Every half mile along a road through a forest in the Crimea there is a white sign nailed to a tree. The word “Klesh,” is printed in square Russian letters on the wood, with a warning beneath it cautioning drivers not to vacate their automobiles. Kostic told me that he was six years old when his family vacationed outside of St. Petersburg near a facility where they kept people bitten by Klesh. His mother yelled at him to stay away but he meandered up to the chain link fence and peered through. In the distance he saw men and women dressed in white walking quietly through a sparse gathering of trees. One man stood gazing at a tall branch stuck into the ground. Tilting forward he grasped it with both hands, holding himself close and staring into the bark. Suddenly the man screamed, his arms flew apart from the limb, as if the wood had turned into flame. According to Kostic, Klesh is an insect whose bite causes permanent dementia. A member of the tick family, it is shaped like a sickle and lives only in the forests of the Crimea, where it drops from trees and buries itself into your skin. Since there is no cure for the bite, the Russian government locks up the infected in areas like the one outside St. Petersburg. Kostic told me how he kept watching the man through the fence even as his mother shouted at him to stay away, how his fingers tightened on the wire diamonds, and he started yelling when the man ran from the stick, “Pseakch! Pseakch! (Psychopath! Psychopath!)” How the man turned and
charged at him, drool pouring down his lip, slapping at the air as if fighting off a swarm of hot bees.

Fifteen years later, at the University of California at Berkeley, Kostic found himself staggering through the halls of Unit 2, pushing his way into the vacant bedroom of 123 and collapsing with a groan on the floor. At five AM he crawled into an adjoining bathroom and decorated a toilet shared by Isaac of 125 who informed my comrade that if he ever found him in there again he would remove him physically.

Kostic was furious.

“Let’s burn him,” he said. “Ban, can we do that?” Kostic asked me softly, “would they arrest us?”

“Yes Kostic, I imagine they would.”

“Hm.” He said, putting his chin on a fist. “Well.” Kostic was little, about five foot three but lean and hard wired. He would laugh when I ran after him, trying to tickle him, but Kostic always said that if it ever came down to “real fight” he would kill me. He told me about how he had been beaten once in the streets of St. Petersburg, someone at school had a crush on his girlfriend, and it was customary for that person to challenge you to a fight. It happened near the bronze statue of Lenin, except it was three boys instead of one, all punching and kicking Kostic’s face and ribs. He said he lay all night beneath the huge metal statue, talking to it, sipping canned vodka and holding a towel to his wet cheek. “In Russia no one gives a fuck about it.” He flicked a penny off my desk. “If you get beat up in the street and you tell police they just laugh and tell you to walk with more friends next time.” Kostic picked up a book of matches and thumbed through the red heads. “Ban why do they arrest people for burnen things?” Kostic broke into a smile and then a laugh. “How I am supposed to punish Isaac for his stupidity?” “Well,” I thought for a second, “Maybe you could just beat him.” “In the head! Yes!” Kostic clapped his hands together. “It is goot idea! Will you help me?” 

“I don’t know Kostic,”

“Oh, come on Ban! Don’t let your Jewish half get in the way. It is your only problem you know, if you were not half Jewish you would be perfect human being.”

I shrugged and opened the fridge. Each dorm was allotted a white cube with a small drawer attached to the bottom which was supposed to be the freezer. I used my fingernails to pry out the Strawberry Cheesecake Swirl I knew was Kostic’s favorite. He never asked for anything else, ever since I introduced him to the taste two weeks ago he had refused to try any other flavor.

“This is Jewish name, ‘Isaac’?”

“What do you have against Jews?” I asked, scooping the ice cream into a bowl.

“I have nothing against them. I just want to burn them.” He smiled and then laughed.

I yawned and squirted some chocolate syrup over his dish, setting it in front of him.

“Great!” He grinned and he smacked his lips, holding his spoon like a scalpel over the dessert. “Ice cream!”

Before he met me Kostic had never tasted a thick milkshake or known apple pie. It was sort of amazing, to watch his eyes widen as he sucked the cream through the straw. He said that in Russia they put water in the milkshakes, so they were thin as juice. Kostic moved to America three years ago, and swore that he hated it here, so much so that for two years he refused to assimilate. He said he did everything like a real Russian, taking showers once a week, wearing only the clothes he had brought from St. Petersburg, refusing to talk to any Americans at all. “I don’t respect you western peoples,” he said, a drizzle of chocolate syrup falling from his lip, “And it is so funny, you know once I was on subway in Saint Petersburg, and some American guy asks me for directions to somewhere, and since I only know three English words I turn and say to him ‘Table,
dog, rocket.’” Kostic and I stood up laughing and went out on the balcony to eat our dessert. Kostic leaned over the rail and peered into his ice cream. I watched him use his spoon to cut around the strawberries, removing them like small red kidneys. How did I stumble upon such a character? We met for the first time in a Cafe where I used to go to play chess. I had been crushing everyone there pretty regularly until the manager found Kostic and told him that if he beat me he would buy him two coffees. After that the manager never got rid of me. Soon I was the one buying Kostic coffee, just so he would let me watch as he muddled over opening variations and complex pawn positions. In Russia Kostic had been a strong master which meant that
in the United States he destroyed almost everybody.

“Sack a knight first. Then take a Bishop....” Kostic swirled the rook around in his fingers like a glass of whiskey. He was quiet. I could hear the rain slash against the side of my dorm. I looked out the window; it was strange weather for September in Berkeley. The water was so heavy on the street the drops splashed craters when they hit. “But this doesn’t work because of rook sacrifice on h3. But then why would Kasparov recommend this line if rook can sack?” Kostic frowned and put his head in a cage of fingers, “Often I agree with Kasparov,” he smiled a bit, “but mostly I think he is idiot. Do you think he is good player?” He looked up at me with that soft gaze. I shrugged. Kostic was usually serious about his opinions of anyone who
managed to achieve greatness, even figures like Bobby Fisher or Einstein could not escape his scalding  riticism. Except Langranch, who was Kostic’s cat, a long haired tabby named after the French mathematician Petroff Langranch. “Oh Ban, he is soo beautiful, he is the only guy who I more or less like. But he is afraid of me. You know what awful thing I did to him today? He was sleepin on the pillow and I pull it from out from underneath him! Hee hee! And oh Ban he was so afraid, I think he never sleepin again!” Kostic got up from the board and went to the window, his hands folded behind his back. The glass had begun to steam up. The sound of water pelting the roof swelled briefly then died. “You know I must bring cat to hospital on Tuesday.” Kostic wiped a hole in the mist and peered out into the rain. “Langranch is very sick. It cost me five hundred dollars to get him repaired. Why American doctors charge so much? In Russia it only cost seven dollars to fix cat.” He giggled at his own choice of words and was quiet again. “Ban, is it worth it?” He asked me softly. “Is friend worth five hundred dollars?” He turned his head slightly to look at me, but I shrugged and didn’t say anything. He looked back out the window, his hands still clasped behind his back, ridged and cold.
 
 

Kostic was afraid to walk in the dark, but after awhile I convinced him there were no mountain lions and we started for the cement path. Inspiration Point was about a half mile hike into Tilden park. We hopped a gate and walked down the dim gray road. After a few minutes we cut left onto a dirt path and started walking up towards the bald, windblown summit.

“Do you think Klesh is here?” I was breathing hard and slipping on dirt clods.

“No. Only in Crimea.”

“There’s really no cure?”

“Maybe if you are bitten twice it cures Klesh. But I think for Jews it takes three times.” Kostic giggled slightly. A cold wind picked up, he tucked his arm inside his jacket. “Actually, I heard that you can burn it. They say you can stop poison if you burn your arm where Klesh goes. I heard of one my friends tell me he used car cigarette lighter to burn it. But he deserved that bite. I think people always deserve what happens to them. Ban?” He asked me softly “Don’t you think people deserve what they get?”

I bit my bottom lip and shrugged, “ So….is he okay?” “I don’t know. He was crazy anyway, you know?” Kostic smiled, and even in the dark I could see his eyes light up.

As we were walking Kostic told me about a recurring dream he had of a printer spitting out images of people who peeled right off the page and started chasing him. “Oh Ban it was so scary!” He laughed and watched the lights emerge from behind the hills as we stomped up the path. It had stopped raining and the grass was wet and cool. There was a strange wind here, a warm gust of air that hit you like a wave. “Wait, stop.” We paused on the hill. Kostic wrinkled up his nose and put a hand to his chest, “My heart hurts.” He spoke between breaths. It happened often, usually when Kostic wasn’t eating, a phase which sometimes went on for two or three days. His hair would start to look bigger, his cheeks would sink in and his chin would narrow. It meant he was worried about something, maybe he was changing jobs, or graduating soon. When I pointed this out he would always claim that he wasn’t worried, even when his cat was in the hospital he said he was a cold person, that he had no emotions inside.

And maybe that’s why Kostic hated the heat. It was only hot for one month out of the year in St. Petersburg, and so anything over fifty degrees Fahrenheit bothered him, especially spicy foods. He loathed anything Mexican or Chinese. It was odd but I rarely saw him eat, he couldn’t touch anything at the supermarket because he believed it was poisoned. “Don’t you think they try to poison us?” He looked at me calmly. “They put these chemicals in the food to control our behavior. This is why Americans have such big sex drive, and then government preoccupies them with pornography while it does anything it wants.”

“So how do you eat anything?”

“I only eat a few things. Like a bread and a coke. The less variety of things I eat the less chance I have of getting poisoned.” It was true, Kostic would buy foods in mass, such as three gallons of only coffee ice cream, or eight jars of a particular brand of peanut butter, items that he had deemed “safe” through a careful method of testing he never made clear to me. When I first knew Kostic I remember asking him if he wanted to try some of my lunch, I was having soup. I remember he ate a won ton, I suppose he was just being polite, with his teeth bared and eyes closed, like he was biting down on the head of a rat.
 
 

“Every two nights I have dream of people fucking screamin at each other in cars.” Kostic paced up and down my small room. “They get out of the car and just start crashin each other with metal pipes. It’s fucking mad.” He went to the window and looked out, making a face at the rain. It had been storming all day, and we couldn’t go anywhere because Kostic refused to leave my room. “I am like cat to water.” He said,

“Then why don’t you eat mice?”

“Mice, Bleaahch!” He made a face. “No. They are too furry. Besides I am vegetarian.” Kostic turned abruptly and found himself staring into Cleopatra’s terrarium. Originally she had come in a little Styrofoam cup with nothing but a leaf to hide under. My brother gave her to me for Christmas, almost as a joke because he knew I was afraid of spiders. “What is this?” Kostic’s eyes got wide, “Is it beetle?”

“No. It’s a spider, a Tarantula.”

Kostic tilted forward, then tensed as Cleo lifted a hairy leg lazily into the air.

“It is poisonous?”

“No. No more than a bee sting.”

“Lets fuck with it, Ban!” Kostic ogled the spider through the glass. Cleo was a dark, quiet animal who usually remained under her piece of bark. Sometimes she would sit there cleaning her fangs, massaging them up and down like a cricket rubbing its legs together.

“Do you want to hold her?”

“No.” Kostic looked at me, a little frightened, then broke into a laugh. “Let’s put it in Isaac’s room. Jews hate spiders.” I lifted the cardboard and carefully sneaked my hand up to Cleo, who cautiously climbed on.

“Oooh my God! Look at how many eyes it has! If I had this many eyes I would be able to see everything that comes after me.”

Kostic stared into her face, “Ban, what do you do in this country if poisonous thing bites you?”

“Well, usually they suck on the bite. Sometimes they’d slice up the wound and try to bleed the poison out. But that’s just for snakes. I don’t know what they do for insect bites.”

“How about burnin the bite with cigarette lighter?” He made an ‘O’ with his fingers and pressed it against his arm, “like Klesh.”

“No, I don’t think that would work either. Usually the toxin is already deep inside you by the time you start that kind of stuff. And the pain from the burn makes your heart rate increase which just spreads the poison.”

“Hm.” Kostic put a fist to his chin. “Well.” I put Cleo back and Kostic started setting up the chess pieces. He had left his rooks off the board but after fifteen moves I was already losing. I rested my chin on a wrist and peered at the squares. Kostic always stood when he played chess, leaning over the board with both hands gripping the edges of the table, his stone gaze pushing into the board. He would lie to me sometimes. He would show me how what I thought was a loss for the white pieces was actually a winning position. Only later would he tell me about it, saying he did it to reaffirm his analytical skills, that it helped him to play a flawless game.

“Don’t you ever make mistakes?” I asked.

“Yes, sometimes. But only on purpose. I only make mistakes when I want to confuse people. The best way to control people is to confuse tham. Did you know that Ban?” He smiled a bit, and looked at me softly, “Are you confused?”

It was a Wednesday night and we got kicked out of a chess club in San Francisco for racing through the marble halls. We had clattered down the spiral staircase into the lobby, shouting and stumbling. The night doorman grimaced and told us to never come back, that he would remember our faces. We waved at him happily and waltzed out into the street, Kostic laughing so hard his hands were on his knees. After that we walked around downtown for a while, Kostic staring up at the towers of lighted windows. At about  ight-thirty we came to the Bank of America Building; I told Kostic that I was going to show him the Carnelian room, a café thirty six stories above the streets of downtown.

“It is like a bird sees.” Kostic looked down at the darkened city. You could see the tops of other skyscrapers, their cascades of mirror windows. People were moving in the streets like dots, buses were slivers. Kostic told me a story about a tournament he played in Moscow. He had lost an important game because of a careless blunder. He was so angry he went to the wall where they tacked up the score sheets and lit his with a cigarette lighter. The whole first floor burned he said, all the chairs and desks were reduced to charcoal, the pine floor was warped and black, the plastic chess pieces melted into lumps. “You know, Ban, I have new philosophy. Everything that can burn should burn.” He peered out, the sky was dark but the bay still glowed, a blue shimmer against black hills. “That is biggest problem with America.” He said, looking down at the grid of the city, “So much here is made of stone.”
 
 

One night late Kostic called me, sounding quiet. “Ban, I want you to help me. Will you help me?”

“Sure.” I mumbled, rolling over in bed, the phone squashed into my jaw.

“I want to jump out of ninth story window of my apartment. But I need someone to take cat to vet in the morning and I cannot if I am falling.”

“Why do you want to jump out the window?” “Because…Because window is...window is nice place.” “Kostic, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Just don’t feel like anything working. I graduate in one month. Nothing is...happening in Kostic’s life. So. You halp me? Will you take cat to vet?”

“Uhmm….I can’t Kostic.”

“Why.”

“I’ve got homework.”

“Shit. Wa-ell….hm. I know! I can take cat with me! Out tha window! Yes! This is good plan!” “Kostic, why do want to kill yourself? You know your mother would be really pissed off.” “Yes....It is true. The only reasonable thing then is to take her with me.” I kept him talking. He said he wanted to go home, that it was the only place he felt safe, especially in his mother’s egetable garden where everything was fresh and pure. He would eat vegetables all day long he said—carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, until he was ready to burst. “Ban, would you ever stop talking to me? Even if I told you I did something really terrible?” I could hear the click of the chess pieces over the phone, Kostic was analyzing some position.

“No. I don’t care what you do. As long as you don’t hurt me or anyone I love there really isn’t anything you can do to piss me off.”

“Good.” He said, “It is very un-jewish thing to say.” “Why? What did you do? Finally burn somebody?”

“No!” He laughed. “I had two people beaten in the head with pipes. But that’s all.” “You did what?” I sat up in bed.

“In Russia. Two guys, Everits and Berilits. But it’s not important.” “You paid someone to kill two people?” He was quiet. All I could hear was background static. Even the sound of chess playing had faded.

“Yes, more or less, this is the case.”

“How—How….“ I stammered for words, and then a strange question rumbled out, “How much did it cost?”

“Six bottles of Vodka. Per person. But you know at first they wanted ten each. I told them two.” He laughed, “But you it is funny thing, because at first I told tham I should pay nothing, because these guys were such assholes. We bargained for two weeks over this.”

“Why did you have them killed?”

“Because they wanted to kill me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Because I have big mouth probably. In Russia I was always telling people exactly what I think of them. I getting into fights all the time. More than I ever tell you.” Kostic told me how they were dragged down to a river and beaten with steel pipes. Then a bottle of vodka was poured down each their throats and they were left to die. When the doctors examined the bodies they theorized that each had taken a pipe and smashed his own head in a drunken rage. I asked Kostic how any doctor could come to such a conclusion, “Well,” he responded, “You know, doctors get their vodka too.”
 
 

I borrowed a knife from the kitchen to cut some bread. Kostic refused to play chess with me unless we had bread. I was hungry anyway and suggested dinner and chess later. He agreed to the plan and we went downstairs. Knowing how Kostic was about food, I tried to make everything from scratch—I had even bought the tomatoes to make tomato sauce. “What is this?” He sniffed critically at the bubbling pot.

“Tomato sauce.”

“Ah, good.” His face brightened. “You know Ban, tomatoes are my friends.” Kostic always ate more when I cooked dinner ike this. I wanted him to gain some weight, so his heart would stop bothering him. I always sneaked in as much oil as I could, mixing it in with the sauce or the spaghetti. Kostic refused to eat anything like cheese or butter since he was afraid of getting fat. Now he was fumbling with something in his jacket pocket, “I read article that ninety percent of all meat has little animals which live in it. Then they bite you and eat into your brain. Look.” Kostic produced a manuscript from his coat flopped the Xeroxed pages down onto the dinner table. “It says it there.”

I peered at the Cyrillic, confused for a moment by the strange square angles of the letters. “Kostic, this is in Russian.”

“Oh. Yes. I forgot.” He giggled. Kostic adjusted his sleeve. He wore exactly the same white pants every day, white shoes and a purple silk, button-up shirt. Every two weeks he would change colors, usually to blue, or dark green.

“Ban, I keep thinking you are Russian. Are you Russian?” “No. I am cat.” “Cat? You?” Kostic started to giggle. “You are cat?”

“Yez. Me. I am Langranch, cat of Kostic Petrovich. And I will throw you in bathtub and drown you in twelve bottles of Vodka!” I charged after him, going for his ribs. Soon I had him backed into a corner.

“Ban, Ban….” He held out a finger, “If you tickle me once again I guarantee you that everything in this kitchen will be on the floor.” Once, on a fluke, I beat Kostic in chess and he became so angry he threw an orange at me. It missed and slammed into the wall, juice and pits scattering everywhere.

I backed up.

“Do you ever feel bad Kostic?” I suddenly asked him, “ I mean about those guys you killed?” Kostic furled his eyebrows, as if I had somehow insulted him.

“Ban, I did not kill tham, I had tham killed.” “Well, doesn’t that ever bother you?” “What you are going to be sad? Go cry at the grave?” He curled a finger under his eye, “Oh it is so sad!” He sniffed, “They are dead!” I rolled my eyes. “Ban! Why do you care so much? Don’t you think they deserved that?” Kostic lay a hand on the table, he looked straight at me and spoke very softly “Don’t you think people deserve what they get?” Back in my room we sat at my desk eating spaghetti and staring at the board. Kostic once told me he named himself after the chess grandmaster, Kostic Reshevsky. He had changed his name twice in his life, each time to leave an old identity behind. I picked up the knife and looked around for the bread.

“Did the experience change you at all?” I found the loaf and cut a piece off, offering him a slice.

“Yes, a little I think.” He took it from me, “Because afterwards I throw party at my house. First time I ever in my life throw party.” He swept out a hand, munching as he glared at the chess board. We stayed up late into the night analyzing. By three AM Kostic decided to sleep over rather than drive home. I offered him the bunk bed, empty since my last roommate moved out. I held out a blanket but he waved it away. Kostic lay down in the center of the mattress, curled up; he looked like a little child. I turned off the light and lay down, pulling the warm blankets over me.

“Ban, do you ever have good dreams?” His soft voice came in through the dark, “I am never having them. Sometimes I am afraid to sleep.”

“Well….Try thinking of something beautiful.” The dark was still for a few moments.

“Ban, what is beautiful?”

“I-I guess….I….Kostic, what do you think is beautiful?” “I don’ know. Flower? Maybe pretty girl.” “Sure. That works.”

“Okay. I think of pretty girl.”

I peered over at the faintly glowing alarm clock—I didn’t have to get up until ten. “Okay. Well, g’night, Kostic.”

“Yes….Good. Night.”

When I got up in the morning he was gone. I looked downstairs but there was no sign of him. The only thing I found was the kitchen knife. The steel blade lay quietly on his mattress, flat in a spot where his hand must have been the entire night, resting quietly over it.
 
 

We had climbed up on the roof because Kostic wanted to see the city. The sky was clear and the stars were cold. We walked to the edge and looked out into the dark wind.

“Kostic, I don’t understand why you’re such a racist.” I said suddenly.

“Because different races are different. Why treat a duck like a cow?” “But a cow and a duck are different species. Jews are just like you. They eat under the same sun. They cry when they are sad.” “You think I am crying when I am sad?” Kostic looked at me and grinned. “You don’t know me, Ban.” Kostic spoke low as his eyes cut across the county. There was a line stretching  cross the hills where orange street lights suddenly ended and became yellow—the border between Oakland and Berkeley.
“You think you do but you don’t. I am lyin to you all the time, like everything. Everything I tell you about myself is lie. Just to confuse you. And you think you know it. You really think I would ever be dumb enough to kill myself? Do this stupid chicken shit thing? Fucken shit.” He walked around in circles and found a table, “Fuckin shit!” He kicked the structure over on its back, stood in the middle of it and started bending its legs back, bending the nails. I watched him work on the table, sitting, calmer, breaking off shards of wood, cracking the supports. I didn’t care really. It wasn’t mine, some fool had left it up here. I looked up and tried to imagine the Russian sky, the industrial sprawl below it that stretched forever past horizons—cranes, rusted
pipes, unfinished highways, blocks of cement, mud and rats. This is the Russia where you could smash a  indshield and buy a life with six bottles of poison. I watched him stare at the remains of the table. There was something dark in his face, under his eyes and nose.

Kostic started kicking little pieces of wood, scattering them across the roof. I looked down, rolling my shoe over a rusty nail. Kostic told me how he tried to purify himself once. No one knew where he was for three days. He told me he drove to the forest and built a huge fire. Then jumped in the flames and danced on the burning wood until his shoes melted. I looked at Kostic again. I didn’t try to stop him as he walked towards the edge of the roof, he was my best friend but I didn’t say anything. Kostic stood at the edge of the building, one of the table legs in his hand, a nail sticking out the end like a bone, his feet were halfway over the edge, and he rocked calmly back and forth on the brink, taking in the wind, looking out over the city.
 
 

The next day Kostic called me. He had gotten a letter in the mail, an invitation to a Master’s chess tournament in St. Petersburg. 

“Are-are you going?”

“Yes. I think am.”

“Do you have a ticket already?”

“Yes, I have. I only call because I leave jacket at your house and do not have time to come and get it. Will you bring it to me? As last favor to Kostic?”

“Sure...” I tried to say something else. My mouth opened and then closed again. “I’ll be right over.” I gently replaced the receiver and looked around for Kostic’s jacket, the bland white and blue coat with the steel zipper. By the time I got to his house he had already packed his bags. He beamed and looked down at the ticket in his hand like it was a sheet of gold. I was quiet. I handed him his jacket and he smiled. He put his hand on my shoulder, “So I leave tomorrow this fucking America. You are good friend.” It was the first time Kostic had ever addressed me as anything besides “Ban,” or “asshole.” I smiled back and tried to think of something to say, a parting insult so I could hear his laugh. It felt strange to be touched by him. I guess he didn’t know what to do either, so he just left his hand there, on my shoulder, looking at me with that crazy grin. Kostic pulled away, not cutting the conversation off like he usually did, but lingering for a few moments, unsure, then he turned swiftly around and walked away. As he left I caught a short glimpse of something on his arm, a strange tan spot on the white flesh near his wrist, as if something round had been burned there, leaving only a circle.