He knew he should eat, but he had no taste for food.
As he walked he remembered the first Easter service he had attended. Father Merhum had stood in front of the congregation and sung out, “Chri’stos Voskresye.”
And the congregation had answered, “Veyeastino Voskresye. “
The sound of voices chanting in the dead of night, the heat of the church, a hundred candles. And then the bells had rung and he had shuddered. The bells rang out the triumph of life over death while he thought of murder.
He had joined the congregation as they sang an Easter hymn; then he went outside and circled the church. He heard the chanting and the bells echoing into the woods, and then he went back into the church. It was even more crowded now, for some of those who had stood outside to wait for the procession had now entered with it. Icons of the saints looked down at him, and he looked away, not because he feared their eyes, but because he feared others seeing the defiance he might show.
And then the priest stood in front of the iconostasis and sang from the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
The words were chanted in church Slavonic and in Russian, and he had been moved by the words, had looked them up, had committed them to memory, and recited them to himself to calm him in moments of rage.
“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it,” he said softly to himself. “The question I must ask myself is: Am I the light that shines or the darkness that cannot be overcome?”
Shortly after seven in the morning Emil Karpo heard the door of the meeting hall open and footsteps move quickly across the floor in his direction.
He had been awake for two hours. His bed was made and in the small kitchen he had found a pot of cold tea and some bread, which he had eaten slowly while he finished his report.
He was reading a book on the Russian Orthodox Church when the door opened. Karpo put the book aside and stood.
“Are you awake, comrade? Tovarish Karpo, are you up?”
Karpo opened the door and found himself facing Misha Gonsk, the MVD officer, in need of a shave, uniform partly buttoned, trying to hold himself together.
“Dead, murder,” said Gonsk, trying to catch his breath.
“Who’s dead?”
“The nun,” said Gonsk, pointing toward the next room as if the body were just beyond the door.
“Sister Nina?” asked Karpo.
“Sister Nina,” Gonsk confirmed. “She … he … her body is … Come.”
“Wait for me in the street,” Karpo said. “I will be there in a moment.”
Gonsk nodded and hurried off. When he was through the outer door and into the street, Emil Karpo stepped to the hook next to the door and reached for his dark coat. He put the coat on and moved across the small room into the cold outer room and crossed to the door to the street. It was only when his hand went out to turn the doorknob that he became aware that he was shaking.
A little past seven that same morning Peotor Merhum, son of Father Vasili Merhum, father of Aleksandr Merhum, husband of Sonia Merhum, keeper of a farm equipment shop, decided to run away.
“Decide” is, perhaps, too strong a word. He fled in mindless panic, fled without packing, fled without eating, fled without leaving a note.
The hardest part about flight was remaining calm as he ventured out into the street. Pulling his coat around his chest and covering his ears with his cap, he stepped into the morning and turned to his right. He encountered no one as he forced himself to walk north from Arkush in the general direction of nowhere in particular. After almost an hour of walking he stopped abruptly, looked up, and realized that this would never do. He would be found walking this road or hiding in an icy barn. Night would come and he would be lost in the woods and never found. Or worse, he would be found frozen, his body nibbled by mice, gnawed by rats, his …
Peotor turned and headed back toward Arkush, moving faster, ordering his mind to come up with a plan. But he could think of sanctuary or survival for only a few seconds. A snatch of a children’s rhyme came to him:
Thousands of animals on Noah’s boat, Two of all, even two goat, Wandering decks, watching the rain, Nowhere to go, just staying afloat.
He repeated the rhyme, ordered it to go away, but it would not. It simply returned like a prayer, “Nowhere to go, just staying afloat.”
At the same moment on that day a very large and ugly crow, with black wings and head and a gray body, perched on the window of the house of Father Vasili Merhum. He cawed four times and pecked at something that might have been a seed but turned out to be a small, bright stone. He dropped the stone, cawed again, and looked through the window at the bloody room and the mutilated body of the nun. Just inside the window a small bright object that resembled a human eye shone on top of a torn icon of St. Sebastian.
The bird contemplated the object, tapped the window with his beak, and cocked his head at an angle to get a better look at the ax embedded in the wall.
Once again he cawed four times and was about to caw again when he heard the sound of humans coming through the woods.
The bird turned on the window ledge, flapped its black wings, and rose slowly toward the trees. He caught the wind and soared upward. Before he had cleared the first row of birches, he had forgotten the house and was thinking only of finding something to eat.
TWELVE
When Rostnikov arrived in Arkush a little before nine, he could tell from the delegation that watched him get off the train that something had changed. The farmer Vadim Petrov stood next to the little mayor Dmitri Dmitriovich, beside whom stood the disheveled MVD officer Misha Gonsk, who had made some effort, though a poor one, to put himself in order, an effort that had resulted in his cutting his cheek while shaving. Peotor Merhum was missing, but Emil Karpo was standing next to Gonsk, his unblinking eyes focused not on Rostnikov but through him and well beyond.
Rostnikov had never seen this look on the face of Emil Karpo. It was the look of a dreamer or a person in shock. Though his words had sometimes betrayed a hint of emotion, Karpo’s face had never, till this moment, revealed anything but a slight tension of the forehead that told Rostnikov that his colleague was in some stage of a migraine.
“Who is dead?” asked Rostnikov.
“Sister Nina,” said Vadim Petrov, his voice tense. “Someone-” He stopped, trying to find the words. A trio of men coming off the train brushed past them, talking excitedly, and Rostnikov heard one of them say, “Murder.”
“She has been mutilated,” said Karpo. “Someone has hacked into her body fifteen or sixteen times. The killer left the weapon, an ax, embedded in the wall. It is possible that it is the same weapon that killed the priest.”
“Madmen,” mumbled the mayor, looking around for agreement with his observation. “A madman is loose, killing priests, nuns. Maybe he will start killing government officials.”
“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk, Emil Karpo,” Rostnikov said, stepping past the four men.
Emil Karpo nodded, his eyes fixed where Rostnikov had been standing a moment ago. Rostnikov repeated, “Somewhere we can talk and I can have a glass of tea.”
“Yes,” said Karpo, tearing himself from the vision only he could see. “The meeting hall.”
“What would you like us to do, Inspector?” asked Petrov. He removed his cap and rubbed his head with a flat, heavy palm.