“Good evening,” Mrs. Allyamakaya said with a toothless grin.
“The night is beautiful,” he said, looking to the sky.
This was evidently something she and her friend had not considered before, so they looked upward.
“Beautiful,” Mrs. Allyamakaya’s friend said.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his bag. “I have three peaches. Too ripe to save. They must all be eaten tonight. One for each of us.”
He handed a peach to each of the women and they beamed at him gratefully.
“We live in troubled times,” he said with a deep sigh. “Very troubled times. But we must be grateful for the opportunity to enjoy the taste of a peach.”
“All times in Russia have been troubled,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya, gumming her peach. Juice dribbled down her chin.
“Good night, little mothers,” he said, stepping past them. “I suggest you not stay out too long. There’s a chill in the night air out of the north.”
“Thank you for the peach, Tovarich Odom,” Mrs. Allyamakaya’s friend said.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya as he disappeared into the building.
“God bless that young man,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya’s friend, wiping her hand on her dress.
“May there be more like him in the future,” said Mrs. Allyamakaya. “If Russia is to survive and prosper, it will be through the work of young people like him.”
Cuba is dotted by small police stations with perhaps two or three cells in each. Each station is headed by a major with a single gold star in the middle of his blue baseball cap. Station operations are run by a captain or lieutenant. There is also a plainclothes lieutenant whose job it is to know the district and to direct investigations if a crime occurs.
The sun was bright and the streets of Havana hot, but not as hot as Moscow on a humid summer afternoon. A pair of small boys ran past the Guanaba Police Station on their way to the little park a block away. If the old man who tended the park was feeling well enough, the gate would be open and the boys could find friends to fight or play with.
One of the boys looked up at one of the windows of the small white two-story building and met the eyes of Major Fernando Sanchez. Sanchez looked through the boy into the center of the earth and the boy’s face went pale as he hurried on.
Behind Sanchez were Rostnikov, Elena Timofeyeva, and Igor Shemenkov, all seated in wicker chairs circled around a small white wicker table. A folder filled with thin sheets of paper sat on the wicker table. The room had blue curtains. There was a small desk with a black leather chair and photographs of young uniformed Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on the wall. An air conditioner with a green potted plant atop it hummed in the window through which Sanchez, his back to the trio, looked out onto a wide, busy street of children.
“You know I never wanted to come to this country,” said Igor Shemenkov in a low voice, first to Rostnikov and then, once more, to Elena Timofeyeva. He sighed deeply and waited for a response to his declaration.
Rostnikov saw a man in blue pants and a formerly white guayabera shirt that had yellowed with age and careless washing. He saw a man of about forty with a dark, rough face and alert eyes. Shemenkov was losing his hair, but Rostnikov thought the man’s brooding roughness and his open sincerity might be a very appealing combination to women. He looked at Elena, who held a notebook at the ready.
Elena was attentive and a bit tired. She looked strong, clean, and pretty. He detected nothing that would suggest anything but a professional interest in the man across from her. He watched her eyes stray from the notebook for an instant to the back of the Cuban policeman at the window. Then she looked back at the blank pages before her.
“Unfortunately,” said Rostnikov, “a distaste for the scene of the crime is not a defense.”
“I’m not trying to say …” Shemenkov began, and then turned to Elena.
“I worked. I did not complain. I learned the language. You know how many Soviet advisers bothered to learn Spanish?”
“All of them,” said Elena. “It is required.”
Shemenkov smiled and shook his head. He looked at the back of Major Sanchez and ran his rough palm over his head to hold down the last thin strands of his hair.
“Have you ever taken a language course for foreign advisers?” Shemenkov said. “I’m not talking about the military courses, the diplomats’ courses. I’m talking about the few weeks of phrases and badgering we got. One in ten. Yes, one in ten learn to speak Spanish.”
He held up a single finger so they could count it and pointed it at himself.
“Your family is from Minsk?” asked Rostnikov.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been to Minsk twice,” said Rostnikov. “I have two cousins there. One is a fireman. The other works in the office of a radio manufacturer. The fireman’s wife has three kidneys.”
“That is unusual,” said Shemenkov. He looked at Elena for some clue to the puzzling conversation of the policeman with the bad leg.
“Perhaps,” said Rostnikov.
“Is it good or bad?” asked Shemenkov.
“Three kidneys? She has infections in one of the kidneys. My cousin wonders if it is the last kidney, the one she doesn’t need.”
“I see,” said Shemenkov, though he saw nothing.
“A band at our hotel played music most of the night for the German tourists,” said Rostnikov. “The Presidente. You know it?”
“Yes,” said Shemenkov cautiously.
“I am in the room of Maria Fernandez,” Rostnikov said. “You know it?”
“Yes.”
“My window and that of Elena Timofeyeva face the pool. We had little sleep. I would like to be home in my own bed surrounded by people who speak Russian. Tonight I would like to see my wife and the two girls who are living with us, also possibly talk to my son. I do not travel well.”
“I’m sorry,” said Shemenkov.
“Thank you,” said Rostnikov. “You claim that you did not kill Maria Fernandez.”
“I did not kill her,” Shemenkov said evenly. “We had a little quarrel, yes. But she was fine when I left the room.”
“Witnesses,” said Rostnikov, looking down at the folder on the table between them.
“Lies,” said Shemenkov, putting his hands, palms down, on the wicker table and looking at both of them.
“Why would they lie, Igor Shemenkov?” asked Rostnikov.
“Jealousy,” the man said.
“Jealousy? What were they jealous of?”
“I had Maria,” he said. “Victoria says I killed her. I know she says this. But I did not. Victoria hates me.”
“Why does she hate you?” asked Rostnikov.
“Victoria is … was in love with Maria,” he said.
“So?”
“In love,” Shemenkov repeated, leaning toward Rostnikov and speaking slowly. “Like lust, sex.”
“I am familiar with the passion,” said Rostnikov.
“Maria was in love with me and I with her,” Igor said.
“You have a wife and two children in Minsk,” said Rostnikov. “That is not meant as criticism, only as a possible reason why you might not want the continued attention of-”
“I planned to divorce my wife and marry Maria,” he said. “I loved Maria. I would not kill her. I would not pinch a hair on her head, though I know the hairs of the head have no feeling. It was enough for me that the hair was Maria’s.”
The sound that Sanchez made at the window reminded Rostnikov of the groaning of the toilet pipes in his apartment in Moscow.
“I would not harm Maria,” Shemenkov insisted, looking at Sanchez, who turned around and shook his head. “I swear to you on the memory of my mother, the honor of my father, the virginity of my sister.”
“When did you last see your sister?” asked Sanchez as he moved away from the window, folded his arms, and stood with his feet slightly apart.
“My sister?”
“Tell them what happened,” said Sanchez. “Your words.”
Shemenkov shook his head, bit his lips, and looked at Elena.
“Believe me,” he pleaded. “I didn’t kill Maria.”