All day he had vacillated about saying something to Larissa — some small word by way of a gentle goodbye. He would never see her again. But did he really give a damn? No children to worry about. Just twenty years of marriage, stretching backward like a littered path through a dense, troubled jungle. Vacillated between that and maintaining a stoic front. Another trip. Be gone for a week. Bring you back something special.
Without realizing it, he had begun walking again. Brezhnev himself lived on this street. Several blocks away, in a less shabby stretch, but on the same street nevertheless.
It had been the proudest moment of Larissa’s life when her husband had been promoted to chief of the bureau and they had been assigned this apartment on the Prospekt.
At length, Dybrovik arrived at his building. He checked his empty mail slot, then walked down the corridor to the back stairwell. They had been having problems with the elevator for the past several months, and the OUT OF ORDER sign was still on the door.
Why was it, he thought as he started up the dirty stairs, that his countrymen never seemed able to get telephones or elevators to work? Rockets to space, deterrent nuclear missiles, and world-girdling nuclear submarines. Triumphs of technology. But when it came to telephones and elevators, all science and technology seemed to break down.
At the top floor he walked down the corridor to his apartment as he pulled the key from his jacket pocket. Once again he hesitated.
If he tried to be tender with Larissa, she would either mistake his intentions for desire and would rebuff him, as she had for the past several years, or she would read right through him, another trick she had developed over the past few years, and would understand that he was leaving.
Either way he would come out the loser. Better not to say a thing. Later, when he was out, he could write her a very long letter, explaining what he had learned in Africa.
He unlocked the apartment door and stepped inside the tiny vestibule, where he took off his sweat-stained jacket and hung it on one of the hooks. He looked at himself in the mirror beneath the hat rack. He had been sweating profusely. His forehead was wet, and his hair was plastered against his skull.
He did what he could with it, with his fingers, then turned and, bracing himself, marched down the short corridor and around the corner into the living room.
Only the light on the small table in front of the window was on, and it illuminated the features of a dark, very intense-looking man who fairly exuded officialdom, although he wore civilian clothes. His three-piece gray suit, although out of date by Western standards, looked very modish here.
“Delos Fedor Dybrovik?” the man asked politely, his voice soft.
“Yes?” Dybrovik said. His knees were weak; his stomach churned and he felt the urgent need to relieve himself. This was trouble. Very big trouble.
The man uncrossed his legs, got slowly to his feet, and shook his head sadly. Dybrovik was surprised at how short he was. His features too, were small, almost delicate.
Silently, the little official crossed the room to the bathroom door, which was between the bedroom and the kitchen. It was ajar, and the little man reached out with his right foot and eased it the rest of the way open.
“We have much to talk about, Pasha,” he said.
Something was hanging from the ceiling of the bathroom, but for several seconds Dybrovik could not understand exactly what he was seeing. It was pink, with mottled splotches of red and blue. But…
Suddenly he understood what it was hanging from the ceiling. Hanging nude, her toes just inches above the tiled floor, her buttocks dimpled with overweight and strangely colored with blue.
“Larissa.” Her name choked at the back of his throat.
3
The night had suddenly become cold, the fog thick and malevolent, the darkness empty. Dybrovik, walking closely beside the official who had not bothered to identify himself, had no real sense of time or of what was happening to him. Larissa was dead. She had hung herself. But why? The question kept hammering in his head. And almost more important to him: Why couldn’t he feel sorry for her, or feel the loss? He was in a dream.
“I’m really very sorry for you, Pasha,” the little man said softly.
“Who are you, what do you want of me?” Dybrovik asked. Everything he had worked for — his apartment here on the Prospekt, his position, and his travel to the West — it was all gone.
“I came to see you, and when no one answered the door I opened it and went in. I was just going to wait inside in comfort, you see, rather than out in the corridor. And I found her like that.”
“How do you know I am called Pasha?” Dybrovik asked stupidly.
The little man smiled. “Ah, Pasha, we know many things about you. Many things. You have been a naughty boy these past two years. Perhaps, and please, it is merely a suggestion, perhaps your behavior drove your poor, overburdened wife to take her own life.”
“No,” Dybrovik cried, raising his right hand, almost as if warding off a physical blow. “What do you want of me? What have I done to you?”
“It is not so much what you have done, my dear Pasha. It is what you can and will do for us.”
They had stopped, and Dybrovik looked at the other man. Perhaps he had killed Larissa. Perhaps he had hung her to make it look like a suicide. Things like that happened. It wasn’t beyond possibility. But why?
Geneva and the West seemed so far away now, so unobtainable, and yet Dybrovik felt a certain sense of relief. The question of Larissa had been solved for him, and as heartless as it seemed even to him, he could feel the mammoth guilt he had carried with him these past months begin to bleed away. But what did that make him? A heartless monster, who was dancing on his wife’s grave?
“I have worked hard for the department…” he started, breathlessly, but the expression on the other man’s face stopped him.
“Of course you have, my dear friend. And you will continue to work hard. Harder than you have ever worked. But with elegance, Pasha. With an elegance that will earn you a medal. You’ll see.”
The little man took Dybrovik’s arm, and they started down the deserted street again, almost as if they were lovers out for an evening stroll.
Larissa was dead. It was an amazing thing to contemplate. At once frightening and yet somehow relieving. No longer did he have to face his wife — face the problem of loving her and hating her at the same time. But he was tied up with another, deeper guilt now, because of those complicated feelings. His mind seemed disjointed. It was difficult to focus on one thought, let alone follow a train of ideas.
“I know what is going through your mind, my poor fellow,” the official said. “Believe me, I know and understand, and sympathize with you. But it is a terrible thing, nevertheless, don’t you agree?”
Dybrovik found himself nodding. “Yes,” he mumbled. “Yes, comrade.”
“Yes, comrade,” the little man said softly. “I understand, but alas, I do not think your colleagues would. Nor do I believe the Presidium would understand, and they have been taking notes of you these past months.”
A cold wind passed through Dybrovik’s soul, and he shivered.
“Don’t you know, Pasha, that we have been disappointed with you? Deeply disappointed. We had such high hopes.”
The fog seemed thicker now, the night more intense, the deserted streets even more lonely, the West more distant.
“It is why we began to look very carefully at you. It is why we wanted to know more about you, to see if you were of the necessary caliber.”