The old man turned to face Rostnikov, who was now convinced that he was dealing with senility and had best be simply polite and depart.
“Did your policeman have a name,” Rostnikov said. “This one does.” He pulled out his wallet and displayed it, though the man had obviously recognized him for what he was.
“There was no policeman,” Ostrovsky said, shaking his head. “I was acting. You couldn’t tell I was acting? That’s the goal, the very thing all these young actors miss the point of. That business about the policeman was one of Tatyana’s speeches from Gorky’s Enemies. Have you ever seen it? “
“No,” Rostnikov admitted. The stage was cool, and the chief inspector half expected the ghosts of past audiences to reveal themselves and laugh at his confusion.
“Too much talk,” the old man said, holding up his arthritic right hand and opening and closing it to show what talk was. “But I got you, huh? I can still act circles around these people today, these actors.”
He demonstrated his ability to act circles around those who frequented the stage by swirling his mop in a circle on the floor.
“I can see that,” Rostnikov said.
“I actually met Anton Chekhov when I was a boy,” Ostrovsky said, pointing to a spot on the stage where he presumably met Chekhov. “Right here.”
“Chekhov died before you were born,” Rostnikov said.
“Then it was Tolstoy I met,” the old man said with a shrug.
“Abraham Savitskaya,” Rostnikov said. His leg was beginning to stiffen. He shuffled to the single chair on the stage, moved the record player to the floor, sat, and looked up at the old man, who had been struck dumb by the name from antiquity.
“He’s dead,” said Ostrovsky, his permanent smile going dead.
“How did you know?” Now Rostnikov was directing, acting to the nonexistent audience. He was back in his familiar role.
“Everyone’s dead.” The old man shrugged. “I have a stage to mop.”
“Mikhail Posniky,” Rostnikov shouted as the old man made a move to resume his work. The name stopped his motion. Rostnikov had a few more he could pull out if need be.
“Dead,” Ostrovsky said.
“No, I think he murdered Abraham Savitskaya two nights ago here in Moscow.”
“I haven’t seen either of them for … a thousand years,” Ostrovsky said. “Who can remember-”
“You remember lines from old plays.”
“Ah,” the old man said, his smile strong and crinkly. “That is fantasy, easy to recall. Reality, now that is not nearly as real to an actor.”
How long could an eighty-year-old man stand up? It was an experiment that Rostnikov might have to make to get some answers.
“A brass candlestick,” Rostnikov said. “Do you remember a brass candlestick that Abraham Savitskaya owned?”
The old man’s face looked blank, and he began to shake his head when an image came, a memory. He shuffled a foot for new balance.
“No, it was Mikhail who left with the candlesticks,” he said, seeing some vague image in the past. “Mikhail and Abraham left together, going to America, they said. Each had a little suitcase, and Mikhail had the candlestick. His mother had given it to him just before he left. Why do I remember such things, such details? Who wants to remember such things?”
Rostnikov had no answer, only questions. “And have you seen either of them since they left the village, left Yekteraslav?”
“Who?”
“The men, Posniky or Savitskaya.”
Ostrovsky shrugged. “Rumors-I heard rumors from people I ran into from the village, just rumors, rumors, rumors. You know rumors?”
“I know rumors,” Rostnikov admitted to the parched mask of a smiling face that moved slowly toward him. “What kind of rumors?”
“That Mikhail had become a big gangster in America, just like the movies. Tiny Caesar, the Godfather. Guns. Everything. It was possible. Who knew? He was a hard boy, a hard young man. I was a clown.”
“Savitskaya?”
“Ah,” Ostrovsky said, moving close enough to whisper. “A macher.”
“A macher?”
“That’s Yiddish,” Ostrovsky confided. “A dead language for dead Jews like me. Savitskaya was a dealer, a man not to be trusted.”
“One more name,” Rostnikov said, standing up. “A fourth young friend of yours from the village. Shmuel Prensky. What became-”
Rostnikov had simply been finishing the routine, looking for another step, another lead. He had not anticipated the reaction. Lev Ostrovsky went an enamel white and trembled. The smile became a grimace of pain or fear.
“Dead,” Ostrovsky said, holding his mop handle, his knuckles twisted and white.
“When did he-”
“Long ago. He is dead, quite dead. Buried. Long ago.”
“Yuri Pashkov still lives in Yekteraslav,” Rostnikov pursued, walking over to the old man, ready to grab him if he should fall. “Pashkov-you remember him. He also seemed afraid of the name of Shmuel Prensky.”
“Afraid? Me?” Ostrovsky said with a false laugh. He was acting quite poorly now. His reviews, if he survived the terror he was going through, would not be approving. “Shmuel Prensky is dead. I’m a very old man in case you haven’t noticed. I have nothing to be afraid of from anyone on this earth. I’ve played the great roles. On this very stage I played Grigory Stepanovich Smirnov in Chekhov’s The Boor. And I’d still be acting if they let Jews have decent roles. See, I’m not afraid to tell a policeman such things. So how could you-”
Rostnikov closed his eyes and opened them with a little shrug. “Perhaps I was mistaken,” he said.
“Mistaken,” the old man said vehemently. He began to mop the floor without bothering to dip it into the water. Then a thought struck him, and he turned, trembling.
“Gorky himself,” he said, sweeping the darkness with his hand, “said the Art Theatre is as marvelous as the Tretyakov Gallery, St. Basil’s Cathedral, and all the finest sights of Moscow. It is impossible not to love it.”
“I can see that,” Rostnikov said, watching the man justify himself to himself.
“It’s enough to simply be in here, to be on this stage, to play out a little scene between soaping. To live out my last days with no trouble.”
“I understand,” Rostnikov said.
“‘Life,’” said the old man almost to himself, “‘has gone by as if I had never lived. I’ll lie down a while. There’s no strength left in you, old fellow; nothing is left, nothing. You addle head.’”
“Firs’s final speech in The Cherry Orchard,” Rostnikov said. “A fine performance.”
“Thank you,” Ostrovsky said, some of his spirit and color returning. “But-”
The old man was looking over Rostnikov’s shoulder behind the stage, and Rostnikov turned to watch his uniformed driver hurry toward him. The man or the uniform had brought the fear back into Ostrovsky’s eyes.
“Comrade inspector,” the young man with the flat face said, ignoring the setting and the ancient actor. “You have a message, an urgent message from Investigator Zelach.”
“Coming,” Rostnikov answered, and then to the old man, he said, “Perhaps we will discuss ancient history and the life of the theater at some point in the future.”
“My pleasure,” said Ostrovsky, his smile broadening, his manner making it clear that such an encounter would not be a pleasure at all.
Rostnikov followed the driver toward the wings. He couldn’t keep up with the younger man, not with his bad leg. Instead, he relied on that which he always relied on, his steady movement. He would bear in mind Gorky’s detective from Kostroma; he would endeavor to move with caution and not get himself killed by runaway horses.
Behind Rostnikov, Lev Ostrovsky waited, waited a full five minutes, waited cautiously in case it was some trick and the policeman was hiding in the darkness. He forced himself to finish the floor, to make straight lines of soapy water, to set up the record player again, to listen to the martial music from Rocky, to control himself, to act out the role of cleaning man, a role he wanted to continue for whatever days he might have left. He waited a full five minutes, and then, when he was confident that he was again alone, he put down his mop, turned off the record player, and hurried off to find a telephone.