Free The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia Page A

numb from the stinging cold.
    "Hey!” he heard behind him.
    He ran, his thin-soled shoes slipping on the long ice slicks, treacherously hidden under the fresh snow; the pursuit panted behind, and he couldn't look back. He only hoped to gain another block, to lead them further away from home, and yet realized that it was an empty gesture-they knew where he lived. Still, his legs pumped, his feet slid, and his throat burned from the chilly air he gulped by the mouthful.
    A shot rang out in the crisp air, and he ducked and careened, not slowing down. His spectacles slid off his face and he had presence of mind enough to catch them and shove them into his pocket-he couldn't risk trying to put them back on while running.
    He rounded the corner, and almost fell but caught his footing. There were lights and frozen trees, hazy, haloed against the glow of the streetlamps. He could not see very well without his glasses, and when he saw the gaping doorway, dark, promising safety, he ran toward it. His arms outstretched, he was almost in its safe embrace, when more shots tore the air. He felt a sting in his back and a dull tearing pain in his shoulder blade; he made a desperate dive for the doorway when it fractured in front of him, and as he went through he realized that his poor eyesight had fooled him-he had mistaken the storefront window for the door. The window showered jagged glass on his face and hands, stinging them like a million bees. Then a cool air blew into his face, and a tree glowed above, and twelve white jackdaws descended upon him, cawing.
    * * * *
    Yakov finished his drink. David looked at him, as if expecting something.
    "She never remarried,” Yakov said. “Grandma, I mean."
    David nodded. “Neither did I. Still, I wish I knew… About your mother."
    "There isn't much to know,” he said. His mother was ordinary-not a sort of person who lived an exciting life; even her hardships lacked exoticism. She was born three years before the war, and remembered it vaguely-the hunger, the fear, the dull torments of ordinary souls who were never offered a chance for heroics. She was someone one needed to know to appreciate, and David lacked that. “She's a good person,” he finally said. “You would've been proud of her. Like grandma was. Her name's Valentina; she's going to be fifty-three. She works all week, and on weekends she goes to take care of your and grandmother's grave. She made sure to bury her in Moscow, next to you."
    David looked perplexed. “I have a grave? Why?"
    "I don't know,” Yakov said. “I never asked."
    David slumped, his head resting on his folded arms. “I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Only it is strange. To learn that you have a grave and a daughter who's fifty. I heard about men finding out that they had kids they didn't know about-only not fifty years later. I wish I could talk to her, to tell her…"
    "Tell her what?"
    "That I'm sorry. I'm sorry it happened this way, and I'm sorry I survived. I know I wasn't supposed to. If only I had had my glasses on-I wouldn't have tried to run through that window."
    Yakov understood what his grandfather wanted-for-giveness. “You've done nothing wrong,” he said. “You were fucked either way."
    David shrugged, unconvinced. “I suppose."
    Yakov didn't know what else to say. He'd seen this before, people who survived catastrophes. They could not enjoy life knowing that others had died-survivor's guilt, they called it. He'd seen it in his grandmother-she left Moscow, saving her unborn child. Yet, the guilt of abandoning her husband was never far below the surface. The letter on the government letterhead made it worse.
    Perhaps there was a reason for it, he thought. Those who ended in this no-man's land underground: perhaps they were allowed to live for a reason. “You were spared,” he said out loud. “Surely there is a point to that."
    "Perhaps. But if there is, I sure don't know what it is. Nobody here does, and some have been around for