Tatiana

8

Arkady squinted in a morning light so bright that crumbs cast shadows on the kitchen table. Anya was in dark glasses, her fingernails painted scarlet red, black hair brushed to a shine. Uncertainty was in the air. She had spent the evening and half the night with Alexi, and Arkady didn’t know whether to be angry or feign nonchalance. He hadn’t expected her to show up on his doorstep the morning after, looking fresh as a daisy, although she held his gaze a little too long and lit a cigarette with movements that were a little too quick.

“Have some caffeine with that.” He poured her a cup. “You were out late.”

“Alexi and I went to a club.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“He says you’re jealous.”

“He told me.” Since there was nothing he could say now that wouldn’t sound jealous, he plunged ahead. “How is the writing going?”

“I’m still doing research.”

“With Alexi?”

“What have you got against him?”

“Nothing, except that he’s a slicked-back version of a real Mafia boss. Someone is going to put a bullet through his empty head any day now.” That didn’t sound fair, he thought. “I just hope you’re not in the way.” That didn’t sound any better.

“So you were up late too.”

“Listening to Tatiana. I found some old tapes in her apartment.”

“Sometimes I think you’d rather listen to ghosts than to someone alive.”

“It depends.”

“And now, on top of ghosts, you have a Saint Tatiana. Maybe you should pray.”

“What would help more than prayers is the notebook Tatiana brought back from Kaliningrad.”

“It’s funny. Everybody wants it and no one can read it.”

“I’d like to try.”

She opened her tote bag and produced the spiral notebook that Obolensky had shown him. “Just for you, the Holy Grail.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Over and over.”

“May I?”

“Be my guest.”

The pages were covered with enigmatic symbols. Inside the back cover were geometric shapes, a list of numbers and sketches of a cat.

Anya gathered up her coat. “I myself prefer a hothead to an ice cube.”

He heard the decisive slap of her shoes and perhaps the word idiot as she shut the door.

• • •

Whenever Arkady visited the university, he could not help but measure his progress in life against the precocious student he had been. What promise! A golden youth, son of an infamous general, he had floated easily to the top. By now, he should have been a deputy minister or, at the very least, a prosecutor, ruler of his own precinct and feasting at the public trough. Somehow, he had wandered. Almost all the cases that came his way were fueled by vodka and capped by a drunken confession. Crimes that displayed planning and intelligence were all too often followed by a phone call from above, with advice to “go easy” or not “make waves.” Instead of bending, he pushed back, and so guaranteed his descent from early promise to pariah.

One exception to the general disappointment was Professor Emeritus Kunin, an elderly iconoclast who dragged an oxygen tank and breathing tube around his office. A linguistics expert, he had once been arrested for speaking Esperanto, considered in Soviet times a language of conspiracy. Arkady convinced the judge that the professor was speaking Portuguese.

“I apologize, my dear Renko, that my office is such a mess. There is a system, I promise you. With all these. . charts and chalkboards. . I can’t even see the windows. I know there’s a bottle of cherry liqueur here somewhere.” He waved his arms futilely at charts, at audio equipment, at photographs of small brown people with oversize bows and arrows. Two blue macaws in separate cages cocked their heads skeptically at Arkady and blinked their sapphire eyes.

“Do they have names?” Arkady asked.

“Fuck off,” said one bird.

“Piss off,” said the other.

“Don’t get them started,” Kunin said. “It’s bad enough that the tropical forest they came from has been despoiled. . by international corporations. . logging in the Amazon, paradise lost. My charts are virtual tombstones. . Thank God for DNA. . For example, who the devil are the Lapps? Really.”

“A good question. Do you have five minutes to look at this?” Arkady produced the notebook.

“Ah, as you mentioned on the telephone; your piece of evidence.” The professor pushed books off his desk to make room. “You’re in luck. I have been making a study of ‘interpretation’ to see whether it tells us something about the foundations of language. The basic words. Mother. Father.”

“Murder?”

“You get the drift. Because each interpreter creates his own language.”

“Ah.”

“You’ll see.” Kunin sipped oxygen and studied the pages. “I can tell you, to begin with, one thing that’s odd. Usually the first thing a professional interpreter does is write on the cover of his notebook the name of the event, the parties involved, and the place and date the notes were taken. Also his name, mobile phone and an e-mail address in case the notebook is lost or stolen. Perhaps promise of a reward if found. This notebook has no identification. There is the name Natalya Goncharova, Pushkin’s wife, but of course she was a historical figure and a slut to boot.” The professor emeritus stopped for air and returned to the first page. “It’s hard to say with so few pages actually written on but it seems to be a notebook commonly used by journalists or consecutive interpreters. I would say that by the use of some commonly used symbols this was the notebook of a consecutive interpreter. Party A speaks in one language, which the interpreter relays in a second language to Party B. So it goes back and forth. If he keeps good notes, he can deliver a complete and accurate translation whether the parties speak for one minute or ten. It’s an amazing mental feat.”

Arkady was more confused than ever. Each page was blocked into four panels with a dizzying solar system of hieroglyphs, half words and diagrams. He felt like a fisherman who had hooked a creature far below the surface of the water with no idea of what he had caught.

“From these pages an interpreter can reconstruct an entire conversation?”

“Yes. And aren’t they lovely? Beyond arrows signifying ‘up’ or ‘down.’ A bumpy line for ‘difficulties.’ A loop and an arrow meaning ‘as a consequence.’ Genius. A ball and line for ‘before’; a line through the ball for ‘now.’ An interpreter creates a new symbol and other interpreters follow. It’s the creation of language before your eyes. A ball in a three-sided box? ‘A goal,’ naturally. Crossed swords? ‘War.’ A cross? ‘Death.’ ”

“Then we should be able to read it too.”

“No.” Kunin was just as definite.

“Why?”

“These are just the commonly accepted symbols. I can write them in for you. The rest are his. We don’t know the context.”

“If we knew, could we read the notes?”

“Probably not. It’s not a language and it’s not shorthand. Interpretation is a system of personal cues. No two interpreters are alike and no two systems are the same. For one interpreter, the symbol for ‘death’ might be a gravestone, for another a skull, for another a cross like this one. Symbols for ‘mother’ run the gamut. Cats can be sinister or cozy.”

“They don’t look warm and fuzzy to me.”

“See, the double triangles could be a map, or a constellation, or a route with four stops.”

Arkady had seen the shape before; it danced just beyond his grasp. He tried not to try too hard to remember because answers came when the mind wandered. Stalin used to draw wolves over and over.

“Or a bicycle frame,” Arkady said. He remembered going into a bike shop with Zhenya. Hanging from the shop ceiling had been a row of bicycle frames in different colors. “Someone was building a bike.” He walked the idea through. “An expensive bike for a serious biker.”

“You don’t know that for a fact.”

“This was custom-made. Not like adding a bell to the handlebars.”

“Renko, I’m dragging around an oxygen tank. Do I look like I know from bicycles?”

And that was it. Abruptly, Arkady was dry. He had gone as far as this slender branch of guesswork could support him.

• • •

“Is this Lieutenant Stasov?”

“I’ll put you on hold.”

“Tell the lieutenant that Senior Investigator Renko is on his cell phone from Moscow and wants to talk to him.”

“You’re first in line.”

Arkady was first in line for twenty minutes, time enough to return to his apartment and heat a cup of stale coffee.

Finally, a voice as deep as a barrel answered.

“Lieutenant Stasov.”

“Lieutenant, I need just a minute of your time.”

“If you’re calling from Moscow, it must be important,” Stasov said. Arkady could picture him winking to his pals in the squad room, taking the piss out of the big shot from Moscow. “What can I do for you?”

“I understand that you are the lead detective in the case of a dead body found ten days ago on one of your beaches.”

“A male homicide, about forty. That’s correct, at the spit.”

“The spit?”

“Where the land narrows. Beautiful beach.”

“Is the victim still unidentified?”

“No ID and no address, I’m afraid. If he had a wallet, it’s gone. I’m just glad it didn’t happen in the summertime when the beach is full of families. Anyway, we dug a bullet out of his head. Low caliber, but sometimes that’s what professional killers use.”

“A contract killer?”

“In my opinion. We will conduct a thorough investigation. Just keep in mind, we don’t have the technical gear that you have in Moscow. Or money, after Moscow drains the coffers. Moscow is the center and we are the stepchild. I’m not complaining, only putting you in the picture. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

“What did he look like?”

“We had some photos. I’ll find them.”

“Besides photographs, what was your general impression of the victim?”

“Skinny. Short and skinny.”

“His clothes?”

“Tight and shiny.”

The lieutenant was going to drag it out, Arkady thought.

“Tight and shiny as in biking gear?”

“Could be.”

“Shoes? There’s no mention of them in your report.”

“Is that so? I guess he took them off to walk in the sand. Or one of the local boys stole them.”

“That makes sense. Did you find anything else?”

“Such as?”

“Well, if he were an artist he might have brushes and an easel. Or if he collected butterflies, he’d have a net. If he was a biker, he had a bike. He was found on the beach. There was no bike?”

“Who bikes in the sand?” Stasov asked.

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“I’m really sorry I can’t help you out. The guy was a fruit.”

Now, what could make the lieutenant say that about a dead man he had never met? Arkady wondered.

“Did he shave his legs?”

“Weird, huh?”

“What kind of public transportation is there from the city of Kaliningrad to this place you call the spit?”

“During the off-season, none.”

“A person would have to drive or walk?”

“I suppose so.” The lieutenant was wary now.

“Were any cars reported stolen or abandoned near the beach?”

“No.”

“Bicycles?”

“No.”

“Helmets?”

“Shit, Renko, relax. I’ll let you know when we find something.”

“Tell me again exactly where the body was discovered?”

Lieutenant Stasov hung up, leaving Arkady staring out the kitchen window. The coffee was vile. It had been made the night before and warmed up at least twice. He had heard that in Japan restaurants were rated according to how many times the same cooking oil was used. Naturally, the first time was the best. The oil was then used by one restaurant after another, steadily degrading into brown sludge. He contemplated his cup and wondered what the record was. Always a thrill for the heart. He drank it in one go.

Professional cyclists shaved their legs for an infinitesimal edge in aerodynamics. An amateur might too if he was serious enough-serious enough to have a custom bike built just for him. What sort of personality would that demand? Athletic. Competitive. Older than twenty-five, younger than forty-five. Willing to invest much of his life in cycling. Well ordered, not Russian. Obsessive. Swiss? German? Comfortable traveling alone and on business; no one went to Kaliningrad for pleasure. For that matter, no one had reported him missing. An invisible man.

Arkady was startled to find Zhenya behind him.

“In a trance?” Zhenya asked.

“Just thinking.”

“Well, it looks strange.”

“No doubt,” Arkady said.

“I came to pick up some clothes. That’s all.”

It was clear now that Zhenya would never kick a winning goal at Dynamo Stadium or inspire supermodels to sigh in his direction. A camouflage jacket overwhelmed his shoulders; his hair was twisted and his features pinched, redeemed only by the vibrancy in his gray eyes.

What to Arkady was really odd was how Zhenya managed to enter the apartment and get to the kitchen without being heard. The parquet floor squeaked under anyone else.

“How are you?”

Zhenya reacted as if Arkady had uttered the stupidest question ever formed by the mouth of man. “What’s this?”

“A notebook of interpretation.”

“Whatever that is.” Zhenya flipped the cover back and forth.

“Code. A personal code written by a dead man.”

“Oh. What’s it about?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is this what got him killed?”

“Maybe. Are you hungry?”

“There’s nothing in the refrigerator. I checked it out. Hey, you never told me how famous your father was. The army guys were real excited.”

“They can stay excited until you’re eighteen.”

“This is such bullshit. Who gave you the authority to boss me around?”

“The court did, so you could register for school.”

“I quit school.”

“I noticed.”

“No, I mean I really quit school. I went to the registrar’s office and told them, so there’s nothing for me to do but enlist early.”

“Not without my signature. Seven months. You’ll just have to wait to be crazy.”

“You’re just putting it off.”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know how old Alexander the Great was when he conquered the world? Nineteen.”

“A precocious lad.”

“Do you know who his teacher was?”

“Who?”

“Aristotle. Aristotle told him to go conquer the world.”

“Maybe he just meant travel.”

“You’re impossible.” This was the point when Zhenya usually turned around and went out the door. This time he slumped into a chair and let his backpack fall. He always carried a folded chessboard, pieces and a game clock, but he was becoming too well-known as a hustler. He no longer looked innocent. Maybe he never looked innocent, Arkady thought. Perhaps that was his fantasy.

“What do you know about bikes?”

“Bikes?” As if Arkady had asked him about Shetland ponies. “I know you’d have to be an idiot to ride one in Moscow traffic. Why, were you thinking of getting one?”

“Finding one.”

Zhenya reached out for the notebook and idly turned the pages. “So what’s the story on this code?”

“It’s a code, hieroglyphics, anagram, riddle and worse because it’s not meant to be solved. There’s no Rosetta stone, no context. It might be about the price of bananas but if we don’t know his symbol for ‘banana,’ we’re lost. In this case, the only context, maybe, is bicycles.”

“It doesn’t sound like you got very far.”

“You never know.”

“Profound. Is there any milk?” Zhenya launched himself in the direction of the refrigerator.

“See for yourself.” A psychologist had once told Arkady that Zhenya was finding it difficult to separate. Arkady was finding that harder and harder to buy. “So, what do you know about expensive, custom-made bikes?”

“About as much as you do.”

“That’s too bad, because I know nothing.”

“Then you’re fucked, aren’t you? Well. . I only came to pick up some clothes.”

That served Zhenya as hello and good-bye.