The Faceless Ones

It was raining. Lightning streaked across the sky in various sequences, illuminating the streets below. Maynard Eddings didn’t have an umbrella, nor did he have a raincoat. He was huddled against the wall underneath an awning over an entrance to some deli; the only constant light was the bluish glow of the neon hot dog sign, flickering just beside him. Other people were gathered around him, trying to keep dry, waiting at the Akard DART station for the light rail to come and take them off to the suburbs. It wasn’t always like this for Maynard Eddings. He used to be the owner of Maynard Financial, LLC, one of the most powerful brokerages in the world. He used to have mansions across the US, condos in London and Rome, women hanging off his arms wherever he went. Now he was ruined. Freshly out of the penitentiary in a cheap charity suit, stubble growing on his face. He sighed.

When times were bad before, he knew he could go to the bank and take out a loan, or use his credit cards. Not anymore. No one would lend to anyone with the last name of Eddings, not after the sub-prime scams he had been accused of doing. Of course, he maintained his innocence, but the SEC, the FBI and the court system had politely disagreed. He knew his money was gone when his wife and lawyer had shown up together at the pen to visit. While they walked away, she had given his lawyer a peck on the cheek and he a slap on her rear. And he didn't have any friends - he had forgotten or destroyed anyone close to him on his way to the top, so he understood why none helped him now that he was on the bottom. Those that were with him at the top weren't friends, they were, in the words of Kissinger, "interests".

That’s not who he was mad at. He couldn’t blame his lawyer – his wife was attractive, or his wife – she married him for the money, after all. He couldn't blame his friends either. No, who he thought about on that rainy day in May was Special Agent Milton Brands. Eddings had long learned in life that people were not born equal. Either you were born with that special flair that made you into someone or you were born normal like everyone else, doomed to live your life as a bottom feeder. That was the way of things. What Eddings couldn’t stand about Brands, and all these other government people, was that here were a bunch of ordinaries carrying the tools of the State to keep men like him down. Eddings wasn’t the first man Brands and his cronies had brought in on embezzlement charges. And he wouldn’t be the last. It wouldn’t be too soon until all the Atlases of the world shrugged.

He had to quit doting on his hatred for Milton Brands. There were more pressing concerns – more immediate concerns, mainly that of food and shelter. In his pocket was two hundred dollars and a calling card to someone who could help him get a job – as what? A produce manager? Eddings would starve before he worked at a grocery store. He had people do shopping for him. Well, he did have people who did that for him.

“Excuse me, do you have any spare change? I can give you a dollar, I just need to use the phone,” he said to his closest neighbor, a scrawny, middle aged black man in a tan suit.

“Here, you can just use my phone,” he said, handing his phone to Eddings.

“Oh thanks,” he replied. He dialed the only person’s number he had memorized, his driver. “Hey Marty, it’s me.”

“Yeah, I’d recognize that voice. So they let you out?” Marty said.

“Fresh out. Look, I was wondering if I could hold up at your place for a while?”

“You remember that time you didn’t let me off work when my mom was dying?”

“No.”

“Of course you wouldn’t.”

Click.

Eddings lowered the phone from his ear and stared at it. He began to imagine every future conversation with his past acquaintances turning out like that. He handed the phone back to the man, who then stepped away to catch his train.

“Maynard Eddings?” a woman’s voice called out. A young, freckle faced, red haired woman emerged from the rain to stand next to him under the awning. She folded up her umbrella so that the rain drops wouldn’t flow down on him like the Victoria Falls the rest of his luck was. “I’m Cadence Juneau. I used to work for you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. A pity, she was fairly attractive and did - as Maynard Eddings was always to notice - have a shapely bosom lifting up her purple blouse.

“I used to be one of your admins,” her tone was noticeably drier. She hadn’t originally come up to be hostile to him, but since she had worked in his office and often answered his emails and sent faxes for him, she had even slept with him, and he didn’t even remember her.

Another train rumbled up. The blue banner across the front said “Garland”. “That’s my train,” she told him, excusing herself. She ran to the platform and climbed on the blue-line train. Eddings watched her as she went along, hitting himself in the head with his open palm. He was off his game. Of course, these were strange circumstances. He never had expected to get caught – not that he was doing anything wrong, of course. Well, at least he had the five hundred dollars in his pocket. That’ll give him a few nights to think at the Magnolia Hotel and at least somewhere to go to get out of the rain.

Eddings stared at himself in the small hotel room mirror. With his five hundred dollars, he had four nights. He sighed. Four nights, or one night with a lot of drink, and he really felt like the drink, to take off the edge. Moments later, he found himself at a sports bar, sitting at a marble countertop, staring gloomily in the dimly lit mirror, occasionally glancing to the side where they were filming some reality TV show. This is it then, having to mix with all these ordinaries, drinking scotch and dressed in a cheap suit. Even the material felt cheap. It could get worse, he supposed, he could be on the street, without the room to go back to. Three more nights then.

Several days later, Eddings had no room and no money. He had squandered it away, something he had never done before. How times had changed, but he had to take it how it came. Standing near the Pearl Street DART station, he leaned against the wall, looking at a beggar. The beggar was dressed in a dirty brown raincoat with a collection of argyle rags underneath. His face had long been unshaven and was, in a way that Eddings couldn’t quite pin, rather nondescript. It wasn’t that he had no features, it was that he had no describable features. He didn’t understand what he was seeing, which brought him intense interest.

The beggar went from person to person, head tucked down and letting out a low haggard mutter for help. A walrus could have panhandled better and invoked more sympathy than this bum. Even more interesting to Maynard was that no one seemed to notice him. They could, of course, have been ignoring him, he would have done the same on a normal occasion - had he ever had to take the light rail before, that is. He would have been reading the Wall Street Journal or going over various numbers on his iPhone, completely oblivious to the outside world. But now he was disillusioned with the world of finance. He just didn’t want to go back – there was an unexplainable aversion. Not that he could go back, anyway, who would hire him? Who would lend him money to invest? He had no capital and he had no leverage.

“Change?” a mutter drifted through the air from beneath the beggar’s constantly shifting beard. It was low and forced, not unlike the solid rattle of an aging HVAC unit. The rattle sliced through Eddings’ thoughts and he looked up at the beggar and attempted to meet his gaze, but it was too downcast and wasn’t really holdable anyway. The beggar’s face made him sick and made his head spin. He didn’t understand what was happening – he couldn’t even figure out what color the bum’s beard was.

“You… can see me?” the beggar said, raising his face towards Eddings. Eddings stepped back, gasping.

“You have no face!” he said. That’s what it was that Eddings didn’t understand. It wasn’t that the beard had no color; it was that there was no beard. It wasn’t that the face was indescribable; it was that there was no face to describe!

The beggar shuffled off.

Eddings was sick to the stomach. He had to sit down or he was going to empty it on the railway. He found a seat at one of the steel mesh benches, designed so that no one would want to sit in one for longer than it took for a train to arrive.

“You’re Maynard Eddings,” came a gruff, cigarette laced voice from next to him on the bench. Someone was resisting the design technique of the bench and had been sitting in it for longer than the train to arrive, Eddings realized. Eddings looked next to him, hoping that this guy wasn’t faceless like the last one. It was another bum, but this one had a very describable face, thankfully. It hung low, like a pug’s, drooping down to the ground. His eyes were clear and blue and there was a deep scar across his left cheek.

“Yes,” Eddings said. His queasiness was beginning to subside, though the pungent smell of the man next to him was quickly giving him a new reason to be queasy.

“Welcome to our world,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Only those on their way can see the faceless ones. It’s a difficult sight.”

“You mean those people weren’t just ignoring him?”

“There isn’t much difference, is there?” the man said. Eddings could smell vodka on his breath, but the man spoke clearly and with an even cadence. He was evidently not drunk.

“I guess not,” he said softly after a moment. “Are there many of… of them?”

“There is a whole city of them down at the Trinity Park, underneath the highway. Few can stand them, but we’ll all be them soon, so we make sure there’s food. Us norms supply them today, other norms supply us tomorrow. It’s an investment of sorts,” he chuckled. "I guess that kind of work doesn't really make sense to you folk."

“How does it happen?”

“When you’re on the street long enough, you begin to be forgotten by everyone. You begin to disappear from existence and eventually you even forget who you are. When that happens, the image that you project begins to deteriorate. It's complicated, you know. But basically, you're only the sum of what people think of you, on like, a psychological, spiritual and metaphysical level.”

Eddings was quiet. Maybe this guy was drunk. There was no clear way of telling, except perhaps by the insanity that he was hearing. But then there was that… that thing that he saw earlier. Would he really become like that one day? No, certainly people remembered him, if not even for good things.

“You have fallen a long way, Maynard Eddings, but you still have a great distance more to fall.” The bum stood up, patted his dirt caked jeans and started walking away.

Eddings raced to his side. “Wait! Who are you? Why are you not faceless?”

“My name is Robert Keines, but that’s not important. And I have only not turned yet… I am still remembered, someone out there still thinks of me.”

Eddings stopped, letting Keines walk on. Robert Keines. He knew that name from somewhere. Robert Keines was a painter, that’s where he recognized the name. He had bought one of his paintings sometime ago at a gallery showing down on Lemmon Street. And he’s a bum? How fickle is fortune after all? But at least he’s clearly not forgotten. Insane, very likely, but not forgotten. And what had he, Maynard Eddings, done that was lasting and would leave him remembered and not without identity? He had built a financial empire that now only lives on in dust covered SEC and FBI records. And who reads those?

But he barely remembered Keines, even the fame in art fades, and unless they had achieved something great, then artists will fade all the same. What both Keines and himself had in common then, was that clearly they were both without true friends. Eddings wondered what the artist had done to alienate himself. And perhaps his own infamy could propel him in the same terms Keines’s art had done. Perhaps he will be enough cursed by those whose lives he had ruined that his face will remain.

He no longer was greatly worried about food and shelter, or killing Milton Brands, now that he knew there were greater things to fear.

Eddings felt strange. It wasn’t the Pabst Blue Ribbon that was in the tall can on the ground next to him. It wasn’t that he was awake in the cold at three in the morning, sitting on the Mockingbird Street bridge that crossed over Highway 75, staring at the giant towers of downtown Dallas just to the south. He was feeling extraordinarily lonely and keen to asking himself the most basic existential questions.

“Quit pondering that, Maynard,” a voice came from behind.

“Robert!”

“You’re starting to regress. You feel it, don’t you?”

“How do I stop it?”

Keines grunted and was quiet. “The stars of the city are its lights,” Keines finally said.

“What does that mean?”

“It’s from a song I heard once. It means lots of things. You can’t see the stars from the city, but all the lights shine like stars. But it can also mean that the lights of the city, the real philanthropists and do-gooders, are its stars. I used to make tons of money, Maynard, but I hated everyone. It didn’t matter that I was an excellent painter – the best – I treated everyone badly and now look where I am.” He looked up, seeing only the North Star shining clearly. “Stars don't eat up everything around them. They give light. Black holes eat up everything around them. We're black holes, Maynard.”

“You want a beer?” Eddings asked Keines after a while.

“How you have fallen,” Keines shook his head with a smile. “Sure.” Eddings handed him a Pabst. They both sat there, staring at the stars of the city, listening to the cars roar behind them.

“I see you’ve managed to keep your shoes,” Keines said.

“Yeah, someone tried to steal them the other night, but I kicked them.”

“Brutal,” Keines replied. “Maybe he needed them more than you?”

“We can’t all have my shoes,” Eddings replied.

“I’m going to help you,” Keines said.

“You’re a star,” Eddings told him.

At first, Maynard Eddings had refused to beg. He had always worked hard for everything he did and he would never accept charity from anyone. Hunger had a humbling effect on him, though. There was an obvious and inverse relationship between Eddings’s hunger and his level of pride. He was comforted also by the fact that people could still see him and that made the matter of his panhandling easier to swallow.

He found some good tactics. He learned that people who were trapped, that is, on a patio or at a bus stop, were less likely to give than people walking along. Also, the more exposure to people he had increased his return, so that it was best to beg during lunch or rush hours than while people were at work. The sales rule, “law of averages”, also played into effect: you couldn’t get angry when you didn’t get any money, you just put your ego aside and moved on, the big one was waiting. Also, the middle class people were more likely to give a dollar or two. Service industry people were always bitter towards him and rich people were usually a bit more stingy. He therefore stationed himself near the lunch areas, so that he was in the path of people who were either going to or coming back from lunch. He was in-between the great rectangular Bank of America building and the marble clad Department of Justice building, near the great parking lot that divided the two so eloquently. There was where Milton Brands worked. He needed resources if he was going to take care of Milton Brands. And those resources were the people walking by. Every time he turned towards that building, he sneered.

“Excuse me sir, I just need to get a few dollars to eat,” he said to one guy walking along in business casual. Those are the best targets. This man gave him two dollars.

“Thank you,” he said to him. He wasn’t to the point of doling out blessings, but he did thank people. He turned back and saw Cadence Juneau walking right towards him. He remembered her name this time and he remembered how hurt she was when he forgot who she was. And he remembered what Keines had said. Normally he wouldn’t care about hurting some woman’s feelings, especially one he had no real use for. But she remembered him and that’s what he needed now.

“Cadence!” he called out to her. He saw her turn to her male friend and say, “Here he is.” She didn’t seem happy. “Cadence, I’m sorry about the other day, I was just under so much stress and you look so different then when I last knew you.”

“Different?”

“Prettier. You must have done something with your hair.”

“Well, yes. Look, just get away, I can’t deal with you,” she told him.

When the two passed, he heard the friend say, “Good job, I’m proud of you.”

Eddings shuffled away from Cadence, head down and hurt. Why was he hurt? He wouldn’t have cared before, but now he was so afraid. He was to meet Keines soon and now all he could think of was Cadence. This was idiocy, he thought. Screw her, if she’s going to be like that. He’ll find someone else to remember him. He was strong, he didn’t need anyone else. And yet he did if he was going to survive. He was already starting to lose himself. Soon he’ll be one of the faceless ones too.

“Maynard!” Keines called out to him. “Are you ready?”

“Yes. Where are we going?”

“Just come with me. I can’t promise you it will be easy, though.”

They walked together to the south of the downtown, towards the Trinity River Bridge, built as a loop around downtown, barring practical use of the greenbelt known as the Trinity River Park. The park was always empty and barren, perfect for its primary inhabitants – the faceless ones. The abode of those who were forgotten. Keines led Eddings to one of the bridges that spanned over the park, to get a view of the whole expanse, to see the whole population of them.

“Look at them,” he told Eddings.

“I can’t,” Eddings replied.

“If you want to live, look at them!”

“I can’t!” he cried back. He turned around and threw up. “It’s too… they’re too… nauseating. They make my head spin.”

“You’re weak. If you want to be saved, you must walk among them. There’s something that you have to get that they have among them. Look at them from here, it’s easier here. Get used to it. Then we’ll go down.”

Eddings brought himself back up to the rail, forcing himself to look down. His eyes kept averting from their faces, brushing off, but he kept forcing them back. It made his stomach reel, churning and rising.

“Look at them!” Keines yelled.

He was dizzy. He was going to wretch again. He was going to fall down and pass out. But he kept forcing himself to keep looking. He didn’t wretch again or do those other things. His nausea subsided. He became stronger.

“Let’s do it,” he told Keines.

Keines led him down below the bridge, into the pit of the forgotten. They pushed their way to the middle, Eddings shivering and shaking along the way, but he still managed to hold himself. They arrived at the center of the park, next to, ironically, a monument to the unknown soldier.

“Now,” Keines said to Eddings, who was keeping his eyes in constant aversion to the faceless ones around him. “Look at them.”

He forced his eyes up to look at those faces. They constantly slipped and slid and changed. Was it his imagination or was it real? The faces took form and changed. Their voices called out to him for help. “Help me!” “Help me!” “Help!” They all called to him in whispers. They reached out and touched his jacket and his face and his hair. They all crowded in, wanting so badly to touch him.

And there was his brother next to him. He had last seen his brother, asking for his help, having just been through a foreclosure. Maynard had said good riddance. There were his parents, who he had left alone in the nursing home all those years.

“Scott?” Eddings called out. “Mom? Dad?”

The faces slid and changed constantly. There was Lisa and Brian and David and Joan, there were all the people who had been a part of his life that he had cast out and trampled on. There was Milton Brands. There was Cadence.

“No, I can’t do this!” he cried out. “Get me out of here!”

“Look at them!” Keines yelled back, pulling Eddings’s hair to force his face up and forward.

“Help me! Help me!” they continued crying out. He knew these faces, he knew these voices. Eddings punched Keines in the jaw and knocked his hands out of his hair. Then he pushed all the homeless and faceless, making his way through to the open. When he was free, he at last wretched, emptying out the remaining contents of his stomach. “No, no, no,” he kept repeating to himself as he kept crawling away. He finally broke, unable to crawl further and he curled up in a fetal position crying. Crying to his brother, to his parents, to Cadence, to all the people he had ruined. Keines followed him and knelt down, putting his hand on his shoulder.

“Who did you see?”

Eddings told him. “Did that happen to you too? You saw them too?”

“Yes. Others have to. I stayed so that I could show others, change others, save them. This is worth more than my art, it is my art now, in a sense.”

“I see why you don’t change now.”

“Why?” Keines asked, despite knowing the answer. He wondered if Eddings really got it.

“So that you won’t be forgotten?”

“No, no,” Keines said, frowning. “Or, in a sense, I suppose, but I like to think it has more to do with love, but maybe you’re right. It’s still a bit selfish isn’t it? But I’m an artist. I imagine higher things.”

“I know how that is, I was a financier. I wanted higher things.”

“Our higher things were a bit different, I’m thinking.”

“Probably,” Eddings wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “What now?”

“Now maybe you won’t be forgotten. Go and make yourself again.”

Eddings was back on the street, on Wednesday, at the same place he had seen Cadence. He was staring at the federal court house, thinking that he should let go of his hatred for Milton Brands. He looked there no longer with contempt, but rather, with ease. It was okay. He had deserved what he got.

“Maynard?” he heard someone call. He turned. It was Cadence. “Maynard, listen -”

“No, you listen. I’m sorry. I was terrible to you. Not just for not recognizing you, but for when you worked with me. For what happened.”

She saw his earnestness. Tears flowed from her face freely. “I’m sorry for being cruel to you the other day. Look, I know you need some help. I’ve got some extra money that maybe I can help you with, as you know, a loan or something?”

“That’d be nice. I don’t think I can take anything from you though.”

“Well, you’re welcome to it.”

“I won’t forget your kindness. Please, don’t forget me.”

 She looked at him strangely. Then she said, “I won’t.” 

Frozen

Ivan shut the thick, oak doors of the Hermitage.  He stepped outside, still under the awning, watching the sailors leave their footprints across the snow and ice covered plaza, back to their boat.  They had come to fix the heater for the museum curator, Orbeli, after they had hooked up a line from their ship, to give a few rooms light.  The artists were all thankful enough, but Ivan didn’t understand what anyone expected them to do with the light.  It was long since the temperature had gotten so cold that no one’s fingers could hold a paintbrush or a pen.  He had resorted to doing works of charcoal, works that looked like they were done by a kindergarten student.

He was glad to get out of the museum.  In the great halls of the Winter Palace, it had become colder than it was outside, and even in the outside the air bit into what was left uncovered by his face, and quickly froze the moisture coming from his mouth, leaving ice crystals on the outside of his mask.  A walk would warm him up, if he had the energy to walk.  The rations were so small these days.  The Nazis had long since stopped shelling the city, knowing that hunger would kill them all soon enough and empty the city of Leningraders.  Living Leningraders, at least.  Who knew what ghosts would remain to haunt the canals at night, hopefully exacting revenge upon their German besiegers.    

The wind was quiet.  The air was quiet.  Everything was quiet.  Ivan heard only his own heavy boots, crunching against the snow.  He walked towards the Summer Gardens, crossing a bridge over a frozen canal, stopping momentarily to light a cigarette.  It was midday, but clouds hung low across the entire sky, appearing as frozen and cold as the land before it.  When he came to an intersection, he saw two people talking.  One was a woman, her cheeks rosy, her eyes crystal blue.  She was dressed in a green greatcoat of an NKVD police officer, though it was a bit too big for her and the fur hat with the shining star kept slipping over her eyes. 

The NKVD woman was talking to an older woman, who was thin and frail.  The skin that Ivan could see barely hung on to her skull, her eyes so deep set that he wondered if he could see her brain through them.  Her lips were drawn in and her teeth were almost black.  But the rags she wore made her look thick and healthy – had he seen her from a distance.  “You have to find him,” she was telling the officer while holding onto her arm.  “That boy took my card.  My card.  Can’t you get me another card?”

“I can’t,” the officer said.  “They stopped giving replacements.  I can look for the boy.  What did he look like?”  She looked up as she saw Ivan approach, rolling her eyes towards Ivan and sighing heavily, a puff of steam coming out of her mouth. 

Ivan looked at her.  Looked at her face.  He knew her, but from where? 

The NKVD woman came up to him.  “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry, excuse me?” 

“You’ve been staring at me for ten minutes now.”

“No, it couldn’t have been so long.  I must have dazed off,” Ivan said, his words trailing off along with his train of thought.  He wondered if she had anything to eat.  She looked so healthy. 

Her expression changed, from one that was as cold as the ice on top of the nearby canal to something much warmer, which seemed to give Ivan some heat.  “Vanya?” she said.  “Vanya?  Is that you?  Oh my God, look at you.”  She put her arm around him, rubbing his sides as though that would help warm him. 

“Do you have anything to eat?” Ivan asked.

“Vanya, don’t you recognize me?  It’s Vera.  I’m Vera.  I was your art student all last year.”

“Vera,” Ivan said, trying to trigger his own cognition by repeating her name.  “Vera, yes, I remember you.  But weren’t you a secretary?”

“They ran out of detectives, they sent them all to the front.  So they made me a detective.  It’s not bad, they feed us as much as the soldiers.  When I was just a secretary, I was getting a civilian ration.  Oh my god!”  She reached into her jacked and pulled out a piece of bread.  She held it up to Ivan. 

Ivan snatched the bread and shoved it into his mouth, pushing the crumbs into his cheeks as though he were a squirrel storing nuts.  Only then, when it was all in his mouth, did he begin to chew.  Vera wiped at her eyes as she watched Ivan, trying to keep them dry before any tears could freeze on her cheeks. 

When Ivan at last swallowed, he said, “They feed us, but it’s not much.  They want us to keep with our work.  They say our work inspires the Soviet people to keep on.  But what work we do!  How can we work when everything is so cold?  When we have no food?  I – instead of sketching, I ate the paper and the pencil.  It tasted like candy, sweet, sweet candy.” 

“Come, let’s walk,” Vera said, guiding him along.  They passed benches where people were sitting, huddled together.  Ivan could not see them very well, he kept his eyes down on his feet, pushing them one step at a time.  He didn’t want to see the people on the benches, to see that there was no breath coming from them.

They came upon a long line of people, waiting for their rations.  Each with their cards in their pockets, and their hands stuffed deep, protecting their cards.  They watched each other warily.  They all heard the stories, of people stabbing each other for cards, of stealing cards, of best friends turning on each other, killing each other, just to get a hold of a little red card.  The card meant food.  Not much food, but something.  Vera recognized someone in the line.  It was another woman her age, in her mid 20s.  Unlike Vera though, she wore a dirty, ragged coat and her eyes were as sunken as the old woman’s.  Ivan couldn’t tell what color her eyes were, they were so taken by shadows.  “Olya,” Vera called out to her.  “Olya, how are you?”  She put her hands on Olya’s arms, gently caressing them and she kissed Olya’s cheeks.  Olya tried to kiss back, but she moved too slowly. 

“Olya, tell me, where is your husband?  They said he hasn’t been coming to the factory.”

“He’s so sick, Vera.  I’m getting food for him now.  He’s so sick, he can’t come to the factory.” 

“But he has to, everyone has to work,” Vera said, her voice soft, her eyes just as soft.  “How can we hope to get the Germans if no one is reporting to their duties?”

“See for yourself, he’s too sick to come down.  All he can do is eat.  I bring him bread, and he eats it.  That’s how they all are.  Everyone in our apartment.  I bring all their food and all they do is eat it.  And Mitya, he even sometimes eats my food!  It’s just not enough.  He’s barely making it, I tell you.  And all night long he just talks about food.  He asks me if we can eat the table.  We’ve already eaten the wallpaper.” 

Vera pulled her towards herself, “Come along with me.  Let’s get your rations and then I’ll check up on Dmitri Ivanovich.” 

They went to the front of the line, Vera telling some of the citizens to stand aside and let Olya go along.  Olya showed all of her ration cards to the distributer and he gave her the proper share.  Olya said, “No, there should be more.  That’s just not enough.  There should be more.”  But she didn’t say it loud enough for the distributor.  The only person who could hear was Vera. 

“No, it’s the right amount.  Come on, let’s bring this back to Mitya.” 

Ivan shuffled along behind them, not having anything else to do.  Besides, he needed Vera to take him back to the Hermitage, he had already forgotten his way.  It was also better than just standing there, as he could feel his veins beginning to freeze when he didn’t move.  They walked several more blocks until they arrived at Olya’s apartment complex, an old baroque building that once was a palace but had long since been divided up into communal apartments, each floor housing five families.   She lived on the fourth floor. 

Vera pushed open the ice crusted doors.  They slowly slid open, ice and snow falling on their heads.  It was dark inside, the only light from the door and from frosted over windows in the stairwell above.  They climbed the steps, careful as not to trip.  Ivan, in his weakness, held on to the rail as he ascended, behind the two women.  “How old I feel,” Ivan said.  “Vera, how old am I?  Before the war I was only in my thirties, but now I’m in my sixties.  I just want to sit all the time, sit and rest and think.”

“Sometimes it’s best to keep moving,” Vera said.  “Especially in the darkness, and we are in Leningrad.  Now, Leningrad is the darkness.”

“It was good for a while, wasn’t it?  We had something.  Or am I just dreaming?”

They came to Olya’s door and pushed it open.  The apartment was quiet and still.  They stepped in.  “Mitya, we have visitors,” Olya called out.  “Oh, he’s right this way.  He’s always in the dining room, just waiting for me to feed him.  No, Mitya, I’m not talking about you.  He’s so sensitive you know.”   

As Olya continued talking to Mitya in the other room, Vera looked back at Ivan.  Ivan said to her, “There’s something wrong.”  Neither could hear Mitya responding to Olya, though she heard him fine.  Even inside, it was cold, their breath rising in clouds above them.   

“Okay, okay, I’ve got your bread, we’re coming.”  They walked down the corridor and pushed open the door into the communal dining room.  Olya moved across the room, swiftly now.  She walked behind the table to where Mitya sat and she kissed him on the cheek.  “Here’s your bread, sweetheart.” 

Ivan and Vera stopped at the door, Vera’s mouth dropped and her hand raised to cover it.  Mitya sat with three others at a long wood table, crusted over by ice.  Mitya and the three other men sitting around it were pale and white, frost caked over their hair and eyebrows.  They sat, leaning back, each balanced against the backs of the chairs, though one of the men had fallen forward, his forehead now attached to the table through a bridge of ice.  Each of them were nearly as thin as skeletons, the skin pulled back and tight across their bones.   Ivan whispered, “She thinks they’re alive.” 

Olya set the table, putting plates for each of the men.  For the one whose head was on the table, she put the table by his ear.  “Volya is always sleeping,” she said, patting his head.  Then she placed the daily ration on the table, an eighth of a loaf of bread. 

“But where does the food go?” Vera asked him. 

“Do we want to know the answer?” Ivan asked her.  “Look at their hands.”  They each only had half their fingers, most of them had been missing up to their palms.  “Something’s been eating their hands.”

“Rats,” Vera said.  “She has rats.”

“Rats,” Ivan repeated, but in a different tone.  His spirit was stirring again.  “You can eat rats.” 

“Olya,” Vera said as Ivan started peering around in the corners and behind the furniture.  “Let’s have a seat.”  She pulled her friend down to the bed in the corner.  “Listen, they’re not with us.” 

“Of course they’re with us, they’re right at the table.”

“No, I mean they’re not with us, anymore.”  As Vera tried to explain to Olya that her friends were dead, Ivan wandered into the kitchen.  He heard some shuffling inside a cupboard.  He grabbed a kitchen knife and lifted it up.  How hunger increases the senses, tones one’s ability!  Ivan felt like a tiger, stalking through the icy forests of Siberia, hunting a great deer. 

A few moments later, he came back to an Olya whose spirit was gone and a Vera who was quietly crying.  “I have lunch,” he said, as he bit into the back of the rat which was speared by his knife.  “Excuse my manners, would you like any?”  Though with his feverish eyes, he didn’t look like he was really prepared to share. 

Vera ran into the washroom.  Olya continued to stare at the wall, ignorant of Ivan’s presence.  When Ivan finished his meal, leaving a pile of blood and bones on the table, he sat next to Olya.  His preternatural senses were clearing away and he was returning to normal Ivan, with a full belly of food.  He looked at Olya.  He knew what he was watching; he was watching a woman dying.  This was the same look he’d seen on so many park benches in the past.  “Soon, you’ll be in a better place.  No one can remain in this hell forever.” 

                Ivan got up and walked into the corridor, just as Vera was coming out of the washroom.  Ivan shook his head.  “Don’t go back there.  She’s gone.”

                “I killed her,” Vera said.

                “You’re NKVD.  Isn’t that your job?” 

                “No, my job is to help.  To stop crime.  To stop fraud and theft.  Not to kill.  That’s not my job.”

                “She was committing fraud.  You can write a report on it,” Ivan said.

                “No!” she hit Ivan’s chest and fell into him.  He fell back, unable to hold her up, until he hit a wall.  She cried into his coat.  “I can’t take this anymore, Vanya.  I can’t.  How much longer can we go like this?  What did we do to the Germans?  I don’t understand.”

                “We have to survive,” Ivan said.  “We have to live long enough to kill them.  To kill their wives, their children, their spirits, as they have killed ours.  I don’t know how, but we must.  I buried my child with my wife, and I paid someone a loaf of bread to throw my wife into a ditch.  And I am so cold and so hungry – I barely feel human anymore.  I’m not human, I’m eating rats out of cupboards and shuffling around parks, and eating pencils – all I think about is food.  I used to have so many beautiful thoughts, about life and love.  But now just about food.  But the worst part is, is that I know what’s happening to myself.  I see myself as this vile and starved animal and I can do nothing about it.  We must go on, Vera, even if it’s just to spite the Germans.  The Communists told us there is no Hell, because there is no God, but this is it, this is Hell, and the Germans are demons sent by God.” 

                “You’re talking nonsense now, Vanya.  Come, let’s get you home.”

                “Yes, home.”  They walked down the stairs and out onto the streets, Vera holding Ivan’s arm, so that he wouldn’t fall.  As they walked, Ivan said, “You know Vera, I had always liked you.  You were the prettiest in class.  Before I used to think about you, about what it would be like to make love with you.” 

                Vera was quiet, but she squeezed his arm.

                “But now, I just wonder how you would taste.  What does that say?”

                Vera sighed and forced a smile.  “It says you’re hungry.  I’m hungry too.  We’re all hungry.  But you know, if you eat the snow, it keeps your belly full?  Before my promotion, I used to eat so much snow.  And you can mix it with things to change the taste.  With a little mud and dead leaves, it can spice it up.” 

                “Well then Vera,” Ivan said, trying to smile.  “I’ll hold off on eating you and I’ll eat some snow.  Thank you for the walk, but I see we are already back to the Hermitage.  I would like to see you again, Vera, but I know that one of us will be dead soon.” 

                “No, we’ve got to live, remember,” Vera said.  She hugged him and kissed his cheek.  “You said we have to live, to spite the Germans.”   

                “Yes, we must live.  To spite the Germans.”  Vera left him in the courtyard of the Hermitage.  The great column with the golden statue of the angel holding the cross was covered in white sheets, to disguise it from the German bombers.  He sat at the feet of the great stone Atlases which held up the balcony overhead.  “But really,” he said to himself.  “I just want to sleep.  I can smell shashliuk and the smell comes from my dreams.”