Valya wads up his kerchief and presses it against my nose. “You, too. Get inside.”
We have a whole car to ourselves: Larissa, Masha, Kruzenko, and I will share one compartment, and Valentin, Sergei, and Misha will share another with one of the guards; at the end of the car is the tiny closet with a hole directly over the rails, which qualifies as a toilet. We are lucky to have that luxury.
Rostov will be flown in with a Red Army convoy, joining us in Berlin. I am far more grateful for that.
Valentin pinches my nose and tilts my head back to stanch the blood flow before we part for our separate compartments. As he gives my forearm a gentle squeeze, I sense a terse little bundle of music slip under my skin. I mentally place it in my pocket for later decoding.
Once my nosebleed is stanched, Larissa and I head to the dining car. The train clatters along the iron road through Moscow’s heart; the failing light shows endless smokestacks and snaggled wires overhead. We’ll pick up speed as we leave the city, but for now, we’re closed in a Moscow-sized aquarium. I reach out mentally around me as Larissa and I shuffle down the corridor. The glass panels make me feel empty, exposed.
“Why do you think the scrubber only affected you and Kruzenko?” Larissa asks under her breath as we pass a forlorn-looking man, staring out the window and smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
“I feel like I have this … connection to him. Maybe not a connection, but this certainty.” I trace a finger around my temple. “I know he’s dangerous, but I can’t help but sense there’s something more to it. I … I need to find out what.”
Larissa presses her lips into a thin line. “How about you leave the prophesying to me? Besides, it doesn’t explain Kruzenko.”
“He must have had a reason for targeting her specifically. Maybe he’s encountered her before.” I shake my head as I sink into an empty bench in the dining car.
My tea arrives with too much honey, wrapped in a metal podstakannik commemorating Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight in space with a geometric, stylized swoosh of stars and meteors. Our dinner is an unidentifiable whole fish, eyeballs thankfully removed, and a bowl of boiled potatoes with mushrooms. Larissa flips through her book while she pushes the potatoes back and forth. I curl up on the bench and unravel the thought that Valya left for me.
You are right about needing to recover your missing memories. I fear they may be tied to the way the scrubber affects you. Stay in the dining car tonight until everyone is asleep. I’ll help you as best I can.
Our teammates filter through the dining car, as well as heavy-faced old women and skeletal men with bear-trap jaws, but none of them glow with the scrubber’s imprint. I try not to circle too close to their depressing, dull thoughts: fretting over dwindling rations or persistent coughs or promiscuous paramours in Murmansk. Misha and Masha enter in tandem and dine at the opposite end of the car, offering us nothing more than the occasional evil eye.
Larissa heads to sleep once the sky is too dark to mark the flurry of parallel naked birch trees whizzing by. I’m alone in the dining car with a group of loud, intoxicated Komsomol university students. Their thoughts are simple and clear. I wait for the screeching sound of the scrubber but it never comes.
Sergei and Valentin appear at the far end of the car. Sergei fiddles with his hair, trying not to scowl, while Valya wears his scowl like a medal. They give each other a look as they reach my booth, silently jockeying, then both slide onto the bench opposite me.
Valentin drums his fingers against the tabletop. Sorry. We’ll have to wait. His thoughts never waver as he sends the message my way. He’s calm in a way I can only dream of.
“We should reach Warsaw by morning,” Valya says, as the train slows and the conductor calls out a station name somewhere in Belarus. “We’ll arrive at East Berlin by afternoon. Doesn’t leave much time to look around the city before dark.”
I nod, keeping my gaze fixed out the windows, but I know what he means. He wants to scout our escape route.
“I just hope we’re home before next week’s game. Oh—Yulia, I didn’t get to tell you!” Sergei pokes my leg under the table with his foot. “I’m on the third line for Spartak next year! Kruzenko’s letting me play half the games.”
I force a smile on my face and let Shostakovich fill the hollowness in my chest. As much as I want to be genuinely happy for him, I can’t split that desire from the sadness at seeing him settle for this life, this gilded cell that the KGB would put us in, telling us it’s a lavish Party apartment in Kutuzovsky. He deserves better; he deserves to be free. But he has to want it, and a lifetime of Party doctrine has clouded his thoughts more than any scrubber could.