The Stones of Years Ch. 03

"Yes?" Tina said, confused now and prompting him to go on.

"It is not important," Lev said seriously, then he brightened and stood up. "I wonder if it is too cold yet to go for a swim?" he said even as he began pulling off his shirt.

"Lev! Are you crazy!" Misha shouted gleefully. "There was ice on the water just last week! Of course it's too cold!"

"Come on, sissy!" Lev taunted as he pulled off his boots, and Misha stood and started to take off his shirt.

"You're not!" Sara groaned and looked away.

"You bet I am!" Misha said. "I smell like a goat! Perhaps because I haven't had a bath in six months!"

"You do smell like a goat, brother!" Lev said as he started jogging down to the water.

"I'm going too," Tina said as she stood, then looking at Sara she continued: "You'd do well to bathe now to, you know."

"You are all crazy!" Sara said as she crossed her arms over her chest.

"What? And you are not?" Misha said with mock-grumpiness, hopping on one foot as he pulled a tattered sock off.

Before long they were all tip-toeing into the icy water, dressed only in their underwear. Lev walked cautiously out into waist deep water but soon hopped backwards...

"My God in heaven but that's cold! Whoopee!" He stood in the sun a moment longer then gathered his courage and dove headlong into the black water. He came up a moment later and splashed hurriedly back to shallow water – coughing and sputtering as he came. "Well, come on!" he shouted. "Am I to be the only one today with any balls?"

Misha walked out until his groin went under, then he howled and stepped back:

"Shit! Shit! Shit! My balls! Where did my balls go?"

"What?!" Sara shrieked. "What do you mean?"

Everyone laughed until Sara realized what he was talking about, then she turned red and reached down, splashed water at Misha with her hands.

"I wish I had some soap!" Lev called out...

"Perhaps you should bring some back from your next trip, Comrade Podgolskiv!"

Everyone turned toward the voice.

Kushnirenko!

The commandant was standing on the rocky beach, looking at the girls.

He was thin now, almost gaunt, the skin on his neck and face sagging and yellow in places, as if it had been molded from chicken fat, yet Lev could still see the dark malevolence smoldering inside the man's eyes.

"Greetings, Comrade Kushnirenko!" Lev called out cheerfully, and the old man recoiled slowly, suspiciously.

"And greetings to you. How did you enjoy Moscow?"

"It is a grand city, Comrade, just as you said. And I brought you something. Will you be in your office later?"

Kushnirenko squinted, unsure of this new angle and what it might portend.

"Of course, Comrade. You are most welcome to drop in anytime!" The old man's voice was thick with sarcasm, but Lev continued, undeterred.

"Did you hear I was with Ludmila Gromyko? She accompanied me to Warsaw!"

"Hah!" the old man bellowed. "The foreign minister's wife? You?"

"Yes! But I did not meet her husband. Next time, she promised."

Kushnirenko stepped back a little more, unsure of his next move. He had planned to abuse young Podgolskiv and his brother before these two whores, but now he was having second thoughts. If the lad indeed had such a powerful patron he would do well to cultivate a better relationship with him; the consequences could be very worthwhile!

"So! How is the water, Comrades?" he called out.

"Very cold, Comrade Kushnirenko," Tina Lenova replied. "Will you join us?"

The old man laughed at her brazenness, narrowed his gaze on her. "Perhaps another time. Give my regards to your father!" He turned and walked up the trail toward the camp.

"God damn!" Misha groaned, then turned to look at Lev. "Well, I see you have not lost your balls!" But he saw the latent fury in his brother's eyes, the towering hatred oozed from his brother's skin as pus might from an open wound. Then his brother turned and looked at him, quizzically at first, but soon a devious smile crossed his face.

"He is a simple man," Lev said finally. "I will miss him."

"What!" Sara Lenova said. "What do you mean by that?"

"Hmm? Oh nothing, Comrade Lenova," Lev said formally. "Just that I have heard Comrade Kushnirenko is very ill. Quite ill, in fact."

"Where did you hear that?" she said while Misha moved to her side.

"Oh, someone on the trip mentioned it. I forget who." He looked at Sara, then at Misha, and he was filled with hatred for the duplicity he saw in their eyes. How else would Kushnirenko have known to come here so suddenly? "Anyway, the water is not so cold now, is it, Brother?" He rumbled through the water and tackled Misha and drove him backward until he fell over backwards into the water.

They played thus for quite some time.

____________________________

"Lev had become, you see, famous throughout the central region for his performance of the Rhapsody in Blue; first at military facilities throughout Siberia then, as word of his skill spread beyond the Urals, to Moscow and beyond." The old man sipped his water, slipped a piece of ice into his mouth and chewed it for a moment. "Anyway. With his performance he began giving talks about the Gershwin's everywhere he went. He even gave "Porgy and Bess" a rather amusing socialist makeover to warm-up political officers and members of the Politburo..."

"No shit!" Wakeman said. "That must have been a sight!"

"Well, yes, I suppose ignorance is bliss – in any language."

"When did all of this happen?" Somerfield asked. "The concert tours and stuff?"

"Stuff? Ah, well... Let's see..." Podgolskiv scrunched up his face as memories came back unbidden. "Hmmm... The Lenovas came in the summer of sixty two, right before the Cuba thing; so Collins began teaching Lev that fall and he gave his first performance of the Rhapsody that December. You see, no one out there had heard it before; it was new and grand and took everyone by surprise – but it wasn't just the music. No – Lev had real passion for the piece, and it showed. Something magic happened that winter... something magic indeed..."

Somerfield looked through the old man wistfully: "Do you still remember the music? The way he played?"

"Oh my, yes. There was just one recording made during all that time, as well; very inferior, but even so you can feel it. Something very odd, yes, very odd and otherworldly came alive in those frozen moments." He seemed to drift on the currents of displaced memory for a moment – as if he had just come upon the first snow of autumn – but slowly he drifted back to them. "That next summer, yes, he was invited to a competition in Moscow – which he won, by the way – and the next winter all his performances were "sold out" – everywhere. The State sent him to exhibitions all over the Soviet Union after that, then with famous orchestras all over Eastern Europe, and even Paris once, but even so, even with all of this sudden fame he was sent back to the camp time and again."

"That doesn't seem right," Judith said. "Why? I mean if he was becoming famous? That seems self-defeating... from a propagandist's point of view..."

"Self-defeating? But of course it is self-defeating. All evil is self-defeating. All totalitarian systems are built upon a rock-solid foundation of self-loathing and decay. You should readBuddenbrooks..."

"I'm curious," Wakeman interrupted, "but what illness did that commandant, that Kushnirenko fellow have?"

"Emphysema, I am given to believe. He was, you see, a heavy smoker."

"So he never was tried, or arrested, for the things he did?"

"Good heavens no, but he illustrates the point I try to make here, no?" Podgolskiv said, his voice thick with pedantic sadness. "Kushnirenko was all self-loathing and decay, the very essence of Mann's dis-ease. And, well, the world remains full of Kushnirenkos, does it not? The world still remains a dangerous place for Jews too, does it not? But let us be clear, this holds true for any minority perceived as weak. There are probably not, or never will be, you understand, enough prisons to hold-in all the hatreds that consume the dis-eased. Not in all the world."

"You continue to avoid mention of Sara." Somerfield looked at Podgolskiv again, this time over the rims of her glasses. "And your relationship with her? What happened to her?"

"Ah. So this is to be an interrogation, is it? Well, I should warn you, Miss Somerfield; I have been interrogated by some of the very best – but pardon me... perhaps I should say the very worst interrogators the world has ever known, so please, spare me your little condescensions, would you?"

Somerfield looked away for a moment, unsure of herself, and Podgolskiv smiled at this little triumph...

_____________________________

He held her in his arms, felt her shaking as another wave of tears shook her.

"It can not be true," he whispered in her ear. "Surely you are mistaken."

"I don't think so, Lev. I saw her; saw her listening at father's door. Sasha was in there. Sasha and one of the others..."

"The others? You mean..."

"One of those military people, with the painted face. She listened, and then she went and wrote down what was said... in our bedroom..."

"But why?" cried Lev. "Why would she do this?"

Tina cried into his shoulder and tried to run away from her fears. It seemed all so obvious now. Why couldn't Lev see such a simple truth? Sara had loved him; she had since that first night when they took care of him, but she had in time lost that war. Sara had taken up with Misha to taunt Lev, to make him jealous, never realizing he could simply care less what she did... and in time her love had turned to something else...

"We must tell your father!" he said. "Quickly! We must go now..." He had taken her by the hand and led her across the compound to the clinic. Dr Lenova had been busy – was in fact talking with Comrade Kushnirenko even as they waited outside his office for him – and soon the old commandant had come out of the examination room, even then coughing and wheezing, and thanking the doctor, shaking his hand before he left the building. Lev and Tina scurried into his office and she without any preamble told him what she had seen, and what she suspected.

"Did you see the notebook?" he asked quietly when she had finished.

"Yes, Papa. It is the one she carries in her apron all the time."

The doctor went to his chair and sat heavily, his head fell into tired hands and Lev could hear him talking quietly to himself. Presently he sat up, looked at them both standing there, waiting for him to say something - anything. But he seemed to Lev quite at peace with himself, resolved to the injustices of life and the unfairness of fate and what surely waited for him with the next midnight knock on the door.

But still, Lev saw, the doctor struggled with so intimate a betrayal, struggled to find the right words to express his grief for this one great failure.

"Why, Tina? Why do you think she has done this?"

Valentina Lenova looked at her father, then at Lev, all implication clear...

"So, you think she has done this – because of him?" he said in a whisper as he looked at Lev. "I cannot believe she could be so... petty. You two are of the same cloth, are you not?"

Tina looked away; the implications of his words shattered her...

"That may be, doctor," Lev interrupted when he saw the effect his words had on Tina, "yet it may also be that they are two sides of a coin... or of two faces – like Janus – one looking ahead, to the future, the other to the past."

The doctor looked at Lev and nodded. "Janus was the God of beginnings, and of endings, was he not?" he said as he looked again at Tina. "And I think it is of endings now that we speak..."

"Papa!" Valentina said quietly, urgently, "I don't know what to do..."

The doctor stood and went to the window; he looked out on falling leaves and a leaden sky.

"Winter is coming," he said quietly. "I feel snow in the air."

Tina came to his side and slipped under his arm; he held her close to his side and she felt the chill that took him in that moment. She felt Lev beside her and looked at him, then heard her father say...

"Oh my God!"

...and the three of them looked as one across the compound...

Sara was talking to Misha, showing him the notebook.

They talked rapidly, or so it seemed; Misha made wild gestures with one hand and pointed at the clinic with the other, then he nodded his head and took her by the hand. They began walking toward Kushnirenko's office...

...and Lev could see the smile on his brother's face...

Lev looked at his brother as he walked across the compound, looked at the body so different from his own, at the tortured soul so helpless to deny its own destiny, yet all he felt was love.

Love was all around him now – everywhere... and nowhere...