Moscow Noir

Jan’s taste is the taste of gun grease and machine oil. Viscous and sticky, it makes me shudder just to think of it. I hold on to his balls—easy to take, hard to let go—and feel his shaft moving in my mouth—the almost toylike barrel of a revolver, though not small—the taste of which so many have learned in years past. No, the huge hot barrel of an artillery gun, the organ of a machine of destruction, poised to fire, just waiting for the command.

I’m moving faster and faster, the hand on the back of my head won’t let me rest, my lips itch with a sweet pain—I press my whole body to Jan, and from the depth of my heart rises the sacred word. It runs through my veins, flies up my throat, and opens my mouth even wider with the violent magic command: Fire! —and a sticky stream of semen explodes in my head.

At school, in scripture class, they taught us that the seed dies and yields much fruit. Jan’s seed is dead and cools on my lips in a whitish film. The fruit it brings … they’re beautiful those fruit—and tears run down my cheeks. Then he takes his hand from the back of my head, sits down on the bed, and jerks me toward him. I bury my sticky lips in his shoulder, and his hand lazily rakes my spine.

Then Jan starts talking. He recalls the Civil War, the Kronstadt rebellion, the Antonov uprising, the counterrevolutionary plots. He tells me how his day went.

His days pass with mundane matters. Compiling lists, dictating telegrams, and listening to reports, denunciations, interrogations, resolutions, and decisions. Now Jan almost never does the executing himself— Let the others do some work, he says. At the beginning of our affair I asked him whether he remembered how many people he’d killed, and Jan answered, In battle doesn’t count, and when they lowered me into the barge—there was really no one keeping score.

Sometimes I tell myself, Right now I’m crying on the chest of a man who has killed people without count—and my heart pounds like a hammer. I ask, Could you shoot me?

Of course—Jan grabs me by the shoulders—of course I could. I’ve shot men I slept with. They were traitors. I serve the Revolution, but you understand, Kolya, and the Revolution does not forgive treason.

I don’t ask him how many men he’s slept with. I’m afraid he doesn’t remember them any more than he does those he killed. I’m afraid of getting lost on his list, his long list, like his list of executions.

I don’t ask him whether he’s ever slept with a woman. That thought is unbearable: imagining Jan with a woman, imagining his mighty cock plunging into those fusty wet human insides. The female secretion is disgusting, like rust eating into the barrel of a rifle. I can’t imagine Jan’s seed, the seed of death, spilling in a woman’s lap, that nauseating source of new life.

I’d like to hold Jan’s cock in my hand and squeeze it with my lips always—to know that not a single drop of his seed would fertilize a woman. Small children are awful, their howls are a parody of passion, and their stinking diapers, strollers, and bonnets are the gloomy prophecy of old age’s impotence, which I will not live to see.

One morning I’ll see my cock dozing between my hips like a feeble worm. One evening, at the sight of a man’s nakedness, it won’t perk up and will stay wrinkled and pathetic. That’s the day I’ll realize my old age has arrived. And I’ll ask Jan—because Jan will always be by my side, forever young—to add me to his execution list and—in memory of our love—finish me off himself.

Right now Jan almost never takes part in the executions. I’m saving my bullets, he jokes. I have a dream about shooting a countess. A real live countess.

When he told me this the first time I got scared. I imagined some high society love story: little Jan, an errand boy; the countess he lusts after (or who lusts after him); the old count who in the murk of the conjugal bedroom reveals to Jan the mysteries of homosexual love; a woman’s silhouette in the doorway; the shouts, the hysterics, maybe the police or a lashing in the stables; the vow for revenge, underground cells, the party of Bolsheviks, revolution, war, Cheka, execution lists, my tears on his shoulder …

That time Jan reassured me.

You have to understand, he said, I’ve never seen a genuine countess. Only in the movies. So I want to see how countesses behave before death, how they die, what color blood they have.

Aristocrats have blue, I joked, but Jan didn’t answer. I saw his cock stiffen up again, and in an onset of jealousy I squeezed it and Jan’s nails dug into my back. Then he loosened my fingers and laughed. What are you, jealous? Do you want me to take you along when we send her off to Dukhonin?

Since then we’ve spoken of this often. Jan’s dream has become my dream. We’ve imagined finding a countess: a spy infiltrated by White emigres from Paris; an aristocrat in hiding who survived the Revolution in some out-of-the-way house, masquerading as a peasant, factory worker, or student. On the day of her execution she’ll be wearing a white dress, holding a parasol, wearing black high-laced shoes on low heels. Sometimes we’ll lead her down a brick corridor to the last wall, sometimes we’ll take her out into the snow in the Cheka courtyard (they haven’t executed anyone there in a long time, but in my dreams for some reason I see her walking, stumbling in the snow, across that courtyard), sometimes we’ll take her out of town, to the Gulf of Finland. Even in his dreams Jan won’t let me carry out the sentence myself—I just hand him the revolver and then he, squinting, slowly raises the muzzle and the countess turns pale, opening her parasol with a trembling hand or dropping it in the snow, covering her face in elbow-length white gloves. Jan always says, Farewell, countess!—and the seed of death bursts from his barrel, and her white dress turns red, soaked with blood, ordinary red blood, the same color as everyone else he has shot.

His dreams go no further than that shot, but in my visions I drop to my knees before him, kiss the revolver’s smoking muzzle, and then carefully take the other shaft into my mouth, a shaft poised and ready to fire.

I doze off holding Jan’s hand and think, Today it seems like he isn’t really with me, as if he’s thinking about something else, not the Revolution even, but some other young man, a year or two younger than me maybe, a twenty-two-year-old beauty with curly fair hair. Half-asleep, I see the three of us, then Jan goes away somewhere and my new lover kisses me on the lips—and then Jan’s voice wakes me, and I don’t understand right away what he’s said, but when I do I squeeze his hand even harder—and fall asleep for real.

I’ve found her, Jan says. I’ve found the countess.

There’d been a joint meeting to fight banditry—the police, UgRo, and OGPU. When they were done, Jan went outside and saw a young woman standing with her elbows resting on a fence, almost stock-still, her entire figure replete with bourgeois refinement, the aristocratism of the old regime. She was out of place there, among the strong men in leather jackets. I should ask for her documents, Jan thought, but at that moment an UgRo officer he didn’t know ran up to the girl, hugged her, and kissed her on the lips.

Jan walked away so as not to attract attention, only later he asked, Who was that kissing the woman over there?—and in reply he heard the man’s name.

All the rest was a technical matter. Jan made inquiries and found out more about the man. Some Civil War hero, a fighter against banditry, a distinguished comrade. True, he had to dig deeper when it came to the girl. A student at the university—so Jan stopped by her department and checked her documents. Everything seemed in order, a worker family, but her name put him on his guard. He went to the address where her mother and sister lived. My revolutionary instinct did not mislead me, he chuckled. When the house committee saw his warrant, they told him everything. A former bourgeoise who started at the factory recently so she could get into the university.

The street cleaner volunteered to show him where they’d lived before—in their own house, it turned out. And there, not believing his own ears, Jan heard this: The dead count’s wife and daughter.

I’ll collect some more documents, he said, and I felt his fingers trembling in my hand, and report to Comrade Meerzon that a representative of the exploiting classes concealed her origin when entering the university, and with criminal intent entered into a liaison with an officer of the workers and peasant militia. This means the death penalty, believe me, Vitya, I know how to write.

I pressed my whole body to Jan, soaking up his trembling.

Why didn’t you say something? I whispered. After all, this is a gift for both of us.

Yes, Jan replied gravely, for the Revolution’s birthday.