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The kosher store is closing when Illya arrives. Ludmilla Petrovna groans as she hauls the last of the produce in from the front display. Silently, Illya hoists up the remaining barrel of apples, small and pink-streaked, and sets them down in the center of the store.
“You are late,” Ludmilla chides him, even as she bends to gather his usual order of pirozhki. The oil stains darkly through the paper bag. “The sun has almost set. Kol Nidre draws near.”
He hadn’t remembered. But, uncomfortably, he had not forgotten, either.
“You should come to shul,” she says. “Atone for your sins and seal yourself into the Book of Life for the new year.”
Illya ducks his head politely, saying nothing, and steps out into the rapidly darkening afternoon. Above, red-orange light spills out like ink, staining the clouds. The pirozhok is soggy, and the oil clings thickly to Illya’s tongue.
This morning he cut himself while shaving, surprised by the flash in the mirror of enemy eyes, fixed on him with cold blue appraisal. It is only a nick, but he feels the sting when a chill gust of wind brushes past his chin.
When Illya drops the emptied paper bag into a trash bin, the light is almost completely gone. His feet have brought him to a synagogue, the exterior humble white and old brick; there are few ornate touches but one stained glass window sits proud in the upper chapel. The service has already started. Entering through the unlocked door, Illya comes to the row of tallises and hesitates, reaching out to finger the rough cloth.
In his dark turtleneck and blazer, he feels akin to the black cat of ill-omen, stalking through the foyer.
A kippa and a tallis, and no one inside would give him a second glance. A very efficient disguise, he thinks, and feels his stomach churn. A bitter bile rises in his throat.
At last, the usher notices him, presses a mazhor and a tallis upon him with a smile and a murmured, “G’mar chatimah tovah.”
May you be inscribed for good.
Inscribed under what name? Illya wants to demand of the complacent usher. His mother toiled hard for the spare, stenographed letters in his passport that read ukrainets, in the place of yevrei .
Inscribed under what name? Eyes watch him calmly from the mirror, cast a ghostly blue in the weak bathroom light. My name is Colonel Maximilian Nexor. The son made in the image of the father.
With the hesitance of a campfire started from green wood, a tune picks up inside the shul. The tune grows in strength with each repetition as he listens from the threshold, until the flame is comfortably blazing. Illya knows this tune. It coils around his mind— nagging, familiar.
Our vows will not be vows, the congregants chant. Our promises will not be promises. And our oaths—they are not oaths.
Illya knows he is little more than a tangle of promises, vows and oaths. If they could be unraveled that easily, with a single tug like a trick knot, he would be undone.
~*~
Napoleon finds him the next day in the laboratory. He steps forward, heedless of personal space, peering at the vial in Illya’s hand as if he has any hope of decoding the string of letters and numbers inscribed there.
“You must be working on something quite fascinating,” Napoleon says smoothly.
Illya doesn't look up. “A test trial for our upgraded truth serum.”
“Funny. I would have thought it would be something more explosive, to have you missing your lunch.”
Illya has benefited from Napoleon’s uncanny powers of perception innumerable times in the field. Still, it is unnerving to find those powers turned on him now. Napoleon watches him intently, a well-heeled panther. The past few weeks, Illya has looked up many times to find that particular, evaluative gaze fixed upon him.
When Illya does not answer, Napoleon speaks again. “There should still be leftovers. I know Maria was worried you hadn’t been by.”
Illya realizes his foot is tapping slightly, his mind trapped in the coils of a familiar tune. He hadn’t dreamed last night of the agonized screams he had torn from Napoleon in that bright metal room. Instead he’d dreamed of calm blue eyes and the persistent buzz of electric charge, carefully modulated.
Somehow, that was more frightful.
“I will not eat today,” Illya says. Napoleon perks his ears up at the awkward phrasing, like a hound scenting blood. “But I anticipate a large dinner. You—”
Is this necessary? Illya is a knot of secrets and lies. One tug—
Napoleon leans forward, his anticipation too eager, his focus too desperate. What he really needs right now, Illya knows, is to see Illya’s ribs from the inside—to pull back Illya’s fingers until he cannot hold down the scream. Napoleon will not acknowledge that, to himself least of all, but even now something in him is searching in Illya for the weakness that leads to blood.
“You could join me,” Illya finishes, his stomach churning.
There is a long silence, as Napoleon digests this uncharacteristic invitation.
“All right,” he says at last, voice smoky. “I will.”
~*~
It is like this. One cannot—cannot—apologize for knowing a man so well, knowing so well his pleasures and his pains that he can tear that man apart and not destroy him. One cannot apologize for that knowledge, nor for its use. Those words would insult them both.
All he can do is stand here, his head covered, white from head to toe, and demonstrate for Napoleon a little flaw—a small crack in the edifice that is Illya Kuryaken, soviet, spy, ukrainets .
“We are not so brazen and stiff-necked,” the rabbi calls out in an aged and cracking English, so morphed by Yiddish and Russian both that it has become a new language, “to stand before you and say we have not sinned. We have sinned .”
The vidui begins like a sigh, like a late-summer’s wind, setting them all swaying.
Napoleon, expert chameleon that he is, needs only one subtle scan of the room before his fist folds loosely over his chest.
“Like this?” he murmurs, leaning in close.
“Like that.”
Illya beats his fist against his own chest—once, twice, thrice, until something loosens there, like muck from a clogged drain.
He does not believe in this Adonai. He asks him for nothing and owes him nothing.
But if there is a book of life, in which his name has been written and today will be sealed, then that name is Illya Nikovitch Kuryaken, and no other.
No other.
~*~
When the service is over, they stream out with the other congregants into the chill autumn night. Napoleon’s arm comes to rest on his shoulders, the pressure light but unyielding.
And our oaths, thinks Illya, drawing in one level breath and then the next. They still are oaths.