Madness Treads Lightly

CHAPTER 27

In Tyumen, spring seemed a long way off. Snow was falling in big, soft flakes on the morning that Lena and Michael arrived in the small Siberian town. Moscow may have been dirty and cold, Lena thought, but at least it was spring there.

For some reason, having to return to winter saddened Lena. Huddling in her leather jacket, which was too light for the freezing temperatures, she tried to flag down a car in front of the Tyumen airport. Michael looked around ecstatically.

“Tell me, has anything changed here in the last ten years?” he asked. “Do you remember the last time you were here? It was still Soviet then, right?”

“Michael, let’s first get to the hotel,” Lena implored.

There were lots of cars, but their routes were probably strictly determined by the local mafia. Some drivers refused to go to the Tura Hotel for some reason, and others quoted such crazy prices that Lena wouldn’t use their services on principle. Tired and chilled as she was, she still couldn’t let Michael throw away a hundred dollars on this ride—not even if her teeth were chattering.

“Why did you refuse that car?” the professor asked. “That’s the fourth one!”

“There are two people there and they’re asking a hundred dollars. It’s too dangerous, and it’s too expensive.”

“Lena, you’re blue from the cold. What am I going to do if you get sick?” Michael shook his head. “I don’t care if it’s a hundred dollars!”

A nondescript Moskvich pulled up. There was no one inside except for the driver, a young, skinny guy in glasses.

“The Tura Hotel,” Lena said wearily.

“Hop in.” The driver nodded.

Lena and Michael got in the back seat, and only when they’d driven onto the highway to town did Lena ask, “How much?”

“How about fifty?” The driver smiled in the rearview mirror.

“Fifty’s good.” Lena smiled back.

“From Moscow, are you?” the driver inquired.

“Yes.”

“And this guy is a foreigner?” The driver lowered his voice a little and winked in the mirror.

“An American.”

“Here on business? Or a private tour?”

“Business. He’s a scholar, a historian.”

“Yeah, you can tell right off he’s a professor. Which makes you his interpreter, right?”

Lena nodded and looked out the window at the blurry, snowy city she hadn’t seen in fourteen years. Michael dozed off with his head leaning back on the seat. Cheerful though he was, after the long night flight, he too was exhausted.

The city hadn’t changed much. The same gray prefab tenements, only the red Communist posters had been replaced by billboards, just like in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New York, and the rest of the world. Smiling people urging you to drink Coca-Cola, take soluble aspirin, chew sugarless gum, smoke Marlboros, and buy Salita shoes.

A few shops had popped up here and there, and there was the occasional foreign car on the road. Clusters of somber men from the Caucasus dressed in sheepskin jackets and saggy, wide trousers circled near the stores, restaurants, and cafés, of which there were many.

“In these parts for long?” the driver asked.

“A few days,” Lena answered.

“And then?”

“Then Tobolsk and Khanty-Mansiysk.”

“That’s quite an itinerary. Will you be flying back from Tyumen?”

“Where else?” Lena shrugged.

“Listen.” The driver’s voice became more confiding. “You’re going to need a car to get around town. Why don’t I take you where you need to go and when you get back, I’ll take you to the airport. It’ll be cheaper than hailing a taxi every time.”

Lena took a close, careful look at the narrow, pleasant face reflected in the mirror. Indeed, she hadn’t thought about a car. If taxi drivers and freelancers were going to continue to quote her extravagant prices, this trip would bankrupt the professor. And there was nothing immediately off-putting about the fellow. He didn’t look like a crook. And he knew the town.

“How much would your driving services cost?”

“Let’s see how much we drive.” He smiled. “I won’t ask a lot. You don’t have to worry about your friend’s wallet. I have a conscience. What’s your name?”

“Lena.”

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Sasha. Write down my phone number.”

Lena took a notebook and pen out of her purse and he dictated the number.

“What plans do you have for today?”

“We’re going to rest up a little at the hotel, eat, and then go for a walk through the historic city center.”

“Why don’t I drive you around instead? I know the town well. I was born here.”

Michael woke up, yawned, and asked what they were talking about. Lena laid out the driver’s proposal.

“Excellent!” Michael rejoiced. “He doesn’t look like a crook. And I’m curious to talk to a native Siberian. Ask him what his field is.”

“I used to work as an engineer at a woodworking factory,” Sasha offered readily. “But they held up our pay for months. And I’ve got a family, a small child. So now I drive and make whatever money God sees fit to grant me.”

Michael and Sasha chatted and Lena interpreted the rest of the way.

The Tura Hotel was the best in town. When Lena finally got to her small single room, she dropped her bag on the floor, took off her boots, fell into the armchair, and just sat there for a few minutes looking out the window at the blue-gray northern sky. In a separate pocket in her small black purse, she had the letters from Vasya Slepak and the mother of the deceased First Lieutenant Zakharov. Both had home addresses—one in Tyumen and one in Tobolsk. Should she go to those addresses? Completely different people could be living there, and even if they did still live there, what was she going to say to them?

Where did I get the idea that Zakharov’s story has anything to do with Mitya and Katya’s deaths, the stroller bomb, and Volkov and his wife? What connection could there be? she asked herself, and rising from the chair, she started unpacking.

Vasya Slepak’s father was accused of raping and murdering several girls, she thought as she set her bottle of shampoo, toothpaste, and soap out on the bathroom shelf. Zakharov’s last story talks about someone unjustly suspected of several rapes and murders. Slepak the father was executed. Zakharov was killed. It’s just a night’s train travel from Tyumen to Tobolsk. And an hour by plane. Volkov was born and lived in Tobolsk. Fourteen years ago, they found a raped and murdered girl in a park above the Tobol. That same night we had lit a campfire, roasted shish kebab, and sang songs there. But meanwhile, someone was raping and killing a girl. Very close by. Venya Volkov was with us the whole time…

Lena turned the handle on the hotel shower and couldn’t believe it: hot water came out right away. A lot had changed in this town in fourteen years after all! Quickly undressing, she happily stood under the shower.

No, she thought as she washed off the dirt and weariness of travel. He did go somewhere that night. He disappeared for a while. And Mitya went off to find him. And then there were the spots of blood on his sweater. Volkov had looked very odd. He’d had this crazy, wandering gaze. He said the blood was from a nosebleed, that he shouldn’t drink. But he’d barely had anything to drink that night. Why do I remember it all so well? Could I be confusing things? Fantasizing?

Swaddling herself in a large hotel towel and slipping her feet into her slippers, Lena took an enameled mug from the bottom of her bag, along with an immersion heater, a tin of ground coffee, sugar, and the small, nickel-silver cup she’d been taking with her on business trips for years.

After the water in the mug boiled, Lena turned off the immersion heater, put four spoonfuls of coffee in the water and three cubes of sugar and plugged the immersion heater back in for exactly two minutes to make it foam ever so slightly.

While the coffee was cooling, Lena got dressed—just in time. No sooner had she zipped up her jeans when she heard a knock at the door.

It was Michael. He, too, had taken a shower and changed his clothes.

“Here’s what I keep worrying about,” he said, sitting in the armchair. “What if there’s nothing vegetarian in the local restaurant? What am I going to do then?”

“Let’s have some coffee for starters,” Lena suggested.

Michael chatted on about the difficulties of finding vegetarian food in some of the places he had visited in his travels, but Lena was only half listening.

There were spots of blood on his sweater, Lena thought. I don’t remember how long Volkov was gone, but… When I was packing up the dishes after the picnic, we were missing a knife. I remembered the knife because Volkov had sliced the onion for the shish kebab so deftly, in thin, even circles. It was a young onion, strong, all three of us were tearing up, though we turned away. But he sliced dry-eyed. It was so surprising, I remembered it.

“It Italy it was like they had never even heard the word ‘vegetarian’ before! I would tell them I didn’t eat meat, and they would just bring me chicken. If I said I didn’t eat chicken, they brought me fish!” Michael got up from his chair and started pacing around the small hotel room, gesticulating expressively.

Something happened in Tyumen, too. Lena looked at the enameled blue mug with the immersion heater and suddenly remembered that June morning at the Hotel East. Mitya had a mug just like this, but twice as big, and the immersion heater… He went to the hotel buffet while Olga and I made coffee. When Mitya got back he was white as a sheet. Someone had told him about a girl who’d been raped and murdered. The girl had been a student at the vocational institute where we’d performed the night before. Stop! It doesn’t make sense!

“And what if it is like that here as well? What am I going to do? I have a lot of work to do, and I can’t do my work and think clearly if I am not eating. In Italy, I could just eat pasta with tomato sauce at every meal, but this is not Italy. We are in Siberia, of all places!”

Why doesn’t it make sense? Lena asked herself. Just because I’d be so scared if it was Volkov? He was in Tyumen at the time, after all! We traveled to Tobolsk together. That was the night when he and I had that bizarre conversation on the train.

Her heart started pounding. Lena mechanically tapped a cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

“Lena!” Michael shouted in despair. “I don’t think you’ve been listening to me at all. You’ve been thinking your own thoughts!”

“Oh, Michael, I’m sorry!” Lena caught herself. “Please forgive me.”

“Be honest, are you thinking about your friend, Veniamin, who took us to that fancy club?”

“Why do you think that?” Lena asked in fright.

“Child, I’m an old man. I’ve seen lots in my life, even though I’ve been living with the same woman for forty years. I’ll tell you another banality, but believe me, sexual intimacy ends very quickly. All you’re left with is bitterness and disappointment. You’re a young and beautiful woman, and nothing can keep someone from courting you, not even the fact that you are married. But be careful. Don’t go too far. Forgive me for meddling, but I know how Steven worries about you, and he and I are close friends. I don’t have daughters, but if I did, I’d tell them the same thing. Be careful. Don’t go too far.”

“I have no intention of going too far,” Lena replied quietly. “There is no romantic interest, not on my end anyway.”

“Well, that’s very good.” Michael smiled, delighted. “You know, while I was fretting about food, I managed to get good and hungry. Let’s you and I go down to the restaurant and see whether they have any vegetarian food there.”

When Lena was already locking the door behind her, the phone rang.

“That’s curious,” Michael said, surprised. “Who could that be?”

It was Sasha, the driver. He said he was downstairs, at the front desk.

“I thought you would have eaten and be ready to head out for your tour of the city. But that’s all right. I can wait.”

Lena was mildly surprised at his zeal. But she assumed that the young man was anxious to make some money and maybe he was afraid someone else would poach his rich foreign client.

“Yes, please wait in the lobby. We may have to go somewhere else to eat if this restaurant doesn’t have vegetarian food.”

“You mean your friend doesn’t eat meat?”

“Or fish.”

“I sympathize. He’s going to have a hard time here. All right, if the hotel restaurant doesn’t have anything for him, I’ll find somewhere else to take you.”

I was very lucky with this Sasha, Lena thought, hanging up the phone. He probably knows where Malaya Proletarskaya Street is.

Malaya Proletarskaya was where Raisa Slepak had once lived. She might still.

The hotel restaurant turned out to be just fine. The tablecloths were white and the waitresses polite and smiling, though the vegetarian options were limited to the vegetable appetizer and roast potatoes.

“We also have pancakes with sour cream for Shrovetide,” the waitress told them. “Get that for your friend. I recommend them.”

She brought such a stack of pancakes that Michael clapped his hands.

“I’ve read that Russian merchants died of overeating at Shrovetide! If we eat all this, we’re guaranteed to wreak havoc on our stomachs. Listen, you said that young man, the driver, is sitting in the lobby. Why don’t you go and invite him to join us? He can help us deal with this giant stack.”

Sasha was sitting in an armchair, leafing distractedly through one of the magazines fanned out on the table.

“Hello again!” he exclaimed. “Finished eating?”

“No, we’ve only just started. Michael wanted me to invite you to join us for pancakes.”

“Thank you.”

Returning to the dining room with Sasha, Lena suddenly felt someone staring at her back. Turning around, she noticed a young, mustached bartender wiping glasses behind the bar. Meeting eyes with Lena, he immediately turned away and started rubbing the fine glass so furiously that the glass shattered in his hands.