“She was right,” Sasha said, moving to get his jacket from the closet. “I owe her a great deal.”
“We all owe our parents a great deal,” Maya said gently. “But we cannot spend our entire lives paying the debt. Parents should understand that. My parents understand that.”
“You are missing the point,” Sasha said with mounting irritation.
“And that is?” asked Maya, offering Pulcharia a bottle that the baby grabbed greedily.
“My mother should have time. She has no friends. She’s alone. Damn. There’s a stain on my jacket.”
“Take it off,” said Maya. “I’ll clean it.”
“No time,” he snapped. “I’m late.”
“I’m sorry you’re so upset, Sashaska,” Maya said.
Tkach hurried across the room and gave his wife and baby identical kisses on the cheek.
“You are blaming me, Sasha,” Maya said as he opened the front door.
“I am not blaming you, Maya,” he said with a sigh.
“And you are not kissing me,” she said.
“I’m late,” he answered.
“Then go.”
And he went out the door, closing it hard behind him.
Zelach was waiting for him in a Zhiguli with a defective heater and the tendency to pull to the left. Tkach opened the passenger door and slid in.
“I’ve been waiting,” Zelach said, pulling away from the curb.
Tkach grunted.
“I haven’t had anything to eat,” Zelach went on. “You know that stand at the Kiev Railway Station, the one where the Jews sell those meat pies?”
“Knishes,” Tkach said with a grunt.
“Do you mind if I stop for a few?”
Tkach grunted and Zelach took that for an affirmation.
“Where will we start after we eat?” Zelach asked.
“They found a body,” Tkach said, looking out the window. “Dumped on a road off the Outer Ring. Man named Tolvenavov. Shot.”
“So?” Zelach said.
“He was due home last night,” Tkach went on. “He takes route seventy-five; the missing bus was on that route. Computer put it together this morning after they fed in information from the dead man’s wife. Made a match with our request for cross-checking on what we had about bus and driver. Shevlov called me when it came through.”
Zelach nodded. Even copying machines were a source of confusion to him, a confusion he tried to hide with nods of understanding that sometimes got him in trouble.
“So, where do we go?”
“To the laboratory to see if the dead man can tell us something. Can I ask you something, Zelach?”
Zelach nodded uncertainly.
“Do you have a mother, Zelach?”
Zelach barely avoided hitting a grunting Volga that pulled ahead of him in a hurry as they moved off the Borodino Bridge.
“Everyone has a mother,” Zelach answered.
“She’s alive?” Tkach asked, glancing at a young woman hurrying with a small suitcase toward the entrance of the Kiev Railway Station. He could not see the woman’s face, but her legs were firm and long and he could imagine her heels clicking against the concrete. Zelach pulled over and parked the car, nodding at the uniformed policeman in front of the station who was about to order him on before recognizing the license plate and the driver.
“Yes,” he said. “I live with my mother. You know that.”
“I didn’t remember,” said Sasha.
“My mother has bad legs,” said Zelach, opening the car door. “Can’t walk much. You are lucky. Your mother is well, working, able to take care of herself.”
“I’m very lucky,” said Sasha.
“We’re both lucky,” Zelach amended. “You want a knish?”
“Why not?” said Sasha with a shrug.
SEVEN
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov listened as the factory manager gave him a tour of the Lentaka Shoe Factory. Raya Corspoyva, the party representative to whom Rostnikov had spoken the day before, accompanied them, a clipboard in hand, taking notes. The manager, a thin, balding, and very nervous man named Lukov, kept adjusting his frayed blue tie, which did not match his rumpled brown suit, though it did correspond with the manager’s complexion. Lukov glanced constantly at Raya Corspoyva, a no-nonsense and rather good-looking heavy-set woman in a no-nonsense blue factory smock.
Lukov said something and pointed at a row of men and women at sewing machines. The machines were clacking so that the manager had to speak loudly to be heard. Rostnikov paid little attention. He was, in fact, enjoying the strong smell of leather faintly tinged with oil. He also enjoyed the row after row of partly finished shoes and boots of brown or black, shoes without soles, boots without heels.
“And up there, there in the assembly area,” Lukov shouted, “we have a new machine for processing the leather by color, size, material! Of course, most of the shoes are not made of one hundred percent leather!”
“Fascinating,” said Rostnikov, whose leg was beginning to warn him about prolonging the tour. “Can we go to your office and talk?”
“Of course,” Lukov said expansively, opening his arms wide, showing that he had nothing to hide or fear, almost tripping over a mound of dark leather sheets the size of an open newspaper. Comrade Raya Corspoyva did not look pleased. She wrote herself a note on the paper attached to her clipboard. Lukov’s mouth opened and his eyes moved to the clipboard in fear.
Minutes later the three of them were seated in a small office with large dirty windows looking out into the factory. The noise was muffled by the room but not completely obliterated, and the smell of tanned leather was replaced by stale tobacco. Lukov sat behind his battered desk, which was covered with a mess of papers of various colors. Raya Corspoyva sat at Rostnikov’s side and straightened her already straight dark hair before placing the clipboard on her lap.
“Theft,” said Rostnikov.
“Very little,” said Lukov, looking at Raya Corspoyva for support. “Pilfering,” he went on as she took another note. “Pieces of leather, even finished shoes. But even that is better since that television show. You know the one with Victor Shinkaretsky on Good Evening, Moscow.”
“No,” said Rostnikov.
“He pretended to be a worker in a sausage factory,” the woman explained. “Walked past guards who paid no attention with a gigantic ham hidden under his coat. Hidden television cameras got the whole thing. Factories all over the Soviet Union began a crackdown on security.”
“But we had already begun. We had anticipated,” Lukov added, leaning forward. “Would you like some tea, Comrade Inspector?”
Lukov’s eyes were pleading with Rostnikov to refuse. Rostnikov said that he would not like tea.
“Ivan Bulgarin,” Rostnikov said. The name made Lukov’s mouth open and close like a fish.
“As I told you on the phone, Comrade,” Raya Corspoyva said, “he is a fine manager. Overworked, in need of rest.”
Lukov nodded in agreement.
“He said the devil was here,” Rostnikov said flatly. “That the devil was trying to get him.”
Lukov laughed, but when no one joined him, he stopped abruptly and reached into his pocket for a cigarette, which he lit nervously.
“The man is suffering from a temporary madness, Inspector,” Raya Corspoyva said with a shake of the head.
“Of course,” Rostnikov said with a nod. “But … when an accusation of theft is made, even by a madman, it should at least be investigated.”
“You would be remiss in your duty if you did not,” the woman agreed with a smile that conveyed an understanding of the breadth and difficulty of the policeman’s job.
“Then,” Rostnikov said, standing before the stiffness could begin, “I’ll not trouble you further except for one question: Do you make boots in this factory?”
“Yes,” said Lukov. “Fine boots.”
The relief on the factory manager’s face was childishly evident as he crushed out his cigarette and rose. The factory noise level rose suddenly behind them and Rostnikov looked out as a small dirty-yellow lift truck with a pallet full of boxes rambled into the center of the factory, seemed to hesitate about which direction to go, and moved right and tipped over, sending boxes crashing.