Stalin’s Ghost

26

Riding to the apartment, Arkady was exhilarated and exhausted, as if he and Eva had crossed a wasteland of betrayal and misunderstanding, and survived. He knew that later they would talk about it and words would diminish the experience, but for the moment they rode the motorcycle in a happy stupor.

Only once she spoke over the noise of the bike, “I have a gift for you.” She took a cassette from inside her coat. “The real tape.”

“You are a wonderful woman.”

“No, I am a terrible woman, but that’s what you’re stuck with.” Waiting for the elevator doors to close they spoke of trivialities, preserving the bubble of the moment.

“Are you still an investigator?”

“I doubt it.”

“Good. We can take a trip to someplace with a sunny beach and palm trees.”

As the elevator doors began to close a cat with spiky fur came on board, arched its back in surprise, and ran off.

“And Zhenya?” Arkady said.

“We should take Zhenya with us,” Eva said.

Why not, Arkady thought? To golden sand, blue water and a regular drubbing on a chessboard. If that wasn’t a holiday, he didn’t know what was. Eva removed her scarf and snapped off the snow as they stumbled out of the elevator on Arkady’s floor. Being happy was like being drunk. He didn’t have the usual ballast.

At the apartment door he asked, “Would you like to see a dragon?”

“Let’s just get Zhenya and go,” she whispered.

Eva entered first. As she turned on the light Bora stepped out of the bathroom. Arkady recognized the same dagger that he had failed to find on the ice at Chistye Prudy. It was double edged and sharp as a razor and Arkady grabbed it only to have his palm sliced open. Bora turned and drove the knife into Eva’s side and carried her backwards over the body of Sofia Andreyeva. Sofia Andreyeva’s throat had been slit, her face white under garish mascara and rouge. The walls and posters were speckled with signs of struggle. Zhenya was barricaded behind a coffee table in a corner of the room, a long knife in one hand. On the table lay a partially assembled Tokarev awaiting its recoil spring and bushing.

Bora wore rubber gloves and an easy-to-wash training suit. He asked Arkady, “Are you laughing now?”

As he drew the knife out of her, Eva sank to the floor trying to catch her breath.

In the corner Zhenya fumbled the spring and it rolled off the table. It was unfair, Arkady thought. They had been so clever, Eva most of all.

Bora had the confident approach of a butcher, ready to open the belly but willing to start carving an arm or a leg. In films this was where the hero wrapped a cloak around one arm as a shield, Arkady thought. No cloaks seemed to be available. Instead, Arkady tripped on the carpet and went down. At once Bora was on top of him, pressing the bruised side of Arkady’s head against the floor.

Bora’s breath was hot and damp. “There’s a weight room in your courtyard. I was coming out and who do I see pulling off a motorcycle helmet but the man from Chistye Prudy? Remember the fun you had on the ice there? You laughed at the wrong man.”

Bora was all muscle, while Arkady got winded climbing stadium steps. Also, he had only one good hand to fend off Bora. Everything was wrong. The red ring around Sofia Andreyeva’s neck. Zhenya’s despair as the pistol’s recoil spring sprang and rolled out of reach. Eva’s hoarse efforts to breathe.

Bora leveraged more weight onto the knife.

“Are you laughing?” Bora introduced the knife to Arkady’s ear, tickling the fine hairs of the whorl.

Slowly, reluctantly, Arkady’s arm gave way. He remembered a dream in which he had failed everybody. He didn’t recall the details but the sense was the same.

A chessboard bounced off Bora’s head. He looked up and Zhenya fired.

There wouldn’t be a second shot, because the boy pulled the trigger without the recoil spring.

There didn’t need to be a second shot. Bora was spread out on the floor, a black hole the size of a cigarette burn in his head.

With wind and snow constantly shifting, it was hard to tell whether the ambulance was making forward progress.

Arkady and Zhenya rode with Eva and a paramedic, a girl with a check list. Eva was strapped into a litter, blankets up to her chin, an oxygen mask cupping her face and wires connecting her to a rack of monitors. On a jump seat, Zhenya hugged his knees.

“She’s taking shallow breaths,” Arkady said.

The paramedic assured Arkady that while stab victims could die from shock and loss of blood in a matter of seconds, at twenty minutes after being attacked Eva was still conscious, her eyes focused on Arkady and she had hardly bled at all. Arkady tried to seem confident, but the experience was like being in a plunging elevator. He saw the floors go by, but couldn’t get off.

Eva lifted the oxygen mask. “I’m cold.”

He pulled Eva’s blanket back and tore her dress for a better look at the wound, a slit edged in purple between the ribs. There was no external bleeding from the cut unless he applied pressure, then wine-dark blood seeped out.

Waiting.

Arkady and Zhenya sat on a bench outside the scrub room, trying to catch a glimpse of Eva whenever the door opened to the OR she had been rolled into. Arkady measured the hall in footsteps again and again. He stared at the Do Not Smoke and No Cell Phones signs on a wall. At one end of the hall an Emergency Only door accessed the roof; outside, snow was covering the deck and pushing along cigarette butts and empty packs. He flipped through commercial brochures on a table without really reading, “What to do in Tver,” “Sovietskaya’s Luxury Row” or “How to Win at Roulette.” Felt himself petrify. Zhenya hid in Eva’s coat, two legs sticking out, until Arkady put his arm around him and thanked him for saving everybody. They would all be dead if it hadn’t been for Zhenya.

“I think you’re the bravest boy I ever met. The best one ever.”

Zhenya’s crying under the coat sounded like the tearing of wood.

Elena Ilyichnina came out in purple scrubs dark with sweat and spoke to Arkady in a soft, special tone that offered no false hope at all. “We drained a considerable amount of blood. Doctor Kazka presented little external bleeding, but internally she was drowning. There are so many organs for a knife to hit-the lungs, liver, spleen, diaphragm and, of course, the heart-depending on the reach of the blade. A complete laparoscopy and repair could go on for hours. I suggest you go to the emergency room and have your hand properly looked at.”

Arkady could picture the emergency room and its nocturnal population of drunks and meth-heads vying for attention. Everything but vampires.

“We’ll stay.”

“Of course. How silly of me to suggest medical attention.”

Arkady didn’t see why she was so brusque. “Could you please tell me where I can use a cell phone?”

“Not on this floor. Our instruments don’t like them.”

“Where, then?”

“Outside.” She caught him eyeing the Emergency Only door. “Don’t even imagine it.”

Sick of gazing at the floor, Arkady returned to the brochures on the table. They were glossy foldouts that offered apartments, manicures, intimate restaurants, the chance to meet foreign men. One said, ‘Sarkisian Carpets. A fine Persian, Turkish, Oriental carpet is a beautiful investment! Dragon carpets, especially, only gain in value. In the auction houses of Paris and London dragon carpets are valued at $100,000 and more!” In the accompanying photo a well dressed man with white hair pointed to a red dragon skulking in the intricate design of a carpet. Arkady inked in the man’s hair with a pen and the family resemblance to Prosecutor Sarkisian was complete.

Victor and Platonov arrived from Moscow with cardboard cups of tea.

“Your doctor called me. I called Platonov.”

Platonov said, “You and Zhenya didn’t think your friends were going to desert you, did you?”

“Do you have a relationship with Elena Ilyichnina?” Arkady asked Victor.

“Sort of. We sat up together when you were in the hospital. We shared the vigil.”

“You were drunk.”

“A detail. Drink your tea.”

The tea looked weak and felt cold. Arkady took a sip and almost spat up.

“A touch of ethanol.” Victor shrugged. “There’s tea and there’s tea.”

“It’s vile.”

“You’re welcome.” He offered Arkady a pistol and an extra clip.

Arkady declined. “I don’t think Elena Ilyichnina called you so we could have a gunfight in her hospital.”

“We would be famous. We would be terrorists on the evening news.”

Zhenya and Platonov played blindfold chess, exactly what the boy needed to keep his mind occupied. A catalogue for women’s lingerie had Victor totally absorbed.

Arkady nodded off and in a dream went for cigarettes. He found a machine in the basement next to the cafeteria, which was closed, and an exhibit of schoolchildren’s art. There were a good many princesses and figure skaters, ice hockey players and Black Berets.

He got confused on the way back, missed a turn and took the wrong elevator to a different part of the hospital. Now he was hotter, sweatier and it was the middle of the day. He heard the drone of outboard engines, dipping oars, the plop of fish, the lassitude of an aluminum boat adrift. Midges hatched from the water, dragonflies feasted on the midges, swallows snatched dragonflies on the wing and horseflies fed on Platonov. He wore an Afrika Korps-style cap to protect his neck and every five minutes went into a spasm of swatting that rocked the boat.

“Bloodsuckers! This is probably why the creature stays in its murky depths.”

Platonov dropped the oars back in the water and managed a stroke. He did the rowing because placing his bulk at the bow or stern made the boat unsteady. Zhenya sat up front in a T-shirt and shorts searching through a box of fireworks. He had attained a light tan and even filled out a little. A camera hung on a strap around his neck.

“We only have one more bomb,” Zhenya said.

“How are we with sandwiches?” Platonov asked.

Arkady looked in the hamper. “We have plenty. Some of them are a little wet.”

“There’s no such thing,” Platonov said, “as a sandwich that is only a little wet.”

Zhenya scanned the water through the camera. “Did you know that some dead bodies don’t sink or float, they just hang in the water?”

“Sounds delightful.” Platonov dipped his cap in the water and set it back on his head, luxuriating in the cool runoff.

“Tell me the plan again,” Arkady said.

Zhenya said, “We set off a bomb, really a big firecracker. The monster is curious, comes over and I take its picture.”

“Good plan.”

“It will be on the cover of every scientific review,” Platonov said.

A dragonfly began to flash around the boat, make figure eights and loops so close to Platonov that he lost his balance. As the boat jerked, he and Zhenya stayed in. Arkady plunged into the water and sank. He was comfortable under the surface, drifting in the shadow of the boat when a larger shadow crossed his line of vision. A sturgeon hundreds of year old, with barnacles and armored ribs, swam by trailing a white veil from its jaws. The giant fish was a metallic gray and each eye was as large as a platter. Arkady followed the veil down to the dark bottom of the lake, where he found Eva trapped by a massive rock he could not budge. Arkady looked up at the boat and saw Zhenya throw something in the water. The bomb! A huge bubble erupted, creating a shock wave that littered the surface of the lake with fish and, below, dislodged the boulder. Arkady took Eva’s hand and they rose effortlessly until Victor shook him awake.

“She’s coming out.”

Eva emerged from the OR a deflated version of herself, drenched with sweat, anaesthetized and deaf to the rattle of the drip stand rolling at her side. Then the doors of the Recovery Unit closed behind her.

“Doctor Kazka had a difficult time,” Elena Ilyichnina said. She herself looked all in, with shadows under her eyes and the indentation of a surgical mask running like a seam across her face. “The blade moved in an arc after penetration, so we had a number of sites to attend to. One lung was scraped and the diaphragm was perforated. However, there was no damage to the heart. Usually, I would insist on admitting her here for observation, but I understand your special need to return to Moscow and have organized an ambulance. You can make a financial arrangement with the driver.”

“But she’s out of danger,” Arkady said.

“Not as long as she’s with you,” Elena Ilyichnina observed, regarding the purple side of his face. “You’re taking good care of my delicate handiwork? Being careful when you cross the street?”

“I try.”

“You know, we are supposed to report any violent crimes to the militia. I’d like to report a man who had a miracle and threw it away,” Elena Ilyichnina said and marched through the door to Recovery, leaving Arkady with the sense that his head was on a pole.

Victor said “Our ‘special need?’ Our need is to get out of this piss pot of a town. Towns like this, you could be anywhere. Russia has towns like Tver all over, like a thousand ugly daughters. It doesn’t matter how big they are, they’re the same. Same dreary buildings, same empty squares, even the same statues, because we no longer notice how ugly they are. What do you think, gentlemen?”

“I think you’ve had enough tea,” Arkady said.

“We have to get Zhenya somewhere safe.” Platonov was suddenly a mother hen.

Arkady said, “Go to the ambulance bay. Work out something with the driver.”

“You’re not coming?” Victor said.

Arkady watched the last of the nurses leave the scrub room. “Give me five minutes.”

Arkady went out the emergency door to the fifth floor deck and climbed a metal stairway to the roof.

He found himself on a shadowy island surrounded by a faint wash of floodlights and populated by ventilation ducts hooded with snow. The spiral bonnets of a vent spun like a dervish. Fans hummed. A duct with a vane shifted nervously with the wind. High ground, perfect for cell phones.

He called Moscow.

The eleventh ring was answered with “Who the devil is this?”

“Prosecutor Zurin, this is Renko.”

“Christ.”

“I’m coming back. There are two dead bodies in my apartment in Tver. One older female with her throat slit, a very nice woman named Sofia Andreyeva Poninski, and her assailant, Bora Bogolovo, whom I shot and killed.” He gave Zurin the address.

“Wait, wait. Why are you calling me? You work in Tver in Prosecutor Sarkisian’s office.”

“Sarkisian was involved with Bogolovo. Also with Moscow detectives Isakov and Urman in murder, war crimes and receiving stolen goods. I have Isakov’s confession on tape.”

“Christ.”

“It’s shocking. Who knows where this may lead?”

“What are you insinuating?”

“Only that this investigation can’t be left to Tver. It must be led by an outside prosecutor whose reputation is above reproach. I left you a key above the apartment door.”

“You son of a bitch, are you taping this conversation? Where are you?”

Arkady clicked off. That was enough for a start.

He felt refreshed by the call. He rested his arms against the parapet, took a deep breath and let a shudder of relief roll through him.

From the hospital roof he took in the black course of the Volga and the sinuous light of traffic along the river road. Lenin Square was a pool of light, but away from the center streetlamps were softly overwhelmed. As snow fell the city sank and rose. There was a rhythm to the snow as surely as there were waves at sea, and the illusion, as snow fell, that Tver was rising.

“Not so bad,” said Arkady.

Snow settled. Snow settled on a hero at a gate on Sovietskaya Street, immobilized, still thinking of his next move. Snow settled on bones that had come out of hiding. It settled on Tanya and Russian brides. It settled on Sofia Andreyeva’s panache.

He thought the doctor had it wrong about a miracle. The real miracle was that the people of Tver would wake to find their city transformed into someplace pure and white.

As for ghosts, they filled the streets.