“I wish to report,” Karpo said.
“Proceed,” said Rostnikov.
And Karpo slowly, in detail, omitting only his own pain, related what had transpired in his visit to Andrei Morchov.
“I will have a full, written report on your desk this afternoon,” Karpo concluded.
“Comrade Morchov sounds as if he may have some idea of why this young man might want to do him harm,” said Rostnikov. “Or he may simply have a great deal on his mind, or he may simply be an unpleasant person. Who knows?”
“I was not antagonized by Comrade Morchov’s behavior,” Karpo said. “Though I did find it curious.”
“Forget the report till tomorrow,” Rostnikov said. “I won’t get in till late in the morning. There are some thefts at the Lentaka Shoe Factory I must look into. I may need your assistance with this. Shall we have someone keep an eye on our young suspect? Yuri …”
“Vostoyavek,” Karpo supplied.
“Get some rest, Emil Karpo,” said Rostnikov. “You’ll function better with some rest.”
Rostnikov hung up, and Karpo did the same. Yes, Karpo knew he would function better with rest, and he would get that revitalizing rest by lying in bed fully clothed, but first he would change those clothes, wash, shave. During the conversation with Rostnikov, Emil Karpo had decided the pain would have to wait. He would not permit it to interfere with the performance of his duties. And, later, when he did lie down, he would leave the light on.
Emil Karpo looked around his room carefully before moving to the sink in the corner. His desk, shelves full of black notebooks on each and every case he worked on, the bed in the corner, the single wooden chair, and the squat, wooden dresser in the corner were in place, and the photograph of Lenin working at his desk was where it should be, over his bed.
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had just finished his right-handed curls with fifty-pound weights when Karpo had called. When he had come home an hour earlier, he had changed into his blue sweat suit, pulled the weights out of the lower cabinet in the corner of the living room, laid out his blanket, and arranged the wooden chair so that he was facing into the room with the music from the record player behind him. Recently, since Sarah’s surgery, Rostnikov had found himself drawn to melancholy French music. He had traded six of his paperback American mysteries-two Lawrence Blocks, three Ed McBains, and a Jonathan Valin-for two very old Edith Piaf albums.
The weight routine required no thought. In fact, thought was to be avoided if at all possible. The workouts that left Porfiry Petrovich most satisfied, most refreshed, were those that passed without his being aware of time, passed with only a vague, blue-white hum instead of thought. But time had moved too slowly this night. He had sat on the chair, looked down at the neatly arranged weights, and smiled at his newest acquisition, a compact fifty-pound dumbbell from Bulgaria. It rested blue-black in front of him, inviting. He had listened to Edith Piaf sing about a piano and he had let the thoughts come, Sarah, the man who walked like a bear, his son Iosef, the Gray Wolfhound, Sasha Tkach’s distracted look, Karpo’s headache. The thoughts came and began to fade into the blue-white hum of soft music and the flow of energy and effort in his muscles.
The positions were awkward because of his leg, but Rostnikov had mastered them long ago. His lifts and repetitions were mostly for the upper body, arms, neck, abdomen, back. His good leg received a series of weighted rises near the end of the workout that ended with a painful but necessary manipulation of his left leg. When Sarah was home she usually helped him with the final manipulation. Rostnikov had been bending the leg and coming out of his blue-white peace when Karpo called.
Now Rostnikov put down the receiver and looked around the room. He would turn off the phonograph, put away the weights and blanket, place the chair back next to the table, and then shower, after which he would change, make the promised visit to his neighbors, the Agarevas, with his tools to fix the leaking pipe, and then return home to finish for the second time his Ed McBain novel as he ate his sandwich of black bread and thick-sliced cheese. He had one cucumber and four potatoes left plus a bottle of mineral water.
Rostnikov knew he would eat quickly, that the emptiness of the apartment without Sarah would be most evident at the table. He let the thoughts come back now, his wife and son, the people with whom and for whom he worked, but behind them loomed the large and melancholy shadow of Ivan Bulgarin, the man who walked like a bear.
At the precise moment that Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was turning off his phonograph, Sasha Tkach was telling his wife and mother in great detail about his and Zelach’s efforts to locate a missing bus and its driver.
“Put it on television,” Lydia said, sipping her glass of tea. Lydia was small, loud, decisive, and inflexible. Unfortunately, she was, as even Maya had to admit, sometimes right. It was simply difficult to acknowledge that someone as maddening as Lydia Tkach could be right about anything. “Go on television and tell everyone to look for the bus.”
“There are priorities,” Sasha explained. “We would fill the television time with announcements of crimes. There would be nothing but descriptions of criminals, pictures of stolen automobiles, missing children.”
The baby Pulcharia tugged at her father’s pants and grunted. She was more than ten months old, crawling and good-natured. They were seated around the table finishing their Moscow-style borscht of beet soup, tomatoes, cabbage, and a bit of ham. Sasha reached down to pick the baby up and smiled at his wife. She returned the smile without enthusiasm. Missing buses were not what she wished to be talking about. She wished her husband to address their forthcoming move, to tell his mother that she would not be moving with them. She knew his pain, but it had to be done, and putting it off would not make the task easier.
“So,” Lydia went on loudly, reaching over to pat her granddaughter’s head, “so the television would be filled with crime. What is so terrible about that? It’s better to see bald men reading the news and old men making speeches?”
“No one would watch,” said Sasha.
“Nonsense,” said Lydia. “They do in America. In America that’s all they do now, show pictures of murderers and the people watch and go out and drag the killers in. What are they showing here on television that’s better than murderers and bus thieves?”
Pulcharia leaned forward against her father and gave his neck a gentle, moist, and toothless bite.
“In any case,” Sasha went on, “we did find one bus driver who says he saw the missing bus heading away from the city, far off its route, a short time after it was reported missing.”
“Can we talk about something else?” Maya said softly, too softly for Lydia to hear.
“And no one else saw this?” Lydia asked, finishing her borscht. “Don’t let the baby chew on you. It will make her sick.”
Sasha sat the baby on his lap and whispered to her, “Krasee’v/aya doch,” beautiful daughter.
“A man reported having seen an old couple get off the bus in front of the park,” Sasha went on as the baby rubbed her eyes. “He didn’t exactly report it. We followed the bus route and found him on a bench, an old man himself. He thinks he knows the old couple but we couldn’t find them.”
“Television,” Lydia said. “You should put the baby to sleep. She’s tired.”