Deathless

* * *

Ivanushka, do not go down into the basement of this house.

Do not open the door. Do not peer into the lock.

Is that all?

* * *

“Comrade Morevna, allow me to show my cards. When something is amiss in the life of a citizen, it is as though he walks around all day with his shirt inside out. To the casual observer, all may seem normal, but in truth, the natural order of things has been upset. Even if he wears a coat, even if for all the world he appears the picture of a man, something within him is backwards. I suggest that during his disappearance Comrade Geroyev associated with antirevolutionary elements, and continues their work even in the depths of Leningrad.”

Marya laughed out loud. “Is that what you think?”

“Either that or you yourself are a spy, having attached yourself like a lamprey to a good man, and harbor even now—in the attic? in the basement?—seditious persons of great interest to myself and those whom I represent. Tell me, Comrade. What would I find if I looked in your basement right this very moment?”

Ushanka extinguished her cigarette on the windowsill.

* * *

Ivanushka, for you, this house has no basement.

I promise, wife.

* * *

The basement of the house on Dzerzhinskaya Street stank of shadow and disuse. Old jars of onions cured into mothballs grew veils of cobwebs, sharing space with a rusted typewriter, a box of nails, a dressmaker’s form, and three jugs of home-brewed beer long ago overfermented and burst, even their spilt foam calcified, crumbling. Koschei wrapped his long arms around Marya’s waist, pressing his cheek to her hair. She squeezed the black egg in her palm; he moaned into her scalp. She tucked his death into her dress, between her breasts, where it touched her heart.

“Stand against the wall, Koschei.”

Without a word he obeyed her. In the jetsam, Marya Morevna found, as if by magnetism or divining, what she wanted: a coil of moldy rope. She stood against Koschei, so much taller than she, her hips moving against him out of old memory. She lifted one of his hands, knotted the rope around it, and looped the rest through an iron ring that once held a hook for the curing of meat.

Koschei the Deathless regarded her knotwork. “That will not hold me. It is a joke. I could breathe on it and it would crumble.”

“What proof would it be if you couldn’t get out?” said Marya softly, and kissed his pale mouth in the dark, all her child’s worship of him seething feverishly back into her. I need this. I need it. You will not deny me. She lifted his other graceful hand and bound it, too, pulleying his arms up above his head.

He hung there, tears streaking down his face.

“I love you, Marya.”

She laid a finger over his lips.

“There is no need for you to speak, Kostya. There is only one question: Who is to rule? And that is never answered with words. You will not move. You will not try to loosen my knots. You will suffer for me, as I suffered for you. Then I will know that your submission to me is total, and true. That you are worthy of me.” Marya Morevna took Koschei’s face in her hands and pressed her forehead to his. “We are going to do something extraordinary together, you and I,” she whispered. “Do you remember when you said that to me, so long ago? Do you know what it is we are doing? I will tell you, so that later, you cannot say I deceived you. I am taking my will out of you, and I am taking yours with it. Out of the eye of a needle, hidden inside an egg, hidden inside a hen, hidden inside a goose, hidden inside a deer. When we are finished you will give your will to me, and I will keep it safe for you.” She smiled, her eyes serenely shut. “I learned very well how to give up my will to my lover. I was a savant, you might say. You, however, are a novice. Less than a novice. And, like a good novice, you must swallow your pride.”

Marya drew away, her eyes shining, her blood singing. Then, she turned and walked up the staircase, her red dress trailing behind her on the black steps. She shut the door behind her, and turned the key.

* * *

Thank you, Ivanushka. How good you are to me.

That is all I want in the world, to be good to you.

* * *

Marya’s eyes sparkled with sudden interest, even delight.

“Isn’t this fun?” she said, a grin starting on one side of her face and traveling the slow road to the other. It was a game, always a game. And when you were done playing, when you got bored, you just called it off, and went to hunt mushrooms by moonlight.

“Pardon me?” Comrade Ushanka recoiled.