Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

She wakes writhing in hot wet sheets. Something hard slams into her side. When she disentangles herself, she is on the floor. Her sweaty palms slip on pale pink vinyl as she crawls to the door with the square window. She tries the knob, beats her fists against the door. She slumps back down to the floor, a heap of bones. Coughs erupt through her mouth and nose in painful spasms, expelling a frothy pus—not into her hand, but in the crook of her elbow, as she has been taught. Two limp-faced girls gaze down at her from their own beds, peaceful. All she needs to do is let it happen, their heavy-lidded eyes tell her. Give in, melt into the floor. Isn’t that what this room is for—a long rest? Her lungs will unclench, fill to the brim like two bottles of milk, and the sanitarki will take her away. That’s when the parents come at last. Zaya has seen them visit once their child is safe in a small box. A nurse might even sew up her lip for the occasion.

Her head rolls to the right. In the corner of the room, a crack in the vinyl floor glows.

What she has to do is crawl toward that crack. The need is bodily, instinctual. She has seen it in every moth and mosquito bewitched by a flame.

Right hand, left knee, left hand, right knee. Her joints grind painfully, her elbows buckle, but she keeps moving.

Zaya lifts the corner of the vinyl. It peels away easily, revealing a pair of short loose planks. The glow beckons her from beneath them. Panting, she pulls the planks aside. A small hole in the floor opens up to a set of stone steps leading underground. The tunnel’s cool breath gives the girl a burst of strength. She stands on shaky legs. Strings of cobweb cling to her arms and face as she follows the light down the cold steps, which level out into a chamber. Long narrow shelves are carved into the stone walls. Broken candles and vases litter the floor—remnants of pillage. The air smells sweet, like a baby’s mouth after feeding.

The glow emanates from a corner of the chamber, from underneath a gray pile of robes. Zaya unwraps them—the cloth’s folds retain a bluish luster—and the unsettled dust brings on another coughing fit. Inside is a mummified body. Or, half of one. The legs appear to have been snapped off. The brown leathery face squints up at Zaya. Its mouth, petrified midscream or midyawn, suggests the creature met its end in wretched terror or sublime repose. Its hair and beard are the yellow of dead grass, but its teeth gleam white. The hands cross at the chest, skin stretched between knuckles like a bat’s wings. Beside the creature lies a dark red cylindrical hat Zaya has seen before, atop the bishops painted on the monastery walls—but on this hat, the jewels have been picked out.

Zaya beholds the shriveled face, and determines from its gaze that something awaits her, something important. The saint, she knows, doesn’t want to be buried at the internat any more than she does.

Zaya tugs the hat over its shiny forehead. The hat is fetching. A waste indeed, to be a saint stuck underground with such a hat.

She gathers the saint in her arms. Centuries of desiccation have made its body very light. The saint pulls forward, as though tied to a string. The pair make their way through the tunnels, turning right here, left there, the bundle leading her through the dark, urging her toward the miracle of escape. They totter up a set of steps, toward an opening. Zaya smells the leaves before she sees them. Gripping the saint with one hand, pulling the branches and weeds apart with the other, she climbs over a clutch of tree roots.

The blue sky greets them.

Zaya leaps forward, ready to run from the internat, run as far as her aching legs will take her. But then she stops.

They’re outside the building, but still inside the tall iron fence.

Before Zaya can feel the blow of defeat, the bundle pulls her back into the tunnel—and Zaya follows.

Down the tunnel they go, then to the left, right, left again. They reach an opening in the cliff face. The only way down here is a fall to the jagged rocks below. Back into the tunnel they go. The saint’s pull is stronger now, the pruney creature in Zaya’s arms frantic to perform its marvel, and she frantic to witness it. Right, left, another left.

They’re outside again, but still inside the fence, this time just a few steps shy of the forest beyond.

Zaya waits for direction. The saint, now inert, gives none. She shakes it. In the daylight, its parched features look exhausted, accepting their fate. At least one of them can escape, Zaya thinks. She thrusts the bundle over the fence. The saint lands faceup on the wild grass, hat uncapped in salute.

Zaya hears a sanitarka call her name, turns to see the woman racing toward her. Just a few meters away now, the woman’s creamy arms are spread wide enough for an embrace.