Three Stations

9

Watching Maya was agony. Zhenya watched her futile attempts to accost passengers as they stepped off the morning train from Yaroslavl. Now the isolation she had maintained during the trip worked against her. No one remembered her red hair or her baby. No one had ever heard of Auntie Lena. She mentioned the card game and arguments. Like every other ride in hard class, people said. They were going to work. No time to talk. She ran after a priest she remembered by the crumbs on his beard. This time he wore a faint dusting of confectioners' sugar. He had no recollection of her.

Zhenya saw Maya wilt under the maddening interrogation of babushkas. Darling, how could you lose a baby? Did you pray to Saint Christopher, dear? Was it your little brother? This never would have happened in the old days. Are you on drugs? At least when a Gypsy begs you see the baby.

Including platforms, cafes, waiting rooms, tunnels, anterooms, nursery, ticket booths, there was too much ground to cover. Pedestrian underpasses were bottlenecked by shops and salesladies who wasted her time with scissors and clippers and hose until Maya wanted to scream. Finally she found herself in the main hall of the train station like a chess piece with every move exhausted.

Not every move, Zhenya reminded himself. There was her razor and a wide selection of trains. In a mosaic of families and traders rising with the sun she was in free fall.

Zhenya took a chair next to Maya. She didn't acknowledge him but she didn't leave. They sat like travelers, staring heavy-lidded at the digital clock above the arrival and departure board. As fatigue won out over fury her breathing slowed and her body relaxed. He figured that she hadn't eaten since the day before and handed her a candy bar.

"Did that woman call?"

It took him a moment to guess what woman she meant.

"The platform woman? No, she hasn't called yet. She has my cell-phone number."

"You're sure?"

"I put it in her hand."

"She seemed a good person."

Zhenya shrugged. Social skills were not his strong point. In fact, for Zhenya, one of the most appealing aspects of chess was that victory was self-evident. Screw conversation. The winning player need not say anything other than "check" and "mate." The problem was that Zhenya was always either boastful or mute. Sometimes when he heard himself he wondered, Who is this jackass? He was aware how miserably he had failed in his first go-round with Maya. The moment was getting strained but he had to say something because militia with rubber truncheons had entered the waiting room to roust any homeless who had snuck in. The officers were led by the lieutenant who had chased Maya.

Zhenya said, "Let's get some air."

"We'll come back?"

"Yes."

"Without the investigator?"

Her head shaved, her eyes seemed huge.

"You two!"

The lieutenant saw them when they stood. His attention was diverted, however, by a street boy who snatched a purse and bolted for the underpass. Zhenya steered Maya away from the chase and out the station's double doors to what he had always regarded as an open-air market of crap. Crap toys, crap souvenirs, crap fur hats, crap posters under a crap sky of floating shit. Today, he embraced it.

They browsed the stalls. To extend Maya's wardrobe Zhenya bought her T-shirts featuring the Stones, Putin and Kurt Cobain; a knockoff sweatshirt from Cafe Hollywood; a cap from Saint-Tropez and a wig of human hair from India. Maya went along in a bemused way, as if she had caught him playing with dolls, until they reached a kiosk that sold cell phones. Zhenya decided that she should have a mobile phone in case they became separated.

The kiosk was so crammed with electronic and video gear that the two vendors inside had to move in tandem. They were Albanians, father and son, practically clones, in tight shirts unbuttoned to display gold chains and body hair. They were willing to sell Zhenya a top-quality cell phone and SIM card, no contract and no monthly charges. No rip-offs. They showed Zhenya an unbroken seal on the box of a similar phone.

"It's stolen," Zhenya said.

The vendors laughed and looked at each other.

"What are you talking about?"

"The bar code. It's simple. Drop the first and last bars, break the rest into groups of five, add the digits under the long bars and you have your zip code. You can get the delivery point too. This box was supposed to go from Hanover, Germany, to Warsaw, Poland. It was hijacked on the way. You should show this to the militia. Would you like me to check your other boxes?"

People stopped to listen to Zhenya's flat robotic voice.

"The other boxes?"

"All the boxes."

More people gathered. Traditionally no market was complete without entertainment, a puppet show or a dancing bear. Zhenya was today's.

He said, "I shouldn't have to pay full price for something stolen. And the warranty is probably no good when the goods are stolen."

The son said, "Get out of here, you fucking freak."

The old man, however, was aware that a sizable crowd was developing. He was protected against acts of violence such as arson or a brick through a window, not agitation from a wiseass who could read a bar code. Besides, strangling the creep right now might drag in the militia, which was like inviting in locusts.

"Let me take care of the little prick." The younger vendor started out of the kiosk only to be held back by his father, who told Zhenya, "Pay no attention. So, my young sir, what do you think would be a fair price?"

"Half off."

"I'll throw in some phone cards, too, as a proof of no ill will."

"In a bag."

"As you wish." The father turned on a smile. A murmur of approval ran through the crowd.

As soon as Zhenya and Maya were gone, another shopper stepped up to the kiosk and asked the father for the same discount.

The old man turned on him. "Can you read a bar code?"

"No."

"Then go fuck yourself."

Zhenya had never noticed before how interesting the market was with all its pirated CDs of hip-hop and heavy metal, T-shirts of Che and Michael Jackson, Chinese parasols, Muscovites with their noses in the air, women from Central Asia dragging a suitcase the size of an elephant calf, the sound of explosions rocking a game arcade while drunks reposed against a wall. That was pulsating life, wasn't it? More so than any plaster animal decoration on the station wall.

"Was that a trick back there with the bar code?" Maya asked. "How did you do that?"

"A magician never reveals his secrets."

"What other secrets do you have?"

"They'd be pretty poor secrets if I told you."

"Is that why they call you 'genius,' because of the tricks and the chess?"

"The trick of the bar code is that there is no trick. You just do the math."

"Oh."

"And as for chess, it's basically a matter of anticipating your opponent's moves. You go step-by-step. The more you play the easier it gets to cover every possibility."

"Do you ever lose?"

"Sure. You have to let your opponent win at the start to raise the stakes. It's not about winning the game; it's about taking their money. That's the game inside the game." He ducked under a display of condoms that promised long-lasting pleasure in a variety of colors and certainly were an improvement over the old Soviet galosh. The words popped into his mouth. "Who is the baby's father?"

"It could be anybody."

It was the one answer that Zhenya had not anticipated.