I could smell Clipboard cooking.
When his head was yanked back, the hot metal tugged at chunks of skin before breaking loose, leaving a torn, glossy wound.
“What do you think, Kotik? Five centimeters?” Vitali asked, inspecting the man’s half-burned face. A blood vessel burst, flooding his right eye with a deep red.
“Stop…” I whispered, but barely heard my own voice.
Vitali didn’t wait for my answer. “Luckily, a train just came in from Moscow with one Daniil Tochkin, formerly known as Valid Aliev.”
Clipboard panted, eyes (eye) dashing around the room for anyone who’d help him. He stopped on me.
“Please!” he begged.
“Katya,” Vitali said, far too calmly. “Is he the one who hit you?”
“I don’t know…” I muttered again, and that was a lie, because all I could see at that moment was the red face seething above me. Hands throwing me against the wall. The gun pointed at my face. The strike and the sensation of my flesh splitting open, taking everything I had left inside me that wanted to believe monsters existed, and men couldn’t be monsters.
“Katya.” This time, his tone touched my bones. “Did. This. Man. Hit. You.”
Only then did Clipboard’s face flood with recognition, drowning his last sliver of hope.
I became suspended in a fragile moment where my past naivety and concept of virtue fell apart, and my future hadn’t yet formed. Who Katya was before Vitali had left a long time ago, so quietly I barely noticed. Or maybe I shut out her thundering, retreating steps. I didn’t know who Katya would become. I like to think that if I did, I’d be okay with it. But at that time, the man in front of me—the man who’d shattered my sense of humanity being basically good—knelt naked on the ground, and his eyes pleaded for me to help him. And he held no regret for what he did, only the knowledge that the time for penance had arrived, and my forgiveness was the thread keeping the noose from tightening.
Except, he was wrong. It was not my forgiveness, but Vitali’s. And Vitali wouldn’t forgive him.
I understood his calm leading up to this day. “Yes…”
“No—I—it wasn’t! It was—”
“See, Kotik says it was you,” Vitali interrupted, “and I think it was you. Misha, do you think it was him?”
Misha was as pale as the man writhing naked on the floor. He muttered something and looked away.
“My point is,” Vitali stood and flicked a bit of organic residue off his wrist, “if you’re going around hitting so many womenthat you don’t even remember my Kotik, that’stoomany women, Ruslan. She is a jewel. You do not forget such a woman. Just look at her—perfect.”
A part of Clipboard’s face began sloughing off.
“Vitali…” I rasped. “Please…”
“Are you a Christian, Ruslan?” he asked.
“Yes! Yes! Just please—anything—just let me—!”
“You already know you’re going to die,” Vitali continued. “You were going to die the moment you set foot in that podyezd. But I am a patient man. We aren’t animals. I’ve even brought in a priest to give you your last rites.”
Everything in me went numb, the tingle at the back of my skull turning into a buzz.
Boris opened the door and let in a skinny man with death written all over his face, followed closely behind by Ivan.
“My God, forgive me…” the man mumbled, his bulging eyes on poor, naked, burnt Clipboard.
“Some fears are earned with pain: a child will not touch fire after he burns his hand. Some fears are earned through camaraderie: a man who sees another burn will not walk into the flames,” Vitali said. “So what is the fear that eats through a man who knows someone he loves will stop loving him—but he will never stop loving them? Tell me, do you think your brother will stop loving you when he finds out it’s his life or yours?”
I could not look at either one of them, so I stared at my shoes. My expensive, expensive shoes.
“Batuyshka, please begin,” Vitali said, nodding to the newcomer. When the man only trembled in place, he added, “I saidbegin, Aliev.”
The man opened his mouth and quickly gathered himself enough not to end up on the wrong side of Vitali’s attention.He recited, “By the grace of His compassion and the love of mankind, forgive you, my child, Ruslan, all your transgressions…”
