despised, at last triumphant, paying back a list of slights that reached to heaven.

“Who have we now?” Omaraeff asked.

“The clerks of the city.”

“They look dangerous.”

“They are.”

Omaraeff was tight-lipped. “You see what we face. When the marching begins, the next thing is throwing bombs. Well, we’ll put a stop to that. Trust Djadja. For a long time I averted my eyes. This is not my country, I reasoned, let them go to hell in their own way, what do I care?”

“What has changed?”

“Everything has changed. Now there are strikes, here, in England, even America. And posters, and parades. And those NKVD devils are everywhere, stirring the pot. You know who I’m talking about?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, you must share my view.”

“Of course,” he said. Unconsciously, he shifted the packaged Radom to his other hand.

“One might use it right now,” Omaraeff said. “And to good effect.”

“Well …”

“But I have bigger things in mind.”

There was a stir across the boulevard. A man in the crowd had shouted something that reached the marchers’ ears, and one of them strode menacingly toward his tormentor. A policeman stepped out into the street and swung his cape-weighted with lead balls in the bottom hem. The marcher danced away and made an obscene gesture with an adamant thrust of both arms. The marchers, a battalion of streetsweepers, some of whom carried their brooms like rifles, roared their approval.

They were followed by the salesgirls of the grands magasins in their gray smocks.