Madness Treads Lightly

CHAPTER 35

He was having Technicolor dreams and was reluctant to wake up. Before, he’d only dreamed in black and white—bad dreams, gloomy dreams. That’s probably why he’d always slept so little. But now he was reliving his entire forty-year life—completely differently.

He dreamed of himself as a little boy loved tenderly and doted on by his parents. His mama had cool, light hands. She stroked his hair, kissed him good night, and read him fairy tales. His father was strong and good-natured. He taught him about the taiga, how to guess where the solid hummocks were in the swamp’s abyss, how to weave pots out of fragrant spring birch bark and boil water in them over a fire.

There was a great deal of warmth and light in his dream. The scarlet taiga cranberries glowed in the sun and looked nothing like drops of blood. His dark-haired little neighbor Larochka ran down the creaking stairs, smiling gaily and tapping her heels. No one ever raped her in the deserted park in spring. She didn’t know how painful and terrifying it was, which meant she was going to live a completely different life.

Sixteen-year-old Tanya Kostylyova stepped out on the bank from the calm nighttime river, shook her long wet hair, and, huddling in the predawn chill, pulled her graduation dress over her damp body.

“Venya, I’m freezing! Why did you talk me into swimming?” she whispered, pressing her warm forehead to his chest.

Tanya Kostylyova was alive, and she was forty. The six other girls were alive, too. He hadn’t pursued anyone, hadn’t attacked anyone, hadn’t strangled anyone, hadn’t killed anyone. They were all alive, and each had followed her own path, lived her own life, happy or unhappy, dissolute or righteous—but her own. Four of the six had children. The children were growing up, some of them had children, too. Those grandchildren were girls Venya Volkov had never raped or killed.

Somewhere far away, in another dimension, on another planet, there was an enormous business, Veniamin Productions, an invincible iron horse that fed on intrigue, cruelty, and blood. But he, Venya Volkov, had nothing whatsoever to do with that. He lived peacefully and happily. Lena Polyanskaya looked at him with her clear gray eyes. He wished he could touch her face and feel her long black eyelashes flutter. He reached out, but around him was emptiness, cold, dead air. He couldn’t breathe that air. It burned his throat and shredded his lungs. He had to wake up, but he didn’t want to.

“Veniamin Borisovich, wake up, please,” he heard a voice from far away.

“Venya, the doctor’s here to see you. He has to examine you.”

He opened his eyes and saw over him two faces—Regina’s doll-like face and the soft, round, bespectacled face of an older man he didn’t know.

It pained him to pull himself out of his dream. It felt like he was falling straight from his warm, Technicolor world into a dull, icy, black-and-white nightmare. The round-faced otolaryngologist had dry, rough hands. He palpated Venya’s glands and looked at his throat.

“I don’t see a postpharyngeal abscess. The throat’s enflamed, but not badly.”

“So you’re ruling out angina?” Regina clarified.

“What angina? It’s the flu. A perfectly ordinary case of the flu. This should not get to the point where there are complications. But I would recommend a course of antibiotics. In any case, he’ll require a thorough examination. You should bring in a cardiologist.”

“Yes.” Regina nodded. “I think you’re right. Thank you, Doctor. My driver will take you home.”

She handed him a hundred dollars.

When she heard the car departing, she went back to the bedroom and took a disposable needle and a cardboard box of ampoules filled with a colorless liquid from the nightstand. She sawed the ampoule’s neck with a diamond saw, broke the thin glass—and cut her finger. The cut wasn’t deep, but it bled. She had to set the open ampoule carefully on the nightstand and go to the bathroom, where she had hydrogen peroxide and iodine in the cabinet.

When she returned to the bedroom, Venya was sitting on the bed, holding the open ampoule in two fingers and examining it in the light.

“Why isn’t there a label?” he asked.

“I can see you’re already feeling better.” Regina smiled delightedly.

“Yes, I am. What were you injecting me with all that time?”

“Antibiotics and vitamins.”

“I don’t need any more medicines. Or specialists. And stop trying to turn me into an invalid. Bring me the phone.”

“Whatever you say, my love.”

Lena curled up under her jacket and tried to fall asleep. She didn’t know what time it was. Her watch had gone missing. The leather strap had probably broken when they put on the handcuffs. All she could see out the tiny window was a sliver of sky, which had brightened considerably.

Now I know almost everything, she thought, but what good is that? Even if a miracle does happen and I do get out of here, I can’t prove anything. I don’t understand why Regina Gradskaya needed to take this kind of risk. What is it all for? Is she that in love with Venya Volkov? Or did she decide to tame the monster so he could help make her beautiful and rich? Plastic surgery in a Swiss clinic is expensive. But she has the brains and energy to earn that independently, without the help of a monster. She’s taken risks, and not only when she framed Nikita Slepak. She’s taken a risk all these years, living with Volkov, and lying down next to him every night. Or did she manage to cure him after all?

What about Mitya Sinitsyn? Why did he only bring this up fourteen years later? And who with? Volkov himself! Yes, he only had a suspicion, but no actual proof.

Lena imagined Mitya’s torment as he tried to decide what he should do with his suspicions. He couldn’t say nothing and forget it. At first he’d thought of blackmail, but he couldn’t do it. He probably found a way to meet Volkov alone and ask him a direct question: “Are you or aren’t you a murderer?” Knowing Mitya, she could imagine that. He thought he was acting nobly, that he had no other option. And what did he achieve?

What would I have done in his place? Lena asked herself. Actually, I am in his place. I know much more than Mitya did when he went to see Volkov. But what’s the point? I’m locked up God knows where. My only goal is to get out of here alive and see Liza and Seryozha again. That’s much more important to me than some abstract idea like justice.

Lena had nearly fallen asleep when the door opened and two young goons appeared at the threshold.

“Get up. Let’s go,” one of them said.

Lena laced up her boots and threw on her jacket. They led her down a dim corridor where she couldn’t make out anything other than a few closed doors. Then they went up a short wooden staircase to the second floor. A minute later, Lena was in a large living room. The floor was covered with a light-colored, thick-piled rug, and in the corner a fire flickered in an antique fireplace. The dark, heavy, red drapes were pulled tight. In front of a low zebrawood magazine table, in a white leather armchair, sat a flabby, perfectly bald man of sixty or so with a good-natured, snub-nosed face.

“Hello, Elena Nikolaevna,” he said. “Please, come in. Take a seat.”

“Hello,” Lena echoed back. She took a few steps into the room and sat in the armchair facing the bald man.

The two goons stayed in the doorway behind her.

“Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?” the bald man offered with a polite smile.

“Coffee, if I may.”

The bald man’s eyes were light brown, almost yellow, small, and lashless.

“Okay, Vadik, get some coffee for us.” He nodded to one of the goons. “Don’t worry, Elena Nikolaevna,” he addressed Lena kindly, even rather paternally. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions, we’ll have our coffee, and we’ll part on good terms. On one condition, of course. You know perfectly well what that is. You’ll answer my questions honestly. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Question number one.” The bald man grinned. “Who is Michael Barron?”

“Michael Barron is a US citizen, a professor, and a historian,” Lena said calmly.

So that’s what this is about! They really have taken Michael for someone else. And Gradskaya has nothing to do with it. I wonder where Michael is now. I hope Sasha had the sense to send him to Moscow.

“Elena Nikolaevna, we did agree that you would answer honestly.” The bald man frowned slightly.

“I have no reason to deceive you. Dr. Barron really is a professor and a historian. To figure that out, you certainly didn’t have to go through this charade of searching our rooms and abducting me. This is as obvious as the fact that there was talcum powder in that tin can, not drugs.”

The bald man burst out laughing, though with a wheeze.

“Well, fine. Let’s continue. Why did you come here with this, as you say, historian?”

“Dr. Barron is studying the history of Russian Siberia. He’s interested in schismatics and the small ethnic groups of the North. He hired me as an interpreter since he doesn’t speak Russian.”

“And who is the young man who drove you around?” The bald man’s eyes became altogether yellow, and his pupils narrowed to a pinpoint.

“We needed a driver. We hired the first one we came across. He asked for very little money.”

The goon called Vadik silently walked up to the table with a tray holding two small cups and a sugar bowl.

“Drink your coffee, Elena Nikolaevna, and think a little more,” the bald man suggested politely.

“May I smoke?” Lena asked.

“Yes, of course.”

Parliaments, a lighter, and an ashtray appeared on the table. Lena greedily sipped the hot, strong coffee and took a cigarette out of the pack.

“Well, fine, and what did you talk about for so long with the two old women on Malaya Proletarskaya?”

“I was visiting the mother of an old acquaintance. It’s an old story.”

“I’d be happy to hear it.”

Lena calmly laid out the story of Vasya Slepak’s poems. Curly listened and thought that she was telling the truth. Not the whole truth, of course, but the truth. He knew that the killer really did once write poetry. And one of his poems was even published in a popular youth magazine.

“Was it hard to get him published?” he asked with some sympathy.

“What do you think?” Lena smiled.

“What did you do that for?”

“I felt very sorry for Vasya Slepak.”

Right then she heard laughter. The bald man was laughing, though with a wheeze. The two young goons standing in the doorway were laughing hard.

“Sorry for him, you say?” the bald man said when he’d finished laughing, and he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes with his fingertips. “You should have felt sorry for yourself!”

His face hardened. His bare yellow eyes stared at Lena in a way that made her shiver.

“Do you miss your daughter?” he asked insinuatingly.

Lena didn’t respond. She felt everything inside her turn cold. The hand holding the coffee cup started shaking noticeably. Lena put the cup down on the table and squeezed her hand into a fist.

“You do,” the bald man answered for her, and he quickly licked his thin lips. “Do you want to take a look at her?”

Lena suddenly got very dizzy. This can’t be happening, she told herself. He’s bluffing. This can’t be.

A remote appeared in the bald man’s hand. Only then did Lena notice a large television and VCR on a zebrawood stand in the corner of the room. The bald man pressed a few buttons. The screen turned on, and a minute later Lena saw the broad drive of the Istra holiday house. Liza was running down the drive wearing her bright, colorful snowsuit and her striped knit cap with the pom-pom. In one hand she was holding a red plastic bucket and in the other her stuffed monkey. She was running toward the camera. Her rosy little face now took up the entire screen. Her blond curls poked out from under the cap, and her big blue eyes looked straight at Lena.

“Nanny Vera!” she shouted gaily, then turned and ran off to the side.

On the side, Vera Fyodorovna was standing in her warm jacket and loose woolen trousers. She leaned over to Liza, smiling, straightened her cap, and fastened a snap on her snowsuit.

“Let me look, Liza. Are your little feet wet?”

The scene changed. Now they were looking into the bedroom through the window on the balcony. Liza was sleeping in her pink flannel pajamas. Vera Fyodorovna was knitting, sitting in a chair in front of the television. The glowing screen cast pale patches of light on her calm face. The picture was so peaceful and cozy that Lena wanted nothing more in the world right now than to be in that room, to stroke Liza’s silky hair, and to kiss her warm cheek creased by the pillow’s folds.

Vera Fyodorovna rose heavily from her chair, went over to the bed, straightened the blanket, and did exactly what Lena so wanted to do—stroked Liza’s little head, leaned over, kissed her little cheek, and quietly made the sign of the cross over the sleeping girl. Then, yawning sleepily, she turned off the television and left the room.

The screen went dark. Lena took out another cigarette and lit it, trying to stop her whole body from shaking.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” she heard the bald man say. “Who does she take after to be so blond? Your husband? Speaking of the colonel, is he still in London? When will he be back, do you know?”

“What do you want from me?” Lena asked, and she forced herself to look straight into his yellow eyes.

The young deaf-mute woman silently approached the coffee table and began clearing the coffee cups. Lena didn’t notice when she’d appeared in the living room.

“You do realize,” the bald man continued thoughtfully, “I have much experience in loosening the tongues of people who preferred to keep quiet. Mostly men, though. I don’t much like dealing with women. There are all kinds of ways to make a person talk. You’re an educated woman, you know how this is done. But each person requires a unique approach. Now you, for example, you’ll probably pass out at the first touch. Physical pain is one of the easiest ways to get a person to talk. But I don’t like that. You end up with a lot of noise and blood. None of my boys has laid a finger on you yet. And they won’t. And, so far, we’ve only filmed your Liza. We won’t harm your child for no reason. But we will if we have to, and you’ll have only yourself to blame. Believe me, it will give me no pleasure whatsoever to show you another movie of your beautiful baby in a few days.”

Lena suddenly noticed that the deaf-mute had stopped by the table holding the empty cups and was looking steadily at the bald man’s lips.

“This is how it is.” His stubby-fingered hand lightly chopped through the air. “Give this some proper thought. I’m not rushing you.”

“Why do you think I’m not telling you the truth?” Lena asked quietly.

The deaf-mute was focusing her bright blue eyes on Lena’s lips as she spoke. No one besides Lena noticed.

“You’re a strange woman.” The bald man sighed. “You pitied some prison bastard, but you don’t pity your own child. Or maybe you haven’t completely caught on, eh? Fine. I’ll give you another day. You can take the cigarettes and lighter with you. And if there’s anything you need, don’t be shy. Consider yourself my guest.”

They took Lena back to the small room. Only now did she realize the room was in the basement. When the door slammed, Lena collapsed on the bare mattress of the creaky cot and began to weep. She sensed that this wasn’t the time for tears, but she couldn’t stop herself. Her tears streamed and she angrily wiped them over her cheeks. Yes, if she was ever going to calm down, she first had to get good and angry.

“Pigs, brutes, brainless bastards!” she whispered.

And that really did make her feel better. Her tears dried. Now she could calmly contemplate her situation.