The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia Page A

queasy.
    Fyodor caught her elbow, steadying her. “Took a spill, there."
    Both men fussed over her, as if to avoid having to look around and notice the white arch cupping above them and a dim road stretching in every direction. She fantasized briefly that it was just an abandoned tunnel, a secret subway station compartment she had fallen into, and she laughed. “We're actually here,” she told both of her companions as they looked at her, worried. “This is real."
    "If we only knew where ‘here’ was,” Yakov said.
    "Underground,” Fyodor said. “Isn't that obvious?"
    The road they stood on stretched before them, a single dirt lane worn deep in twin ruts. Tents, wooden shacks, abandoned haylofts lined the road non-committally, sometimes tucked back under the clumps of gangly black bushes with twisting long branches, sometimes crowding it.
    "It looks like my home village,” Fyodor said.
    Yakov laughed. “No offense, but congrats on getting out."
    Fyodor's gaze lingered over the road, and a slow smile stretched his lips, black in dim underground. “Thanks. Same to you, limitchik. What, you thought no one noticed?"
    Yakov's face darkened, and his fists grew large and heavy. “Don't you talk to me like that. I'll fucking arrest you."
    "Oh, a cop.” Fyodor laughed. “What, you think if you bark louder than everyone else and protect their shit they'll treat you like a man and not a dog? Keep dreaming, mutt."
    Galina frowned. “What are you talking about? Who are ‘they'?"
    Both men whipped around. “You,” they said in unison.
    "You have something against Muscovites?” she asked, surprised. And laughed before they could answer. “And why are you discussing it now?"
    "As good a time as any,” Yakov said. “But this ain't Moscow, so we can leave it for now."
    Fyodor shook his head. “You're sure we're not under some KGB dungeon? This road probably leads to the Lubyanka or a secret prison or something."
    "I thought you blamed gypsies,” Galina said.
    Fyodor lit another cigarette. “I blame everyone."
    Galina quelled another argument before it broke out by starting down the road. “I wonder if it leads to a river,” she said. “Like the Styx."
    Yakov walked next to her, pointedly leaving Fyodor to bring up the rear. “I'm expecting more of a hovel on chicken shanks situation,” he said. “You know, like in the children's tales."
    "I don't,” Galina said. “All my childhood books were translated-English stories. Jack the Giant
    Slayer, and others I can't remember."
    "Huh,” Yakov said. “That's weird. I also had a bunch of English books when I was little, from my grandfather. When we left Serpuhov, my mom threw them out."
    The shacks and tents gave way to trees, a park of sorts. The trees stood tall and bare, their skeletal branches phosphorescing with a weak light. They crowded the road and the branches touched above their heads, forming a lacy canopy against the black backdrop of non-existent sky.
    "Definitely Baba Yaga territory,” Fyodor said. “I'd like to see you try to apprehend her."
    "Simple. Citizen Yaga, you're under arrest,” Yakov responded, and all three snickered uneasily.
    The road meandered and almost disappeared, thinning to barely visible tracks in the fat white grass the sight of which filled Galina with irrational disgust. White birds-starlings and rooks-studded the trees like pimples. Galina wondered if they were different from the birds outside, or if the regular birds gradually changed color underground, shedding their dark feathers and growing new ones, white like shrouds.
    A faint noise that grew for some time finally crossed into her awareness, and she listened to the quiet but powerful throb. It sounded as if it came from a great distance, and she guessed that close by it would roar, deafening. Like a waterfall, she thought, the waterfall of the escalator that brought her down to the overturned skeleton of the funeral barge-the subway station had foreshadowed what was