application form asked about blood relatives. Besides which, he lived in Baku, we lived in the mountains. I hardly
ever saw him. If he passed me in the street today I wouldn’t recognize him.”
“How could he pass you in the street today if he’s dead?”
“I only meant—I don’t sleep much, comrade interrogator, so I sometimes mix things up.”
“You mix up innocence and guilt,” he said with so much conviction it set me to wondering if he knew something I didn’t.
It was long about then that the biggest of the guards, an Uzbek with the broken, badly set nose and the long sideburns of an itinerant wrestler, turned up in comrade interrogator’s corner
office. We sized each other up for a few seconds. I didn’t doubt, despite my bad knee, I could take him if it came to a test of strength. The Uzbek, clearly a professional, checked to make
sure my wrists and ankles were properly attached to the irons in the wall. Christophorovich came up with a man’s sock and the Uzbek, using a wooden soup ladle, began filling it with sand from
a red firefighting box. When the sock was half stuffed with sand, he tied the filled part off with a piece of string and tested it against the palm of his hand. Satisfied, he looked over at comrade
interrogator, who was back at the table, the napkin tucked under his chin, eating his supper meal. A second plate filled with sausages and cabbage was waiting for me if I signed a confession.
Picking gristle out of his teeth with a fingernail, which convinced me he had working-class roots after all, Christophorovich nodded. The wrestler, if that’s what he was before he went to
work for the Organs, came up to me and gently pinned my head so my right cheek was flat against the wall. There is an unwritten code between really big men like the Uzbek and me—you should
not make use of your strength to hurt someone if you can avoid it, you should use it respectfully if you can’t avoid it. Which is why the Uzbek said his name.
“Islam Issa.”
I said mine. “Fikrit Shotman.”
His grip on my chin tightened. “Say when you are ready.”
“Do what you must do to earn your bread,” I told him.
He locked my head against the wall with one big paw and began to bash the sock filled with sand against the inside of my left ear.
I am not as thick as some who shall remain nameless pretend. I took this as a good, even positive sign—using the sock filled with sand, as opposed to a brick, and concentrating on the
inside of my ear meant they didn’t want to leave marks on my body. And that meant that without me confessing, they weren’t sure they could prove I committed a crime and would have to
let me go home to Agrippina. Look, they weren’t ticklish about leaving marks on Sergo’s body, you see my point? Which can only mean they were confident he was guilty as sin, but
didn’t rule out I might be innocent like the baby Jesus, though, mind you, I wouldn’t say that out loud because, as they drummed into us at Party meetings, Russian Orthodox is the opium
of the people, something like that.
The beatings continued over the next interrogations and I began to go deaf in my left ear. It started with a terrible ringing. I tried to get my mind off the pain by picturing, one after the
other, all of Agrippina’s tattoos—the snake twisting up her thigh, the map of Africa, the faces of Lenin and Stalin and the one she called Engels though I was in on the secret, I knew
it was the traitor Trotsky, the Mona Lisa painting even though it was in Paris, France and not Russia, the two peacocks, one perched on each of her small shoulders. The painkiller worked for
a while, then the throbbing began to blur the tattoos until I couldn’t see them clearly. The more they beat me, the farther away the ringing got until it seemed to come from another room, and
then from another floor of the prison. After that there was only soreness in the ear, soreness and silence. And through the fog of
ever saw him. If he passed me in the street today I wouldn’t recognize him.”
“How could he pass you in the street today if he’s dead?”
“I only meant—I don’t sleep much, comrade interrogator, so I sometimes mix things up.”
“You mix up innocence and guilt,” he said with so much conviction it set me to wondering if he knew something I didn’t.
It was long about then that the biggest of the guards, an Uzbek with the broken, badly set nose and the long sideburns of an itinerant wrestler, turned up in comrade interrogator’s corner
office. We sized each other up for a few seconds. I didn’t doubt, despite my bad knee, I could take him if it came to a test of strength. The Uzbek, clearly a professional, checked to make
sure my wrists and ankles were properly attached to the irons in the wall. Christophorovich came up with a man’s sock and the Uzbek, using a wooden soup ladle, began filling it with sand from
a red firefighting box. When the sock was half stuffed with sand, he tied the filled part off with a piece of string and tested it against the palm of his hand. Satisfied, he looked over at comrade
interrogator, who was back at the table, the napkin tucked under his chin, eating his supper meal. A second plate filled with sausages and cabbage was waiting for me if I signed a confession.
Picking gristle out of his teeth with a fingernail, which convinced me he had working-class roots after all, Christophorovich nodded. The wrestler, if that’s what he was before he went to
work for the Organs, came up to me and gently pinned my head so my right cheek was flat against the wall. There is an unwritten code between really big men like the Uzbek and me—you should
not make use of your strength to hurt someone if you can avoid it, you should use it respectfully if you can’t avoid it. Which is why the Uzbek said his name.
“Islam Issa.”
I said mine. “Fikrit Shotman.”
His grip on my chin tightened. “Say when you are ready.”
“Do what you must do to earn your bread,” I told him.
He locked my head against the wall with one big paw and began to bash the sock filled with sand against the inside of my left ear.
I am not as thick as some who shall remain nameless pretend. I took this as a good, even positive sign—using the sock filled with sand, as opposed to a brick, and concentrating on the
inside of my ear meant they didn’t want to leave marks on my body. And that meant that without me confessing, they weren’t sure they could prove I committed a crime and would have to
let me go home to Agrippina. Look, they weren’t ticklish about leaving marks on Sergo’s body, you see my point? Which can only mean they were confident he was guilty as sin, but
didn’t rule out I might be innocent like the baby Jesus, though, mind you, I wouldn’t say that out loud because, as they drummed into us at Party meetings, Russian Orthodox is the opium
of the people, something like that.
The beatings continued over the next interrogations and I began to go deaf in my left ear. It started with a terrible ringing. I tried to get my mind off the pain by picturing, one after the
other, all of Agrippina’s tattoos—the snake twisting up her thigh, the map of Africa, the faces of Lenin and Stalin and the one she called Engels though I was in on the secret, I knew
it was the traitor Trotsky, the Mona Lisa painting even though it was in Paris, France and not Russia, the two peacocks, one perched on each of her small shoulders. The painkiller worked for
a while, then the throbbing began to blur the tattoos until I couldn’t see them clearly. The more they beat me, the farther away the ringing got until it seemed to come from another room, and
then from another floor of the prison. After that there was only soreness in the ear, soreness and silence. And through the fog of
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