The Good Angel of Death

by Andrey Kurkov

  He took it out of its case and inspected it carefully from all sides. He raised the lens to his eyes. Then he moved his plate aside, put the camera on the table and took a Swiss army knife out of his pocket. Opening out the little screwdriver, he prised up a small lever of some sort beside the lens, which came away from the body of the camera, together with part of the front panel.

  Oleg Borisovich smiled. ‘It’s almost an antique now,’ he said sadly. ‘See, this is where the micro-cassette for parallel or independent shots was inserted . . .’ he pointed to a little niche. ‘Someone removed it . . . Someone who knew where to look for it . . .’ Oleg Borisovich stared at me. He was about to say something, but the appearance of the waiter with a tray prevented him.

  The waiter set down plates of chops and rice in front of us. He wished us bon appétit and withdrew with decorum, as if he was deliberately moving slowly.

  ‘And this . . . Colonel Taranenko, does he know about the camera?’ Oleg Borisovich asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oleg Borisovich grunted contentedly, picked up his knife and fork and attacked his piece of meat.

  ‘Should I ask him about Kiev or not?’ I thought feverishly. ‘Should I wait until he tells me himself? But he might not say . . . How can I tell?’

  ‘Does your wife like to gossip?’ Oleg Borisovich asked, holding a piece of meat in front of his mouth.

  ‘No, she’s a Kazakh,’ I said, and immediately thought that perhaps not all Kazakh women were as laconic as Gulya.

  ‘A Kazakh,’ Oleg Borisovich repeated pensively and dispatched the piece of meat into his mouth.

  He chewed slowly and abstractedly, as if it was some secondary kind of activity. The main activity was taking place in his head – he was thinking.

  Alexei Alexeevich filled the small glasses again.

  ‘What’s her name?’ Oleg Borisovich asked.

  ‘Gulya.’

  ‘To Gulya!’ he said, raising his glass.

  We drank. Silence descended on the table again. The pork was well cooked and generously peppered. One thing that definitely united us all was the enjoyment of the delicious meat.

  I suddenly thought that they must be saying so little about the colonel, and even pretending that they didn’t know him, because he really was connected with some secret department. After all, they hadn’t mentioned the sand or asked me about it. I hadn’t said anything about it either. Even when I was telling them about the journey from Krasnovodsk to Bataisk, I had mentioned the crates of guns and the narcotics several times, but I hadn’t said a word about the sand.

  Oleg Borisovich reached into the inside pocket of his jacket again. He took out an ordinary envelope and handed it to me.

  ‘These are you tickets to Kiev. For tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Where’s the film?’

  I handed him the little box with the film in it.

  ‘In the morning of the day after tomorrow you’ll be in Kiev. I wouldn’t advise you to go home just yet. Stay with friends. Call me at eleven o’clock. We’ll meet and I’ll settle up with you for your discoveries.’

  I was astounded. My face obviously expressed such an odd mixture of emotions that Oleg Borisovich couldn’t help chuckling. He probably liked surprising people.

  I took the tickets out of the envelope and looked at the number of the train and the type of carriage. Two tickets for a sleeper carriage!

  ‘They’re genuine!’ said Oleg Borisovich. When the waiter brought the bill, he and Alexei Alexeevich argued politely for several minutes over who was going to pay for lunch. As I expected, Oleg Borisovich won. And he carefully tucked the bill away in his wallet.

  Outside the cafe there was a surprise waiting for us. All four wheels of the No. 6 had been deflated. Alexei Alexeevich swore, adjusted his spectacles and looked around. Oleg Borisovich heaved a sigh.

  Oleg Borisovich took me right back to the gate in a taxi. I was still in a highly agitated, slightly perplexed state. When Gulya asked me ‘Well?’, I showed her the tickets. And for the first time I saw a smile of happiness on her face and tears in her eyes at the same time.

  ‘We have to buy some suitcases,’ she said. ‘It won’t feel right with the bundle . . .’

  I nodded.

  75

  THE TRAIN ARRIVED in Kiev half an hour late. The autumn sun was shining above the station. There was a crowd of porters and people meeting passengers beside the carriages. One of the porters dashed forward to help when he saw me climbing down on to the platform with two suitcases in my hands and a rucksack on my back.

  After haggling to agree a price, we loaded our things on to his trolley and Gulya and I followed him to the taxi rank. The trolley squeaked.

  The bustle of the previous day seemed to be continuing. The cabbage pie hastily baked by Olga Mykolaivna was lying in my rucksack. ‘When you get to Petro’s place it will be empty, there’ll be nothing to eat . . .’ she had said, standing over us with the pie in her hands as we were stuffing our things into the suitcases we had bought that morning. And she had come back again several times, always with something else. She had given Gulya an embroidered Ukrainian blouse. Then she had brought a jar of jam. And then she had written Petro’s addresss and telephone number in Kiev on a piece of paper yet again. ‘Put this in your pocket, if they steal the other note, you’ll find him from this one. Say hello from us, tell him to come!’

  The taxi driver ripped us off, taking five dollars for a five-minute ride, but I didn’t have the strength or the desire to argue with him.

  Petro and Galya gave us a warm welcome, like members of the family. And for a minute I also felt an invisible bond of kinship between us.

  They gave us their bedroom and we took our things in there and got changed.

  After that I left Gulya in Petro’s flat and went out into the street. I bought a telephone card and called Oleg Borisovich.

  ‘Welcome home, Nikolai Ivanovich!’ Oleg Borisovich said happily. ‘Let’s make it half past twelve by the patriarch’s grave, under the clock tower of St Sophia’s Cathedral.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘See you there,’ Oleg Borisovich said and hung up.

  I went back to Petro’s place.

  The sun was shining outside. There were twenty minutes to go until my meeting with Oleg Borisovich. I left Gulya with Galya again – Petro had gone out somewhere on business of his own – and set off to the meeting.

  Oleg Borisovich arrived at the meeting place in a black BMW. He climbed out of the car with some difficulty, leaned down to the open door and said something to the driver, then came towards me.

  He was wearing an elegant grey suit which, while not concealing his ponderous figure, in some mysterious way managed to draw all your attention to itself and its fine cut. In his left hand he was carrying a leather briefcase.

  ‘Well, how was your journey?’ he asked after nodding in greeting.

  ‘Fine, thanks.’

  ‘Let’s go and sit down in the sunshine,’ he said, gesturing towards the open door into the monastery park.

  We sat down on a bench that was free. He put the briefcase on his knees and crossed his arms.

  I looked round. There were several young mothers pushing their babies in prams. There was a pair of pensioners sitting two benches away from us. There was a photographer, draped with equipment, waiting for work at the entrance to the cathedral. Beside him on a tripod there was a stand showing examples of his photographs.

  ‘Do you have some kind of bag with you?’ Oleg Borisovich asked, turning towards me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ he said in surprise. ‘Are you going to carry the money in your pockets then? Although, of course, you don’t have very far to go.’

  ‘Money?’ I said.

  ‘Why, yes, I told you in Kolomya,’ said Oleg Borisovich, looking at me and smiling, seeming to enjoy my bewilderment.

  ‘Tell me,’ he went on. ‘Apart from the tent, the newspaper and the camera, did you find anything else there?
’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ he said, slapping the briefcase lying on his knees. ‘In here there are ten thousand dollars . . . Five thousand for the camera and the film, three thousand for making sure that no one but you and you wife will ever know about the film.’

  ‘And two thousand?’ I asked, perplexed.

  ‘The two thousand – that’s part of a different payment, an advance, so to speak . . .’ Oleg Borisovich opened the briefcase slightly, lowered his head, glanced inside and slammed the lid shut again.

  ‘You’re probably wondering why you’re getting such a lot of money.’

  I nodded.

  Oleg Borisovich took an envelope out of the inside pocket of his jacket. It contained only the same three prints from the old film that the deceased photographer Vitya had pointed out to me.

  ‘This man here is Ivan Rogovoi,’ said Oleg Borisovich, pressing his index finger down on the first man from the left in the photograph with the prisoner sitting on the sand. ‘He’s now a deputy in the Russian Duma. This one’ – he moved his finger to the second standing man – ‘is the vice president of Sakha Diamond Export Ltd. The third man is now in the leadership of the Belorussian KGB . . . The one on the right was a director of the Construction Investment Bank in Moscow. He disappeared without trace two years ago.’

  ‘There was another one,’ I said. ‘In the other photos.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Oleg Borisovich said, nodding. ‘So far we don’t know anything about him.’

  ‘And who is this?’ I asked, pointing to the bound man.

  ‘That’s my brother, Major Naumenko.’ Oleg Borisovich said in a trembling voice. ‘I’ll tell you more about that sometime, but I have to go now.’

  ‘Major Naumenko?’ I said. ‘But he was buried beside the dervish’s grave! That is, this means someone else was buried . . . is he here?’ I asked, indicating the photograph of the sandy grave with my eyes.

  ‘No, he’s in the other place. There’s no one here,’ said Oleg Borisovich, looking at the photograph. ‘They piled the sand up like a grave for a joke. A bit of fun . . . But they took my brother to Mangyshlak on the schooner. We still don’t know what happened there.’

  I suddenly realised that the story Colonel Taranenko had told us didn’t match the story told by these photographs.

  ‘Wait,’ I said to Oleg Borisovich. ‘If he went there to find out about the material manifestations of the national spirit, why was he observing the schooner?’

  Oleg Borisovich answered my queston with a glance of mute dejection.

  ‘You should never combine a spiritual quest with operational work,’ he said after a pause. ‘Either one or the other. Or death . . .’

  He opened the briefcase, took out a brown paper bag and handed it to me.

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ he said, trying to smile. We walked towards the exit of the park. Any moment now he would get into the dark blue BMW and drive away. And I wanted so badly to ask him another couple of questions. And, of course, to hear the answers.

  I gave him a sidelong glance. He noticed it. We were already gettting close to his car.

  ‘And where’s Colonel Taranenko now?’ I asked in a low voice.

  Oleg Borisovich raised his eyebrows in surprise at the question.

  ‘I think he’s in Odessa, in the Chkalov sanatorium. Taking a rest . . . Well, all the best! Here’s my card. Give me a call if anything comes up!’

  ‘But when can I move back home?’ I enquired.

  ‘Tomorrow after lunch,’ he replied.

  I watched the car leave, then looked at the neat little rectangle of cardboard and read: ‘Oleg Borisovich Naumenko, Director, Ukrainian-Kazakh Joint Enterprise Karakum Ltd.’

  Feeling puzzled, I walked straight across the square to my house, swinging the brown paper bag in time to my steps. I stood outside the front entrance for a couple of minutes. In just one more day I would be living at home again.

  76

  THE NEXT DAY we gathered up our things, declined Petro’s kind offer of help, flagged down a private car and drove to St Sophia’s Square for three hryvnas.

  Everything inside me was seething in joyful anticipation. And for some reason I thought that Gulya must be feeling genuinely proud of me at that moment.

  We walked up to the third floor and put our things down. I took the key out of the pocket of the rucksack and set it in the keyhole, and only then spotted a little brass plaque that had been hung on the wall to the left of the door. I took a step to the left and read the plaque. My jaw dropped.

  The sign informed me that the space behind this metal door was the ‘Baby Food Store of the Corsair Charitable Foundation’.

  After several seconds of total stupor, my hand automatically reached for the doorbell. I pressed the button several times. There was no sound on the other side of the door. Nobody came hurrying to open up the storeroom that used to be my flat.

  My eyes slid down to the key sticking out of the keyhole. I hadn’t even tried to open the door. It would be stupid to suppose that the owners of this ‘store’ had not changed the lock . . .

  To my surprise, the lock was still the same one and it yielded easily to my key. I opened the door apprehensively, peeping in first, then stepping inside and asking Gulya to wait on the landing.

  The flat looked the same as ever. I couldn’t spot any obvious changes. Eveything was just covered in dust.

  I calmed down, deciding that the plaque was an attempt to frighten me by those people I had kept out of the genuine storeroom. Quite a lot of time had gone by. They must have put up the sign, thinking that I was here, in Kiev. And then they’d probably forgotten about it. I called Gulya in and carried our things through to the hallway, then went back into the room. This time my gaze lighted on something incomprehensible. A standard, two-metre door that looked as if it led through to the neighbours had appeared in my little flat’s only room.

  Puzzled, I walked over and halted in front of it. I remembered that the person living on the other side of the wall was a retired lawyer, whom I used to run into occasionally on the landing, but had never had any kind of conversation with.

  I pulled on the door and it opened. Behind it there was a room just like mine, except that it had a modern desk with a fax-phone standing by the only window, and along the wall were rows of cardboard boxes with the familiar Finnish baby-food labels.

  I went in, closed the door behind me and walked over quickly to the desk. The first thing I noticed was a little semi-transparent plastic box containing a pile of business cards. I opened the box, took out a card and raised it to my eyes.

  ‘Nikolai Ivanovich Sotnikov, Director, Corsair Charitable Foundation.

  ‘Kolya,’ Gulya called to me.

  I went back into my own room, still clutching the business card with my name on it. Everything was jumbled up inside my head.

  Half an hour later the flat had been put in order. The kettle was boiling on the cooker and the contents of the suitcases were lying on the floor. The bright-coloured shirt-dresses were in a separate pile of their own.

  My rucksack had also been half emptied.

  ‘We need to put everything away somewhere,’ Gulya said, sounding rather bewildered. ‘And this too –’ she lifted up the mat that we had slept on in the desert. Lying underneath it was the pistol with the silencer, which I had already forgotten about.

  ‘There should be enough room in the wardrobe,’ I said, glancing at the massive ancient wardrobe that took up half the space in the hallway. ‘But first we’ll have some tea.’

  She suddenly spotted the bag of money sticking out of my pocket.

  ‘Did you buy something yesterday?’

  ‘No, I sold something, more like,’ I answered, going over to the table and spilling several thick wads of green bills on to it.

  Gulya stared at the dollars in amazement.

  ‘It’s for the film and the camera,’ I explained. ‘Only they asked me very seriously not to say anything
to anyone. All right?’

  Gulya nodded.

  ‘And that’s not all,’ I went on. ‘It seems like I have a new job . . .’

  I handed Gulya the business card that I had taken from the desk in the room that had been attached to my flat.

  While Gulya was studying the card, I went over to the phone and called Oleg Borisovich.

  ‘What’s this storeroom doing here in my flat?’ I asked in a rather sullen voice.

  ‘It’s your storeroom,’ Oleg Borisovich replied calmly. ‘You used to work in it. You’ve already been paid for your enforced period of absence from work. And now you’ve been promoted . . .’

  His calm, ‘Olympian’ tone of voice left my thoughts totally dead-ended.

  ‘So what am I supposed to do?’ I asked him.

  ‘Nothing. Work, work and more work, as the great Lenin instructed us . . .’

  There was a hint of irony in Oleg Borisovich’s voice now.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ he reassured me after a pause. ‘If the plaque annoys you, you can take it down. But no one’s going to relieve you of your position as director. Call me if there are any problems!’

  And he hung up. I turned to Gulya. She was watching me tenderly and the expression in her eyes needed no explanations.

  ‘My God, how lucky I was to find her,’ I thought.

  We had a drink of tea and ate a piece of cabbage pie, then went out for a walk. The sun was still shining. Gulya kept pausing all the time and looking around wide-eyed at the buildings.

  ‘It’s more beautiful than Almaty!’ she said. I had never been to Almaty, not even when it was still Alma-Ata, so it was hard for me to make the comparison. But I was quite willing to believe her. I found it hard to imagine a city more beautiful than Kiev.

  The sun shone into my eyes without blinding me. ‘Hi!’ someone said as they walked past. I looked round, but I didn’t recognise the person from behind.

  It was my city, but while I’d been away it seemed to have become more independent, it had gone running on ahead, and I would have to catch up with it, come to terms with it again, become a little part of it, dissolve into its air. I was already familiar from the past with this sensation of temporary rejection. After a few days, everything would be the way it used to be. The invisible flows of current between the city and me would be restored.