He was lying on his back under the Karenskovs’ sink, his copper-colored tool kit on the floor beside him. The girl, in her nightshirt, was kneeling.
“Searching for the leak,” Rostnikov said.
“You are getting dirty,” Laura said.
“The plumbing is old,” he said. “It rusts, it leaks, it makes noises like the wind and machine guns. Hand me the pipe wrench, that big metal thing with jaws.”
She found the wrench and offered it into the darkness below the sink. Rostnikov clamped, tugged, grunted, and pulled. Rust flaked over his face and he closed his eyes.
“No use,” he said, sliding out awkwardly.
The girl smiled when he sat up. His face was covered with red rust. In his hand was a dirty length of piping.
“I amuse you?” he asked. “Good. Now hand me that piece of pipe. No, the smaller one.”
She handed him a short section of plastic piping he had brought with him.
“The pipes are all forty years old, and made from inferior galvanized steel,” he said. “They are beginning to rust from inside. Small holes are developing in the pipes. They can be patched with tape for a while, but eventually they will all have to be replaced, just like I am replacing this section.”
The Karenskovs waited in the other room watching television. Rostnikov and the girl could hear the cheerful voices of a man and woman on the television. Then the audience laughed.
“The plumbing in this building, like most of the buildings in Moscow, is similar to our government,” Rostnikov said, putting down the rusted section of pipe and examining the tube of black plastic the girl had handed him. “It is rusty and rotten. Soon … leaks everywhere. The system is falling apart. It has to be replaced, but the cost is great. Do the new plumbers simply make repairs with plastic tubing?” He held up the plastic pipe section in his hand. “Or do they completely replace the entire system as they have promised but which they cannot afford to do?”
The girl listened, a look of intensity on her face.
“You don’t understand, do you?” he asked, reaching out to touch her cheek.
“A little,” she said.
When he removed his hand from her cheek, he saw that he had left a handprint of rust and dust. He put the two pieces of pipe side by side on the floor. The black plastic one was longer.
“Saw and clamp,” he said, pointing at the tools.
The girl handed them to him and said, “It’s like being a nurse, a little.”
“A little,” Rostnikov agreed with a smile. “You would like to be a doctor or a nurse?”
The girl considered this while Rostnikov turned his body, biting his lower lip to control the pain in his leg, and fixed the clamp and black piping together on the edge of the sink.
“No,” she said. “I want to be a traffic director. I’ll have a uniform and stand in the street telling cars when to go and stop. Or I’ll be up in one of those little traffic towers.”
“A noble ambition,” Rostnikov said as he stood up and started to cut the pipe to the same length as the rusty one he had removed. “Well within your grasp.”
“You are a policeman,” she said.
“I am,” he answered, continuing to saw.
“You put my grandmother in jail.”
It was the first time the girl had spoken of her grandmother, though both Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich had given the girls messages from her.
“I took her to the judges, who put her in jail,” said Rostnikov without looking away from his sawing. “I am trying to get her out. You know what she did?”
“Yes,” said the girl, also standing now and watching with interest as Rostnikov sawed. “She shot a mean man who wouldn’t give her bread for me and my sister to eat.”
“Basically correct,” said Rostnikov as he sawed through the piece of plastic and the loose end fell to the floor.
The girl picked up the four-inch piece of black plastic and asked, “Can I keep this?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, loosening the clamp and painfully beginning to make his way back under the sink.
“There may be things I can make with it,” she said, turning it around in her hands.
“Now,” he said, the top of his body hidden under the sink, “hand me that small can of oil. The blue can.”
She did so, and after a minute he handed it back out to her.
“Now the bigger can, the one that looks like a small drum.”
She handed it to him. Moments later he handed it back out.
“Finally,” he said, “the bottle. It is solvent. Handle it carefully, and if you feel brave enough, unscrew the top.”
Slowly she unscrewed the top. The solvent smelled terrible. She handed it to him and listened to him grunt and turn. The girl looked at Rostnikov’s withered leg and said, “Does your leg hurt all the time?”
“Almost all the time,” he answered with another grunt from the darkness. “There.”
Rostnikov, covered now with even more dirt and rust, eased out from beneath the sink and reached back under it to retrieve some rags, a spatula, and another small tool. He had to grip the sink with both hands in order to rise, and once he had risen he stood silently for two minutes coping with pain.
“The metal snake,” he said, pointing to a drain auger, perhaps his most valued tool.
Laura handed it to him, and he began to drive the coiled metal serpent into the sink and through the new piece of plastic piping. She leaned over the sink to watch the metal coils disappear as Rostnikov pushed the device deeper and deeper into the piping. Finally it was as far as it would go. Rostnikov tugged, twisted, and pulled the metal snake carefully out of the pipe.
“Well, it is done,” he said with satisfaction, holding out his right hand. The girl took the large hand and they shook on their success.
“Why do you like doing this?” the girl asked as they put the tools away and cleaned up the mess they had made.
“This is very simple. The work I do as a policeman is very complicated,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I must deal with people, and people are seldom simply good or bad. It is rare for a policeman to be able to fix a problem. One problem creates another one. It doesn’t end, and when it does, the end is not simple and the system is not working any better. Does this make sense?”
“A little,” she said. “It’s like what happened to my grandmother.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “When I fix plumbing, I search for the problem, find it, repair it, and receive the gratitude of those who live with the system. Like this leak.”
He gathered his tools, took the girl’s hand, and went out to report his success to the Karenskovs. They were young, in their early thirties perhaps, and she was pregnant. He worked in the Moscow office of Pizza Hut.
“Fixed,” Rostnikov said. “But don’t use it till morning.”
“Thank you,” said the husband, taking Rostnikov’s dirty hand.
“Yes,” said the pregnant wife. “Thank you.”
“Please take this,” the man said. “I know you won’t take money.”
Actually, Rostnikov was getting close to the point where he thought he might accept a few kopecks to replace equipment. Money was tight and his salary small. Combining his salary and that of Sarah, who had gone back to clerking at the music store, they could make it through each month, but there was nothing left over. Money was there to be had for a policeman, but Rostnikov had never considered selling himself. Once he took even a few kopecks from a suspect or a criminal, he would have sacrificed the very meaning of his commitment to the law. There was a line. He would never cross it.