Deathless

“You are, though,” said Marya, and she heard her own voice fill up with familiarity, with longing. She almost turned. She almost called him Vanya, Ivanushka, as though they were already lovers. Her hip already moved toward him a little, as though her whole self meant to fix him with a gentle expression and forgive him, in the beginning, so that she would not have to, later. She could not explain it, the pull of him, like Viy pulling at her breasts with his pinprick sting. The dead Tsar had caught her by the death and spun her around. Ivan, oh, just his voice, had caught her by the life. “You are. Just by lifting the flap of my tent, you are. Just by being warm and alive and near me. After this long day, and all of Viy’s cavalry sweeping over my battalion like water. I lost two colonels today. Two colonels and a major and so many horses. So many girls. And tomorrow I will wake up and pin up the front of my uniform and look them all in the eye, my comrades, the very same, only they’ll have silver stars shining on their chests and they’ll want to cut out my liver. And into all that you come, so hot and young and innocent. You smell like a human. I can smell your heart. It’s like a rich meal, set out just for me. And I should know by now: Rich meals laid out as if by magic, in the wood, unlooked-for—those are seductions. And even though I know you are an Ivan and you exist to make me betray my husband, I still want to kiss you. To feel the life in you seize on the life in me. Raw and fresh and new. And you—you have not even seen my face, but I can feel the shock of your desire in my shoulder blades. The shape of me, the size of me—already you will not leave this tent without me.”

“Yes,” breathed Ivan.

“Yet you insist on your innocence.”

“I only found you by accident. I followed a trail of bodies.”

“Then maybe I am seducing you, too.”

“It’s a grisly kind of bride gift,” Ivan said, and did not laugh.

“Maybe every soldier I killed fell in just a certain way, to lead you out of your world and to me. Maybe my body did it without my knowing, the strokes of my sword, the shots of my rifle.” Had she? Marya felt as though all her limbs were connected by thin threads, and a wind would blow her apart. Who was she to know what those disconnected limbs wanted, what they did when she was not looking? “But it’s not so bad as you think. Most of the soldiers are just empty, cloth, with a little breath in them, a thimbleful of blood. It troubles no one when they are torn. Well. No one that matters. But some, yes. Some are grisly. Some were alive.”

Marya gasped as Ivan placed his hand on her waist. She had not heard him move toward her. Had not been on guard. And what had he looked like before he came into her tent? Had he fallen from a tree? Had he been a crow, a robin, a sparrow? No. Not him. He had been a man, out there and in here. There was no bird in him. Ivan did not circle her waist with his arm, was not possessive. He just rested his palm against the curve of her, hesitant. The nearness of him crushed her, like being held by the sun. His gravity pulled at her ears; his breath blossomed against her neck. He whispered, unseen, as close as a ghost, and she could not understand why he was saying this to her, not at first. But the sound of him speaking, the vibrations of his words against the bottom of her skull, moved in her like soldiers, staking territory, gaining ground.

“When I was a boy,” he said, “my grandfather died. My mother was very close to him, and for a year we visited his grave every day. But I was a boy, restless, so I wandered away from her. Her grief was a closed house, and it made me afraid. I learned to read from the gravestones, sounding out each letter in the long grass. One in particular struck me. A little one, no bigger than a schoolbook. Dorshmaii Velichko, it said. 1891–1900. Underneath it said: For death hath no dominion over her. I didn’t know what dominion meant. But I imagined Dorshmaii over and over, with black hair or blond hair, taller than me, not so tall as me. A long braid, or short hair like a boy. She would be my friend and read gravestones with me. She would be haughty and shun me and I would love her anyway. I would reveal my loyalty to her quietly; I would declare my love in loud songs and promises. I thought of her all the time, and those words: Death hath no dominion over her. And then one day when my mother went to see grandfather and I went to see Dorshmaii, there was an old woman standing near her grave with a brown scarf over her head. One of her stockings had fallen down. The old woman had set up a table among the tombs and she was setting it with food: bread and relishes and dumplings and big green grapes and little chocolate candies and an old samovar full of tea. She set places at the table like someone was coming to eat with her. But she didn’t eat. She turned around like she knew I was there and held out her arms to me. ‘Eat,’ she said. ‘Eat.’ I was shy. I didn’t know the woman. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘My son died in the war. He was all I had in the world. That is him, there. Vitaliy. My Vitaliy. I will never see him again. There is a hole in me like a bullet. I want to feed everyone who is not my son, to keep them living. I want no one to have holes in them. I have no one anymore whose mother I can be. Eat, eat. Here are some blintzes, sweet boy; here is cheese pastry. Eat. Be fat. Be alive.’ And I ate her food while the rainclouds drifted in. I have never eaten anything sweeter. I left grapes on Dorshmaii’s grave, and I never went back. The day after I ate the old woman’s bread and cheese, my mother finished her grieving, and took me to the park instead. I never went back.”

Marya shut her eyes. She thought of a hut in a dark wood; a heavy table. “Why are you telling me this?”

Ivan Nikolayevich leaned his head against her hair. “What I am saying is, in this graveyard, I would like to feed you, so that you will not have holes in you like bullets. Sit at my table, Marya Morevna. Let me be a mother to you. Be fat. Be alive.”

And Marya turned. She saw a young man, but not so young, with a broad, sun-reddened face and dark gold hair, like a coin that has often changed hands. His eyes were tea-colored and crinkled at the edges, and this made them look kind. She clenched her jaw to show him that she was not kind, would never be.

Around his arm he wore a red band, an old scarf, knotted like a ludicrous sort of knight’s favor. Marya touched it with her fingertips gently. She thought for a moment it might go up in flames. That it might vanish rather than allow her touch. A person, but not of the People. But it stayed soft and bright in her hand.

“You are so hard, Marya Morevna. You could cut me. Why are you so hard?”

“Because I joined the army and all my friends died.”

And then she burst into tears, her first tears since that awful night-wedding. She rested, just for a moment, her burning forehead against the chest of Ivan Nikolayevich.

16 The Constant Sorrow of the Dead

During the Great War, the Tsar of Death came closest to victory. His great strength has always been in numbers, and in patience. Death can always afford to wait.

It was in those lightless years that the Tsaritsa of Salt was killed.

In the Land of Death, Viy grew rich. The treasuries of death filled up with burnt grain and apples, with starved cattle and blighted potatoes. The cafes of the dead filled up with patrons drinking spilled coffee and reading banned books. Souls were relieved to come to Viy’s country, for they were not shot at there, nor did they get dysentery, nor did any of their friends suffer. Viy made his country as like the living world as he could, even to building film houses where silvery images of the war showed, so that the dead might be grateful and not wish to return to life. For this is the constant sorrow of the dead, that though they drink and eat and dream much as they did before, they know they are dead, and yearn desperately to live again, to feel blood inside them once more, to remember who they were. For the memory of the dead is short, and thought by thought they lose all sense of their former lives until they drift from place to place as shades, their eyes hollow. After a time, they believe they are alive again.

So it was that Viy sent his chief boyars among his people to announce that if any among them would serve in his army, he would send them home when their terms of service ended. Home, to Life, to hearth and blood and labor. He lied, and they knew he lied, but the dead can live for a long while on such a diet. No longer would the Tsar of Death be content to wither corn on the stalk or slowly rot men with infections. He would attack the source of all he hated, the Tsar of Life. After all, why should he dine on the ashes of living feasts? Why should he be held in less esteem than his brother? Why shouldn’t the Empire of Death surpass any earthly power?

And they tore the streets of Buyan piece from piece. The territory of Death advanced one inch each day; the territory of Life retreated. But the next day the territory of Life would advance, and Death retreat.