“Marina,” he shouted.
She turned quickly toward him, her hand touching the lever. The Chaika began to spin wildly as it jerked to a stop.
“No,” she screamed, and Sasha stopped no more than four feet from her, hesitating, watching her hand on the lever, but she was too late. She turned quickly toward the space under the car and realized that Rostnikov had stepped back, limped just beyond the shadow of the massive weight dangling from the chains.
Her eyes met those of the inspector and asked a question. Tkach glanced at Rostnikov, who looked up at the car and shrugged.
Marina’s hand pulled back as Tkach lunged for her, and the Chaika dropped on screeching chains, dropped with a massive crash, its front end hitting first and then its rear. Glass and metal exploded through the room, and Tkach threw himself to the floor. The Chaika and the car-theft operation were no more.
The pain was much worse that day than it had been the day before, but Vera had expected that. Actually, she welcomed it, for she had already committed herself, found meaning to the end of her life. If she were suddenly and miraculously to be cured, to discover it had all been a mistake, then the policeman and the others she had killed would have died for nothing. Well, not for nothing. The corruption would still have existed, but there would have been an irony she did not want to face. There was just so much irony a human can take, she thought as she finished putting the rifle in the trombone case, snapped the flimsy latch, and glanced over at her mother, who had fallen asleep over her sewing.
Adriana Shepovik snored gently, a slight breeze touching her face through the open window. Vera felt nothing for her. Then the pain in her stomach punished her and told her to feel. She tried, tried to imagine her mother alone, as she would be, but Vera could feel nothing but its truth. Vera would not be, and her mother would. Her mother would live without meaning, but she would live and suffer. She was good at suffering, had turned it into an old woman’s art.
Vera took seven or eight deep breaths and then a series of short ones before taking five of her pills. She had bought the pills from a clerk in the medical-supply store. He had been furtive, demanded extra money, refused to give the name of the pills, insisting only that they would temporarily eliminate pain. He guaranteed it. He was right, but the pain stayed away for only short periods, and more and more pills were required to relieve it.
Vera made her way to the metro station and glanced at the sky as she went. There was the possibility of rain, which would be fine. Her original plan was to wander around till night and move to the station she had picked out, but the pain might come again. She didn’t have much time. Maybe if it rained, if the rain came, it would grow dark, would provide an artificial night. She had a sense of incompleteness. It was like reading a newspaper. If a word from a story caught her eye, she had to read the whole story even if the subject didn’t interest her or the story would haunt her. Things once begun had to be finished, and she had decided within herself that she must destroy at least one more soldier or policeman, one more at least. Was that too much to ask after what she had been forced to suffer? If a God existed, would he not grant her this wish, look down at her and say she deserved that satisfaction? If a God existed, he could simply take the soul of the policeman and do with it what he would do, anyway, at some point, as he would do with Vera’s soul if one existed. Vera didn’t think one existed. One’s satisfactions and rewards and revenge came in this life, no other.
She tried to look at no one as she rode the subway, not even at the two sailors who talked in the far corner. She stood, swaying slightly with the movement of the car, trying to hold her upright trombone case close to her so no one would feel its weight and sense its shifting contents. At the Kropotkinskaya metro station, groups of young people carrying little bags jostled past her, hurrying toward the huge Moskva Swimming Pool. She let them flow by her and began her walk and her wait, wishing the sky to darken, hoping she could put off taking more of the pills, which, she knew, created a pleasant disorientation that might hamper her aim and shake her resolve.
She walked around the outside wall of the pool, listening to the screams and voices within. At the Kropotkin embankment beyond the pool she leaned over the stone wall and watched the boats going down the Moscow River. She watched for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, grew restless, felt the pain returning, and started back toward Volkhonka Street. People sped past her now, but she moved across the massive Pushkin Fine Arts Museum. She knew the story of the museum, had visited it frequently, particularly as a child in school when it was thought she had some artistic talent. The building had been erected at the turn of the century. It was, she knew, the largest museum in the Soviet Union outside of the Leningrad Hermitage.
She clutched the trombone case to her, ignoring the looks of guards and visitors. The crowd was large, and she let herself wander, seeing but not absorbing the Greek and Roman collection, the stone statues that would be there long after she was gone. Before she could begin to hate them, she wandered into the picture gallery where she stepped on the foot of a small boy, who screamed.
The boy’s mother looked at Vera, ready to fight, but something in Vera’s face stopped her, and she settled for, “That’s all right, Denis. Some people are blind pigs.”
Vera walked on past Botticellis, Rembrandts, Rubenses, Van Dycks, Constables, Gauguins, Picassos, and Van Goghs. Once they had given her satisfaction. Now they sickened her with their suggestion of timelessness. Vera would leave nothing behind her, no Olympic records, no paintings, her only art of creation one of destruction, a protest.
She had to take more pills. There was no help for it. She shifted the trombone case to her other hand and pulled the bottle out of her pocket. There were not many of the green pills left, perhaps a dozen or so. She would have to go back to the man who had sold them to her, the man who sickened her with his corruption. She placed the case between her legs, poured out some pills, threw them into her mouth, and forced them down dry. It was painful, but the pain in her dry throat distracted her from the pain in her stomach. She stood while people moved about her, the practiced move of Muscovites who watched without making it clear they were doing so. Everyone gave the impression of minding their own business except for a heavyset babushka who walked over and said, “If you’re sick, you shouldn’t be walking the streets. You should be home, not giving diseases to other people.”
Vera looked at the angry old woman, who was saying exactly what her own mother would say to a stranger on the street. Either pretend the other person isn’t there or walk right up to them on the street and chastise them for not sharing your moral commitment.
Vera looked at the woman with vague curiosity. She stared down the old woman, who eventually backed away, shrugging and angry.
The sky was darker when she stepped back outside, and she felt some sense of hope. It was going to rain. No doubt. It would rain. She felt dizzy, slightly dizzy, but also somewhat euphoric as she crossed Kropotkin Square and was almost struck by a bus at the corner of Gogol Boulevard. When she started down Kropotkin Street and passed the entrance to the Soviet Peace Committee Building, the sky rumbled distinctly.
“Let’s hurry,” a man growled at a young woman in high heels who gave him an angry glare as they passed Vera.
The street was filled with people, many people, especially soldiers. There were policemen, too, an ample supply. The trick would be to get to her destination, set up, and pick her target just before the rain came or just after it ended. During the rain people would get off the street. She would have to be clever, precise, careful. She would have to remember everything her father had told her about shooting.