I pushed the empty china cabinet aside, lifted the floorboard, pulled out the piece of cork, snagged the diamond with a fork, removed my boot, and shoved the stone in my sock. Then I went into the bedroom, where there was a spot in the middle of the bed that looked like a wine stain, wrestled on two sweaters, collected money from all the drawers, and headed back out, crunching on the glass dust. Turning onto Aerodromnaya, I called the fence from a pay phone, but he didn’t answer, and I had to leave a message, although in my position it wasn’t terribly intelligent. I said I’d call tomorrow at the same time and that I had a pear for anyone who had twenty well-done steaks. An idiotic code, but he liked it, the crappy conspirator. Saying this made me hungry and I quickly hit a shawarma stand, then went back to the harbor on foot, through Serafimovskoye cemetery.
The woman wasn’t on the boat. There was an empty bottle on the table in the cockpit, the stove was stuffed with firewood, and there was a lipstick heart on the hatch leading to the forepeak. I fired up the stove, smoked a couple of reefers, threw the stinking rags off the bed, wrapped up in the blanket, and fell asleep. I had a hunting dream, though I wasn’t the hunter or the prey but someone else. Before I woke up I dreamed of a vixen, a dazzling vixen being chased across an empty white field by hounds. It was heading for the forest, racing. It wasn’t going to make it, I thought, when I saw the pack getting closer, but then the fox stopped short, swiveled around, dug its front paws into the snow crust, let out a howl, and turned into a small dog. The hounds ran up to it, sniffed the snow-covered dog face, and rushed on. Opening my eyes, I saw the light was already oozing through the crack between deck and hatch, the February wind droning on the other side of the iron wall, and it felt as though the boat was rocking, ready to set off, and I quickly climbed out. The weed was still clinging inside my head, and scraps of fog were floating before my eyes, but when I glanced toward the island I saw the hole and sobered up instantly.
The yellow scarf was fluttering on the wire net. Huh? Walking up to the hole I already knew who I’d see there, and I wasn’t wrong. I peered at the drowned man’s tranquil face and slowly walked toward shore—there was no cross in the drift, there wasn’t even a drift, just level ground, a little trampled, they could have been our own prints, mine and the datsan cleaning woman’s. I managed to break off a thick branch from a bush close to shore and poked it through the middle of the grave. There was nothing under the snow.
Had the dead man returned to the water? Or was this a different dead man? Or did he jump in the water like a whitethroated dipper to escape a hawk, walk along the bottom, and then calmly climb out from under the ice? I returned to the hole, knelt, and poked at the floating body so the face would appear from under the ice crust. The face was just as smooth, and the hair was fair, only instead of a shirt this fellow had a clown’s black bow tie on his bare neck. It looked as though he’d been killed at a party, or after the party, during a friendly orgy on a yacht. They might well have been killed simultaneously, only the second one didn’t get here right away and got snagged somewhere else on his scarf, at some other fishing hole. Damn, they couldn’t have identical rags on their neck. Where was the first one? No, this was the same guy, no question.
The Buryat decided to play a little joke on me, that’s all. She’d hooked the drowned man’s bow tie and dragged it back to the hole. She’d had her revenge for my not wanting to wind her beastly hair on my hand and go at it with her on that narrow cot in the unsqueamish Luka’s place. All right, woman, do this again and you’ll be the one floating with a bow tie around your neck. I went back to the vessel for the boathook and rope, pulled out the drowned man, who looked bizarrely fresh, dragged him over the ice to the shore, and buried him in the same place but didn’t stick a pet cross in, and tied the yellow scarf to a handrail on the gangway. When I’d brewed the last of the tea, I heard voices near the boat and climbed on deck, went into the latrine, and peered out through the porthole. Fishermen were standing a few meters from shore, examining the hole, but they were reluctant to move any closer. One of them, wearing a down coverall, gestured and I heard something like honeycombs and yellow.
* * *
I spent the day in Lakhta, there was no point showing my face in town, and by now the boat made me sick. I bought brandy, drank it on the shore sitting on a solidly frozen log, relaxed, and tried to call the Latvian a few times, but she apparently had either turned off her phone or just didn’t want to talk. A couple of months earlier Anta had told me that they had a program at the consulate that could pinpoint the location of any employee, therefore she took the battery out of her phone when she played hooky from work. This had made an impression and I’d surrendered to a moment’s paranoia, leaving my phone in the conductor’s apartment. At least I didn’t toss it in a ditch.
It was too cold to sleep, I had enough wood left for a couple of hours, and toward morning I picked up what was left of the partition and used it for heat along with the wood carving of Esenin that was hanging over the bed. When I woke up, I went to the hole and checked out a new dead man. This one had the scarf wrapped up to his ears so all you could see was his smooth, celluloid forehead and whitened, pruney cheeks. His hands were in his jacket pockets, as if he’d been searching for his wallet or cigarettes before dying, and in general his look was bizarrely matter-of-fact, sullen even.
Load-unload, that meant. There’s the job the locals have thrown your way, you sorry-ass beggar, I thought, observing the long scarf bobbing in the water like a floater on a giant’s fishing rod. He cleaned up after criminals, sly old Luka, founder of the seasonal cemetery. In a couple of weeks the snow would melt and your burials were going to go floating down the Greater Nevka past Elagin Island. I’d like to know where they sunk them so cleverly that they all landed here, near the harbor. Though who said I’d seen them all? Maybe they’d released an entire excursion under the ice and I was just getting the guides in identical scarves.
All right, boys, I’m done being your gravedigger. I’m clearing out of here in a couple of days and you can catch your own rotten smelt. I took a walk as far as the shore, examined the footprints in the snow next to yesterday’s grave, collected a bucket of snow, and returned to the boat. After I’d started making breakfast I suddenly realized I couldn’t eat and drank some hot water with sugar I found in the galley. Then I shaved in front of the shard of mirror, cleaned my coat, and walked down the shore to Staraya, to the Datsan Gunzechoinei.
* * *
“You sit alone too often,” I was told by the monk I asked about the slant-eyed woman, showing him the cap she’d lent me. “You sit alone and think about women. You’re already late for the khural, it ended at noon. And if you came for the seminar of the venerable lama, then get your five hundred rubles out and go to Malaya Pushkarskaya. Not now, in two weeks.”
“What seminar’s that?” It was clear I wasn’t getting past the gates.
“The practice of samatha and vipassana.” The monk was hunched over in the wind in his robes, but he spoke with me willingly. “Or maybe you want a lunar calendar? You’ll know your bad days.”
“Lately that’s been pretty clear without a calendar. Maybe you do remember the woman after all, she looks like a Kalmyk, rosy-cheeked, with lots of hair. She was at the New Year’s celebration, and before that she cleared the snow from the courtyard.”
“Women come to us to help with the housekeeping, but I don’t know their names.” The monk frowned. “You can leave the cap here and she’ll see it herself. Come at three o’clock, we’ll pray together. For a favorable reincarnation and for the departed.”
“I’ve got stacks of departed,” I said mechanically, and all of a sudden I bumped into his attentive gaze. The monk’s face was ochre and doughy, and for some reason I imagined him shaving his head with a curved, ivory-handled Tibetan knife. He turned and started down the alley toward the sloping stairs with the columns, signaling me to follow. Hanging above the datsan entrance was a wheel that resembled the wheel on my boat, o
nly that had been hacked to pieces and was lying on the floor in the pilothouse.
“Have you ever dreamed that bamboo was growing out of your head?” the monk asked. “Or a palm growing out of your heart? … Why are you limping?”
“I broke the heel on my left boot at a train crossing. I’m living on a boat,” I added for some reason, “and I dream of dogs chasing a vixen.”
“You spend too much time alone,” the monk repeated, leaving me by the doorway. “You should see people. Take a walk here, look around. We need a boilerman, a jack-of-all-trades. The roof leaks, there’s lots of work.”
“Oh no, lama, I’m not here about that.” All of a sudden I felt cheerful. “I may not be a church thief, and I don’t rob temples, but I don’t advise you to let me into the cabbage patch. I might not be able to help myself.”
“I’m not a lama,” the monk said, turning away from the doors, “and you’re no thief. You’re Luka, the man from the boat.”
I had no desire to tour the datsan, so I waited for the monk to go inside and then went back to the street in search of a phone booth, cursing myself for ditching my Nokia so hastily. The fence was home, but he was reluctant to speak to me—even the description of the ripe pear didn’t excite him, and eventually he told me to meet him at the French café on Petrogradskaya, but he immediately added that I’d have to wait awhile for my steaks. Not only that, twenty was a bit much, the trickster commented gloomily, I’d have to make do with sixteen, since they were looking for me all over town. I said we’d talk there, but as I hung up I already knew there was no point talking, his type had an animal instinct for other people’s troubles.
The city stretched on like a solid snowy canvas, my ruined boot had taken on water, and I had to drop into a cheap cobbler and buy whatever they had—loafers on a ripple sole. In the repair shop I spent a long time looking at the guy, who seemed familiar, he was obviously the shop owner because he was chewing out the salesman for some cracked window. As I left the store I realized what had made me stare at him. The owner had a yellow scarf wrapped around his neck, kind of dirty, as if it had been pulled out of the river.
Reaching Petrogradskaya in my new boots, I went into the café, took a free newspaper from the counter, ordered a brandy, and got ready to wait for the fence. There were only two people and the waiter, who was wearing an idiotic getup with braids. The floor was sprinkled with sawdust, in the Parisian manner, to make the mud easier to clean up. The second customer was sitting by the window chewing something, he had a mug of mulled wine in front of him, and the light from the window fell on his hair, which looked like soaked linen thread. The guy must have been wandering around town all day without a hat, I thought, but then he turned around and I saw his face.
“You’re not missing anyone?” I myself don’t know what power lifted me from my chair and made me walk up to the blond guy. “You look like a dead man I know … sorry, like someone I saw recently. He looks an awful lot like you, like your brother really. Are you looking for him?”
“You want money?” He raised his eyes to me, dark and quick, like the river water under the ice.
I’d already raised my arm to punch him in the nose, but the waiter appeared beside the table with another steaming mulled wine, and his scornful look told me that I hadn’t shaved for two days and I looked like a tramp in my damp, ash-spattered coat.
“The alms seekers have multiplied. Here, take it.” The guy dug up change from his jacket pocket and sprinkled it on the table. I recognized the jacket too, and my mind went dim. Blood surged to my temples, I leaned on the table and looked into his eyes. His face was smooth and welcoming. I remembered how two days before I’d thrown spongy gray snow on that face, trying not to look at the snow-dusted eyes and the dark depression of his sunken mouth.
“Listen, buddy.” The waiter put his hand on my shoulder. “You need to get out of here, leave the man alone.”
“He’s a dead man,” I said, pointing to the blond man. “Touch his hair, it’s linen yarn. My granny would hang some like that on her fence to dry, and then she’d straighten it with a steel comb. He’s a drowned man, I buried him, but he dug himself out and ran away.”
“I see.” The waiter let go of my shoulder. “Get moving, sicko. Don’t worry about the brandy. It’s on the house.”
“Hey, look.” I reached out cautiously to tug at the man’s bangs. “He’s going to be bald now, and if you give him a swift kick he’ll fall to pieces.”
The guy moved my hand away, stood up straight, proving taller than I’d thought, pushed his chair back with a rumble, and started for the exit. I followed him, hearing the waiter’s voice behind me.
“Kind gentleman, your two mulled wines and croissant?”
The blond guy pulled a five hundred out of his pocket and threw it on the floor, on the dirty sawdust. I walked out after him and tried to grab his sleeve, but he pushed me with such unexpected force that I flew back into the café’s window, slipped, and struck my temple on the stone sill. Blood gushed into my eyes, I sat down, leaned against the wall, and wiped my face with my sleeve. The drowned man sped off, and for a while I could see the shiny blue dot of his jacket in the crowd, then I lost it. I tried to get up but couldn’t, and I remained sitting. Pedestrians gathered around me, a fellow in a leather jacket started clicking his cell—I think he was photographing me, the bastard—the curious waiter stuck his head out the door like a lizard, some girl chirped something about the police, and I gestured that I was fine—but it was too late.
“Can you stand?” A cop who had come out of nowhere leaned over me. “The van’s on its way, I called it. Do you have your ID? Citizen, can you hear me?”
I could, but I couldn’t speak, the air was thick, and I had a hard time pulling it through my windpipe. I’ve got to get out of here, I thought, feeling the bills in my pocket, small change. I had to get out of here, I had the diamond in my sock, they’d find it if they searched me, and this would all get many times worse. I couldn’t go to the station.
What would I tell them? That I was a fence? That the river was giving birth to monsters? That for the first few days they were helpless and couldn’t climb out of the hole? That I had to drag them out so that they could rise after a few hours, shake themselves off, and head to town?
That this was the cycle of dead water in nature? That Petersburg was in danger?
The first thing they would do would be to pull my file, then they’d beat me in the kidneys, and then they’d call the orderlies. That was at best. At worst they’d find that dodgy old jeweler with knocked-out teeth and the glade with the silver sheep. The blood was pouring down my cheek and now creeping onto my neck.
“Listen, friend,” I said with difficulty. “Lean over. I have a stone worth twenty grand in my sock. Take off my boot, take the sock, and put me in a taxi. And do it quick, before your guys come. Come on, before I change my mind.”
After getting all this out, I heaved a sigh, stretched my leg out, and shut my eyes. An eternity passed, the cop was in no hurry, I could hear the street noise—the rattling windows, the streetcar rumbling, the radio muttering, the shuffling of soles over the wet snow—but still no sirens. The gawkers seemed to have started to disperse, and I no longer heard their alarmed voices.
“What, are things really that bad?” the cop whispered, leaning toward my ear. “Stop it, this is just a scratch. It would be different if you’d been smashed in the head with a silver ingot.”
He smelled palpably of slime and diesel. I unglued my eyes. Or rather, just my right eye because the left wouldn’t open anymore. The cop’s smooth, welcoming face spread like an oil spot in water. Behind him there was some lady with a string bag looming, and behind her the young woman who had shouted about the police, a linen fringe covering her forehead all the way to her eyebrows. Behind the young woman was a snow-covered square with a view of Kamennoostrovsky Prospect. There were people walking down the avenue, a lot of people, a whole lot of people, more than usual in this par
t of town. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I knew that many of them were wearing yellow scarves. I looked at them with one eye until the siren went up at the corner of Avstriiskaya Square.
“Get up, Luka,” the cop said, holding out his hand to me. “The van’s here. Very well, we’ll drop you off at work.”
BARELY A DROP
BY ANDREI RUBANOV
Liteyny Avenue
Translated by Marian Schwartz
The writer headed off an hour before midnight.
Usually he took the sleeping car: he liked his comfort and did not care for traveling companions. In fatter, richer times he might take a whole double. For the sake of solitude.
His best friend once said, “Don’t confuse solitude and loneliness.”
Now leaner times had come upon the writer. He wasn’t poor, of course, but he had no desire to pay extra for solitude. Thirtynine. At that age you no longer feel like paying the world extra; it’s time to arrange things so the world pays you. And the sleeping cars were worse now. The creak of cheap plastic, the gray sheets. The brown railroad dust. Last time he’d traveled with his son. He’d wanted to show the boy springtime Petersburg; it had been a cold May, and the heat on the train wasn’t working. (The conductor apologized nonchalantly: “It broke; we’re fixing it.”) The writer froze and promised himself he would never travel in sleeping cars again. The cold and dirt—that was no big deal. He’d known worse in prison and barracks. Only there it was part of the rules of play, whereas here it just added to his irritation. A train plying between the two capitals and made up of “luxury” cars should be heated on cold nights, right?
St. Petersburg Noir Page 13