A tall, solid woman in a torn shirt wandered around the department, looking in at the wards. She was barefoot and dishevelled and a blissful smile played unbidden on her features like a cat.
«Rina, Rina, come and join us!» the men called, tearing themselves away from the television. «Come on, gorgeous!»
Every year, Rina Oktyabrina would be brought over from the psychiatric hospital where she had become pregnant, God knows by whom. She would wrap a pillow in a sheet, cradle it like a baby and sing it a lullaby. Her ward had doors without handles, windows with bars and fat half-drunken nurses. The only man was the old, gout-ridden doctor so they didn't know who to blame. Oktyabrina would be tied to her bed, locked in the back room and kept under constant observation on her walks and yet once a year her stomach stubbornly swelled. «It's the Holy Ghost's!» the nurses would say blasphemously, crossing themselves and dispatching her to the hospital where she would be scraped out like a pot of burnt porridge and then wander the floors of the hospital, empty and insane.
The women's department didn't have enough nurses who could perform both deliveries and abortions and they were always losing Oktyabrina, like a needle in a haystack. She would pop up here or there and, arms outstretched as a scarecrow's, she would snatch bags of fruit from visiting relatives. A stranger to shame, she would sit on men's laps or shrug off her top to reveal her drooping breasts. The men lured her into their wards where she hid under the beds from the nurses and during the night staff from the women's wards would search every floor in the hospital for their missing patient.
«Now, now, back you go!» said a nurse blocking her path. She dialled a number and yelled into the receiver: «Come and collect your star patient. She's wandering half-naked round the surgical ward!»
«Honestly, she should have been sterilized long since!» said another nurse, shaking her head as she peered out of the treatment room and wrung out a wet cloth over a bucket. «Every year, she comes here. Without fail!»
Oktyabrina pushed the nurse out of the way and ran over to the television, tugging down her short top. Her curvaceous hips covering the screen, she cast a triumphant look at her audience and stamped a bare foot.
«Rina, lift your shirt!» whispered a man with his leg in plaster, hand over his mouth. «Come on, Rina!»
As everyone laughed, the woman lifted her shirt, revealing the curly hair low down on her belly. Savage jumped up as if he'd been scalded. He turned away from the madwoman and the men nodded at him.
«Look what a gentleman! Turning up his nose!» shouted the leg patient, scratching the skin under his plaster. «She might be an old bag to you but she suits me fine!» he guffawed.
«You've no shame!» said a nurse with a waggish shake of fist. «No shame at all!»
Savage stretched out on his bed, which rocked on its springs. His future seemed less and less clear to him and suddenly it occurred to him that he might escape — into the forest, back to the Saami, to the down-and-outs at the tip, anywhere as long as it was far away from this town.
He took the paperwork out of his bedside table and ran a finger along the leaping lines that detailed the murder of Coffin, of which he had now become an inadvertent witness.
He was met outside the hospital by his wife and by police officers who supported him by the arms as they led him to a car. He was suddenly stricken by a dreadful feeling of weakness as if the months of wandering were hanging on him like drunken girls. He couldn't take a single step unaided.
His wife had managed to plaster a smile on her face as if she'd used some special lipstick, but over the years the smile had become increasingly false and now, watching her curl her lips into a sneer, Savage lowered his gaze. His old life was coming back like a flood tide, washing over a bereft shore and Savage felt he was just the same as he had been three months earlier, the unloved husband of a domineering wife.
Pulling the door to, Mrs Savage stayed out on the landing for a long time whispering to the policemen, while Savely, like an uninvited guest, hovered in the hallway, too timid to cross the threshold. He gazed around as if seeing the walls he'd spent his life in for the first time. Taking in the smell of the flat, he recognized the tartness of lemon peel hidden in the wardrobe, the pungency of lipstick and the smell of the cigarettes his daughter disguised with cheap scent. There was the odour of old wood and leather boots, of dust on books and family meals, of a pillow wet with tears and the withered violets Vasilisa had forgotten, as always, to water, and the many other aromas that made up the smell of his home and were evident only on returning from a long journey.
He found his slippers under the chest of drawers. He popped into the kitchen and opened the fridge out of habit to find his shelf was bare. Gnawing on a piece of cheese, he went into his room that he had recalled so wistfully at the town tip. He fell onto his bed, which was magically soft, and fell asleep, fully dressed, still holding the cheese. When his wife looked in on him, it was a long time before she could take her eyes off this stranger who had appeared in the flat.
«Vasilisa's staying over at a friend's,» she whispered into the telephone. «I'm scared to go out and staying in… Yes, yes, you're right,» she nodded at her friend's advice. «I'll put a knife under my pillow.»
Savage stood in front of the mirror inspecting his dried-up, yellow body, covered in cuts and bruises. Gnarled blue veins had appeared on his legs. His ribs jutted out over a hollow belly and his chin was as sharp as an old man's.
«I look terrible,» he said, pulling a face and running a hand through his hair when he met his wife in the hall.
Fidgeting with the belt of her housecoat, Mrs Savage, embarrassed, said nothing.
«E-e-everything's so mixed up, s-s-so w-w-weird…» Savage tried to say, stammering as he had before. «I feel like I've gone mad.»
«So what's new?» snapped his wife, unable to resist and immediately biting her lip in a rage.
Savage simply thought that there are no truces in domestic battles.
«I'm glad you're back,» she lied, embarrassing them both with the falsehood. «Have you read the statements?»
«Wh-wh-where it s-s-says K-K-Karimov shot Coffin?» Savage gave his wife a long, challenging look but she didn't bat an eyelid. «What d-d-does Vasilisa have to say? A-a-after all she w-w-was there.»
«How could it possibly be any different to what you said?»
Pulling her housecoat more tightly around her, Mrs Savage vanished into the bathroom, locking it noisily behind her.
Vasilisa came back in the evening and looked at her father with mean and frightened eyes. His daughter avoided him, hiding away in her room, and when he did come across her in the kitchen, she jumped away in fright, a hand raised in self-defence.
«Vas-s-silisa, shall we have a chat?» Savage asked, standing in her way.
The girl was sullen and silent, her gaze turned away.
«L-l-let's t-t-talk about that n-n-night,» said Savage lowering himself onto a stool and taking his daughter's hand.
«H-h-have you r-r-read w-w-what's in the papers?»
Vasilisa licked her lips and nodded.
«A-a-and what do you think about it?»
She twirled her hair round a finger and didn't reply.
«What d-d-do you think ab-b-bout K-k-karimov?»
«He's a terrible man, that Karimov. It's a good thing they caught him,» she said, choosing her words as if she was feeling her way across a mossy swamp, checking where she could put her foot down safely.
«And that n-n-night?»
«I was really scared when he fired,» she sighed, lowering her gaze. «I only saw Coffin fall and then everyone started yelling and running around and I didn't understand any of it and then people said you were the one who shot him…» Vasilisa breathed in deeply and fired out, «I even believed it myself for a while.»