Apparatus 33 by Lawston Pettymore (bearly read books TXT) 📕

Nicolaus translated, “She says she has no money to pay you for what you’ve done.”

Zerrissen was baffled by the comment. The thought of financial reward never crossed his mind at any moment during the year-long project. If anything, this demonstrated his incapacity to live in the world of capitalists across the river.

“So, she wants you to have this.”

Halina’s hand was outstretched, fingers wrapped around another one of her sculpted objects.

Zerrissen cradled it in both his hands, recognizing it as one of her cranked kinetic sculptures, another automaton for his menageries of insects. As with her first sculpture, it consisted of a twig and branch, but instead of a caterpillar, a fat pouch about the size of a teabag hung suspended from the branch. The word NIX was stitched in thread to the side.

“It’s intriguing, but, ah, do you know what it is?” Zerrissen asked.

“Erm. A cocoon?” Nicolaus read some signs from Halina’s hands. “Ah. A chrysalis,” he corrected.

Zerrissen looked at the companion piece Halina had made earlier, the black and red caterpillar.

“And I suppose…”

“Yes. She’s telling a story in sculpture. Turn the crank.” Nicolaus pointed to the twig crank similar to the one in her caterpillar piece. It wound a spring causing something inside the fat pouch to wiggle briefly. Not very dramatic. Was it not working? If not, this would be the first time Zerrissen had seen any of her creations fail. But the thought was there, as they say.

For the first time in a decade, Zerrissen heard himself say, “Thank you, Halina. I…” His rare attempt at sincerity was overcome by a wave of guilt about what could have happened that night.

Halina smiled and, nodding to the chrysalis, signed something to Zerrissen only parts of which he recognized, the words “Wait” and “See”.

No time for explanations. She and Nicolaus must make good their exodus now. With help from Nicolaus, Halina stepped into NIX and crumpled to the bottom with a yelp. Zerrissen recognized the spasm immediately.

“That was labor pain.”

For the first time, Zerrissen saw an expression of utter helplessness cross Nicolaus’ face.

“That baby is coming. It’s too dangerous. Have the baby here, then we can leave.”

Nicolaus and Zerrissen fumbled for their move. Only Halina seemed calm, and ready to make the hard choice. As if on cue, Buttercup fluttered in and landed on NIX, a signal to a horrified Nicolaus as certain as any dove was to Noah.

“I locked up the bird in the old shop. If Buttercup flew out an open door, that means they’re here.”

Everyone in the room understood who ‘they’ were.

Zerrissen found some energy somehow and stated calmly. “Unless you want that baby born in a Stasi prison hospital, you’ll leave now. I’ll hold them off.”

In Halina’s mind there were no options. This baby would be born in the West. She waved off all attempts at assistance and took her place in the forward seat. Buttercup flew in on her shoulder.

Nicolaus looked at Zerrissen for guidance, but Zerrissen was just as useless, and was less inclined to contradict Halina on any matter, much less the choice of birthplace for her child. With a resigned shrug, Nicolaus took his position in the pilot’s seat, followed by a salute to Zerrissen, and closed the hatch over him.

With a loud chunky sound, NIX was released from the magnetic grapple chain, and it fell down the duct with a whoosh, leaving Zerrissen alone in the workshop.

Through the silence, Zerrissen could her men yelling his name, knocking down doors of neighboring shops, working their way to his.

Waiting for the inevitable, he plopped down at the drafting table and admired Halina’s most recent sculpture of the chrysalis, making clicking noises of its own before it popped open. Plopping down on the table was the object it held inside like a crude Iron Curtain version of a Faberge Egg. He recognized it as a beetle. Red with black spots, with one of its legs in a brace.

He smiled and looked up into the face of the KGB man staring back.

“It’s a ladybug.” He explained to the humorless man with the typically broad, Russian face, pointing a 9mm pistol at Zerrissen’s chest. “Fly away home. A new home. This one is on fire.” The Russian began barking orders, none of which Zerrissen cared to follow.

Instead, he studied the reflection in the polished hub cap always on the bench for Buttercup’s amusement, seeing for the first time the sewn wound on his arm. Magnified in the curve of the hubcap, he saw details not visible from his perspective. She had used sutures to form legs, twelve in all, one fatter and malformed, along the length of the curvy incision, two feelers at the head where freckles formed eyes. The combined effect resembled a caterpillar crawling up his arm. Halina’s self-image was as an ugly, disfigured caterpillar just wanting to crawl away to shed its handicapped body and trade its tree branch prison for a more beautiful body that could fly. This was Halina signing her work. Zerrissen laughed out loud. Some may have thought this was an inappropriate time to experience delight.

The bulky Soviet agent, not accustomed to being laughed at, raised his gun hand to strike some humility into the laughing moron with the pistol butt. Broken jaws, according to an unwritten KGB handbook, have a way of sapping one’s pluck.

Before he could land the blow, however, Zerrissen had produced a 9mm pistol of his own from the drafting table drawer, put it in his mouth, and escaped Russian justice one final time.

Postpartum

Zerrissen’s aborted sea trial-cum-escape to the West had been conducted under first-class accommodations in comparison to the decidedly down-graded steerage class experience Halina and Nicolaus were having.

The odor of the organic pollutants in the Spree, an accumulation of the offal of centuries of neglect and abuse, laid heavy in the ambience. The scrubbers were unable to disguise or otherwise suppress the sparse breathable air trapped within, leading Halina and then Nicolaus to contribute organic pollutants of their own to