Spit on your friends. Shit on your friends. They’ll do the same to you.
Just clasp their hands and walk in step when you agree on what to do.
On what to do, on what to do, and who to do it to.
“Akardy,” his mother said. “Yes.”
“You are bouncing your head while you eat.”
“A song I can’t … it just …”
“Listen to the song,” she said, tearing off a piece of bread. “It may tell you something.”
Emil Karpo ate alone in his room, which was about the same size as Misha Lovski’s cell. The room held very little furniture-a cot near the single window whose shade was almost always pulled down, a chest of drawers, a free-standing simple wooden closet, a desk in front of a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf filled with files of cases he had worked on, open and closed cases, and cases that he had never been assigned but were still open.
What free time Karpo had, he gave to those files and their challenge.
He ate one cucumber, one tomato, one onion, a thick slice of unbuttered bread, and a piece of plain boiled chicken he had prepared on his hot plate on the dresser.
There were two lights in his room, one a bulb in the ceiling, the other a small table lamp.
The only color in the room was a painting above the dresser, a painting of and by Mathilde Verson, a gift from her. The woman in the foreground looking up the hill to a barn was definitely Mathilde, though her face was turned. Mathilde, the woman of the city, the part-time prostitute whom he had paid once every two weeks for her services until she had stopped taking the money and they had become something more than client and provider. That lasted three years, four months, and six days. She was shot in the crossfire between two Mafias, gangs disputing territory or trying to make a point which may not have been clear to either gang.
The phone next to the computer rang. He picked it up and said, “Yes.”
“Emil,” came Rostnikov’s voice. “I am going on a train ride.”
Karpo said nothing.
“Sasha is going with me. To Siberia.”
“Yes.”
“While I am gone, you are in charge.”
“I understand.”
“I left the file on the subway attacks on your desk.”
“I shall read it in the morning unless you feel I should get it immediately.”
“No, just be acquainted with the case, should you be needed. In an emergency, you can reach me on the Trans-Siberian Express, the number two. I’ll be in compartment twelve, car three-two-seven-eight.”
Karpo did not bother to write the number. He would remember it.
“Yes,” he said.
“Emil, as I recall, you can see the sun over the hill in your painting of Mathilde. Is that correct?”
Karpo did not have to turn to the painting.
“That is correct.”
“Then I have a very important question. Is the sun rising or setting? Have you ever asked yourself that question?”
“No,” Karpo said, now turning to the painting.
“Look at it with fresh eyes and tell me what you think when I return.”
“I will do so.”
“You are working on the Lovski case tonight?”
“Yes. Zelach and I are going to a club called Loni’s where Lovski was apparently last seen.”
“Find him,” said Rostnikov. “And don’t forget the sun.”
He hung up and Karpo turned his wooden chair so that he could face the painting above his dresser.
Pavel Cherkasov dined, as he had planned, at the Uzbekistani restaurant on Neglinnaya Street. There was a good crowd, but Pavel had assured himself a table near the wall with a few bills passed to the maître d’. With a bottle of Aleatiko wine to guide him, Pavel, as planned, had started with maniar, moved on to shashlik, followed by an order of Tkhum-dulma. He ordered a second bottle of wine and turned to the patrons at the next table, a well-dressed couple in their fifties.
“A glass of wine?” he offered.
The man smiled and Pavel motioned to the waiter, who came over quickly. He knew Pavel from previous visits, knew the man would leave a big tip if he were served quickly and if the waiter smiled or laughed at his jokes.
“The other night I came in here,” Pavel said in a whisper to the couple at the next table after the waiter had moved to get two clean glasses. “I said to the waiter, ‘I’m so hungry I could eat a rat.’ And the waiter replied, ‘Then you’ve come to the right place.’”
The woman gave a slight tic of her left cheek that might have signaled offense or a touch of amusement. It encouraged Pavel, who poured wine from his bottle into the glasses the waiter had brought.
“Listen, listen,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “An American and a Russian go to hell and the devil says, ‘You have a choice of American hell or Russian hell. The difference between them is that in American hell you get one bucket of shit to eat every day. In Russian hell, you get two buckets.’ The American takes American hell. The Russian, to the American’s surprise, takes Russian hell.”
The woman and the man to whom Pavel was speaking were definitely not amused, but Pavel chose not to notice.
“A year later,” Pavel said, “the American and the Russian meet. ‘How is your hell?’ asks the Russian. ‘Just as promised,’ the American answers. ‘One bucket of shit to eat every day. And Russian hell?’ ‘Just as I expected. The shit deliveries seldom arrive, and when they do come they are late and there are never enough buckets to go around.’”
Pavel laughed. The couple did not.
“We are late for an appointment,” the man said, motioning to the waiter for the check.
“One more,” Pavel said, laughing. “When I was here yesterday, I told the waiter there was a dead cockroach in my soup and he said, ‘I’ll call my manager, but you should know there will be an extra charge for the funeral.’”
The couple rose without the check and headed for the door. Pavel kept laughing. On the train, he would find a captive audience in the bar. He had dozens of train and travel jokes and even more about drinking. He checked his watch. He had brought his suitcase with him. It was tucked under the table, which was not at all odd in Moscow. One never knew when luggage or a coat might disappear from a checkroom.
It was nearing time to go, but he still had at least ten minutes for a cup or two of syrupy thick coffee. Pavel was not drunk. He was, however, at his limit and could use the coffee to return to the ground. Pavel was a professional.
He ordered his coffee, told the waiter another joke, and looked around the room with satisfaction. In a few days, he would have enough money for that gourmet trip to America. His English was good enough for him to get on the stage during open-microphone sessions at a comedy club in New York. He had tried it before. The crowd had been small and the audience minimally polite, but he had new material now. He was not one to give up.
He glanced around the room as he drank. There was the hum and clatter of conversation and plates, the shuffling of moving waiters and customers departing. He had an idea for a little joke in English. He would play on his slight Russian accent. He would begin his set in New York by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am a Russian, but my English is perfect so let’s conversate.” He removed one of the lined cards from his pocket and with his pen made a note of the remark.
At a table on the other side of the restaurant another diner, back to the room, watched Pavel in the large ornate mirror on the wall. The watching diner had come in a minute after Pavel, given the maître d’ even more money than Pavel had, and pointed to this table.
The watcher heard nothing of Pavel’s jokes but watched him eat, pay his bill, rise, pull his suitcase from beneath the table, and head steadily toward the exit. The watcher had motioned to a waiter a second after Pavel had called for his check. To insure a quick departure, the watcher had overtipped the grateful waiter.