Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

Orynko Bondar’s homecoming was magnificent. The townspeople filled the platform of the Kirovka train station, and applauded as Orynko and Konstantyn descended the steep steps of the passenger car. Never before had Konstantyn seen such a crowd in his town. He hadn’t slept the whole trip back. His eyes were red, heavy-lidded. Strangers slapped his back, shook his limp hand. He wished they would all go away.

Orynko’s parents—short-haired, wearing practical footwear—wrapped themselves around the teenager, kissed her face. Konstantyn heard her father whisper in her ear, “But the Academy!” A small boy in a dress shirt thrust a bouquet of pink dahlias into Orynko’s hands. A canister of home brew made the rounds.

Brave girl, foolish girl, the townspeople exclaimed. When had Miss Kirovka learned to spit with such aim, such force? From this, Konstantyn understood that the broadcast of the Moscow pageant had cut out right after Zaya spat on the judges. He found himself enraged at the townspeople. How could they have mistaken Zaya for Orynko, when she was so obviously Zaya? How could they have failed to recognize the real Orynko as the contestant from Norgorsk? Had the camera not zoomed in on the girls’ faces, or had the townspeople simply wanted to believe the impossible? His convoluted plan had succeeded, and he hated himself for it.

Her name is Zaya, he wanted to shout, Zaya from Internat Number 12. An adept sprinter, a reciter of poems.

But now the townspeople pressed around Orynko and Konstantyn. They took Orynko’s reticence for modesty, Konstantyn’s red eyes for fatigue. As the pair stumbled out of the station, the crowd followed, boisterous as a victory parade.

PART TWO After the Fall

LUCKY TOSS

I’d been working as a guard at the saint’s tomb for eighteen months before the trouble began. Konstantyn Illych paid me little but provided free lodging—an army cot and stove I could fold out in the corner of the tomb each night. The job consisted of telling pilgrims to keep hands out of pockets and lips off the display case. Sometimes children rapped the glass, bored by the saint’s inactivity, and I would remind them that we were not a zoo.

The saint’s display case, which Konstantyn Illych bought from a defunct delicatessen shop at quarter price, boasted a curved glass front and a steel ledge with tracks for plastic trays. Normally the saint basked under the fluorescent lamp like a glazed roast, but that particular day the bulb began to flicker, making the creature look as though it were twitching awake. At first the effect pleased Konstantyn Illych, who wanted the crowd of pilgrims to grow even thicker, but after the second pilgrim fainted he asked me to procure a replacement bulb—though not before we closed the tomb, at 18:30.

The tomb was a low-ceilinged concrete room in the crumbling building known as 1933 Ivansk. The room was bare as a bunker, containing only the display case, a narrow counter for the cash register, and a small bathroom (not for public use). Before being a tomb it had been a hair salon and before that, a ground-level suite. The owner of the salon had knocked out the street-facing wall and replaced it with glass panes. When Konstantyn Illych bought the space, he knocked out the inner walls, too, to make room for the pilgrims. That the rest of 1933 Ivansk had not yet collapsed on us almost made me believe in the saint.

I’d approached Konstantyn Illych about the position after the Union fell and job prospects plummeted. He had already fired two guards for their substandard work ethic. Despite our unfortunate history—the letter of apology he never wrote or signed—we had reached a truce; I blamed him for ruining my career at the agency, and he blamed his failed marriage on the distress I’d caused, and so we were even. Even, but not equal, and Konstantyn Illych enjoyed reminding me of this fact: as my new boss he reveled in assigning me pointless tasks, such as dusting the insides of locks and buffing the stainless steel screws of the display case. I’d reached a similarly uneasy peace with Milena Markivna, who had returned to the building but not to Konstantyn Illych. For the past few months she’d been living on the ninth floor with a stylish young woman named Larissa and her two daughters, but Konstantyn Illych’s repeated assertions that the women were merely roommates made me suspect they were more. Of course, I dared not ask Milena Markivna myself. The only time she and I had spoken since her return, she’d joked that I had finally realized my dream of becoming an Honor Guard. But I sensed my presence embarrassed her—I was a sticky residue from a past she longed to forget.