Too crazy for Victor? That was worrisome, Arkady thought.
He said, “The bicycle maker led us to Bonnafos, who, I believe, was a source for Tatiana. We can’t question him because, unfortunately, he was shot and killed on the same beach where the notebook was found. It was important enough for Tatiana to make a special trip to Kaliningrad. I don’t know what she was after, but the notebook is the key.”
“Only you can’t read it.”
“That’s right. We’ll have to call in some experts.”
“Didn’t you try with Professor Kunin?”
“We’ll try again.”
Victor said, “I just don’t get it. Why are you so hooked by a notebook no one can read? I’m with you, but I want you to know how I feel.”
“Now I know.”
“That we’re covering two cities. This should be interesting.”
“Do you want to see the notebook? See what the fuss is all about? It’s in the desk.”
Victor dug his hands into his coat pockets. “I’ll pass. It’s late and I can already feel the blade of the guillotine. We’re so fucked.”
• • •
It was a shameful thing for Arkady to admit, but he couldn’t wait for Victor to leave so he could return to the tapes and listen to the voice within the words. He had read that auditory hallucinations were more subtle and more powerful than their visual counterparts. He still occasionally heard his wife, Irina. Which was crazy, since she was dead.
On the last cassettes, Tatiana sounded tired, her guard down.
“I am supposed to be so grave but I am sick of gravity. Of being Our Lady of the Sorrows. Of being Tatiana Petrovna. In fact, I’d rather steal away with the Gypsies. Perhaps I’m insane. I ache for a man I haven’t met.”
That said enough, Arkady thought. Yet there was the last cassette with a metallic tapping so faint it was hardly worth recording. Arkady dug into Zhenya’s box of castaway computer gear, USB connections, tapes, headphones, discs, electrical chessboards. Monkey see, monkey do. He had seen Zhenya attach the sound-enhancer system to his earphones a hundred times. Arkady plugged them into the recorder and listened.
Silence. Vacuum. An amplified three taps of metal on metal. Then three scrapes. Silence. Tap, tap, tap.
Arkady’s father had taught him a number of useful skills. How to field-strip a gun, signal with flags, send Morse code.
The tapping and scraping was in Morse code and said over and over, “We are alive.”
Who was alive? For how long? Why would Tatiana keep such a faint recording? The realization came with a cold sweat. How could he not know?
The nuclear submarine Kursk had been carrying one hundred and eighteen officers and sailors to war games in Arctic waters when, for unexplained reasons, its forward torpedoes exploded, setting off fires the length of the ship. The crew had operated in the highest tradition of the Russian navy and were posthumously awarded Orders of Courage. Families were reassured that the entire crew died almost instantaneously.
Tap. Tap. Scrape.
The chief of rescue operations reported that he heard knocking in the submarine’s Compartment 9 at the rear of the hull.
“Everything is being done. People should remain calm and stay at their position,” the prime minister said, and hosted a barbecue at a Black Sea villa.
Tap . . . Tap . . .
At a press conference, the mother of a crewman demanded the truth. She was forcibly sedated and dragged from the hall. The chief of operations decided that he must have misinterpreted signs of life from Compartment 9.
The tapping came to an end.
Finally, ten days after the accident, Norwegian divers breached the hatch and found a scribbled note wrapped in plastic on the body of a seaman dredged from Compartment 9. He had marked his note 15:15, four hours after the explosion. Some experts thought that the twenty-three submariners may have lived another three to four days.
The label on the cassette said “Grisha,” although the connection to the Kursk escaped Arkady like a fish between his hands.
12
His wife, Irina, had died years ago. Still, whenever Arkady heard a voice like hers in the hubbub of the metro or saw a beautiful woman in full stride, he remembered her. While she was alive, the mystery had been why a woman as intelligent as Irina would cast her lot with a man as lacking in prospects as Arkady. Later, he didn’t talk about her for fear of turning her death into a “story” inevitably altered by the telling, the way a gold coin handled year after year is rubbed smooth and effaced.
Arkady remembered every detail.
They were going out for dinner and a film. Irina had a minor infection and it was Arkady’s inspiration to stop at the local polyclinic for an antibiotic. The waiting room was full of skaters, drunks and grandmothers with sniffling children in hand. Irina asked Arkady to step out and find a newsstand. She was a journalist, and for her, going without a newspaper was like going without oxygen.
He remembered a balmy evening, cottonwood fluff gathering in the air and, stapled to trees, notices that offered medicines for sale.
Meanwhile the waiting room emptied and Irina was taken in to see the doctor, who prescribed Bactrim. On the books, the polyclinic had an ample supply. In reality, the cupboard was bare, the drugs having vanished out the back door.
Was Irina allergic to penicillin? So much so that she underlined the words on her chart. But the nurse’s mind was on a letter she had received that day informing her that her son had sold her apartment and she had a week to pack. The only word she heard was penicillin. Since the polyclinic was out of oral doses, she gave Irina an injection and left the room. By the time Arkady returned with a newspaper and a magazine, Irina was dead.
Wrapped in a damp sheet, she looked as if she had washed up on shore. Apparently, as her windpipe began to close in anaphylactic shock, Irina recognized the nurse’s error and came out of the examining room with the vial in her hand. A counterinjection of adrenaline would have saved her. In a panic, the doctor snapped off the key to the pharmacy cabinet, sealing her fate. She saw. She knew.
When Arkady closed her eyes the doctor warned him not to touch the “corpus.” Arkady’s face went dark, his hands became grappling hooks and he threw the doctor against a wall. The rest of the staff retreated to the hallway and called the militia to deal with the madman. In the meantime, Arkady sat and held her hand as if they were going someplace together.
Tatiana reminded him of Irina. They were both fearless and idealistic. And, Arkady conceded, they were both dead.
• • •
The phone jarred him. It was Maxim Dal, the poet.
“Do you call everyone in the middle of the night?” Arkady asked.
“Only night people. I rarely make a mistake. The pallor, silence, malnutrition—you have all the signs. Do you have a microwave?”
“Of course.”
“I will bet you fifty-fifty that there is some forgotten food in that microwave.”
Arkady opened the microwave. Inside was a shriveled enchilada. “What do you want?”
“Do you remember our conversation about Tatiana’s notebook?”
“You were up for some sort of American prize for lifetime achievement?”
“For being alive, yes. Do you remember that I asked you about Tatiana’s notebook and whether I’m mentioned in it?”
“What does it matter? You told me you had a short-lived romantic liaison with her twenty years ago.”
“That’s the problem. Once upon a time I was a professor and Tatiana was a young student. American universities do not approve of such liaisons. They’re Puritans. If there’s a hint of scandal my prize becomes a spitball.”
“Haven’t you had enough honors in your career?”
“I’ve had a dry spell. Fuck the honor. The difference is fifty thousand dollars as a visiting poet in America or a beggar’s bowl in Kaliningrad. Have you ever been in Kaliningrad?”
“No.”
“There’s no security
anymore. It’s not like the old days when a member of the Writers’ Union could compose an ode to rutabagas and be paid. It’s not like Moscow either. It’s a separate world. Really, if you ever go there, you have to let me take you around.”
Arkady yawned. His eyes felt as though they were sinking into his head. “I don’t think so. How would they even hear about the notebook?”
“Other poets. I’m not the only candidate.”
“I didn’t know that poetry was such a cutthroat occupation. I don’t think you have anything to worry about. There’s only a few pages and I didn’t see your name.”
“Do you have the notebook?”
“Yes, under lock and key.”
“Have you read it?”
“No one has. No one can. Relax. Good night.”
• • •
Arkady was about to go to bed when Victor called to apologize for some of his earlier comments.
“You’re entitled to an opinion. We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Wait, I was out of line. It’s the focus on Kaliningrad. Remember, I was stationed there when I was in the navy. It was a top-secret piss hole. You couldn’t even find it on the map.”
“Thanks.” Arkady took it as a vote of confidence.
“One other thing I forgot to mention. I saw Zhenya on your street today. Did you talk to him?”
“No. Where was he?”
“Outside the building.”
“Did he see you?”
“I think so, because he ducked out of sight like a squirrel.”
“Typical.”
“I just thought I’d let you know.”
Arkady was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. He had the sensation of being wrapped in a spiderweb, but comfortably. Snug. Tucked in. Then plunging into a black depth, a cold wind on his face. Still, no complaints. If this was sleep, so be it. Above, a fading dot of light. Below, an invisible city.
The city spread and turned to liquid. Arkady made a splash and became a torpedo speeding toward the outline of a ship. It was odd that Tatiana had fixed on a submarine accident that occurred twelve years before. Squirrel described Zhenya perfectly.
Zhenya.
Arkady’s eyes were wide open. He swung out of bed and went to his office, turning on lights along the way. The desk was mahogany with brass hardware, and on the right bottom drawer, there was a false front and a dial safe that only he knew the combination to. Nevertheless, he held his breath while he tried the handle and found it closed and locked.
Perhaps Zhenya had simply been in the neighborhood or happened to come by while Arkady was out. There were any number of explanations. Arkady didn’t believe any of them.
As he turned the dial, he could feel the tumblers fall: two turns to the right, two left, one right. With a soft pop the door eased open.
His gun, a presentation Makarov, lay on the bottom of the safe, but the notebook was gone. In its place was the form for parental permission for early enlistment in the army waiting to be signed.
13
Zhenya lived out of train station lockers and hustled chess. Not tedious four-hour games with locked antlers but Blitz: forty moves in five minutes. He took $50 from a ship’s cook waiting for the train to Archangel and as much from an oilman headed to the rigs of Samarkand. Zhenya’s fingers moved pizzicato, plucking pieces off the board. Boarding in ten minutes? Zhenya could fit in two games, maybe three.
His favorite site was a small park called Patriarch’s Ponds, in a neighborhood of embassies, town houses and sidewalk cafés. He sat on a bench and set out his chessboard and pieces as if musing over a difficult position. Sooner or later, someone would stop to give him advice.
In the meantime, he enjoyed the pond’s collection of swans and ducks—mallard, goldeneye, teal—dressed in iridescent feathers. He knew the names of all the waterfowl and the trees. When a boy skipped bottle caps at the swans and was led away by the ear, Zhenya heartily approved. A breeze drove cottonwood fluff to a corner of the pond. The papery seeds of elms were slow enough to catch.
The architecture school of the university was close by, and students on a midday break congregated around benches. Although they were only two years older than Zhenya, they were infinitely more sophisticated. All the students, male and female, held open bottles of beer, casually posing like models in a glossy magazine. Their jeans were torn at the knee as a fashion statement. His jeans were simply worn through. It wasn’t as if they snubbed him. They didn’t see him at all. And what kind of conversation would they have if they did notice him? Snorkeling off the coast of Mexico? Skiing in France? There were half a dozen girls in the group, including a redhead with milk-white skin who was so beautiful that all Zhenya could do was stare. She whispered behind her hand and Zhenya watched the whisper travel through the group.
“Excuse me.”
“What?” Zhenya was startled when a boy spoke to him. He was the largest in the group and wore a Stanford sweatshirt.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you, but aren’t you the Chess Creep?”
“I’m what?”
Other conversations died down.
“We’ve seen you at different train stations hustling games. You’re doing the same thing here. What’s the deal?”
Zhenya felt like an insect under a microscope.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. You’re doing it now. That’s why we call you the Chess Creep.”
Zhenya stood, his face burning. Even so, the Stanford boy loomed over him and said, “Relax, I’m not picking on you. I just want to know, are you the Chess Creep? From your lips. No?” Mr. Stanford turned toward the redhead. “Lotte, is this the Creep or not?”
She said, “The word I used was—”
At that moment a swan came out of the water, hissing, wings spread, neck stretched like a snake, to chase the same brat who had bedeviled him before. As the architecture students bolted, the chessboard was knocked off the bench, scattering pieces in all directions.
Zhenya found himself alone, searching the path and grass and fallen leaves for kings and queens. He found all the pieces except a black pawn that bobbed in the pond out of reach.
Creep rang in Zhenya’s head.
He stuffed everything into his backpack, pushing aside the notebook he had taken from Arkady’s desk. It was a puzzle without a clue but it served a purpose if it forced Arkady to sign the forms for early enlistment in the army. Zhenya had been truant so long he was off the books and going nowhere. How long could he survive by cadging games with weary travelers? Most young people coming through the stations were connected to iPhones. Some didn’t even know basic openings in chess, the most Russian of intellectual tests. Without a diploma, Zhenya would be vying with Tajiks and Uzbeks to push a broom. His other options were the army or the police. He certainly wouldn’t do the latter. The solution rate for professional murders was 4 percent. How could they even call themselves police?
14
A pathologist was no respecter of men. To him, heroes, tyrants, holy men were all meat on a slab. Alive, they may have been draped in military decorations or a professor’s robes. Dead, their secrets poured out as cheesy rolls of fat, blackened liver, the tender brain exposed in its bowl. Nothing more.
That Willy Polenko was still alive was a relief to the other pathologists, because nobody wanted to carve up a colleague. He had done his part, lost a hundred pounds, huffed and puffed around the dim halls of the morgue for exercise, a half-deflated balloon moving in slow motion. Tatiana’s body had been found—not only found, but burned, and her ashes resided in a cardboard box labeled “Unknown Female #13312.”
Willy told Arkady, “You can upgrade to an urn of ceramic or wood. Most people choose the wood.”
“I told you there was to be no cremation.”
“I know, I know, it happened when I wasn’t here. Half the assistants are Tajiks. If you give them orders and they nod their heads, it means they haven’t underst
ood a word you said. On the other hand, they don’t drink the disinfectant. Anyway, with this and that, she was two weeks unclaimed and you know how it is, the lowest fruit is picked first.”
“But cremated?”
Willy consulted a folder. “She was identified by her sister, her only sibling. She made the request.”
“Her sister was here in Moscow?”
“No. She wasn’t well enough to travel from Kaliningrad, so she performed the identification by phone from her home.”
“On a cell phone? We’re in a tunnel here and the reception is impossible.”
“We took the picture here and went up to the street and transmitted it.”
“Who took the picture?”
“Someone.”
“Was it saved?”
“Unfortunately not.”
“Teeth?”
“You might find some pulverized in the bottom of the box.”
“Enough for DNA?”
“Not after cremation. What can I tell you, I’m surrounded by incompetents.”
“Did they, at least, get any corroborating identification?”
“By a Detective Lieutenant Stasov of the Kaliningrad police.” Willy patted the folder. “It’s all in here.”
“One last question. If this is Tatiana Petrovna, why is the box labeled ‘Unknown Female’?”
“It could mean we’re running out of boxes. Do you want it? Her sister said we should dispose of it any way we want.”
“You’re not serious.”
“It’s you or the trash bin.”
“Have you tried her magazine or her friends?”
“I can’t dash around scattering ashes like salt and pepper. You know these people.”
“And the folder?”
“All yours.” He handed everything over and gave Arkady a critical opinion. “I really think you should go with wood.”
• • •
In his car, Arkady tried calling Ludmila Petrovna again, and got no answer. The same with Detective Stasov. The operator at Now said that Obolensky had not come in. The dead were dead. The living marched on.