When the woman moved back down to Sasha, he handed her the book of fairy tales and pointed at the book the little girl had approved. The dour woman quickly turned her head toward the little girl, but the child was looking beyond the scene toward the Lenin Hills.
"I'll take it," he said. "Sko'l'ka sto'eet? How much?"
"One ruble," the woman said.
Sasha had not intended to buy anything, knew he would not be reimbursed by the Procurator's Office. He did have an advance for enough money to purchase a record album as evidence. There was a procedure for reimbursement, but it was complicated and required anticipation of one's expenditures, the filling out of a form, and long waits. The woman took the book and wrapped it, and Sasha felt a sudden feeling of pleasure. His smile was sincere. He had purchased his first book for his daughter, for Pulcharia. He was about to tell the woman when he thought better of it. He was a student. What was a young student doing with a baby daughter? He wasn't sure how common such a thing was. So instead of a thank you or an explanation, when he reached over to take the book he said softly to the woman, "Do you carry records?"
The woman looked at him as he took the book and shook her head in a decided no, but she did not hide the touch of caution in the corner of her large mouth. As she started to turn away, Tkach added conversationally, "A man from whom I purchased a record said you might have one I wanted. And I want it very badly."
The woman ignored him, or appeared to, and began to wait on a young woman with long blond hair and glasses. The young woman, who carried several books, glanced at Sasha and smiled, which marked her immediately as a student even if her youth and the books had not. He looked back at her but didn't smile.
"The man who recommended you is named Gaidar, Tsimion Gaidar," Sasha went on. "I've purchased several recordings from him."
The dour woman behind the table moved over to him quickly, ignoring a man with a gray beard who called to her impatiently and looked at his watch. The dour woman looked at Sasha's open, boyish face, and he did his best to look open, innocent, the Innocent.
"Behind the trailer," the woman said, leaning forward. "Knock at the door."
With this she backed away. Sasha glanced at the little girl at the trailer and held up his wrapped book. She nodded in approval, and Sasha backed through the dozen or so people at the table, opened his briefcase, and put the book inside. He hadn't even checked to see what the book was.
The back of the white trailer looked much like the front. There was an emergency door. A few people walked by on the street, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. He knocked. There was no answer, though he heard a shuffling inside. He knocked again, and the door opened to reveal a short, muscular, dark, hairy man in an undershirt. The man was probably in his late thirties and definitely needed a shave and a bath. His dark hair was thinning rapidly.
"Tsimion Gaidar sent me," Sasha said with a smile.
The man didn't smile back. He examined Tkach, looked at his briefcase, paused, and then backed into the trailer. Sasha ducked his head and followed him. When he got inside, the dark little man pushed the door closed.
The inside of the trailer was one large open space with cabinets along both walls blocking the windows. A bit of light came in from the front and rear windows of the trailer. Both windows were heavily curtained. The metal cabinets, Tkach could see, were padlocked. There was a desk at the rear of the trailer with a chair behind it so the light from outside would come over the shoulder of whoever sat at the desk.
Behind the desk was a second man, who sat with folded hands as if that were the way he contentedly spent all his time. The man behind the desk, wearing a green turtleneck sweater far too warm for the weather, was older man the man who had let Sasha in, but they were obviously related; they had the same sagging face, the same eyes. The older one's hair was white and there was far less of it than there was on the head of his younger relative.
The two men looked at Tkach and waited.
"I'm a student at the university," Tkach said. "I'm a collector of records. Tsimion Gaidar said that you might have one of the Beatles records that went on sale a few months ago at the Melodia record store on Kalinin Prospekt, a Saturday. I waited in line all day. They said there were a hundred thousand of them, but thousands of us were turned away."
The two dark men exchanged glances. The younger
one, standing with his arms folded over his undershirt, shrugged.
Tkach knew far more about the records. Melodia, the Soviet Union's only recording company, had contracted with British EMI to produce 300,000 copies of two Beatles albums originally made in the mid — I960s. Only a few thousand albums were actually made by Melodia, and more than two hundred of those were stolen by a delivery truck driver who was a distant relative of Tsimion Gaidar.
"We might know where to get one of these albums," the older man behind the desk said. His voice was slightly raspy, as if he had just been awakened from a long, deep sleep.
"But," said his younger partner, "it is not cheap."
"I want it very badly," said Tkach.
"Thirty rubles," said the older man.
"Or fifty dollars American," said the younger man.
The older man behind the desk sighed and said, "You must forgive my brother. Osip has American money on the mind. We had a customer, a student like you, a few weeks ago who had some American money. Who knows how he got it? You don't have American money, do you?"
"No," said Sasha. "I don't."
"See?" said the man behind the desk. "You ask dumb questions sometimes."
"But," said Osip in his undershirt, "I sometimes make us a profit with these dumb questions that don't cost us anything to ask."
"What am I to do with such a partner?" the older man asked Sasha, who had no answer. "He tried, my brother, but… You want the album?"
"I want it," said Sasha.
"You've got thirty rubles with you?" asked Osip.
"Yes," said Sasha. Actually, he had almost fifty rubles, the price Assistant Procurator Khabolov thought the album would be.
"Where does a student get money like that to carry around?" asked the older man.
"My father is an architect in Tblisi. I'm studying to be ah architect," said Sasha.
"Felix, what's the difference where he gets the money? He's got it," said Osip.
"Ignorance," said Felix with a sigh behind the desk, looking at Sasha for understanding. "I promised our mother I would take care of him, but ignorance is hard to overcome."
"Ignorance," grunted Osip. "Without my ignorance we'd still be sewing women's handbags for a few kopecks."
"You hear that?" Felix asked, shaking his head and pointing a hairy finger at his brother. "You hear that? That is not gratitude."
"I've got to get to a class," Sasha said as the brothers glared at each other. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his wallet, stepped to the small desk, and began to count out rubles.
The rubles sat on the desk and Sasha opened his briefcase. Felix nodded to Osip, who moved to one of the metal cabinets near the front of the trailer, took out a key chain, and opened the cabinet. Sasha couldn't see inside the cabinet from his angle. Osip removed something from the cabinet, tucked it under his sweating arm, and locked the cabinet.