Today, the office smelled of cooking and Pekkala remembered it was Friday, the one day of the week when Kirov prepared him a meal. Pekkala breathed a sigh of contentment at the odor of boiled ham, cloves, and gravy.
Kirov, still in his uniform, hunched over the stove, which took up one corner of the room. He was stirring the contents of a cast-iron pot with a wooden spoon and humming quietly to himself.
When Pekkala shut the door, the young man wheeled around, spoon raised like a magic wand. “Inspector! Just in time.”
“You know you don’t have to go to all this trouble,” said Pekkala, trying to sound convincing.
“If it was up to you,” replied Kirov, “we would be eating army-issue cans of Tushonka meat three times a day. My taste buds would commit suicide.”
Pekkala took a pair of earthenware bowls from the shelf and carried them over to the windowsill. Then, from the drawer of his desk, he brought out two metal spoons. “What have you got for us today?” he asked, peering over Kirov’s shoulder into the pot. He saw a dark sauce, a knot of ham, potatoes, boiled chestnuts, and a bundle of what looked like yellow twigs.
“Boujenina,” replied Kirov, tasting the end of the steaming wooden spoon.
“What’s that?” asked Pekkala, pointing at the twigs. “It looks like grass.”
“Not grass,” explained Kirov. “Hay.”
Pekkala brought his face closer to the bubbling mixture in the pot. “People can eat hay?”
“It’s just for seasoning.” Kirov picked up a chipped red-and-white enameled ladle and scooped some of the stew into Pekkala’s bowl.
Pekkala sat down in the creaky wooden chair behind his desk and peered suspiciously at his lunch. “Hay,” he repeated, and sniffed at the steam as it rose from his stew.
Kirov perched on the windowsill. His long legs dangled almost to the floor.
Pekkala opened his mouth to ask another question. Several questions, actually. What kind of hay was it? Where did it come from? Who thought this up? What does “boujenina” mean? But Kirov silenced him before he had a chance to speak.
“Don’t talk, Inspector. Eat!”
Obediently, Pekkala spooned the boujenina into his mouth. The salty warmth spread through his body. The taste of cloves sparked in his brain, like electricity. And the taste of the hay reached him now; a mellow earthiness which summoned memories of childhood from the darkened corners of his mind.
They ate in comfortable silence.
A minute later, when Pekkala’s spoon was scraping the bottom of the bowl, Kirov loudly cleared his throat. “Have you finished already?”
“Yes,” replied Pekkala. “Is there any more?”
“There is more, but that’s not the point! How can you eat so quickly?”
Pekkala shrugged. “It’s what I do.”
“What I mean,” explained Kirov, “is that you should learn to savor your food. Food is like dreams, Inspector.”
Pekkala held out his bowl. “Could I have some more while you explain this to me?”
Sighing with exasperation, Kirov took the bowl from Pekkala’s hand, refilled it, and handed it back. “There are three kinds of dream,” he began. “The first is just a scribble in your mind. It means nothing. It’s just your brain unwinding like a clock spring. The second kind does mean something. Your unconscious mind is trying to tell you something, but you have to interpret what it means.”
“And the third?” asked Pekkala, his mouth full of stew.
“The third,” said Kirov, “is what the mystics call Barakka. It is a waking dream, a vision, when you glimpse the workings of the universe.”
“Like Saint Paul,” said Pekkala, “on the road to Damascus.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” Pekkala waved his spoon. “Keep going. What does this have to do with food?”
“There is the meal you eat simply to fill your stomach.”
“Like a can of meat,” suggested Pekkala.
Kirov shuddered. “Yes, like those cans of meat you put away. And then there are the meals you buy at the cafe where you eat your lunch, which are not much better except that you don’t have to clean up after yourself.”
“And then?”
“And then there are meals which elevate food to an art.”
Pekkala, who had been eating all this time, dropped his spoon into the empty bowl.
Hearing this, Kirov shook his head in amazement. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you, Inspector?”
“No,” agreed Pekkala, “but I’ve had some excellent dreams. I don’t know why you didn’t become a professional chef.”
“I cook because I want to,” replied Kirov, “not because I have to.”
“Is there a difference?” asked Pekkala.
“All the difference in the world,” said Kirov. “If I had to cook all day for men like Nagorski, it would take all the pleasure out of cooking. Do you know what he was eating when I went into that restaurant? Blinis. With Caspian sevruga, each morsel like a perfect black pearl. He was just stuffing it into his face. The art of food was lost on him completely.”
Self-consciously, Pekkala glanced into his already empty bowl. He had done his best to eat at a dignified pace, but the truth was that if Kirov hadn’t been there, he would have set aside the bowl and would be eating right out of the pot by now.
“Any luck with Nagorski?” asked Kirov.
“Depends,” sighed Pekkala, “on what you call luck.”
“That machine he built,” said Kirov. “I hear it weighs more than ten tons.”
“Thirty, to be precise,” replied Pekkala. “To hear him speak of it, you’d think that tank was a member of his family.”
“You think he’s guilty?”
Pekkala shook his head. “Unpleasant, maybe, but not guilty, as far as I can tell. I released him. He is now back at the facility where his tank is being designed.” It was then he noticed a large box placed just inside the door. “What is that?”
“Ah,” Kirov began.
“Whenever you say ‘ah,’ I know it’s something I’m not going to like.”
“Not at all!” Kirov laughed nervously. “It’s a present for you.”
“It’s not my birthday.”
“Well, it’s sort of a present. Actually it’s more of a …”
“So it’s not really a present.”
“No,” admitted Kirov. “It’s really more of a suggestion.”
“A suggestion,” repeated Pekkala.
“Open it!” said Kirov, brandishing his spoon.
Pekkala got out of his chair. He placed the box on his desk and lifted the lid. Inside was a neatly folded coat. Several other garments lay underneath.
“I thought it was time you had a new outfit,” said Kirov.
“New?” Pekkala looked down at the clothes he was wearing. “But these are new. Almost, anyway. I bought them just last year.”
Kirov made a sound in his throat. “Well, when I say new, what I mean is ‘up to date.’ ”
“I am up to date!” Pekkala protested. “I bought these clothes right here in Moscow. They were very expensive.” And he was just about to go on about the prices he’d been forced to pay when Kirov cut him off.
“All right,” the major said patiently, trying another angle. “Where did you buy your clothes?”
“Linsky’s, over by the Bolshoi Theatre. Linsky makes durable stuff!” said Pekkala, patting the chest of his coat. “He told me himself that when you buy a coat from him, it’s the last one you will ever need to wear. That’s his personal motto, you know.”
“Yes”—Kirov brought his hands together in a silent clap—“but do you know what people call his shop? Clothes for Dead Men.”
“Well, that seems a little dramatic.”
“For goodness’ sake, Inspector, Linsky sells clothes to funeral homes!”