During the month of the trial, bouncers from the bar, accidental witnesses, the banya attendant, wiping his brow with shaking hands, and Savage's daughter avoiding looking in his direction, all passed before Karimov. He listened to what they had to say indifferently. Like the lines on his palm, the wrinkles that had appeared on his face revealed his fate while the outcome of the trial, which he knew in advance, lay in the creases by his mouth.
«He checked whether the gun was loaded, smirked and fired!» said a waiter from the Three Lemons, straightening his glasses.
This was echoed by a bouncer who said, «He turned the barrel towards Coffin and — bang!»
«He got drunk at the banya and boasted about killing Coffin,» confirmed the attendant, so agitated he trembled.
Saam was called several times. He talked about the murder of Coffin, acting it out, and the judge listened open-mouthed. Seeing Lapin in court, Saam gave him a friendly wink so that the prosecutor and the lawyers looked round to see who the wink was meant for. Seeing his former subordinate, haggard and crushed, the prosecutor grimaced and whispered something to his secretary.
When Savely Savage took the witness stand Karimov leant eagerly against the bars and Lapin, half-rising, stared at him so intently that when Savage intercepted his gaze, he felt as if the investigator was shaking him by the collar.
The court was so quiet it was possible to hear the prosecutor's rasping breath and Karimov's whispering which reminded Savage of the old Saami woman's fortune-telling but he couldn't make out what he was saying.
«Who killed Coffin?» came a shout from the public and the judge banged her hammer and called for order.
Savage cleared his throat, loosened his shirt-collar and looked at Karimov. There was whispering in court and it seemed to Savage that the wind was rubbing the forest up the wrong way and the aspens were jingling leaves as round as coins, their tops leaning towards one another. Savage's cheek twitched as if an invisible hand had patted his face and he looked fitfully around the room, afraid that he would see one Savely Savage looking at Savely Savage and tugging on his matted beard. «Just don't split in two like a tree hit by lightning,» Savage thought in a fright, stroking his shaven chin.
«Why did you run away into the forest?» The judge's voice was like a dash of cold water.
«I was a-a-afraid for m-m-my daughter,» Savage replied, rubbing his temples. «They threatened to get rid of her. I was prepared to do anything for my daughter's sake even to take the blame…»
The now quiet courtroom tried to catch his every word. When Savage was asked about the details of his wanderings, muffled gasps were heard from the seats.
«What did you eat?» inquired the lawyer. «How did you survive for so long?»
«Mushrooms, berries, roots, leftovers from the tip…» said Savage, ticking them off on his fingers.
Saam exchanged looks with his sidekicks and pursed his lips:
«I said to check the tip!»
«We did. We couldn't find him,» one apologized.
Savage covered his twitching cheek with his hand, embarrassed by the appearance of the nervous tick that twisted his face into hideous grimaces.
«Did you come into town?»
Savage shook his head. He was squeezing the cold pebble from Salmon's grave and, as he looked at Saam, sitting astride a chair in the back row, he recalled her protruding cheekbones and face like a skull.
«I look at myself in the mirror and I wonder, ‘Severina, Severina, where are you now? Where have you gone?'» the girl whispered, head bowed as she admired a bead and feather bracelet the old Saami woman had given her. «Where are you now?» Savage asked himself, thinking that it was Salmon they had buried on the island beneath a rough-hewn cross and Severina, whom he'd never seen, in the empty coffin on the river bank.
Savage rolled the stone in his hand and thought about where that Savely Savage had gone who had tightened a wire round Antonov's neck and listened to his last gasps. Would he come back? Or was he now inside him and contemplating, as he looked at Saam sitting in the courtroom, something the other Savely Savage could never bring himself to do?
«Did you shoot Krotov?» the lawyer asked again, bringing him back to the courtroom.
«Who?» Savage asked in turn.
«The mayor, Krotov,» he repeated. «Were you the one who shot him at the banya?»
«I don't know how to fire a gun,» said Savage with a shrug and the courtroom burst out laughing.
As he left the witness stand, some journalists ran up to him but he was still squeezing his stone and held out a fist so the puzzled reporters shook that.
Lapin was already waiting for him in the corridor. He was nervously playing with his jacket collar and Savage would have liked to go back into the courtroom but the door was already locked.
«I just need to know,» Lapin whispered to him heatedly, taking him by the elbow. «It won't change anything now but I need to know! Or I'll go crazy. Just give me a wink…»
«Sorry, sorry,» said Savage. He detached his hand carefully.
«Just give me a wink. I'll understand. It's all such a mess. You said one thing then another. I'm losing my mind. I beg you. Just tip me a wink… I won't tell anyone! I just need to know!»
Savage turned away so that the investigator couldn't take the nervous twitch of his eye for an answer.
«They've forced me out of my job, you know!» Lapin called after him. «Forced me out! Can you imagine? So that I don't get in their way…»
Savage hastened down the stairs but Lapin leant over the railing and carried on shouting:
«Just give me a wink? What would it cost you?»
The final day of the trial was held in camera. Everyone was heartily sick of the murders and only a small crowd of onlookers and reporters had gathered outside the court. With nothing else to do, they talked about the weather that was as changeable as the mood of a capricious woman.
A court official recounted that when Karimov heard the verdict he burst out laughing and shook his head as if he'd lost his mind. Stretching his arms out through the bars, he yelled at the judge: «It was you in the snow drift! I recognized you straight away! Do you remember me? Do you?» But the judge ignored his cries, continued reading out the sentence, straightened her skirt and left the court. Karimov carried on laughing as he remembered how he couldn't bring himself to kill the drunken woman lying in the snow.
Back in his cell he mused, «If everything in life is predetermined, if everything is mapped out in detail by the Almighty who knows the manner of our deaths even before we are born, the Almighty is an evil joker just like my foster father.»
«You had it all,» said a prison warder, shaking his head as he put his face up to the viewing window. «Money, power, a flat in Moscow… Everything. What more did you want?»
Karimov grinned, stroking his cheek as if checking whether he'd remembered to shave.
«I've got what you can't buy for any money — freedom!» He gestured at the cell.
The warder laughed:
«Freedom? In jail? You haven't got it. You've lost it!»
Karimov rolled on to his stomach with a yawn and buried his face in the pillow. The warder waited to hear what he would say but deciding he wasn't going to get an answer, was about to close the window, still laughing at Karimov. All of a sudden, however, Karimov leapt up and looked out through the bars. The guard could feel his fevered breath on his face.
«Freedom means freedom from everything and above all from freedom itself!» Karimov said poking the warder in the face. He jumped back and slammed the window shut.
«You had it alclass="underline" money, power… what more did you want?» he continued to mutter to himself as he went off along the corridor.