I want to believe this. Truly I do. But I can’t find the right words for what I’m feeling. Even if we only steal thoughts from our oppressors—the KGB, the Communist Party, whatever Russian entity feels like taking its turn putting soles to our necks—we’re no better than they. Are we? And there’s Valentin himself, his dangerous skill. Will he savor this power with Rostov’s same hunger, where the more power he acquires, the more he craves? Will he use his abilities just as ruthlessly?
I don’t talk to him for the rest of our Metro ride. Shostakovich pulses to the steady clanking of the rail car.
We reach the Kievskaya station and squeeze out of the car at the last minute, swimming against the rush of people trying to board. I don’t care if our guards make it off the train or not. We can’t be blamed for the morning rush.
“Take my hand.” Valentin’s fingers catch mine. His voice is soft, the command almost a question. “Stay close.”
The station itself is palatial—a palace for all the workers, as Stalin once called the Metro stations, and he spared no expense in their decor. Phony plaster molding, chandeliers, marble floors, elaborate mosaics, and of course hammers and sickles everywhere, as if sprayed there by some terrible explosion. The grimy factory film that hastens to cover up such finery is thinner here than in most stations. I can actually see Lenin’s coy smile on a painted mural, and the shine on a soldier’s boot as he waves to farmers in a field of golden tiles.
We cram onto the escalator. Waves and waves of nomenklatura, the Communist Party elite, pass us on their way down. Tailored suits, fur coats, Turkish scarves; the women wear absurd heeled boots under their billowing skirts, the leather already stained with a rind of salt. Unlike the solemn industrial-park station where we boarded, the air crackles with rapid-fire conversation, giggles, grins.
Valentin peers over his shoulder, to the base of the escalator far below. We’ve been riding for three minutes, but we’re only halfway up the tunnel. Can you see them? I ask, pushing the thought against him gently.
They’re just now boarding. He looks upward at the glowing circle of daylight ahead. You need to add another layer of music to your thoughts. In case Lev can hear us. Something we both know, so I can understand you.
I grimace. An arms race of thought. They are trained to penetrate one, so add another. They can penetrate two, so add three more.
This Tchaikovsky song. Do you know it? Valentin closes his eyes behind his fogged lenses and for a moment, all I hear are girls chattering, the elevator squeaking and churning. Then the low, mournful piano chords start. Thick notes, but somehow soft, patient. I think I may have heard Papa and Zhenya playing it together once. It doesn’t fit the beat of Shostakovich, but somehow, they meld together into a sturdy fortress of sound.
Keep it in your head along with your usual barrier, he says. We’ll use it to speak to each other. Safely, without me having to dip into your head.
Like a code. I nod, the tightness in my chest unclenching as we finally reach the escalator’s crest. The clouds have reappeared to shield us from snow blindness. The street is a soothing gray, tipped in white. Elaborate apartment buildings of plaster, marble, and stone stand in rank on both sides of the street, bolstered with red columns. Unlike the crowded-teeth concrete blocks in most districts, the boulevard is wide and trimmed with well-groomed trees. No streetcar cables forming a web against the sky; no factory slime blackening the walls. I take a deep breath, and I can’t even smell the pickled-fish stink of the Moskva River. “This looks nothing like the Moscow I lived in,” I mutter aloud, as we stride onto the plaza.
Valentin puffs out a phantom of breath and rubs his hands while surveying the street. “That’s because the Party members live here. Rumor has it, there’s even a secret Metro line that runs through here for the top officials.”
“And where did you hear that?” I ask.
Tchaikovsky’s somber chords echo the rest of his thoughts. He slides his thumb up my hand; wriggles it into the hem of my glove so our bare skin makes contact. I flinch at his cold touch, but this is the shortest distance for his thoughts to travel. I lived here once.
The winter air doesn’t bother me, but that thought certainly does. It slips through my coat and chaps my skin. I’m not so sure I want his hand on mine, but those words lure me in. What happened?
My father was Party. We had a private car, a custom apartment, a piano, maids …
Was, I echo. We squeeze past a pair of hound-faced men, and I catch an unwelcome thought of sex clinging to one of them.
He doesn’t live here anymore.
And then his thoughts tear away from mine. The shine to his deep, dark eyes is gone. He lets go of my hand. Like Colonel Rostov, his thoughts are a negation of thought, a painful noise. They grate against me, brittle and sharp, until he takes a few steps away from me.