Katya walked to the front hall on limp legs and found her purse lying on the floor. Right now all she could think about was that she had a needle and ampoule in that bag. There was one there, another two in the desk drawer, and three more on the bookshelf, in the case from Mitya’s old electric shaver. The case was on the bookshelf, and there were three more ampoules there. Katya remembered that precisely, but nothing more.
She was very sleepy, and her eyes kept shutting, like a doll placed on its back. The needle wouldn’t go in where it should, and she scratched her skin, but it didn’t hurt at all.
CHAPTER 5
Tobolsk, October 1981
On the dusty stage at the city’s Pioneer Palace, a dance ensemble was finishing its number, “Russian Quadrille.” Boys in yellow silk Russian shirts and girls in boots and blue sarafans dashed gaily across the stage, arms akimbo, stamping loudly to the recorded music.
Fat Galya Malysheva, the propaganda instructor, couldn’t keep from tapping her foot to the beat and, in a whisper, joining in with the rollicking song about how much fun and what important work they were doing in the factory and on the collective farm.
“Galya, quit it!” Volodya Tochilin, the arts instructor, elbowed her. “We are the official city commission, after all. Behave accordingly, like Veniamin over there.”
Veniamin Volkov was sitting and looking at the stage with a stony face, as befits a member of an official city commission who’s come to watch the rehearsal for the holiday concert celebrating the anniversary of the October Revolution.
“You have a terrific ensemble!” Galya whispered loudly, slapping her broad knee. “You should send them to Moscow! Abroad, even, to Karlovy Vary. Hey, Comrade Culture Chief, you should encourage young talents!” She winked gaily at Volkov.
He didn’t respond. He didn’t even turn his head. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the stage.
The soloist’s nimble feet were flying across the stage. Her narrow feet, in soft dance boots, barely touched the floor. Several of the girls in the ensemble had artificial braids pinned on that were a slightly different color from their own hair. But the soloist’s braid was the same color as her own thick, shiny, and ash-blond hair. The bodice of her blue sarafan tightly swathed her delicate waist, and her wide skirt fanned over her long, slender legs.
Venya saw before him a flushed, slightly elongated, pretty little face with merry, bright blue eyes. The girl was about sixteen.
“No, you absolutely must send them to Moscow for some competition!” Malysheva couldn’t restrain herself from exclaiming. “Talents like this are wasted in this backwater!”
“Yes, our Tanya Kostylyova is a diamond in the rough,” the Pioneer Palace director sitting next to her said, nodding proudly.
The music ended. For a second, the children onstage froze in their final, triumphant poses. There weren’t more than ten people sitting in the auditorium. Everyone started applauding. Everyone but the Culture Department chief, Veniamin Volkov. He sat without stirring, intent on the blue-eyed soloist. Her name thundered in his ears: Tanya Kostylyova. Tanya Kostylyova.
“You’re some kind of savage, Volkov.” Galya shrugged her pudgy shoulders. “You could at least put your hands together once!”
“Russian Quadrille” was the concert’s last number. Now the Young Communist Commission was supposed to go to the Pioneer Palace director’s office to drink tea and discuss the concert program.
“Well, what do you say?” the director asked as he sat at the head of a table generously spread for tea. “Help yourselves, comrades. The tea’s hot. Veniamin Borisovich, how do you like your tea? Strong?”
The dead don’t rise up, Venya thought, nodding mechanically at the director. I haven’t lost my mind. It’s all very simple. Tanya Kostylyova had a brother. I think his name was Sergei. That Sergei could very well have a daughter that age. He could very well have named her in honor of his dead sister Tatyana. There’s nothing surprising in the girl looking so much like that Tanya. Nothing surprising at all.
“Veniamin, are you unwell?” the elderly director of the dance ensemble asked quietly. “You’re very pale.”
“Huh?” he caught himself. “No, no. I’m quite all right.”
You can’t do that. You have to get a grip, he thought, smiling hard. Or it could end badly.
“A marvelous concert,” he said loudly. “And the dance ensemble was especially fine. Galya’s right. We have to take them to the provincial competitions, maybe even to Moscow. The chorus isn’t bad at all, but I think that in addition to the revolutionary and Pioneer songs, they could add a cheerful children’s song, especially when the younger group performs. As for the poetry reciters, their outfits should be fancier. You’ve got them too stiff. It is a holiday concert, after all. Those are all my notes.”
After tea, the director accompanied the commission through all five floors of the palace. The director showed them the holiday preparations and the concert posters.
A deafening wave of rock and roll struck them as they passed by the auditorium door, which was ajar. Glancing in, they saw Tanya Kostylyova onstage. Wearing her brown school uniform, without the black pinafore, she was dancing a wild dance to an Elvis Presley song. Her partner, a tall, slender boy in navy school trousers and a checked shirt, was spinning her and tossing her around. Her loose, ash-blond hair flew straight out to the sides and fell on her slender, flushed face. The girl stuck out her vivid lips and mechanically blew the hair from her forehead.
“I hope you’re not planning to include that in the concert program,” Volkov said to the Pioneer Palace director, grinning.
That other Tanya, the soloist’s aunt, had been a great dancer, too. She had had bright blue eyes and long, thick, ash-blond hair. She’d been considered the prettiest girl in their class. And Venya Volkov had been an ugly duckling until the tenth grade, when all that changed.
He grew three inches in one summer. His shoulders broadened and his voice dropped. He started shaving. He was amazed to discover that girls were giving him the eye.
Among his classmates, it was the worst students who had that kind of success. They were colorful, manly, brave. They smoked, drank port, spat, swore nonstop, and feared nothing and no one.
The best students and goody-goodies were despised. And Venya Volkov was both. But he was very strong physically and he could push back at anyone who tried to bully him. By tenth grade, no one dared challenge Venya. He fought too well.
Vovka the Dove had lost Tanya in a card game. Not a school boy, Vovka the Dove was an honest-to-God crook just out of prison. He’d been lying in wait for the girl one evening in a dark side street. Venya Volkov just happened to be nearby.
At that point, nothing had happened. Tanya and the Dove were standing and talking. Venya immediately recognized the slender silhouette and long braid.
Whenever he looked at Tanya, his mouth dried up and his hands instinctively balled up into fists. At twelve he hadn’t been able to explain it, but now, at sixteen, he was sure he understood his own feelings perfectly well.
Had anyone told him, “Volkov, you’re in love with her!” he would have laughed in the idiot’s face. There are no such feelings. They don’t exist. There’s instinct, attraction between the sexes, like in all the rest of the animal world. It’s like hunger, only stronger.
“Venya! Venya Volkov!” Tanya’s voice sounded scared and pleading.