“You want to carry me to police headquarters, carry me,” the old man said.
“Your tongue will get you in trouble,” Zelach warned, falling back on the threats of his trade.
“Ha,” Yuri cackled. “I’m eighty-five years old. What have you to threaten me with? My family is gone. This shack is a piece of shit. Threaten. Go ahead. Threaten.”
Rostnikov stepped up on the small porch into the slight shade from the wooden slats above.
“What kind of factory have you here?” he said.
“Vests.”
Rostnikov glanced at the old man in the chair. The lines on his face were amazingly deep and leathery.
“Vests?” Rostnikov asked, sensing the man’s favorite subject.
“Vests,” the old man said, pausing to spit into the dirt near Zelach, who stepped back. “We used to farm around here, and now they have us working in a factory, and what do we make in that factory?”
“Vests,” said Rostnikov.
“Exactly,” said Yuri, recognizing a kindred spirit. “What dignity is there in a man’s life when he has spent it sewing buttons on vests to be worn by Hungarians or Italians.”
“None,” Rostnikov agreed.
“None,” Yuri said. “And so they make vests without heart, spirit, need. You know what kind of vests they make?”
“Vests of poor quality,” Rostnikov guessed, glancing at Zelach, who clearly ached to shake the old rag of a man into a cooperation that would never come.
“Vests of paper, toilet paper, vests not fit to wipe one’s ass with,” the old man said with venom, spit forming on his mouth, eyes turned always toward the factory.
“It wasn’t always like this,” Rostnikov said softly.
“There were times,” the old man said.
“Long ago,” Rostnikov agreed.
“Long ago,” Yuri agreed.
“I understand you remember a man named Abraham Savitskaya who was here a long time ago,” Rostnikov said, not looking at the man.
“I don’t remember.”
Zelach stepped forward, whipped the photograph from his pocket, and thrust it in front of the wrinkled face.
“That,” said Zelach, “is you. And that is Savitskaya.”
“And you are Comrade Shit,” the old man said sweetly.
“Zelach,” Rostnikov said firmly before the sweating, weary policeman could crush the dry old man. “Walk back to the police station, arrange for a car to get us to the station in time to catch the next train.”
Zelach’s face displayed a rush of thought: first the consideration of defiance and then its quick suppression, followed by petulance, and finally resignation.
When Zelach had gone, Rostnikov leaned against the wall and said nothing.
“What happened to your leg?”
“Battle of Rostov,” Yuri said. “I still have poison gas in my lungs. I can taste it when I belch.”
They watched the factory a while longer before the old man spoke again.
“Some didn’t stay around to face the troubles, the Germans, the Revolution.”
“Some?” Rostnikov tried gently.
“Savitskaya,” he said. “Savitskaya and Mikhail.”
“Mikhail?”
“Mikhail Posniky,” the old man said. “After the first Revolution, they fled.”
“Mikhail Posniky is the third man in the photograph?”
Yuri shrugged, the closest he would come to cooperation.
“What happened to him?”
“They left, said they were going to America. Who knows? We were supposed to be friends, but they ran like cowards.”
“They should have stayed,” Rostnikov agreed.
“To make vests?” said the old man.
“To fight the Nazis,” Rostnikov answered.
“Who knew in 1920 the Nazis were coming?” the old man said, looking at his feebleminded police guest.
“Who knew?” Rostnikov agreed. “And the fourth man?”
Pashkov shrugged and shivered. “I don’t know.”
Rostnikov was sure, however, that the man did know. His face had paled, and he had folded his hands on his lap. His arthritic fingers had held each other to keep from trembling.
“You are Jewish,” Rostnikov said.
“Ah,” Yuri said, laughing. “I knew it was coming. It always comes. I fought. This village fought. And you people come and-”
“The four of you were Jewish?” Rostnikov said, stepping in front of the old man and cutting off his view of the factory.
“Some of us still are,” Pashkov said defiantly. “Those of us who are alive, at least one, me.” He pointed a gnarled finger at his own chest.
“The fourth man,” Rostnikov repeated. “Who is he?”
“I forget,” Pashkov said, showing yellow teeth barely rooted to his gums.
“You forget nothing,” Rostnikov said, looking down.
“I forget what I must forget. I’m a very old man.”
“A name,” Rostnikov said, and then softly added, “My wife is Jewish.”
“You lie, comrade policeman,” the old man said.
Rostnikov reached into his back pocket with a grunt, removed his wallet, and fished through it till he found the picture of Sarah and his identification papers. He handed them to the old man.
“You could have prepared these just to fool me?” he said, handing the photograph and papers back to the man who blocked his view of the loved and hated factory.
“I could have,” Rostnikov agreed. “But I didn’t, and you know I didn’t.”
“I know,” Pashkov said, painfully rising, using the side of the house to help him to a level of near dignity. “He was not a pleasant boy.”
“And you are afraid?”
“Vests,” Yuri Pashkov spat, coming to a decision. “His name was Shmuel Prensky. Beyond that I know nothing. He cooperated with the Stalinist pishers who came here in, I don’t know, 1930, ’31. He helped them. … I have nothing more to say.”
“You were afraid of him?” Rostnikov said, stepping out of the man’s line of sight.
“I’m still afraid of him,” Yuri whispered. “May you carry my damnation for bringing his name and memory back to me, for reminding me of those dark eyes that betrayed his own people. I damn you for bringing that photograph.”
Rostnikov stepped back and let the trembling man return to his chair and to his thoughts of useless vests and distant Italians wearing them.
There was nothing more to say. Rostnikov had two names now, and if Sofiya Savitskaya was right in her identification, the name of the killer of her father was Mikhail Posniky.
“The other man in the photograph,” Rostnikov tried, hoping to catch the old man before he was completely lost. “The little man with the smile in the photograph.”
“Lev, Lev Ostrovsky,” Yuri answered, sighing. “The clown, the actor.”
“Actor?”
“He stayed through the troubles and moved to Moscow.” The word Moscow came out like the spit of a dry, dirty word. “He left to become an actor. His father had been the rabbi here. But we had no need for rabbis or the sons of rabbis when Shmuel Prensky and his friends …”
He never finished the sentence. His eyes closed and then his mouth, hiding what little remained of lips. The sun was hot and high, and Rostnikov was tired and hungry. The walk to the police station was far and dry, but Porfiry Petrovich did not mind. He had some names to work with. He wanted to hurry back to Moscow, for it was there a survivor existed who might provide a link in the puzzle of the murder of Abraham Savitskaya.
FOUR
The young man and woman walked along Granovsky Street arm in arm. People who passed them in the late afternoon assumed the man had obtained his flattened nose in some hockey or soccer game. He was burly, rugged looking, and his straight black hair, falling over his forehead, bounced athletically as he moved. He talked easily and loudly. He wore a clean blue short-sleeved shirt that revealed his well-developed biceps and added to his image as an athlete. It was also appropriate that the woman with him was quite beautiful and strikingly blond, her hair worn back in an American-style ponytail. She was not thin like an American, however. She was full and athletic appearing, possibly weighing about 140 pounds and looking as if she had just rolled up her sleeves and stepped out of a poster for increasing production in the steel industry. All she needed was a flag. She wore no makeup and needed none. Health beamed from their faces, and Vera Shepovik glanced at them as she passed, cursed them silently, and wished that she could cross to the park, get out her father’s old rifle, and burn the joy of life from their faces.