The Sin Collector

MASHA

Masha followed Innokenty into his apartment and felt as if she were exhaling, finally, for the first time this whole long day. There were suddenly so many things she wanted to do. Sleep. Call Andrey just so she could hear his voice. But the first thing, probably, would be to get some food.

“Kenty?” she asked beseechingly as she kicked off her shoes. “I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?”

Innokenty put down Masha’s bag and shot a wry glance in her direction.

“I’m so glad you associate my home with sustenance, my dear. Come on.”

In the kitchen, Masha sat on a high bar stool and swiveled around quietly, this way and that, while Kenty studied the contents of his enormous French-door refrigerator. He adored it for its capacity, and referred to it lovingly as his root cellar. Now he pulled a stock pot, wet with condensation, out of cold storage and put it on the stove. The deep recesses of the machine also yielded up some fresh dill, and Kenty got out a huge heavy-looking cutting board and set to work chopping the herbs up. He turned on the oven and slid in a tray of pirozhki. When the pot started boiling, he removed it from the burner, ladled out some chicken meat, and cut it up into small pieces. He got out a serving bowl with a delicate floral pattern—Dutch, he explained, a Delftware piece—and neatly poured the broth into it. He selected a linen napkin from a drawer and set it on the table next to Masha, along with a solid-silver spoon.

Usually Masha teased him about the care he took, his desire to make sure everything in his life, especially everything pertaining to the stomach, was just right. Even when it was his one and only best friend at the table, someone he had known forever, and whose stomach was growling in a completely indelicate way. This time, though, Kenty’s dance around the table had a calming effect on Masha. After all, in a world where a Delftware tureen could survive since the eighteenth century, how bad could things be?

“So where’s the silver napkin ring?” Masha couldn’t help ribbing him now. “No respect, I tell you!”

Innokenty looked up from the last step in his ritual (he was pouring vodka from a bottle into a crystal pitcher already chilled to readiness), smiled, and reached out a finger to tap her nose. He poured some vodka into a small, thick-walled shot glass, ladled the broth into a deep bowl, and moved a plate full of pirozhki closer to her. Masha breathed deeply, lifted her glass, and, without pausing for a toast, took her shot. She chased it down with a bite of the pirozhki and tossed some of the lovely bitter dill into her bowl to soak.

“Kenty—” she started, then stopped. He froze with the spoon in his hand. What could she say to him? Thanks for being you? You’re my best friend in the world, and I don’t know how I would have survived all these years without you? Could she tell him the things she might have said, but never did, to her other best friend, Katya? Or to her stepfather? But thinking like that scared her. It was as if she were getting ready to say good-bye to him, too. So instead of finishing her sentence, Masha took her first spoonful of the radiantly golden chicken broth. Only after that did she lift her eyes to meet his again.

“Who taught you to make such excellent broth?”

For a second, it seemed that Innokenty had been expecting some other sort of declaration. But he smiled and wiped his mouth with a napkin.

“My only teacher is Elena Molokhovets, the Russian master cook.” He could even quote her: “‘To be sure the soup comes out clear, let it simmer on the lowest possible flame while removing any scum. Then your soup will taste delicious and will be so transparent that you will not need to skim off the fat, but merely strain it through a napkin.’ That’s the 1911 edition.”

“Oh God,” moaned Masha in exaggerated horror. “And to think, all I can make is an omelet!”

“Sure, but what an omelet it is!”

“Sometimes I think you’re just a mirror there to reflect my own faults,” Masha told him, finishing up another bite. “Did you bake these yourself, too, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?”

“The pirozhki came straight from the bakery,” Innokenty admitted gracefully. “But what do you mean about the mirror?”

“Oh, I dunno. It just occurred to me. You have so many good qualities that when I look at you, I see all my own faults. You understand, right? You’re good-looking and elegant. You’re a great housekeeper. You can cook! Any girl would be happy to share your well-equipped household.”

Innokenty smiled, and turned back to the stove.

“Want anything else?” He cleared his throat. “Dessert?”

“No, Kenty, but thank you,” said Masha sincerely. She walked over to him and for a second leaned up against his broad back. She could feel the muscles tighten, just slightly, under his thin, silky sweater. Cashmere, thought Masha. Dear little fashion plate! She stepped away again.

Kenty sighed, then turned to face her. “Masha, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

His somber tone and the look on his face were so alarmingly out of character that Masha knew, suddenly, that all the effort he’d made to lure her out of the dark woods she had been wandering in—the hot soup, the cold vodka—would be in vain. She could feel her heart dropping, then freezing solid.

“Sit down, please,” Innokenty said, and he sat down next to her, resting his large, handsome hands on the table before him. “There’s something you don’t know about me. I never thought it was important. I still don’t think so.”

“Kenty,” said Masha softly. “Just tell me.”

He sighed again, looked her in the eye, and tried to smile.

“It’s about my family, Masha. You never asked, but my family… They’re Old Believers. My great-grandfather donated the money to build the church on Basmanny. My great-grandmother came from an Old Believer community in the Urals. None of that ever mattered much to me, since I’m not a very religious person. But my father…” Now he was looking down at his hands. “That’s why I almost never invited you over to my place when we were kids.”

Masha stared at him. Hundreds, even thousands, of memories that had collected over the course of her childhood danced before her eyes like dolphins cresting at the surface of the water. Innokenty’s father, with his full beard and archetypically Russian face. His mother, who always had a kerchief wrapped tightly around her head, no matter how warm the weather. The shadowy icon in the kitchen. The smell of old books in their home, their time-worn leather covers embossed in gold, lined up on the top shelf, out of the reach of children. The thesis Innokenty had defended two years ago about the Old Believers, the one the dean had told him ought to be turned into a dissertation. Why hadn’t she guessed? After all, they had told her practically the same thing about her own thesis on murder. Innokenty had always been obsessed with the schismatics, and he told endless stories about them, some terrifying, some strange, some even funny. None of that could have come out of nowhere, any more than her own fascination with serial killers did.

Masha looked at Innokenty and felt like she no longer recognized him. He seemed to have grown. He was enormous now, and he took up every square inch of the kitchen. And there were things about him buried so deep that Masha had never even suspected.

“Don’t look at me like that! It’s just a branch of Russian Orthodoxy, you know, one with a difficult past. You wouldn’t be staring at me like that if I had told you I was a Protestant! And I’m not even religious! You know that. I’m a historian, first and foremost!”

Masha gulped. “You said your great-grandfather had something to do with building the church on Basmanny?”

Innokenty ran a hand over his face. “Yes. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Some people came to see me. The head of the church, in fact. He asked me to talk to you, to try to convince you that the killer you’re looking for isn’t one of us. He’s worried that the detectives will ruin things for them, that there will be articles in the paper. The Old Believers have only just started growing again, building churches, and people have begun returning home from the US and South America. All of that progress could be stopped by stupid prejudices, gossip, and rumors with no basis in reality.”

“And you agreed?” Masha asked. “You agreed to talk me into dropping it?”

Innokenty smiled morosely. “I told them I’d try, Masha. I didn’t promise anything.”

“Well, great.” Masha’s lips twisted into a frown. “At least you won’t have to break your promise! I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you violating any sacred vows.”

“Masha, please!” said Innokenty, leaning closer to her, but Masha slid back away from him. He hunched back in his chair unhappily. “I have only one thing to say in my defense,” he said. “It’s a historical argument, and it might not seem convincing to you and the detectives, but for me, and for all the Old Believers, it puts the schismatics beyond all suspicion. This Heavenly Jerusalem our Sin Collector is so obsessed with? It’s directly connected to the life and work of Patriarch Nikon, who promoted the idea of Moscow as a second Jerusalem. Nikon wanted to unite all branches of the Orthodox Church under the patriarchate in Moscow, especially the Greek and Ukrainian churches. To that end, among other things, he replaced the Russian two-fingered sign of the cross with the three-fingered sign the Greeks used. He revised the liturgical texts to follow the Greek versions. And you know what happened as a result. Some refused to follow the new rules, there was the schism, and the Old Believers split off from everyone else. For the Old Believers, Nikon and everything that he stood for is the lowest point in our history. Every ideal he worked for is diabolical to them, Masha. He wanted to be like the Catholic Pope, and he even built a new monastery, called New Jerusalem, outside Moscow. Nikon did it all in an attempt to imitate the Vatican. All of that is anathema to us. Believe me, no Old Believer would ever drink from that poisoned cup.” Innokenty lifted his hands, seeming to give up. “I could tell you more, but—”

“I get it.” Masha slipped off her stool. “I need to think about this. Sorry. I really need to get some rest.”

“Sure, sure, of course,” Innokenty said, fussing around her again. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to keep that from you any longer. Forgive me, Masha, I’m not—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ll fix up a bed for you in the study.”

He rushed off, but Masha sat still for a minute. Then she made herself put her dirty bowl in the dishwasher and lug the soup pot, still slightly warm, back to the refrigerator. Innokenty reappeared in the kitchen doorway. He looked harried, but Masha didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t feel sorry for herself, either.

All she wanted, desperately, was to sleep. When Kenty left her in the study and quietly pulled the door shut behind him, she wasted no time in tossing off her clothes and slipping into a cool forgetfulness there between the crisply ironed sheets. She was asleep in an instant.