Death Of A Russian Priest

FIFTEEN

Rostnikov sat at the table in Father Merhum’s house where the nun had been hacked to death only a day before. The room had been scrubbed clean, and the icons, those that had not been destroyed, were back on display. Where the ax had been removed from the wall a deep, black scar remained. On the small table in front of the policeman were a pot of tea, two glasses, and a plate on which rested half a loaf of dark bread and an ancient bread knife.

In the chair in which Emil Karpo had sat talking to Sister Nina, Rostnikov drew the same picture for the twentieth time in the last three days. It had not changed greatly, but there were some subtle revisions. His bed did not take up quite so much space. The table had moved closer to the wall and under the window. The rug on the floor was not quite so patterned. All in all the room looked far less exotic than he had at first remembered.

The room was finished. There was an end to it. Now he would have to move on to the next step, remembering the faces of his mother and father. Porfiry Petrovich knew that would be much more difficult. He pushed the small pad aside and looked at Emil Karpo.

“He is waiting,” said Karpo.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov with a sigh. “You want to be here?”

“No,” said Karpo.

“Then send him in.”

Karpo got up and moved toward the door.

“Emil,” Rostnikov said. “Shall we simply shoot him and say he was trying to escape?”

“You would not do that,” said Karpo.

“Would you?”

“No, I would not.”

“Because you believe in the law?”

“Because I accept the law.”

“Father Merhum and Sister Nina believed in a higher law,” said Rostnikov. “They had faith. Does the faith of those you have seen here tempt you, Emil Karpo?”

“One cannot believe what one does not believe,” said Karpo. “To pretend to do so fools everyone but oneself.”

“Very philosophical, Emil.”

“Hegel,” said Karpo, and moved to the door.

When he opened it, Vadim Petrov stepped in. He wore no hat. His ears were bright red from the afternoon wind and his hair a brambled bush.

Karpo stepped outside and closed the door. Petrov moved across the room toward Rostnikov. “The other policeman told me you wanted to see me. I came right over,” he said.

“Please sit,” said Rostnikov. “I prefer not to look up.”

Petrov eyed the chair across from Rostnikov and sat wearily.

“Do you know where our Officer Gonsk might be?” Rostnikov asked.

“Looking for Peotor, I suppose,” said Vadim Petrov.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “You look tired.”

“I’ve had little sleep since this began,” said Petrov. The darkness under the farmer’s eyes looked painted. His hair needed washing and his clothes looked slept in.

“You’ve had a great responsibility,” said Rostnikov.

Petrov looked up at the policeman, who continued, “Party chair, leader of the community, keeper of secrets.”

Petrov said nothing.

“May I ask you a question, Comrade Petrov?”

Petrov looked up.

“Do you have a scar on your chest?”

Petrov looked away.

“It won’t be difficult to find out,” said Rostnikov gently.

“I have nothing to say,” said Petrov.

“Then I will speak,” Rostnikov continued, looking down at the notes before him. “You came to Arkush in late April of 1959. You were twenty years old. You came in search of your father, the priest. You identified yourself to him and agreed not to reveal your identity. You remained close to him, even accompanied him on a religious mission to protect a monastery. Shortly after you returned, in 1974, you joined the Communist party and became a zealous leader who opposed the church. Then, two days ago, you murdered your own father with an ax.”

Petrov turned his gray eyes to the policeman.

“And yesterday,” Rostnikov added, “you murdered a nun. At least that is what makes sense to me. If you have any other explanation, let’s have some tea and discuss it.”

“Then she died for nothing,” Petrov muttered.

“I didn’t hear …” said Rostnikov.

“Sister Nina,” he said. “She died for nothing.”

“Would you like tea?” asked Rostnikov.

“Yes,” said Petrov.

Rostnikov poured and handed the tepid glass across to the farmer, who took it in his large hand. The policeman waited silently while the man drank.

“My mother lived in the small town near Kiev where my father was born,” said Petrov. “Merhum was a boy, but he seduced her, more than once. The son of a priest who would become a priest seduced a married woman, the mother of his closest friend, Oleg Yozhgov.”

“Oleg,” said Rostnikov.

“Oleg,” repeated Petrov. “Merhum, his father, and his family fled the village when Stalin’s purge of priests began in the west. He did not know that my mother was pregnant with me. I barely remember my half-brother Oleg. He and his father, Viktor, were forced into the army when the Nazis came. I was a little boy. They died in the war. My mother survived, and when I was eighteen, just before I left for my army service, she told me of my real father. He was not as famous as he later became, but his name was known and she told me of him and where he could be found. She thought if I revealed myself to him, he would take me in with open arms. I had no such illusions, but I wanted to find him, to face him. My mother died when I was in the army. I had nothing to go back to in my village, so I took the name of Petrov and came to Arkush. More tea, please.”

Rostnikov poured another glass and Petrov drank it quickly. Then he held out his glass for more.

“He had a family,” Petrov went on. “Wife and son. He did not deny me, but he did not want to reveal my identity. I accepted that. I joined his faith, believed in him, and then, little by little, I learned.” He stopped and looked down at his empty glass.

“You learned?”

“That he had only begun with my mother, that he had touched many women, girls, taken them, lied to them. Though my wife was ill by then, dying, he even made overtures to her. I turned from him, but I didn’t renounce him. And then he had a son, my brother, and later a grandson. I had no children, no family. I befriended Peotor and his family. Helped them. Peotor was weakened, beaten, almost broken by our father’s strength. I supported him.”

“But you never told him you were his brother?”

“No.”

“And then?” asked Rostnikov.

“He set himself upon Sonia, the wife of his son. The mother of his grandson. He took her, tricked her, and then shamed her. He made her … I found out about it three weeks ago. I went to him, told him to stop, said I would expose him. He said no one would believe it, that it would bring ridicule upon me, Sonia, Peotor, and Aleksandr. I tried and he said to me … he said to me, ‘Vadim, there is much that I believe in in this world. I do the work of God and man with my full heart, but the Lord has also given me a lust that age has not ended. It is the burden I carry. I cannot overcome it. In many ways that which I have accomplished has come from the guilt I feel because of what I am.’ That is what he said to me and that is why I killed him on the morning when he had planned a meeting in Moscow with Sonia. Sonia looks very much like my own mother’s pictures.”

“I am sorry,” said Rostnikov.

“I killed Sister Nina for the family I never had,” Petrov said, his head bowed. “For the secret she had kept for him. I was mad. I killed her to keep that secret and now I’ve told you and-”

“Where is Peotor?” asked Rostnikov.

“In the tower of the church,” said Petrov. “I was going to kill him, to keep him quiet, but I couldn’t. My brother is worth more than my honor. I am very tired.”

Petrov stood up and looked around the room as if it were some completely unfamiliar landscape. “Comrade Inspector,” he said. “Do you have a wife?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

“Children?”

“A son.”

“Parents?”

“Long since dead.”

“Consider what it is worth to destroy the name of a beloved priest and the family of his child,” said Petrov, leaning forward, both hands on the table.

“You must go to trial. I have no choice, Vadim Petrov?”

“I will give you one,” said Petrov, picking up the bread knife.

As the knife rose Rostnikov put his hands against the table and shoved. Petrov tumbled backward. Though his leg kept Rostnikov from lunging forward, he did manage to shove the heavy table out of the way as the door opened and Karpo ran in followed by Misha Gonsk.

“Wait,” cried Petrov, his back against the wall.

The three policemen hesitated and Vadim Petrov plunged the bread knife into his throat.

From the window through which the crow had looked the day before, Klamkin the Frog watched Petrov’s suicide. He had heard little of the conversation, but enough for his needs.

He hurried back into town and attempted to reach Colonel Lunacharski by phone, but the colonel had left his office and no one was sure where he had gone.

Instead of waiting for the four o’clock train, Klamkin went to the home of a former KGB informant in Arkush. Colonel Lunacharski had supplied him with the name.

The woman had not been happy to see the ugly man at her door. She wanted to tell him that she was no longer able to perform any duties in Arkush, but recognized that this was not a man one wanted for an enemy.

She let him take her car, a very old Moscova, which he promised to return “soon.”

Klamkin first drove to the Arkush telephone exchange, a small white stone building on the road back to Moscow. The exchange handled all calls from the region. It took Klamkin no more than five minutes to destroy the new cable into the building. There was no way, he was sure, that it could be repaired till the next day, at the earliest.

Getting to Moscow was not easy. The roads were in need of repair. Buses blocked the lanes and wrecks slowed down traffic, but Klamkin had no choice. He had to be patient. When he finally arrived in Moscow, he called the office of the Gray Wolfhound, identified himself as a representative of the new minister of the interior, and demanded to know where Colonel Snitkonoy was.

Pankov held out for seven whole seconds.

Klamkin caught up with Colonel Lunacharski just as he was about to enter the elevator to the Seventh Heaven Restaurant in the TV Tower.

After listening to Klamkin’s report, Lunacharski took the roughly written sheets the Frog handed him and read them quickly. A trio of Japanese businessmen moved past him as he read.

Lunacharski was clad in a conservative gray suit and blue tie. He carried a very slim briefcase that he opened a crack so that he could drop the report into it. “Good,” he said. “Very good. Go back to my office. I’ll be there when I am finished here.”

Satisfied, Klamkin the Frog walked back into the cold Moscow darkness.

Since Colonel Lunacharski had arrived almost an hour before the scheduled meeting with the Wolfhound, he had plenty of time to call the general, give a full report, and still be more than half an hour early. He announced himself to the maître d’, giving his full title. The maître d’, a dour old man with a white mustache, was unimpressed. He led Lunacharski across the slowly rotating floor to a table near the broad window, where Colonel Snitkonoy was sipping a glass of mineral water.

“Ah, Colonel,” said the Wolfhound, rising to his full height and extending his hand to the man who stood nearly a full foot below him, “you are early.”

“I was nearby,” said Lunacharski, shaking the extended hand and sitting down quickly.

“As was I,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “As was I.”

The Wolfhound had chosen to come in full uniform minus the medals. It was clear that other diners recognized him and pointed him out to their companions. Colonel Snitkonoy succeeded in appearing oblivious to the attention. “May I recommend the Strogonoff,” he said. “One of their better dishes, though recently a bit deficient in beef.”

“I’ll have bread and some soup,” said Lunacharski.

The opening of this dinner meeting had been a decided defeat for Lunacharski, but the entrée, he was sure, would be his to savor.

“You know General Piortnonov?” asked the Wolfhound. “Special Political Branch?”

“By name only,” said Lunacharski.

“Old friend,” said Snitkonoy. “Haven’t seen him for several years, though I understand he is back in Moscow.”

“So I understand,” said Lunacharski.

“If you happen to run into him …” said the Wolfhound.

“I will give him your regards,” said Lunacharski, accepting a glass of sparkling mineral water from an elderly waiter and reaching down for his briefcase. “I really do not have much time, Colonel. I am here to offer you some assistance.”

“In these trying times it is reassuring that there are those who wish to offer assistance,” said the Wolfhound, smiling sadly.

“I have information on two cases which have been assigned to your department,” Lunacharski said. He removed two envelopes from the briefcase and placed them on the table. “I have already passed the information on to my superiors.”

Snitkonoy nodded and looked out the window. “There, look, the Cosmos Pavilion. Impressive. The sun against its dome.”

“Very impressive,” said Colonel Lunacharski without looking. “The first case involves the death of the priest in Arkush. We have evidence to identify the killer. I have the authority, should you agree, to turn this over to your office. You will have full credit for the discovery, but you will sign a report which is now being prepared in the office of General Karsnikov indicating that I was the source of the information which led you to the arrest and apprehension.”

“Vadim Petrov,” said the Gray Wolfhound. The restaurant floor slowly rotated away from the Cosmos, and the tip of the Vostok space rocket appeared above the roof of the Mechanization and Electrification Agriculture Pavilion.

Colonel Lunacharski placed his hands in his lap.

“Petrov was an ardent party member who detested the Church and feared its renewed position in a besieged Soviet Union,” explained the Wolfhound. “Poor man killed the nun and then, when confronted, confessed to two of my men and committed suicide.”

“When did you get this information?”

“Oh, an hour ago, maybe two. The phone lines are down in Arkush. There is speculation that it is the work of angry Marxists,” said the Wolfhound. “One of my men, Inspector Karpo, brought me the news by motorcycle. I filed a report immediately with Secretary Panyushkin in President Yeltsin’s office.”

“Then we will simply forget my offer,” said Lunacharski.

“A very generous offer,” said the Wolfhound as the elderly waiter approached with two plates of food. “I know you are not hungry. Please forgive me, but I took the liberty of ordering the Strogonoff. It is my treat. I hope you will try it.”

“With pleasure,” said Lunacharski as the waiter placed the steaming plate before him.

“You said, Colonel, that you have information on two cases?”

“The other is a bit more delicate,” said Lunacharski, unsure of how to avoid eating any of the pungent creamed meat before him. “It involves the daughter of a Syrian diplomat.”

“The Durahaman girl.” On the horizon Snitkonoy just barely caught a glimpse of the sculpture of the Worker and Collective Farm Woman. In a moment he would be able to see the Space Obelisk that commemorates the progress of the Soviet people in mastering outer space.

“The case involves the murder of a Russian citizen by a known Russian criminal,” said Lunacharski. “However, the criminal was hired by the Syrian oil minister to murder his daughter’s Jewish lover. This information has also been passed on to the general.”

“The Syrian did not hire Leonid Dovnik to murder Grisha Zalinsky,” said the Wolfhound, abandoning his examination of the Moscow panorama and turning to his meal. “Dovnik was hired by the girl, Amira Durahaman. Strogonoff is a bit off I think, don’t you?”

Lunacharski looked down at his food, which he had not touched.

“No matter,” said the Wolfhound with a sigh. “It is edible. The girl, according to Dovnik, who is now in our custody, wanted to get away from her father and her boyfriend so she could run away with a married British businessman. The boyfriend threatened to tell her father, and the girl paid a woman named Tatyana to have Zalinsky killed. We have reason to believe that the Tatyana woman was murdered by the Syrian in an attempt to cover up his daughter’s crime.”

“Then we can use the information about the girl to get the father to-”

“I’m afraid not,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “The father has insisted that the girl be tried by a Russian court. He claims that Dovnik’s story is a lie. Since the woman Tatyana cannot be found to confirm the tale and Dovnik is a known criminal … Well. We have interviewed the girl at the Syrian embassy and she claims that she knows nothing about the murder. Lovely girl, I understand. Quite innocent looking. She suggests that Dovnik and the Tatyana woman did it all in the hope of extorting money from her father. The father claims he has a tape of a phone call made by this Tatyana, offering to find the daughter for a fee. We are now in the process of compiling a detailed account of her whereabouts while she was missing. She went from Zalinsky to Chesney and then moved in with a man named Arbanik who we suspect may be an Israeli agent. It seems the girl is attracted to the enemy, whether to provoke her father or … but who can say. Though our information is not complete, Interpol has sent us a preliminary report documenting that when she was fifteen years old a similar situation, including the accidental death of a young man, took place while she was with her father in Paris. Have you anything else that might be of service to us in our work?”

“And this, too, has been brought to the attention of-”

“Secretary Panyushkin, yes,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “A pity you had not come to me a bit sooner, so that your report, which seems to be somewhat in error, could be coordinated with our investigation. Do you have any other assistance you wish to give my department, Colonel?”

“Not at the moment,” said Lunacharski. He plunged his fork deeply into a square of cream-covered meat that looked absolutely repulsive to him, but he forced himself to raise it to his mouth.

“What do you think?” asked the Wolfhound.

“Most palatable,” said Lunacharski.

“You don’t find it a little tough? Just a bit too hard to swallow?”

“Not at all,” said Lunacharski. “It is delicious.”

Lunacharski had not simply underestimated this great maned peacock and his staff, he had underestimated him badly. Lunacharski’s impulse was to make an excuse, to claim another appointment, to run. He had errors to cover and reports to retrieve, if possible. But he would force himself to stay, to finish the food, even to have coffee with Colonel Snitkonoy.

Lunacharski was a man of patience. There would be changes in his staff and there would be another time, and at this other time Colonel Vladimir Lunacharski would be far better prepared.

At midnight, in the town of Arkush, in the church with four towers, Aleksandr Merhum helped the new priest put on his robes.

The ritual was familiar, for many times the boy had helped his grandfather perform the same ritual.

This priest was young and serious. He neither spoke nor sang under his breath. He neither noticed Aleksandr nor looked away from him, and this was fine with the boy.

When he was ready, the priest nodded to the boy and moved to the door beyond which the soft sound of singing could already be heard.

“You are the grandson of Father Merhum,” the priest said.

Aleksandr looked up at the man. His beard was long but showed no gray.

“Yes,” he said.

“You know the Gospels,” said the priest.

“Some, Father.”

“What comes at this moment to the mind of the grandson of Father Merhum?”

Without knowing why, Aleksandr Merhum thought of his father and mother, who were beyond the door waiting for the service to begin. Then he thought of the policeman with the sad eyes and the bad leg. Finally, he thought of Sister Nina and his grandfather, and the boy said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.”

“Mir vsyem,” said the priest. “Peace be with you.”

“Spasi gospodi” answered the boy. “God save you.”

The priest opened the door, and the sound of voices came in. As he closed it behind him there was silence again. Alone, the boy continued the passage from Saint John which he had begun:

“In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Then the boy knelt, lifted the loose floorboard, and reached into the darkness. He pulled out the thick notebook he had seen his grandfather put there when the priest thought he was unobserved.

The boy carefully put the board back in place and moved to the table. Beyond the wall the voice of the new priest called out to the congregation.

Aleksandr Merhum opened the book and began to read.

HOLY FATHER, TO ACCEPT THE SINS YOU HAVE IN YOUR WISDOM IMPRESSED ON THIS WEAK VESSEL WHICH IS THE BODY OF VASILI MERHUM, I HEREBY COMMIT THIS CONFESSION IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1962:

In the Spring of the year 1938, in the village in which my father was priest, two weeks and ten days following my 15th birthday I entered for the first of many times the bed of Yelena Yozhgov, the mother of my best friend Oleg Yozhgov.

Since that time, I have committed many sins of the flesh and mind and sought in vain to control this test you have given me.

I will herein enscribe all of my transgressions in the hope that it will show me the path to righteousness.

In the sanctuary, the voice of the congregation swelled in song. Young Aleksandr Merhum continued to read. He understood little of what he read, but he knew that he had discovered a terrible and powerful secret. The policeman with the bad leg had known, but Aleksandr had not been weak. He had learned well from his grandfather, and the book would teach him more.

But it was well past the time he should have joined the congregation, so Aleksandr closed his grandfather’s book. He returned the book to the hiding place below the loose floorboard, straightened his cloak and walked to the side door that led to the narrow street. He would walk around and enter the front of the church.