Wolves Eat Dogs

14

The steppe was soft. The steppe was a vast plain that shone with ponds and corkscrew rivers and evoked a wistful sadness. The poetry was stentorian, to rouse a patriotic fervor, but the bread was as plump as pillows, and bread always won over poetry. Ukrainian beauty was the child of history: the luminous doe eyes and fair skin of the Slav set on Tartar cheeks. At least that was the ordinary beauty. Galina was probably like that, Arkady thought.

Eva was not soft. Her pale skin and black hair-black as a cormorant's, liquid to the hand-set a theme of contradiction. Her eyes were dark mirrors. Her body looked slight but was strong as a bow, and Arkady thought she would have made an excellent imp in hell, goading slow and doughy sinners with a pitchfork. She should have feme from a landscape of flames and spewing lava. Then he remembered that, in part, she did.

They had kicked the sheet off the bed and lay, skin on skin, enjoying the cool evaporation of the sweat they had produced. Dusk hung outside the window.

She asked, "Why do you have to go?"

"I have to meet a missing man."

"That sounds like a children's rhyme, but it's not, is it? You're still investigating."

"From time to time. I'll be back in a few hours."

"That's up to you." She turned her face to him. Her eyes were too dark to distinguish an iris and they seemed huge. "If you do return, you should know the risks."

"Such as?"

She moved his hand with hers to the scar on her neck. "Cancer of the thyroid, but you knew that." To her breast. "Chornobyl heart, literally a hole in the heart." She played his fingers along her ribs. "Leukemia in the bone marrow." Below the ribs. "Cancer of the pancreas and liver." Across a ruff of pubic hair. "Cancer of the reproductive organs, not to mention tumors, mutations, missing limbs, anemia, rigidity. Not that any of this necessarily matters. Alex says, in the future our main concern will be predators."

"What kinds?"

"All kinds."

"People aren't like that."

"You don't know. When people in Kiev learned about the accident they didn't act with great nobility. Trains were mobbed. Iodine tablets were hoarded. Everyone was drunk and everyone fucked everyone. There were no morals. If you want to know how people will react at the end of the world, this was it. Later, the populations of Pripyat and Chornobyl were farmed out across the country, which didn't want them. Who would want someone radioactive in his home, then or now? They got very good at spotting us, at asking our age and where we were from. I don't blame them a bit. Now do you want me?"

"Yes."

She sighed and stroked his cheek. "Well, you may come back or not, but you've been warned."

In Pripyat light slowed to a drifting mist. Arkady had arrived on his motorbike on time at ten, and another twenty minutes passed while he heard the occasional whir or glimpsed a moving shadow that meant the Woropay brothers were making sure he had come alone.

The square was fronted by the city hall, hotel, restaurant, school, all shells. The moon made figures out of streetlamps, turned the amusement park Ferris wheel into a huge antenna. Other civilizations, when they vanished, at least left awesome monuments. The buildings of Pripyat were, one after the other, prefabricated ruins.

Dymtrus Woropay popped up like a large sprite at Arkady's side and said, "Leave the bike. Follow me."

Easier said than done. The Woropays wore night-vision goggles and glided on inline skates, clicking over cement and sweeping through the grass. On foot they might be clumsy, but on wheels they swung in graceful arcs. Arkady walked briskly while the brothers circled in and out of shadows to shepherd him along an arcade to a footpath through what had once been a tended garden and now was a maze of branches. Nothing stopped the Woropays; they splashed through standing water and shouldered aside brush to a two-story building with stone columns that supported a mural of organ pipes and atoms: Pripyat's cultural theater. Taras, the younger brother, punched the doors open and whooped as he rolled into a lobby. Dymtrus elbowed his way in and thrust his arms over his head as if he'd scored a goal.

By the time Arkady entered, the Woropays were gone. He heard them, but in the dark it was difficult to see which way they had gone, and the path was obsructed by stage flats stacked in the lobby. What dramas had been left behind, to rest cheek to cheek for eternity? "Uncle Vanya, meet Anna Karenina." Of course, there would have been children's productions, too. "Mouse King, meet Raskolnikov."

A crashing of piano keys came from deep inside the theater, and Arkady pushed through the flats and the clatter of cloakroom racks into a passageway of near-total darkness. He used his cigarette lighter to see along a wall defaced with curses, threats and crude anatomy. He had been in the theater before, but in the daytime. The dark gave no warning of the broken glass that slid underfoot or of the ripped wires that dangled in the face.

Finally Arkady groped his way to a drawn curtain and ropes and the light of a kerosene lamp. A piano with broken and missing keys was onstage, and Taras Woropay played as he sang, " 'You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need!' " while Dymtrus, night goggles flipped up, skated and danced wildly from one side of the stage to the other.

The audience seats were tiers of red benches strewn with broken chairs and tables, bottles and mattresses, like furniture thrown down the steps of a house, while Dymtrus's shadow stamped around the walls. A couch had been dragged to the other side of the piano, where Karel Katamay lay propped by pillows and covered with shawls. Arkady barely recognized the virtual skinhead he had seen in photographs at the grandfather's house. This Karel Katamay wore his hair long and beaded around a chalky face with pink eyes. A hockey shirt-the Detroit Red Wings-swam over him. Small, thoughtful pansies sat in jars of water around the couch, and a liter of Evian was tucked between his legs. Arkady didn't know what he had expected, but not this. He'd read descriptions of the court of Queen Elizabeth. That was what Karel Katamay looked like, a powdered Virgin Queen with two oafish courtiers. A satin pillow cushioned his head; a corner of the pillow was embroidered "Je ne regrette rien." "I regret nothing." When Karel smiled, tickled by the sight of Dymtrus whirling like a dervish, he showed pulpy gums.

" 'Get what you need! need! need!' "

Taras collapsed over the keys while his big brother weaved dizzily on the stage, and Katamay made more a gesture of clapping than actually bringing his hands together.

Dymtrus steadied himself and pointed in Arkady's direction. "Brought him."

"A chair." Katamay's voice was not much more than a whisper, but Dymtrus immediately jumped off the stage to bring a chair from the benches and set it in front of the couch so that Arkady and Karel Katamay would be at the same eye level. Close up, Katamay looked crayoned by a child.

Arkady said, "You don't look well."

"I'm fucked."

Katamay's nose sprang a leak. He pressed a towel against the blood in an offhand, nearly elegant way. The towel, to judge by its blotches of brown, had been used before.

"Summer cold," Katamay said. "So you wanted to know about the dead Russian I found?"

"Yes."

"There's not much to say. Some old fart I found in a village."

The hoarseness of Katamay's voice brought the volume down to a level of intimacy, as if they were theatrical types discussing a production to be presented on this very stage. Katamay said he had never seen the Russian before, and couldn't know the dead man was Russian, since his papers were missing. He was found in the morning lying on his back, his head at the cemetery gate, bloody but not too bloody, stiff from full rigor mortis, disorganized because of wolves. Katamay found the body coincidentally with a squatter he had seen before, a guy called Seva, about forty years old, missing a little finger on his left hand. Arkady took notes in case the Woropays wanted to stomp on anything afterward. Notes were a good target. But around Katamay, they were like dogs under voice command, and he had obviously told them to be still.

"Just a few questions. How was the dead man dressed?"

"He was rich. Expensive gear."

"Nice shoes?"

"Beautiful shoes."

"Well cared for?"

"Beautifully."

"Not muddy?"

"No."

"His shirt was damp. Was it clean or dirty?"

"A few leaves, I think."

"So he had been turned over?"

"What do you mean?"

"A man who drops dead to the ground doesn't roll around much."

"Maybe he wasn't dead yet."

"More likely someone turned him over to relieve him of his money and threw away the ID later. Did you find anything else on the body? Directions, matches, keys?"

"Nothing."

"No car keys? He left them in the car?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't notice that his throat had been cut?"

"It was under his collar, and there wasn't that much blood. Anyway, wolves had been messing with him."

"Moved him? Torn him up?"

"Didn't move him. Yanked on his nose and face a bit, enough to get an eye."

Lovely picture, Arkady thought. "Do wolves go for eyes?"

"They'll eat anything."

"You saw their tracks?" Huge.

"Did you see a car or any tire tracks?"

"No."

"Where were the people in the village, the Panasenkos and their neighbors?"

"I don't know."

"People in black villages don't get a great deal of entertainment. They're pretty nosy about visitors."

"I don't know."

"Why were you there that day?"

Dymtrus said, "That's enough. He's got a million questions."

"It's all right, Dyma," Katamay said. "On the captain's orders, we were taking a count of villagers in the Zone, and items of value."

"Like icons?"

"Yes."

"Would you like to stop for a minute and drink something?"

"Yes." Katamay sipped French water and laughed into his handkerchief. In case he spits up blood, Arkady thought. "I still can't get over Wayne Gretzky. Tell the truth, do you know Gretzky?"

"No," Arkady whispered, "no more than you know a squatter named Seva missing a little finger."

"How could you tell?"

"The bizarre detail. Keep lies simple."

"Yeah?"

"It's always worked for me. Give me your hands."

The Woropays shifted anxiously, but Katamay put out his hands, palms up. Arkady turned them over to look at purpled fingernails. He motioned Katamay to lean forward, and held up the lantern to observe tendrils of bleeding capillaries in the whites of Katamay's eyes.

"So tell me the truth," said Katamay. "Am I fucked or am I fucked?"

"Cesium?"

"Fucked as they come."

"Is there a treatment?"

"You can take Prussian blue; it picks up cesium as it passes through the body. But it has to be administered early. It wasn't. There's no point going to the hospital now."

"What happened? How did you get exposed?"

"Ah, that's a different story."

"Maybe not. Three men suffered from cesium poisoning: your Russian, his business partner and you. You don't think they're related?"

"I don't know. It depends how you look at it. History moves in funny ways, right? We've gone through evolution, now we're going through de-evolution. Everything is breaking down. No borders, no boundaries. No limits, no treaties. Suicide bombers, kids with guns. AIDS, Ebola, mad cow. It's all breaking down, and I'm breaking down with it. I'm bleeding internally. No platelets. No stomach lining. Infected. The reason I agreed to see you was to say that my family had nothing to do with this. Dymtrus and Taras had nothing to do with any of this, either." Katamay stopped for a spasm of wet coughs. The Woropays were solicitous as nurses, wiping blood from his lips. He raised his head and smiled. "Much better than a hospital. I had my theater debut here in Peter and the Wolf. I played the wolf. I thought I was a wolf until I met a real one."

"Who is that?"

"You'll know when you know. Anyway, we stray. Just the Russian I found, we agreed."

"His car. You towed it. Was there anything inside? Papers, maps, directions?"

"No."

Arkady reviewed his notes. "His watch, you said it was a Rolex?"

"Yes. Oh, that was sneaky. You caught me." Katamay held up an arm to show a gold Rolex like a bauble.

Dymtrus punched Arkady in the back of the head. He obviously did not appreciate lèse-majesté.

Katamay said, "No, no, fair is fair. He caught me. It doesn't matter, anyway."

"It doesn't, does it?" Arkady said.

"Give Dymtrus back his gun. He's embarrassed."

"Sure."

Arkady returned the pistol to Dymtrus, who muttered, "Gretzky."

"Okay, there was a checkpoint pass and directions," Katamay said.

"To where, exactly?"

"The cemetery."

"Where are the directions now?"

"I don't know."

"Typewritten?"

"Hardly." Katamay was amused.

"But the pass was signed by Captain Marchenko?"

"Maybe."

"It's just a form that could be snatched off a desk?"

"Pretty much."

"You saw the pass and directions when you found the body or when you towed the car?"

"When we found the body."

You said you found the body while you were canvassing houses about theft. The cemetery gate is fifty meters from the nearest occupied house. Why were you at the gate?"

"I don't remember."

"That was cute, towing the car and hiding it at Bela's yard."

"Right under Bela's nose and where Marchenko couldn't go. I hear Bela walks the whole yard every day now." Karel's laugh turned into a cough; every word seemed to cost him.

"You disappeared at the same time. Were you sick then?"

"A little."

"But you still wanted money from a stolen car?"

"I thought I could leave something… to someone."

"Who?" Arkady asked, but Katamay stopped for breath. "Leave me something. Who was the 'squatter' who led you to the gate?"

"Hulak," Katamay got out.

"Boris Hulak? The body pulled out of the cooling pond?"

"That's the only reason I'm telling you." Karel sank out of sight against the cushions with a laugh no more than a sigh. "There's nothing you can do about it anyway."

As Arkady rode by the sarcophagus, he felt the monster shift within its steel plates and razor wire. But the monster wasn't only there. It was riding a Ferris wheel here, swirling though a bloodstream there, seeping into the river, rooting in a million bones. What leitmotif for this kind of beast? An ominous cello. One note. Sustained. For fifty thousand years.

The closer Arkady got to the turnoff to Eva's cabin, the more each passing radiation marker sounded like the stroke of an ax. He didn't have to go back. She wouldn't answer any questions. She was a complication. The truth was that, after such close contact with Karel Katamay, part of Arkady craved nothing more than a chance to burn his own clothes, to scrub himself with a stiff brush and ride as far away as he could.

By itself, the motorbike seemed to turn her way. He rode over the rattle of the bridge and along nodding catkins to the house among the birches, where he found her sitting in bed in her bathrobe, smoking, cradling a glass and an ashtray between her legs. She looked as if she had stared a hole through the door since he'd left.

Arkady asked, "Are we drinking?"

"We're drinking."

There was a sharpness in the air that said it wasn't water.

"Do you think we drink too much?"

"It depends on the circumstances. I used to go over patient files in the evening, but since you arrived, I have been trying to understand who you are. When I get the answer, I may not want to be sober."

"Ask me." He tried to take the bottle, but she held on.

"No, no, you're the Question Man. Alex says most people get over asking why by the age of ten, only you never did."

"Was Alex here?"

"See? The problem is, I hate questions and poking into other people's lives. I don't see much of a future for us."

He pulled a chair up to the bed and sat. Being with her was like watching a bird beat against a pane of glass. Anything he did could be disastrous. "Well, I had a question."

"No questions."

"What's your opinion of Noah?" Arkady asked.

"From the Bible?"

"The Bible, the Flood, the ark."

"You are a strange man." He felt her tease around the question, searching for his angle. Eva said, "My opinion of Noah is low, my opinion of God is lower. Why on earth do you ask?"

"I was wondering 'Why Noah?' Was he a carpenter or a sailor?"

"A carpenter. All he had to do was float, and muck the stupid animals. It wasn't as if he was going anywhere."

"How do you know?"

"God would have given him directions."

"You're right." If Timofeyev had driven from Moscow to the Ukraine, to a small village he had never seen before, he would have needed directions. "Do you think the ark could have settled here?"

"Why not? It's a nice place," Eva said. "Full of murdered Poles, Jews, Reds and Whites, not to mention the victims starved to death by Stalin or hung by the Germans, but still nice. The best milk, best apples, best pears. We used to spend the summer on the river, in boats or on the beach. We fished. The Pripyat was famous for pike in those days. I would lie down on a towel on the beach and watch fluffy clouds and dream of dancing and traveling to foreign countries where I would meet a famous pianist, a passionate genius, and marry him and have six or seven children. We would live in London, but we would always spend our summers here. I'll let you guess: what part of that have I not accomplished?"

"Is this a trick question?"

"Definitely not. A trick question is, how long will you be here? When will you suddenly disappear? People do that. They're here for a week or two, and poof, they're gone, taking with them their fascinating tales of living with the exotic natives of the Zone."

"Let's dance." Arkady took the glass.

"Are you a good dancer?"

"Awful, but I remember you dancing with Alex."

"You were dancing with Vanko, after all."

"It wasn't the same thing."

"Slow?"

"Please."

"I didn't think you were coming back."

"But I did."

She slipped out of bed over to a cassette player. "A waltz at midnight. This is romantic. You're surprising. You can cut wheat like a farmer, you can dance."

"I surprise myself."

"A midnight waltz in Chornobyl, that's kicking death in the teeth."

"Exactly."

He took her in his arms and executed a practice dip. She was incredibly light for being so much trouble.

Arkady's mobile phone rang.

"Ignore it," Eva said.

"I'll just see who it is."

He assumed the caller was Victor or Olga Andreevna, but it was Zurin the prosecutor, calling from Moscow.

"Good news, Renko. Sorry to ring you in the middle of the night. We're bringing you home."

It took Arkady a moment to absorb the news. "What are you talking about?"

"You're coming back to Moscow. We've booked you on the six a.m. Aeroflot. There'll be a ticket waiting for you at the airport counter. How do you feel about that?"

"I'm not done."

"It's not a failure, not a bit. You've been working hard, I'm sure. However, we've decided to wrap up things at Chernobyl, at least on the Russian side. I thought you'd be delighted."

Arkady turned with the phone away from Eva. "There is no Ukrainian side to this investigation."

"So be it. This matter should have been shouldered by the Ukrainians from the start. They can't always depend on us to wipe up their spilled milk."

"The victim was Russian."

"Killed in the Ukraine. If he'd been killed in France or Germany, would we have investigated? Of course not. Why should the Ukraine be any different?"

"Because it is."

"They wanted to be independent, now they are. There's also a manpower issue. I can't have a senior investigator staying indefinitely in Chernobyl. At a risk to his health, let me add."

"I need more time," Arkady said.

"Which will become more time and more time. No, it's been decided. Get to the airport, catch the early flight and I'll expect to see you in my office by noon tomorrow."

"What about Timofeyev?"

"Unfortunately, he died at the wrong place."

"And Ivanov?"

"Wrong way. We're not reopening a suicide."

"I'm not finished."

"One last thing. Before you come into the office, take a shower and burn your clothes," Zurin said and hung up.

Eva refilled two glasses like a good barmaid. "Marching orders? And where are you going from here? You must be going someplace."

"I don't know."

"Don't look so sad. You can't be stuck here forever. Someone must be getting killed in Moscow."

"I'm sure."

"How long can you sleep with a radioactive woman? I'd say the odds against that are not very good."

"You're not radioactive."

"Don't quibble with me, I'm the doctor. I simply need to understand the situation. The prognosis. It sounds as if you're leaving soon."

"That's not up to me."

"Oh, it isn't? I had taken you for a different kind of man."

"What kind?"

"Imaginary." Eva delivered a smile. "I'm sorry, that's unfair. You were enjoying yourself so much, and I was enjoying you. 'Never pop a bubble' is a good rule. But you should be happy to go. Out of exile, back among the living."

"That's what I'm told." He felt his mind race in ten directions.

"Secretly, aren't you a wee bit happy, a little relieved to have the decision taken out of your hands? I'm happy for you, if that helps."

"It doesn't."

"Just as well, because I don't think we really made the ideal couple. You obviously hate histrionics, and I am completely histrionic. Not to mention damaged goods. When, exactly, are you going?"

"I have to go now."

"Oh." Her smile began to sink. "That was fast. Hardly more than a one-night stand." She drank half her glass in a swallow and set it down. "Not samogon. We will always have our samogon party. Well, they say short farewells are the best."

"I will be back in a day. Two at the most."

"Don't even-" She pulled her robe tight and picked up the gun when he approached. Shining streaks ran down her face. "The Zone is an exclusive club, a very exclusive club, and you have just been voted out. So get out."