Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

When I was a child, my mother was invited to join the Honor Guard. According to my father, she had always been a model student, the fiercest marcher in the Pioneers, the loudest voice in the parades. She was the champion archer of Ukraine and had even been awarded a red ribbon by the Kirovka Botanist Club for her Cactaceae collection. One evening, an officer came to our door and served my mother a letter summoning her to the Chief Officer’s quarters. Within six months she was sent to Moscow for special training, as only special training would suffice for the Guard that stands at the mausoleum of Lenin. Since our family was not a recognized unit—my parents hadn’t married because my paternal grandparents (now deceased) didn’t like my mother—my father and I could not join her in Moscow. I was too young to remember much about this period, but do have two recollections: one, I could not reconcile the immense honor of the Invitation with the grief that plagued the family; two, my father assumed care of my mother’s cactus collection, and every evening, when he thought I was asleep on the sofa bed beside him, wrapped his fingers around the spines of the plants and winced and grit his teeth but kept them there until his whole body eased into a queer smile. For many months his hands were scabbed and swollen. Within a year my father was gone also; he had at last been able to join my mother in Moscow. My grandparents told me that one day I, too, would join them.

Now that Milena Markivna had entered my life, I felt I had finally been noticed. The vetting process for the Honor Guard was still possible. My reassignment to Moscow to see my mother and father was still possible. I believed it was possible to make gains with hard work.

From that point on I followed Milena Markivna’s husband with greater vigilance, and in turn Milena Markivna followed me with greater vigilance. If Konstantyn Illych rifled his pockets for a missing kopek for the newspaper, Milena Markivna’s voice behind me would say, “Surely you have an extra kopek for the man,” and surely enough, I would. If I dropped a sunflower-seed shell on the floor while pacing the corridor outside the couple’s apartment, behind the peephole of Suite 76 Milena Markivna’s voice would say, “It’s in the corner behind you,” and surely enough, it was. She was a master observer, better than I.

(It should not go unsaid that, beyond mention of the reprimand of Milena Markivna’s family, and of her employment as a polyclinic custodian, her file contained little information. On the surface, this was because she was born in the province surrounding Kirovka and not in the town itself, but I suspected it was a matter of rank: if Milena Markivna were indeed my superior, tasked with the evaluation of my conduct and aptitude for ceremonial duty, of course I would not have access to her full history. Information is compartmentalized to mitigate leaks, much like compartments are sealed off in ships to prevent sinking.)

Konstantyn Illych grew accustomed to my omnipresence, even seemed to warm to it. Once, after a bulk shipment to the Gastronom, I watched him haul home a 30-kilogram sack of sugar. By the time he reached his building, Number 1933 Ivansk (at least, this was the theoretical address indicated in his case file—the building number appeared to have been chiseled out of the concrete), the sack developed a small tear. Konstantyn Illych would be unable to haul the sack up to the tenth floor without losing a fair share of granules. The elevator was out of the question due to the rolling blackouts, and so I offered to pinch the tear as he carried the load over his shoulder, and he did not decline. Many minutes later we stood in front of Suite 76, Konstantyn Illych breathless from the effort. Since I was there I might as well come in, he said, to help with the sack. He unlocked the steel outer door and the red upholstered inner door, then locked the doors behind us—all this with an excessive jingling of numerous keys. Here was a man with a double door, he wanted me to take note: a Man of Importance.