“What did you tell them, in French?” Nimitsov asked in a gur-gle that Sasha could barely hear.
“That I am a policeman.”
Nimitsov nodded as if everything were clear now. “I’ll never get the chance to save Russia,” the dying man said.
“You saved me,” said Sasha. “Why?”
“Destiny,” said Nimitsov, choking.
“Destiny?”
“You ask a madman a question and you’ll get a mad answer,”
said Nimitsov. “It was a good fight, wasn’t it?”
“A very good fight,” said Sasha.
“Now, if you will excuse me, I must die.”
And he did.
“Are you wounded, Sasha Tkach? An ambulance is coming.”
“No. I should be but, no, I am not. The dog is hurt.”
Rostnikov left Sasha looking down at the corpse of the lunatic killer who had saved his life, and moved toward the cage of the pit bull. Tchaikovsky was still inside, lying down now, watching the end of the show.
“Dog,” said Rostnikov, “someone will be here soon to take care of your wounds.”
The dog looked up at Rostnikov.
“The Hindus believe in reincarnation till one achieves Nirvana,”
Rostnikov said conversationally, watching Sasha kneeling at the side of Nimitsov’s body. “I would value your opinion, dog. What were you before? Who were you before? I doubt if one remembers when one is reincarnated. What will Nimitsov be? I think a bird, a small, vulnerable bird would be appropriate.”
Rostnikov looked down at the dog who was looking back up at him, his head cocked to the left. No one had ever spoken to him this way before.
“But,” said Rostnikov, now looking at the bodies in the front row. “The truth is that I don’t believe in reincarnation. Atheism when taught from an early age is a difficult religion from which to escape. Perhaps we’ll talk again, dog. As I said, help is coming soon for you.”
Rostnikov checked his watch. If he did the paperwork tomorrow and hurried, there was still a chance he and Sarah could make most of Leon’s concert. He would have preferred the blues, or 1950s American modern jazz on his cassette machine, but this was a celebration. He had hoped for the best and expected the worst when he discovered that his wife needed more surgery. The best, as it seldom does, had come.
“Are you all right, Sasha?” he asked, moving back to his detective, who rose.
“I don’t know what to think, to feel. I think I. . I feel alive.”
“And things that seemed important no longer seem so.”
“Yes.”
“The feeling comes more frequently as you grow older,” said Rostnikov. “Go home. Come in early tomorrow. Write a long report. Kiss your children for me. Kiss your wife for yourself.”
“If she’ll let me,” said Sasha. “You spoke to her.”
“Yes. Go home. Try,” said Rostnikov. “You want a ride? I have a car and a driver.”
“Yes,” said Sasha, following Rostnikov out of the ring and into the darkness behind the stands.
When all the humans were gone, the pit bull walked slowly out of his open cage, ignoring the wounds to his ear and back. He moved to the side of Peter Nimitsov and smelled death. He looked at the bodies in the first row and smelled their death too.
Tchaikovsky sat back and waited as the sound of a siren approached from too far away for a human to hear.
Rostnikov recognized the melody, could hear the playful interchange of themes and instruments. It was not unlike the best work of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. Sarah took his hand. They were in the large auditorium of the Moscow Technical Institute. The room was about half full. Rostnikov estimated about one hundred people were listening, mostly older people, but a few of college age or a bit older. There were even two little girls in the audience. Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich had brought them. It had been Sarah’s idea.
The girls’ grandmother claimed she was too tired for a concert and that she had never learned to appreciate “smart” music. The girls sat next to Leon’s son, Ivan. The three children had been promised ice cream after the concert, if they weren’t too tired for the treat.
They had all insisted that they would not be too tired, but a glance showed that only Laura, the older girl, was still alert and even attentive.
The piece ended with a solo closing by Leon at the piano. When the last note stopped echoing, the applause began.
“Are you enjoying?” asked Sarah.
“Yes,” said the older girl.
The younger one had fallen asleep and was now in danger of toppling from the wooden seat. Ivan was still awake, but he had begun fighting his heavy eyelids. Rostnikov reached past his wife, picked the sleeping girl up, and put her on his lap. She stirred slightly and put her head on his shoulder.
“It is beautiful,” said the older girl.
“It is beautiful,” Sarah agreed, reaching over to touch her husband’s arm.
The next piece began.
Destruction, creation. Death, beauty, thought Rostnikov. He decided that if he could make the time tomorrow, he would find the young Israeli rabbi, Avrum Belinsky, and have a serious talk which would probably clarify nothing but, Rostnikov was sure, would make a one-legged policeman a bit more at peace with the chaos that is Russia.
The trio on the low stage began another piece.
“Brahms,” Sarah whispered.
Brahms would be most appropriate, Rostnikov thought as he smelled the clean sweet hair of the child on his lap.
The children were both asleep in the living room and, thank whatever gods there may be, Lydia Tkach was not in the apartment.
Sasha sat next to Maya on the bed. Neither spoke. Neither reached out to touch the other. There was a night chill of impend-ing Moscow rain in the air. People were going nearly mad waiting for the rain that refused to come. Maya wore flannel pajamas Sasha had given her for her birthday two years earlier. Sasha was in his white boxer shorts and the extra-large Totenham Hotspurs soccer shirt he had confiscated from a shipment of illegally imported goods from England a few months earlier. The three suitcases were on the floor in the corner. They were closed, waiting, threatening.
“Something has happened to me, Maya,” he said.
She said nothing. He went on.
“I would normally be depressed now, afraid of losing you and the children, dreading the need to face my mother, cursing my work. But I’m not. I feel calm, as if the things that usually get to me are not important. I don’t want you to go. I will surely weep.
But if you must, I’ll try to understand. You surely have reason to leave.”
“You are reacting to being alive when you should be dead, Sasha,” she said softly, her head down. “Lydia is right. You should try to do something less dangerous, but I know you will not.”
She was right.
“Maya, I did it again. The weakness came. I became a different person, Dmitri Kolk, criminal.”
“You were with a woman,” said Maya. “I knew. I could tell from the guilt in your voice on the phone. Did she have a name?”
“Tatyana,” he said.
“Was she pretty?”
“Thin, but pretty, yes.”
“Did you have to do it? Would the people you were with be suspicious if you didn’t?”
“Maybe. No,” Sasha said, “I was drunk. I was playing a role.
Forgive me if you can, but I was enjoying playing that role.”
Maya turned her head toward him. “Sasha, you just told me the truth.”
“I know.”
“You have always lied in the past.”
“Yes. I told you. Something has changed. Don’t go, Maya.”
“Twenty-two days’ trial,” she said. “I’m not threatening you, Sasha. It just seems reasonable, enough time to see if you’ve really changed.”
“Twenty-two days,” he said. “An odd number.”