andrei_isaev

Disparity.

2009-09-18T09:03:35Z

Not long after the gauntlet was flung between them, Irinarhov had gone out for a cigarette and never come back.

Andrei stayed the remainder of the night, as a courtesy, in case he intended to reappear- drunk or otherwise impaired- but when evening rolled around again and there was no sign of Kassian, he cut his losses and gathered up his cigarettes and scarf.

He'd pretty much called it. Still, it was better that it happened now.

He'd blended back into the Lieutenants' barracks, no questions asked.

Imanov had been placed on mandatory psychiatric leave by Ocelot, he was told, and it frankly didn't surprise him, though it gave him a pinch of sadness on the underside of his soul.

Semeyonev and Kolyin were always on an opposite tour, so ultimately Andrei had the quarters to himself.

His post had been piling up.

They had taken to throwing it on his empty bunk. His bed was pristine, the corners still militarily matched and perfect.

Andrei had a strong desire to mess them up, and well.

He found one of Semeyonev's matchbooks, clipped from a Moscow hotel, and lit a cigarette. Then he fell indolently into his bunk and leaned back to read his mail, smoking.

His mind was quiet; almost unnaturally so. Unearthly stillness and a fine dusting of ice protected his shoulders.

Andrei had a pretty good idea of where Kassian had gone. He'd run to his treehouse, like a child.

He sighed, flicking ash and glancing out the window into the darkness beyond.

Perhaps it was for the best. There were no treehouses in Leningrad.

Sleep demons.

2008-04-14T09:45:23Z

He slept hard, always had.

At home in Leningrad he had slept like a toppled statue, owning the expanse of the canopied bed in a classical sprawl.

Sometimes Lasha joined him on cold nights, wordlessly emerging from the dark, and then he slept hard in the stricture of his brother's fierce embrace, his sprawl hampered by a more insistent instinct.

Sometimes Lasha joined him on warm nights, and then he slept hard and held scarcely beneath the light weight of cool silk sheets and against his brother's smooth skin as Lasha's hand rested proprietarily on his hip.

Here, he slept hard between a hard-wrought sniper and a hard concrete wall, in a deep wall-mounted trough that the army called a bunk, and went to sleep with the scent of Kassian's hair and skin perfuming his linens, mingled with his own, fainter to his senses. Rustic and earthy, quiet with masculinity.

Isaev did not wake easily, but he did dream in vivid verisimilitude.

Tonight he dreamed a dream he had believed banished. He dreamed of battering, bludgeoning, beating.

He dreamed of boxing Tourangeau, and Lasha watched coolly from the sidelines near his corner. An associate kept his company. A sledge-jawed tough with idiosyncratic and impeccable grooming who drank in the violence like most men guzzled liquor.

When the final blow fell and Tourangeau was counted out, he lay still.

Andrei broke away from the referee, falling into a crouch, shaking the Frenchman's limp form.

But something was different.

Tourangeau- André- had fallen face down.

No, his conscious mind insisted faintly, that's not right. He fell flat on his back, looking up at dead heaven with eyes open but swollen so much as to be shut. Arms out like a starfish or Jesus Christ or like he wanted to hug you.

Isaev grasped a shoulder and yanked his prone form over, glaring down.

Aryol.

He'd killed Aryol.

Andrei's breath vaulted into a silent yell of horror and refusal, which ripped forth in his dream, but in the physical realm manifested as a shudder and an unwarned snarl, as his body shot forward at the waist, and then he was awake, shoulders taut and chest heaving unrestrained, bolt upright in the blue-dark.

Irinarhov was already awake by the time he came to himself. Awake and grasping his arm.

He slept like a hummingbird.

Andrei couldn't bring himself to lie back down and close his eyes just yet.

Dreams were persistent things.

Like remorse.

Like guilt.

Like Isaev himself.

andrei_isaev @ 2007-10-06T20:16:00

2007-10-07T03:24:06Z

Dear Ilarion,

It's fucking cold and damp.

Nights like this, I miss Leningrad. It would be nice, bratan, to have a long banya and a hot cocktail, and sit in the upstairs salon wrapped in white towels.

My fingers actually itch to touch an antimaccassar every now and then.

I actually miss looking up at a fucking baroque chandelier in the morning, or almost knocking over a Tsarist vase full of flowers.

I want to see a museum or a film or a play.

Instead I have coarse cotton and wool and iron, and books and white tile showers and a heatstove. It's rustic, but altogether not bad. It makes me realize man's needs are few- his comforts are easy, but his taste may be extravagant.

When I am next home, please take me to a tea house and a venik master. Tip thick and expensive liquor past my lips and then stagger me home to collapse in my canopied bed.

Love, Andrei Alexandrovich

andrei_isaev @ 2007-10-05T01:32:00

2007-10-05T09:28:30Z

He is drunk, but he is laughing.

He is drunk, but he has his wits about him. Enough, at least, to shepherd me.

He drags me from the ruined table where we sat drinking and singing, long after the others had found their beds. Drags me from the table to the washroom, with its scent of warm clean wood and soft bathing light, where he strips my clothes without ceremony, as I loll against the wall, feeling good- melted as a candle.

Into the banya, it is, to sober up in the heat. It does not sober us much.

I sprawl and watch him with eyes at half-mast.

My brother is naked. He is tall and his hair is as blond and sleek as ice. His body is all broad angles and trim, hard finishes. He has long, lean, ranging muscles, a pugilist utilitarianism- the kind that look good in uniform, and punishing without.

They say I look like him, that I am his mirror, reflect what he is, but I disagree. I am less a bullwhip and more a blackjack. I am broader-boned and modestly epic in proportion. My eyes do not show the same weather.

He is one of my favorite things to look at, drunk or not- but when I am drunk, my eyes can and do linger with all kinds of worshipful abandon, and there is no rational consequence.

The banya is almost too much for me, and I want to close my eyes.

He draws my head upright and shakes his own.

"Nyjiet, Angelochek," he admonishes, with good nature. "You bed isn't here."

He drags me up, off the bench, pulls me back against his chest. His skin is warmed and bare. Slightly slick.

I am drunk, but I can feel.

He molds me around him like clay, dragging me naked, out of the steam and into the anteroom.

He eases me onto a napping platform, and follows me down, losing his balance briefly. He's wiser than I. He does not fight with gravity, but settles beside me in the warmth of the room, murmuring something overly sentimental about our friendship.

"Brother," I drawl adoringly, fighting to caress his cheek with sprawling, slack arms. I incline my head, and it is sloppy, the way my eyes roll and attempt to find focus.

Comical, too, for I hear him laugh. The sound is quiet and it quiets me.

"You are a handful of trouble, Andrei," he says, softly, amused. "And your soul is a bowl of jokes."

I draw him close, skin against skin.

I wonder when a man becomes a lover.

Remus Untwinned.

2007-07-25T09:41:28Z

The Codec buzz was low and casual in his ear, like a friend's murmur.

Andrei opened his eyes. He'd been dozing lightly, post-shower and weight regimen, relaxed and pleasurably fatigued.

"....Saev," he yawned, brushing his hair back with a lazy hand.

A lag.

"Privet?" he asked, more cognizant now. "Eto Dmitrich?"

"Lieutenant," said a modulated voice, and he recognized Solofan Drashov, the GRU comm officer who dispatched all incoming communications. "Were you expecting a...personal call from the Leningrad Branch of the MVD?"

His voice sounded cheerfully dubious.

Isaev sat up, glancing at his watch.

"Da. On the dot. I'll come right down," he said, but Solofan made a dismissive noise.

"Don't bother. I can patch it through on your Codec transmission. That's what I do for the Major class. But surprise- works for you too, since Ocelots have nano." He paused. "What's your code and frequency?"

"ISA," Andrei said, impressed. "123.77."

"Transfer in ten," Drashov replied, briskly. "...Now you don't have to stop masturbating," he added, deadpan, and Andrei laughed, settling back.

The transmission went through a series of interesting sounds, all of which were mechanical, on Drashov's end, and nothing to do with internal Codec- and then he heard the inexplicably live sound of an open line, and silence.

"Ilarion?" he ventured, experimentally.

A laugh answered him, resonant and unrushed.

Andrei smiled, slowly, brightly.

"It's good to hear your voice, Anduriasha," said his brother, warmly. "I miss you."

"Ya skuchaju," replied Andrei, his voice softening. "You sound so close."

"I'm in Groznyj, actually," Ilarion told him. "So da, bratanka. A little closer than usual."

Andrei made a face.

"Groznyj? Why? What the hell is in Groznyj?"

"A conference of the Interior Ministry. Moscow branch was there as well. Best to do these things on neutral ground. Staves off infighting," Ilarion said, then Andrei heard a pause, as if he had gathered his breath. "Despite Moscow being here, I noted that Liadov was not attendance."

Andrei frowned, bemused at the sound of Nikanor's name issuing from his brother's lips in that sheared and formalized way.

"Staves off infighting indeed," he said quietly. "It seems like there's more than a little friction between Moscow and Leningrad these days."

Ilarion was silent for several moments.

"What has he told you?" he intoned, slowly at last. "That he loathes me? That we quarreled?" Lasha's dulcet voice dipped into ground glass. "...That we fought over a woman?"

The words were tipped in cynicism.

The bitterness in Lasha's tone took Andrei wholly aback.

"We haven't spoken much. He's been preoccupied."

"Preoccupied?"

"With...fucking murder, and god knows what else. He won't be returning to Moscow any time soon," Andrei said, obscurely. "It's not exactly simple, what they're looking into."

"They?"

"He and his accompanying pathologist, Lieutenant Rakitin. He's on loan from KGB, I believe."

"Really. Nika has a traveling companion. Are they close?"

"Khui, I don't know, Lasha. They seem amicable enough. Polite."

"I see."

Ilarion paused, and Andrei could taste the ice in his silence, knew exactly the expression he was wearing, all those miles away. No, not so many miles, he thought. Only in Groznyj, which was Chechnya, and far nearer to Tselinoyarsk than Leningrad.

[cont]

andrei_isaev @ 2007-07-18T23:06:00

2007-07-19T06:20:08Z

The evening after the second body was found, Andrei was slugging the heavy bag again, alone in the gym. It was eight forty five. He was sweaty and adrenalized.

He wondered where Irinarhov was. He'd seen him only briefly, at a distance, as their duties crossed paths. The sniper's eyes had been pensive, and searching.

Ambivalent?

Andrei punched harder.

He wanted a shower. He wanted a bed. He wanted to keep pummeling something.

Decisions, decisions.

andrei_isaev @ 2007-07-05T10:55:00

2007-07-05T18:04:19Z

[TELEGRAM]

[ANDREI ALEXANDROVICH ISAEV]

YOUR LAST LETTER CONCERNS ME STOP I WILL CALL YOU AT 2100 STOP I THOUGHT NIKA WAS IN MOSCOW STOP TSELUYU LASHA STOP

Confinement and Confession.

2007-06-29T04:06:40Z

Andrei lay in his bunk, unstirring, staring at the ceiling.

He was alone in the barrack; Kolyin and Semeyonev were out on night point, of course, as expected.

He was alone in his bed as well.

Imanov was on assignment.

Irinarhov was also on assignment.

They were together.

The idea was a strange one, but Andrei had to make peace with it- the sniper had assured him they’d worked out their antagonism, at least to a functional civility.

Ilya had said nothing to him about it as he suited up and kitted out, just offering him a tight smile and a firm touch on the shoulder that lingered a moment too long.

He seemed to go to great lengths to avoid acknowledging Irinarhov at all since he’d returned, Isaev had noted. He assumed that meant Ilya disapproved but couldn’t find a compelling reason to oppose their acquaintance.

Ilya was getting harder to read. Distance was mounting in his eyes.

Still, despite his carefully chosen words- (every one, Andrei felt somehow, was weighed against the feather of Ilya’s psychological judgement), one thing remained constant- the unflagging devotion in his pale eyes.

Pale like chrysoberyl, as if someone had mined them and slipped them beneath his sleeping lids as a final touch before baking him forever and a day, or however long it took to bake mankind.

Andrei supposed half of Ilya’s detachment was due to not wanting to voice his disgust over what was almost certainly too romantic of a comradeship. Unmanful. Or too manful. He understood him well enough, if that was what he thought. Sometimes the sniper casually crossed lines that even Andrei hadn’t imagined.

Such as the tattered, battered target he had been staring up at, unseeing all this time. Strange gesture. Too sweet to be manful, in contrast to a drunken mea culpa over a bottle of vodka. And yet too perfunctory to be unmanful- it wasn’t flowery in nature, or excessive.

Sometimes he would catch Kasya looking at him, at odd moments- usually when he was engaged in something nonchalant and unremarkable, like leaning against a wall or laughing, or lighting a cigarette for someone else.

In those moments, the smoldering look in Irinarhov’s eyes was too ancient for him to interpret, too primal and strange for him to reconcile.

So he didn’t try.

A man that quiet had thoughts that never saw the light of day, and never would with any amount of mining.

Only unpredictable natural rockslides would unearth those deepest notions, the subtle shifting of techtonic plates. Then something would grind and break free and fall from Kassian’s lips like coal.

The dark and rougher cousin of a diamond.

Andrei could persuade many things from those lips.

But persuasion was where he drew the line.

He knew he could force Irinarhov to spill his inner monologue by dogging and dredging him relentlessly, but he was content to tolerate his own uncertainty.

Isaev had no wish to drag the sniper’s raw thoughts out into the light for his personal satisfaction.

He rolled over onto his side, and his eye fell on the newspaper clipping Marijya had enclosed in her last letter.

A younger version of himself, looking upward like the Great Soviet Hope, eyes lucid and fore-gazing, hands bound in tape and held at his chin in a ready stance.

Andrei Isaev, before Spetsnaz, before killschool.

Before Siberia, and his tenure as a Lynx.

Before he’d shoved in his mouthpiece over a grin, hit gloves and gone to fight an amicable opponent to the death, unknowing.

Andrei’s jaw petrified into stoic contrition and he closed his eyes with a sigh.

andrei_isaev @ 2007-05-18T16:29:00

2007-05-18T23:30:07Z

Dearest Andrei-

I haven not written you letters in weeks now, and I am very sorry for that.

The reason for my lack of a letter was personal. I now am write in English, for Papa does not speak it enough to read. I do not think he is read my post, but is best be sure always now.

Things were going not so well with Papa. He had very much desided I was not to be trusted to choose my own sweetheart, and what they did to him I do not know.

I cry at first, before I realize there is no useful.

Lasha did take me away from Leningrad, and so to make me forget, but I did not. I only came quiet as days go on and I know he is gone for me.

No use to be grieving then. What ever they do is done.

When I come back from Moscow I am not Papa's little girl now. I have cut off my hair, and when he saw it, I though he turn white and die right there, Andrei!

But he say little to me of it, little at all actually.

He act as if he is afraid of me.

I do not understand, and when I ask Lasha, he only gives me smile like thorn and sayes "He sees Mother in you now."

I do not understand Lasha. He love you very much, though. Keeps all your photos and letters. He give me leave to go through them when I ask, and sometimes look with me, smoking and smiling.

I find this news clipping picture from Krasnaya Zvezda, in it you are before boxing, no? It is make me laugh quite a little, for you are so young! How this boy could hit anything is mysterious me, but Ilarion says that you do, even then, and very hard! This is propaganda picture of best kind, surely!

But for writing, I may keep in English. I wish there were some other way to speak to you. I will try to device something, Andrasha.

I know that Lasha does write you always, but surely you missed my letters a little too? If not, you must lie!

I miss you, Andrasha.

I want you should come home, or I should come for visit. They will to let poor sisters come, yes?

If not, I disguise myself as stupid boy. Haha!

Tseluyu bolshoi!

Masha

andrei_isaev @ 2007-04-05T10:40:00

2007-04-05T18:15:46Z

Letter from the desk of Illarion Isaev, Captain of the Internal Service.

Dearest Andrei,

I took Marushka to the dacha this last week. I apologize for not writing. You know I was thinking of you night and day. Papa said it would be best if she were out of town when her unsuitable suitor was dealt with. I'm of a mind to agree, except that it might well have proved a valuable lesson in romantic selection for the girl. She should know by now that negotiating a good prospect at the outset is more far more painless than putting herself through the ramifications of choosing the son of a known dissident.

She knew, of course, and wept and carried on all the way there. I was silent, of course. She called me many terrible names, as I expected, and when she was done I asked her if she felt better, with just a bit of venom in my tone, bratan, because she can't think this is easy for me.

Sometimes I grit my teeth, Andrusha. She doesn't know how well she has it. All she has to do is follow a few simple rules, and she never need touch ugliness. Mariyja has utter freedom, within so very few caveats- and yet she rails with her cup against unseen bars as if she were a prisoner.

She sat on the rocks of the sea shore all day. I let her. When it was evening, my compassion got the best of me. I finally went out to bring her a shawl, and she took it with a bitter look in her eyes. She told me I would never know what it was like.

She called herself a prisoner of circumstance.

I said nothing. I was afraid, in that moment, that I might actually strike her, Andrei- and that thought scared me to death.

She doesn't know what it means to be a prisoner of circumstance.

She only knows what it is to want the few things she can't have in the whole world. Not to have a whole world what she doesn't want.

She came in sometime later. I was sitting by the fire, brooding, I admit.

"Lasha," she said, "don't be angry. I can't bear it when you're angry. You're all I have, now that Andrei is gone."

"You have Papa," I pointed out.

"No," she said. "Papa has me. I want no part of him."

"How fortunate you are," I told her, in a frozen tone, "to have the liberty to make and keep such pronouncements, dear sister."

Her eyes softened and she looked away.

"Lasha," she said, "I know you mean well."

She laid her head in my lap like a little girl, and I thawed fully once more.

"Then let me take care of you. I know what's best, Mashushka."

She slept, then, deep and untroubled as a fox kit before the fire.

But I felt no peace until hours later.

Andrei- is it so much to ask that she live between the strictures of society? Live up to her birth? When she was a child, she spoke of marrying Nikasha, you might remember- how she toddled after him declaring her love. We laughed, of course, but would that she had kept to those aspirations-

Well, not Nika, of course. She's entirely unsuitable and wrong for him, but you understand my meaning.

But again, we find ourselves locking horns, and she will always lose, because the State is me. Why does she do this, when she knows I suffer for it? I am the one who must draw the lines when she carelessly ignores them.

At any rate, Andrei, by week's end she had come round again, and become thoroughly disinterested in this young man. Fickle, our dear sister. Her capriciousness is amusing. And after such a display.

She was still angry at Father, however, so when we returned to Petrograd, so promptly took a train to Moscow and got all her hair hacked off in the newest "mod" fashion from the pages of the contraband London magazines you always send her.

Papa was dismayed, I was amused, and since you are indirectly the abetting progenitor of this style, I thought you might like to see for yourself. This is one of the pocket-sized portraits she had taken directly after it was done, and presented to Papa.

I thought he would have a heart attack.

What do you think?

...I think it's not half bad, actually.

It makes her look not unlike you.

andrei_isaev @ 2007-02-19T03:49:00

2007-02-19T12:03:24Z

Imanov/Isaev m/m NC-17

Continued from the Ilya's Return Thread: http://community.livejournal.com/groznyj_grad/12773.html

ilya_imanov:

Andrei's push had some serious force behind it. His heart felt like it was aching to burst.

Ilya reasserted his grip to bodily move him, to use him as a lever to move upright, but Andrei wasn't allowing it.

That meant one of two things: Andrei was bored of the game, and if Ilya had no way to fight, then it would be called to a halt.

Or it meant it wasn't wanted for him to leave this position.

Even against the pain and adrenaline, he could hear Andrei's words moving closer to his ear; feel him breathing against its skin.

That was outright cheating. Andrei knew what that did to him.

Good. He would thoroughly deserve what came next.

Ilya went for his friend's exposed neck with his mouth - not like an animal, not biting, breaking the bone - but grazing his mouth over the skin possessively, more lips than teeth. It was just the opportunity he needed to distract him, trip him so he fell flat against him with a soft thud and a mutual grunt...

... and more than enough to stop him getting up again.

andrei_isaev:

Andrei groaned out loud, making no effort to stifle the sound.

Who would hear him, and who cared if they did?

Instead of striking back or repelling Ilya's onslaught, he feverishly nursed him to the task, seizing his friend's head and massaging his ardent encouragement into the soft blond strands.

Imanov's mouth moved mercilessly over his throat, evoking animal pleasure in his core, making him long for rough, sweet indulgence, as only Ilya had ever been able to offer.

"You win," he breathed, feeling his cock stir and bloom into hard, fast life, like a sullen ember awaiting revival. "I surrender."

andrei_isaev @ 2007-01-03T00:47:00

2007-01-03T09:17:48Z

Letter from:

Isaev, Illarion Alexandrovich, Petrograd, 1964

Dorogay Andreyka,

Do not be concerned that Mariyja has not written you for some time. She is very much taken with a young man she met at a State dinner. It has been impossible to talk to her sensibly for weeks.

Unfortunately, Papa will not be having him, I think, as he is the son of a blacksmith, despite being of good political prospects. His name is Istvan Vedikovich, but don't bother memorizing it. He won't be around long enough.

However, in my eternally springing hopes that you will consent to return to us here and relent to abdicate this Spetsnaz nonsense, I have included some photos that Mariyja took this past week. You will see the Lion Bridge, where Mama took us to play as children- you'll recall climbing on and otherwise molesting the stone lions, I'm sure- and the lovely promenade on the banks of the Neva, where many of us received our first evening affection, either from adventurous companion or night butterfly...

And no, Andrushushka, I do not mention what manner of butterfly that might be, for to answer your question, I know quite well how these things might go, and as long as it is not spoken of, it might never cause harm. Just remember, a chatterbox is a treasure for a spy.

I miss you, bratan, with a sharp and constant pain. Why are you in Tselinoyarsk, when I might find you any position of your choosing here? If it's special forces and shadow operations you so fervently desire, with one call I could have you in the KGB, or better yet, ensconced in SMERSH.

Hopefully these images of Petrograd in winter will kindle some nostalgia, or if there is yet a spark, may it blow upon it.

Love always,

your brother Lasha

andrei_isaev @ 2006-12-20T19:50:00

2006-12-21T00:50:46Z

An amusing morning, all around.

The sky is dark when I open my eyes, and a man's callused palm slides over my brow, rousing me gently before the reveille sounds. Sparing me a crude and familiar awakening.

I turn my head and see more darkness, like the early morning sky, in the form of hair and eyes. If he were smiling, I could call that dark too, but he isn't smiling. He's watching me with well-concealed concern, unsure, I think, of how I'll react to the sight of him, and the memory of what transpired the night before, as he watches it trickle slowly back behind my eyes.

"Well, if it isn't Irinarhov," I murmur lazily. "I'm glad to see you're fitting in."

I expect him to react, flush, tell me I'm shameless, and a handful of trouble, but he just studies me, the scarcest of almost-smiles gracing that firm and stoic mouth.

He was the last to close his eyes, and the first to open them.

He doesn't let me watch him sleep, like Ilya does. Ilya will stretch like a cat at the brush of my hand, without ever waking, and find a new contortion.

When we pursue our nighttime recreations, we wear each other like obscene mink. When we sleep, his strong young limbs entangle with mine like the mangrove trees in Lower Tselinoyarsk.

While we play hard and fast by night, neither Imanov or I excel at mornings. We disengage clumsily and by necessity, pushing each other and laughing drowsily as we dress.

But Irinarhov is not that kind of officer, luxuriating in the gluttony of comfort until the last possible minute.

Irinarhov is more soldier than officer.

He's awake before I am. Age and experience.

I'm amused, but it seems to follow. I'd expect no less from a Spetsnaz long rifleman, used to picking his battles from a distance, and always keeping ahead of his marks.

There's a solemn look on his face, almost grateful, but I'd be hard pressed to guess what he's thinking.

There's a strange intensity in the way he responds to me, an oddly quiet possessiveness in his fingers and lips.

When we fell into his bunk and fell into the act, he was like a priest. Not prudish, that is to say, but reverent and devoted to his task. When we fucked, his body covered me, sheltering. When we slept, his form embraced mine like a shadow.

Funny, how protective he is, this deadly comrade who surpasses my years, but keeps pace with my insolent vigor.

He touches me like a pet, or a woman. As if it doesn't matter to him that I am a strapping Lieutenant of Spetsnaz GRU and the Ocelot Squadron.

As if my youth both charms and alarms him.

...I know how he feels.

I miss Ilya viciously. I'm fascinated by Irinarhov's whole being.

I could never mistake him for Ilya, nor Ilya for him. I don't know why it matters, whose bunk I choose to climb into, but it seems I've developed a bit of an introspective bent.

Hopefully that won't linger.

Button, Kitten and Corpse, LTD

2006-09-21T08:14:49Z

The button was heavy and round in Andrei's small palm. It was hand-etched and beautiful. When he turned it over, he could make out engraved letters, and as he was an early reader, knew proudly what they were- D. I.

Andrei did remember.

Lasha needn't have doubted that, ever.

And it was a memory of disjointed childlish perceptions- of amusement and wonder and ill ease.

The amusement misplaced, horribly so, because he’d been too young to understand the gravitasse of death, and too young to understand about the gulag, and what his father and grandfather actually did from their polished offices.

They always smelled of cognac and wool, cigars and leather, his father and his comrades. They teased him, called him Anka, told him it was duckling in Swedish, called him Little Swede because of his pale hair.

Then they would ask his father what his mother had been up to, in her spare time, and if she’d enjoyed her trip to Stockholm. Winking, always, good comrades all.

Andrei would never understand, but his father seemed to, because he would laugh and ruffle Andrei’s blond hair.

“As if he could be anyone else’s son. Look at him. The apple is still hanging from the tree.”

His mother was a pretty woman, a very pretty woman. But she was utterly infatuated with his father, and he’d never have needed to worry.

Not then.

They’d gone to the North, and the snow, in a big black car with a driver. The gulag was large, and he’d been in his mother’s arms for most of the grounds tour. At three, he was already showing signs of inheriting his father’s strapping build. Andrei was heavy, but his mother Natasha was strong and shapely and muscular beneath her winter gabardine suit and fox and mink stole.

Andrei loved his pretty mother, but hated being face to face with that horrible stole.

He felt desperately sad when he looked at the tiny faces, frozen in eternal rigor, plasticized mouths open in a petrified snarl. He would stroke the fur comfortingly sometimes, lay his cheek against it, like he did with their dogs, Masha and Lyev, as if they could feel it somehow, and he could ease their suffering and injustice retroactively with his painful empathy.

He sometimes imagined them coming to back to life, and biting his pretty mother about the face and neck, ferociously, snapping madly after her flesh, like Lyev went after mice in the woodpile at the Dacha.

He wouldn’t be mad at them for it. It would be all they could do, in the face of something so incomprehensibly huge and threatening. No recourse but to strike back, even feebly, even knowing the retribution one might invite.

Andrei wondered why she wore it. It made her unpretty to him, and made him doubt her.

The memory of Irinarhov himself was scrawled hastily in magic marker on a back wall of his mind- unobtrusive, but indelible.

The warden led them out to the perimeter fence, and pointed laconically outward, as they stood in the patch-grass of the grounds.

The silhouette had made a stark tableau against the slate grey sky, of a man, looking like an effigy, limply strung up in the midst of the barbed wire, head tilted back, dark hair touching his collar. His posture was inorganic, and grotesque because of it.

His brother Illarion had looked uneasy at the sight, but made a brave face of it for papa. He was almost eighteen, after all, and couldn’t be susceptible to these kinds of things.

Andrei had stared, mouth open, feeling a little uncertain, as if the glass of his rose colored globe had cracked and let in a whole new spectrum of light, harsh and white, and ugly.

He wasn’t allowed to look very long, his mother turning her back almost at once and turning him with her, even as he craned to see what Lasha did.

“Look,” she said, brightly, pointing to a Persian kitten that was playing with something on the frozen ground. “Is that a lost button he’s found? Shall we go see?”

Andrei nodded, reluctantly, but then found himself handily distracted by the tiny beast’s spastic conniptions. It made a lot of that button.

It wasn’t much of a cat yet- more like a handful of fluff with a little dab of kitten to hold it together- probably no more than five weeks, eyes opened, but coordination poor at best. But already it had vigor and imagination in spades.

“Look at him,” his mother whispered, charmed, the amusement evident in her voice. “He’s already learning to hunt, even if it’s only a button he’s stalking.”

Andrei studied the strange gymnastics. They revolved around the button, were paeans to the button, but rarely touched the button. Like a ballet performed in praise of a static object.

A highly interpretive ballet.

The man in the MENT uniform who’d been showing them around laughed and crouched down, hands on his knees, to pet the kitten a few times.

“Cute little bastards,” he said. “We have ten, can you believe, comrade Isaeva.”

He paused, smiling a broad and cheerful grin.

“Hey, would you like him for your son, comrade Isaeva? My wife’s silver has had a litter, and we can’t keep them all.”

Andrei’s mother had graciously and predictably accepted, as no woman who wore fur could resist a Persian cat, to lie flat-faced and pointless on the Napoleonic recamier couches, like a living ushanka.

So when they left, kitten and button came with them.

“Here,” said his mother. “Let’s take his toy, Solnyshko, so that he has something familiar to play with. It will help him settle into the house.”

She gave him the button to clutch, and he did, in both fists, concentrating hard, mindful not to lose it.

"We'll pour cream on his head when we get home," his mother added brightly, still worried, he thought, that he might decide to take a look at Irinarhov's charred and battered corpse. "He'll lick it off, and that will give him time to acclimate to his environment."

The button was heavy and round in Andrei's small palm. It was hand-etched and beautiful. When he turned it over, he could make out engraved letters, and as he was an early reader, knew proudly what they were- D. I.

For some reason, he didn’t tell his mother. Normally he would have held it up and declared his find with ebullient self-satisfaction, but this time, he kept it to himself, kept it in his pocket.

Initials, and the concept of them, made no sense to him then, but it made disturbing sense later, when he was older, and he chanced upon it again in a box of his mother’s sewing notions after she died.

Dmitri. Irinarhov.

His button had belonged to the man on the fence. Probably blown right off his coat when the current hit.

The fluffy silvery kitten had idly been playing right in his death shadow, unaware of anything but the shiny object it had captured with its guile and determination.

Unaware where that object came from. The origin of the button.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree. That was what Andrei's father often invoked, although he knew it couldn't be less true.

But the button was blown clear off, and lost forever, at the mercy of a preening young cat.

It all made sense then, and he felt a huge welling of unease.

Now, it made another kind of horrible sense. But the universe didn’t deal in coincidences that cruel, not in his world.

andrei_isaev @ 2006-09-19T01:01:00

2006-09-19T17:07:00Z

His brother wrote like clockwork, and he knew to expect a letter on Tuesday and Friday, whether or not he'd had time to respond to the last. Lasha was faithful and punctual in his correspondence, even when Andrei was not.

He was a state official, so it stood to reason. There were probably strict rules for the writing of one's brother, and Lasha doubtless took them to heart.

Unlike Andrei, their father's occupation had suited him, and he'd taken to politik like a mink in an egghouse. A Faberge egghouse, that was.

But his letters, while as reliable as triplicate reports, were never standoffish or formal. They were teeming with anecdotes and jokes, and brimming with a warmth that Andrei could almost feel.

It never surprised him that Illarion had gravitated toward power-based pursuits. He was ruthless, behind his smile, a wolf, like their mother, who only cared for her own cubs, and could take or leave the rest of the world.

When he read the latest missive, however, in and amongst the levity was a toss-off paragraph that caught Andrei's attention and held it fast.

"Your mention of your new tutor, this sharpshooter, made me remember something, Andrusha.

Grandfather sent an Irinarhov to the gulag, when we were children. I only recall it out of the many sentences because it was quite a big deal, seditious charges of some kind, accused by neighbors, and the man himself was quite a lightning rod.

Ha, Andrei, now I’ve made myself laugh because I just remembered how he died! He tried to escape the camp by climbing the fifteen-foot perimeter fence, and was electrocuted. It was quite the event- shorted out the prison for several days, and caused a major inconvenience that Papa, of course, was called upon to correct.

Poor Papa, he and Mama had been hoping to squeeze in a Black Sea holiday.

But before that, Papa went up to the gulag, on a bureaucratic trip, so that he could verify Irinnarhov’s death and circumstances, or something, I don’t know. I was sixteen at the time, and only marginally interested in politik issues. More interested in girls with big white and blue bows on their heads.

He brought mamushka and us along, if you remember at all- you were quite young- perhaps all of three.

We saw him, remember, when we drove up- his body still stuck on the fence, hung up between earth and sky like an orphaned kite. They had yet to take it down.

Papa chided them, made them give him a proper box. Not that he felt a blatnoy bastard like that deserved much.

Dmitri Irinarhov. That was his name.

Interesting, that, don’t you think? Not such a common name, that one, but it definitely rings a bell, Andrusha. You should hear it too, I would think- especially as you were also there with us when Papa had to tell the widow."

andrei_isaev @ 2006-09-16T07:41:00

2006-09-16T12:56:50Z

I've been lying awake and alone in the barracks at night, without Ilya's company in the blue dark, and it certainly is reflective.

His breath is a rhythm I know, whether above me or beside me, and its absence is unsettling. His touch is missed as well, although neither of us speak of what transpires when the lights turn out, we simply fall into it, like an easy choreography of instinctive dance.

He makes me come.

I return the favor.

Yes, it's that kind of friendship. But he's an amazing comrade, I could ask for no better.

...but somehow, last night, I managed to dream about someone else. Oh, Ilya showed up soon enough (He can never stay out of my dreams), but not before I had already half undressed him and touched this other man- kissed him and ran my fingertips over his stomach and scars.

I should be horrified, but I suppose it's normal enough, the subconcious...

My god, I was born when he was in his first training session. 1940. A very good year.\

I don't know why I feel these qulams...Ilya woudn't care who I fucked. He watched me scrrew a Moscow whore once, after all...

Still, I find myself conflicted.

andrei_isaev @ 2006-09-08T13:30:00

2006-09-08T20:36:28Z

Dear Ilyusha,

Stupid to write a note to a guy all of 100 meters away, but what can I do? Khostov is being a first class whorepoker about your fever and your supposed contagion.

As if I wouldn't have caught everything you have by now. We are bunkmates, after all.

He says he doesn't want an 'epidemic' on his hands. I guess he's right, despite his unappealing bedside manner. Quarantine makes sense, but hell if I don't think it's fucking chush anyway.

I want you to have my ration tobacco for the week and a pack of rolling papers. I left them with Khostov, priyatel, make sure you get them from him!

In squad news- because I know you, bratan, and that you'll have been fretting about it- Sergei's leg is not the best, but he can walk and he heals fast. Irinarhov has proven to be a very valuable sniper, and an intriguing man in is own right, though still a little detached from the collective. Oh, and I mustn't forget to tell you what our own Charushkin overheard on his way back to the infirmary- though he doubtless already told you, but it's fun to say it again- that Major Ocelot and Major Raikov are doing a little recon work on the side...mainly in eachother's jodphurs.

The main objective seems to be...mounting an offense. Or several offenses, of the kind that could get you gulag time in some parts.

This cannot really surprise anyone. Well, it surprised me, I'll admit, but on second thought, chuvak, I'd be surprised if they weren't playing 'hide the makarov'.

We have an infiltration to attend to, Makno and I, so I'll send this along with the kapral, and hope it gets to you, all of 100 meters away.

Fucking crazy, this military life.

Tseluyu, Andrei Alexandrovich

andrei_isaev @ 2006-09-03T18:37:00

2006-09-04T03:01:32Z

Ilya and I became fast friends in that rare and organic way that sometimes transpires between strangers, where it took no more than a glance to inform me that we would be favorable comrades. It took no time; we skipped the formalities and went straight to brotherly devotion.

It was Ilya who suggested we find some company that night in Moscow. We were on leave, and loose in the city for three days. A willing young lady found us, as luck would have it. She was quite sweet, and obviously used to the servicing of servicemen, so to speak.

I asked if she had a friend she could call, but she was adamant that we needed no other girl to satisfy us- she wanted us both to herself, "first one, then the other!", how beautiful we were, how she loved our bright hair and our dashing uniforms.

She grabbed our arms, and accompanied us back to our room, cooing over our height and our builds, and how she loved to be fucked by Spetsnaz men, because they had perfect discretion and highly skilled manuevers. We laughed, and opened a bottle of slivovic to warm up the evening and ease our inhibitions.

I told Ilya that he could go first, as I was feeling generous and happy- I was on leave in Moscow by the harbor, in the company of a good friend.

And so it happened that I lay lazy on the bed of the hotel room, idly watching as Ilya screwed this girl- Magda, I think her name was- with Russian vigor, and obvious skill, judging from her dove-like cries, and the way her hands caressed the skin of his back.

She was very pretty, the picture of a Hungarian beauty, as she sprawled on the chaise, legs open eagerly and indecently to recieve him, her high heeled shoes and cuban heeled stockings still intact, but no impediment to his thrusting cock.

I felt myself hardening at once, and made no secret of it, stroking myself occasionally through the fabric of my black jodphurs.

There's no shame between comrades, after all. Ilya noticed, and it spurred him on to have a captive audience. His speed increased, as did his force. He began talking to her, in low, rough tones, telling her how he'd wanted her since he saw her, how she turned him on, how much he loved her pale eyes, following him.

It was a strange moment, when I realized that I was watching Ilya more than the girl. Drinking in his moans and the harsh sounds of his breath. Enjoying his expressions, his rolling hips, his masculinity in motion- like a conquering ocean that called to my own.

And when he chanced to look up in his passion and met my eyes, for some reason we didn't look away, but boldly kept our gazes locked.

He triggered, just then, hard and fast, and I held him in my gaze as he came.

Even though he was fucking a Muscovite shopgirl, he came for me.

Averting his gaze, Ilya had no sooner pulled out of her than the girl was already reaching for my belt. She'd had climax with him, but was eager for more.

He settled back, unashamed, to observe as I had, a light in his eyes that I saw for afterglow.

I never took my eyes from his face the whole time I had her.

I made her scream her pleasure to the tin tiles of the Villa. I made her shudder and clutch and fuck me back like a wanton minx, making animal sounds of desire.

And Ilya made encouraging sounds of enjoyment, saying my name over and over, telling me yes, like that, like that, yes, Andrusha, give it to her...

His eyes on my nude and working body was more arousing than I was prepared to expect.

I went off like a shot.

She left soon after, patting our cheeks, leaving us sprawled in casually contented ruin on the bed.

It seemed only natural that we would fall asleep where we were, foxhole or fuckhovel, and his hand on my hip seemed wholly germane as I drifted off to sleep.

andrei_isaev @ 2006-09-01T21:56:00

2006-09-02T05:13:43Z

I'm beginning to wonder what I'm thinking, watching him. It's suicide, I know.

I've never wanted anyone more painfully, or acutely. It came on like appendicitis.

Wanting isn't necessarily wrong, but wondering begins to be.

Wondering, as he meets my eyes, wondering if he has ever even had another man press against his body, and whether he'd like to be taken, or whether he breaks open at the first sign of tenderness and takes like a wave of furious vengeance.

Letters to Petrograd

2006-08-29T21:32:33Z

Dearest Marishushka,

It's been too long, I know, since I last wrote. One must write everyday to elude the stagnant delivery from Tselinoyarsk, hidden here in the hair behind God's Left Testicle.

I am sorry for my crudeness just now; that slipped from my mind to my hand unfiltered. Perhaps, as my comrade Ilya suggests, I've lost my frontal lobes.

I would cross it out, but something in me demands that when given a choice between indecency and unsightliness, I always choose indecency.

I miss you, Mariyja Alexandrovna. I miss our trips into Moscow, I miss drinking tea with you in the Square and escorting you to State parties and the Bolshoi house. I even miss carrying your shopping parcels. I miss blackening the eyes of boys stupid enough to ogle my little sister.

But truth to tell, I do not miss much else. A man requires little to live well.

I love you, and Papa and Lasha.

Your brother Alexandrich

Dear Lasha,

Life in Tselinoyarsk continues pleasantly enough. I think pleasantry can be described as relative peace on a mountaintop. That is what we have.

My comrades are good to drink with, good to know. Some are very good to know. Some are known to be good.

We have some unusual fauna in the lowlands, thanks to Major Krauss, a German defect, defective, or defector, depending on how benignly you view him.

Actually, much as he'd like to, Krauss can't take full credit; if not for the observation by a botanist, one of the useless non-weapons scientists pressed into service by Volgin, that the biodome here is unique, and unusually hospitable.

It's not unlike a zoo without bars. They've outcompeted or eaten the normal fauna. No one has seen a bear in weeks.

Krauss is certainly a man of his country, even when loudly singing our anthem. Germans seem to feel that everything can be improved on through selective enhancement.

Nature included.

Life is good here at Groznyj Grad, but one must acclimate. It isn't hard. It's very hospitable, but the flora and fauna are not what you're taught to expect. If one can accept that things will be different here, it is very liberating.

Perhaps you were always happy to see bears, but now find you have an equal interest in leopards. It pleases you very much to see leopards, even if it is unnatural in Russia.

In the end a man does not require much, and everything he does require can be found here, as well as some human luxuries. Comfort of the more human kind is not a rarity, as one might expect. As I quickly learned, however, that like most commodoties at at Groznyj Grad, it is best not to question were it comes from.

Each day, I do things that please me, and things that are merely necessary. Sometimes, they are one and the same.

I don't know if I've told you anything, Illarion, that you don't already know or suspect. Perhaps you have no idea what I'm confessing in these lines, but I felt the need to impart it to another soul, and Mariyja would not understand the circumstances that make men weak.

I hope that you will.

Your brother, Andrei Alexandrovich

andrei_isaev @ 2006-08-27T03:20:00

2006-08-27T10:36:27Z

I can tell when I'm without him.

It doesn't feel right, the pieces don't fit. I carry on fine, I keep up appearances. He's not far off, anyway. Just not right beside me, my constant companion.

But it wouldn't do to show too much.

It might mean admitting that this...thing...we carry on is more than the sum of its quiet, passionate, shivering parts.

Of low cries in the dead of night, muffled by necessity, staunched with each other's mouths by preference.

Why not a hand clapped across? Why not a pillow or the back of an arm?

If I stop to ask myself that, I'll regret it. We do what we do, like in any war. We don't apologize, and we don't analyze, lest the threat, and the truth, be greater than we imagined.

More than a lazy grin and a pat on the back after culmination.

I'm in fucking hell, and it's warm here. Better than the Siberian winter.

I hope he feels better soon.

I can tell when I'm without him, but there's no one I can tell when I'm without him.

He's a good friend. The best.

To Miss Isaeva Mariyja Alexandrova, Moscow. From Isaev Andrei Alexandrovich, Groznyj Grad

2006-07-22T01:44:00Z

_/_/1964

Dearest Marushka,

How does this letter find you, dorogusha moya? I hope that all is well in the city, and that Lasha and Papa are taking good care of you. It's crazy of me, I know you are thinking, even as you read this, but I have great concern for your well-being. Not in a material sense, no, never that, but of the kind of well-being usually assured by a mother.

Because we have not that, perhaps an overzealous middle brother has simply taken to fretting in her place.

In your next letter, please, if you must, lie to me, golubka! Tell me that you aren't going about with any unsuitable types when your brother Andrusha is posted far away. Believe me, after having spent some not inconsiderable time now in the military Spetznaz, I know a thing or two about the rougher edges of Russian men.

Of course, there are not only ill-used thugs among the ranks of GRU. My own unit is rarified and beyond reproach, good comrades all, and one beyond even that, that more I would call companion. He is the best kind of friend to me in this concrete acropolis- a utilitarian Ares to my modern Apollo.

We do what we can to pass the time and give each other the small comforts of home.

So you need not worry about me, I have a strong shoulder to lean on here, and in turn I offer him mine.

I try not to worry about you- you are a grown woman, after all. I haven't forgotten that. Take care of yourself the way that I would, moya tziposhka.

I know I can do nothing from here. My reach is long and deadly in Tselinoyarsk, short and harmless in Moscow.

Tseluyu,

Andrei Alexandrovich