Arkady remembered that his cupboard was bare and sent Victor and Zhenya dashing through the rain into a food emporium. Also, Arkady wanted a private word with Maya. He had not appreciated at first how close to the edge the girl was. He wasn’t prepared for her. The streets of Moscow were lined with Viking women. Maya was small and graceful and her shaved head added vulnerability. He could see why Zhenya was senseless around her.
“You want to talk?” Maya said.
“That’s right. Just you and me.”
“Okay. Let’s hear what kind of bullshit you come up with.”
He thought she might be a good judge of character. He wondered what kind of self-justification had been poured into her ears by men paying for sex with a child.
“If you love your baby so much, why won’t you try to find her?”
“Won’t look for her? All I’ve done for the last three days is search the stations again and again.”
“I know. But that’s punishing yourself, not searching for the baby anywhere but Three Stations. There’s much more to Moscow. It confuses me because I believe you’re a good mother.”
“How would you know that?”
“Because you’re suffering.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“Then let me guess. You’re a runaway, you’re a prostitute and you’re running for your life.”
She asked, “What else?”
“You hid the baby in something it could breathe in, maybe a basket, and probably traveled second class at night. Pickpockets and confidence artists work as teams. One bumps you while the other lifts your money. Or one threatens you and the other comes to your rescue.”
“Auntie Lena chased a soldier who was bothering me.”
“Afterward, did Auntie Lena give you anything to drink?”
“Yes.”
“It had knockout powder. Once you drank that, you didn’t have a chance.”
“I asked people later if they saw a woman with a baby get off the train.”
“By then the soldier had joined her, only he didn’t look like a soldier and she didn’t look like anybody’s Auntie Lena. They looked like an ordinary family on a trip. That would be my guess.”
“And…”
“And the two men you saw in the elevator with Yegor are after you. I’m not sure whether you’ve seen them before, but you know what they are. Once in a while a girl escapes. Then someone has to go after her and not only catch her, but make an example of her, so other girls won’t try.”
“They take pictures.”
“I’ve seen them.”
She had visions of women hanging from a meat hook, set on fire, floating facedown in a swimming pool.
“They tell us it’s useless to escape because they’re everywhere. Not only in Russia. They never stop looking and sooner or later they find you. I could be on the North Pole and they would find me. Is that true?”
“Pretty much.”
“You’re cheery.”
“Sorry.”
“What about the…”
“The bodies? I don’t care about them, I care about you. They’re dead, you’re alive. There are two professional killers after you. We have to keep you as far from this scene as possible.”
“I could do it if I knew Katya survived.”
“That’s the baby’s name?”
“Katya. She has a blue blanket with a design of baby chicks and a birthmark on the back of her neck if you lift her hair. I haven’t settled on a last name yet.”
“Keep your options open.”
“My own is Pospelova. Remember that later.” She smiled. “Maya Pospelova was here.”
They spread a bounty of cheese, bread, red caviar, chocolates and coffee on Arkady’s kitchen table. He kept his eye on Maya. Surrendering her name seemed to have relieved her mind, as if a decision had been made. Her serenity worried Arkady, that and her use of the word “later.” Arkady saw her wrist. He suspected that while Maya had little in the way of Plan A, she always had a trusty Plan B in the form of a razor blade.
Meanwhile Maya was entertained by Victor’s stories. According to Victor, the art of the suicide note had deteriorated.
“A suicide tweet is not the same thing.”
“Don’t you think that people who believe in love are happier?”
“It depends on who you are. Arkady falls in love with the regularity of spawning salmon, whereas I have incredibly high standards, yet we’re equally miserable. It’s become a national crisis. No romance, no little Russians, no army. That’s why Putin played Cupid.”
“I don’t remember that,” said Maya. There hadn’t been newspapers at the bordello.
“He declared a Holiday of Love with bouquets for all the married women who came to Red Square. The weather was a little cool, a little cloudy. Putin wants everything perfect, so he salts the clouds.
“We do it for every parade. Planes go back and forth seeding clouds. The seeds are pellets of silver iodide and liquid nitrogen compacted into a block of cement powder. Each block, as an airman throws it out of the plane, explodes into a puff of dust. All but one.”
Arkady said, “It’s a shame you don’t have children just so you could terrify them.”
Victor continued unabashed. “One block stays together and plunges to the city from ten thousand meters like, well, a block of cement. To the pilots it appears that the block is aimed directly at the Kremlin. Options are considered. Try to shoot the block and make it disintegrate, at the risk of mowing down dozens of mothers in Red Square? Ram the block, at the risk of bringing down the plane? Do nothing and perhaps witness the most unusual political assassination in history? Of course they ended up doing nothing and the block came down in an apartment building nowhere near and tore through a roof and three bathrooms before coming to rest in a tub. I like to think of it as ‘Putin’s Arrow.’”
Arkady was restless. He didn’t know why. He fancied he heard the click of a latch out on the landing.
“Excuse me.” Arkady got up and went to the hall. Music was playing faintly in Anya’s apartment. A samba.
Arkady knocked. When there was no answer, he rang the bell. He knocked again, then knelt and saw light under the door sash. The door was locked, but he carried a credit card for jimmying door locks.
Victor came out from Arkady’s apartment. “What’s the matter?”
“Tell Zhenya and Maya to stay there.”
Arkady shoved the card in between the door and the jamb. A primitive method, but the door eased open.
The layout of Anya’s apartment was a mirror of Arkady’s, only hers was furnished with cheerful silk flowers, painted chairs and a buoyant disarray. Art covered the living-room walls. Mainly retro Socialist Realism painted with a smirk. The kitchen was dominated by a café-size espresso machine with brass fittings. There was little evidence of cooking besides a microwave oven and a list of phone numbers for take-out food. An empty glass stood in the sink.
Arkady called out Anya’s name. No answer.
Victor pulled latex gloves from his pocket. Arkady wondered how many men walked around with latex gloves in their pocket, just in case.
Anya’s office was a research center of book stacks, files, computer gear and photographs of Alexander Vaksberg pinned to a corkboard. Arkady’s heart pounded, as if saying, Getting warmer.
“In here,” Victor said. “The bedroom.”
Arkady had the general impression of a bright, messy bedroom with artwork and photos. He focused on Anya. She was on her back between a bureau and the bed, her nightgown pushed up to her waist. Her right ankle was over the left and her arms stretched back and gently touched, a perfect demonstration of the fifth position. She had no pulse or respiration and her skin was blue.
GOD IS SHIT was spray-painted on the wall above her. The paint was still wet and smelled of acetone. Victor turned where he stood as if they had fallen into a cave.
Arkady read the emergency bracelet on her wrist.
Milk.
&
nbsp; Some people were fatally allergic to peanuts or shellfish. One taste and their immune system reacted so violently that they went into anaphylactic shock: their hearts stopped and their airways shut tight. Anya was blue for lack of oxygen. But there was death and there was death, and in between was a netherworld where the brain was on its own. He knelt beside her to look into her eyes. Her pupils still had their shape, not collapsed, and when he shined a penlight at them, they drew tight.
“She’s still alive.” So far, he could have added. Without oxygen, brain cells started dying at two minutes. At four minutes half the brain was dead matter. She would certainly be dead by the time an ambulance arrived.
Arkady had his moment of clarity. Anya didn’t eat, she drank coffee.
The emergency kit—a white plastic box with a red cross—was the only item in the refrigerator. The contents of the kit were a plastic mask attached to a rubber bulb and an EpiPen preloaded with adrenaline.
Arkady exposed the needle and thrust it into Anya’s thigh. Instantly, she jerked and her heart began to beat.
He slipped the mask over Anya’s face. Her heart would race until it dropped like a dead horse unless she started to breathe. Each squeeze of the mask’s rubber bulb forced air into Anya’s mouth. Her lips were purple and although it was like trying to animate clay, he maintained a rhythm of squeeze and release, squeeze and release, every five seconds as if her heart were in his hand.
“How long are you going to try this?” Victor asked.
Arkady heard a gasp and caught Zhenya and Maya standing in the doorway. Maya’s hand was over her mouth.
Victor whispered, “The longer it takes, the less likely she can be revived. You can’t raise the dead.”
She wasn’t dead, Arkady thought. He wouldn’t allow it.
“Arkady.” Victor tried to pull him up.
“Wait,” Maya said.
Squeeze and release. Squeeze and release.
Anya’s first breath was harsh and ugly. Arkady continued to pump until her respiration was steady and the blue cast of her skin gave way to pink.
25
Arkady had put Anya in his bed. Light hurt her eyes, and he had turned off all the lights except a reading lamp that he turned low. He expected her to fall into a deep sleep, but adrenaline was still racing through her system.
“Half the time I think I’m dead again.”
“You had a traumatic experience. I would guess that being dead, even for a short time, qualifies as traumatic.”
“It wasn’t what I expected.”
“No white light?”
“Nothing.”
“No family or friends?”
“Zero.”
“Let’s talk about whoever tried to kill you.”
“I don’t know who it was. I don’t remember anything from this afternoon on.” Anya shifted for a better view of Arkady. “You knew what to do. You’ve seen someone in shock before. Was it a woman?”
“Yes. I didn’t know what to do then. I do now.”
Overlap was the last thing he wanted. No spilling of memory from one woman to another. Yes, he had helplessly witnessed anaphylactic shock before. This time at least he had a chance to save someone. Arkady had taken no chances. He had concentrated on the bulb and mask as if they were a rope out of an abyss, and hadn’t even noticed when life first began to creep back into her body.
“This was different, someone tried to kill you.”
“They did kill me.”
“But you’re alive now.”
“Maybe.”
“I heard two separate sets of footsteps leave your apartment, and you say you didn’t have any guests?”
“I don’t remember. Could I have a cigarette now?”
“Definitely not. Somebody left a glass with a residue of milk in your kitchen sink. Can you tell me who that somebody might be?”
“I’m a journalist. Don’t you know it’s open season on journalists?”
“And you don’t want to call in the police.”
“Why should I when I have you?”
“Well, I have been dismissed. How much I can help is debatable.”
“I’ll take my chances.” In a different tone, she asked, “How long was I dead?”
“Comatose.”
“Dead,” she insisted. “In other words, am I swimsuit ready? Sasha Vaksberg has asked me to go to his dacha tomorrow.” She pulled back the sheet from her leg to examine the dark bruise left by Arkady and the needle.
“I don’t think you’ve lost anything,” Arkady said.
“The dacha is enormous. Sasha has two swimming pools, tennis courts and a ring for horses. Sometimes I think he pays people just to walk around.”
“I’m sure it’s very grand.”
“You think I should go.”
“You might be safer there than here.”
“Do you have a dacha?”
“A shack.” He tried to return to the attack. “As a journalist, do you keep an appointment book?”
“Is your shack on a river or a lake?”
“Just a pond.”
“Describe it.”
“Ordinary.”
“In what way?”
“A cabin with three rooms, half of a kitchen, bad paintings, a stone fireplace, a family of hedgehogs under the porch, a canoe and a rowboat on a dock. My father was a general, but after enough vodka, he thought he was an admiral.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Was I dressed?”
“Excuse me?”
“When you found me, was I dressed?”
“Not completely.”
“How did I look? Is blue in fashion?”
“You’re asking the wrong man. What about Sasha Vaksberg? He must have called in reinforcements by now. He could have given you a hundred bodyguards.”
“Maybe he would have. He’s an unpredictable man.”
Anya took in the high ceiling, a monstrous armoire, light patches on the wall where photographs and paintings had been removed.
“Did you grow up here? It must have been something at one time.”
“It was where the ‘party elite’ lived, and it was a great honor to be assigned an apartment like this. On the other hand, it was full of false walls and secret passageways for the KGB to listen. And once a month or so, some famous face would disappear. So it was an honor with a certain risk. While no one could refuse to live in such a luxurious establishment, they always kept a suitcase packed.”
“Did they ever listen in on your father?”
“He was very accommodating. He would tell the agents his itinerary for the day. And night.”
“Did it affect you to live in such a haunted house?”
“I’m embarrassed to say no. I did find the wall that the agent sat behind. I had a rubber ball and I bounced it against the wall a hundred times, two hundred times.”
“I don’t think you were cut out to be a policeman.”
“It’s a little late in the day to learn that. What does it mean, ‘God is shit’?”
She yawned. “I have no idea.”
He said, “I understand ‘God is dead.’ ‘God is shit’ escapes me.”
He waited but Anya had fallen into a deep, enviable sleep. Arkady got as comfortable as he could in the chair and dipped into the book he had taken from Madame Spiridona. The diary of a ballet dancer promised to be tame enough. After the triumph in Paris, we opened in Monte Carlo… That sort of thing.
Instead, the pages fell open to God is Dog, Dog is God, Dog is Shit, God is Shit, I am Shit, I am God.
And I am a beast and a predator… everyone will be afraid of me and commit me to a lunatic asylum. But I don’t care. I am not afraid of anything. I want death.
26
Itsy had picked a trailer with a stove that, however small and miserly, kept her family warm. She swaddled the baby in her blue comforter and hardly gave her a chance to cry before a bottle was put to her mouth.
Itsy emphasized safety. Girls should beg in pairs. Boys mig
ht beg alone but in sight of each other. The problem was that the rain made any begging impossible; people lowered their eyes and bulled ahead. Although Itsy had a rule about not sniffing glue, it was difficult to enforce after hours of idleness. The silence was stranger for hearing through the wall the rush of passengers and the coming and going of trains. Sometimes a locomotive sounded as if it were coming right to their laps. The PA announced arrivals and departures in round, unintelligible tones.
Going to the children’s shelter was out of the question. Not because the people who ran it were mean; most were kind. But the family would be split up according to age and sex and Tito would probably be shot.
Mainly to give the kids something to do, Itsy took them to the video arcade behind Leningrad Station, leaving the sleeping baby in the care of Emma, Tito and the two oldest boys, Leo and Peter. Itsy was barely out the door when the boys put Tito on a leash and took paper bags and cans of air freshener from their day packs. They dragged a mattress out of the trailer to sit on.
Emma piped up: “I know what you’re doing.”
“But you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” Leo said.
“Depends. Itsy won’t be happy.”
Peter said, “In case you haven’t noticed, Itsy’s not here. We’re in charge.”
“And we’re bored,” said Leo. “Everyone else has fun while we babysit you and the brat. Here.” He offered her a cigarette.
“I can’t. Because of the baby.”
Peter smirked. “That’s if you’re pregnant. Jesus, you’re stupid.”
Emma, affronted, climbed into the trailer. If boys were so smart, how come they didn’t know how to change a diaper? She considered the argument won.
Outside the trailer, Leo and Peter sprayed the freshener inside their paper bags, lifted the bags like cups of gold and breathed deeply. Almost instantaneously aerosol chemistry entered the bloodstream and breached the brain.
Euphoria and warmth flowed over the boys. Forgetting that he was in a railway repair shed, Leo remarked on the fading light. Fading but profound in a pre-Creation way. Because in that emptiness was, well, everything. The entire universe fit into the palm of his hand.
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