Death Of A Russian Priest Page 4

  They had already been to one restaurant and a rock-and-roll club. No one remembered the Arab girl at the restaurant. No one had been at the rock-and-roll club so early in the morning. The Nikolai Café looked like their best chance, if something was to be accomplished today.

  Sasha shifted his weight and decided that there were many reasons to be miserable. For one thing he would be thirty years old in three days, which did not please him. Nor did the prospect of the birthday party Rostnikov and his wife were preparing. He did not want to be thirty. He did not look or feel thirty. He looked no different than he had for the past six or seven years, and most people took him for no more than twenty-three. He was, he knew, reasonably good-looking, if a bit thin. His straight blond hair frequently fell over his eyes and he had an engaging habit of throwing his head back to clear his vision. He also had a large space between his front upper teeth, which seemed to bring out the maternal instinct in most women. Another thing that contributed to Sasha’s misery was that the woman who stood with him seemed not only immune to his boyish charm but indifferent to almost everything about him. She was a year or two older than he, granted, but he was the one with experience.

  He had been shot at and had shot back. He had even killed criminals. He had seen death, corruption, and misery. Now with a mother, a wife, a child, and another one on the way, he looked forward only to financial disaster, a greater loss of privacy, and increased responsibilities. And now he had this inexperienced woman acting as if she were the one in charge.

  “Why do you look so angry?” Elena asked.

  “Because I am angry,” Sasha replied. “When I am angry, it shows on my face, if I choose to allow it to show.”

  “And you have reasons for this anger?”

  “I have reasons,” he said, plunging his hands into his pockets.

  “Which you do not wish to share.”

  “Which I do not wish to share.”

  “Try a slice this time,” she said, looking over his shoulder at the well-dressed businessman directly in front of them who was shifting his shopping bag from one hand to the other.

  “I think I’ll eat two slices,” Sasha said casually.

  Elena shrugged.

  Sasha wasn’t even hungry. He had eaten some bread and kasha with tea before he left home. He had made breakfast for his pregnant wife, Maya. Sasha’s mother, Lydia, had been in the living room, the only other room in the apartment, when Sasha had brought his wife breakfast in her bed. The doctor, Sarah Rostnikov’s cousin, had insisted that Maya move as little as possible until the pains started or her water broke.

  The irony of this was that Sasha, Maya, and their daughter, Pulcharia, had recently moved in order to have some privacy from Lydia, whom Sasha loved dearly, as one should love a mother, but who, he admitted, was difficult enough to drive a monk to suicide. She was close to deaf and would do nothing about it. She was uncompromising on food preparation, etiquette, child care, and hygiene. Maya had urged Sasha to use his position as a policeman to find a way to exchange their old apartment for a small one for them and another small one for Lydia, and he had done so with guilt but with little regret. Now, only weeks after the separation, Lydia, with a leave of absence from her government job, was back in their apartment to help take care of Maya and Pulcharia, who was now almost two. There was no sign that his mother ever contemplated moving out when the baby came.

  Maya had told him to be patient and he had tried to be. This morning he asked Lydia if she had seen his tooflyee, his shoes, and she answered, “Like your father. He was thirty when he started to say crazy things.” Then she looked at her son and said, in a tone obviously meant only for a demented child, “Why are you looking for a tighgah?”

  “I am not looking for a rain forest,” Sasha had answered, without raising his voice, as Lydia looked at Pulcharia for confirmation of what Sasha had really said.

  Now, to add to his misery, he was spending his days with Elena Timofeyeva instead of Zelach, his usual partner. Zelach was recovering from the near loss of his eye, an injury he might never have sustained if Sasha had been doing his job instead of being seduced by a suspect. Zelach was an amiable, if exasperatingly slow, hulk of a man. There was no doubt of who was in charge when he and Zelach were on an assignment.

  Sasha wanted to put his hands over his ears to warm them, but he looked at Elena, who was hatless, and decided to suffer.

  “You look cold,” she said. Her thigh-length cloth coat was not even buttoned. “It will warm up later.”

  “I’m fine,” Sasha said, though he now feared that he might be coming down with a cold.

  “If you want to go stand in the metro entrance, I’ll bring the pizzas,” she said.

  “I am not the least bit cold,” Sasha said emphatically.

  Elena shrugged and looked at the man with me shopping bag. The man tried to ignore the scrutiny by feigning a great interest in a lumber truck parked in front of a government food shop.

  “You see the man ahead of us?” Sasha suddenly said in a whisper that could be heard for at least half a block.

  The man couldn’t help turning his head slightly in their direction. Elena looked at the man with sympathy, which seemed to increase his discomfort.

  As the line moved forward a flurry of automobile horns signaled a battle over a few feet of space on Kalinin Street.

  Sasha looked at Elena. She was a bit hefty for his taste, but he had to admit that her face was pleasant, her skin clear, her eyes blue, and her teeth, though a bit large, remarkably even and cleaner looking than most Russians. Her dark hair was just long enough to be pulled back and tied behind her head with a rubber band. At that moment of unnecessary embarrassment Sasha was glad that he did not find her particularly attractive. He loved his wife, her voice, her laugh, her face, but all too often he had been betrayed by his flesh.

  “What about the man?” Elena asked.

  “It’s Semykin,” he said. “Gregor Semykin, the one who was arrested with Folyoskov last year, the glass-tumbler case.”

  Elena looked at the man, who was now studying the fascinating head of the woman in front of him. The line moved forward. “It is not Semykin,” she whispered. “The man looks nothing like Semykin. Semykin is in jail. Semykin is short.”

  “Perhaps it’s his brother,” Sasha replied. “The similarity—”

  The man in front of them suddenly looked at his watch, gave the impression that he had forgotten an important meeting, and left the line hurriedly.

  Sasha urged Elena forward in the line.

  “That was unnecessary,” she said.

  “We’re in a hurry. You said we’re in a hurry. Besides, the man was guilty of something or he wouldn’t have run.”

  The warmth of the truck made a difference now that they were only two customers away from being served.

  “Everyone is guilty of something,” Elena said. “It makes—”

  “And it is our task to find out what it is,” Sasha said, standing on his toes so he could get a better view of the interior of the pizza truck.

  “Only if they are guilty of a crime,” Elena said.

  “There are so many crimes,” he said with a shrug. “And there’ll soon be new crimes. Crimes against the rights of individuals, women, crimes against dignity. This is too serious and I am hungry.”

  They stood in front of the truck window now. The line behind them numbered about forty.

  “No more,” said the man in the window. “We’re out of pizzas.”

  He was a heavy man in need of a shave. Perched on his head of unruly black hair was a white cap designed to protect the food. His smile revealed teeth in need of emergency dentistry.

  “We’re the police,” Sasha said.

  The man shouted over their heads, “You see, there is no more cheese. I’m not a magician who can make cheese appear where there is no cheese. And I do not make pizzas without cheese. So, no more pizza today.”

  The line held for a moment and then, amid groans and threat
s, it broke up. The man with the white cap and bad teeth started to close the doors.

  “We are the police,” Sasha repeated.

  “Once that meant something,” the man said, leaning forward, “but read the papers, turn on the television. Look at the political paintings being sold on the walls of this very street. The police can’t threaten. Boris Yeltsin will not tolerate it. We are becoming a democracy. A democracy with no cheese. If you were cows and could give me cheese, we would have something to talk about.”

  “You are not humorous,” Sasha Tkach said, looking at Elena. She did not seem to be enjoying the scene.

  “Then do me a favor. Don’t hire me as a comedian.”

  Sasha felt Elena’s hand on his shoulder and turned to shrug it off so he could carry on his debate with the pizza man, who now had one of the doors almost closed. Elena stepped in front of Sasha and gave the pizza man her best smile. The man returned a frown.

  “No more cheese. I’ll say it slowly one last time, and then I’ll say good-bye. No … more … cheese. Now arrest me for not having cheese.”

  Sasha’s hand went out past Elena and grabbed the second door as the man started to close it.

  “Tkach,” Elena said. “It doesn’t—”

  “You wanted pizza,” he said. “You will have pizza. I will taste pizza. I will eat it and imagine what it must be like to live in Naples or Boston and eat pizza.”

  Sasha pulled the door from the man’s hand. It shot out with a clatter against the side of the truck. A few people in the line who had not decided on a breakfast alternative looked up.

  “Are you crazy?” the pizza man said, losing his cap. “Boris, help.”

  A voice from inside the truck, dark and deep, called, “What are you doing, Kornei? Close the damned door and let’s get out of here.”

  As the voice came from within, Sasha grabbed the sleeve of the pizza man and pulled him forward. The man hit the partly closed door, popping it open with a bang.

  “No, no, what are you doing?” screamed the pizza man, grabbing the open door to keep from falling to the street.

  Sasha felt an arm on his shoulder again and dimly heard a woman’s voice behind him, but it was too late. There were too many lines, too little cheese and money, too many mothers, children, eyes, birthdays, people demanding.

  Over the rear end of the pizza man named Kornei appeared a huge round face with a very flat nose. This second pizza man, Boris, wore a white cheese-and-sauce-stained apron and a look of total bewilderment. “Call the police,” he shouted at Elena as he grabbed Kornei to keep him from being pulled to the street by Sasha.

  “They are the police,” cried Kornei.

  Whereupon the man inside the truck let go of his partner, and Kornei tumbled onto the sidewalk.

  “Tkach,” Elena said, moving past him to help the panicked pizza man, who rubbed his shoulder as he inched his way backward on his behind till his back was against the truck.

  Sasha looked up at Boris, and what Boris saw in the young man’s eyes made him say, “We were saving one for ourselves. It’s yours. Don’t touch him. Wait. Wait.”

  “Help,” Kornei called out to the growing crowd.

  The cry for help started an immediate debate.

  “Help him,” called a woman.

  “What?” said a man. “I’m going to fight with the police, get my head broken over a pizza?”

  “He must have done something wrong if the police are beating him,” said another man. “Maybe he’s selling tainted pizza.”

  Some of the crowd—Elena was sure it was the ones who were eating pizzas they had luckily or unluckily purchased before the madness began—began to grumble and move forward.

  The big man appeared at the window, holding a pizza covered with cheese and a red sauce. “Here,” he said, holding it out.

  Sasha took the pizza and handed it to Elena. “How much?” he asked.

  “You’re paying?” asked Boris, leaning over to see if his partner was still alive.

  “We are not thieves,” said Sasha.

  “Ten rubles,” said the man.

  Sasha opened his wallet, found five rubles, half his monthly rent, and handed them to the man.

  “Kornei has a wife and four children,” said Boris softly through the window.

  “Yes,” Kornei agreed, “I have a wife and four children.”

  “One generally has a wife if he has four children,” Sasha countered madly. “If one does not have a wife, one usually cannot tell how many children he has.”

  Sasha took the pizza from Elena and stalked away. He handed her a slice as they moved through the crowd.

  “And he looks like such a child,” said a woman, whose voice sounded uncomfortably like his mother’s.

  They walked swiftly down the Arbat, eating just-slightly-warmer-than-cold pizza.

  “Do you go insane frequently?” Elena asked.

  “No,” he said. “Not enough.”

  “And it feels … ?”

  “Fine, just fine,” he said, gobbling down pizza. It had no taste and its consistency was that of a tennis shoe.

  They were standing in the Sobachaya Ploshadka, Dog Square.

  “You know what was here two hundred years ago?” Sasha asked, stopping to look around, waving a floppy slice of pizza.

  Elena shrugged.

  “Dog kennels, the kennels of the czar. The dogs were treated better than people,” he said to a fat little woman who waddled quickly by. “I hate this pizza.”

  Elena took it from him and began to munch on it.

  At that moment Sasha decided to bang his fist down on top of an illegally parked white Lada.

  “I live with my aunt, you know,” Elena said. They were next to one of the sidewalk stands that sold marioshki dolls and enameled boxes. A year ago the Gorbachev doll was the large outside one in which all the others nested. He had been replaced by Yeltsin, into whom Gorbachev now fit snugly.

  “That is not relevant,” Sasha said. “I don’t want to talk about your aunt. I want to stay angry. If you hadn’t insisted on the stupid pizza—”

  “You know my aunt?” Elena asked, still munching on the pizza.

  Sasha stood in the middle of the sidewalk, his hands in his pockets. “Yes,” he said. “I was with the procurator general’s office when she was a director.”

  He looked down the Arbat, hoping for trouble, but none was coming. He longed for a pair of young men with punk American clothes and weirdly cut hair who would look at him with a challenge or dare to say a word. He would even settle for a vendor he could catch taking American dollars.

  “You want some of this pizza back?” she asked. “I don’t need to get any fatter.”

  “You are not fat,” he said, considering another assault on the innocent Lada.

  “My aunt had four heart attacks,” Elena said. “That’s why she retired.”

  “I know,” said Sasha.

  Later, he decided, he would go home, stare his mother down, stare his wife down, and grunt at Pulcharia if she was still awake. He would sit in the corner watching American music videos on the television all night without saying a word, and if they dared to speak to him …

  “We live in a small apartment with her cat, Baku,” Elena said.

  A truck hit its horn somewhere in the direction of Kalinin Prospekt. There was a screeching of tires but no crash.

  “It used to be,” Sasha said, “that a policeman had respect, even fear. It used to be that a policeman could do his job. It used to be—”

  “—that a policeman was a police man and not a police woman,” Elena supplied. “There will be more of us now.”

  “Yes,” he said defiantly, looking at her. “I know.”

  She nodded, wiped her hands together, and sucked some sauce off her left thumb. Sasha had a sudden mad urge to step over and suck her thumb.

  “Do you want to go find a missing Arab girl?” Elena asked, pushing away from the wall. “Or do you want to hit more cars and beat up more peop
le?”

  “I didn’t beat him up,” Sasha said. He knew he was losing the anger, and he wanted to recover it.

  “You should take up some hobby,” she said, starting down the street toward Kalinin.

  “I’m too busy for hobbies,” he said. “I work all day and half the night, and whatever time I have left I spend taking care of my daughter and trying to please my wife and my mother.”

  Elena was about twenty yards away now. She stopped and turned to speak to him. “That is a very sad story, Tkach,” she said with mock sympathy. “I’ll tell you mine someday.”

  Someone not long ago had said the same thing or something like it to Sasha. It felt as if it had been Elena in this same place.

  “Damn,” he shouted.

  “What now?” she called.

  People were crossing the street, pretending to look for some address to avoid the insane couple.

  He moved toward her, his hands still plunged in his pockets. Sasha threw his head back to clear the dangling hair from his eyes.

  Elena said nothing as they walked side by side.

  “My birthday is in three days. You want to know how old I’ll be?”

  “Thirty,” she said.

  “I look thirty?”

  “You look fourteen,” she said. “My aunt and I have been invited to the party for you. If you are reasonably sane by then, we may come.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I think I like you better crazy than contrite,” she said. “Or even better, something in between.”

  “I’ll try,” he said.

  “Feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then …”

  “Let’s find an Arab girl.”

  FOUR

  BEFORE HE LEFT PETROVKA, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov called his wife. He knew she would be home. Sarah was recovering from surgery for a brain tumor. The operation had gone well, but the recovery was taking much longer than they had expected. They had gone on a vacation to Yalta, which had not been much of a rest, and some progress had been made, but Sarah still grew dizzy if she walked more than a few blocks and she needed at least ten hours of sleep each night.

  “You’re home,” he said when she answered the phone.