The Sin Collector

MASHA

“You stay in the car,” Andrey told her.

He kissed her, his lips taut, then pulled a gun out of the glove compartment and left. There were fewer lights here, and it was completely dark. A few lingering tourists wandered around the square, on the hill leading from St. Basil’s down to the Moskva, where it flowed past the Kremlin. Masha sat there terrified as the air inside the car gradually got colder.

Maybe I should call Anyutin? Why did Andrey go by himself? Or maybe he called everyone as soon as he got out of the car and the place is already surrounded? In that case, why haven’t they gotten all these foreigners out of the area?

Masha thought time must have stopped. She looked around. This was the obvious place to meet, now that she thought about it. The perfect scene for the final act in this nightmare. The Kremlin wall seemed higher here than anywhere else. This road flowed like a wave, in a wide ribbon, down to the river, crowned on the high end of the slope by St. Basil’s Cathedral. The building was brightly lit, and from here, it looked like an elaborate gingerbread house. It was a favorite spot for teens and tourists to come for pictures, the kind of place where you could reduce a complex, amazing city to one nice glossy picture.

As Masha looked at the wall of the ancient fortress, almost black in the night, she thought about how the history of any city, any point on the map where people have lived pressed close together for centuries, was a history of blood and cruelty. Human beings were pitiless creatures. If all the blood that had ever been spilled on the streets of those ancient cities were to rise up over the cobblestones, we’d all be wading around in it up to our ankles, maybe our knees. And we’d never agree to live in a city again, because of all the cities in creation, only one was free of sin—and nobody had ever seen it. The City of God, Heavenly Jerusalem.

A phone rang, and Masha realized in horror it was Andrey’s. He had left it on the dashboard, which meant he couldn’t call anyone for help. And that meant he was out there alone in the dark, hunting for a killer, who was lying in wait for him in some dim shadow of the fortress wall!

In one swift move, Masha grabbed the phone, tumbled out of the car, and, like a baby bird fallen from its nest, helplessly looked around in all directions. The phone had stopped ringing and she couldn’t see Andrey anywhere. People hurried by, intent on their own business, and she suddenly wanted to take a deep breath of the cold, wet river air and shout at them all, Get out of here! Save yourselves! Instead she let out a short, spastic breath and started scrolling through the phone’s contact list for Anyutin’s number.

“Mashenka,” a quiet voice said then, and for a split second she sighed with relief. Thank God, Nick-Nick was here! He’d know what to do! But then she remembered, and she froze.

He was standing right behind her. Masha thought she could even smell his old-man breath.

“Mashenka,” he said again, in a voice that was at once dear to her and utterly repulsive. “Your papa would have been proud of you. You always were a very smart and very stubborn girl.” He chuckled softly, sounding pleased with himself. “And I very much believed that you and I would meet one day, right here, at the end of my journey. I really had no desire to be here by myself. But I was sure you would seek me out! Fyodor also trusted me at the beginning, do you see? But that night he started asking questions. Before I had even answered, he knew. He knew me so well, Fyodor! We were best friends! Nobody else could see through my lies, but he always knew!”

Masha gritted her teeth and turned to face him. Nick-Nick was standing with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his ripped old raincoat. Masha remembered that jacket. It must have been fifteen years old. Nick-Nick smiled at her, a smile that was tired and sad.

“You—” Masha could not finish her sentence.

“Yes, Mashenka. I killed him. Not with my own hands, of course. The people who had bribed me killed him. You understand.” He tried to step even closer to her, but she moved away. “It was a time when everything was so confused, Masha. There was such poverty, such chaos. Economic, political, moral. I was lost and confused.”

“Papa wasn’t confused!” Masha screamed, her eyes full of tears. And she jutted her chin forward determinedly. What was she doing talking to him, defending her father to a monster? But she couldn’t help it. She had been waiting for this conversation since she was twelve years old.

“No, your father was not confused,” Nick-Nick agreed, and his face twisted painfully. “Fyodor always had that moral compass. But I only discovered mine later, when I found God. I found peace, Masha. I became a different man.”

“A different man?” Masha’s voice was getting higher, and as she spoke, another voice rang out, just like in a bad movie.

“Freeze!”

Andrey was five steps away, his gun pointed at Katyshev’s head.

Nick-Nick grabbed Masha by one shoulder and yanked her toward him. She felt the cold gun against her temple.

“Not so fast!” said Katyshev. “We haven’t come to terms yet, young man. Put your gun down. Put it down!” he bellowed, and Masha saw Andrey slowly laying his pistol on the ground. “Hands behind your head!” Katyshev ordered. Masha heard his voice changing. She knew every intonation of his speech by heart, but these new tones, with the hysteria that ran through them, were completely unfamiliar. A wave of horror washed over her.

“Now then,” said Katyshev, and Masha felt the steel trembling against her forehead. “Where were we? I became a judge. I could no longer tolerate the licentious or bear the sight of their lawlessness. I could not! They were all liars! Both the ones who pretended to be running away and the ones who chased after them. Yes, I have sinned! And no earthly court can ever serve justice!”

Now his voice was soaring even higher. It howled and vibrated in the crystal-cold air. Katyshev licked his lips.

“The only just court is the court of heavenly judgment. An angel and a demon exist inside each of us! In their names, I sentenced the guilty to be cast at once to perdition.” He laughed good-naturedly, making Masha shudder all over. “But I would be a poor judge, indeed, if I could not judge myself. I will not pass through the ninth tollhouse, the Torment of Injustice. Here are punished the unjust judges who acquit the guilty and condemn the innocent for their own selfish ends. My place is in hell, and I shall die here, on Vasilevsky Slope, symbol of the fiery mouth of hell!”

In a burst of strength, the old man who had once been her father’s closest friend shoved Masha forward. She stumbled and fell directly into Andrey’s arms. Katyshev pulled a small vial out of his ragged pocket, and while Andrey rushed at him, slowly, oh so slowly, his teeth crunched through the fragile glass that held death. He fell to the pavement, his body spasming uncontrollably. He saw Masha bent over him, and he spent his last second staring, focused, at those light eyes, so like Fyodor’s. In their depths, he saw only pity without measure.

Then silence fell. The shouting stopped, and so did the hum of passing cars, and the nearing sirens, and some distant music. The smell of the wet asphalt slipped away, and the scent of the fallen leaves and the gasoline. The new penthouses vanished from the opposite bank of the river, and the river itself disappeared, along with the tall brick towers of the Kremlin. But along with them all the trouble disappeared, too, all the blemishes, all the suffering. All human moaning and lamentation.

And it seemed to him that out of the crystalline nothingness around him, new, high walls were rising, slowly, triumphantly, gleaming with a cold fire.