The late afternoon had brought darkness, and out of it came Malenko’s laughter.
“What will you do?” asked Lvov, straining to see the outline of his visitor.
“It is not simple murder that will set me free of what he did to me,” he said softly. “Why didn’t I see that? There was but one of her. There are two of them.”
And with that he went to the door and was gone.
Lvov knew that he had wet his pants and that his face was damp with tears. He pulled himself from his chair and went to the door, locking it. Then he hurried back to his heavy chair and slowly, slowly, slowly pushed it across the room against the door. When the chair was firmly in place, Simon Lvov took off his pants and underwear and started slowly across the room toward his dresser.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man in the room, and before fear could overtake him he realized that the man was his own reflection. He looked at his distorted image in the window glass. It was a ridiculous sight. A tall old man in a sweater wearing no pants and a little shriveled penis bobbing up and down. Lvov began to laugh. And then he began to cry, and had anyone been able to ask him at the moment if he were very happy or very sad he would have been totally unable to answer.
By the time he got to bed that night, Porfiry Rostnikov concluded that he had experienced far better days. Karpo was almost certainly going to lose his left arm. Malenko had been lost, lost by Tkach’s inability to follow a nearsighted old man. In the morning he had to face Colonel Drozhkin at the K.G.B. The toilet was completely backed up, and while he was confident that he could repair it, he was aware that the part he needed might be almost impossible to obtain. That did not deter him. If necessary he would get a book on machine shop tools and learn to make the part. He was determined to absorb the totality of human knowledge if necessary to repair that toilet. But all this had been nothing compared to Sarah’s reaction to his news about Iosef.
He had told her after dinner and she had taken it well, too well. All she had said was, “I see,” and had gone back to watching television. It was a special film produced by the USSR Central Television and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was about Pavlov and showed the physiologist in his Leningrad research center while a voice told of his accomplishments. They both watched without speaking. They watched movies of H.G. Wells visiting Pavlov. They heard Pavlov speak about his concern with objective experimentation and the extension of conditioned reflex methodology to the problems of neurology and psychiatry. They watched and absorbed nothing. When it was over, Sarah had touched his hand and gone to bed two hours earlier than usual. Rostnikov had lifted weights for more than an hour till a tremor in the tendon of his weak leg warned him that he must stop. He defied the tendon, which knew more than he, concluded one more brief exercise, and then stopped. He took a cold shower, since there was no hot water, and tried to read an American paperback by a black writer named Chester Himes. It was about police in Harlem, New York, which struck Rostnikov as a mad, violent place. He prefered Isola or even Moscow.
The next morning he woke up early and touched Sarah, who slept soundly. She resisted, waking so he touched her again, and she sat up, turning on him.
“You don’t have to break my arm,” she shrieked.
“I just touched you,” he said.
“I didn’t sleep,” she said, turning back into the bed.
“You slept soundly,” he said, knowing he should simply stop but unable to do so.
“You sat up all night watching me sleep?” she asked with sarcasm.
“No,” he said, moving to the sink to heat water so he could shave. “Forget it. You didn’t sleep.”
“Don’t humor me,” she said angrily. “You think I slept all night.”
Rostnikov turned on the light in the corner. The sun was not yet up out the window. He looked into the darkness outside and then at her.
“Iosef will be all right,” he said.
“Now you’re a god,” she said, glaring at him.
“No. He will be all right.”
Sarah looked at him for an instant and then turned her head away into her pillow. He finished his shaving, dressed, found some bread in the cupboard and a piece of cheese, and made himself a lunch, which he rolled in some newspaper and placed in his worn briefcase.
At the door he paused.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He wanted to repeat that Iosef would be all right, but his mouth went dry and the words called him a liar. The Volga and the new driver were waiting for Rostnikov at the curb in front of his house. People hurrying to work in the near dawn glanced to see who was important enough in the neighborhood to merit a car and driver.
“Why are you here?” Rostnikov asked.
“Orders from the Procurator’s office,” he responded instantly. “I am to pick you up and be available throughout your current investigation.”
“That will be most helpful, Michael Veselivitch Dolguruki,” Rostnikov answered getting into the back seat.
“You remembered my name,” said the driver, pulling into the nearly empty street.
“You are an unusually talkative driver,” said Rostnikov.
“I’m sorry, comrade,” answered the driver. “I assume that is a rebuke.”
“Assume only that you made some impression on me,” said Rostnikov, looking out the window. “Do you know where the K.G.B. headquarters is?”
“Of course,” said the driver.
“That is where we are going.”
This time Rostnikov did not wait at all. He announced himself at the front desk, and seconds later the man named Zhenya appeared to lead him up to Colonel Drozhkin’s office. Again, Rostnikov had to hurry behind him to keep pace.
“Go right in,” said Zhenya.
“Thank you,” replied Rostnikov, reaching down to massage his leg. Zhenya watched him for a second and then turned and left. Rostnikov knocked and entered the room before waiting for an answer.
“Rostnikov,” said Drozhkin, without rising. Rostnikov decided that the colonel resembled the dead branch of a birch tree. The image pleased him and gave him a secret to sustain him through the conversation.
“I called you here to say that we appreciate the speed with which you conducted the Granovsky investigation,” said Drozhkin, looking up with a pained look on his face that Rostnikov took to be a smile.
“Thank you, Colonel,” said Rostnikov. He was not offered a seat, and Drozhkin seemed not to have noticed. Then the colonel realized the situation and said, “Please sit down.”
Rostnikov sat and nothing was said for a few seconds.
“This Vonovich will be given a quick trial,” Drozhkin said, fixing his eyes on Rostnikov, who returned the look while holding a gentle smile on his face.
“That,” said Rostnikov, “is up to Procurator Timoteyeva.”
“Of course,” said Drozhkin, standing nervously. “I was not asking a question. I was making an observation. I understand that you are already on another murder, an entirely unrelated murder.”
“I am on another murder,” said Rostnikov.
Drozhkin paced to a corner nervously, looked out of the window behind him and turned to face Rostnikov with hands behind his back.
“Neither of us is a fool, Inspector.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Good,” Drozhkin said, returning to his desk. “I understand that troops are being rotated in Afghanistan this very day. I know this because we have direct contact with agents who are there. We can get information and relay orders instantly. While our relations with the military have been strained in the past, this is a new era, especially where political matters are involved. It is hypothetical, of course, but we could have individual soldiers transferred or even recalled from the front if we thought it necessary.”
“I see,” sighed Rostnikov.
“Good,” said Drozhkin. “Well, I hope you catch your new murderer as swiftly as you caught your last one. And I hope you will be hearing from your son very soon.”