She shrugged and let him drag her into a seesaw sort of polka around the desk. Platonov watched wistfully, missing a playmate his own age.
“How well do you know her?” Arkady asked.
“Not a bit, but a pretty woman always dresses up a place.”
“Any more threats?”
“Not since I placed myself in your hands. You’re doing an excellent job.”
The needle hissed. A hymn followed and Tanya released herself with an audible sigh.
Orthodox hymns were a slow blending of voices, repetitive and hypnotic. Arkady wondered who was in such a butchers’ choir. Brezhnev? Molotov? Khrushchev? A strong baritone carried them all through the crackling of scratches.
“That’s Marshal Budyoni, the Cossack,” Surkov said.
As Arkady recalled, his father had considered Budyoni the stupidest man in the Red Army, an old cavalryman who never made the transition from horses to tanks, and worth at least a battalion to the Germans.
Tanya said, “Communists singing hymns?”
Platonov said, “In wartime you pray, whether you’re an atheist or not.”
None of the songs had introductions, but as if by command the hymn gave way to a single voice singing, “I searched for the grave of my beloved while grief tore at my heart. The heart aches when love has gone. Where are you, Suliko?”
Surkov mouthed, “It’s him.”
Stalin’s everyday voice was as dry and ironic as a hangman’s. Singing brought out a pleasant tenor and a sentimental feel for melody. It was a solo, just Stalin and the piano, with Beria, presumably, back at the keyboard. The Great Leader had a Georgian accent, but then the song had originally been Georgian, and the tale was classic. A forlorn lover discovers that the girl he seeks has been transformed by death. When he calls, “Are you there, my Suliko?” a nightingale answers, “Yes.”
Surkov said, “He could be standing here with us, he sounds that close.”
“Then it’s definitely time to go,” Arkady said.
Tanya begged a ride. “The people I came with are gone and my coat is right downstairs.”
“Stay with me, Tanyushka.” Surkov reached out.
She took Arkady’s arm. “Save me from this crazed Bolshevik. It’s International Women’s Day. Protect me.”
“Coming?” Arkady asked Platonov.
“I’ll be right there.”
The stockroom was outlined in white by the light of a streetlamp. Inside the stockroom coat hangers, a copying machine, scanner, and shredder sat in the dark. Platonov had yet to come downstairs; instead, “Suliko” was playing again and the sentimental tenor sang, “I saw a rose drip dew that fell like tears. Are you crying too, my Suliko?”
“Dance with me,” Tanya said.
“Haven’t you danced already?”
“Surkov doesn’t count.” She eased Arkady’s pea jacket off his shoulders and took his hands in hers. “You know how to dance.”
Arkady was capable of a waltz. It was an appropriate interlude on such a night: Stalin singing, the windows shivering, Tanya resting her head on Arkady’s chest. What a ridiculous couple they made, he thought; she was the belle of the ball and he looked like he should be shoveling snow. There were calluses on her fingertips, but they were from stroking a harp.
“I’m sorry I’m in the same dress you saw me in this morning. I played for receptions all day long. I must look like a pressed cabbage.”
“A bit.”
“You’re supposed to say I look like a white rose. You don’t say much, do you?”
He considered opening gambits. “Do you really want to marry an American?”
Her head lifted briefly.
“How did you know?”
“The Cupid agency. They described you as a dancer. What sort of dance?”
After a moment, “Modern. What else did they say about me?”
“That you weren’t my type.”
“You see, their problem is they don’t like spontaneity. I believe when an opportunity comes you have to seize it. How do you feel about adventure?”
“It’s almost always uncomfortable. Tell me, what sort of friends would bring you here and then leave without you?”
“Well, now I can tell them I heard Stalin.” The name provoked a sibilant
“It’s amazing. I know some people who just saw Stalin.”
“Are they crazy?”
“I don’t know.” They brushed against the sleeves of a coat rack. “You deserve a better partner.”
“You’re exactly who I wanted. Are you lucky with women?”
“Not lately.”
“Maybe your losing streak is at an end.”
When the song ended Tanya let go reluctantly. “Suliko” was replaced by a speech, one of Stalin’s harangues, which could go on forever because the Great Instructor was always interrupted by applause described in the newspapers as “steady and thunderous.” Anyway, nothing to dance to, Arkady thought and although he sensed that Tanya was disappointed, he pulled on his jacket.
“We must smash and overthrow the theory that proclaims that the Trotskyite wreckers do not have the use of large resources.” Here was the other Stalin, a voice like a hammer and words like a carpenter’s nails. “This is untrue, comrades. The more we move forward, the more successes we enjoy, then the more hateful become the remnants of the exploiter classes. We must smash and overthrow them!”
Applause broke out as Surkov turned up the volume and let the high tide of adulation pour from the gramophone. Arkady said nothing because Tanya had slipped a garrote around his neck and pulled it tight. Arm strength was where playing the harp paid off. The garrote was steel harp wire attached at each end to a wooden handle. Tanya stood behind Arkady, but he wasn’t going anywhere and all she had to do was lean back to stop him in his tracks. The wire dug into his neck and crossed in back to her strong hands. If he hadn’t turned up the collar of his jacket, the wire would have been a circular knife.
All the same, the wire dug too deep for Arkady to pull it off or loosen. When he tried to reach back or turn she applied more pressure the other way. He couldn’t draw air or call out because his windpipe was closed.
Mounting applause and shouts of “Root them out!” and “Throw them to the dogs!”
Arkady felt his face balloon. She kept him moving backwards and off balance, letting him flail and spill pamphlets off a copier. “Marx: Frequently Asked Questions.” Arkady had a question or two. She missed a kick toward the back of his knee. If he did fall she could drag him by his neck and he’d be dead all the faster.
Sustained applause and calls of “Bullets are too good!”
Strangulation came in stages. First, disbelief and a wild thrashing of resistance. Second, dawning recognition of dwindling resources. Third, spasms, limpness, and acceptance. He was well into stage two. He kicked the copier and propelled himself backwards. In the momentary slackness, he snapped his head into hers and heard the crack of bone.
Swelling applause and shouts of “Beat them and beat them and beat them again!”
They began skidding on blood. He got one hand on hers, eased the wire enough to find a straw’s worth of breath, plunged backwards and sandwiched her into the shelves and a cascade of light-bulbs, poster board, markers and scissors. She abandoned the wire and snatched a scissors as it flew by.
Thunderous applause and demands to “Stamp on them like vermin!”
She stabbed him in the neck but the raised collar befuddled penetration. When she swung for his eyes he blocked her arm and threw her over the worktable. She came up scissors first over the photo cropper, where he caught her by the wrist and, with one hand, held her hand secure over the cropping deck while he raised the
