Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

Helical gears, cluster gears, rack gears,
bevel and miter gears, worm gears, spur gears,
ratchet and pawl gears, internal spur gears,
grind my body
meat grinder
grinds
gr gr grrr
ah ah ah
aah aah aah
ah haaaaaah!
And also:

The bear
bares his flesh
skinless, bears the burden
of the air wooooo­ooooo­ooooo­sh
And also:

Dewy forget-me-not
not me forgets.
Stomp.

I cannot guarantee I transcribed the onomatopoeic bits with accuracy; Konstantyn Illych’s reading gave no indication of the number of a’s and o’s, et cetera.

At the end of the reading the poet placed his pages at his feet, unbuttoned his faded blue blazer, addressed the audience: “Time for some trivia. I’ll recite a poem and one of you will guess who wrote it. Get it right and everyone here will admire you, get it wrong and you’ll be eternally shamed.” A few people laughed.

Throughout the challenge poets such as Tsvetaeva, Inber, Mayakovsky, Shevchenko (this one I knew), and Tushnova were identified. The audience expressed their enjoyment of correct answers by whooping and clapping between names.

Konstantyn Illych waited for the lectorium to quiet down before he leaned into the microphone. “Who, whom.”

This, apparently, was also a poem; the crowd erupted in fervid applause. I made a mental note to alert my superiors that local culture was going down the chute.

Konstantyn Illych scanned the audience until his eyes met mine. “The gentleman in the front row, in the black peacoat,” he said. “Who wrote that poem?”

Once more the hall fell silent.

I turned right and left, hoping to find another man wearing a black peacoat in my vicinity. That’s when I saw Konstantyn Illych’s wife sitting behind me. She crossed her arms, her great bulging eyes on me, beckoning me to answer. One of her hands, nestled in the crook of her opposite arm, resembled a pale spider waiting to pounce.

Konstantyn Illych’s voice boomed above me. “The greatest poet of all time, Comrade, and you do not know? I’ll give you three seconds. Three…”

I froze in my seat. The middle-aged man to my right, whose nose looked like it had been smashed many times, nudged me in the ribs.

“Two…”

The man whispered “Grandfather Lenin!”—a mockery that I found in poor taste.

“One!” Konstantyn Illych bellowed. “Who was it, esteemed audience?”

The words rose from the crowd in a column. “Grandfather Lenin!”

Konstantyn Illych looked down at me from the stage, tsked into the microphone. Each tsk felt sharp, hot, a lash on my skin.

—

It was around this time I began to suspect that, while I had been following Konstantyn Illych, his wife had been following me. I forced myself to recollect the preceding week. Milena Markivna never figured in the center of my memories—the bull’s-eye had always, of course, been Konstantyn Illych—but I did find her in the cloudy periphery, sometimes even in the vacuous space between memories. If I stood five spots behind Konstantyn Illych in line for sausage, the hooded figure four spots behind me possessed Milena’s tall narrow-shouldered frame; if I sat three benches away from Konstantyn Illych, the woman two benches over had the same pale ankle peeking out from under the skirt. I began to see my task of retrieving the letter of apology in a new light.

What I suspected: My mission was not about the letter, but about the lengths I would go to retrieve it.

What I suspected: I was being vetted for a position of great honor.

What I knew: “Who, whom” had been a simple test, and I had failed it.

What I knew: My mother had been subjected to the same tests as a young woman, and had succeeded.