St. Petersburg Noir

by Natalia Smirnova

  We finally got the jeep started up, but we had to cut the engine again at the morgue. Farid and I went up to the back entrance and rang the bell. While we were waiting for someone to come, I read a soggy printout that hung on the left side of the door:

  Funeral Home

  Cheap. Discounts for Wholesale Customers.

  Wholesale? Buy three coffins, get one free? Are you friggin’ kidding me? They might as well say, All incoming are free.

  Footsteps sounded from inside, and a light went on in the peephole.

  “Who’s there?”

  “The police. We brought a client,” Farid said, pointing to his cap.

  The lock and bolt jangled and the door opened. A whiff of something both foul and sweet-smelling escaped outside and enveloped us. An elderly man with a handgun was standing in the doorway. He looked like the night watchman. When he had convinced himself of our good intentions, he tucked the handgun back into his belt.

  “Live ammo?” Farid asked.

  “Tear gas,” said the watchman. The smell of beer suggested that the pensioner wasn’t just catching some z’s on the job. “Who did you say you brought?”

  “A client,” I answered. “Where should we unload him?”

  “No, no, boys,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re closed. You’ll have to register the person at eight a.m., please, those are the rules. Palich will be here, and you can hand the body over to him. Go on now.”

  He didn’t seem in the least surprised that we weren’t transporting the corpse in the official morgue-mobile. Apparently corpses arrived in all kinds of things.

  “Look, mister, he’s already registered,” Farid protested. He didn’t seem to relish the prospect of driving the builder around in the jeep until eight in the morning. “We already handed him over to your fellows at eight this morning. Here, look at the tag on his hand!”

  “How come you have him then?”

  “Found him on the road. I don’t know, maybe he fell out or something. Long story short, Pops, this ain’t no grocery store you’ve got here. Don’t give me that eight-to-nine business. Show us where to unload him.”

  The watchman stared mistrustfully at our wet faces and asked us to show him the body. We did. When he had to admit we were telling the truth, he shrugged and nodded.

  “All right, bring him in. I guess they really did lose him. Drunken morons.”

  Then we repeated the trick with the curtain, as a result of which the long-suffering builder was moved to yet another resting place.

  “Take him into the freezer,” the old fellow ordered us when we had entered the kingdom of the dead. “It’s this way.”

  Thank God we didn’t have to go far, or else I might have gotten a hernia or a ruptured navel. The watchman flung open wide doors and turned on a switch.

  “Go ahead. Put him in that empty spot.”

  We were struck by a wave of cold. Here it was—the penultimate stop on the road to eternity. The grave would be the terminal station. To be honest, if I had ended up here in the morning, my nervous system would probably have given out. But now my nervous system had adapted somewhat, insulating me from any deep psychological perturbation. I had never been in a place like this. The watchman wasn’t fazed in the least. For me, however, the tables and shelves overflowing with the dead made a strong impression. Especially considering the fact that the appearance of many of them was far from aesthetically pleasing, and some of them had died in far from natural circumstances. There was one, for example, whose leg was no longer even attached to its body. It immediately reminded me of that little Hollywood gem I had seen on the box not long before, Resident Evil. People just like this guy suddenly up and came to life again. Not only that, they started forcing themselves on ordinary citizens, striving to get their fill of fresh meat.

  The fluorescent lamps in the freezer cast an unnatural light, turning the dried blood on some of the bodies a bright red. Memories to last a lifetime. At a moment like this the only thing I could do to cope was to repeat Farid’s mantra to myself: They won’t bite. Really, what did I have to worry about? They were simply dead people. Dead for good. They can’t harm the living. They just lie there. And there they stay. When you see them in some thriller or an action film, no one rushes to turn off the TV. Farid there—he didn’t show a trace of emotion. But it set my teeth on edge. It could have just been the cold, though. My feet were already completely numb.

  Some of the corpses were fully clothed. They had most likely been brought in not long before and still hadn’t been worked over. Farid found an empty space on the farthest table. With his free hand he nudged aside an old woman who was already lying there, then heaved the legs of the builder onto it. After that he helped me with the rest of him. He didn’t pick up the curtain.

  “Done,” he said.

  Turning around, he bumped into a stretcher that was leaning against some of the shelves. It clattered down onto a bucket with a mop.

  What happened next made my feet and my blood burn hotter than any sauna or any amount of vodka ever could. If I had been a heart patient, the whole incident would have ended with yet another death certificate. For starters, I experienced a tremendous burst of adrenaline. A maiden parachute jump must be pure pleasure compared to what I felt. And I’m pretty sure I lost every last one of my marbles, at least temporarily. The next thing I did was cross myself multiple times, without even thinking about it, for the second time that day. Farid did too, by the way … As did the watchman, whose face was the color of an aging bruise from a billy club. So this is what you’re like, Ms. Schizophrenia. Well, hello there.

  One of the corpses that had been lying peacefully on the table nearest the door suddenly stirred, and then uttered a hoarse expletive. After this it sat up on the table, steadying itself on its neighbor—the junkie we had picked up earlier in the park. I couldn’t make out the face of the resurrected one, but I had no burning desire to do so, either.

  After crossing myself once more, I froze. My right hand moved automatically to my holster, though I knew from watching those zombie movies that you can’t kill them. Farid staggered into the farthest dark corner of the freezer and waited, muttering something about Allah. Now the fiend will look around and notice us, raise his stiff arms up in front of him, groan, and start moving toward us for fresh blood, I thought. And then we’ll turn into zombies too, and go back to Evseyev. Boy, will he be happy. Why am I even thinking about that? What’s the point in thinking at all?

  I raised my gun, because I didn’t know what else to do at such a tragic moment in my life. What would you have done if you were in my place? Picture this: a corpse has come back to life in the city morgue. Hello, I’m back!

  The dead man dangled his legs over the edge of the table and turned toward me … My finger rested on the trigger.

  An avalanche of life-affirming curses coming from the watchman saved me from a fatal mistake. I won’t quote him here. I’ll just say that at that moment they worked better than any magic spell of Harry Potter. I realized that the watchman no longer feared for life and limb. Literally or figuratively. He recognized the corpse.

  A second later I recognized him too. Or, rather, I recognized his canvas jacket. And when he raised his red calf-eyes to me, I knew it was him. Scarecrow. One of the orderlies. The junior partner.

  “Dudes, what are you doing here?”

  I put my gun away without answering. Farid seemed to come to life again too.

  The watchman just kept up the barrage of curses. “How did you get in here, you son of a bitch?” He dragged the orderly off the table and shoved him up against a cooling pipe. “Are you trying to get me sent up, you miserable pig?”

  “Where’s Lenka?”

  “Who the hell is Lenka?” the watchman roared.

  “My wife. Is she here too?”

  “We’re all going to end up here someday,” Farid said prophetically, shaking the blood off his jacket, which had rubbed up against some gangster with a shotgun wound.


  The watchman dragged the orderly out of the freezer into the warm corridor. We were right behind them, in case someone else decided to come back to life.

  The watchman sat the zombie-wannabe down on a wooden bench in the hallway and subjected him to an emergency purification ritual, threatening him with the gas pistol. We didn’t interfere. Judging by the turns of phrase, Mister Watchman had clocked in a few hours in a KGB basement.

  “Why are you going off on me?” the orderly said in his own defense. “Just give me a beer. Our shift was over, and I asked Valek to drop me off at home. Ask him yourself … Hey, guys, where have I seen you before?”

  The former KGB officer didn’t give us time to answer. “I’m the one asking the questions around here! How did you end up in the freezer, you enemy of the people?”

  “How should I know?” Scarecrow coughed loudly, putting his hand to his heart.

  “What do you remember? Tell me now or I’ll lock you up in the freezer again!”

  “Wait a second. Let me think. So, we picked up the lady from Kupchino to bring her over here … I got into the back of the van. Thought I’d lie down for a while to take a snooze. I was dead beat, hadn’t eaten anything all day. Valek said he’d wake me up when we got here, and then take me home. He had to drive the van to the garage … But where is he now?”

  I turned to Watchman. “Did you see them unload the van?”

  “No. I only get here at eleven.”

  “Is there someone who helps them carry in the bodies? From the van to the freezer?”

  “No, there’s not enough help here. They do it themselves. That’s what they’re paid for. And they don’t have to carry the corpses far when they go through the back. Before he had a partner, Valek did it all by himself. He slung the corpse over his shoulder—and into the freezer he went. He’s a strong fellow, for someone who drinks.”

  Suddenly it all made sense to me. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure this one out. Tin Man tried to wake up his partner, but it was the wrong guy. He kept poking and tugging at someone wearing the same kind of jacket—the builder. In the end, he couldn’t wake him up, and he unloaded the van himself; but he unloaded it after he dropped off his partner at home. Understandably, he didn’t even wake up. He was dead to the world. But no big deal, Tin Man just slung him over his shoulder and took him up to the apartment. The door wasn’t locked; it was held shut by only a sash. He opened it and dumped Scarecrow (who was actually the builder) in the hallway, propping him up against the wall. Then he said goodbye and left. The wife was too drunk to realize the corpse wasn’t her husband. She called the police and had her private memorial service right away.

  “Where do you live?” I asked Scarecrow, just to make sure.

  “In number eight?”

  “Yep … How did you know?”

  “We stopped by today. Your wife invited us in.”

  There was still one thing I didn’t understand. Wouldn’t Valek have noticed that the body of his partner was pretty cold and stiff when he dropped him off? But then it depended on how many “memorial services” they’d had that day, and there seemed to have been plenty.

  Farid seemed to have figured it all out too. But there was something else bothering him.

  “How does Valek drive the van in that condition?”

  “Oh, that’s no problem at all,” said the watchman. “Valek can be falling-down drunk when he tries to walk, but as soon as he gets behind the wheel he sobers up fast. Experience.”

  Evseyev’s hoarse voice could now be heard barking out of the jalopy. Duty officer demanded we contact him.

  “Let’s go, we’ve done our part,” Farid said, motioning to me.

  “Dudes, can you give me a lift?” Scarecrow asked, his eyes still closed. “If I go on foot I won’t get there until morning. My wife must be worried.”

  “Nah, she took a sedative,” Farid said by way of comfort. “And don’t forget your curtain in the freezer.”

  When he was showing us out, Watchman nodded to Scarecrow, still standing in the corridor, and said softly, “Valek doesn’t have any luck with partners. They’re all saboteurs. Do you know what the last one did? He took the van at night, covered the yellow stripe over with black electrician’s tape, and made money picking up people at the train station. Turned it into a jitney. They fired him. People like that should be summarily executed … That would get the country back on its feet.”

  * * *

  I couldn’t get to sleep that night. If you spend the whole day picking mushrooms, you’ll start seeing enormous milk mushrooms and orange caps as soon as you go to bed. If you sit in one place with a fishing rod for five hours, you’ll have visions of a float bobbing up and down. That’s just how the brain works. I had hardly closed my eyes when I started seeing gloomy corpses. Of course, I jumped up from the makeshift bed (chairs pushed together) and looked around the room in terror. I couldn’t see anyone except for the peacefully sleeping Farid, so I tried once again to fall asleep.

  At around six in the morning the indefatigable Evseyev came into our room. He still hadn’t won his computer game.

  “Alex, you’ve got to make a run over to number eight again. To that orderly from the morgue. The paramedics called about some nonsense going on over there. His wife jumped out the window. From the third floor. She fractured almost every bone in her body, but she’s still alive. He came home drunk half an hour ago, apparently, wrapped up in a curtain. She saw him and started shouting, Get thee gone, Satan! Then out the window she went. I don’t like the looks of it. I’m afraid he might have chucked her out himself, and he’s trying to pin the blame on Satan. Swing by the place, in any case, and see what you can find out. If it’s something serious, I’ll call the operative …”

  THE SIXTH OF JUNE

  BY SERGEI NOSOV

  Moskovsky Prospect

  Translated by Polly Gannon

  I was told to forget about this place. Not to come here, ever. But here I am.

  A lot has changed, there’s plenty I don’t recognize. It could have changed still more, on an even grander—planetary!—scale, if I had kicked opened the bolt on the door and burst into the bathroom back then.

  I hope I don’t have to explain for the ten thousandth time why I wanted to shoot Boris Yeltsin.

  Enough is enough.

  * * *

  Since I got out, I haven’t been to Moskovsky Prospect even once. Tekhnologichesky Institute metro stop was where I disembarked, and then my feet took me where they wanted to go. Everything is close to here. To the Fontanka River it’s six minutes if you walk fast. The Obukhovsky Bridge. Tamara and I lived not in the corner building, but right next to it—number 18 on Moskovsky Prospect. Hey, check this out! A restaurant called The Lair. There didn’t used to be any lairs here. There used to be a grocery store, where Tamara worked behind a counter. I went into The Lair to take a look at their menu. Bear meat is their specialty. Oh well.

  If this is a lair, it would be fair to call the room in the apartment above The Lair, where Tamara and I used to live, The Nest. And if things had worked out differently, there would be a museum now in our nest above the lair. The Museum of the Sixth of June. But a museum was really the last thing on my mind.

  * * *

  I walk into the courtyard. There, with the help of a hoist that raises a worker up to the height of the third floor, a poplar tree is being dismantled in stages. The worker amputates the thick branches with a chainsaw, piece by piece, cut by cut. I used to view that tree with great respect. It was tall. It grew faster than the others, because it didn’t get enough sunlight in the courtyard. I used to sit under this poplar in ’96 and ’97, smoking on the rusty swings. (Today the playground is filled up with wooden blocks.)

  This is where I met Yemelianych. He crouched down one day on the edge of the sandbox and, opening up a small vial, downed an infusion of hawthorn berry. I wanted to be alone, and got ready to leave, but he asked me about my political convictions. We got to talking.
We shared a lot of the same ideas. About Yeltsin, as was to be expected (everyone talked about him in those days), and about how he should be killed. I said that not only did I dream of doing it, I was ready to do it for real. He said he was ready to do it too. He said that he had been the commander of a platoon of intelligence agents in a certain African country, the name of which he didn’t have the right to say out loud. But soon he would, and then everyone would know. I didn’t believe him at first. Yet there were details. Lots of details. It was impossible not to believe him.

  I told him I had a Makarov (two years ago I had bought it in the empty lot behind Yefimov Street). Many people had firearms back then—those of us who had them hardly tried to hide it. (Well, Tamara didn’t know. I hid the Makarov under the sink behind the pipes.) Yemelianych said that I’d have to go to Moscow. That was where all the important events happened. There were more opportunities there. I said my windows looked out on Moskovsky Prospect, and official government delegations often passed along that route. It was significant that the year before I had seen the presidential cortege from my window. Yeltsin was visiting St. Petersburg, since it was getting close to election time. We’ll wait. We should wait until he comes back.

  But, Yemelianych said, you can’t shoot him from the window. They have armored cars.

  I knew that. I said that was not what I was going to do.

  You have to do it another way, said Yemelianych.

  So that’s how I got to know him.

  And now the poplar will be gone.

  * * *

  Yemelianych was wrong when he said that I got together with Tamara solely because of the view onto Moskovsky Prospect. That’s what he thought at first. That’s what the investigator thought too. Ridiculous. First of all, I knew myself that it made no sense to shoot out of the window. Or even to leave the house and run to the corner, where the government corteges slowed down to turn onto the Fontanka Embankment. It made no sense to shoot at an armored car. I’m not a complete idiot. I’m not nuts. Although, I must admit, I do let my imagination run away with me sometimes. Sometimes, I have to say, I would see myself running over to the car that had slowed down at the corner, aiming at the glass, shooting, and my bullet hits just the right weak spot, and all the bulletproof glass … and all the bulletproof glass … and all the bulletproof glass …