The poet stooped resisting and surrendered his body to them.
The trap they had set had worked. But then his own plan began to unfold. First let them think they had succeeded.
The man in black punched the poet in the stomach a few more times, and Seriozha felt a belated surprise at human cruelty. He waited for his death as though for an unpleasant procedure— he had died many times before, and it was unpleasant, like a coarse male nurse administering an enema.
With a dull pop, the little ventilation window flew wide open, and he felt himself hanging, the steam-heating pipes searing his side.
This won’t do at all, he thought, looking down through his long eyelashes at the Cheka officers who were stamping their feet, brushing themselves off, and straightening their sleeves, as though after a snowball fight. One left, while the other began to search the room.
Hanging like this was terribly uncomfortable, but soon the man in black grew tired. He stood up, then disappeared behind the bathroom door. The poet quickly loosened the knot and hopped onto the floor. Then he slipped into the armoire.
He didn’t have to wait very long. From the depths of the armoire, he could hear a wild cry from the fellow who discovered the body was missing. He listened to the halting explanation, interrupted by threats, and heard them send someone down to the morgue to look for an unclaimed dead body.
A dead body was found, but it turned out to be a suicide who had slit his wrists. By then, however, the Cheka officers had no other choice. Time had them in a stranglehold, chafing their throats, pulling them toward the open window.
The poet watched through a crack between the doors of the armoire as they smeared glue on the gutta-percha mask, which they now pulled over the face of the hapless suicide.
He caught sight of the dead man’s feet, then a lifeless arm— and then a new body was hanging from the noose, and the poet listened to their unsteady breathing.
When at last they had left, Seriozha climbed out of the armoire and looked sadly at the lifeless face of his double. Bidding himself farewell, he touched a cold dead hand and left the room.
Seriozha closed the door using a copy of the key, and went out into the corridor, past the receptionist in a paramilitary uniform who was fast asleep.
Leningrad was black and still.
The damp cold struck him in the chest, honing his senses. The wolfhound had missed—and the poet’s trick had worked; as had the Cheka officer’s trap, for that matter.
Now he could move far away, to the east, to hide beneath Siberia’s snowy quilt, where cities and towns have peculiar and wonderful names like Ol’ Erofei Palych. Or Winter. Winter sounded like a good name. Why not settle down there?
A new page of his life was beginning: with the dawn snow and the pale sun—a fair copy right off the bat.