The Soviet Comeback by Jamie Smith (best ereader for academics TXT) 📕

believe he is gone. So many times, we told him to get a new truck, but he loved that thing nearly as much as the wine he carried around. Pappoús is inconsolable.”

“Something like this… must be hard to accept. For everyone,” he said, grabbing and squeezing one of her hands as her eyes filled again with tears.

Feeling instantly awkward, he made to move his hand away, but then she clutched it.

“It makes me realise that maybe Giorgos was right all these years. The moment to be lived in is the present one. He would always recite this Groucho Marx quote to me: ‘I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it’. He made me memorise it when I was small, because he said too many people now, even on this island, get caught up worrying.”

“He’s a wise man. He didn’t strike me as a worrier.”

“He wasn’t. At least the last time I saw him, he was happy.”

The image of the bullet-riddled truck flashed through Nikita’s mind.

Elysia held his hand and looked into his eyes. “Giorgos would want me to find joy in everything,” she said and kissed him fully on the lips. She smelt warm, like old summers.

Nikita pulled away, and saw her eyes fill with pain and confusion. Those eyes, liquid brown like those of a doe. A strand of her dark hair fell across her face, and he couldn’t help but push it back behind her ear, eager to keep drinking in her beautiful, sorrow-filled face. He leant forward and kissed Elysia deeply, allowing himself to give in to another kind of escape.

***

He woke suddenly feeling a warm hand on his bare shoulder. “Nathan… kalimera ómorfe.”

He jerked upwards quickly, disorientated. Elysia was there sitting on the bed, looking over at him, her hair falling across her face.

“It’s OK, ómorfos,” she smiled at him. He could smell coffee, and noticed a cup on the bed stand beside her.

“Ómorfos?” he asked.

She laughed, a tinkling sound full of joy in sharp contrast to the deep sadness she had shown earlier that morning. “Your Greek needs some practice. It means handsome, or beautiful man.”

“Then it’s you that is the ómorfos one,” he said, looking up at her, causing her to roll her eyes. He wrapped her in his arms and pulled her down onto the bed. She felt light in his muscular arms but he kissed her only gently.

She laughed again, but stopped when she saw his pained expression. His insides raged with a cyclone of emotions. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she asked.

“It’s you I’m worried for. We shouldn’t have done what we did; you’re grieving.”

“We did what we did because I wanted to, and I don’t regret it.”

“I just… don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” she replied, pulling away slightly to better look at him.

He steeled his heart, and reminded himself that Nathan was a character he was playing, not the person he was.

“OK then.” he smiled at her and kissed her again.

“Good. Now, I have to go; my family need me and will be worried about where I am,” she said to him.

He nodded at her and watched as she gathered her things and arranged her mussed-up hair. He was entranced by her, and hated himself for letting it happen so easily. He felt dirty and corrupted by the vast amounts of blood already on his hands. But every time he felt himself indulging in these feelings, his training would kick in and force him to suppress it, leaving him with an internal see-saw of emotion to no emotion and back again.

He walked her to the door, which she pulled open, her eyes filling with tears again as the real world flooded in with the sunlight.

“Thank you for this morning,” she said, and pecked him on the cheek before turning and walking purposefully away.

***

LENINGRAD, 1985

“You want to cry, Allochka?” Major Koryan leered, his face inches from the pitiful specimen in front of him. His skeletal face looked like the skin had been pulled back, leaving it pale and translucent. His brown eyes held no warmth, only disdain at the trembling boy before him. “This is the best you have, Maxim?” he said, turning from his crouched position to look at the impassive face of Denisov behind him. “You must be losing your touch.”

“Mastering emotion is the biggest remaining obstacle,” replied the steady voice of Denisov, everything about him a masterclass in controlled emotion. “That and a discomfort with heights which will be conquered eventually.”

“Is that right,” muttered Koryan, crouching back down in front of Nikita. “Your weakness disgusts me,” he whispered into his ear.

It happened in a flash. Nikita’s teeth latched onto the ear of the major and tore at the lobe, ripping skin and sinew. The major screamed and leapt back, the bottom of his ear half dangling off. A look of deepest loathing and fury crossed his face and he drew his weapon and aimed it at Nikita. Denisov, spotting the danger, moved quickly and wrestled the firearm from Major Koryan.

“If you had let me finish, Igor, I would have said that the emotion we have to contain is his rage, not his tears.”

“That mudak has ruined my ear; I will have blood!”

“Igor, let me deal with this. Go and visit the doctor; he will sew it back together. I will make sure he is punished.”

Koryan’s eyes burned as he looked at the newly named Lieutenant-Colonel Denisov, and held his tongue. Barely. He spat at Nikita as he walked to the door. Nikita smiled back through his blood-smeared mouth.

“Be careful with that ear, comrade.”

Koryan turned to strike