Nicolai arrived home far later than he had expected. The steps beneath him creaked as he climbed the stairs. He stepped lightly so as not to wake Mrs. Fletching, a woman who would berate him if awoken in the night, and all the other residents in the process.
Nicolai reached the door of his apartment without creating so much as a mild disturbance. He slipped the key into the lock and entered. Once inside, Nicolai’s heel hit the baseboards, the balls of his feet no longer carrying the whole of his weight. He groped through the darkness over to his bed where he slipped off his shoes. He sighed as his shoulders sagged. Even though the old, drafty flat was far from the warm comfortable cottage that he wanted, Nicolai had to admit that it did feel good to be home.
At a loss for what to do, he reclined back on his bed, where ideas and emotions flooded his anxious mind. The next few days would give him the chance to figure out what to do next. His one foray into the labor pool that day had ended disastrously, with the possible death of his newfound comrade Vasily. Nicolai was tempted to return to the docks to inquire about him, to put his mind at ease, but he knew better. His actions had already jeopardized an innocent man’s life. Any further interference on his part would only cause more strife. No, he reasoned. Best to let it go, even if it meant no peace of mind.
The next few days holed up in the flat would be difficult for Nicolai. He had grown used to moving about. While the Shavice of Knight’s Harbor had tried to restrict the activities of the Chenians to the ghettos, Nicolai had always found opportunities to explore the city beyond the neighborhood walls. He cherished every long walk, whether it was as mundane as traveling to the butcher or to the bakery. Such small moments mattered to him.
Nicolai stretched out on the bed. The old mattress, its coils rusty from the thick salt air, creaked under his weight. The sound cut through the otherwise silent room.
Suddenly, Nicolai sat up. He tilted his head and craned his neck. His eyes darted about the dark interior. A noise, not that of his mattress, but of something – or someone – moving about carefully, had caught his attention.
Nicolai scanned the blackness, his eyes only partially adjusted to the night. The shades, which he had last remembered were halfway open, were now pulled tightly shut. Had he not been so preoccupied by the day’s events, he would have noticed it much sooner.
Then it happened. Two noises at once. One was that of a floorboard creaking under the weight of another. The other, even more slight, was of an item being removed from a sheath.
Nicolai's first reaction was to run, as he had earlier that afternoon from the docks. But rather than follow this notion, he stayed on the bed. Another feeling, a more primal instinct, welled up inside him. To say that it was something unlike he had ever felt before would be untrue. While this feeling seemed strange, it was hardly unfamiliar. It was as if he was recalling a distant memory, a hazy one, which nonetheless stirred his emotions. While the source of this feeling was at that moment unknown, Nicolai knew to trust it, for one reason: it convinced him not to run but fight.
Nicolai decided that to run would be futile. Whoever was there in the darkness had managed to stalk him back to his own flat. This person was no doubt prepared for Nicolai's eventual arrival and possible attempt to escape. The more Nicolai considered running, the less likely success seemed.
Fighting appeared to be not only the best option but the only one. While Nicolai was unarmed and lacked the element of surprise, he knew his home better than anyone. He could tell which floorboard creaked and which remained silent. Of those that made noise, he could distinguish the location of each based on the volume and duration of each sound. A few years of tiptoeing through the flat, both by him and his roommates, had taught him that much.
Nicolai sat still, listening, waiting for the next sound. Whoever was there must have also realized that the floorboards were loose, for no sound followed. Several minutes passed. The silence continued for so long that Nicolai began to doubt his own senses. Did I hear what I thought I heard? he wondered. Could I be imagining things?
He decided to put his suspicions to the test. Slowly, he lifted his legs off the floor to lie back on his bed. He stretched out his legs as if to settle in for the night. Just as he relaxed his shoulders he heard it again. A slight creak. Less than a second long. But it was enough. That was all he needed to hear.
Nicolai shot out of bed and lunged across the room. He knew exactly where the sound had come from, although he was still unaware of who had made it. As he extended his arms to guide himself, his right shoulder struck a torso. Judging from the weight and dimensions, Nicolai knew it was a man. The two of them hit the ground with a thud. Nicolai scrambled back to his feet before the assailant knocked him back to the floor. He then found himself wrestling with a brute, much bigger than he was. As they struggled on the ground, Nicolai’s leg hit a blade. The knife, he realized. The one that this man unsheathed. It’s here.
Nicolai struggled to slide toward the blade under the man’s weight. Even as the man delivered blow upon blow, Nicolai remained undeterred. He continued to inch forward until the tips of his fingers came upon the handle of the blade.
With one motion Nicolai grasped the handle and swung the blade into the man’s left shoulder. He let out a muffled scream as he tried to stop himself from alerting the other tenants and thereby drawing help for Nicolai. Again, Nicolai moved to stab the man, but this time he found his arm in the firm hold of two hands.
Nicolai wriggled his other arm free. He swung it up, connecting with the man’s jawbone, a perfect hit. The man fell back. Nicolai struggled to his feet. He rushed to the curtains to draw them back. Outside, every window was blacked out, the candles in the sills having been extinguished much earlier. But the half moon and the stars gave just enough light so that Nicolai was now able to see the interior of his flat.
Near his bed, on the floor, lay the man. He was much larger than Nicolai had suspected, at about six feet four inches and two hundred twenty pounds. Nicolai inched closer to find blood seeping from a gash in the man’s right shoulder. But the major source of pain appeared to be his jaw, which he clutched with both hands. As Nicolai stood over him, he realized that it was broken. Was that me? Nicolai asked himself. Could I have hit him that hard?
A fervent knocking at the door interrupted Nicolai’s train of thoughts. He considered moving toward it, but decided against it, choosing rather to keep his focus on the assailant before him.
“Who is it?” he asked, his eyes never leaving his opponent.
“Mrs. Fletching . . . and the neighbors. We heard noises. What’s going on in there?”
Nicolai stared at the man. He considered lying, telling Mrs. Fletching that a possum had found its way into his flat or that some kids had simply broken in but had run off scared. He wondered what he could have done to the intruder, whether he would have interrogated him or taken more serious measures if he tried to fight back or escape.
But answers never came to those who operated alone, of only their own accord, Nicolai realized. Petrov had acted without considering others, and although he had managed to drag along Leo and Fyodor, Petrov no doubt was a man possessed. Nicolai knew this much about his friend. When driven by an idea, a goal, a desire, Petrov focused in on it alone, with nothing else in mind, until a mild interest became an obsession. Nicolai had seen it before. When they had first arrived in Knight’s Harbor, Petrov was determined to live anywhere else but the Chenian ghetto, not out of wanting to avoid his own people but rather to prove to the Maricanians that Chenians could coexist with their naturalized neighbors. It was a difficult task, with every flat and boarding house denying Petrov the opportunity to even view a residence. Petrov even went so far as to spy on the landlords of such residences after they had denied him housing, in the hopes that he could discover some dark secret of their lives and then use the information to blackmail them. In the end, after months of camping out on rooftops and under bridges, Nicolai, Leo and Fyodor had managed to secure a flat in Mrs. Fletching’s building, a place Petrov only agreed to live in after Nicolai had convinced him that it would only be a temporary situation.
That was some eight years earlier, when the four of them were adolescents. Now, with an unknown assailant curled up before him, Nicolai considered how his own will wanted nothing more than to end the meager life that sat there. But, as with all of Nicolai’s momentary lapses of judgment, reason began to filter into his mind. Nicolai found himself moving back towards the door, his gaze never leaving the intruder, until his right hand reached the knob. He turned it slowly to open the door a crack.
On the other side, Mrs. Fletching leaned in, her eyes burning with curiosity.
“Nicolai? What happened? What are you doing in there?”
He did not meet her stare, but remained staring into the darkness of his flat.
“Mrs. Fletching.”
“Yes.”
“Get Boris.”
“Which Boris?”
“You know the one I’m talking about. Get the only man named Boris who really matters in a situation like this.”
Mrs. Fletching nodded. She retreated back into the hall as Nicolai closed the door. He could hear her muffled voice as she addressed the residents who had filtered out to see what was awry. Such a request, at this hour, would keep her gossiping for months. But Nicolai knew he could trust her to deliver. 65Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOC3Es8XNYp
