He instantly regretted what he’d said. Shrugging listlessly, Tamara dropped into the first chair she came to and seemingly lost all interest in the surrounding reality. All these imposing types lounging here and there in anticipation of dinner were not supposed to see Tamara’s weakness, to say nothing of her inadvertent tear. Sitting down next to her, Krylov poured a little cognac into an empty goblet whose glass stem was garishly adorned with the remains of someone else’s alcohol. He needed a drink before he could move on to his reason for coming. He couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered to Tamara, taking her cold, heavy arm. “We have to talk. Right now.”
“Fine,” Tamara replied quietly without raising her head. “Take care of this,” she addressed the panting maid who had run in at the noise raised by the pig.
“Shoo! Shoo!” The maid waved a towel at the confused pig, which was staring angrily with its rusty little enameled eyes. This simple Afro-Russian woman—first name Zina, last name Krasilnikova—had been working for Tamara for more than three years and took everything very much to heart, her heart being about the size of a bucket. Zina, who weighed a good centner and had a powerful lion’s nose and a curly mane, looked a lot like a maid from the old Hollywood films, which was why she’d been hired. But she behaved like an ordinary Russian woman, that is, she always expressed her opinion, wasn’t afraid of anyone but a crocodile, and pitied her mistress her feminine foolishness, but loved Krylov because even though he suffered, he didn’t drink.
With the concerned and gracious look of a hostess hurrying to solve a small problem, Tamara slipped between her guests and through a solid door, into a large, dimly lit hall where a transparent spiral staircase wound straight up in the air, like a dinosaur skeleton asleep in a museum. On the stairs, tiny lamps lit up in response to the weight of her steps, lighting Tamara’s pointy-toed shoes with their faceted silver heels, and Krylov’s dust-covered boots.
Upstairs, both bedroom doors were open. The rooms held a nearly identical gloom. To the right it was greener and thicker; to the left a little lighter, with a hint of blue. The night did not recognize the difference between green and blue, picking out only a few bright objects; both beds were tightly made up in silk, and not a single wrinkle spoke of Dymov’s recent presence. Krylov heaved a sigh of relief; he touched a trembling Tamara’s elbow ingratiatingly; it was soft, like a shriveled apricot. Tamara stopped short and turned around, and Krylov was pierced by the awareness of her homelessness. No matter how many bedrooms you own, a woman has to have a room of her own, as she does a man.
The confusion lasted literally a second, and then Tamara laughed unpleasantly, as if she were spitting a fine needle from the corner of her painted mouth, and started quickly down the hall, past the broad-hipped floor vases and oil paintings that were mute in the semi-gloom. She led Krylov toward her two home offices, which were arranged identically and changed strictly simultaneously. Right now the change was obvious from the threshold. Instead of her old PC, which had been very elegant but still looked like expensive kitchen equipment, on her desk was something fundamentally new. At first glance it looked as though a broad transparent monitor had been fused to a gigantic flash of golden amber, in the depths of which one guessed at large, honey-infused insects, specks of dust, and rainbow bubbles. He didn’t understand how this machine from outer space, which appeared to have no ports, turned on. But iridescent Tamara dropped into a taut armchair with a rustle of her abundant sequins, plunged her index finger into the first rush of substance, and her purple fingerprint slowly filled with red, like a tiny iron. Instantly, a sensory keyboard popped up in front of the mistress, and her screen saver beamed on the monitor: a bird’s-eye view of her house patrolled by a line of smooth, two-headed eagles with glossy necks.
“Just the design is new; the hardware and software are nothing special,” Tamara commented offhandedly, her manicured nails clicking on the keys and quickly paging through the menu. “Remember, I told you, they don’t let our gentlemen scholars have any fun now. Still, this machine is good enough to hijack a military satellite if you wanted.”
“That’s so cool!” Krylov cautiously touched the “amber,” which turned out to be soft and a little sticky, like marmalade. Tamara gave the keyboard a quick click, his finger turned cold, and the machine informed him in a dead, silvery voice, “Fingerprint accepted.”
“Not bad.” Sucking his finger, which felt like it had been injected with icy champagne, Krylov watched dumbfounded as his hologram quickly coalesced on the monitor out of vague cubes, with the twisted collar of his reddish brown jacket and a crooked smile somewhere on his cheek. “I could never figure out this equipment!”
“It’s worth it,” Tamara remarked in a strained voice, rummaging in the crunchy contents of a drawer she’d pulled out. “This is actually your machine and your office, if you ever want to come back. Now where’s that cassette? I’ll never find it.”
Krylov said nothing, feeling a biting heat rise up over his face and turn into moisture in his eyes. Horrified that all this could be taken for pathetic male tears over their wonderful past, he hastened to grab the first knick-knack he came across on the desk: the same two-headed eagle, silver, with dragon heads and an intricate little key between its polished wings. When you turned it, an empty, mirrored hiding place opened.
“All right, let’s stop beating around the bush.” Tamara shut the drawer, which made a sucking sound, placed her cold hands on the icy black desktop, and looked Krylov in the face. “Tell me what kind of jam you’re in this time.”
“It’s the same one we were talking about at the Plow,” Krylov replied gloomily. “Only now it’s much worse, you see. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that, how shall I put it, that you haven’t wondered just a little. Naturally, I didn’t see your professionals, but I’m sure they were hovering somewhere nearby. Basically, I need the information you gathered.”
The look he aimed at the calm Tamara must have intimidated her. After a pause, she answered Krylov with a good-natured, triumphant smile.
“Fine, I’m not going to be coy. I did know you’d come running for this,” she said, tapping out sharp commands on the keyboard. “Only I don’t like that word, ‘wondered.’ I’m no scandalmonger gathering gossip for lack of anything better to do. As I already said, though, your beloved rock hounds are, from many points of view, a club of suicides. Leaving you to your own devices would be careless on my part to say the very least. I did ask people at one very civilized agency to watch after you. I don’t think they disturbed you in any way.”
“They were like the air,” Krylov confirmed sullenly.
“Let’s start with the fact that the agency where my friends work had an interest of their own in the case,” Tamara continued, swinging a shoe. “They told me that rumors have been lingering in your club for about a year about some spectacular find. I mean, that kind of home brew is always sloshing around in your shaggy heads, but this time it was something more specific. Your friend Anfilogov and some other Pole who Interpol is crying over have settled out. From my friends’ point of view, those two wreckers are set to spoil the gem corundum market. No one’s going to let them do that, naturally. There are other interests involved, not even Russian ones, actually. The agency never was able to find out exactly where your professor gentleman dug up his underground riches, but they’re waiting for him to come out and they’ll never allow him to sell what he’s found.”
“So that’s it,” muttered Krylov, hiding his eyes. He felt as if his very blood had suddenly faded. The hope he’d lived and breathed all this time left him suddenly and simply, and all the pictures of future prosperity he had secretly, ecstatically drawn for himself became alien, like ads about the beautiful life that the country’s entire population had learned by heart.
“Why so sad?” Tamara looked at Krylov with stern and gentle amusement. “I realized you were counting on cashing in big time. I also knew they couldn’t do
it without you. But you have to understand: this world already has everything it actually holds, and it has someone who owns it. New valuables, be they unique stones or, for instances, paintings, however brilliant, simply don’t count. It makes sense to produce only what I consume and drop into the toilet. Food, TV series, cheap housing that will be razed in thirty years. You can get rich now, of course, but only gradually and with the permission of those who control the processes.”
“What about you? I wonder who gave you permission?”
Never before had Krylov asked his wife this craven question, and now he regretted the words coming off his tongue. It was like belated jealousy at the rotund young men of apparently Komsomol origin, with ribbed gold watches on white wrists and full-length cashmere costs splattered in back with stony Riphean dirt, in whose company Tamara had made her first money while she was still practically in the university classroom. Krylov had stoically believed Tamara when she returned after midnight, feeling the walls, from restaurants he didn’t know, when she flew away and didn’t call, condemning Krylov to insomnia. He had all kinds of claims against Tamara, but in his heart of hearts Krylov understood that the truth was in blind, calm faith, nothing else. Together they had rejoiced at their first serious purchases, especially their first car—a white BMW sports car, as elegant as the porcelain in a nobleman’s dinner service, a 1970-something, which Tamara drove clumsily, so that the BMW jerked forward, like a toy car on a string, amid the angry honking Zhigulis. Tamara never hid the details of her business from her husband, but he didn’t like listening to her narration about the war between the Black and White accountancies, and Krylov didn’t delve too deeply into the dubious processes of making money out of thin air. The only thing he was prepared for was to lay himself down for Tamara at any minute in the event of an attack, after first laying low as many as he could with the tough old revolver Krylov kept in the entry on the upper doorjamb. Somehow, though, they got by, and the husband’s participation in his wife’s affairs was never required. All Krylov could do was love his strong woman, nothing more. Now, especially, there was no call to ask her about the past.
Not that Tamara had any intention of reporting to him.
“I just jumped on the last car of a departing train,” she told him irritably. “Today you can’t even see the caboose. Still, I don’t understand why you can’t be content. If you need money, take it from me. Believe me, I won’t be any the poorer. Instead, you’re caught up in that amateur act of yours. You’re all involved with Anfilogov—and who is this Anfilogov? A mineral with an awl up his ass. You could live comfortably for a year on the money I paid the agency. I should have given it to you. What do you think?”
“Stop!” Krylov squinted, trying not to lose sight of an important point. “That means the place the professor went to hasn’t been found. But how can that be if you can see through the earth from satellites, according to your reports? And the professor himself isn’t exactly a needle. He’s going to be bigger than any corundum.”
“Something came up,” Tamara admitted reluctantly. “Supposedly there are anomalous zones in the north. Naturally, no particular deposits have been discovered there. But we’ve been receiving snapshots from satellites dating from two years ago and more, moreover the dates go backward from the present. You get the impression of someone transmitting old tapes to the satellite, on rewind. Look”—Tamara gave Krylov a quick sideways glance, as if apologizing for the absurdity of the message—“you know, there are some strange rivers there, in those parts. They look like someone was pulling threads and unraveling a sweater. I saw it myself. They broadcast it on all the news: that helicopter fell into the Kavatuisky swamps—remember?—and shot up as if it had been fired from a cannon. That’s where your old fogy’s dived in, and the edges of the zone are nasty, all wet, kind of. Judge for yourself whether what he drags back from there does you any good.”
Not knowing what to answer, Krylov said nothing. The information Tamara had reported was incredible. All this affected his future badly, but this evening it was utterly beside the point. Right now he was much more worried about whether he’d be able to find Tanya and whether he could show up at her place late at night. Correctly interpreting his feverish abstraction, Tamara sighed and rested her hand, crowned with a black pearl the size of a grape, on her lit up mouse.
“Fine, let’s get down to business. I’m not sorry, you know. I only did it for you.”
On the translucent monitor, which Krylov could view from the back, a familiar face suddenly leaped out of the cascade of snapshots. The spy had probably been holographed a few years ago; he looked younger than now and at the same time more disheveled. His tight green jersey, saggy from too many washings, looked as if it had been put on backwards, a square black hole gaped in his month instead of one front tooth, and his hair, amazingly, was long and gathered up in a messy tail, like spaghetti twirled on a fork. The hologram was immediately covered in tiny text turned inside out for Krylov. He leaned forward, trying to make out the creeping symbols.
“Viktor Matveyevich Zavalikhin,” Tamara introduced Krylov to his accursed acquaintance. “Born 1983, Russian, less than a high school education, married common-law to a tenement rat just like himself, has a daughter Varvara eight months old. Lives at sixteen Svarshchikov, apartment three. In his younger days he boxed for money. He was the kind who agreed to hold off until the third round for the knockout. Twice convicted. The first time he got two years’ probation because he was a minor, for robbing a bookstore where only money was taken. The second time he did hard time for robbery, three years, maximum security. He just got out, in 2015. He picks up occasional work for a close relative; the rest the relative gives him out of the goodness of his heart. And you know who that good man is? Your employer, who, in turn, is working for Anfilogov and robbing the professor of everything that’s not tied down.”
Tamara leaned back contentedly in her chair, admiring the spy, who also seemed to be looking around the office trying to figure out how to lift something that would never be missed. The information did not surprise Krylov. Whenever his mind played hide-and-seek with him, it invariably got “warmer” whenever Krylov combined the spy’s present-day image with his old cellar workshop. However, Krylov could have sworn that among his boss’s buddies who stopped by for a beer and in appearance, for some reason, always coincided with the plump spy—the spy wasn’t there. His memory set up a kind of police lineup for Krylov and slipped him an approximate likeness, suggesting he agree to it and be content with that—but Krylov wouldn’t agree because he knew his torments wouldn’t end. Right now he thought that maybe the mnemonic itch could be explained by the family resemblance between the spy and the workshop owner. He attempted to picture his employer’s face as clearly as possible, mentally removing his lowered glasses, his characteristic checkmark eyebrows, and his second chin. And suddenly his roving memory did a pirouette and gave him the snapshot: the owner, his fat little back shaking, freezing in a birdlike pose next to the hooks where Krylov’s jacket was for some reason pulled out above the heap of other clothing, spread as if his employer, out of kindness, had decided to brush it clean; here was his boss, looking disinterested, for some reason standing by Krylov’s side and floating away from his desk in tiny steps. His city map with the previously entered points was usually rattling around his desk or in his jacket pocket. Krylov nearly burst out laughing at how simply it was all explained: the vulgar soiledness of his cherished atlas and the ubiquity of the spy, who arrived at the spot nearly before his charges. There was nothing mystical left in the actions of Viktor Matveyevich Zavalikhin, petty criminal. Just then Krylov felt a chill of the supernatural return. The hologram was looking at him with nasty eyes that looked like spoons of soup gone cold, as if to say, “Here I am again. It’s me, whether you like it or not.”
Frowning, Tamara observed the changes in Krylov’s face, and she could tell some secret thought was setting a strict limit to his candor.
“Basically, y
ou did a good thing running over here so disheveled. You really should be worried about this guy,” she informed him, removing the spy from the screen. “It’s hard to believe he’s working for a big-time client. Guys like him usually don’t get past face control. Most likely the two relatives have decided to rob you and the professor in the most ordinary way and are waiting for Anfilogov to emerge from the forest, too. But they’re foolish and greedy enough that they could just as easily stick a knife in you. I doubt you could deal with that, but in any case I’ll put it all on a disk for you right now. Although you refused the laptop I tried to give you. Fine, I’ll do a printout.”
Tamara gave the mouse a spin and several pages fell out of the printer, turning in the air. Krylov leaned over to collect them, and in the tight space of the desk, armrest, and small shredder full of curly dust, he clumsily brushed Tamara’s hip, which trembled under the muslin and scales. Hastily returning with the tousled, messy goods to the visitor’s chair, he saw Tamara’s eyes fill with tears.
“Wait. That’s not all!” he exclaimed, forestalling her attempt to stand abruptly and head for the exit. “I’m interested in a second person. That woman, the skinny blonde in glasses. You know who I’m talking about.”
“What?” Tamara’s eyes dried up instantly and became two nonidentical spots. “Yes, I know who you’re talking about! The tape they brought me left no doubt as to the nature of your relationship! And you’re asking me who she is?”
“I’ll swear on anything you want,” Krylov spoke in a frozen voice, “I don’t know her first name, her last name, her phone number, or her address. And she doesn’t know anything about me. We lost each other on the square and now we can’t find each other.”
Tamara looked at Krylov the way people look at a disaster. From downstairs, through a half-open window panel, came the blurry hubbub of voices and—suddenly—a lush, hissing explosion and light. A crimson rocket drew a phosphorescent trail, its fiery core flickering low over the scalded garden, and was extinguished in the darkness, like a coal in water. The guests, having forgotten the official mourning, must have got to the supplies of fireworks. Broken dishes crashed ringingly.
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