It was OUR ICE! The Ice sent by the Light, the ice that struck the breast of the sleeping earth and awoke it.
Our hearts quivered in ECSTASY.
We held hands and descended into the pit. We approached the Ice along a wooden bridge. With trembling hands I tore my clothes off until there was nothing on me.
I stepped onto the Ice.
A cry of rapture escaped my chest. Tears burst from my eyes. I fell onto the Ice and embraced it. My heart felt and understood this divine mass. A huge heart lay under me. It spoke with me.
Adr undressed as well. I jumped up and stepped toward him. Sobbing with delight, we embraced and fell onto the Ice.
Time stopped for us.
When we regained consciousness it was night.
We loosened our embrace.
A black sky bright with stars hung over us. The stars were so low that it seemed you could touch them. Two blurry half circles, tinged with yellow, shone around the huge bright moon. Somewhere far beyond the horizon, the northern lights blazed.
We lay in warm water. We weren’t cold at all. Just the opposite — our bodies were burning. We had warmed a crater in the Ice that followed the contours of our entwined bodies. A cloud of steam stood over us.
A shot suddenly rang out nearby.
And then another.
Someone cried out: “Hey — ey-eyyyyye!”
I realized they were looking for us.
We stood up and left our “bath.” We found our clothing and dressed. It was time to say farewell to the Ice, to return to the cruel world of the meat machines and to our brothers lost among them. We kissed the Ice.
Then we set off across the frozen bridges toward the shots and voices.
In Moscow everything worked out well: the results of the investigation satisfied the new minister of state security. Lieutenant Voloshin was shot as a Japanese spy, as were eight of Abakumov’s people against whom he’d given evidence under torture. Another “nest of spies” had been liquidated in the system of rehabilitory labor camps.
Camp No. 312/500 began working again; the prisoners’ picks rang, the brigadiers shouted, the guard dogs barked, and cubic meters of ice were transported to the capital. From there they went to other countries where sleeping hearts waited for the awakening blows of the Ice hammer.
We worked precisely and with great focus.
In two years, ninety-eight brothers were found.
It was a huge victory for the Light.
But the ill-starred year of 1953 was at hand.
In March, Stalin died.
The next night, Kha convened us at our dacha. Six brothers and six sisters sat in the half dark of the spacious living room, next to the blazing fireplace. Kha sat in a rocking chair. He wore a lilac Chinese robe with silver dragons on it. He fingered rosary beads from Bukhara. Tongues of flame played across his stern, handsome face and burned in his blue eyes. Kha said, “A redivision of power is about to take place in the USSR. Enormous changes will follow. They will touch many of us. It is imperative to be prepared. We must take care of our brothers, and of the Ice. The majority of our people must be sent out of Moscow and Leningrad into the provinces. It will be less dangerous that way. We must begin this work without delay. Adr and I will take on the technical side of things. As far as the quarrying of Ice is concerned — it is difficult to predict what may happen. It isn’t clear what will become of the camp and the project. They may survive, but they may be closed.”
He was silent for a moment and turned his eyes toward me, “Khram, you are the only one of us who knows all the heart words and sees with your heart. What does your heart tell you?”
“Only one thing — something huge and threatening looms over us,” I answered honestly.
“What does it resemble?” asked Adr.
“A red wave.”
“Then we have to act now.”
We were silent for a long time. Then Kha smiled and began to speak.
“This morning I received joyous news — the first shipment of Ice arrived in America. Soon we will find out the names of our American brothers!”
Everyone jumped up. We exulted. Throwing off our clothes, we stood in pairs, embraced, pressing chest to chest, we fell to our knees.
The fireplace went out. But our burning hearts quivered in the dark.
The spring and the early part of summer passed in intensive work. In order to send our people to different cities we needed money, a good deal of money. Kha advised us to rob a bank collection truck. It was easy for me to follow the vehicle and the people guarding the bag filled with those packets of paper that meat machines value so highly. My heart knew everything about the bank cashier collector — from his collarbone broken in childhood to his passion for playing the accordion. He also loved sniffing women’s toes, talking about soccer, and reading books about the war. At just the right moment, when I signaled, Zu shot the vehicle guard, Shro cut the collector’s throat, and Mir grabbed the bag of money from his hands.
Half a million rubles was more than enough for moving one hundred people.
This was our main task. At the same time, we accomplished many other things: an emergency store of Ice was placed in three refrigerator factories, and we infiltrated our people into a variety of up-and-coming organizations and destroyed the witnesses. In the last case I was absolutely irreplaceable. All I had to do was walk up to the door of an apartment to know who was home and what they were doing. Mir, Zu, and Shro took care of the rest. Almost every day their knives interrupted the meaningless existence of yet another meat machine whose memory could harm us.
We were merciless to the living dead.
And suddenly.
Like the thrust of an unseen sword: on June 26, Beria was arrested.
Heat blew from the Kremlin. The illusions of Beria’s cohorts evaporated: some shot themselves, some went on a binge. Others hurriedly wrote denunciations of yesterday’s friends.
But Kha remained calm.
“We have managed to do it,” he repeated.
After the arrest of his patron, he, like many MGB generals, became vulnerable. We no longer had any rear guard, no support from above. I begged Kha and Adr to hide.
“We must fight here,” Kha objected.
“We have gone through three purges with the help of the Light, and we can make it through this one as well,” said Adr, smiling.
My heart was apprehensive. Something was creeping up on us. I raged at them about the coming disaster. But all my arguments shattered against the wall of their courage.
On the other hand, both of them constantly wanted my heart, foreseeing that we had very little time remaining. During the day we worked on business. At night we froze chest to chest, heart to heart.
Their hearts were inexhaustible.
My arms could barely untwine from their necks, my knees trembled, my body blazed.
Kha’s wife poured water on me and slapped my pale cheeks.
I was happy.
During these close, sultry July nights, Kha and Adr learned all 23 heart words from my heart.
And they found the Light.
Forever.
On July 17 they were arrested.
It happened during the day. I was sleeping in the old, cluttered apartment belonging to Yus, whom we had sent to the Crimea with two young brothers. My heart woke me. It was in a bad way.
A sense of petrified horror overtook me. I rose, dressed, and went out. I walked through sun-drenched Moscow to Belorussky Station. It was the first time since my return to Russia that I felt a sucking emptiness in my heart.
I moved like a machine — without feelings or ideas.
Making my way to Belorussky, I stood on the noisy platform, looking at the trains. Then I went to the long-distance ticket window. I waited in line.
“Where are you going?” the cashier asked me.
“I’m going to...” It took enormous effort to force myself to think and I decided to go there, where the ice was, OUR ICE. And where was our divine ice? In endless Siberia.
“To Siberia,” I said firmly, handing money over through the window.
“Now, now, Varvara Fedotovna, why should you pay money for that?” a sarcastic voice spoke into my ear from behind. “We’ll send you to Siberia as a business expense.”
Two men grabbed me forcefully under my arms.
“Citizen Korobova, you are under arrest,” said another voice.
A couple of hours later I was already being interrogated at Lefortovo prison...
That day six associates of Beria were arrested, six high-placed generals of the MGB, one of whom was Kha. At the same time, lower-rank MGB employees, who were connected to Beria and his people, were also arrested.
“What tied you to general Vlodzimirsky?” was the first question that Investigator Fedotov asked me.
“Nothing tied me to the general,” I answered honestly, seeing through Fedotov with my heart: a premature birth in the hay fields, orphaned, a difficult childhood, tears, fights, the navy; he liked water, cognac, having intercourse with fat women and making them repeat swear words, beach volleyball, and thinking about Saturn while defecating; he was afraid of spiders and scissors, of being late to work, of losing documents; he liked stew, remembering People’s Commissar Yezhov, making little boats in the spring, the Black Sea port of Gagra, and beating people on the face and kidneys.
“And what is this?” he showed me a photograph.
I still could not see any images. In the middle of the glossy paper two shiny spots merged.
“What is this, I’m asking you?”
“I can’t see it,” I admitted.
“Are we going to play the fool?” Fedotov wheezed angrily.
“I really cannot see any images on photographs, not only on this one. Over there you have a portrait — I nodded toward a dark patch in a red frame. “I can’t see who it is.”
Fedotov looked at me angrily. His plump face slowly turned red with blood.
“That is Vladimir Ilich Lenin. Or haven’t you heard of him?”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Is that so?” he clapped his strong hands and laughed nastily.
I said nothing.
“Vlodzimirsky and your husband, Korobov, are friends of Beria. And Beria, just so you know, is an agent of foreign intelligence services. He has already given evidence. About Vlodzimirsky, among others. I’m offering to let you tell us honestly about the criminal activities of Vlodzimirsky and Korobov.”
“I didn’t know General Vlodzimirsky well.”
“You didn’t know Vlodzimirsky? But on this photo he’s pawing you. Naked.”
“I repeat, I wasn’t close to General Vlodzimirsky, and didn’t know him well. I knew his heart well.”
“What?”
“And this photograph records a moment when our souls spoke in a secret language.”
“That means you confess that you were his mistress?”
“By no means. I was his heart sister.”
“And you never slept with him, even once?”
“I slept with him many times. But not like an earthly woman would. Rather, like a heart sister. A sister of the Eternal and Primordial Light.”
“A sister of Light?” Fedotov laughed maliciously. “What kind of nonsense is this, you stinking cunt? A sister, shit! What holes did he hump you in, you regiment hooker?! You’re all from the same goddamn gang, Beria’s spies! You made your viper’s nest in the MGB, you reptiles! Tell the fucking truth!”
He hit me on the face.
I said nothing. I looked at him.
He rolled up his sleeves, all business.
“You’ll remember everything for me in a little while, you rotten cunt.”
He came out from around the desk and grabbed me by the hair with his left hand. Then he began to beat me on the cheeks with a practiced right hand. He probably expected that I would cry out, like the majority of meat-machine women, and, covering my face, beg him for mercy.
But I didn’t even raise my hands to my face.
I looked him straight in the eyes.
He swung his hand back and slapped me on the cheek even harder. His coarse palms smelled of tobacco, eau de cologne, and old furniture.
“Talk! Talk! Talk!” he said as he slapped.
My head went back and forth, and my ears rang.
But I kept looking straight into his small, piercing pupils.
He stopped slapping me and brought his reddening face right up to mine.
“So you’re a bold one, are you? I’ll turn you into mincemeat, salt and pepper you, and make you eat yourself! Why so quiet, you dried-up cunt?”
Inside he was absolutely happy. His heart sang, and in his bald head orange flares blazed and extinguished.
I said nothing.
During the first two interrogations he shouted and whipped me on the cheeks. Then a second investigator appeared — Revzin. At first he tried to play the “good cop,” initiating intimate conversations with me, asking me to “help the organs of state security expose Beria’s gang.” I spoke only the truth: the brotherhood, Kha and Adr, 23 words.
I did this because my heart was absolutely certain that they would not need our secrets. The meat machines didn’t see the truth — they looked right through it, they couldn’t distinguish the Divine Light.
It was incredibly wonderful to speak the truth, to delight in it.
They swore and laughed.
Finally, they got sick of hearing about the singing of hearts. They undressed me, tied me to a bench, and began to flog me with a rubber plait. They were in no hurry, they took turns: one would flog, while the other shouted or quietly cajoled me to change my mind.
I felt the pain, of course.
But it wasn’t like before, when I was a meat machine. Previously, there had been nowhere to escape from the pain, because the pain was the master of my body. Now my master was the heart. And the pain couldn’t reach it. It lived separately. My heart felt the pain in the form of a red serpent. The serpent crawled over me. But my heart sang, mesmerizing the serpent. When it crawled for too long at a time, my heart shrank, flaring violet. Then I lost consciousness.
They poured water on me.
While I was coming around, they smoked.
Then their simple hands once again took up the plait.
Everything repeated itself.
I said nothing. My heart sang. The red serpent crawled.
The water rang.