From the pocket of his bathrobe, Czernobog produced a pack of unfiltered cigarettes. Shadow did not recognize the brand. Wednesday pulled out a narrow gold lighter from the pocket of his pale suit, and lit the old man’s cigarette. “First we come to New York,” said Czernobog. “All our countrymen go to New York. Then, we come out here, to Chicago. Everything got very bad. In the old country, they had nearly forgotten me. Here, I am a bad memory no one wants to remember. You know what I did when I got to Chicago?”
“No,” said Shadow.
“I get a job in the meat business. On the kill floor. When the steer comes up the ramp, I was a knocker. You know why we are called knockers? Is because we take the sledgehammer and we knock the cow down with it. Bam! It takes strength in the arms. Yes? Then the shackler chains the beef up, hauls it up, then they cut the throat. They drain the blood first before they cut the head off. We were the strongest, the knockers.” He pushed up the sleeve of his bathrobe, flexed his upper arm to display the muscles still visible under the old skin. “Is not just strong though. There was an art to it. To the blow. Otherwise the cow is just stunned, or angry. Then, in the fifties, they give us the bolt gun. You put it to the forehead, bam! Bam! Now you think, anybody can kill. Not so.” He mimed putting a metal bolt through a cow’s head. “It still takes skill.” He smiled at the memory, displaying an iron-colored tooth.
“Don’t tell them cow-killing stories.” Zorya Utrennyaya carried in their coffee on a red wooden tray. Small brightly enameled cups filled with a brown liquid so dark it was almost black. She gave them each a cup, then sat beside Czernobog.
“Zorya Vechernyaya is doing shopping,” she said. “She will be soon back.”
“We met her downstairs,” said Shadow. “She says she tells fortunes.”
“Yes,” said her sister. “In the twilight, that is the time for lies. I do not tell good lies, so I am a poor fortune-teller. And our sister, Zorya Polunochnaya, she can tell no lies at all.”
The coffee was even sweeter and stronger than Shadow had expected.
Shadow excused himself to use the bathroom—a cramped, closet-like room near the front door, hung with several brown-spotted framed photographs. It was early afternoon, but already the daylight was beginning to fade. He heard voices raised from down the hall. He washed his hands in icy-cold water with a sickly-smelling sliver of pink soap.
Czernobog was standing in the hall as Shadow came out.
“You bring trouble!” he was shouting. “Nothing but trouble! I will not listen! You will get out of my house!”
Wednesday was still sitting on the sofa, sipping his coffee, stroking the gray cat. Zorya Utrennyaya stood on the thin carpet, one hand nervously twining in and out of her long yellow hair.
“Is there a problem?” asked Shadow.
“He is the problem!” shouted Czernobog. “He is! You tell him that there is nothing will make me help him! I want him to go! I want him out of here! Both of you go!”
“Please,” said Zorya Utrennyaya, “please be quiet, you wake up Zorya Polunochnaya.”
“You are like him, you want me to join his madness!” shouted Czernobog. He looked as if he was on the verge of tears. A pillar of ash tumbled from his cigarette onto the threadbare hall carpet.
Wednesday stood up, walked over to Czernobog. He rested his hand on Czernobog’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said, peaceably. “Firstly, it’s not madness. It’s the only way. Secondly, everyone will be there. You would not want to be left out, would you?”
“You know who I am,” said Czernobog. “You know what these hands have done. You want my brother, not me. And he’s gone.”
A door in the hallway opened, and a sleepy female voice said, “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong, my sister,” said Zorya Utrennyaya. “Go back to sleep.” Then she turned to Czernobog. “See? See what you do with all your shouting? You go back in there and sit down. Sit!” Czernobog looked as if he were about to protest; and then the fight went out of him. He looked frail, suddenly: frail, and lonely.
The three men went back into the shabby sitting room. There was a brown nicotine ring around that room that ended about a foot from the ceiling, like the tide-line in an old bathtub.
“It doesn’t have to be for you,” said Wednesday to Czernobog, unfazed. “If it is for your brother, it’s for you as well. That’s one place you dualistic types have it over the rest of us, eh?”
Czernobog said nothing.
“Talking of Bielebog, have you heard anything from him?”
Czernobog shook his head. Then he spoke, staring down at the threadbare carpet. “None of us have heard of him. I am almost forgotten, but still, they remember me a little, here and in the old country.” He looked up at Shadow. “Do you have a brother?”
“No,” said Shadow. “Not that I know of.”
“I have a brother. They say, you put us together, we are like one person, you know? When we are young, his hair, it is very blond, very light, and people say, he is the good one. And my hair it is very dark, darker than yours even, and people say I am the rogue, you know? I am the bad one. And now time passes, and my hair is gray. His hair, too, I think, is gray. And you look at us, you would not know who was light, who was dark.”
“Were you close?” asked Shadow.
“Close?” asked Czernobog. “No. We were not close. How could we be? We cared about such different things.”
There was a clatter from the end of the hall, and Zorya Vechernyaya came in. “Supper in one hour,” she said. Then she went out.
Czernobog sighed. “She thinks she is a good cook,” he said. “She was brought up, there were servants to cook. Now, there are no servants. There is nothing.”
“Not nothing,” said Wednesday. “Never nothing.”
“You,” said Czernobog. “I shall not listen to you.” He turned to Shadow. “Do you play checkers?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Shadow.
“Good. You shall play checkers with me,” he said, taking a wooden box of pieces from the mantelpiece, and shaking them out onto the table. “I shall play black.”
Wednesday touched Shadow’s arm. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said.
“Not a problem. I want to,” said Shadow. Wednesday shrugged, and picked up an old copy of the Reader’s Digest from a small pile of yellowing magazines on the windowsill. Czernobog’s brown fingers finished arranging the pieces on the squares, and the game began.
In the days that were to come, Shadow often found himself remembering that game. Some nights he dreamed of it. His flat, round pieces were the color of old, dirty wood, nominally white. Czernobog’s were a dull, faded black. Shadow was the first to move. In his dreams, there was no conversation as they played, just the loud click as the pieces were put down, or the hiss of wood against wood as they were slid from square to adjoining square.
For the first half-dozen moves each of the men slipped pieces out onto the board, into the center, leaving the back rows untouched. There were pauses between the moves, long, chess-like pauses, while each man watched, and thought.
Shadow had played checkers in prison: it passed the time. He had played chess, too, but he was not temperamentally suited to chess. He did not like planning ahead. He preferred picking the perfect move for the moment. You could win in checkers like that, sometimes.