“None that I know,” said the killer. “Aleksander was a good man, one who we shall miss. Another will have to be found to replace him. His voice is stilled, but there are other voices, will be other voices.”
“Such as yours?” the policeman had asked, with some irritation finally showing.
The killer had shrugged. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I think my destiny lies elsewhere. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some preparation to do before my wife comes home for dinner.”
“You do not work?” the policeman had asked, with the hint of a barb in his words.
“I am a student,” the killer had replied, “and as such, I quite possibly put in more hours at work than you do, and the ultimate value of my studies may have far more input to our economic future than does your pursuit of the depraved, deprived, and unfortunate. Now, if you wish to threaten me with loss of the apartment or a trip to Petrovka, please do so and then leave.”
The policeman had left with a smirk but in confusion and the killer had closed the door, retrieved the hammer and gone back to sitting on the floor.
And now he heard the footsteps in the hall. And now he heard the knock at the door. He didn’t answer. And now he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the opening of the door. In the bleak light of the hall he could see her outline, the outline of his Vera. In her hand was her shopping bag filled with food she would never eat.
“Ilyusha?” she said, speaking into the darkened apartment. “Ilyusha, are you home?”
He rose from the floor as she removed her boots, still standing in the doorway. She heard him move forward and paused with one shoe off.
“You startled me,” she said with a nervous smile. “Why are you in the dark?”
He waited till she took off the other boot and walked in.
“Ilyusha,” she said, “what is wrong?”
“Aleksander is dead,” he answered.
She dropped the shopping bag, and a sound like air escaping from a child’s balloon in Gorky Park came from her dark outline. A bread skittered out, and a can of something rolled.
“I thought it would disturb you,” he said. “But I have something that will disturb you even more. I killed him.”
“No,” she cried. “Ilyusha you…”
“Yes,” he said, knowing that tears were coming to his own eyes, that he would soon be unable to control his own voice. “Yes, I know. I saw the pictures. Ilyusha the-fool-no-more knows. Ilyusha who was used and laughed at.”
“No,” she said backing away from him. “It wasn’t like that, nothing like that. You must understand.”
Her coat was still on and he could sense her fear through it.
“I understand,” he said, unable to hold back the tears. “Now you must understand.” He brought the hammer up over his head. It was heavy up there like a barbell. He knew she could see it, could feel his weakness, and he hated both her and himself as he brought the hammer down as hard as he could as she started to whimper something softly that he never heard.
The Rostnikov toilet did not work. Well, it did work if you were willing to clean up the floor each time you flushed. So, between complaints to the regional manager who was responsible for the building, the Rostnikovs used the toilet at the end of the hall. Porfiry Rostnikov had done what he could. He had threatened the manager, a thin party member named Samsanov who wanted to talk only about his wife’s illness. Threats did not work. The offer of a small bribe brought only promises and an explanation. The tenants above Rostnikov were a Bulgarian whose family was spending a year in Moscow in a technological exchange program. To fix Rostnikov’s toilet meant disrupting the toilet of the Bulgarian technological expert. The Bulgarian did not know anything was wrong with the toilets. A decision had been made at a political level Rostnikov could not penetrate to keep the Bulgarian visitor from knowing that there was anything wrong with the toilet. The building manager had promised that when the Bulgarian family left in the summer, the toilet would be fixed immediately, providing of course that a higher priority political family did not move into the apartment and that a suitable bribe be involved.
Rostnikov missed his toilet. He had given up complaining as had his wife. A new idea had begun to form within him. He would go to the library, find a book about plumbing, learn how to fix the toilet and then approach the Bulgarian family directly. He did not even know if they spoke Russian, but he was sure they must in some manner. He was also of the belief that Bulgarians in general were polite people who would find it difficult to refuse his request. So, in his spare moments Porfiry Rostnikov read plumbing books.
He and his wife had eaten a quiet meal of fish soup, bread and tea with a small glass of after-dinner cognac and talked about the things they usually talked about. Rostnikov said nothing about Iosef or about the fourteen-year-old boy killed by Tkach.
Sarah was a solidly built woman of forty-five with a surprisingly unlined face considering the wear of her life. She belonged to an official national group in Russia. The Jews had to register just as did the Armenians or any other ethnic segment of the populace. Sarah was so registered. They had married after Porfiry was a policeman. If they had married before, it was almost certain that he would never have been given the job he was so good at. In fact, it was only his reputation that protected him.
He fingered the plumbing book near his plate and tore off a piece of dark bread.
“Procurator Timofeyeva does not look well,” he said.
Sarah wore the familiar round Russian glasses and had a habit of looking over them when she wanted to emphasize her interest. The habit had begun when she went to work as a clerk in the Melodiya record shop on Kalinin Prospect eight years earlier. She would look over her glasses at the top of an album selected by an important customer and nod at the sagacity of the selection.
“She does too much,” Rostnikov went on. “She works too hard. Loyalty and dedication have reasonable limits.”
Sarah nodded in agreement.
“That young man, Tkach, shot a boy today, a robber, killed him,” Rostnikov went on, looking down at his plumbing book. “You’ve never met him. He’s a good man. Reminds me…”
“Of Iosef?” Sarah supplied.
Rostnikov shrugged. “In some ways. Others not.”
“And you want to invite him to come over?” she said.
“Maybe, with his wife, for a drink of coffee, some time,” Rostnikov went on.
“Would they accept?”
Rostnikov knew what she meant, but he felt she was oversensitive to her Jewishness. He knew, if he ever let it happen, she would open up the question of leaving Russia, of going to Israel or England or America. They had skirted the possibility many times. It was an unanswered challenge. He was not even sure what his own status was if it came to such a request. He doubted if a police official, even one as low as he, would be permitted to leave, and even to think about it publicly might end his career. There were many ways to end his career, but that might be the surest of them all. Besides, he was a Russian, a Muscovite. It wasn’t just a matter of love or loyalty. It was part of him. His thoughts, past, future were within a few miles of where he now sat worrying about his son, the plumbing, a murderer, a stubborn procurator with a heart condition, a young officer fighting a sense of guilt, and a murder which made him uneasy in ways he could not quite understand.
He rose from the table, reached over with the remnants of his bread to soak up the last bit of moisture from the soup in his bowl, popped the bread in his mouth, and moved to the corner of the room.
“You shouldn’t lift those things after a meal,” Sarah said.
“Later I’ll be too tired,” he countered. Their dialogue had been almost exactly the same on this point for years, but neither could resist it. “I’m preparing for a competition.”
Sarah cleared the dishes and said nothing.