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The Stones of Years Ch. 01

By: Adrian Leverkuhn



The Starlight Sonata, Part II

(note: part one of the story appeared under the title "Woman in Chains")

The Stones of Years 

I

The air was so cold that the snow underfoot crunched like shards of broken glass on cold, dry stone; each breath the boy drew-in burned so sharply it made his clear blue eyes water. The cold seared his eyes, tears formed and ran down his cheeks; they froze instantly and he peeled them off like brittle old scabs. Every now and then as he walked, and despite the bitter cold, he looked up into the vastness of the night sky to the stars that always stood ready to guide him safely home. 

He would never forget those summer nights with his father; they were always with him. The memory would often leave him as quickly as it had come, but he smiled tonight as it lingered with warm arms all around him… 

Home… the right stars always pointed to home…

He was tired tonight, very tired, his fingers where cramping and sore, but just as Professor Soloff was his friend and mentor the stars above were his friends as well, his companions, and like Professor Soloff they always reassured him, comforted him when the memories became too real, the grief to sharp. Though they both bound him to a very useable past -- just as the frigid air that burned in his lungs bound him to this life, he knew he could never turn away from either of them, and as such the constrained his idea of what was possible. Yet above all else he would never turn from Madam Soloff. 

Even so, he always came back to the stars, listened with wonder to the songs they sang in the darkness.

The stars sang the song of his father. 

Madam Soloff had helped him hold on to his father through the darkness.

The lake he walked on had been frozen now for months; the endless Siberian winter -- like the endless Siberian night -- held him in its icy grip just as surely as it held the ice he walked on. The way ahead was endless, impenetrable, and sometimes he felt it was a pale imitation of life. Lost in a thought, he stumbled on a pressure ridge, fell to his knees and winced at the sharp pain that spread up his legs and arms; he cursed, pushed himself up on his arms and checked to make sure the bundle was safely under his coat even as he caught his breath. There was no moon tonight, he reminded himself, so the shadows cast by the stars were hardly enough to see the way ahead. He pushed himself all the way up and brushed up his pants off, picked up his backpack and checked the bundle under his arm, and he moved to walk again; it was in that crystalline moment he first heard it. He had never heard anything like it before…

A faint humming filled the night. The sound was almost like the electric generators working across the lake in the pump-house, yet he could just make out a faint crackling pulse, and suddenly it was as if somehow the noise was all around him. He felt power in the air, a crack like distant thunder split the night, and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end. He shivered violently; he felt as if a current had suddenly and without warning passed through his body. He stood still under the vast dome of the sky, and for a moment he wondered if this was what it meant to be afraid.

'It is behind me,' he said to himself. Whatever 'it' was. He halfway expected to turn and see those funny lights in the night sky that the old men talked of seeing, perhaps one of those spaceships from another world that they talked about when they were roaring-drunk, but he knew they were the delusions of tired, incurious minds. The hair on his neck had been attracted by airborne electro-magnetic currents, not fear. He turned and looked up at the night sky and gasped at what he saw. 

They had never come so close before!

Great kaleidoscopic arcs of green mist pulsed overhead, dancing arcs shimmered and hummed and shifted toward violet and pink and back to green again, and Lev Podgolskiv cried tears of pure happiness. He had never heard such music in his life, and his heart filled with immeasurable, limitless joy. His back to the village, all thought of the bitter cold forgotten, he held out his hands as if he had been summoned to conduct a great orchestra. He closed his eyes and listened to the music, his head cocked gently to one side, then his body began to sway gently, his hands to move as if in communion with the pulsing rhythms that filled the sky. From time to time, his eyes barely open, he looked up at Arcturus and smiled, then he closed his eyes again and returned to the warmth of the dream.

"Thank you, Papa," the boy said finally -- as the aurora subsided. He thought of the arrangement of chords he had just learned and committed them to memory, then turned and ran toward the prison he called home.

_____________________________

A street of sorts ran between row after row of splintered log cabins, each identical in the misery they housed, each small hut containing two or perhaps three families. Snow more than a meter deep covered the frozen ground, vast crystalline drifts were piled up under small windows and up against doorways. He walked down paths shoveled carelessly, indeed recklessly; he made his way by dim golden oil-fired light that barely seeped through tattered burlap curtains. The pale light cast contorted purple shadows between the cabins, and he picked his way carefully between them.

The boy walked through these chiseled canyons of snow and ice to a hut in the center of this community, this prison; he walked up to a flimsy door and kicked snow and ice from his boots; he turned the half frozen knob and stepped inside, his face set in stone now, as if he had a secret to keep. He might have been disappointed to find the air inside almost as cold as that outside, but this was his fourth winter in Siberia -- and he knew better than that now. You learned, you adapted, or you perished; there were no bars on these prison walls -- there was no need. That had been the very first lesson he'd learned.

He took a moment to make sure all the snow was gone from his boots, but even so he left his coat on. He walked down the narrow, dimly lit hallway to the room he shared with his brother; though it wasn't late he was certain Misha would be asleep, and was surprised when he opened the door and found him still awake. Misha was sitting in the corner of his bed, blankets bundled around his shivering body. The room was as icy cold tonight as it was every night, perhaps with the clear sky tonight even more so, and of course there was no heat -- just the single oil lamp on the stump that served as a table by their narrow bed. The peaty-wet Siberian mud that served as their floor had frozen solid long ago. He found that marginally better than the sticky muck of their summer floor.

"Well, did you get any food?" Misha asked, knowing that the famous teachers across the lake usually brought gifts of food back for their favored students, and Misha was hoping against hope that Lev had been able to bring some home tonight.

Lev made a glum face and shrugged, but when he saw his brothers crushed expression he relented and opened his coat enough to remove the burlap bundle from under his coat. His brother's eyes changed in an instant, his whole being seemed to lighten for a moment, and he looked expectantly -- if a little guiltily -- at the sack.

"Professor Soloff just returned from Prague. You would not believe the things she saw…"

"I don't give a damn what she saw," Misha said quietly, almost morosely. "What did she give us -- uh, you?"

Lev opened the sack and poured the contents onto their bed.

"Are those smoked oysters?" Misha grinned as he held up the little oblong tin in the dim light. "And sardines, too? My God!"

"I don't know -- I can't read the label, I think it's Japanese; but Misha… look at this!" Lev held up a brown paper rectangle little larger than a deck of cards and he waved it in front of his brother's face.

"Is it… could it…" Misha began, but his eyes filled with tears.

"Yes. From Switzerland. Milk chocolate, with raisins. Can you believe it? From Zurich."

"We must save it!" Misha said, his voice full of firm conviction, but he appeared to waver as he looked at the wrapper. He could feel himself moving off into the dream, the dream he sometimes had of his mother and of her chocolate pastries coming out of the oven, yet already his eyes were scanning the other goodies in the pile. There were two tins of green olives and a small jar of peanuts, a small wedge of pale yellow cheese and some fresh bread, and… a handful of fresh cherries. These last Misha had not seen since he was very young, and he picked one up now and stared wonderingly at it. 

"These are cherries, Lev." 

"I think so, yes, but whatever they are -- they taste good. But be careful, they have a seed inside."

Misha looked at all the food laid out on the bed and it was all he could do not to cry; Lev pulled apart the stale bread and mashed bits of cheese into it and handed half to his brother. They ate hungrily, picked crumbs from their clothes and the blanket and slipped them wordlessly into their mouths, each eyeing the small bar of chocolate from time to time, each lost in that infinite landscape between caution and desire. 

They ate the cherries one by one; Lev put the pits into a small box filled with loose dirt and sprinkled melted snow on them, then he slipped the box back onto the shelf over his bed. Then he looked at Misha, and the chocolate. 

"Well?" Lev asked his brother.

"Let's save it. I'm almost full now, and who knows how long it will be before we see so much food again."

"You're right," Lev said as he took the chocolate and the oysters and put them inside his old leather suitcase under the bed. He buckled the straps and slid it back under the bed, looked at the flame in the oil lamp and the steady beat of its light as he leaned against the ice-cold wall. 

What a strange night it had been.

He wrote music for a while, then looked at his brother. He was soon asleep, fighting his way across the tortured landscapes of his nightmares.

'Won't they ever end?' he asked himself as he looked at this little mirror of himself laying there. 'God, let him know peace just once in this life.'

____________________________

Professor Soloff -- people close to her heart had called her Miriana once upon a time --returned to the "village" that morning from a concert tour of Old Europe; she had spent the morning telling her best students of weird and wonderful cities and impossible luxuries and of being watched every moment of every day by men and women whose sole job it was to keep her from disappearing into labyrinthine corridors of escape. Of escape, she told them, while her handlers looked on, of escape into the seductive fantasies of the decadent West. Yet when the True Believers had abandoned their listening posts, all the teachers spoke in hushed tones of the vast conspiracies used to keep their "counter-revolutionary tendencies" bottled-up inside this soul-numbing deep-freeze; of course in time these sidelong whispers had spread out among their students like ripples across a still pond. Flames of resentment -- perhaps too long damped by this long Siberian night of their lives -- were kindled and stoked, kept alive, waiting; dichotic conversations formed within the notes of the music they shared with their students and spread across all their souls like a Siberian sunrise. She lived, like all of them, in a dichromic dream -- a dream of bitter cold days and warmer nights. The warmth of these dreams was the only warmth Miriana Soloff knew anymore. She longed for release… for escape. She longed to live again.

Miriana often returned with treats for her most favored students, but these days she held none in higher regard than Lev Podgolskiv, and consequently she lavished upon this most favored pupil almost everything her handlers had allowed her to keep. 

Now they sat side by side in her classroom; she watched his hands caress the keys of the old piano, and she felt connected to the future through this boy. She saw in Lev's blue eyes and within the brilliant white skin of his fingers some vague semblance of the future and that, she knew, was the real flame she kindled. She knew she was too old, her time in this life too short, to return to the land from whence her dreams came. No, her hopes would come to life again in Lev's eyes. His fingers and that glorious mind would give birth to her dreams one day, and through them the voice of the silenced would be heard, and this story would at long last be told as only he would be able to.

She listened to him now, watched him play, chided him gently when he misread a veiled emotion or drifted into discordant timing, but she watched his fingers as they danced over her keys. They were as always touching her soul, carrying her gently along distant Silesian streams -- by a mist-laden farm draped in the careless shadows of weeping willows and apple blossoms floating lazily by on Spring breezes. 

'Oh, the music you'll make,' she said to herself. 'How our world will cry.'

"Are you alright, Professor?" she heard him say, and she came back to the frigid reality of the barren yellowed room.

"Lev, oh my? What did you say?" She turned, saw him looking at the scars on her hands.

"You were crying, Professor."

"Was I? How silly of me. Perhaps it is the music?"

"I did not think it so sad. Do you?"

"Debussy was complicated, Lev. The Suite bergamasque was complicated by so many contradictions of form, so I suppose that depends on your point of view, and more importantly, how the artist chooses to interpret the music."

"But the prelude is so… playful! And the Passepied …"

"But the heart of the work is the third section. Moonlight, yes? And how is it played?"

"Pianissimo."

"Yes. Softly, gently. Not playful, Lev."

"But…"

"A bergamasque. Do you remember what I told you about the meaning of the form?"

"Yes, a medieval dance, from Bergamo, in northern Italy."

"And? Why is this of any importance?"

"It is the form of the dance in A Midsummer Night's Dream, taken from the form of a ritualized dance in the medieval city of Bergamo."

She smiled. "And so, why is that significant?"

"Because the dance occurs in the forest land of the fairies, under the light of the full moon. It is in that moment that spells are cast…"

"Ah, so Debussey makes reference to a rustic medieval dance employed by Shakespeare in a comedy, yes? All in a suite that draws reference to a poem by Verlaine. So then, why do you suppose he chose to end with a Passepied?"

"An homage to the Baroque, to the purity of Handel. The Passepied, the passing feet, a reference to the fleeting nature of time as a part of the very nature of existence."

"Alright, Lev; so why is the Clair de Lune pianissimo? If Debussey's intent was to explore the playfulness of time itself?"

The boy looked at his teacher, crestfallen, lost, and suddenly the weight of all her expectations broke her heart. He was so very young, too young, really, to understand the immense emotions contained within such vast works, yet when he played she could feel his implicit understanding of the music within the music. But then… he looked at her and spoke again… 

"Because all that has befallen the lovers up until the interlude in the forest has been a comedy of errors, but when Puck is at work, when spells are cast -- under the moonlight -- the nature of truth is revealed, love is revealed as the greatest of human truths, and tragedy within that truth becomes manifest. The passepied develops as their re-emergence into the stream of time, it is their rebirth. The perfection of the baroque form affirms the perfect truth of human existence."

Miriana blinked rapidly while Lev spoke. 'My God,' she said to herself. 'My God, he's only twelve!' He was looking at her -- not expectantly, not looking to her for approval -- but trying to understand what was in her heart. She wanted to cry, to hold him, to give to him all that had been taken from him, but she knew these impulses were wrong, they would only hurt him in the end, confuse him only more.

Instead she pulled back, looked at him cooly. "That's a very workable summary, Lev. Yes, very insightful. So, what is the focal point of the Suite -- in it's entireity…" 

They continued to talk a while longer; she had him play key passages again, play them as written, play them in different styles, until she knew he was sure what the music meant in his own heart, to his very soul. 

As afternoon turned to evening she grew tired, gave him the treats she had brought back from Prague and Bratislav, told him to hide them carefully, and reluctantly she sent him on his way.

Despite the cold she stood outside the classroom building and watched him walk across the lake; he had seemed so happy, so excited that these treats would help his brother. He seemed so connected to both the happiness and the sorrow of the people he loved, and was so oblivious to his own needs, and she worried about him, about his soul, and how he would survive in this horrible place. With his knowledge and insight he seemed so very strong, yet she could feel the fragility residing beside his core. It was as if his soul had grown porous and brittle, unnaturally tired and -- old, with each winter he endured.

As he ran across the lake she heard the sky come alive and stepped out onto the ice and snow under the stars; she turned to look at the spreading aurora and smiled as the majesty of the moment washed through her. She turned, looked at Lev standing in the middle of the lake, his arms raised, his eyes apparently closed, swaying to music unseen and as yet unheard, and she gasped when she understood what his movements meant. She began to cry, slowly, gently, but her grief gave way and she broke down completely.

"Oh, my God! No! Not again!" she gasped between sobs. "Not again, God! Not again! It is too soon!"

________________________________

Vasily Kushnirenko stood by the window in his darkened office; he looked at the vast frozen lake and the clear black sky, and beyond -- into the infinite darkness that had always terrified him. He picked at his fingers, chewed a tag of skin off his thumb and spit it out, then lit another cigarette. He drew the smoke in deeply and coughed, then coughed again, and when he felt little bits of spittle hit his hand he wiped them on his trousers.

Though he was from Leningrad, the labor and re-education camp at Surgut was under his nominal charge. He considered himself very sypathetic to musicians, and even though the very best ones in the camp were Jews he tried to not let that distasteful fact color his judgement of the men and women he presided over. But even after years of rehabilitation, after years of being provided for by the State, he detested the ones who continued to make trouble. 

And the very best caused him nothing but the most extreme trouble.

Now, word had come down from on high that the Soloff bitch had been contacted in Prague by people long suspected of helping smuggle citizens into the West. His superiors were livid once again; he had assured them before this last trip that she had been rehabilitated, that it was safe to showcase her talents once again. Now they were demanding she be made an example of; the others needed to be reminded of the dangers they all faced by spreading their relentless discontent about so carelessly. It was a contagion that could -- and would -- consume them all.

"So be it," Kushnirenko said into the darkness. Between drags on his cigarette he closed his eyes, imagined what he might do to her. She was old, perhaps too old to fuck, but some of the older guards might enjoy taking her; perhaps he would make the other women watch as she was raped again and again. Or her students? Might that not silence those impressionable young minds once and for all time?


The Stones of Years Ch. 01



A flicker of light caught his eye and he saw Soloff step out onto the low covered porch of the musician's classroom building. And what was this; a young student? Ah, yes. He recognized Lev Podgolskiv and immediately remembered the boy's father, the way the man had looked contemptuously at him before he had shot him in the head. Kushnirenko smiled at the thought, smiled when visions of raping the boys' mother played in his mind. Both of the boys had been forced to watch that first time, and the other boy -- what was his name? -- had been forced to watch many more times. Hadn't that one been sodomized, too?

He couldn't remember anymore, and anyway, what did it matter?

He watched the boy walk away from the classroom building, stepped back from the window just a bit and watched the Soloff bitch watching the boy.

The sky flared, great sweeping arcs of luminescence filled the air and he gasped; in all his years out on this frozen hell he had never seen such a bright display of the aurora. He came back to the window, his breath frosted the icy glass as he looked up into the night and he wondered what caused this to happen. Was it, as his father had once told him, a sign that great change was about to come -- or was it just radiation?

No. It was, he knew, an omen of things to come.

He greedily wondered what change might be coming his way but soon felt a creeping darkness fall over his soul and he shivered, looked back down at Soloff and at the boy in the middle of the lake, and then he laughed out loud.

"What a fucking moron!" he said as he watched the boy swaying to the beat of unheard music; it was as if he was conducting a vast, unseen orchestra, and he forgot for a moment the feeling of darkness that had just swept over him. He looked on with darkness filling his heart and took another deep drag from the cigarette and coughed again, but this time even more violently. He held his hand to his mouth, felt the moisture spray his hand again, and he turned on the lamp by his desk. He looked at his hand, at the little red droplets of blood and wet flakes of pink tissue on his skin and on the cuffs of his clean, white shirt, and his lips curled in a feral snarl.

"Now what the fuck," he said grumpily -- but then the darkness reached out for him. He reached for a handkerchief in his back pocket as fear crawled up his spine, then started to laugh as if he was without a care in the world -- until another fit of coughing came for him out of the growing darkness.

______________________________

Misha and Lev walked across the lake the next morning toward the school house just outside the administrative compound; the early morning sky was cobalt-blue and crystal-clear, Venus still was brightly visible just over the trees that lined the distant eastern horizon.

"Look at that star," Misha said as they walked along. "How come that one stays so bright after all the others have gone? Is it closer to us?"

Lev looked up from the ice ahead; without thinking he told his brother that the 'star' was in fact a planet, that it was between the Earth and the Sun, and that the Soviets were building probes to land on it. Lev did not see the look of hatred on his brother's face as he spoke, nor would he have understood it if he had.

Misha knew his brother was more intelligent -- gifted, he had heard teachers say -- and that one simple fact more than any other drove him to wild despair. He loved his brother more than anything in the world; Lev was, in fact, the only thing that grounded him to life. He could not imagine life here in this camp without him -- yet the simple fact the deck had been so unfairly stacked against him made him feel dirty, unclean, and he struggled to understand his feelings about not just his brother, but about himself. He could never admit to feelings of simple jealousy… no, it was more complicated than that… it had to be… had to be -- something else.

Some times it was all so complicated. Nothing made sense.

They made it to the classroom building and went their separate ways; he to a basic mathematics class, Lev to a class in something called calculus. It was always thus, he knew, and it always would be; they were brothers, yet they were so much more. They were twin brothers. Though they hardly looked alike, though intellectually they were as different as night and day, the incontrovertible fact was that the had shared the same moment of creation, they had formed together in the warm seas of their mother's womb, and they had come into this world just moments apart. They were, he remembered his father saying more than once, cut from the same cloth.

The same cloth.

Same cloth?

"Cloth?" Misha said aloud as he walked down the close wooden corridor to his classroom.

"What was that, boy? You there!" he heard a voice say, but he ignored it, walked on by lost in his own little world. A moment later he felt a hand on his shoulder, felt himself being spun viciously around, and when he had collected himself he saw Mr Kushnirenko looking down at him, his face angry and red.

"Sir!" he quailed, his voice a trembling shambles.

"You know you are not to speak in the hallway!" the stout old man sputtered. "To whom were you talking?"

"Talking?" Misha didn't know what Kushnirenko was talking about.

"Yes, you daft turd! Talking! You know? Open your mouth… sounds come out? Talking?"

"Sir… I… I don't know…" but Misha saw the old man was staring at his shirt.

"What is that on your shirt?"

"What?"

The blow to his face was instantaneous and stinging and his eyes welled up with hot tears.

"This shit all over your shirt, you imbecile! Are you deaf as well as stupid?"

Misha looked down, saw the red stains, remembered last night…

"Cherries, sir."

"Cherries?! Where did you… who gave you..."

Now Misha understood the danger he had put his brother in. "I found them, sir. On my way home from school -- just last night."

The next blow knocked him off his feet. He came down in a ball, crying, and he looked up in time to see Kushnirenko balling up his fist and kneeling, coming his way.

"Does that make you feel better, Mr Kushnirenko?" he heard another voice saying. "To beat up little children? Do you feel like a man now?"

Misha turned toward the voice, saw Professor Soloff standing between him and Kushnirenko.

"You would do well not to talk me like that, Madam," the old man said quietly, yet Misha could feel the brooding malevolence in his voice.

"Oh, really? I think I would do rather well, Mr Kushnirenko." She knelt beside Misha, dabbed his lip with a tissue, and he saw his blood when she pulled it away from his face.

"So, did you enjoy Prague?" the old man said as he stood. "Did everything meet with your satisfaction?"

"Yes, thank you, it was lovely. I can't wait to return in the Spring."

"Spring? No one's said anything about you…"

"I want to see the flowers bloom, you see…"

"Flowers?"

"Yes, I long to see white lilies. Vast clouds of white lilies."

"Ah. Well, perhaps that can be arranged. Perhaps even sooner than Spring."

Soloff looked at Kushnirenko with knowing eyes and she smiled at the implied viciousness of his threat. "I would welcome it, Comrade Kushnirenko."

"Really?" he said, his voice dripping with uncertain sarcasm, but she was helping the boy up now, then pushing him down the hall toward his classroom.

Misha ran unsteadily into the classroom and took his seat. Mrs Tritov looked at him unsteadily as he took out his paper and a pencil, then at the door -- nervously, he saw. She remained, as everyone else in the room remained, quiet, filled with a tremulous sort of dread that hovered somewhere between hopelessness and fear.

Nothing. All was quiet. Misha fell into the dreams that always came this time of day.

Later that morning, in literature class, the teacher was discussing the poetry of an Irishman named Yeats while Misha daydreamed, and he drifted off suddenly onto limitless vistas of white lilies on fields of black cloth. He saw Madam Soloff kneeling by his side, Kushnirenko's red face sputtering, and as these dreams came to him he could just make out the words of his teacher talking about a poem.

"Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven," Misha heard her saying as he drifted away from her voice once again.

He saw his mother, her broken body shuddering over her husband's lifeless form…

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Her blue dress tattered and torn, the deep reddish-brown blood that ran from the gunshot wound in his father's face…

I have spread my dreams under your feet

Kushnirenko standing over his father, a pistol in his hand, blue-gray tendrils of acrid smoke arcing up lazily from the end of the barrel…

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

There was a commotion outside on the snow-covered lawn and everyone rushed to the windows. Kushnirenko had Madam Soloff by the hair and he was whirling her body around, dragging her across the snow, shouting at her, taunting her. He let go of her and her body tumbled across the snow, and he walked over to her. He kicked her once in the head; her body shot over backwards and came to rest on the snow. She was lifting her head, trying to stand…

The world grew blue and dim and dark -- and all grew very still and slow -- as Kushnirenko walked over to Madam Soloff; he had that same pistol in his left hand and he raised it and fired once, twice, into her head. She fell back silently onto the snow, and Misha saw the deep red well of her life emptying onto the snow. He wanted to cry -- but could not.

He watched as Kushnirencko -- laughing first, then coughing -- slipped the pistol into his coat pocket, and still he could not cry. 

He stared at Madam Soloff as Kushnirenko walked away from the school, laughing as he went. The old man was enjoying the power of his performance, knowing he had his cowed audience in the palm of his hand -- and still Misha could not cry.

He saw his brother run from the schoolhouse to Madam Soloff's side, saw his twin brother kneeling beside the dying woman, saw him take her hand in his, lean over her body and listen as she tried to speak. 

Misha was aware he felt nothing at all.

He saw Lev rocking over her body, saw his brother lost in prayer, and then, as teachers came slowly out of the building, only then did Misha Podgolskiv turn away from the mute horror of the scene.

But still he did not cry.

Indeed, no, he did not because he could not. He looked at the writing on the slate-board, at the lines of a poem:

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

He looked at the line from the poem his teacher had been reciting for a long time before he noticed that no one was left in the room, then he looked down at his hands to see if there was any blood on them.

When he saw that there was none he smiled, then stood and walked silently from the room.

©2008 by Adrian Leverkuhn 



The Stones of Years Ch. 02



(note: Part I of the story appeared under the title "Woman in Chains")

The Stones of Years 

©2008 by Adrian Leverkuhn 

II

"Most prisons are built of concrete and steel, you see," Misha Podgolskiv said, "but what of that prison we toil over all of our life, that prison of the mind we build within ourselves year after year, that prison which serves only to tear apart our very dreams. You know," he said, looking at them, "those walls invariably come down at the least opportune moment – destroying that which we love most. Everything buried under the weight of years of treachery and deceit. And you know, doctor, what amazes me most is the dedication we apply to constructing our own little prisons. We build them, you know, stone after goddamn stone, relentlessly, pathetically, as if we are impelled to construct our dark little castles out of sight, out of mind. It is as if we think no one will see the ill labour that has consumed us."

Todd Wakeman looked at Podgolshiv and shuddered inwardly. "Why do you think you smiled?" he asked after the old man finished telling them of the Soloff woman's murder. "I mean, did you know she was dead?"

"Of course I knew. Dead, yes, dead; no mistake. Just like my father was – dead. The symmetry of place was perfect, you know. I'll never know if that was what the old monster intended, but, oh, I wouldn't have put it past the old bastard."

"You mean he killed your father in the schoolyard, too?" Judy Somerfield asked.

Podgolskiv nodded. He was looking down at his hands; they were crossed on the table in front of him, candlelight danced in his eyeglasses and his pale skin looked leathery, almost like a new parchment.

"I thought the Gulags had been shut down by the sixties," Somerfield said, almost accusingly.

The old man looked up at her, pain and anger in his eyes, then he simply shook his head. "The work-camps, you mean? From Stalin's time? There were hundreds of them, you know. Not the dozen or so that the Germans built – oh no. I don't know how many people were killed in Stalin's camps; maybe four, five times as many as Hitler killed. Odd, but history has been relatively kind to the old wolf…

"But no, Ms Somerfield, they were not all closed down by the sixties. Some remained open for business right up until the day Gorbachev was chased from the Kremlin, but, well, they were no longer called Gulags. Settlement camps, I think, is a name I heard once. No longer work camps. Shit, work camps! Concentration camps, forced labour, people worked to death, starved to death, all in the name of the State. God forbid you might criticize the State, or speak your mind about the State, or criticize the glorious leaders of the State…

"But you must remember, my dear, that my parent's were brought to this camp in 1954 and, well, from the beginning ours was a very "special" camp. Ours was the first, how should I say this, "composed" of musicians and their families. Sorry, but I could not resist…

"So you're saying," Somerfield interrupted, "your parents went from a German concentration camp to a Russian camp?"

"My mother, yes; it was almost so. Not so my father, at least not in the same way. He was more useful to the Reich, so he fared better. He was an engineer of sorts. He dreamed of building rockets, you see. He wanted to go to the stars. Apparently he was very good at what he did. He studied in Germany, before the war – well, he was still there when German tanks rolled into Poland. He spent much of the war on the Baltic, near Peenemunde, until the rockets he designed were sent to kill innocents in London. Then he stopped."

"He stopped?" Wakeman said.

"Yes. Just so. He refused to cooperate any longer, demanded he be sent home, to Lithuania."

"He what?"

"Well, you see, he was a scientist. I doubt he knew there was a war going on. I know how absurd that must sound, but he was, well, he was just that way… so focused, so absent-minded it was almost comical. I understand the authorities were unamused, so instead they sent him to a camp, near Weimar, and there he met my mother…"

"Wait… so, wait, your mother was the musician?"

"Just so. Truly gifted, a prodigy. Violin. Some charming fellow in the Gestapo had her picked up, in Berlin I think, about the time Hitler turned on Russia. She spent the war performing in a string quartet in the camps, entertaining officers I suppose. She never talked about it, you see, not even to father. I can only imagine what else they made her do…"

"Where? Where did your parents meet?"

"Buchenwald. 'Jedem das Seine', or words to that effect."

"What?"

"Ah. 'To each his own', or, in the instant case, 'you reap what you sow'."

"Was your mother from Lithuania?" Somerfield asked.

"No, oddly enough, she was from France, I think – but I do not know much about her side of the family. Still, she was a teenager when the Germans took Paris, but she was, however, already something of a sensation. The Germans were not philistines – well, I have been led to believe that some of them were not - and she continued to perform, mainly in Paris, but sometimes in Germany too, I might add, until someone figured out that her mother was a Jewess. So, Jedem das Seine'."

"I don't get it,"Wakeman said. "What did she do to deserve…"

"Ah, perhaps I mistated my translation. 'One gets what one deserves' might be more accurate – idiomatically. Like 'work sets you free' in Auschwitz. You must admit, Dr Wakeman, that the German tends to have a rather unique sense of humor."

"Misha, how about another drink?"

"Perhaps a mineral water. But, let me get it…" The old man stood and walked off to the bar.

"Holy Mother of God," Somerfield said breathlessly. "I felt like I was going to lose it there for a minute."

"What do you make of him? Think he's on the up and up?"

"What do you mean? You think he's making this stuff up?"

Wakeman turned and looked at the old man standing at the bar. "No, I suppose not, but PTSD does some pretty weird shit to perception and memory. I'm not so sure I'm ready to buy into the idea that he saw two girls from a concentration camp floating around in Tomlinson's eyes. I mean, come on!"

"What about the chains?"

"Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. Coincidence maybe."

"Coincidence? Are you serious?"

"Hell yes… oops, here he comes."

Podgolskiv sat down, poured the water into a chilled glass, then slid a wedge of lime in and watched as images formed in the water. As the lime settled to the bottom of his glass he thought of chains and ice and falling, always falling in the darkness. He watched, his mind thousands of miles and decades away from New York City, but the pain was with him always, and he smiled at it like it was an old friend.

"Prisons are like that," he said softly as images resolved before his eyes.

Wakeman looked at Somerfield and gently shook his head, but the old man saw their doubt take form in the air and he turned his smile at them.

"Shall I continue?" he asked …

_____________________________________

Lev Podgolskiv walked along the razor's edge of the lake, from time to time his boots sinking into the sandy mud at the limit of the water's reach, his eyes focused on the slippery trail just ahead. The sun, high overhead and fiercely hot, beat down on his naked back, beat down on the huge stone he carried awkwardly in his bleeding hands, beat down on his ability to keep his grit-filled eyes on the shimmering mud just ahead.

Lev was in a line of boys hauling stones around the lake for the masons to use in the construction of Mr Kushirenko's new dacha; they had been hauling stones for weeks now. He pushed through the pain in his legs and arms, pushed through the hatred that filled his every waking moment, tried not to worry about Misha and what they might be doing to him today. There was a new rumor that the people from the Army were testing new vaccines for diptheria and typhus on "volunteers", but no one really knew what they were doing in the clinic – anymore than anyone knew why they were hauling rocks around the lake when the ones on this side of the lake were no different from those they hauled. This was an insane world – and Lev had learned long ago that all questions of the insane were better left unformed… far better to leave them hanging in the roiled air than to tempt an answer.

He heard trucks in the woods across the lake, and trucks inevitably meant one of two things: supplies would soon need to be offloaded or new "settlers" would need to be shown to their "quarters". Of course, Kushnirenko might show up and need to provide one or two of the unruly ones with a little demonstration of his authority, or he might take an interest in a particularly charming young lady and express a rather pressing need to show her around his quarters.

Lev felt grit settling on his teeth and he rolled his tongue around the inside of his dry mouth and spit out what he could; he looked at monstrously huge black flies swarming around the boy just ahead and wondered why none swarmed around his head, but he was grateful whatever the reason. He heard the line of trucks grinding up the last long grade before reaching the plateau the camp was built on, then the first one crawled into view across the lake and bounced along the rutted dirt track, but for a time, it seemed, the sound of boys groaning under their loads almost drowned out the gathering noise. Lev listened but remained focused on the muscles in his shoulders and gut, how hot and hard they felt, almost like steel cables pulled tight under his skin, yet as much as they hurt he had to admit they burned in a good way.

Kushnirenko's dacha came into view and the group staggered up a short, steep rise and placed the stones on ordered piles the masons had shown them how to start, then their foreman shouted at them, herded them down to the village for soup. They trundled down the hill and sat on the stumps of felled trees, wolfed down watered soup and grainy bread, and as focused as they were on their food they hardly looked up when the trucks rolled to a stop by the administration building.

Kushnirenko was, however, waiting for them. He had his riding crop out, was beating his hands regularly like a metronome. The camp goons were gathering around now, just beside his group.

Lev groaned inwardly. No one dared say a word when the goons were so near.

Tailgates were thrown open, canvas pulled back, guards barked orders at bleary-eyed men and women who slid to the ground and looked around at their new home. Some turned and helped children down to the ground, and more than one body was passed downas well. The living were pushed into a line, their backs to Lev and the other boys, but he could hear Kushnirenko growling and snarling at them. The monster was laying out the ground rules, explaining conequences for infractions, when one of the arrivees sneezed. Kushnirenko hurried to the man and hammered his face with the riding crop, then kicked him in the face after he fell to the ground. 

It was in that tortured moment that Lev first saw the two girls.

They were quite tall and very thin, almost willowy, their brown hair in braids, their rail thin legs showing under knee-length skirts. 

'Twins!' he said to himself. 'Identical twins!'

The girls and – apparently, their mother – knelt beside the stricken man and helped him stand while Kushnirenko looked on contemptuously, almost mockingly.

"Don't think I don't know who the fuck you are!" Lev heard Kushnirenko yell at the stricken man. "And don't think I don't know what kind of scum you are! That's over now, do you hear! Now! Over!" He raised the whip in his hand as if to strike another blow, but the man did not flinch or draw away. "Do you hear me!" Kushnirenko thundered. "You belong to me now!" He turned to face all of the assembled arrivees. "You all belong to me now. Whether you live or die today or tomorrow, whether you eat today or starve to death chained to a tree in the forest – understand this. I choose! I choose whether you live or die! Work hard, obey my rules, cause me no trouble – and you will find your life hear tolerable enough. You will have the opportunity to play your goddamned music, to learn and teach music as befits your talent, but your destiny is in my hands. Do not forget this!"

Kushnirenko turned and walked away, but someone in the group muttered "Fuck off."

Kushnirenko turned and looked at a guard, who pointed at a prosperous looking man in the middle of the group. He walked up to the man and put his pistol to the man's face. People flinched in that moment, some stepped back moaning; one fell before Kushnirenko's knees and began begging him to spare her husband.

"Do not do this, please!" the woman wailed, and Kushnirenko regarded her dispassionately for a moment, then shrugged and put his pistol away.

"Does anyone else have another pithy comment they would like to share with me?"

He looked around.

"No?"

He stood back and looked slowly down the line.

The woman on the ground moaned now, reached up to her husband – but he seemed to step back from her and he remained absolutely quiet. Kushnirenko walked up and down the line again, looking at each "settler" in the eye, then he turned and walked back to his office. The guards cursed the new arrivees and barked orders at them, began herding them off toward new cabins at the far end of the compound. They walked by Lev and the other boys while they finished their soup, the arrivees eyes cast to the ground as if embarrassed by what had just happened. Even the boys eating soup looked away.

All except Lev Podgolskiv.

He looked at Kushnirenko's retreating form, at the pale skin and pale hair of the monster, and their was pure hate in his eyes.

At least that's what one of the girls remembered, one of the twins, whilst they settled into their new home. She told her sister about the boy she had seen earlier that afternoon, about how he alone had looked at them, and at the commandant; she told her sister that she did not quite know why, but she felt one of them would fall in love with this boy.

"Why do you think that? Why do you always dwell on such foolishness?"

"I don't know, Sara," laughed the first girl, "but for some reason I feel as if I have seen him before. When I saw him it felt as though I had, I don't know, been with him - maybe in a dream. I can't explain it, but when I saw him everything inside me felt turned upside down."

"Do you know what I think?" Sara Lenova said.

"No, tell me," her sister Valentina said.

"I think the heat went to your head."

They wanted to laugh but each looked around their room again.

"But this is no dream, Sara."

"No, no it's not. It's a nightmare."

_____________________________

Lev and the rest of the boys bathed in the lake; the icy water nearly always took his breath away, but today, after the blistering heat the prickly cold water actually felt very good. He dove under the water and swam along just above the rocks on the bottom of the lake, wondered what it must feel like to be a fish, then turned over and looked up through the clear water toward the sun still high overhead. He continued to swim, holding his breath until his chest felt hollow and full of fire, and when he could stand it no longer he rushed for the surface and burst back into the air.

"You! Podgolskiv! What are you up to!"

He turned around and looked back toward the shore, now almost fifty meters away. One of the guards was looking at him menacingly, a rifle in his hands. Lev swam back to the shore, dove under the water a couple of times as he did and he skimmed over the rocks again, marveled at how it must be to glide through water all the time, and how warm the water grew the closer he got to the rocky beach. He so desperately wanted to be a fish for just one day…

The boys gathered their clothes and, still naked, ran back to the compound and into their cabins; Lev cleaned mud from between his toes before he dressed, then made his way through the cabins to the clinic. He brushed his hair with his fingers and walked inside.

"Can I see my brother today?" he asked the nurse who finally came out to the reception desk. The woman regarded him silently while she put papers away in a filing cabinet; Lev felt she was ignoring him on purpose, like she was trying to provoke him or anger him. Perhaps he would have been surprised to know what she was really thinking as she watched him.

"No, not today, and probably not tomorrow either. He has a high fever still, and he may yet be contagious."

"What is wrong with him?" Lev asked, unable to hold back the growing alarm he'd felt the past few days. "He was fine when you people brought him here! What's happened? How did he get sick?"

"How old are you?" she asked.

"What?" 

"Are you deaf? How old are you?"

"What have you done to my brother!"

"I will not ask you again," she said. There was a new tone in the woman's voice, a very unpleasant menace in her eyes. Lev recognized it instantly.

"Fifteen, Nurse!"

"But your brother is fifteen! How… are you twins?"

"Yes… but, why…" – yet before he could finish his sentence the nurse had scuttled back onto the ward, looking back at him anxiously as she left. Now Lev looked around the room as he realized he was now in a very dangerous place; he backed out the door and ran into the bowels of the camp. He was suddenly very afraid, thought it best not to return to his own cabin for the time being and wandered carefully toward the library, hoping to look as inconspicuous as possible. He went into the little building and looked around – it was empty – so he drifted in, disappeared into a dark corner and sat on the floor; he reached out and took a book from the closest shelf and looked at the title:





The Stones of Years Ch. 02



He reached up into the light of day, wiped his eyes, fought to focus on the words before him. They came to him now as he read, as if they were a prayer:





The Stones of Years Ch. 02



"You're both very lucky, you know, but I think you'll be fine in a few weeks. At least you will if we can get you can eat!"

"I'm sorry, but I haven't been able to keep anything down for a while – maybe a week."

"The soup will help, and there are some herbs we can use to calm your stomach. We'll find some tomorrow. I have seen some in the meadow."

"Well, thank you, doctor."

"I've done nothing, Lev. And call me Grigory."

"Alright."

"Now try to get some sleep. We'll get you to your room tomorrow morning."

The doctor wanted to ask more questions but the boy fell asleep again – he had been in and out all evening – and he pulled the blanket up before he walked back into the tiny kitchen.

"He'll be fine," he said to his daughters, and they both visibly relaxed. He smiled, laughed inwardly, walked over to his wife and hugged her. "Did you find out anything?"

"There will be a group of woodcutters going out later this week. You should have a message ready for Sasha then."

"Sure, fine."

"The boy – his name is Podgolskiv. What kind of name is that?"

"Lithuanian, I think."

"Ah. Well, we have someone sleeping in his bed tonight, so that's covered. And we will get him to his cabin in the morning, well, if you think he'll be ready."

"Is there anyone to take care of him?"

"No, but I was thinking of sending one of the girls…"

"Tina."

"What?"

"Send Tina, she's in…"

"I know, I know. But it won't be long until Sara is too, you know. Then there will be jealousies."

He shrugged. "That can't be helped."

"Such a pragmatist!"

"We must get them out of here, to the West somehow. At least one of the boys, anyway."

"Can we do such a thing?"

"I don't know. Sasha will have to get word to Moscow. Maybe the Americans – or the British – will take an interest."

"But…"

"And before the weather gets cold. Or they will have to wait a year."

"A year," she said. "That sounds like forever."

"What about you? When do you find out?"

"I did, tonight. I will teach cello for now, and the symphony will hold auditions in October."

"Auditions?"

"Yes, auditions! There are over seven hundred musicians here! Five thousand people in just this camp."

"God-in-heaven! So many?"

"Yes. We will play at Army bases, I am given to understand. Mainly."

"Now, isn't that just like Ivan? What a sense of humor!"

"I also hear that Comrade Kushnirenko is ill."

"Oh?"

"Someone heard it has to do with the lungs, by the way."

"Oh, wonderful!"

"Yes. There is a rumor they are going to make you work at the clinic."

"But they told you I would never practice medicine again!"

"I suspect once Kushnirenko found out your history he has convinced others to have a change of heart. Someone has, anyway. And just what of your Hippocratic oath, doctor?"

"If it is within my power to cure him, I will. You know that."

"I know, Grigory. I know. That is one of the things I love most about you."

"Don't tease me!"

"Alright, if you insist."

"Are the girls asleep?"

"Yes, I think so. Why?"

He looked at her and smiled. "Perhaps if you'd come to bed I'll show you."

"But, I haven't eaten, and I'm starved…"

"Curiously enough, woman, it just so happens that I have just the thing for you. Enough for a second helping, I'm sure."

"I don't see how you can think about sex at a time like this!"

"Because I'm not dead, and I refuse to surrender all that I am to these grotesque little monsters."

She regarded him for a moment, then held out her hand. "Come on then, you beast. I hope I won't be the only one eating tonight!"

__________________________

Lev woke up in the middle of the night. 

'Something's not right,' he said to himself. The air was full of electric intent…

There was a full moon out and bit of silver light streamed in the window above his bed; he could just make out Misha's withered form under the blanket and he reached over and put the back of his hand on his brother's forehead, just like Dr Lenova had shown him to do, and he relaxed when he felt it.

Lev had been released from the clinic almost a month earlier, Misha just two weeks ago, and his brother was still – in Dr Lenova's words – a total wreck. His ribs were so prominent, his belly so shrunken, it looked as though one of the bones might poke through flesh at any moment.

Lev looked at his brother while he slept, feelings of sorrow cascaded over his eyes – washed away objective thought of all that had happened to him the past few months. He had never felt as alone as he had while laid up in the clinic; it seemed as if Misha would die at any moment and these last ties to his mother and father would be irretrievably cut. It wasn't so much that he loved his brother – they had, after all, had their share of tussles and scrapes – now it was this tenuous connection to his past that he mourned.

He resolved, if they were fortunate enough to leave the clinic with some good measure of their health, that he would try to take care of his brother better than he had in the past. He understood better than ever before the responsibility his parent's death had thrust upon them both, that it was the nature of families to take care of one another. As long as they were locked away in this hell, Lev vowed, he'd do his best to keep Misha away from Kushnirenko and his goons.

He heard footsteps on the mud floor outside their door and lay down, pretended to sleep, and he held his breath when the knob turned and the door creaked open a bit…

"Lev?" he heard Valentina's whisper and relaxed. He slipped out from under the blanket and went to the door.

"What are you doing here? It's so… it's so cold out!" Suddenly the cold hit him; after months of summer's warmth this first bitterly cold night hit him in the chest with a hammer blow.

"Father wants to talk to you," she said breathlessly, "and you must come quickly."

"What? Now?"

She pulled him through the door, pushed him down the mud hallway to the back door, spoke to him in hushed, urgent tones:

"I will stay here with Misha. You go, and you must be careful. I heard Yakov and the dogs earlier, walking by the lake."

"Great…"

"Go now! Hurry!"

He ran in the shadows, ducked silently around corners, fell to the ground and rolled under a bush when he heard a dog's bark not far away. He saw two guards walking from Kushnirenko's dacha, listened to their drunken banter and cruel laughter until they disappeared from view, then he stood and ran the last few yards to the Lenova's hut. It was dark inside and he wondered for a moment if he'd entered the wrong cabin, then he heard a door open and saw the doctor's dark form slipping across the little entry room.

"Come," the doctor whispered, and Lev followed the doctor to a bedroom.

The tiny room was lit by a single candle, yet even so the light seemed impossibly bright; Lev squinted and saw there were two men in the room already. Doctor Lenova motioned him to the bed. "Sit down, quickly, and take off your sweater."

"What?" Lev said, his voice full of suspicion.

"I am going to draw some blood from your arm, Lev, and these men are going to take it to be studied."

"But…" Lev looked at the men…

One looked like an old woodsman, his pockmarked face dirty and wrinkled by long years working outside in Siberia's brutal cold. The other was something else entirely. He was dressed in black, and his face was covered with black shoe polish; he spoke in a language Lev had never heard before and the only word he recognized was 'submarine'.

"What is this?" he said, now clearly alarmed.

"These people are here to help us, Lev. They need some of your blood – to study. Now sit down."

"Is he an American?" Lev asked, his eyes wide open now.

"Sit down, Lev."

He sat, studied the foreigners face intently while the doctor tied off his arm with rubber tubing. The foreigner studied him quietly too, looked him in the eye while Lenova swabbed his arm with alcohol, and while the needle slipped into a vein inside his left elbow. 

The foreigner put the vials into a black metal case and patted Lev on the head, then the foreigner and the old woodsman disappeared out the back of the cabin. 

"How do you feel?" the doctor asked.

"Okay. Fine. Was that an American?"

"Lev, it's better that you do not know. Better to forget any of this ever happened, alright?"

"Yes, sir. I understand."

"Can you make it back? Do you need to rest first?"

"No, I'm fine, but Valentina said Yakov was walking about tonight…"

Her father seemed to consider that for a moment. "If you see him, hell, if anything seems funny, you just keep her there until morning. Understand?"

"Yessir!"

"Alright, off with you! And stay in the shadows!"

Mrs Lenova came in as Lev reached for the door and she looked at him, touched his cheek with her hand. "Bless you, Lev," she said.

"Be careful," the doctor said to his back, and he slipped out into the night.

He made it back quickly, darted into his room and found Misha still asleep and Valentina sitting on the floor at the end of the bed. She jumped, had apparently been dozing, and seemed surprised Lev was back so soon.

He helped her stand and he tried to see her face in the intense darkness. Instead he felt her body draw close to his, felt her warm breath on his lips, then her lips on his. Her mouth lingered on his a long time; her mouth opened and her tongue sought his. The sensation shocked him; he instantly felt weak in the knees and breathless, then she pushed back from him and slipped out the door.

The room was suddenly spinning violently and he sat down, put a hand out to steady himself.

"I thought I saw someone… a girl," he heard Misha saying. "I'm sure of it…"

"How are you feeling, Misha?"

"But, there was a … Lev! You're freezing! Have you been outside?"

"Yes, I had to take a crap."

"Oh."

"Can I get you anything?"

"No… No. I'm fine. Did you see a girl in here?"

"Misha, let's try to get some sleep. I have an audition tomorrow, remember?"

"Oh, right! Mr Big Shot musician!"Misha said groggily, though angrily. "The prodigy! I keep forgetting!"

Lev crawled under the blanket, regretted saying anything to stir up Misha's insecurities. "I hear Mr Stelnikov may ask you to audition for the ensemble? Is that true?"

"I heard that too, but I'm not strong enough yet."

"We will walk again tomorrow. We will get you strong, Misha. You'll see. You'll be as good as me again before you know it."

"I've never been as good as you, Lev, and you know that."

"Nonsense! Now, let me get some sleep, and can I have some more blanket, you bed-hog!" Misha laughed and Lev might have felt better covering his misstep but for the lingering waves of lust and confusion that moved from his mouth to his stomach.

He lived within those moments for the rest of the night, felt her breath, her lips, her tongue – each new sensation playing out over and over again until his eyes burned with exhaustion. He watched as the eastern horizon lightened, the fire in his stomach burning out of control, and he simply could not get Valentina Lenova out of his mind.



The Stones of Years Ch. 03



(note: part one of the story appeared under the title "Woman in Chains")

The Stones of Years 

III

She was everywhere – and nowhere...

... Everywhere he turned – at auditions and rehearsals, at lessons and work details – she was everywhere – and nowhere.

He could not get her out of his mind, or her lips, especially the way her lips had found his. Oh God, those lips! The memory of the feeling drove him mad! Even the thought of them and his stomach was afire again, his eyes clouded by the visions of her moving into his arms again and again. He had never felt anything like this before, not ever. In all his life he'd never heard anyone talk about feelings such as these. And Lev had always taken it for granted that in this place there was hardly room for such wondrous hope. But then words from another afternoon crossed his brow... 

'No hope. Isn't that what I told her... by the lake? There is no hope here?'

Hope was, he saw, everywhere... and nowhere...

He had been gliding through lessons earlier that afternoon – a piece he'd never seen before, by an American named Gershwin – and he had become lost in the music for a time – but soon she was there again, in the air all around him, as if she had come to him on silken clouds. She was taunting him, leading him on to the Promised Land, taking him right to the very ledges of extremes, and no matter how hard he tried that afternoon the music hardly made any sense to him. This sensation of being cut-off from his senses left him feeling unsure of himself; it was as if the very ability to breathe had been compromised by her presence throughout the room – and in this blind panic all ability to interpret meaning within the notes on the page had somehow slipped from his soul.

He felt naked and alone, unsure of the power within his hands, unsure of everything he had always taken for granted.

'Is this what Misha feels?' he said to himself... 'My God!'

He had done well at his audition; it had been decided he would perform with the symphony when they toured military facilities this winter, and while he was excited at the possibility of seeing life beyond the camp he realized in a rush he didn't want to be away from his brother. Not ever... and then he thought of Tina again...

"Where are you today, Lev?"

He was suddenly aware that he had stopped playing, that he was staring into the clouds of his hopes and dreams. That was when he heard Mr. Collins speak. 

"What?" he heard himself saying – but it was like hearing a voice in another room

"You are somewhere else today, Lev. Is there a problem? Would you... is there something you need to say?"

Collins was, Lev thought generally, a decent enough teacher even if he was a little too attentive. He was young, maybe thirty and a Canadian. Rumor had it he had moved to the Soviet Union to study music and decided to stay when he met someone and fell in love. Unfortunately, that someone had been, the authorities discovered, a man as well; both had been sent to camps years ago; not to the same camp, obviously, and Collins was as a result deeply depressed and morose all the time, but the poor man was a very capable teacher nevertheless. He had introduced Gershwin to the staid Eastern European musical community within the camp and had become something of a sensation as a result. Collins might have performed with the touring musicians himself but for a crippling case of stage fright.

"No, Pete, Comrade Collins... I'm alright. Just didn't sleep last night, that's all."

"Pete is fine, Lev. So, is it Tina?" 

Lev turned bright red. It felt like his face was on fire! "No!" he barked defensively.

"Uh-huh." Lev looked over and saw the knowing look on Collins' face and his flesh burned even more fiercely. 

"So, what does this music remind you of?" the teacher said, changing the subject.

"I don't know," Lev said. "I've never heard anything like it before."

"Yeah? Well, wait until you hear it with the orchestra! It really comes alive then."

"So, just what is it all about?"

"I don't know if there's an easy way to sum it up, Lev, particularly since you don't know much about America..."

"Much? Comr... Pete, I don't know a thing about this place, America. I'm not even sure I know where it is!"

"Yeah? Well, what have you heard?"

"You mean beyond the capitalist-imperialist stuff? I don't know. Maybe something about slaves, and maybe a civil war."

"Well, yeah, that's a place to start. There were slaves in America, and they fought a war to abolish slavery. True. But do you know when all those slaves were released a lot of their music and folklore was released into the mainstream of American culture, particularly their religious music? Do you know where the slaves came from?"

"No."

"Africa, for the most part. They were Negroes. Have you heard that word before?"

"Is it from the Latin, for black?"

"Yes, very good. These people, from Africa, they have black skin..."

"What?!" Lev burst out laughing. "You must be joking!"

"Have you never seen...?" but Collins stopped in the middle of his thought. Of course this kid hadn't seen an African; he'd grown up in a Soviet concentration camp! He'd never seen an American either. This kid's life had been defined by snow and ice, by hauling rocks around gravel pits to amuse sadistic men like Kushnirenko.

"Lev, it's not important. What is important is that America is this impossible land where people from all over the world go; they go to escape camps like this one. To live on their own, make their own way and their own money, and people have, Lev, people have gone there in huge numbers. People from all over the world have gone there, and America has turned into this crazy make-believe place where people go to make their dreams come true."

"But Pete, don't people only dream in their sleep?"

Collins laughed, but at the same time he wanted to cry. Had everything been taken from this boy, from these people? Even their dreams?

"I don't know Lev, maybe they do. But maybe, just maybe, there's another kind of dream." 

"What has this got to do with the 'Rhapsody in Blue'?"

"Absolutely nothing, Lev. And everything. Tell me... have you ever heard of New York City?"

"No. Well, maybe..."

"Ah. Well Lev, once upon a time..."

__________________________________

"And Misha, there are buildings in New York City made of shiny steel that reach up into the clouds, and everybody has an automobile and lives in one of these shiny towers; they go... they go to the theatre every night and to museums and out to watch movies..."

"Movies? What is... are you talking about, Lev?"

"I don't know for sure, but Pete said it was like they had a special camera that takes pictures of people as they move, and you can hear the words as they speak, and there is even music..."

Misha burst out laughing, and Lev looked hurt.

"It's true, Misha. Pete told me about these movies, and about one of them. It is called 'The Wizard of Oz', and it is about a talking lion and a man made of tin..."

...but Misha laughed even harder now, and Lev picked up his bread and stomped out the front door and ran off toward the lake...

Valentina Lenova watched Lev running toward the lake; she knew where he was going. Yes. She knew...

"Mama, I'm going for a walk," she said into the gathering darkness as she picked up a sweater.

"You crazy girl! It's freezing outside!"

"No it's not, Mama!" but she was already out the door, gathering her old green sweater around her body and walking quickly toward the lake. The sun was still above the trees, if just barely. She knew it would be dark in a half hour, and that it would get very cold indeed after that. 

She walked as quickly as she could, but she didn't want to draw any attention to herself...

He was sitting on the log, that same log where she knew he would be; she came to him quietly and sat beside him. 

He didn't say a word; in fact, he seemed almost angry.

"What is it, Lev? Is there something wrong?"

He looked off to the west, beyond the far horizon, beyond even the sun.

"Lev?"

"I think everything is – wrong," he said, finally. "I don't think life is supposed to be like this."

"Like what, Lev?"

She watched as he looked around the meadow and the lake, but there was something faraway in his eyes – faraway and calling him. It was like he was looking for something, or for somebody, far, far away. Suddenly her mind was filled with images of stars... vast fields of stars... and they were singing to her... calling out to her... 

"Lev? Where are you now?"

His eyes remained fixed, fixed beyond the far horizon, yet she smiled. She put her hand on his leg, and waited... 

His eyes fluttered, she felt the muscles in his leg stiffen.

"Lev? Come back to me, Lev..."

He turned to her now, turned to her words and looked into her eyes.

She reached for him, reached for his face, first with her hand – then with her mouth.

All was instinct now; all wuthering need come undone as the sun fell from the sky.

She felt the warmth of his breath again, his breath on her lips, and she smiled as the stars sang out to her.

______________________________

His restless dreams came as one endless torment all through the night. He felt her by his side, felt her slender fingers drawing formless shapes on his thigh, and always, always he felt her lips on his. He turned to her again and again; saw the glistening tip of her pink tongue moving between her just oh so barely parted lips, her smooth pink lips, and she fell into his arms again and again. He could smell her hair, feel it brush his face as evening breezes lifted them both into a world of never-ending tomorrows. Her hands were always on his face, holding him as he had longed to be held for so long – oh! the unbelievable intensity of that warmth – the endless galvanic convergence of skin on skin.

Oh! Would that it never end!

Yes, she was everywhere...

...and nowhere...

____________________________

"So you're saying that America was a – what did you call it – a 'melting pot'? That people from all over the world came there – come there – to escape injustice, and that as a... that one result is that America is full of almost every kind of music there is?"

"Yes, Lev, and nowhere does this all come together with more force than New York City. It's one of the largest cities in the world now, but no other city in the world is as diverse. Gershwin, George and his brother Ira..."

"Were they Jews?" Lev asked.

"Yes, yes they were, are. Ira is still alive, I think."

Lev nodded. "Did Ira write music, too?"

"He mainly wrote lyrics, the words to songs George scored."

"So what has this got to do with a melting pot? I still don't get it..."

"Well, let's take a look at another Gershwin tune before we tackle the 'Rhapsody'. In the 1930s George wrote an opera called Porgy and Bess..."

"Porgy?"

"Yes Lev, Porgy. Porgy and Bess are, well, they're poor people, poor black people, who in the opera are from South Carolina, from a town called Charleston. Porgy is a disabled beggar and Bess is a prostitute..."

"What's that?"

"A prostitute? Someone who sells sex for money... Lev?"

The boys eyes were wide, uncomprehending, shocked.

"Sex?" he said.

"Oh, never mind."

"But what is it... this sex for money? Is it what boys and girls do together?"

"Right – uh, well, sometimes. Now Lev, well, but, but, that's not the point. The opera opens with a song called "Summertime." It's one of Gershwin's most famous songs, and it illustrates the point I'm trying to make perfectly. The opera opens with a bunch of negroes standing around..."

"Negroes? You mean..."

"Black people, Lev. Africans. Now listen to the melody..."

Collins began playing the notes.

"What do you hear?"

Lev listened, his eyes closed tightly while Collins played. His head turned slightly at one passage...

"Its structure is like a lullaby!" he cried.

"Exactly! Gershwin found the basic idea for the melody in a Ukrainian lullaby called 'A Dream Passes by the Windows'. Now, listen to the melody with the lyrics. Collins began singing as he played:

'Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Catfish jumpin'
And the cotton is high'

He stopped playing. "Now what's going on in this passage?"

"I don't know this thing... a catfish? What is this?"

"Well, a catfish is a fish with the face of a cat... Lev!"

But the boy was laughing again, slapping his knees. "Oh, I get it! A cat-fish! It's an allegorical beast!"

"No, no, Lev, it's a real fish..."

"What?" said Lev, now wide-eyed and unbelieving. "Real?"

"Yes, but listen, Lev, what's happened here, in general terms, in this passage?"

"I don't know." He was scowling now, lost in a thought... "A fish like a cat?"

"Well, yeah, Lev. A catfish. But the music, Lev, it's a Ukrainian lullaby, right? The form. Right?"

"Right."

"So what's happening in the story?"

Lev shrugged. "Things are good."

"Yes! Its summertime, fish are jumping in the river, crops are growing, so things are good for these people. Now listen..." He began to play again:

'Your daddy's rich
And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry'

"It is a lullaby!" Lev shouted.

"Right! The opera opens with a mother singing to her baby, but it's a song of hope, almost a prayer. Your daddy's rich, your mother's good looking; the mother is singing about all the things her family is not, indeed, can never be, because they aren't white. Now the important part:"

'One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky'

"I see!" Lev said. "Yes, a prayer!"

"Right! The Gershwin's fused a negro-slave spiritual, a hymn sung in the fields while slaves worked the crops, and right on top of a Ukrainian lullaby! There is no end to the pain of this life, the mother tells her baby, until he rises to the sky, to heaven. Then it finishes like this:"

'But till that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With daddy and mamma standing by'

"Can you play it through," Lev asked, "from the beginning?"

"Sure..."

When Collins finished he looked at Lev and was surprised to find him openly weeping.

"Lev, are you alright?"

The boy stood and walked to the window across the cold, barren room. He pressed his face to the cold glass and looked at the forest and the meadow, both now wearing their first mantle of winter snow, and at the lake. The rippled surface of the lake lay beyond his reach now, dappled by silvered breezes, and suddenly the thought of living through another winter in this place was more than Lev could stand.

"Why, God? What did I do?" he asked the frosted reflection he saw in the glass.

"What? Lev? What did you say?"

The boy grew silent, but after a moment he returned to the bench and sat down beside his teacher again.

"Okay, so I have to learn this song too?" Lev asked.

"No, no, just the Rhapsody."

"I want to learn to speak American. Can you teach me?"

______________________________

The old man leaned over his drink, lost in the rhythms of other days and other dreams while he remembered, or tried to remember, all that he had worked so hard to forget. His eyes were tired now, tired of all he had seen in this life, tired of the smoky, dimly lit world he had stolen from his brother. 

'But there was no other world for me...' he said to himself.

"So your brother learned to speak..."

"Yes, Dr Wakeman; Pete provided the epiphany, provided, if you will, the keys to the kingdom. Without his timely input none of us would be sitting here right now." The old man chuckled at the thought... "On such a strange, tortured creature does our fate hang even now. Odd, isn't it."

"Odd?" Judith Somerfield scoffed. "How so?"

Misha Podgolskiv laughed openly now, but the smile that creased his face was tired too, he knew; too tired. Everything about him felt too old and too tired – all used up, he said to himself in his pity, but this only made the smile he revealed now cut more deeply into his face, made the open wounds of memory even more raw.

"Odd?" he said as he looked at the young girl. "Don't you find it odd that a Canadian misfit, running from his rich father no less and suddenly finding himself in a Soviet Gulag, would soon be extolling the virtues of America – America, for goodness sakes! – and to a Lithuanian prodigy – and a Jew, let us not forget – who at that very moment in time was falling in love with a girl he had first seen in his dreams when he was hardly old enough to walk? Odd? Odd? That this young prodigy would get it in his head that America was where his destiny lay? That his every waking moment would soon become consumed with the idea of getting to America? Even this young woman, this girl, really – whom my brother loved without measure... she fell almost completely by the wayside as dreams of New York came for him in the night!"

"Really? But, why? You say they fell in love?"

"Oh yes, they did, they did indeed."

"And what of the other girl? What was her name?" Somerfield asked. "Sara, didn't you say?"

Podgolskiv looked away for a moment and Somerfield thought she heard the old man sigh. Soon he cleared his throat and looked at her again, his eyes misty and withdrawn.

"I thought, you see, she loved me. But that wasn't the case. No, not at all."

"She? Sara, you mean?"

Misha nodded...

____________________________

... They were sitting in the meadow by the lake, the four of them, a billowing spring now fully alight on the awakening land. Yellow and violet flowers swayed in full bloom; bees drifted from one ripe blossom to the next while the hot sun high overhead beat down on pale winter skin and turned shoulders crimsoned red. Two boys talked and two girls laughed, they each ate bread and butter sandwiches and drank tea made of dried herbs. Carefree clouds as white as new cotton rose in the heat and climbed majestically to kiss the edge of the sky; distant clouds gray and pregnant with rain danced along far horizons.

"So what was it like," Tina Lenova asked Lev. "I can't even imagine what Warsaw is like these days."

"It was amazing, the crowds – well – just amazing," he replied as he looked off dreamily toward the west. "I have never had such food in all my life, and I heard the most amazing music in the world. Four boys from England who call themselves Beatles. I heard a song on an American station called Norwegian Wood. It was so beautiful it made me weep..."

"An American radio station in Poland?" Sara Lenova laughed as she spoke, her voice dripping with scorn and derision. 

"Yes, yes. It is called Radio Free Europe. The people in Poland listen all the time to music and news from America all the time. It is amazing. And these Beatles..."

"So, all of this stuff is real?" Misha asked, but Sara just shook her head. "All that Professor Collins has told us about America?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Sara said. "All that nonsense about..."

"Sara!" Tina interrupted. "When you have been to Warsaw again you can tell us what you have seen, but for now would you let him finish?" Tina looked at Lev again, saw the hard look in his eyes as he looked at Sara, but after a moment he turned back to Misha.

"I think much of what he told us must be true, but I can tell you one other thing with certainty. The further one gets from Moscow the happier people become, and to hear people in Poland talk about Russians and the Soviet State is to hear people talking about the devil. They are afraid. I had to..." but Lev stopped talking; it was as if he'd just remembered something important, some promise made, perhaps, or a vital understanding recalled, so he pulled back, looked down at the ground.




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 read Buddenbrooks..."

"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...



The Stones of Years Ch. 04



(note: part one of the story appeared under the title "Woman in Chains")

The Stones of Years 

She was everywhere – and nowhere...

And she came for him – as she never had before – in his sleep.

Clinging to ice, beseeching him, begging him to listen... to listen... to the stars...

Chains around her waist, her neck, her hands and feet; water reaching up from the cold blackness under the ice, reaching up for her, reaching up to take hold of what balance of life it could, to carry her back to the womb of that tormented darkness...

He ran, dove across the ice, reached across the infinite gulf of space and time to feel her skin on his – and there was nothing... forever nothing... everywhere...

She was falling... everywhere... into nothingness...

He crawled to the shattered edge between ice and darkness and looked down into the smoky blackness – at her ghostly face, her frantic eyes – and he watched helplessly as she sank further and further from view...

He pulled himself to the edge and tried to slip in after her but something – no, someone – had hold of his legs and he could not move. He watched helplessly as she slipped into deeper water, the last trail of bubbles leaving her nose as she struggled against her chained fate... to hold her breath against the coming of darkness...

And she was gone.

Gone. Everywhere – just gone.

He sat up quickly, could feel his mother stirring next to him in his little bed and he shot out of the room and bolted outside to escape the crushing weight that gripped his chest. Sweat ran down his forehead and froze in his eyebrow; he gulped down air as he leaned against the hut, his head spinning with images of the her – the Woman in Chains – as she slipped from his grasp and fell away. He fought his every impulse to deny what he had seen – because he alone knew the truth.

"It isn't real!" he groaned as he bent over, his hands on his knees now. He began to feel nauseous, like he was about to vomit, and he fell painfully to his knees. He felt light-headed pin-pricks rise on his scalp and race down his spine, yet even with his eyes closed he saw her... there was no escaping her...

And then she was beside him, beside him in the cold moonlight.

"Misha?" he heard his mother say.

He looked up, but it was Tina standing in the moonlight! And yet she was luminous, transparent, and he wanted to cry and run from her... but all he could do was cringe and wait for the inevitable reckoning...

"Misha?" she said – whoever she was. And wasn't that his mother's voice?

He felt hands on his shoulders, shaking him...

"Misha – wake up!"

What?

"Misha, you're dreaming – wake up!"

He rolled on his side and pushed himself from bed, acrid bile rising in his throat as he stood.

"What is it, Misha?" he heard his brother ask. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah... no. Bad dream..." Was it really him... or was it the dream?

"No kidding," his brother said quietly. "What was it about?"

"I don't know, Lev. I think it was her..."

"Shit. You mean... her?" But there was something in his voice... something untrue...

"Yeah. I feel sick, Lev. Real sick. My head hurts... blind..."

"You want me to get Doctor Lenova?"

"No, no... well, maybe help me walk over there."

Misha stepped uncertainly then leaned against his brother as they made their way outside and across the compound to the Lenova cabin; the moon was full and there was a fresh blanket of snow covering the icy ground. Suddenly everywhere Misha looked he saw glittering diamonds – literally billions of them – like ten billion suns blazing away, spread across the infinite. Everywhere he looked billions of suns glared at him, blinded him with otherworldly fury... and they were calling out to him...

"What the...hell is this?" Misha groaned as he shielded his eyes.

Lev looked down silently, concentrated on his footing as he led them through the field of moon-snow, yet he knew what was happening. The doctor had told him it might be like this...

They came to the cabin and Lev worked the handle, pushed snow away from the entry with his boot and opened the door. 

The doctor was sitting on a little wooden chair, reading by the light of a single candle; he hardly glanced up as the boys stumbled into the room; indeed, he seemed intent on finishing what he was reading.

When at last the doctor looked up, it was Lev who spoke first: "Doctor, Misha is not feeling well."

The doctor looked at Lev, then slowly at Misha: "Of that I have no doubt," he said almost to himself

"What?" Misha thought he heard himself saying. "What did you say?" The room was spinning now, and the colors were wrong...

"What seems to be the problem, boy?"

Misha looked at the doctor, then at Lev. "I had a dream – a nightmare – and when I awoke I felt – strange. My head hurts, behind my eyes; it is as if I can't see correctly. Everything is too – bright!"

"Ah."

"What are you reading, doctor?" Lev asked.

"John Donne, 'Forbidding Mourning'. Are you familiar with it?"

Lev smiled; Misha looked down at his hands. "Is that blood on my hands?" he asked himself wordlessly.

"This is the key passage, Misha; tell me what you think of it:

"As virtuous men pass mildly away, 
And whisper to their souls to go, 
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"Now his breath goes," and some say, "No."

"Tell me, Misha, what do you think this means? Given the current situation?"

"The current situation?" Misha said while he looked at the blood on his hands. "What do you mean? Why am I bleeding?"

"Your conversation today. With Sara and Comrade Kushnirenko. What do you think this passage means – in light of your betrayal?"

Misha struggled to break free but Lev let go immediately and stepped away; Misha fell to the floor heavily, all control of his legs gone now. His mouth felt dry and full; it felt like his head was stuffed with cold cotton. Soon everything in the room receded into foggy recesses all their own, even the voices he heard sounded now as if they'd come from miles across a mist-laden forest. 

'Everything is running from me, from the blood,' he said, almost out loud. 'It is as if they want nothing to do with me anymore...'

"Will he be alright?" he heard Lev say, and he wondered what they were talking about.

"Oh, yes. By morning, perhaps noon; but by the afternoon, yes, almost certainly."

"And Sara?"

"The same. We should leave her with your brother. Are you packed, ready? We will have a long walk through this snow. Perhaps twenty miles, maybe more."

"Is Sasha here yet?"

"No..." and even Misha could hear the worry in the doctor's voice. He tried to open his mouth, to say something... but nothing worked now... the blood had covered everything... even his eyes...

"Is Sara..." Misha tried to say, but now even his thoughts betrayed him; he slid into darkness, yet words remained just within his reach.

"The same, I suspect. Sophie is with her. We should leave her with your brother..."

Misha was dimly aware of these words as he slipped further into the darkness, and soon the darkness was everywhere... and nowhere was all around him... waiting for him to speak... waiting to take the measure of his words...

...then came the music...

...he heard it first, then felt it in his soul...

...the music was growing louder, coming closer...

...it was, he knew, coming for him.

______________________________

"I loved my Sara, you see," Misha Podgolskiv stated – and Todd Wakeman looked away. "I thought if I helped her, you see, well, she would choose me over Lev. I had no idea..." he stumbled while he looked about helplessly for the words he so desperately needed, but they too had chosen to run from him.

Somerfield looked away, squinted to check the flow of tears she knew was coming, then she stood and walked off into the smoky gloom.

The old man turned and watched her leave through gales of blue smoke.

"They always leave..." he said quietly as she disappeared.

"And... do you wonder why?" Wakeman asked as softly.

Misha looked after her for a moment, looked at her as ice closed-in over her imploring face, then he turned to the young man:

"No, doctor, I do not. I know who I am. What I've done."

Wakeman looked at Misha for a long time – they held each others' eye and each refused to turn away, but in due course Judith returned and came between them. Her hands and face were wet; she held a paper towel in both her hands, held it close to her body with talismanic rigidity.

"So. Did Sasha make it?" she said finally.

Misha looked away again; he looked at the voices that chased him as if they were drawing near again. He bunched his lips and furrowed his brow, his shoulders tensed as if he expected her blow at any minute...

"Yes," he said flatly. "He made it. Sara had gotten it all down; when Sasha was coming, with whom - where. Kushnirenko was waiting for them. He waited until they had slipped out, cleared the camp, to spring his trap. There was a spy, maybe American or British – I don't know – but that one got away. Killed a bunch of Kushnirenko's men, some Army men too..."

"Was Lev with them?"

"Oh yes."

"What did they do..."

"Do you really want to know the details, Ms Summerfield?"

She looked away, steeled herself against this monster and his denials, then looked at Wakeman. He seemed ashen, unsure of himself; she wasn't sure why but she was filled with the impression he'd withdrawn into a landscape of burned trees.

She turned back to Misha. "Can you tell me what happened to your brother, Misha?"

He pursed his lips again; his blue-veined lower lip protruded a bit and he shut his eyes.

"Very well," he said at length. "Some of what I tell you I witnessed; some I learned later..."

"Later? From Lev?"

"No, not Lev." Podgolskiv opened his eyes and examined his fingernails closely for a moment, picked at something he saw there then scratched his lip. Finally, he took a deep breath...

_________________________

Misha and Sara stood by the lake, lost in the crowd of people who had been summoned late that afternoon. A work detail was clearing a hole in the ice; several of Kushnirenko's goons milled around watching the laborers and the restless crowd, their gray Kalashnikovs circling lazily around the crowd like ill-tempered sharks. 

Misha had been ill at-ease all afternoon; the drugs Lenova had given him had left him nauseous and with a blinding headache, and Sara just wasn't doing well at all. She had vomited and carried-on hysterically for over an hour – when she heard her parents had been captured and were somewhere in the camp. She'd grown pale and quiet after that, and oddly enough Misha hadn't been able to tell if she was happy or sad.

There was movement behind the administration building and everyone turned as one to see guards hauling men and women across the slushy compound toward the lake. Misha turned and immediately saw Lev and his heart grew heavy with ice-borne fear: only Lev's pants remained on his broken, bleeding body. He had been whipped and loose bits of flesh hung from his back, exposing the bones of his left shoulder; a guard had Lev by the hair and was pushing him along with the barrel of his rifle jammed-in at the base of Lev's skull.

Sophie Lenova was bleeding uncontrollably from her exposed breasts; a small stream of blood was running down the insides of her naked thighs, yet she seemed unafraid, almost proud. The doctor was untouched, pristine, and while Misha couldn't see Valentina he knew she was there. The mass of guards in their blanket-like great-coats hid the rest from view, but Misha saw others in the assembled gathering - on the far side of Kushnirenko's men – point and gasp and turn away.

He wanted to turn away as well and run and run, but he couldn't. He felt as if his legs were paralyzed, lost to a spreading numbness... 

And something was calling out to him...

He turned his head at the sound, yet he looked at Sara instead. Now her face was roiled with doubt.

He saw her lips move, saw her say 'Papa' once – twice – but no sound came from her broken-hearted mouth. He looked through the sides of her eyes, through the crescent arc of the lens, and the shattering clarity he saw was overpowering, and now he wondered why everything had grown so muddied and riddled.

Was it her?

Oh, no.

Kushnirenko walked along behind the escapees, his thin, yellow skin glowing with self-satisfied hatred. Every few feet he stifled a cough, but Misha recoiled when he saw the man's eyes. They seemed almost totally red now, red but with silver gray centers. Those eyes looked inhuman, otherworldly, and Misha stood transfixed, lost in the obscene power of the man's inverted humanity.

And still he heard the voice... calling him... 

'Is that you, Mother?'

Someone inside the mass shouted and there was movement – a scuffle; a man Misha had never seen pushed clear and ran toward the lake. Guards turned to Kushnirenko; he regarded the fleeing man for a moment then raised his hand and waved it dismissively. Guards turned and gunned the man down and the assembled crowd moaned and stepped back; Kushnirenko coughed and resumed walking toward the ice.

Misha looked at the broken heap a hundred meters out past the hole in the ice – the form was no longer visible as human – it was just a small gray lump on the infinite white plane of the lake. 

But Sara looked at the twisted lump, then back at her father.

The guards were lining-up the prisoners now; they lined them facing the crowd. There were ten left now, Misha counted. Lev and the doctor were closest to him, then Sophie and Valentina and six others Misha had never seen before. Kushnirenko walked down the line, his pistol drawn, and he shot the first one in the face, one of the strangers, and the boy's body crumpled and fell to the ground. 

Kushnirenko moved to the next person and fired again. 

The closer Kushnirenko came to her mother the tenser Sara became; she trembled and finally she screamed, pulled free of Misha and ran toward the remaining members of her family – and Lev – but pulled up short and fell to ice in front of Kushnirenko's shined boots.

"Oh please-please-please," Misha heard her cries from where he stood – still rigid and mute – and he watched her for a moment, then Kushnirenko – but if the man was moved he didn't show it. Misha looked at Lev and the doctor; his brother was looking up at the clouds, almost smiling, but the doctor was looking at his daughter like she was diseased and beyond his ability to treat. Lenova's face seemed filled with detached sympathy, and Misha wondered if this is what the Christ had looked like as his Roman guards approached.

Betrayed by his own family, condemned for his humanity, soon to die at the hands of a wretched moron, a usurper to the throne of evil. 

'And what am I?' Misha thought. 

A pawn, really. Nothing more and nothing less than a useful idiot.

"As I have always been," Misha Podgolskiv said aloud as...

...Kushnirenko kicked her in the head. She fell away, scattered across the ice; the old monster stood over her in triumph, looking at her father all the while. He shouted orders at guards who jumped swiftly at his words. Muffled men turned and barked at stooped figures who turned and began hauling the dead out to the hole in the ice; the dead were dumped-in. The living returned to the line of those not yet dead and waited; new orders snarled into the graying air, and gray shadows converged on Sara and Valentina and carried them to the water's edge. They were chained together while Lev and the doctor and his wife were pushed out onto the ice at gunpoint. Kushnirenko strode out behind them, kicked clumps of cruddy slush out of his way as he walked.

Kushnirenko coughed once again and walked up to his doctor.

Grabbing the doctor by his shirt, Kushnirenko turned and walked up to Sophie Lenova and pushed her into the water; while she struggled he shot her in the face. The doctor looked at Kushnirenko, then spit in his face and jumped in after his wife... 

...he disappeared under the ice...

Valentina looked at Lev and he held her eyes in his.

"I love you," Valentina Lenova said. "You must listen."

"I will always love you," he replied, then he looked up at the clouds.

Kushnirenko shot Sara in the face and kicked her into the water; Tina fell in behind her and grabbed desperately at the ice. Her fingers dug in but the weight of the chains and her sister pulled at her...

"Well boy!" she heard Kushnirenko say. "Do you think you can save her? Go ahead! Try!"

Lev dove across the ice, slid toward the hole and reached for her hand; his fingers slid into hers and knocked them free of the ice and she slid beneath the water. Lev crawled for the edge, his eyes found hers in the darkness...

She was not so far below... he could see the rocks... the rocks he'd glided over on a summer day not so long ago... the sun on his shoulders... in her eyes... the wind drifting through her hair... her hair wafting as cold water might...

She was reaching out for him now, screaming, her eyes wide with fright and he crawled toward the edge... reaching... reaching...

Hard firm hands had his ankles and pulled him back roughly across the ice and flipped him over on his back... he was looking up at Kushnirenko now, at the very beast Himself.

"You just couldn't do it, could you, Jew?"

Lev looked up at all of the twisted rage and ... what? Snot? Snot hanging off the monster's ear? Doctor Lenova's parting gift? A wad of green snot?

Whatever Kushnirenko had expected, it was not the sneering laughter that ripped through his soul in that moment.

Kushnirenko fell to his knees, the pistol in his hand gripped so tightly his hands shook; he put the barrel up against Lev's temple and pulled the trigger...

'click'

He racked another round into the chamber and pulled the trigger again...

'click'

Kushnirenko fell back snarling, red faced; he lurched to his feet yelling, then clutched his chest. He staggered drunkenly to Lev once again and raised the gun again and fired; this time the gun discharged and Kushnirenko fired again and again. Misha saw explosions rise from the snow and ice and with each impact he felt his life melting... dissolving... as if all there was left of his soul was... 

...cold water falling on a hot stove...

Kushnirenko grew enraged and, now sputtering and clutching his chest tightly, he coughed while he barked incoherently at everyone around him... 

...the gun dropped from his hand and bounced into the water...

...Kushnirenko lunged for it, lost his footing and fell into the water...

...He did not come up.

Time stopped, seemed hesitant to resume again.

But in time the crowd dispersed and the guards too turned and walked away – as if someone had thrown a switch and turned them off; Misha remained in place as if someone had cemented him to the slush covered earth. He still could not move. 

It was all over, he said to himself... all over.

But the voice still called out to him...

Tentatively he walked out onto the ice. He took one step and stopped, looked his motionless brother and took another step. 

With each step his chest hurt more; soon his chest grew tight and he felt short of breath – but he continued, slowly, toward his brother's broken body.

The voice – called insistently now...

Lev moved, rolled onto his side and crawled to the water's edge; Misha ran toward him but stopped when he was a few meters away...

The voice? 

Was it meant for me? 

Are we so tightly joined?

... He could hear his brother's cries over the moaning Siberian wind and he looked closely and saw Lev's hand resting smoothly on the very top of the smooth water. Little ripples – as if from Lev's beating heart – spread out across the little hole. Misha remained motionless until the sky turned to darkness once again.




The Stones of Years Ch. 04



He was conscious of the cold air now, and the coming of night.

"Lev?" he said.

Silence.

"Lev? We must go."

Silence.

He took a step nearer...

"Don't come any closer to me," he heard Lev's voice oh so softly on the wind now, then he saw his brother stand and walk away from him, away from everything.

"Lev!" he shouted, but his brother walked onward – and into the darkness.

Misha Podgolskiv walked to the water's edge and looked down into the crowded darkness. He couldn't understand what he saw at first... 

...the drifting shapes made no sense... 

...bodies soared on unseen currents... 

...resolved into...

"What?!" he yelled.

He fell to his knees and started laughing. He laughed so hard, and for so long, he began to cry...

___________________________

"When I stood the moon had risen. It was so cold... so windy, and still I could not move."

Still Wakeman remained detached from the words he heard; it was all he could do now to remain at the same table with the old man. He felt he knew enough to genuinely detest his brand of evil, but there remained a dread fascination attached to these simple words – and he found he could not turn away from them – not yet. 

'What had happened out there?' he wondered. 'What did he see down there?'

"But... why did you laugh?" he heard Somerfield ask, and he looked at the old man again, his heart full of dread and loathing. "And, you said he'd been shot. I don't understand..."

"No, I said I saw explosions – in the snow and ice, Ms Somerfield. I do not know what happened or the even the why of what happened; I can only relay what I saw, what I understood at the time, and now. I suspect the old monster was so enraged he couldn't see straight. Or maybe it was the hand of God. Take your pick – whatever comes to mind. I'm sure your imagination will suffice." These last words were laced with bitter sarcasm.

"But what was in the water? What did you see?" this from Wakeman.

The old man looked into the smoky gloom of the present room – and beyond, into the smoky depths of a distant lake. His voice trembled as if the forces he had seen drifting in the darkness yet walked his haunted land, for given events of the past several hours – perhaps they did.

Perhaps they did.

"I saw Kushnirenko..." he began, but his voice broke and he cleared his throat. 

"The doctor... the doctor and Valentina had apparently pulled Kushnirenko under... the water was only – at best – ten, twelve feet... you see, they pulled him down and wrapped him in her chains. I saw all three of them... no, the four of them... drifting on currents so obscene... 

"...there are not words, Ms Somerfield, for what I saw. Perhaps 'Hell' would suffice, but I'm sure some might say 'justice' – while others might be content with a word such as 'vengeance'. But does it really matter? I suspect not..."

"You think they were alive..."

"Unmistakably so, yes."

"But, how?" Wakeman said. "Weren't they under..."

"Time had no meaning under there, doctor – none at all. But there was, as I believe has been mentioned, either purpose in these events – or there is none at all, anywhere. But that was not the worst of it."

"Not..." Somerfield began...

"No, no, indeed not. Valentina was shackled to Kushnirenko, true, but her face was locked in a grim smile, her eyes looked skyward, her arms moved in the current as if..." and his voice trailed off again...

"As if..." Somerfield – imploring – begged him to continue...

"Her arms seemed to move with some terrible volition all their own... as if she was alive down there, conducting a vast orchestra..."

"What! You don't mean..."

"... and I suppose I must have been... been having a hallucination of some sort... because as I looked at her... at my Sara and her father and that monster... the water around their chained bodies was filled with... it was like stars had come to life all around them..."

"What the fuck are you saying!?" Wakeman shouted, and people turned to look at him. "You're full of shit, you know that? Certifiably full of bullshit!"

Wakeman threw back his chair and stomped out of the bar and into the night. Somerfield watched him leave, shook her head at Wakeman's immaturity, then turned back to Podgolskiv. The old man's head was hanging down now, his forehead resting on the table, and she could see he was gently crying.

She reached across the gulf of space and time and rubbed the old man's shoulder, ran her fingers through his hair for a moment while he settled down. If even half of what the man said was even remotely true...

"What about Lev?" Judith asked as softly as she could when she felt him ease somewhat.

"What about him?" Misha said through tears that had shielded him from the inevitable for so long.

"You said he walked away... off... into the night..."

"Yes."

"And? Didn't he say anything as he left?"

"He moved to another cabin that night. We did not speak again, but I seem to recall he did mention the Sonata, and the dream, as he walked away."

"What do you mean by 'seem to recall'?"

"Just that. It is not clear to me. We have not spoken since that day. Not to one another, but it was clear to me that he had seen what I had seen."

"Are you serious?" Somerfield gasped.

"It is clear to me, Ms Somerfield. I have had the dream myself... or whatever you would call this vision..."

"You said Leonard... Lev, brought you here?"

"Yes. He brought me here. It was, I suspect, arranged by one of his patrons. I never knew the details. When I arrived he had gone..."

"But what... What happened in the camp – before he escaped? If he didn't leave the camp, well, did he quit his music?"

"Oh Lord, no. He retreated into the depths of his music, and he began to grow hard – like a shell. A protective shell. I mean that quite literally – hard. He grew lean and taut, full of muscle, and his music took on fierce characteristics even as his body changed. The very opposite of me, as I'm sure you can tell. I concluded, if you will, my descent into mediocrity. A small price to pay for such treachery, don't you think?"

Podgolskiv looked at his hands again and shook his head; when he continued all he could think of was the blood that had covered his hands – then, as now. 

He drifted on those current – now, as then...

"He attacked the piano – except on those rare occasions he found his way back to the feminine side Madam Soloff had cultivated. I once heard him play the Clair de Lune, while he was still in the camp... it... her phrasing had mellowed so when he confronted the truth within those phrases; I would say that time dissolves to meaninglessness when he drifts within Debussy. Such brilliance. I have never once heard the piece so completely laid open, his soul so completely examined, as when I heard him play that night."

He paused, looked into his empty glass and shrugged.

"How did he get to America?" Judith asked after a moment. 

"During the Carter years, I think, he was invited to New York. To Carnegie Hall. Foolishly, the authorities let him go, though I understand he was under very heavy guard at the time. Anyway, I don't know the details. We've never talked about it, you see."

"Todd said it was in all the magazines," she said gently. She could only imagine how lonely he must have been. "So you remained behind?"

"That's a remarkable way of putting it, Ms Somerfield. But yes, why not; indeed, I chose to remain in the concentration camp."

"I'm sorry... I didn't..."

"No, of course you didn't."

"So, well, after the fall of the Soviet Union he arranged to have you brought to New York?"

"So it would seem."

"You said another thing, something I've been wondering about. Something about how we all build out own prisons..."

"Ah."

"What did you mean by that?"

Misha looked away again, then down at his hands... 

...'So much blood...'

"I chose, you see, to turn away from my brother... when I embraced Sara. I turned from my family to short-sighted lust, and I have, you see, paid the price ever since. Without that love, without my brother and my mother and father, I had my prison all to myself – just as, I'm sure you can see, I must have wanted it. My treachery provided the stones with which to build the walls, and time provided all the punishment a man might ever need, or desire."

"Desire?"

"Attonement, Ms Somerfield. The price we pay. For building our little prisons. For turning away from life..."

"So, where do we go from here, Mr Podgolskiv? What about Mrs Tomlinson?"

The old man looked through her, to Todd Wakeman. He was coming back to the table, and he was carrying three glasses. He sat heavily, pushed snifters of cognac to Judith and Misha.

"Sorry," Wakeman said and Podgolskiv shrugged, picked up his glass and sniffed.

Somerfield ignored the glass in front of her. "Misha? What should we do about Tracy?"

"Ina Balinski," he said finally, softly.

"Who?" Somerfield said.

"The woman from Julliard," Wakeman said, then he turned to Misha. "What of her, Mr... Misha. What..."

"She knows... well, if anyone knows, she will know where to find him."

"So what?" he said. "I mean, why do you want to pull your brother into this?"

Podgolskiv focused on the darkness around him for a moment, then turned his attention back to Wakeman: "Don't you see it, Doctor? Whatever happened has come to pass to... it is part of a journey... it was meant to close a circuit. Tomlinson and Lev need to... need to be brought together... to finish the Sonata... to close this circuit..."

Somerfield seemed perplexed: "Why this music, Misha? Why is it so important?"

Podgolskiv turned away again, held his hands up speculatively to the smoky blue room and examined them.

Wakeman and Somerfield looked at him for a moment, then at one another. Wakeman shrugged, clearly trying to classify the form of the old man's delusion...

"Misha?" Judith said. "Misha? Come back to us, please... please..."

Podgolskiv held his hands higher, toward the stars that filled the room even now.

"It is part of the promise," he said finally, quietly.

"The promise? Misha? Who..."

"The promise Lev made to my mother. Before they killed her."

Wakeman and Somerfield looked at one another again; after a long pause Todd began again:

"Mr Po... Misha? Where are you right now? What do you see?"

"The sun, Dr Wakeman. The rising sun. Can't you feel it?"

So ends Part Two of The Starlight Sonata

The Sonata concludes with Part Three, "Heart of the Sunrise"