The first time I went to Red Square, it was late August and snowing. I stood on cobblestones, staring up at a low and gray sky. A bitterly cold wind pierced my thin jacket. A few snowflakes drifted down, an ominous reminder of the coming Russian winter. St. Basil’s Cathedral, an ornate terracotta-colored fantasy with its swirling candy-colored onion domes, looked smaller than expected. I went into Lenin’s tomb to get out of the cold. Crawling with armed guards, the place was pitch-black inside except for a light installed behind the old Bolshevik’s head, giving him a radiant, heavenly glow. Eyes closed, suit freshly pressed, his flesh meticulously preserved by copious amounts of chemicals. He didn’t look dead, but asleep, with the distinct aura of a saint. I had just moved to Moscow and I was seventeen.

The next morning, I attended my first day at the Anglo-American School of Moscow, where a fellow senior—a girl with ruddy cheeks, long brown hair with bangs, and eyes that seemed always on the verge of tears—asked me a strange question. She didn’t ask where I had come from, or even my name. She simply leaned over and whispered in a soft and lilting British accent: “Have you seen the bodies yet?”

Perplexed, I asked her to repeat her question. “Do you mean Lenin?” I asked. 

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Not him.”

I lived in the shadow of Red Square, in Molotov’s old apartment. Descendants of the deceased Communist party luminary needed money and had rented the place to my father, a nomadic businessman. The second-floor apartment was surprisingly dark and confining; a few scattered lamps were the only sources of light. Gas heat, coupled with the dull, pervasive odor of a space long vacant, made the place suffocating. I spent my evenings in the parlor. Molotov used to sit in the parlor too, years ago, when the paint on the walls was fresher, the dark green fabric on the sofa not quite so worn. There would have been a robust fire going, the sound of drinks being poured into fresh glasses. Perhaps the record player would have been on, something melancholy but sweet, a plaintive song that spoke of the fruits of a harsh, productive life. Stalin would be there, ensconced on the leather chair, holding the latest list and absent-mindedly tapping the mouthpiece of his pipe against his cracked, tobacco-stained teeth. Night would deepen as their conversation unfolded and intensified, and tendrils of smoke curled toward the ceiling and vanished. One by one, the two men would go down the list of names and Stalin would place tidy check marks next to the ones who needed to disappear. The ones the secret police needed to sweep away, quickly and discreetly, in the middle of the night.

“Those couldn’t possibly be the bodies,” I thought to myself.

The families of those who disappeared never received the remains of their loved ones: they, like the sickly plumes of smoke, simply ceased to exist.

I would turn off the lamps and sit by the parlor window as night fell, chin propped up on my knees, waiting for my father to return home from work. I wondered if—perhaps—the strange creatures on the narrow street below could be the bodies.

Night after night, a group of three men gathered on the sidewalk around a large plastic bucket, poured in entire glass bottles of vodka, beer, as well as an unidentified liquid, and then passed the bucket around until it was empty. As the hours progressed, two of the men started to change: their faces would puff and redden, their eyes turned to shiny stones. They smashed the empty bottles against concrete, like explosions of stars under streetlights, the light refracting, the sound riotous. The two exhilarated men, armed with errant shards of glass, would shout and swing their fists, menaced by invisible foes, and drink themselves into oblivion. The third man was different. Quietly, calmly, the man would gulp from the bucket, and when he was done, he seemed absolutely fine. He would nonchalantly sit on a pile of neatly-stacked blankets with one thin leg swung over the other, fiddling with a cigarette. He would nod politely at passersby as his friends eventually passed out, their limbs contorted, haggard faces frozen in expressions of exhaustion and bliss. As the sun set and rose again, the men were still there. They were always there. And each morning, I would awaken to the sound of city workers sweeping up a sea of broken glass.

I wanted to talk to the girl again but like a phantom, she always seemed to slip away. She rarely took the school bus and was often absent from class; it did not help that the school itself was so massive, it seemed to swallow its inhabitants. The Anglo-American School of Moscow was near the outskirts of the city: a sprawling concrete circular monolith perched on a snow-encrusted hill, its walls painted in beige and terracotta tones with a bright green metal roof. A thick concrete wall, emblazoned with the school’s name, kept trespassers out. A cluttered cluster of homes decorated in the exact same style were situated next door, creating an enclave where the students and their families who chose to live there would never have to leave. The classrooms were infused with the ever-present clanging of radiators and the acrid smell of too many students in overheated rooms. As the semester progressed, the air outside became raw and biting and thick ridges of snow collected on the school windowsills. And every now and then, a question, faint and uncanny, once spoken by a teary-eyed girl, would worm its way into my consciousness.

One day, my history teacher, a tall man with round spectacles, held a laminated piece of paper in his hands. He appeared pensive as we all meandered in and took our seats in tables and chairs that were slightly too small. He said he had something to show us, a picture that would help convey what Lenin did to his people, because words were not enough. My teacher said he had to show us, because otherwise we would forget, and perhaps, events similar to these would happen again.

A syrupy thickness coated the air as each student glanced at the picture for a few seconds and silently passed it on. When the picture got to me, I felt the sudden urge to pass out. It was a black and white photograph of two peasants, clothed in rags, their faces weathered and deeply lined, their eyes no longer alive, but dead. They stood in front of a wooden table that contained a head and a leg. Human. The peasants were selling body parts at the market because of the famine.

The girl with long brown hair and bangs was on the other side of the room. I caught her eye and motioned to the picture with a slight turn of the head: Are these the bodies?

The girl shook her head. No.

As history class let out, I darted toward her and reached for her arm before she could slip away like she usually did. She looked at me, startled, her eyes wide and rimmed with red. A pink flush deepened her ruddy cheeks. I lowered my hand and instead of mumbling “Sorry,” I found myself asking her, intently and earnestly, about the bodies.

An expression of knowingness, of complete clarity spilled across her face. Ever so slightly, the pink in her cheeks started to fade.

“One day you’ll look, and they’ll be there,” she said, her voice soft and melodic, words spoken by lips that never smiled.

In one of the rare moments when my father was home, I asked him if he had seen the bodies. He was sitting in the leather chair in Molotov’s parlor, feet perched on the matching footstool and reading The Moscow Times. I was stretched out on the sofa, looking at the chipped wall paint and the framed, mundane pastoral scenes that hung all around, while ruminating about what the girl had said. The fireplace was empty, the record player silent. He put down the paper with a rustle, took a moment to gather his thoughts, and spoke.

He explained that Chechen terrorists were known to bomb the metro during rush hour and, one morning on his way to work, his mind was preoccupied as he descended into the metro station. A pack of stray dogs huddled in the entrance; they were in all shapes and colors, their fur matted, taking refuge from the brutality of winter. A white terrier, covered in dirt, with sharp black accusatory eyes barked incessantly at nothing, as if warning of the specter of something unseen.

A swath of humanity walked up the stairs as he and others onerously zig-zagged their way down. No one made eye contact. There was a stumbling block in the middle of the stairway: people took exaggerated steps over what looked at first glance like a pile of worn, discarded clothing. A Russian woman in a puffy coat with a fur collar, pale blonde hair sliding over her shoulders, struggled to keep her balance while taking such a giant step in high-heeled shoes and cursed. Her eyes were glacial, her skin smooth. The pile was a man, holding his fingers gingerly to a gaping wound on his head, his surrounding hair matted with blood. He smelled of alcohol. He looked both confused and otherworldly, as if the pain had brought him to a place that was entirely new and he was trying to get his bearings.

In the steady thrum of people, my father couldn’t stop, there wasn’t any room: instead, he was spat out by the crowd at the base of the stairs. He couldn’t speak sufficient Russian to ask for help so he quickly walked up to the closest kiosk, gestured urgently to the surly woman with dyed red hair behind the counter, and pointed to the man on the steps. But she waved him away, visibly annoyed. Not her problem.

My father dug into his briefcase to pull out his mobile phone, only to realize he didn’t know who to call and was not able to talk to them even if he did. The little white dog barked persistently as a sea of humanity poured past.

The spell of his story shattered as he turned to me, saying “I shut my briefcase and walked away. Perhaps this man is now one of the bodies.” He paused and then added, seemingly irritated: “Why did you ask me about this?”

The painting opposite me showed golden fields and bucolic hills, a farmer poised next to a successful harvest. “No reason,” I said, a sense of disillusionment growing within. “Just some nonsense a girl at school told me.”

The next morning, I stood outside my apartment and waited for the unmarked blue bus to take me to school. The air was sharp, the snow already meticulously cleared from the street. My toes were so cold they hurt, so I rocked back and forth on the balls of my feet, submerged in inky blackness; the only light came from streetlamps that cast a warm glow over the hulking concrete buildings. I did not notice the broken glass, or the usual three men asleep on the sidewalk.

Then came a sweep of headlights, the crunch of residual snow under tires, and old, shrieking brakes. The bus arrived and I boarded; the interior was half-lit and smelled like vanilla body spray and peanut butter. I scanned for a place to sit. There she was, by the window. The girl with long brown hair and bangs; she was wrapped in a plaid coat, arms folded. She stared out the window, lost in thought and did not acknowledge me. I wondered if I should sit next to her or keep walking, thinking that perhaps she had concocted the idea of bodies as an elaborate fictional labyrinth that she wandered through alone. Since she seldom took the bus, I wondered why she was there at all.

The bus lurched forward and I slipped next to her.

She nodded then resumed her silent vigil at the window.

The commute was long, crawling inch by inch through dense Moscow traffic. Stop and start, stop and start. Half-jokingly, at least one student would always suggest we walk instead. Normally, the early morning darkness and the rumble of tires on pavement would lull me into a light sleep. As we entered a section of the city still encased in snow, I watched massive snow-removal machines move down streets in a synchronized sweep: clean-up was an art form during brutal Russian winters. Periodically, the girl wiped her nose with a wadded tissue, fixated on the window as her eyes traced the contours of each car, each towering Soviet building, each curve of the road.

We settled into a pleasant silence and I closed my eyes. Having memorized the various movements of the bus over the course of seemingly countless commutes, I could tell precisely where we were by the feel of the road.

Suddenly, she spoke: “Do you know how Lenin looks like God?”

My eyes shot open. It was still dark save for a procession of dull streetlights streaming past the window during a rare break in the traffic. “Excuse me?”

She pressed her lips together, impatiently. “He’s lit up in a holy light in his crypt.”

“Yes…” I said. I could smell coffee on her breath.

“I had a crazy dream about him last night.” She reached out and clasped my wrist with warm fingers tinged with pink. The desperately serious look in her eyes led me to acquiesce to her gesture. I let her continue speaking. “I dreamed that one day, he opened his eyes and pried the glass case off of him and he got up and everything that happened in the picture in history class happened again.”

She tightened her grip on my wrist. “Do you think it will happen again?”

I exhaled through my teeth and fumbled for words. “I mean… I don’t think so…. I hope not… No, I don’t think it will.”

Her grip loosened, stayed there for a while, then fell away. She slipped into a contemplative silence, the tip of her finger tracing the road as it passed by the window. As the commute stretched on, I sank deeper into my seat, my mind sifting through the things she had said, the staccato road noise enveloping me like a lullaby.

“There,” she said just under her breath, tapping the window with insistent urgency. “There there there.”

I leaned over her, peering out the window.

She tapped again and I saw it. On a median strip was the crumpled body of a dead man. Dark clothing, limbs askew, messy brown hair, one side of his face pressed against the pavement like a stone on the edge of a puddle made of broken glass bottles.

The bus fell completely silent. I looked around and all of the children on my side of the bus were looking at the floor, the other window, their hands, anywhere else. No one spoke for the rest of the bus ride, and no one spoke about it afterward.

No one except for the strange girl, who touched my arm and said in an insistent but hushed voice, so as not to be overheard, eyes wide and haunted by what she had seen: “Now that you have seen one, there will be more. There are always more.”

Looking through glass at night is like looking through dark waters—there is a whole other world below, one that reflects things you don’t want to see. That evening I sat alone in the parlor, my fingers tracing the weave of the curtain fabric, thinking about the body and what the girl had said. The three men were on the sidewalk with their now-empty bucket, repeating their involuntary sequence of destruction like actors in a play, like marionettes. I knew, with a quiet and calm certainty, that they were next. I envisioned their three bodies in a pile, stiff and weatherbeaten, collecting thin layers of ice and snow.  

I did not know what to do, so I drew the curtains shut.

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Janet Ciejka has an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School with a concentration in Fiction. Her short story “Hotel Praha,” inspired by her childhood in Prague not long after the downfall of Communism, appeared in the literary journal Epiphany. Janet’s international background informs her work: she has lived in Kenya, Hong Kong, the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. Her website is www.janetciejka.com

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