Stroika

by Mark Blair

  When Viktoriya found the courage to look up again, he was gone. Clutching her jeans, she crawled an agonising ten metres into the shrubbery behind a park bench. Wet snow forced its way up under her torn T-shirt, her bare legs and hands numb from the cold. Terrified he might return at any moment, she lay there motionless, struggling to garner her thoughts, to understand what had just happened, deciding what to do next. She couldn’t stay there, not in those freezing conditions. A thousand thoughts crowded in. She willed herself to calm down, focus. She took a deep breath and held it before slowly exhaling, watching a steady stream of vapour condense and freeze into a small cloud. Gently, she stroked her bruised and aching abdomen. Blue with cold, she gingery pulled on her jeans and wrestled on her coat. With the back of her scratched and blooded hand, Viktoriya wiped away the tears that had begun to freeze on her cheeks. Going to the police, she knew, would be worse than useless. They would only say she asked for it. After all, what was she doing in Yusupovsky Park so late at night? Picking up customers? Wasn’t Yusupovsky famous for it? They weren’t going to arrest some party member whose connections might consign them to a posting in the Far East, and certainly not for an inconsequential young student. She had seen it happen before: the accuser becomes the accused, a university place revoked, a family member’s job threatened.

  Teeth chattering from cold and shock, Viktoriya climbed painfully to her feet. The sound of a lone, distant car horn drifted across the park. The snow had stopped as suddenly as it had begun; once again the moon cast its ghostly pall over the winter stillness. Skirting the frozen lake, now ornamented with the new fall, she traced the path to its beginning and exited onto a near deserted prospect. There was no sign of her assailant. Further up, workmen in orange overalls swung pickaxes at unforgiving tarmac next to a softly purring roadside generator. Hugging her torn coat, Viktoriya passed them on the opposite side.

  Fifteen pain-filled minutes later, Viktoriya found herself in front of her apartment block. Four identical six-storey buildings of indeterminate brown enclosed a large floodlit square. A bronze statue of Lenin, clutching Das Kapital in his upheld hand, railed against oppression, oblivious to local drug dealers and alcoholics who routinely relieved themselves against his polished granite podium.

  Viktoriya’s ankle boots, wet and cold, sank deep into the drifting snow as she traversed the final twenty metres to the main door. Inside, two bare wires woven together replaced the switch that had been stolen the month before. Exhausted, Viktoriya battled the three flights of stairs to her bedsit share. When she finally managed to turn the key and push open the door, Viktoriya was blinded by the sudden switching on of the internal light.

  ‘Agnessa, turn that off!’ Viktoriya croaked, covering her eyes. Her head throbbed and she felt as though she would throw up at any second. She took a step forward and nearly fell. Agnessa caught her and guided Viktoriya past a small wooden dining table before gently easing her onto the sofa. Streetlights cast a jaundiced hue over the small and sparsely furnished room.

  ‘You look terrible! Don’t move, I’ll be back in a moment,’ said her flatmate.

  Viktoriya didn’t feel she could have moved even if she had wanted to do so. She began to shiver uncontrollably. Agnessa reappeared, helped her undress and towelled her dry before wrapping her in a woollen blanket.

  ‘What happened?’ her friend asked, her voice full of concern.

  Viktoriya could not bring herself to say anything. She shook her head and held up her hand.

  ‘I’ll make you some sweet tea.’

  ‘I need a bath,’ Viktoriya managed to whisper finally.

  Viktoriya watched Agnessa as she put on the kettle and placed two large saucepans of water on the hob to boil. How many years had she known Agnessa? Since she was six or seven? Primary school then Ten Year School at eight. Their parents had lived on the same landing. Both their fathers had worked at the docks and often gone out drinking together, sometimes on a weekend binge. At fourteen it had been Agnessa she had turned to that night when her father had caught her in the face with a poker in one of his drunken rages, only narrowly missing her eye.

  Reflexively, Viktoriya’s finger traced the faded scar. Her headache was splitting now. She needed a painkiller, more than one.

  ‘Before you go into shock,’ said Agnessa, handing Viktoriya two Efferalgan and a mug of hot sugary tea.

  ‘Thank you,’ she managed to say, as feeling began to return to her half-frozen hands. ‘I’m remembering this is not the first time you have played nurse.’

  ‘It’s what friends are for.’

  Ten minutes later, Viktoriya lowered herself into a shallow tin bathtub of steaming hot water.

  ‘You should see a doctor,’ Agnessa said, staring at the terrible abdominal bruising that was beginning to show.

  ‘I’ll survive,’ said Viktoriya, relieved to be washing the night away.

  ‘Are you going to report this?’

  Viktoriya shook her head.

  ‘Bed,’ she replied. ‘That’s what I want.’

  Ten minutes later, bruised and exhausted but feeling a lot calmer, Viktoriya climbed into bed and fell instantly asleep.

  Chapter 2

  ‘What time is it?’

  Viktoriya could hear him struggling to look at his bedside clock. Something crashed to the floor. She guessed it was the radio he always had precariously balanced there.

  ‘It’s 5.10 a.m.,’ she replied in a matter-of-fact voice, as though calling him at that hour was not an unusual occurrence.

  ‘Just a minute.’

  Viktoriya heard Konstantin sit up. There was a muffled protest from one of his flatmates.

  ‘Can you meet me by the Baltic Hotel, 7 a.m.? I’ll explain later. I can’t talk about it now, not here in the corridor.’

  ‘Okay, 7 a.m.,’ Konstantin repeated and hung up.

  When Viktoriya had woken an hour before, she had lain there, not disturbing Agnessa, going over what she should do. She felt certain that this was not the first time her assailant had attacked a woman. He was just too confident, too sure of himself, sure that she wouldn’t go to the police. For the same reason she hadn’t gone to the police, she suspected neither had his other victims. Either way, whatever the truth about his past, Roman’s drinking companion was not going to get away with what he had done or be allowed to assault her again.

  That was when she had got up and called Konstantin. She could have called the bar doorman – he was ex-army – or one of her other male friends, but it was Konstantin she had instinctively turned to. He would know what to do.

  Carefully, Viktoriya retraced her steps to the share. She wrapped some bread and cheese in a kitchen towel and, after layering up, headed out to the bus stop and the still dark square.

  Light pooled eerily from overhead floods, the crunch of her footsteps magnified. On the far side a door banged shut with a wumph. A woman, heavily padded, wearing a bright red headscarf, materialised and quickly vanished down a side path. Viktoriya tightened her grip on the kitchen knife she had slipped into her trouser belt and peered anxiously about her.

  The bus pulled in to her stop. A woman driver waved her in and quickly closed the door… warmth at last. Viktoriya cleared the condensation from the window, pulled off her gloves and brusquely rubbed her hands together.

  As they skirted the Fontanka, smoke drifted from the chimneys of canal boats fixed to their winter moorings, hulls captive to slowly thickening sheets of ice; water dwellers, no doubt stoking early morning fires, preparing sweet tea and coffee, fending off the early morning cold. Life going on as it had before.

  Here and there, workers began to appear along the wide pavement wearing thick padded jackets, ushankas and balaclavas. Once or twice, Viktoriya thought she glimpsed her assailant. Unnerved, she cast her eyes around the bus: a young woman with a suitcase bound shut with twine read a book; behind her, two men, a ro
w apart, napped, heads lolling against the foggy window. She pulled her scarf up around her face and the flap of her fur hat across her mouth. Two stops and she disembarked. If anything, it felt colder than when she’d waited at the bus stop.

  Next to an old church, now used as a warehouse, she found the hotel. It was small and, like most of Leningrad, well overdue a coat of paint. Faded streaks of pink, redolent of an era she could only imagine, emerged from under its grey rendered exterior. A sign above the door spelled in capitals: BALTIC HOTEL.

  Sheltering under the buttress of the church, Viktoriya pulled the hood of her coat up over her hat and in between bites of bread and cheese sipped on the steaming hot tea she had bought from a street vendor.

  A familiar whistle made her turn to catch sight of Konstantin striding purposefully in her direction.

  ‘A sip of whatever you’re drinking,’ he said, standing in front of her holding out his hand. He pushed back his hood and swept a mop of jet-black hair off his face. She began to tremble as if the shock of what had happened was only now setting in.

  ‘Are you going to tell me?’ he said, staring down at her.

  She wondered if he could tell what had happened just by looking at her, whether it was that obvious. She wiped her eyes and turned back to the hotel entrance.

  ‘I was attacked last night on my way back from the bar.’

  Haltingly, she told him. Konstantin listened silently.

  ‘Just point him out to me,’ he said coldly when she had finished.

  Guests started to appear, some checking out with suitcases, others with briefcases ready for their day’s meeting; a tourist studied his map for probably the hundredth time that morning, making an early start to the day’s exploration.

  By eight forty-five she was starting to think they might have missed him. Maybe he had checked out the night before, slipped by, or exited by another door. Konstantin showed no sign of impatience; he was smoking a cigarette behind her, propped up against the church wall. A halo of white cigarette smoke drifted by her and dissolved in the frozen air. She smiled for the first time since the previous night, turned and caught him studying her. In an hour they had hardly exchanged a word.

  Five minutes later a taxi pulled up outside the hotel entrance. A man emerged from reception carrying an official-looking attaché case and climbed in.

  ‘That’s him,’ she whispered.

  Konstantin wrote down the cab telephone number displayed under the taxi sign.

  ‘I need you to make a couple of calls. Then you can go home.’

  ‘I’m not going home.’

  He started to object and stopped. His mouth opened and closed without saying a word.

  From his pocket Konstantin extracted a few kopeks and pointed at the payphone across the street.

  ‘This is Inga from the taxi company. One of our drivers just collected someone from your hotel, a…’ Viktoriya hesitated, ‘I can’t read his name. He left his briefcase on the back seat and he is no longer where we dropped him off. Is your guest returning to the hotel?’

  ‘I will check. Yes, that will be Pavel Antyuhin. He is here for a couple more nights. You can leave it here. I’ll be in all day.’

  She replaced the receiver and called the taxi company.

  ‘Hello, I’m calling from the Baltic Hotel. You just collected one of our guests, a Pavel Antyuhin. He has left some papers in reception. Can you tell me where you dropped him?’

  There was a muffled conversation as the taxi booker covered the receiver.

  ‘Yes, I have it here – 36 Italyanskaya.’

  Chapter 3

  Number thirty-six was a retail store reserved for party members selling household goods. It looked empty. The window sported a dusty white vacuum cleaner, a lamp with no shade and a random stack of pots and pans that leaned precariously towards the glass.

  ‘We’ll wait here,’ Konstantin said, lighting up another cigarette.

  Parking themselves opposite, hoods and scarves covering their faces, they had only a few minutes to wait before she caught a glimpse of their quarry. He had stepped forward from the rear of the store, a list of some sort in his hand, and was standing looking out onto the street. For one moment he seemed to look directly at her, but a second later he turned and walked back inside the store. He was broader than she had remembered him. His lank hair was swept back from his forehead, away from those thick dark eyebrows.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Konstantin asked.

  She nodded, unsure about how she truly felt. Looking up at Konstantin now, she knew she had made the right decision calling him. He made her feel safe. The anxiety she had experienced earlier had been replaced by something else, a toxic mix of loathing, hatred and anger.

  The sound of the door opening across the street made her start. Antyuhin had paused in its frame, making final adjustments to his coat and scarf. The store manager lingered awkwardly behind, no doubt anxious for his visitor to be gone.

  ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘We follow him.’

  They set off at a safe distance behind him, occasionally taking opposite sides of the street, arm in arm, a couple about their business. Antyuhin made two more calls before stopping on Kazanskaya for lunch, at a dismal-looking eating house with plastic-topped tables, a food counter displaying savoury pasties and a large soup tureen. They watched as he took his seat by the window with a steaming bowl and a large slice of dark rye bread.

  ‘We haven’t got long,’ said Konstantin, his back to the window. They had moved to a café across the street where they could observe the eatery’s exit. ‘I’m going to make a call.’

  With one eye on Antyuhin, Viktoriya watched Konstantin exit onto the street and stride up to a payphone not ten metres away. An old lady was speaking animatedly into its mouthpiece. Konstantin reached in and depressed the disconnect bar. She looked up, startled. Viktoriya couldn’t see Konstantin’s face, but whatever his expression the old lady thought better than to remonstrate. She picked up her bags and with an exaggerated shrug squeezed past him.

  Konstantin fed the meter, dialled, looked over at her and winked, before whoever he was calling answered the phone. Stern-faced, occasionally shaking his head with what she presumed was frustration, the conversation lasted not much more than a minute.

  Antyuhin was still seated when Konstantin returned to their vantage point across the street. He looked at his watch. She wondered how much longer he would remain there, when he suddenly stood up and started to put away the papers he had earlier taken from his briefcase.

  They both got up.

  ‘You wait here by the payphone.’

  He pulled a notepad out of his pocket, tore off a sheet, and scribbled OUT OF ORDER and handed it to her.

  ‘You know Lev and Ilia?’

  She nodded.

  ‘They won’t be long. I’ll call you the moment Comrade Antyuhin stops.’

  Konstantin bent forward and rather unexpectedly kissed her on both cheeks.

  ‘Mr Khozraschet is not going to get away. You have my word on that.’

  ‘He’s leaving,’ she told him, squeezing his arm. Antyuhin had stepped onto the prospect. ‘No… don’t turn round yet… Okay, now. He’s headed east.’

  Konstantin set off after him on the opposite side of the street, before turning back to look at her and mimic a phone with a hand held to his ear.

  She took a last bite of the stuffed cabbage roll and then followed Konstantin out onto the street and fastened the OUT OF ORDER sign to the phone box with some gum.

  The winter sun still on its northward journey had begun to dip. Shading her eyes, Viktoriya looked both ways down the prospect for Konstantin’s two comrades. She vaguely remembered meeting them at a student party Konstantin had thrown at his share a year back. They were not so much his friends as gofers, collecting, by nefarious means, unpaid debts that
Konstantin had purchased for next to nothing from unsatisfied creditors.

  A tap on her shoulder made her spin round. For one second she thought it might be Antyuhin and that he had managed somehow to escape Konstantin and beat his way back to her. Lev and Ilia stood there, stupid grins on their faces.

  ‘Kostya said to meet him here… didn’t say anything else,’ said Lev. Lev was well built with small deep-set grey eyes, his friend slightly taller, round-faced with thick lips, and the smell of alcohol and fish on his breath. Ilia was doing his best to hold a sausage roll away from his body as relish dripped down his wrist inside his parka jacket.

  ‘We just wait for his call,’ she said, indicating the public payphone.

  Nearby, a gang of municipal workers scraped new snow off the pavement, piling it up in small mountains by the kerb. The temperature had dropped a good five degrees in the last hour. It was all they could do to keep their circulation going by clapping their hands and stamping their feet. Viktoriya bought sweet teas from a street vendor and made it abundantly clear she was listening for the phone and not to Ilia when he attempted to start up a conversation.

  How long would it be before Kostya called? More than once she caught her two companions exchanging furtive glances, Ilia licking those thick lips of his as if she had induced some saliva reaction. At the student party, in the squash of bodies, she had felt him squeeze past her on his way to a refill at the kitchen bar. It had irritated her then, much as they both irritated her now. She would not have felt safe alone with either of them.

  The strangled tink-tink of the public payphone made her jump. Lev cocked his head, doglike.

  ‘That will be him,’ he said.

  Viktoriya picked up the receiver.

  ‘Kostya?’

  Konstantin asked her to pass the phone to Lev. There was a lot of head nodding and ‘Yes, boss’. Finally, Lev replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  ‘Mikhaylovsky Palace,’ he said to his partner. ‘The Palace Bar.’