Brainfire Read online

  3.

  Domareski. Something had happened to Domareski. She wasn’t sure. A dream? Not a dream? She woke, panicked. A strange room, a hospital room, a slatted blind hanging at the window, flowers in a white china vase. The room was overheated; a dense warmth. Flowers. They would die in this heat, wilt and wither and shake their petals loose.… She sat up. Domareski. Why isn’t he here? Why isn’t he here with me now? But something had gone wrong, something she didn’t want to think about now, an aspect of herself she wanted to relegate to a place where it wouldn’t have to be dealt with. But it came back. There was snow. He had fallen in the snow. No, not fallen. But he was dead, dead.…

  And then she noticed the man, Sememko, who was sitting in a chair at the foot of her bed. Sweating, mopping his forehead with a large handkerchief, Sememko. Then it seemed to her that she lost her hold on things, that all manner of perceptions collided as if there were some terrible accident of awareness, a short circuit of mind, a jumble of unclear images. Sememko mopping his brow, the Physician falling falling falling into the snowbank, Aaron speaking to her—a witch? Is that what it feels like to be you? Is that what you are? There was pain now too, coursing upward along the backs of her hands, rising into her arms; and her heart—an insane rhythm of heart as if it might explode in her chest, carry her away, carry her into death, into a place where the snapshots wouldn’t matter, where nothing would exist, no family, nothing—

  The man, Sememko, was saying something to her. Words, words—she couldn’t get them straight. It was like the picture she had in her mind now of the Physician, a cold picture, blurry. But worse—worse was the pain. Domareski knew. He knew how to stop the pain, didn’t he? Where is he? Where?

  What was this man saying to her?

  Words. The Israelis, well, of course—

  She looked at his face, at the fleshy tip of his nose and the enlarged pores. He is going to lie to me. I cannot believe anything he says to me.

  Comrade Koprow himself, the man was saying.

  No—she didn’t want to hear about Koprow. Go back to what it was before, the Israelis. What was it about the Israelis? He was wiping his forehead again. Tell me, she thought. Tell me about my exit visa. Let me go. Let me leave. Put an end to this nightmare. Why had the Physician been killed?

  Confused, she stared at the flowers. The man’s voice went on, on and on; but he wasn’t telling her what she needed to hear. Lies. Lies. When would they ever end?

  Greatly impressed with your cooperation, he was telling her.

  She wanted to cry now because of the pain she was feeling. A dryness clinging to the roof of her mouth, her swollen fingers covered with a cold sweat. The beat of her heart. Domareski. Please!

  The man put his handkerchief away, smiled. Smiles. Expressions. Meaning nothing. Nothing at all. She closed her eyes. She tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

  Your exit visa, of course—

  She stared at him. As she did so, the door of the room opened. A woman came in. White uniform, dark hair held back severely. Her. It was her, the cold one, Andreyev’s assistant, carrying a tray, a syringe, balls of cotton wool.

  She watched the needle rise in the air, saw a faint arching spray of colorless liquid, smelled disinfectant, something icy being applied to her arm—and then the needle. The needle sliced the skin, entered the vein. It hurt her. Domareski had never hurt her like this. Katya? Was that the name? The woman turned, saying nothing, left the room.

  The bureaucracy affects us all, the man was saying. He laughed. He was its victim too. It affected him. Yes, paper work, more paper work, you know how these things are sometimes.

  No, she thought. I don’t know.

  Comrade Koprow himself—himself—asked me to reassure you that it would be only a matter of a few days. A week at most.

  A week?

  Paper work, Mrs. Blum. Terrible. The Israelis are willing to have you, of course. It goes without saying. Paper work takes up so much time.

  Lies, she thought. Lies. Why did she feel such a terrible exhaustion now? Why did she feel as if she were floating through some warm, viscous substance? It was hard, hard to concentrate, the man kept slipping in and out of her perceptions.

  Please. Please. The visa. I ask for nothing else.

  We understand. Family. We understand the importance of family. How much the reunion means to you. We understand all this.

  He was smiling again, watching her, smiling, drifting in and out of her vision. She wanted suddenly to hurt him, to enter him and bring him pain. Paper work? Why should it be so much trouble? A rubber stamp? Why?

  Further cooperation.

  There. There it was. She caught it, slippery as it was. She caught it. There was more. She couldn’t keep it straight, couldn’t concentrate. Dear God, dear God, how much more could she give them?

  Your family is well, I assure you, he was saying. No harm will come to them, I can promise you that.

  She fought to keep her eyes open. What was he saying? What did he mean—no harm? Were they in some kind of danger? She wanted to sit upright, couldn’t, kept feeling herself slip, the room darkening around her, the flowers dying by the bedside. What is he telling me about my family?

  Comrade Koprow himself has guaranteed their safety, he was telling her. His word counts for a great deal. Believe me. No harm will come to them.

  Silence. But not silence. She could hear faint sounds, nothing she could recognize, just faint indeterminate sounds traveling across dreadful distances to her. My family. My family, she thought. No harm will come to them.

  Further cooperation, that’s all.

  No. No.

  A small matter, nothing more.

  She was caught in the drifts, she was floating—but it was through warm water now, it was easy, easy, a pleasant feeling.

  We’ll talk later, he said. When you’re feeling strong.

  Did she hear him go from the room? Something? Had he said, Here, this letter just arrived from your son in Tel Aviv? Read it when you feel more strong? Or was this another aspect of how the dream went? She didn’t know. Had he laid an airmail envelope on the bedside table? Aaron. She tried to open her eyes to see. Further cooperation. A small matter. No harm will come to your family, you may be sure. The children, the grandchildren she had never seen, would run to her. And she would lose herself in the sweetness of it, she would surrender herself to loving, to what loving meant.

  And now she was thinking of Stanislav, of the moment of his birth, feeling a storm within herself, a burning heat between her thighs and a sense that giving birth to this child might cause her to break apart, to splinter. And she was remembering Aaron, how proud Aaron had been; perfumes—broken pine cones, the feline scent of crushed juniper: Aaron walking in the woods with the small boy, hands held, that special link of love, that private thing between father and son that a mother could only watch from the outside. But there was joy, it was joy she remembered, it was joy she wanted all over again.

  Aaron. Oh, God, not Aaron. A witch? Are you some kind of freak? Is that what I’m married to? Forget, forget, you are too old now to remember black things, too old to bring back the picture, the terrible terrible picture. But there it was and she saw it, there it was, locked behind her closed eyelids, penetrating even the sweet moment of dreaming love and joy, the picture—the barn behind the house. Aaron? Aaron? Where are you? The barn. No. But you shouldn’t go in there where it’s dark and smells of rotted hay and the excrement of horses you shouldn’t go inside the barn because the picture lay there and you didn’t need to see him you didn’t need to see Aaron you didn’t need to remember how Aaron had hung—up in the air—just hanging and limp and his body motionless and the shadow of a rope.… A witch? A freak? You saw the open eyes, the open lips, the dead limpness of the body as it hung from rope, how the rope had been tethered to some high dark beam, a chair kicked away; a man hanging there. Nonono.

  A small matter. Was that what the man had said?

  A small matter. T
here was no price you could fix to the value of love.

  4.

  It was falsely rumored of Comrade Koprow that he had single-handedly destroyed a German armored column during its advance on Kalinin—a rumor he did nothing to discourage but much to promote; courage, after all, was as much a weapon as terror. Now, close to midnight, he sat in the office of Maksymovich. They were allies of old, twins of the Revolution; between them they enjoyed the notion that they kept ancient fires burning. That neither entirely trusted the other was a fact both accepted; even between allies there had to be a certain caution, a certain circumspection.

  Koprow, struggling with a nicotine habit, took a pack of imported English mints, Polos, from his pocket and broke open the green wrapper. He watched Maksymovich rise from behind his ornate desk and cross the rug—an elaborate fringed thing, the gift of some obscure sheik who had recently been assassinated in a bloody uprising supported by Soviet guns. He stood at the window, his back to Koprow, and for a moment he was silent.

  “I’m too old to believe in fairy tales,” he said after a time. “This Blum woman—she sounds almost too good to be true.”

  Koprow caught himself in the act of pushing the tip of his tongue through the hole in his white mint. It irritated him. He longed for a cigarette. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “The woman’s an aberration. A freak of nature. Those are facts. I admit it sounds farfetched but the point is—the only point is that she exists.”

  Maksymovich turned around. His little half-moon glasses slipped and he pushed them, rather delicately, back up his nose. “She exists. A natural Soviet resource. Like Siberian oil?”

  “As you say.”

  Maksymovich returned to his desk and opened a folder that was marked PRIORITY CONFIDENTIAL. He had read it; he had read it so many times he knew it by heart. He didn’t particularly want to believe it. But there it was. He closed the folder, laying the palm of his hand flat against it.

  “She must never be allowed to leave for Israel,” he said.

  “Obviously,” said Koprow.

  “Naturally, too, I would like to see some further evidence of her abilities—”

  “She has already been told that further cooperation will be needed.” Koprow cracked the mint at the back of his mouth.

  Maksymovich glanced at Koprow a moment. Then he sat down, gazing at the folder. He was thinking of Lindholm: there was no fool like an old fool. Mallory—well, Mallory was a different proposition. He sighed, trying to put the contents of the folder from his mind. Even from normally impeccable sources some things were not entirely believable.

  “What about the people around her?” he asked.

  “Andreyev is a coward,” Koprow said, in a manner that suggested he had probed Andreyev’s soul only to find, in its darkest recesses, a fatal structural weakness. “And his assistant—you don’t need to have any worries over her.” He inscribed a circle in the air with his hands, a circle of containment, of control.

  Maksymovich nodded. He was beset by a sudden restlessness, a need for action: sitting behind a desk, signing letters, looking over projects—all this was a bog of paper work and he loathed it. He removed his glasses and held them away from his face at arm’s length—distastefully, as if they reminded him of infirmity and thus of his own mortality.

  “In the matter of control—” he began to say.

  But Koprow interrupted him. “I don’t think that should concern us. She believes her son and his family might be in danger if she fails to cooperate.”

  “You’re sure she believes that? You’re positive?”

  Koprow stood up, nodding his head, smiling a little. “I’m sure. She wants to believe it. That’s the important thing.”

  Maksymovich looked doubtful a moment. “You’re sure that nobody around her knows the truth?”

  Koprow looked toward the window, mentally contrasting the size of this office with his own. He did not like the comparison at all. “I’ve taken every precaution. The letters are forged and mailed by an operative in Tel Aviv. A Jew, curiously. The most recent photographs were taken in a studio here in Moscow, using models. Naturally, they’re not very distinct pictures, but they’ll pass. How can I let this slip? We need every hold on her that we can get. How can I tell her that her family was killed by Arabs? Damned Arabs.” He paused, thinking of the pictures he had seen of the bombed bus, the corpses. “How can I take away her only reason for living?”

  Maksymovich smiled. “You sound quite humanitarian, Comrade. Now it’s a question of deciding her next test?” He found himself gazing down at the folder again. All things were possible, he thought. If she were really good: really good. One small test could lead to something else. He looked at Koprow. “I think I know of something,” he said. “Not altogether pleasant—but some things never really are.”

  5.

  In the hospital room Andreyev thought: How frail she looks, how tired—and he wondered what life was left to her. She was sitting upright, her eyes glazed, her awareness shot. She seemed at times not to recognize him. He watched her, conscious of Katya standing at the foot of the bed—Katya in stark white clinical garb, her face drawn and severe, her mouth a single straight line that might have been created by stitching her two thin lips together.

  Andreyev drew his chair closer to the bed. “Mrs. Blum?”

  She looked at him. He thought: She sees through me, straight through me. He struggled with a terrible longing to get up, walk from the room, leave all this behind—but he didn’t move: it was as if the presence of Katya, the whiteness of her clothing were meant to remind him of Domareski. Fear, he thought. You live with it. It becomes a daily staple. There are no days without fear. You do what you have to do. Other people define your existence in their terms. Identity, privacy, choice: all these become lost luxuries.

  “Mrs. Blum—do you understand what I asked?”

  Katya moved. Behind her, the door of the room opened. Turning, glancing, Andreyev saw the KGB man who had been at the Ussuri. And the fear heightened in him. Refuse, he thought. Find it in yourself to refuse. Then, despite himself, despite the wretchedness he felt, he heard himself say, “Your family, Mrs. Blum. Think about them.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. A brief light, then it was extinguished. Where is she? he wondered. What lies inside that head? Ashamed, he found he could no longer look at her. He glanced at the bedside table, at a pale blue airmail envelope. It had been torn open. The kids are doing terrific. We can hardly wait to see you. The exit visa is sure to come through any day. Get out, he thought. Walk away from this.

  “Do you understand what I’m asking you to do?” he said.

  She looked at him—and what he saw in her eyes was an expression of hatred, something so deep, so forceful, as to be impenetrable.

  He was sweating, sweating and cold. “Do you understand, Mrs. Blum?”

  She opened her mouth, whispered. He could barely hear her. “Yes,” she said. “Yes. I understand.”

  The KGB man coughed in the background. Katya came around the side of the bed. Andreyev closed his eyes, as if this darkness might be enough for him to hide in. But you can’t hide, he thought. There isn’t a hiding place. There isn’t a place left for you, Andreyev. If you ever had a soul, you long since bartered it away. And in return for what? Exactly what?

  He opened his eyes. He saw her clenched hands. And it was clear to him that wherever she was, wherever she might be, she was no longer in this room.

  6.

  Rayner listened to Isobel, who, having kicked off her shoes in the manner of one both bored and exhausted, lay face down on the bed.

  “If I have to tour another goddam factory,” she said, “I swear I’ll throw up.”

  Rayner stood in the open bathroom doorway and watched her. “They’re very proud of their factories,” he said. “You underestimate them. Some countries wouldn’t have the simple decency to show you the latest in car manufacturing, would they?”

  “Ha funny,” she said. “But not
funny at all. How much longer do we have to stay?”

  “Dare I remind you—without it causing a war—that you wanted to make this trip?”

  She didn’t answer him. She turned her face away, sighing as if sighing were a last line of defense, a final argument. He stared at her. She had undone her blouse, unzipped her skirt. She doesn’t know what she does to me, he thought. She doesn’t quite appreciate how she contributes to my sexual fantasies. The dear lady. He crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed, holding her hand. He knew her look: I’m not in the mood. Tough shit. Of course, he thought, another kind of person would not take that crap lying down. Another kind of man would, so to speak, grip the reins and give them something of a tug. He felt tired all at once and lay down beside her. She turned her face away from him. He looked at the curve of her hip, the undone zipper, the shape of buttock. This will be the death of me yet, he thought. In my sweetest, darkest dreams, she comes to me with insatiable lust—

  He watched her blindly stub out her cigarette. A fragment of red ash floated to the floor, went out. He closed his eyes. He had something of a headache suddenly.

  Isobel turned to him. “You didn’t answer me. How much longer before we go home?”

  Curious, he thought—he knew the answer to the question very well, he knew the itinerary by heart, he had even planned much of it, but it had slipped his mind. Sleep, he thought. Sleep and away—and wake refreshed. He sat up.

  “Richard?” she said.

  He moved toward the bathroom. “I need aspirin,” he said.

  “Look in the plastic bag,” she said.

  He turned halfway across the floor and stared at her; and he had the strangest feeling—it was as if he didn’t recognize her, as if he had never seen her before in all his life.