22:10 - Part I - The Crooked Chain of Ghosts

Chapter 3

Nikolai stood and moved to the subway door. Its window returned a half reflection and then disappeared in the light of the platform, reminding him of his last view of Tatyana before he had left their apartment.

He exited Chekhovskaya, took the escalator up, and turned toward the corridor leading to the adjoining Tverskaya station. Chekhovskaya-Teverskaya, a major hub for three different lines, normally roared with a flow of dissonant footsteps echoing through the corridors and amplifying down the passageways until spilling over onto a sea of passengers.

But tonight, as if the city itself knew the purpose for Nikolai's meeting, what little sound came from the few people in the station evaporated at the platform opening. For such a large city with so many people and ways to evidence themselves through sound, the mammoth hall was abnormally hushed like an abbey between the end of a Sunday mass and the beginning of a funeral. This unsettling strangeness paralleled his imminent rendezvous with the woman who had ominously entered his life, and if Nikolai had not been utterly unnerved before, he was now.

The next subway car slowed and arrived.

Riding public transport means surrendering oneself to an external constraint. No amount of desire or willfulness can push the vehicle along faster. A passenger, like Nikolai, might be anxious about arriving on time but also experience a calming effect from accepting loss of control over the situation. Being forced to merely endure time is a unique emotion. Nikolai's momentary powerlessness was a respite he used to catch his breath and attempt to refocus.

With his destination, Teatralnaya, approaching, Nikolai felt the weight of the moment upon him. He was ready, and he was reconciled to it. He knew he could not turn back.

Or could he? Might he still be able to turn around, or had he already gone too far? Could he ever have turned back once he had met her? At what particular moment did he veer onto the path that had brought him inexorably to this night?

He knew the answers yet continually denied them, desperately hoping for a different result. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and rubbed his temples as he neared the end of this journey to barter for his freedom. Soon he could physically walk away from her, but he could never forget.

Still, the first thing he would do when he got home would be to crawl into bed and wake up Tatyana with his embrace just to lay next to her, stroke her hair, and meet her eyes with less fear and shame. He longed to watch her watching him until he was cleansed and whole—to the extent that he could ever be again. Her eyes affectionately stripped him bare, and he always returned to them. Their penetrating copper-brown color was otherworldly, like something ancient lost in the Middle Ages and only unearthed and rediscovered during the genesis of her soul at birth.

Tatyana's mother was Georgian and her father was a Kazan Tartar. Her parents had first met in the break room of a truck factory, although she rarely spoke of their relationship. But once, a few days before their wedding, as if a warning, Tatyana revealed that her parents had a tempestuous, passionate, and secret beginning because her mother had been engaged to another man. By the time her mother broke off the engagement, she was already pregnant with Tatyana.

Her parents' love maintained a vigorous momentum for about ten years and then cooled. They began to drift, and eventually her father had a series of poorly hidden affairs. Her mother simply refused to acknowledge what everyone else knew and suffered in silence. The festering secret and the cancerous effect it had on her mother pained Tatyana until she simply moved out of their house and distanced herself from her family.

Nikolai knew the mark those feelings had left on her still remained and probably always would.

Only one story stood out in Nikolai's family history. His great-grandfather had been a somewhat well-known bourgeois gardener for the Tsar and his great-grandmother a chambermaid who came from an impoverished family. His great-grandfather had been impressed by the Bolsheviks and joined the movement years before the Revolution. In the Soviet purges that followed, even though his great-grandfather had been associated with the monarchy, his bona fides as a true Communist went unquestioned—not the least because he had effectively "married down" a class, which was unheard of at the time.