The Sin Collector

MASHA

This was Masha’s first time in the office of a real impresario. His name was Koninov, and he wore a brightly colored silk shirt and sharp-toed dress shoes. The sight of them made Masha’s mouth pucker like she was tasting something sour.

“I don’t understand. So they’re still investigating Lavrenty’s murder, then?” His voice was high and whiny, and Masha marveled at the idea of him talking to singers in that hysterical falsetto. Wouldn’t they, of all people, value timbre and intonation?

“Yes. We’re looking for his killer,” she said, unconsciously moderating her voice into a low contralto and pronouncing every word crisply. “Please forgive the imposition. I’d like to learn everything I can about Lavrenty, not as a singer, but as a person, if possible.”

“Oh my God! This old song again!” Koninov sighed as if exhausted, and propped his feet up on a chair. “What can I tell you about Lavrenty? We weren’t lovers, and even our friendship was pure business. I helped him—a lot—but both of us knew that as soon as his star faded our friendship would, too. Still, as far as money went, he was a big deal.” Koninov waved a hand at one of the many glossy posters decorating the walls of his office. In one, Lavrenty was dressed in a shining silver jacket. He had a thin face and a weak chin. “The ladies swooned over him, like Frank Sinatra,” Koninov confided, and Masha nodded understandingly. “Here, I’ll show you.” Koninov pressed a button and the wall across from him transformed into an enormous screen. “Check out the kind of shi—uh, shenanigans he landed in with this one.”

Masha wanted to ask whether those shenanigans had anything to do with the pop singer’s death in the liquid muck that oozed out of the burst pipe on Lubyansky Drive, but she kept quiet.

On the screen, Lavrenty was wearing a black shirt embroidered with rhinestones, unbuttoned to expose his hairless chest. “I called you all day, and I followed you all day, like a shadow!” warbled Lavrenty in an unsteady little tenor, and Masha was offended at the Sinatra comparison. It was true, though, that his fans were enthusiastic. They shrieked, they sang along, they danced. The camera paused on a girl weeping, her mascara running down her cheeks.

“I could have made another Justin Bieber out of him. Just look at that smile!”

Lavrenty’s smile was truly handsome. Even white teeth, dimples, eyes flashing naughtily from under a subtle line of dark makeup. But Masha found the singer oddly repulsive on some physical level.

“Do you have any interviews with Lavrenty?” she asked, and Koninov came out of his reverie.

“Well, of course, of course!” he crowed, clearly delighted to be rid of her. “I’ll ask someone to escort you to our screening room. You can watch them all there.”

Masha shook the man’s slightly damp, soft hand, and then followed a long-legged secretary to the theater, graciously declining a cup of coffee. Then she sat through a shifting compilation of music videos and quick questions from interviewers, tossed at the star as he left a concert.

“What do you think of our fans here in Nizhny Novgorod?”

“Oh, they’re the most gifted listeners in all of Russia!”

Questions asked in the makeup room before he went on stage.

“How does your new show differ from the previous one?”

“We’re doing only the best songs, new and old!”

Questions in the studio on Valentine’s Day.

“Tell us, Lavrenty, are you in love?”

“No, I’m still waiting for my one and only.”

Masha was starting to lose patience. She hoped that in one interview or another, if only out of the boundless desire that public figures seemed to have to bare their souls, Lavrenty would offer up a little information about himself. Then Masha would latch onto it and dive into that dark wormhole where she’d extract the reason why a maniac had chosen this particular pop star to kill and then dispose of in the place where, in Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives stood.

But all she heard were inane questions with equally inane answers. Listening to them was like watching a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth from one narrow-minded hack to the other—journalist to singer and back again. She had been sitting in the dark theater for almost two hours now, and was about to step out for some fresh air. Lavrenty and his gold and silver suits were driving her crazy.

Then, all of a sudden, a talk show host asked Lavrenty about his parents. Reclining in an armchair, the star spoke lazily about where he came from. His ancestors were aristocrats, naturally. His parents had passed away, he said, when he was just a baby, leaving him only a monogrammed silver cigar case, with which he would never, ever part (here he took the case out of his pocket and exhibited it to the studio audience). There was also a watercolor by Polenov depicting the family estate outside Moscow, which the Bolsheviks had “expo-expro-expropriated” (it took Lavrenty a few tries). In a tone of voice just bordering on irony, the journalist asked a couple more questions about the star’s aristocratic forebears. Then, with an obvious air of satisfaction, the host told the television audience and his celebrity guest that he had “just a very, very short” video to show them.

The video cut to a generic five-story apartment building from the Khrushchev era. A completely ordinary, unglamorous residence for ordinary, unglamorous people. Cherry trees were in bloom, and those trees, plus the extraordinary blue of the sky, contributed to the impression that this building was located much farther south than Moscow. An elderly couple was sitting together on a bench in front of the building. They exchanged embarrassed glances as the camera rudely panned across their bodies, catching details like the woman’s faded blue dress, her legs laced with varicose veins, her feet shoved into brown sandals from the eighties, and the old man’s own ragged sandals, baggy jacket, and the white dress shirt which barricaded his wrinkled old neck and prominent Adam’s apple behind a stiff collar. The camera zoomed mercilessly until their faces filled the frame. The old couple resembled each other, like a brother and sister. They had the same round noses, thin lips, and tiny network of veins visible on their kind-looking faces. The camera moved a little to one side, and the journalist from Moscow appeared, looking ridiculously out of place in his fashionable skinny jeans.

“These fine folks are Kapitolina and Viktor,” he began smoothly. “They’ve worked together their whole lives in the painting and plastering business. Kapitolina,” he said, turning to the old woman, “tell us about your son.”

The old woman smiled abashedly, and in her soft southern accent laid out for the whole country how much she loved her darling Lavrenty, how proud she was. After all, he was a big man now, living in Moscow, singing on the television. Kapitolina took out a family photo album with worn, bent corners, and under the camera’s watchful eye, began paging through the pictures of Lavrenty as a baby, as a curly-haired little boy, and as a pimply teenager, providing loving commentary for each snapshot. Then she took out a different album, one dedicated to Lavrenty the pop star. There were newspaper clippings from tabloids and magazines. A list of the “Sexiest Singers on the Russian Stage.” Pictures from the Mr. Smile contest and awards ceremonies for she wasn’t sure what.

“Only we never see him anymore, our Lavrenty,” Kapitolina complained to the journalist. “He’s off in Moscow, you know, and we don’t have his phone number. We only see him on the television. He seems very happy and healthy. We read he had a girlfriend, very pretty, a singer, too. But then they split up for some reason. We would like to have some grandchildren to take care of, someday.”

This moving speech was interrupted by a wider shot of the father, a tear creeping out the corner of one old eye.

The video ended with a thunder of exasperating applause from the studio, where the camera swept over the excited crowd of fans and stopped on Lavrenty.

“It’s all a lie!” the star shouted, even his golden suit jacket trembling in rage. “Wait till my lawyers hear about this!” The lovely tenor voice had turned into a screech, and under his stage makeup his face was turning bright red.

Looking at that preening peacock, it was honestly difficult to believe that he was his parents’ son. Scowling in disgust, Masha turned off the projector and walked out of the auditorium. She told the assistant she would find her own way out.

She didn’t see Kenty until that evening, when he picked her up after his last interview and handed over the recording. Masha sat in the car and stared straight ahead at the darkening city, the old couple’s faces looming before her eyes.

“I’m never having children,” she said suddenly, and she sensed Kenty gathering his thoughts next to her.

“Funny, I came to the same conclusion today.”

Masha turned her head and took in Kenty’s pale, even profile. “Bad story?”

Innokenty only pressed his lips together without responding, and Masha understood that the story she was about to hear must be very bad indeed. Innokenty was unusually taciturn, and his eyes—his eyes looked not just tired, but tortured. He had been a bookworm his whole life, studying outdated moral systems, rules whose oppressive stench had long been dispersed by fresher air. Now, only beautiful things remained from that era: the onion-domed churches, their cupolas shining in the sun, and icons with their exquisitely drawn faces.

Poor Kenty, Masha thought ruefully, stuck with me for a best friend. He has the refined company of antique collectors on the one hand and someone who collects human depravity on the other.

Feeling guilty, she touched his hand on the steering wheel. That was the good part about having known each other since they were kids; they didn’t need to say anything to understand each other. Masha sighed deeply and opened the window a crack. They were driving past the Sparrow Hills neighborhood, and the evening air was surprisingly fresh. Masha closed her eyes and fell asleep.

She didn’t notice when Innokenty stopped at an empty intersection and turned to look at her, his face like a joker’s mask: lit by a pale-blue streetlamp on one side and glowing in the red of the stoplight on the other. Kenty’s eyes were very dark. What was in those eyes? Tenderness? A feeling grown tired of itself after all these years? The red light on his cheek changed to green, then back to red.

But Innokenty still sat watching Masha, as if he couldn’t get enough of the view.