The Sin Collector

Moving with an easy, athletic stride, the man vaulted over the fence around the park and walked quickly toward the playground. The car was there, in place, black in the early-autumn twilight. He opened the door, sank down onto the worn seat, and sighed. He cranked the window down and lit a cigarette, then took a long, appreciative drag. The spicy smell of the leaves outside mixed with the cigarette smoke in his lungs. Now the trees are covered with colorful leaves, he thought, but soon all that will remain of these trees is their black branches, like a cryptic script written on the pale sky. In the mornings, those benches will be covered with frost. And then the first snow will fall, and finally it will seem that everything has become lighter. But that is an illusion, a trick of the eye. Winter will come. Catharsis. Death, with no hope of clemency. This year, too, would die. And he would die with it. No reason for regret.

The man carefully put out his cigarette in the ashtray, closed the window, and drove away. For some time, the road was completely empty. But suddenly, with a wailing of sirens, a fire truck flew into view from around a corner, and another one after it.

That was quick! The man laughed disdainfully. Everyone’s afraid of fire. They even say if you’re being attacked, you should cry, ‘Fire!’ instead of shouting for help. Who would ever respond to a call for help?

The man swallowed back a familiar bitterness in his mouth. He knew that bitterness would not pass, no matter how often he tried to gulp it down or how much alcohol he used to wash it away. He had driven as far as Kutuzovsky Avenue when the rotund silhouette of a traffic cop, waving his striped baton, emerged from the darkness on the side of the road to pull him over. The man frowned. He knew he had not broken any rules, simply because he never broke any. But he did not wish to be delayed here. Instead of his driver’s license, he handed the traffic cop his badge, and he watched as the officer’s gelatinous face quickly transformed into something like the formal grimace of a man in a military parade. “Have a good day, sir!”

The man could smell something burning. The wind must be blowing from that direction. His hands smelled like it, too. And a little bit like gasoline. He would have to remember to wash them with antiseptic. That would never fool the crime lab, but by the morning, at least, the smell would have to be gone, so that more inquisitive noses at work wouldn’t sniff anything out. He had work yet to do. Masha Karavay would suspect there was one more left when she heard the news tomorrow. But she would be wrong. There would be two more. And he smiled again, the honest smile of a hard worker who had just a short way left to go before a well-deserved rest.

But back where he had come from, farther and higher up Poklonnaya Hill, deep in Victory Park, the enormous bonfire raged, leaping with joyful, bright flashes of flame against the blue-black night.