Legends

His lips moving as he played out a gambit in his head, Katovsky fell silent and Martin didn’t interrupt the game. The Zil passed an enormous billboard advertising Marlboro cigarettes and metro stations disgorging swarms of workers. Fatigue overcame Martin (he’d been traveling for two days and two nights to get from Hrodna to Moscow) and he closed his eyes for a moment that stretched into twenty minutes. When he opened them again the Zil was on the ring road. Giant cranes filled what Martin could see of the skyline. New buildings with glass facades that reflected the structures across the street were shooting up on both sides of the wide artery. In one of them he could make out automobiles barreling by, but there were so many of them on the road he couldn’t be sure which one was his. Traffic slowed to a crawl where men in yellow hard hats were digging up a section of the roadway with jackhammers, then sped up again as the Zil spilled through the funnel. Up ahead an overhead sign indicated the junction for the Petersburg highway.

“Turnoff for Prigorodnaia very shortly now,” Katovsky said. “I was one of Boris Spassky’s advisors when he lost to Fischer in 1972. If only he would have followed my advice he could have vacuumed the carpet with Fischer, who made blunder after blunder. Ha! They say the winner in any game of chess is the one who makes the next to last blunder. Here—here is the Prigorodnaia turnoff. Oh, how time seeps through your fingers when you are not closing your hand into a fist—I remember this road before it was paved. In 1952 and part of 1953, I was driven by a chauffeur to Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria’s dacha in Prigorodnaia every Sunday to teach chess to his wife. The lessons came to an end when Comrade Stalin died and Beria, who behind Stalin’s back created the gulags and purged the most loyal comrades, became executed.”

As Katovsky headed down the spur, past a sign that read “Prigorodnaia 7 kilometers,” the cracked rib in Martin’s chest began to ache again. Curiously, the pain seemed … familiar.

But how in the name of God could pain be familiar?

A pulse, the harbinger of a splitting headache, began to beat in Martin’s temples and he brought his fingers up to knead his brow. He found himself slipping into and out of roles. He could hear Lincoln Dittmann lazily murmuring a verse of poetry.

… the silent cannons bright as gold rumble

lightly over the stones. Silent cannons, soon

to cease your silence, soon unlimber’d to begin

the red business.

And the voice of the poet wearing the soiled white shirt open at the throat.

Sight at daybreak,—in camp in front of the

hospital tent on a stretcher (three dead men lying,)

each with a blanket spread over him

Other voices, barely audible, played in the lobe of his brain where memory resided. Gradually he began to distinguish fragments of dialogue.

Gentlemen and ladies … overlooked Martin Odum’s original biography.

His mother was—

… was Polish … Immigrated … after the Second …

Maggie’s on to …

… staring us in the face …

The driver of the Zil glanced at his passenger. “Look at those chimneys spewing filthy white smoke,” he said.

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s a paper factory—built after Beria’s time, unnecessary to say—he never would have permitted it. Now you are knowing why only little shots live here nowadays—the stench of sulfur fills the air every hour of every day of every year. The local peasants swear you get used to it—that in time you only feel discomfortable when you breathe air that is not putrid.”

Even the reek of sulfur stinging Martin’s nostrils seemed familiar.

“Comrade Beria played chess,” the driver remembered. “Badly. So badly that it required all my cleverness to lose to him.”

… Lincoln Dittmann was in Triple … overheard an old lottery vender talking Polish to a hooker… catch the drift …

… his mother used to read him bedtime stories in Polish …

Martin found himself breathing with difficulty—he felt as if he were gagging on memories that needed to be disgorged before he could get on with his life.

Ahead, an abandoned custom’s station with a faded red star painted above the door loomed at the side of the road. Across from it and down a shallow slope, a river rippled through its bed. It must have been in flood because there appeared to be a margin of shallow marshes on either side; grass could be seen undulating in the current.