Stalin’s Ghost

17

On the way to Tver, Arkady left Moscow and entered Russia.

No Mercedes, no Bolshoi, no sushi, no paved-over world; instead mud, geese, apples rolling off a horse cart. No townhouses in gated communities, but cottages shared with cats and hens. No billionaires, but men who sold vases by the highway because the crystal factory they worked at had no money to pay them, so paid them in kind, making each man an entrepreneur holding a vase with one hand and swatting flies with the other.

For a winter day the weather was freakishly warm, but Arkady drove with the windows up because of the dust pouring off trucks. The Zhiguli had no air conditioning or CD player, but its engine could run on vodka if need be. From time to time the land was so flat the horizon opened like a fan, and meadows and bogs stretched in all directions. A dirt road would branch off to a handful of cottages and a tilted Easter cake of a church framed by birches.

From the passenger seat Elena Ilyichnina looked sadly at the passing countryside. To Arkady’s astonishment she had accepted the offer of a ride to her hometown to visit her mother. Villages on the way were dying, hollowed out by the mass evacuation of the young, who went to Tver, to Moscow or St. Petersburg rather than suffer what Marx called “the idiocy of rural life.” A village shop sold gum boots and canvas jackets. Moscow offered supermodels and video arcades. An entire generation went to the city to make a fortune, gain computer skills, to hang, to temp, to wear a paper cap and fry chicken, to-one way or another-take part in the future. The death of a village could be tracked by the number of houses that, unpainted, turned to gray and disappeared among the trees; in most villages gray was epidemic.

During the war Tver had been called Kalinin, in honor of Russia’s president. Kalinin had a distinguished goatee and, more important, was an organ grinder of secretary praise. In Kalinin’s estimation, Stalin was “our best friend, our best teacher, the pathfinder of the ages, the genius of science, brighter than the sun, the greatest military strategist of all time.” Stalin tried to get Kalinin to please stop, no more, but he wouldn’t. As soon as the Soviet Union fell apart Tver reclaimed its ancient name.

Although the day was warm Elena Ilyichnina’s ears were a vivid pink and it struck Arkady that she was many men’s ideal: a big woman, Victor often said, was a rock in stormy seas. She had organized a lunch of sausage and bread to eat on the way.

Conversation never really got started. They were like two dancers so out of synch that they finally abandoned the floor. Also, Elena Ilyichnina had worked one shift in Moscow and was about to start a shift in Tver and she took the opportunity to nap, which was fine with Arkady. She made a companionable presence as long as she didn’t talk.

As they neared Tver he became aware that she was awake and watching him. She said, “I hear that you are an investigator who doesn’t carry a gun. What is the philosophy behind that?”

“No philosophy. In some situations the gun becomes an issue. You start worrying about when to show it, when to use it. It’s like a locomotive; it takes you where it wants to go.”

“And then someone has to pick a bullet out of your head.”

“It’s not an air-tight system. Are you telling me I’ll need a gun in Tver?”

“No.”

“What is Tver like, then?”

“Patriotic. In Moscow, people pay doctors to concoct reasons why their precious sons can’t serve their military duty. Of course, the army is brutal and stupid, but in Tver, where boys are just as precious, everyone goes.”

“Moscow sounds unpopular.”

“I would get a new plate for the car.”

That sounded unnecessary to him-after all, he didn’t know how long he would even be in Tver-and he changed the subject by asking about her mother’s health.

“Day to day.” She looked suddenly exhausted. “I’ll be back in Moscow tomorrow. Here’s the hospital now.”

They drove up to the admissions door of a dismal six-story building, a structure of plate glass and pre-cast concrete that once looked modern. Grit covered the glass and the concrete was stained from the rust of low-grade rebars.

“It’s better on the inside.” Elena Ilyichnina scribbled on a card and gave it to Arkady. “I’ve added my cell phone number. In case…”

“Just in case,” he agreed.

As Arkady got back on the road a group of motorcycles overtook him, maybe twenty bikers in scruffy combinations of dark glasses, facial hair and leather jackets. Their bikes shone like gems set in chrome. With his long red hair and bandanna the lead rider could have passed for a buccaneer. His machine was low set, elongated, the color of rubies and as it cruised by, he signaled Arkady to lower his window.

“Fuck Moscow!” the biker shouted.

The pack rolled by.

Arkady decided to change his license plate.

“Welcome to Tver.” City Prosecutor Sarkisian made a sentence sound like one sibilant word. He maneuvered Arkady around the office, so that he could enjoy professional certificates, oil paintings of Mount Ararat and, in a place of honor, photographs of the prosecutor in judo gear with the President himself. Otherwise the office was the same as Zurin’s, the Soviet red carpet, dark paneling, drapes in deep maroon. A window looked down on a square with a statue of Lenin overdressed for the weather. “Too bad you missed lunch. You’re going to find this is a very friendly city. Having our ups and downs, as who isn’t. Once you’re settled in, though, friendliest place on earth. There are no secrets in Tver.” Sarkisian squeezed Arkady’s shoulder. “You did volunteer for Tver?”

“Yes.”

“I had a conversation with Zurin, prosecutor to prosecutor. You have a reputation as a, let’s say, unusually active investigator. You like to get to the crime scene.”

“I suppose so.”

“I have a different approach. I think of my investigators as editors rather than writers. Let the detectives do the detecting. Your role is to take their findings and edit them into a case I can take to court. It’s like geese flying south. They don’t fly each in a different direction. They fly in formation. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Less wear and tear too. The doctors have given you the go-ahead?”

“Completely healed.”

“Excellent, but before you come to work, take a few days to learn the lay of the land. I insist. You’ll meet the men later. If I had been given more notice of your arrival we could have prepared a proper ceremony. As it is, we were lucky to organize a room for you to sleep in.”

“Tver is that full?”

“Oh, Tver is a busy town. We’ve put you up at the Boatman. I’ll give you directions.” The prosecutor had already printed them out. “So, as I said, take the next few days to settle in. That will give you a chance to really make up your mind whether or not to transfer here. Then we’ll talk about work.”

Sarkisian steered Arkady into the hall. By the elevator bay a glass cabinet displayed judo medals, trophies, belts.

“We work together, we play together. Is that how it is in Moscow?”

“We drink together.” The elevator, a prewar Otis with an armed operator, finally arrived. Arkady stepped in but held the door. “Moscow does not seem to be well-loved here.”

Sarkisian shrugged at the obvious. “Moscow wants to be the only pig at the trough. The rest of us can starve as far as Moscow is concerned. So, here in Tver, we take care of ourselves.”

Tver had been an elegant city with an imperial palace and, in the Volga, a river that was an inspiration to poets. Then came the revolution, the war, Soviet implosion and economic pillaging, and, it seemed to Arkady, Tver became a couple of boulevards of classical architecture-the drama theater was a Greek temple trimmed in pink-surrounded by desultory shops, idle factories and gray postwar housing. Arkady drove around to see the city while daylight was left, because Russian maps were one thing and reality often something else. There were detours, road work, one-way streets, guarded streets, streets that did not exist, all sorts of surprises.

Short-term memory was an issue for Arkady. Three times he found himself unexpectedly at Lenin’s statue. Arkady consumed a pirog he bought at a kiosk while he contemplated Lenin, who studied a pigeon. Finally, Arkady walked down to the river.

Here the empress Catherine had built a palace for her amours. Here the poet Pushkin had wandered along the river and weaved together “emotion, thought, and magic sound.” Any ordinary winter the Volga would have frozen and Arkady could have walked across the river’s back, but the Volga that he found was swollen with snowmelt and flying through the chute.

As a boy Arkady had taken piano lessons from his mother, and one of the first pieces he learned was “The Volga Boatmen.” The boatmen hired themselves out as dray animals with straps across their chests to haul barges and ships, pitting their strength against the implacable current of the river. “Heave ho! Yo, heave ho!” Arkady’s left hand would pound dramatically while he picked out the tune with his right, expressing the fatalism of men whose only relief was vodka and whose beds were the rags on their backs.

At the Boatman Hotel long-haul truckers maintained the tradition, sleeping on greasy sheets, showering in cold water, dressing in front of a broken mirror. The wallpaper was a mural of stains. A spray can of insecticide stood on the bureau like a bouquet of flowers.

Arkady set down a duffel and athletic bags and asked the night manager, “Prosecutor Sarkisian arranged this?”

“Personally.”

Arkady gave the man a second look. The night manager’s head was shaved and slightly flattened. He carried a plastic sheet. “You’re the elevator operator from his office. You have two jobs.”

“What the prosecutor wants, I do.”

Arkady ran his fingers along cigarette burns on the television cabinet. “Don’t take it the wrong way, but I think I’ll look for other accommodations.”

The night manager had a smile. “Doesn’t matter. You cross the threshold, you have to pay.”

“How much?”

“A thousand rubles for a night.”

“A night of what?”

“Doesn’t matter.” The night manager spread the plastic on the floor, although Arkady thought it was a little late to be fastidious. “This room was reserved for you.”

“Not by me.”

“You crossed the threshold.”

It was hard to argue with a man of such few words. Arkady wasn’t feeling too bright himself, but a cosmic ray passing through his brain tickled his memory. “I’ve seen you before. You boxed.”

“So?”

“The semifinals, International Boxing Tournament, 1998. You and a Cuban. After two rounds you were ahead, but in the third you got cut and the match was stopped. It was a great fight. What was the Cuban’s name? What was his name?”

The night manager was pleased. “Martinez. His name was Martinez.”

“He butted you, didn’t he?”

“Yeah, no one remembers that, only that I lost.”

There was a general contemplation of the unfairness of life. Arkady thought about his gun, safely locked away in Moscow.

The night manager had to shake his head. “You have some kind of memory.”

“Off and on. So this is what you do now, break bones?”

“Sometimes.” The night manager was embarrassed, like a master carpenter ordered to build a birdhouse. He slipped brass knuckles over his hand. “Arthritis.”

“Is it painful?”

“A little.”

“Well, this may sting.” Arkady picked up the can of insecticide and sprayed the night manager’s face.

“Shit!”

Arkady hit him on the head with the can. Blood spread over the manager’s face. He did cut easily.

“Bastard!”

The night manager took tentative half steps and got tangled in the plastic sheet.

“Son of a bitch!”

From the Boatman Hotel Arkady drove to the railway station, one place where a man waiting in a car would not draw attention. The insecticide’s cloying scent followed him and he rolled the windows down. He didn’t know what the night manager had intended-a mere scare, some rib work, a split lip. Arkady did feel that a threshold had indeed been crossed. In one day he had gone from being a senior investigator in Moscow to homeless in Tver. He had wanted to provoke a reaction and he got his wish.

The cell phone rang. It was Eva.

“I don’t believe this,” she said. “You gave the man a towel?”

“I suppose I did.”

“You spray a man who is attacking you and then throw him a towel to wipe his eyes? Did it make you feel better?”

“A little.” He wrote the caller ID in his notebook while he remembered it. The number and “Hotel Obermeier.” “How did you hear about it?”

There was silence on the other end before Eva said, “The main thing is for you to leave Tver.”

“Not yet.”

“Nikolai has promised hands off. It won’t happen again.”

“Hands off me or hands off you?”

“You. Until the election, at least.”

“Do you think he’ll win?”

“He has to win.”

“For the glory or the immunity from prosecution?”

Again a pause.

“Please, Arkady, go home.” She hung up.

Immunity would be the icing on Isakov’s cake. Senator Isakov would be bulletproof. The law protected lawmakers from arrest for any crime unless they were caught in the actual commission of, let’s say, a murder or rape. As for old cases like the Kuznetsovs, Ginsberg and Borodin, there would be no sifting through the ashes. Their cases were already closed and would soon be forgotten.

The cell phone rang. He hoped it was Eva, but the ID panel said Zhenya, the last person Arkady wanted to talk to. He was not in the mood to talk about chess and with Zhenya everything related to chess, chess books or chess tournaments. So he let the phone ring. He did not want to be Zhenya’s chess coach or father or uncle. Being a friend would do. The phone rang. Why was Zhenya so persistent? It was midnight. And rang until Arkady surrendered and picked up.

Zhenya whispered, “Are you near Lake Brosno?”

“I have no idea.”

“Find out if you’re near Lake Brosno,” Zhenya said.

“Okay.”

“There was a program on television last night that said Lake Brosno was near Tver.”

“Then it is, I suppose,” Arkady said. “What about it?”

“Lake Brosno has a monster like the Loch Ness monster but better. They have pictures and all the old people have seen it.”

“What makes it better?”

“The Lake Brosno monster comes out on land.”

“Well, there you are.”

“During the war it came out and snatched a Fascist plane out of the air.”

“A patriotic monster.” Not only had Stalin enlisted the Orthodox Church and all its saints, Arkady thought, but the nation’s monsters as well. “How big is it?”

“Big as a house,” Zhenya said.

“Does it have legs?”

“No one knows. Some scientists are going to take some electronic gear out in a boat and test for anomalies.”

“Anomalies?” A good word.

“Wouldn’t it be amazing if the monster came out?”

“And laid waste to the countryside and spread panic and fear?”

“We’d have to bomb it. That would be so cool.”

“Zhenya, we can only hope.”

After the call Arkady was too on edge to sleep. The trams had shut down. He left the car at the train station and walked toward nowhere in particular. There was little point in checking into another hotel; there weren’t that many in Tver, and Sarkisian could alert them in minutes. Or Arkady could drive back to Moscow.

The street led, as all streets in Tver seemed to lead, to the river. The Volga gathered two smaller rivers in the center of the city and, fed by them, rushed against the embankment in a hurry to a faraway Caspian Sea. It was no wonder why he was drawn. Palace, parks, statues, two illuminated bridges, almost everything in Tver looked toward the river, homely faces gazing at a silver mirror.

There were two approaches: attack Isakov or pursue Eva. Both were shameless but in different ways. Since he didn’t have the evidence or the authority to go after the detective in any official manner, he would have to provoke Isakov into a misstep. Or he could forget Isakov and justice and concentrate on Eva. She had slept with another man? At his age that meant less and less. People had histories.

He could keep either his dignity or her.

His choice.