The Sin Collector

INNOKENTY

Innokenty sat obediently and listened as the pale young woman told her story all over again. Two months ago, her husband had been found whipped to death, and she apparently considered that only fair. His photos portrayed him clearly as the stern Siberian type, with a nose like a duck’s bill and deep-set blue eyes. For a good long while, he had doted on his wife, Larisa.

“He was very kind and considerate at first,” she whimpered. “Then he started misbehaving… Well, you know how men are.”

But Innokenty belonged to that small percentage of the Russian population who would define “misbehaving” as creative sexual practices, or, perhaps, having a little something on the side. How could that warrant such a brutal death? Apparently, his confusion showed on his face, because Larisa bowed her head and explained in a strident whisper.

“He started to beat me! I had my daughter from my first marriage, she was twelve years old at the time, and we’re not from here, so where could we go? I kept begging him, ‘At least don’t hit me in front of my girl!’ It was terrible. Any time he was in a bad mood, his fists came out. I was a chief accountant. I brought home more money than he did! And every day I had to cover up my black eyes to go in to work—I even thought up a new hairstyle, like a shaggy little dog, so that nobody could see my forehead or my neck. He beat me like he was a boxer and I was his punching bag. And I’d ask him, ‘Sergey, why are you doing this?’ And when he was sober, he used to say, very logically, ‘Larisa, I’m not a bad man—you know that! I just have a bad temper! I can’t fight back my anger, it possesses me, like a demon!’”

She looked briefly at Innokenty, but when she saw his eyes full of horror and sympathy, she lowered her gaze again.

“Happens a lot,” she said with a forced shrug. “They say you should be patient at first, that maybe he’ll stop. And I loved him, too. So I put up with it. Then one time it was so bad, I called the police. They took one look at my bloody face and said, ‘You two work it out, lady. We’re not getting involved.’

“After that he got smarter about how he hit me. In the stomach, on the chest, places where nobody could see it. So I thought maybe if I had a baby, that would calm him down. I got pregnant. And it worked. He was much gentler, and our son was born. But he was a fussy baby, cried all night, never let me sleep, and we had a very small apartment, so there was nowhere to hide. He got tired of it, and he started hitting me again, and I couldn’t even scream, because I didn’t want to wake up the baby.” Larisa was speaking quickly now, as if trying to get through the story as fast as she could.

“One time he beat me up and I bled a lot. It’s terrible, but I think it must have been a miscarriage. Now I realize maybe that was for the best, better to lose a baby early. How could another little one have survived in that nightmare? But then—one day I left him alone with our son in the bath. I left all the toys, so my husband didn’t have to do anything but sit there. I went into the kitchen to make dinner, and—”

Larisa hesitated, and dropped her head even lower. “Just a minute.” She pulled out a handkerchief and held it to her mouth.

“Are you all right?” Innokenty rose and bent over her.

Larisa just nodded. He opened a kitchen cupboard and found a glass, filled it with water from a plastic bottle on the table, and handed it to her. She took a drink, struggling to swallow through her tightly clenched throat.

“That was for the flowers,” she finally said.

“Sorry?”

“You gave me the water I was keeping for my plants.”

“Oh. I apologize.”

“No, it’s all right, I’ll be fine. He killed my baby. That’s what he did.”

Innokenty shuddered, but Larisa just looked up at him, gloomy and resigned.

“I still don’t know how it happened. Either the baby slipped, and his head went under the water, or my husband held him down. But one thing’s for sure: he didn’t help him. He was tired of the screaming, and hitting an eight-month-old isn’t as easy as hitting a woman. Anyway, I really lost it then. I ran to the police station. There was a trial.”

Larisa paused. Then she looked Innokenty right in the eye, her face utterly empty.

“They found him innocent. They said there was no proof any crime had taken place. They let him go right then and there. I tried to keep him out of the house. I had the locks changed. But he broke in, and beat me harder than he ever had before. That time I screamed. There was no baby to wake up anymore. The neighbors called the police, and they took him away. They were going to let him go again the next day. I packed our things—mine and my daughter’s. I thought if he came near us I’d run, go back to my mother in the village. But he never came back. A week later, they found him in a ditch near that old church on Prechistenka Street.” For the first time, Larisa smiled at Innokenty. It was a wide, genuine grin. “A dog deserves a dog’s death.”