Tanya

[mies]

“Six sOtokee.”                              


“Six sOtokee? What’s that, the name of Pushkin’s poem?” he asked, waving his hands over his head.                               

“SOtoka is equal to one hundred square meters. After great famines of 1920s government permits people to have property to grow food. Six sOtokee is what average citizen is allowed. Now there is even magazine about dacha life called Six Sotok. In it you will read such interesting things as how to recognize potato plants and how to keep biting flies away. Waving hands over head is not advised.”

1 sOtka
2, 3, 4, sOtki
5, 6, 7, 8, 9,... sOtok

In terms of content - suggested excerpts are quite historically and factually accurate. Or at least do not ring any alarms as "unreal" and "impossible".

[PARADOJAS]

Thanks Mies for the corrections. The hardest thing in the 7+ years it took me to write THE LYING DOWN ROOM was proper translation of Russian terms and realistic diction when a Russian character is speaking English. For every page of the novel, I have ten of research--much of which I had to leave out. I spent over a month researching the Soviet-Afghan War, which included field reports by Russian officers, so I could give some context to Sergei. Unfortunately, I had to delete a chapter from the updated version that was a flashback of Sergei's experience in Afghanistan.

And thanks Sandro and AJ for your feedback. My former agent is the grandson of Marlene Dietrich. His forte was handling nonfiction and my novel was his attempt to break into fiction. I don't think he had the contacts, at that time (2006), to get me to the right editor. Also, I needed to do several more rewrites and get it polished. I'm ready to put it back out there, but when you're an unpublished author of fiction, it is really hard to hook a literary agent, especially in today's market. I might try Great Britain though.

[SANDRO43]

1 sOtka
2, 3, 4, sOtki
5, 6, 7, 8, 9,... sOtok

Paradoxes, a marginal editorial suggestion: I'd write unfamiliar transliterated terms like sotka etc. in italics .

[PARADOJAS]

             
“I forgot he was buried here,” Sergei said, oblivious to the snow lapping at his ankles and soaking his feet.                              

“This is why I wanted Vasiliy buried at Vagankovo, even though it is so far from my apartment. He was very brave just as you and Vasiliy, but he died young from the drugs and alcohol...” Nika hesitated then tugged her rabbit fur hat so it covered her ears and the back of her neck. She glanced at Sergei’s snow-caked sneakers. “I have saved many of his recordings and poems. Perhaps his music and words can be an inspiration and help to fill your days.”                                                               
It was Nika who suggested Sergei use the beads as a marker and self-esteem builder for his thirty-three-day recovery program. She also gave him a spiral notebook and two homemade cassettes, which as a teenager she had filled and recorded with the poetry and songs of Vladimir Vysotsky. It was the time of stagnation, the Brezhnev years, when Vysotsky became the most popular entertainer in Soviet Russia. His songs and poems of everyday Russians struggling to survive the Soviet State were never officially published. Instead, his words and music appeared in samizdat and magnitizdat: outlawed homemade books and tape recordings that passed from friend to friend. Vysotsky wrote of love, of nature, and of war:                                            


Why has everything changed?  Life goes on as it should                                   
There’s the sky over us, blue as ever,                                
as before there’s the air, the water, the wood...                           
But he’s lost in the fighting for ever.                        
I’m destitute now, and I’ve just touched the ground,                          
it occurred to me: I’d been beside him...                                      
and I felt as if I had my fire blown out                     
when he didn’t return from the fighting.                            
In the dugout we had room enough to get by                                      
and for the both of us time would be sliding...                  
But now he is gone, and I think it was I                             
who did not come alive from the fighting.                                                   

Sergei closed the leather bound book and spoke to Vasiliy’s photo. “Why were you the one to die and I am the one to live, but am I really alive or am I just an empty shell like one of Gogol’s dead souls? What if I had been driving the jeep? Then all of me would have died instead of only a part.”                     

His first day back at Vagankovskoye as he read Vysotsky’s words under the gray sky, Sergei shivered, though more from heroin withdrawals than from April wind chills. For thirty-two more days he would come to Vasiliy’s grave. He stayed three hours, picking up the debris left in winter’s wake, reading Vysotsky’s poetry, and walking and exercising his left leg. Exactly at noon he would untie the leather cord. Removing another blue bead, he placed it at the foot of the granite stone.                                                           
On the day of the nineteenth bead, nuclear-tipped missiles and straight-legged marchers paraded past Lenin’s Tomb. But on this May Day celebration, the huge red banners of Marx, Engels, and Lenin masked a lack of confidence and a growing uncertainty among the Russian people. In the early ‘80s army veterans began to disseminate the real story of the war in Afghanistan the Russian press and television would not and could not. Then the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chornobyl sent shock waves reverberating throughout the country. The implosion of the USSR was just three years away, and the military demonstrations of 1988 were but a ghost of former years.                                                                

The blue tit, its iridescent green wings and yellow underside flashing in the sunlight, bounced along the gnarled apple branch looking for mites. Sergei massaged the two lapis lazuli beads hanging from his neck and looked from the apex of the blue triangle of beads to Vasiliy’s glass covered image. The black and white photo had been taken the day Vasiliy and Sergei graduated from the Ryazan Airborne School six years before.      

“Nika is right. I have to move on, but I will never forget,” he spoke aloud. “We were told we were going there to stop the Americans from colonizing them...to build hospitals and schools, to help our socialist comrades and set them free. Not bomb their villages. We were young. We wanted to believe, but the generals and politicians had their own plans. They used us...fifteen thousand good men flying home on the Ilyushins in zinc boxes. So many more crippled, missing eyes, legs, and their souls. And for what?”      

It was a mournful centuries-old melody Sergei strummed on a guitar his final day at Vagankovo. The song’s verses had evolved from war to war, and from famine to famine. They were hummed in the basements of Leningrad where starved women and children licked glue from wallpaper during the nine-hundred-day German siege, and sung in half-collapsed buildings in Stalingrad where a million Soviet soldiers died defending their city. But on this day, Sergei found no words. He played slow and resolute, straining the steel strings and stretching the notes. His cigarette burned out and he lit another. Bitterness and determination replaced the hopelessness and remorse he’d felt one month before. Vengefulness and black humor overcame his fear of living and facing the unknown. It was May 15, 1988: the first day of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the last day of Sergei’s graveyard asylum.                                                      

[PARADOJAS]

I usually do use italics--I must have missed that one. Sometimes when it comes in dialogue, I don't italicize foreign words.

[SANDRO43]

Sometimes when it comes in dialogue, I don't italicize foreign words.

Of course not, italics in dialogue would indicate some sort of emphasis. I meant in running text .

[SANDRO43]

BTW, if you fail to find a traditional publisher, an alternative you might consider eventually would be to turn your Lying-Down Room into an E-book - we did that for our Men of the West, Women from the East.

[PARADOJAS]

Colter had underestimated the distance from Gorky Park to Vera’s apartment. It lay farther south and east than he had thought. Last night when dropping Vera off, she told Colter the shelter stood a block and a half from the Danilovsky Market, and a few blocks due west of Danilov Monastery, headquarters of the Russian Orthodox Church. Founded at the end of the thirteenth century, the monastery’s main entrance lay through a wide archway that supported an eight-story bell tower. In the nebulous light of a Monday afternoon, the fuzzy outline of that bell tower emerged and vanished like a medieval apparition, and Colter used its manifestations to navigate through the maze of narrow side streets he found himself in.                                                       


The children’s shelter occupied a three-story building of dull red bricks and faded white paint. Two steps and a small porch of chipped gray concrete, stained a reddish brown along its edges where an iron railing enclosed it, led to oak-paneled doors above which hung a blue and white oval sign: Sister Yelizaveta Children’s Home. Most of the children had finished lunch and had hopped down a short flight of stairs onto a landing inside the front doors. A boy with short curly brown hair spotted Colter off to the side of the stairwell. He stood in his running gear, including his Spiderman T-shirt, and carried his daypack and a box of chocolates he had bought at the market.             


“Hey, look! It’s Spiderman!” the boy shouted.                 

The children jumped and scrambled over and around each other to get to Colter. Two older boys wrapped themselves around his legs, while smaller children climbed the boys’ shoulders, grabbing Colter around the chest. Three more kids were behind him, pulling at Colter’s black running shorts as they tried to reach the candy above his head. Colter grinned and flexed his upper body: he felt like a human jungle gym.      


“Pryekrateetyeh–stop it!” an authoritative but feminine voice yelled from the stairs. Dressed in a blue blouse and work jeans, her hair tied back with a red handker-chief, Vera descended the stairs carrying a small blonde girl. The children moaned as they let go of Colter’s legs and waist and slid down his back, but they remained clustered in a tight circle around him, all eyes raised at the chocolates.             

“Please excuse them, Wesley. The children do not receive many visitors here, especially ones wearing a Spiderman shirt and carrying chocolates. As you can see, they love the human touch.” Vera’s smile lit the whole foyer. Colter lowered his arms and took two steps toward her, then stopped and looked around. A dozen pair of eyes remained riveted on his right hand.                             


“Well, I brought this for you,” he said, holding out the candy, “but I think it belongs to the collective now.”                            

“I believe you are right. Follow me, there’s a table in the back room. Pashli dyetee,” she said, motioning for the children to follow.                  

After parceling out the chocolates, Vera and Colter escorted the children to a small park a block from the shelter. A worn out swing set and net-less basketball rim composed the playground; fortunately, the park had leafy trees to climb and hide behind. Vera and Colter sat on a bench while the boys played fudbol and most of the girls jumped rope. A pigtailed, black-haired girl had just kicked a half inflated ball through a makeshift goal of dead tree limbs.                            

“Wesley, this is Sveta,” Vera said, using her fingers to comb the little girl’s blonde hair. Sveta was curled up on Vera’s lap...she had wide-open eyes the color of a tropical sea on a cloudless day. She looked away from Colter and buried her head in Vera’s bosom. “She is still very shy. She has only been at the shelter a short time.”      

“Zdrast-vuy-tye...hello Svetlana,” Colter trilled in a high-pitch voice, hoping to coax her out of her burrow. “How did she arrive at the shelter?”               

“Sergei found her and brought her to us. She was living with the gypsy people. He saw her begging over on the Arbat and bought her from them.”         

“Sergei? You mean Sergei with the scorpion tattoo?”               

“Yes, that Sergei. It is not the first time he has brought a child to my shelter. I call him Coconut.” Colter waited for Vera to continue, but she stared at the little girl.      

“Why do you call him Coconut?” Colter finally asked. Vera laughed, and Sveta looked up at her and smiled.                            

“It is because he is hard and tough on the outside, but sweet on the inside. And just like a coconut, he is a survivor. He will drift at sea for months or years, then wash up on a beach and become a strong tree.”                      

Colter glanced at the little girl, and then to a linden tree some of the children swung from. “I wouldn’t have believed Sergei is that kind of guy. And these stories about gypsies buying and selling children...” Colter shook his head. “It’s unbelievable this is happening in a civilized country.”                        

“I can assure you it is all quite true. The gypsies will use children and invalids to beg. All the money the beggars receive is turned over to the gypsy leader who in return provides food, shelter, and protection for the beggars. Young girls are especially valued as they have great potential as wage earners in the sex industry. It is necessary that you understand the current social upheaval...                  

“Nadya, climb out of that fountain,” Vera shouted in Russian. “Please excuse me, but that one loves the water. I would love someday to take these children to the beautiful beaches of the Black Sea...what was I saying?”                     

“You were talking about social upheaval.”                   

Vera nodded. “Most of these children have at least one living parent. They have been found on the street or dropped off at the shelter because their parents have no money to feed and clothe them. Our government has neither the motivation nor the will power to help these social orphans. The mafiya is bleeding Russia dry.”               

“The mafiya…just who are they, anyway?”               

“Russian people say the mafiya are men who do not work during the day. After the USSR dissolved in 1991 these people and their friends in power stole everything.   The rest of us are left to fight for crumbs. For those at the very bottom the crumbs get fewer and fewer and in order to exist, or to drink and forget, some people sell everything, including their children.”                           

Colter lowered his gaze to the small girl in Vera’s arms. “How does Sergei fit into all of this?”                                  

“Ah ha, now you ask a very interesting question. Sergei is not a typical Russian biznesman. He wears two faces. He would never show his kinder face to his colleagues at the Sports Club. Sergei has helped me whenever I have asked for it.” Vera turned away and coughed. “Please help me round up the children, I want to get them out of this smoke. For the last week I have only allowed them outside for one hour a day. I hope the weather changes soon and cleans out the air.”                  

[mies]

you are welcomed. Thank you for posting parts of the book

Vera and Colter sat on a bench while the boys played fudtbol and most of the girls jumped rope.                

Also, the comparison to a coconut is not very likely to be made in that context by a russian-speaker:
1) the word "sweet" does not have same meaning in Russian as it has in English, namely it is not used to describe a person who is nice, kind-hearted, or generous. It is used in russian to refer to children, or in sexual context, and generally means "lovable and adorable" or "the one giving pleasure, desirable".
2) coconuts are not common in Russia, most of people experience them in the form of coconut flakes. For comparison that you are trying to make - other objects (fruits, vegetables, or flowers) are used.
3) in russian slang - "coconut" - [kokos], "coal coke" - [koks] are common names for cocaine. The nickname "kokos" is thus used among certain social groups for a person who is known for their love for this drug.
It's sort of a common knowledge. So calling someone "coconut"-kokos in a different meaning, can create dissonance in perception of this individual.

[PARADOJAS]

Mies,

You're a fountain of information. A small note about Vera. She is extremely fluent in English, having taught it at MSU and then working for an American oil company. So she has a good grasp on American slang words and metaphors. But you're right, while she might use coconut, other Russians not as familiar with the English language would not. Thanks again. I'm wondering if at some future point you would like to read the whole novel. I have it saved as a document.

Rj

[PARADOJAS]

Gazing at the egg shell and yolk on her high heels, and amid the clamor of Sunday morning shoppers squeezing their rubles down to the last kopeck, Tanya stood shell-shocked, trying to decipher the white and yellow hieroglyphics splattered on her red shoes.                                    

If only I could interpret the meaning...realize its significance, then I would have the formula, the winning cards to defeat him, she thought. Her breathing surged then became shallow, and old familiar images assaulted her consciousness: torn curtains and stained bed sheets; a half-naked man standing in the doorway; a green snake and golden sword entwined on the man’s chest. Queen of Spades, help me. Play your trump card, defeat this demon, Tanya prayed.


She looked up from her high heels to a wooden counter. Behind her and surrounding the counter, slabs of white-marbled red meat hung on steel hooks. The sharp tangy odor of freshly butchered animals permeated the cinderblock building where the meat and egg vendors had their stalls, and it wafted from the walkway that held Tanya fast as if its cement surface had been poured two hours before.       


Behind the counter was a former kontraktniki–a contract soldier–who had fought in the 1994-6 Chechnya campaign. A sweat-soaked black bandana, folded three inches wide, covered his forehead and receding hairline, and on the inside of his muscled left forearm, covering a swath of needle tracks, a fork-tongued serpent wrapped its green scalloped body around a blue and gold sword. The letters KOT capped the serpent’s head like a crown; drops of blood dripped from the sword and serpent’s tongue onto crossed crimson roses. The intricate design had been applied ten years before...KOT being short- hand for native of prison, and the sword and serpent signifying his crime was murder. When he wheeled around with the bloody meat and ten inch knife, Tanya locked on to his tattoo, and the eggs slipped from her hands.                      

It had been two years since her last episode. Tanya’s occasional nightmares remained beyond her control, but the sertraline was effective in regulating her depression and flashbacks. So effective, she had stopped taking the drug months ago and had banished the green plastic vial to the bottom of her purse. Vera first realized Tanya suffered from trauma on Tanya’s sixteenth birthday, two months after she had moved into Vera’s apartment. Her anxiety attacks and emotional detachment were evident from the first days of her arrival, but it would be months later until Vera had completely won Tanya’s trust. When she did, Tanya related enough information for Vera to piece together the sexual abuse and rapes four years previous. The recurring flashbacks and memory loss continued until a psychologist and colleague of Vera’s diagnosed Tanya with dissociative identity and post-traumatic-stress disorders and prescribed anti-depressant medication. That had been six years ago.                         


“Hey lady! Do you want this meat or not?” the butcher yelled, his voice piercing Tanya like a foghorn, jerking her out of a psychic nether world. Images from a decade ago dissolved, leaving her exhausted and numb. She pulled a white plastic bag from the side pocket of her purse and slowly unrolled it. Keeping her eyes focused on a dark stain in the middle of the wood counter, she held the bag open in front of her.              

“That’s eighty-five rubles,” the butcher said, dropping the meat into a plastic bag. Tanya looped her right forearm through the bag’s openings and handed him a one-hundred-ruble note. Not waiting for change, she staggered away.

[mies]

Mies,

You're a fountain of information. A small note about Vera. She is extremely fluent in English, having taught it at MSU and then working for an American oil company. So she has a good grasp on American slang words and metaphors. But you're right, while she might use coconut, other Russians not as familiar with the English language would not. Thanks again. I'm wondering if at some future point you would like to read the whole novel. I have it saved as a document.

Rj

Yes, I will be interested in reading the whole book. If you want - I can send you back the file with my comments too.

[PARADOJAS]

Hey Mies,

I sent you a private message.

Rj

[PARADOJAS]

The band played hip-hop and Tanya knew how to dance to it. She wore a blue skirt that reached below her knees, half unbuttoned so six inches of her thighs flashed a downy brown each time she kicked a leg to the front, the side, or the back. A yellow- and black-striped top hugged her like the skin of a cheetah, and Tanya’s flaxen, ten-inch ponytail swept her bare left shoulder. Even in high heels she danced with a fluidity and ease Colter had only seen upon a stage. Vera and Kolya applauded as he and Tanya left the dance floor of the Bez Inhibitsii, a skaz and hip-hop dance club.            

“Tanya is a very good dancer. And you are not bad either, for a man with thirteen stitches in his head,” Vera said. She turned to Kolya and repeated it. The boy nodded while he stared at Colter. Since his deliverance from the skinheads a week ago, Kolya had recounted the story of Vera and Colter’s rescue until every child in the shelter had heard it three or four times. He leaned toward Vera and whispered in her ear.               


“Wesley,” Vera said, as Colter and Tanya seated themselves, “Kolya asked me if you would take your hat off. He wants to see your stitches again.” Colter removed his cap, revealing a three-inch pink and black patch of scalp.               

“O Bozhe!” Kolya said, his heavenly invocation muted by the Saturday night throng of rap and skaz aficionados who crowded the dusky club.             


Klub Bez Inhibitsii occupied the basement of an apartment building in a derelict industrial zone of southern Moscow. Four descending concrete steps and unmarked metal door opened into a rectangular room resembling a large interrogation cell more than a café–its smoky interior, naked light bulbs, and bare cinderblock walls emitting Cold War charm. Wooden tables, fashioned from electric cable spools, and the recycled seats of dismembered automobiles snaked around a plywood stage and linoleum dance floor. An improvised bar of oak planks laid across three 200-liter drums sold wine, juice, soda, and beer. On Friday and Saturday nights the club became a refuge for camouflage-clad students and weekend bohemians reciting skaz and dancing to rap and hip-hop music.                                        

The free-form narrative prose called skaz dates to the nineteenth century when Russian and Ukrainian writers utilized it to tell stories in voices other than their own. Characters were created who became the stories’ narrators and whose language, temperament, and social class differed from that of their creators. Pushkin and Gogol used skaz to avoid censorship and exile–they were not entirely successful–from the tsarist officials and aristocrats they satirized. A century later Mikhail Zoshchenko continued the skaz tradition, lampooning bureaucrats who debated how many communal tenants per toilet was the ideal ratio. But he and his fellow skazsters were reined in by the Union of Soviet Writers: either they wrote only stories which elevated man toward socialist perfection or they faced expulsion from the Union–this, in effect, being a literary death sentence. However, when communism departed, the skazsters resurfaced, performing their stand-up acts in comedy and skaz clubs like the Bez Inhibitsii.          


Vera first learned of the club from contact with homeless teenagers she met on the streets of southern Moscow. There was a limit to the amount of outreach work Vera could provide, but she never turned away those in need of a hot meal or medical treatment. Somehow, with the help of friends like Sergei, she managed to come up with enough money to keep the shelter afloat. In the summer of 2002, she was using less than a quarter of the space in the three-story building which housed the shelter.             
That building is just waiting for warm spring rains and some seed…what a beautiful garden could grow there. But that is in the future, now I have to care for this one, Vera thought, looking at Kolya. Someone in Kolya’s past had realized his interest in literature, and The Twelve Chairs became Kolya’s bible. The satire’s hero, Ostap Bender, was a scam artist and thief in search of jewels hidden in one of twelve chairs. Shunning hard labor and relying on quick wits, Ostap quickly became Kolya’s role model.          


Vera had not confronted him about the glue and battery in the shelter’s basement: she hoped Kolya would volunteer that story himself. Nevertheless, since the encounter with the skinheads, he had started to open up. Kolya admitted breaking into a vehicle in an attempt to steal a CD player. Unfortunately, the car belonged to one of the skinheads who had held him captive.                              


In addition to three female rappers, a bassist, drummer, and disc jockey made up the band Davaiy (Let’s Do It). Tanya told Colter they were the cutting edge of Moscow’s hip-hop and rap scene. Kolya became so awed by the rappers’ vocalizations, he asked Vera if she would purchase their latest CD being sold atop a black metal drum with CCCP stenciled in red on its front and back.                        


“There will be time for that later,” Vera told him. “Right now I want you to listen to the skaz and poetry readings. I will be very interested to hear what you think about it.”       


Three aspiring anarchists, with matted hair grazing gray Soviet Army jackets, moved to the microphones the rappers had abandoned. The young men launched into dueling narratives, accompanied by the bassist and turntable artist. Midway through the performance, after a loud outburst from the audience, Colter leaned to his left.         


“What are they saying?” he asked Tanya. “The only thing I understand is some- thing about a kid named Ivan and references to Pushkin and Pasternak.”         

“They talk about teenager who is very confused living in novye rasseeya...”      

“New Russia?” Colter interrupted.                        

“Da, new Russia. What they say is both crazy and clever at same time. I am not able to translate it properly. When they finish, ask Vera,” Tanya said, squeezing his hand.      


Ten minutes later the skazsters ended their recital to a chorus of raucous laughter and clapping. The café sweated like a sauna. An antique metal fan, whining in front of one of the club’s three windows, did little more than circulate the heat. After Tanya excused herself to freshen up in a corner restroom not much larger than a phone booth, Colter, Vera, and Kolya walked into the cooler night air of the courtyard. Kolya’s wide-eyed expression told Colter the free-form prose had resonated with him. He waited until Kolya and Vera finished speaking before he tapped her on the shoulder.            

“Okay Vera, I need some help with translation. It looks like Kolya enjoyed it.”      

“This was better than I could have hoped for. It was as if the young teenager they talked about was Kolya,” Vera began. “The name of their story is Labyrinth. It is about unemployed young men in Moscow. They live in huge apartment projects outside the city and spend their time trying to impress each other. Their heroes are no longer the poets, athletes or cosmonauts of past years. Instead it is the men of the mafiya and their wealthy lifestyles the teenagers pay homage to. A gang of these youths are stealing cars, and they ask a friend, Ivan, to join them. He is confused. He calls upon Russia’s great poets–Pushkin, Akhmatova, and Pasternak to help him find a way out of the labyrinth. The students reciting this story used many absurd metaphors and malapropisms to achieve their meaning. It is very clever how they took complex psychological and social problems and wrapped it up in short rhyming phrases that at first glance seem totally inappropriate. It is not much different than the ghetto rap of your country, yes?”      

Colter nodded. “And you think Kolya has understood the story’s message?”      

“His brain understands the words, whether his heart has the courage to follow… that is another story. I have been hoping you could be an actor in that story,” Vera said.   Hearing his name mentioned by Colter, Kolya turned and faced him. Light from a nearby window illuminated Colter’s face. His eyes gleamed with a starry blue irradiance. It startled Vera, and she looked away as he spoke.                      

“When I was running in Moose Island last week I saw people riding bicycles. Maybe I could pick up a couple of bikes somewhere and...”             

“At Sokolniki Market. Tomorrow is Sunday, they sell used bikes there every weekend. Kolya and I could meet you there. Do you know where it is?” Vera asked, turning to face Colter, her words gushing like a mountain spring.                 
“Sokolniki? Isn’t that the park a few miles east of Tanya’s apartment? There’s a beautiful church right at the entrance.”                   
“Exactly!” Vera said. “Kolya is going to be so surprised. We could meet you in front of the Resurrection Church. The market is close by.”               

[PARADOJAS]

Yellowish-brown tenement houses ran down both sides of the dead end street. Grates and bars covered all the ground-floor windows, and arched stone entryways gaped every two hundred feet along the buildings’ facades. Vera and Colter dodged toward a building and walked single file to avoid a hole in the middle of the sidewalk. Their shoulders brushed the protruding bars of a corner window as they stepped down from the sidewalk onto the apron of a courtyard entrance. The short tunnel to their right smelled of soured urine, and an empty vodka bottle lay shattered in a courtyard at the passageway’s far end. Vera stopped for a moment before entering the arched tunnel. Ten feet into the passageway she stopped again.                        

“What is it?” Colter asked. She had turned sideways so her left ear faced the courtyard.                                  

“I thought I heard Kolya yelling. Let’s take a look.”                

They exited the tunnel into a treeless cement courtyard bound on three sides by identical apartment buildings. To the left, a cushion-less faded sofa heaped with mounds of trash pushed against a wooden shack. Directly opposite them, 150 feet away, four rows of metal sheds flanked both sides of two parallel alleys. A dirt path bisected the two rows of back-to-back sheds between the alleys. Vera pointed to a group of men twenty feet down the path.             

“Over there, that’s where I heard his voice. Let’s go…”               

“Wait a minute,” Colter said, taking hold of Vera’s right arm. “What do you have in your purse?”                                 

“My purse, why is that important?”                      

“We could be walking into a bad situation. Those guys are skinheads.” Vera turned in the direction of the sheds. The gang members wore black trousers cut off at the knees and heavy black boots laced halfway up their calves. Colter tightened his grip on Vera’s arm.

“Don’t stare at them. Do you have any mace?”                  

“Mace?”                              

“It’s a spray that burns the eyes and throat like tear gas.”               

“I never carry such things.”                        

“How about a whistle?”                        

“No.”                                  

“If you’re carrying any money tuck it away somewhere. They might try to grab your bag. If they get violent, throw it down and run,” Colter told her.            

“I’m not leaving here without Kolya,” she said, turning her back to the courtyard and reaching into her leather pouch.                            

Colter stepped behind Vera, blocking the view from the sheds. “First we have to find out if he’s over there. If he is and they’re holding him against his will, we have to figure how to get him away. Are those sheds used as garages?”            

“The residents here lock their automobiles and motorcycles in them.”          

“All right...I think I’ve got a plan. Let’s walk to the shed behind the skinheads and pretend we’re a couple taking our car out for an afternoon drive.”    

Vera looped the strap of her pouch over her right shoulder so that it hung diagonally across her body. As they traversed the courtyard, she folded the fingers of her right hand around Colter’s left bicep.                       

“Don’t look directly at them. What do you see?”


Vera turned slowly to the right. “I think there are four of them. You are right, they are shpana...hoodlums,” she said, peering from the corners of her eyes. “They are standing in a half circle, facing the back of a shed.”                     

“I’d like to know what’s between them and the shed.” Colter looked at Vera’s pouch. “Take your keys out of your purse and drop them. We need a distraction.”                            

They were halfway across the courtyard. Vera released Colter’s arm and pulled the keys from her pouch with her left hand. Passing them to her right, she let the keys slip to the ground.                                 

“O chyort!” Vera shouted, bending down. Colter stepped to her front so they faced each other.                               

“Look between my legs while you’re picking up the keys.” Vera fumbled for the keys and leaned to her right. The two closest skinheads had turned in her direction, opening a gap in their semicircle.                     

“Wesley, I see him! Kolya has his back to the shed and is wiping his eyes.”      

“Don’t let Kolya see you. Keep my body between you and them,” Colter said, pulling her up. “Let’s walk over to our garage and try to open it.”            

Vera took hold of his arm while Colter thought through his stratagem. As they approached the row of sheds to the rear of the gang, it became apparent Kolya was being threatened. Vera listened to Colter’s plan. They needed to make a scene.              

“Sh*t...Sh*t...Sh*t...Sh*t...Sh*t!” Colter hammered the aluminum shed with rapid double-blows of his fists punctuating each expletive.                  

“Ouiet! You will have all the neighbors gossiping. I’m sorry these are the wrong keys. Wait here. I’ll go back and get the right ones,” Vera shouted in Russian. She turned and walked toward the courtyard. Passing a gap between two sheds, Vera glanced to her left. The skinheads had spun around, facing the quivering shed Colter now kicked. Vera stepped into the courtyard. She angled to her left so she was partially visible to the gang and less than thirty feet from them. They turned in her direction when she looked back at Colter and yelled.                              

“Stop kicking the shed you good for nothing drunk. Is it my fault you lose everything? You’d lose your *ss if it wasn’t sitting on your shoulders!”             

Colter had reversed his ball cap and wrapped his shirt around his mouth and nose. Darting around the left side of the metal shed he had abused a moment before, he stopped short on the dirt path. There were five of them, the nearest two skinheads only six feet away. If he was to have any chance at all, Colter needed to immobilize these two and stay on his feet. If they pulled him down, it was over. He extended his left arm and stepped forward.                                 

“Hola muchachos!”   

Both skinheads spun and received a facial of pepper spray. Colter ducked and passed around them. Lowering his right shoulder, he body slammed the biggest of the five into a shed three feet away. He thought he heard the wind suck out of the big man as he crumpled to the ground. Colter turned and confronted the last two gang members. They stood next to Kolya, but now had completely forgotten him.      

“Byejeetye...run Kolya.” Kolya stared at Colter, but could not move.      

“Kolya! Come on, it’s me, Vera.”                        

Hearing Vera call his name, Kolya snapped his head to the left. The rest of his body followed, and several seconds later he and Vera ran across the courtyard toward the arched passageway. The shorter of the two remaining thugs had crouched into a boxer’s stance and advanced toward Colter. A black swastika swung from his left ear as he weaved his head side to side.                            

“Ya boodoo oobeet vas!” (I am going to kill you!) he screamed.         

Smiling and in a steady, even voice, Colter said in Russian: “Kiss my *ss, b*tch!”     

Upon hearing himself called a b*tch, the black-clad skinhead leapt toward Colter, throwing his right fist in a wide arc. Colter shuffled forward, blocking the punch with his left forearm, and pivoting off his left foot he swung his right elbow upward into the left side of his attacker’s face. The impact shattered the man’s cheekbone and dislocated his jaw, and he fell backward until his head bounced off the ground. Colter glanced to his left. The two pepper spray victims leaned against a shed, rubbing their eyes. Mucous poured from their scarlet noses and spit drooled from their mouths. Colter turned to the last gang member and watched him retreat as he stared at the ground where his comrade cradled his jaw and groaned. The retreating man’s gaze shifted to something over Colter’s left shoulder. Its shadow was the last thing Colter saw before he awoke in Vera’s bed, almost twenty-four hours later.                        

[PARADOJAS]

Okay, I've reached a point where any additional excerpts are going to give the story away, and I don't want to do that because I'm still hopeful this will become published someday, one way or another. If anyone has comments or criticisms (that last scene took a while to choreograph and I'd appreciate any feedback on it) or if you'd like to know a little more about THE LYING DOWN ROOM, contact me privately.

As I mentioned before, although this is a work of fiction, it is loosely based on true events. And as Churchill said about Russia: It's a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma...

[SANDRO43]

If anyone has comments or criticisms

Since you're asking :

In the early ‘80s army veterans began to disseminate the real story of the war in Afghanistan the Russian press and television would not and could not.

I'd change the above to read either:

In the early ‘80s army veterans began to disseminate the real story of the war in Afghanistan - the Russian press and television would not, and could not.
or:
In the early ‘80s army veterans began to disseminate the real story of the war in Afghanistan that the Russian press and television would not and could not disclose/render public.

Also, I'd hyphenate the title: THE LYING-DOWN ROOM.

[PARADOJAS]

Good suggestions Sandro. Thanx...

RJ