Marguerite calls Svetlana before we go to the hotel restaurant for dinner, calls when we get back to our room. “I’m really worried now,” she says, “I know something’s wrong. We know she isn’t the type to promise to come — to say she’ll call the night before to see precisely what hour we want her — and then just to disappear. And with that stroke she had two years ago—” “Oh yeah, that’s right, the stroke, I forgot. So what do we do?” She calls a scholar she met the other day who said he knows of Svetlana but he only has her phone number, not her address, and doesn’t know anyone who does; but he’ll make some calls. “Even if we had her address,” I say, “what would we do with it? She told me it’s about an hour’s metro ride to her stop — lots of changes and at the end of the line. Or a couple of changes, but anyway, ‘couple’ meaning what to her — two, three, four? We’d go out there at this hour when people all over the city are getting bumped on the head and robbed? Even by cab — or of course by cab if we could get one or one would take us that far — we’d be sure he’d wait? If he didn’t we’d be screwed.” “Not that. But say we found someone who knows her and lives near her? Or someone who doesn’t but as a favor to us might want to help her. Maybe that person could phone a friend and go over — two men. Or just you and him. What I’m saying is Russians still do that, put themselves out for strangers, especially one intellectual for another. And if this person didn’t want to do it but lived fairly close to her, which would mean you wouldn’t go because he couldn’t come in for you and then go back there and so on, I’d say we’d pay the fare — cab, anything. And would a carton of Marlboros — a few weeks’ salary for some at the regular exchange — encourage a friend of his to go along with him? Meaning, would it encourage him? But I’ve seen the way they’ve helped me. With leads, contacts, books, unpublished papers and notes and tapes very few American scholars would let me see and hear and copy down. And accompanying me clear across town for something and then waiting there while I worked or saw someone so they could take me back here.”
She calls several people she’s met, and through them friends and colleagues of theirs, but the one person who’s heard of Svetlana doesn’t even know her phone number. The first scholar she spoke to calls back and says nobody he contacted knows where she lives or how to find out. “I give up for now,” she says. “Maybe she’s okay and off doing something we haven’t thought of yet, but I seriously doubt it.” “I hope we’re wrong,” I say. “You mean you think it’s no good too?” “Looks it. But as you said, we’ve only just met her so there’s lots we don’t know.”
Little past midnight, we just got into our beds and shut the night table lights, the phone rings. A woman says “Abel, yes? Hello, I’m Katya Sergeyeva, very good friend of Svetlana. Pardon me for upsetting you if this is nothing, but I’m extremely worried for her. Was she with you all of today?” “Let me put my wife on please. This is very important so if there’s any language problem, she can speak Russian.” She tells Marguerite she and Svetlana have spoken every day with each other since Svetlana’s stroke. Yesterday she thought Svetlana went with us someplace outside of Moscow and got back late or stayed overnight at a hotel with us there. Now that she knows we haven’t seen her for two days she’s sure something’s wrong. She’s going to go over to her apartment now with a friend. If Svetlana doesn’t answer she’ll get the police to break down the door. Marguerite tells her we’ll do whatever we can to help so please count on us and call anytime tonight, no matter how late. We read for a few minutes, then she yawns and hearing it I yawn right after and we agree we should try to nap. I wake up once thinking maybe Katya called but we didn’t hear it in our sleep, though the phone only rings loudly, and cover Marguerite up and turn off the lights.
Katya calls just when Marguerite’s about to dial her. She didn’t get back to us last night because it was very late and things were still so unresolved. They got to the apartment, knocked, nobody answered and they didn’t hear anything behind the door so they called the police who said they couldn’t get there till ten this morning. “They couldn’t get there?” I say when Marguerite translates it for me while still on the phone. “What if she still has some breath this minute but dies a few seconds before they get there?” “Shh,” she says, signaling she can’t hear what Katya’s saying. Katya says she and several friends are going to meet the police now at Svetlana’s and she’ll call soon as she has some news, but she’s convinced now Svetlana’s dead. She also told Marguerite that after they knocked and called through the door last night they went to about twenty apartments in the building and nobody had seen Svetlana for two days. “They went around asking at one and two in the morning?” “I told you, people here do that. Not the police, as you heard, but you can call on your friends and most of your neighbors anytime.” “So why didn’t they all get together last night and knock down the door? Police wouldn’t come, hell with them, or is it it’s really maybe some highly penalizable crime?” “Possibly. Probably.”
Phone rings two hours later. Marguerite stayed around long as she could but then had to leave for an important appointment that couldn’t be rescheduled. “Abel, yes? Katya here, most unexpected news,” and then her voice cracks and she speaks excitably in Russian. “Speak English, please, I understand very little Russian. Nye govoryu po russki, nye govoryu po russki,” and she says “Nyet, nyet, not okay, can’t. Wait.” A woman gets on and says “Hello, I am Bella, good friend of Katya and Svetlana. It is terrible to speak to you, sir, only this once with only this terrible news for you. I speak English not good but try. Svetlana is dead. She has stroke Wednesday, your day, she must have, we and police today believe, that made her that way, killed her. Great pity. Much sorrow. Wonderful woman. Intelligent and kind and so nice to this building and people and everywhere she goes. It is very very sad.” “Very. I’m terribly sorry. Please tell Katya that. And what is her phone — telephone number, please, even though I think my wife took it. But what is it if she didn’t take it so she can phone Katya later,” and she gives me it.