She turned out to be useful in other ways too. She turned out to have a brain she could flex when she needed to, and could bare her teeth at strangers, show some muscle, protect her master, and he appreciated that. On the one hand, he liked it … but on the other, it had started to bother him. Lately Vsevolod had sensed his babe was having quite a hard time—he guessed her time had come for nest building. He knew those tricks of theirs, and for Masha he was prepared to put up with a lot. Maybe he should give her, oh, thirty thousand bucks. That would be quite a lot for her, and he wouldn’t feel it, he could bring more. He could, but there was no point spoiling her, so … for starters, he had to come to his senses. He could keep her longer, he’d grown used to her, but there was one new circumstance … this gentle eighteen-year-old circumstance … and Masha … she wouldn’t understand, though she should … she could have caught on by now: let him, Seva, get away with stuff and accept the world as it was. He wondered what she’d do without him.
Right then Seva got a stab in his side. It was his matchless, famed intuition talking to him. She knew an awful lot, and no good could come of an injured woman, especially Masha, who was something special. You couldn’t buy her off. She needed something else … He could pawn her off on someone else … someone good—that was something they did too, but with her, that trick wouldn’t work, she’d get even nastier … but so what? What about wiping her out? The concept appealed to him: wipe off the face of the earth, from memory, as if she never existed and everything was starting fresh, and no one had ever set foot there before … Wipe her out. This thought didn’t surprise Seva. It was as if he’d been expecting it. He started tallying up his material and moral loss in the one case or the other—if he wiped Masha out or left her walking the earth.
Seva was an old campaigner. He’d started his career small, gone through fire and ice at the very peak of gangsterism, and now he lived peacefully and quietly, or so it seemed. He came from a civilized family, was cautious, sly, beautifully educated, and generous when he had to be, and he had charisma. Seva held a respectable state post and in interviews said proudly of himself, “I’m a creator.” If dirty work was required, he didn’t have to get himself dirty anymore. Obliging hands were always found for that, but he had experienced that animal horror he’d known in his youth during brawls (and he’d been through all kinds) and never forgot it. Sometimes, to unwind, Vsevolod Mikhailovich would take a break and pay tribute to his old enthusiasm for the arts, which dated from his school days: photography and painting. He organized exhibits and went pub crawling with art students, touched by their childish bluntness and their modest demands on life. “Like bugs, they live on crumbs and are happy to have them, baby bugs, the muck of the earth, and we need that … the trees have to grow on something.” He and Masha laughed so hard, and Masha understood him perfectly, she was greedy for life, but a little too greedy …
* * *
They met on the Kryukov near the Torgovy Bridge, as agreed.
The light was already fading, the streetlamps were on, and there was a silvery reflection in the water of the St. Nicholas bell tower flickering in the dusk.
Masha uttered not a word of reproach to her man for being late. She pretended she’d been busy examining the cranes that crossed their long arrows, as if getting into a discussion.
“Look how wretched,” she said, waving her arm toward the new building.
“Check it out from another standpoint—an urbanist landscape, a clash of planes. It’s going to be a lot drearier when it’s all finished.”
He didn’t try to explain to her that at base a construction site was a clash of interests, not planes, and the loser was what was wretched.
Masha suddenly cried out. After the alarming fantasies that had overtaken her during her wait, she now imagined the water had splashed over the banks and touched her ankles.
“What’s up, kid?”
“Do you have a cigarette?”
Seva held out a pack, but it was odd because she didn’t smoke. Very occasionally, for photographs, she would toy with slim feminine cigarettes.
A couple of foreigners walked by. The man was lazily stroking the naked back of the woman, who was wearing an elegant evening dress. The couple were obviously counting on a long and pleasant night, a fitting cap to admiring the Petersburg landscapes.
“Well, where are we going?” Masha was hoping for a night in a good club, top-notch jazz, and she wouldn’t mind a drink, her nerves were completely shattered.
“Today I feel like wandering,” Seva said.
Really? Masha’s friend was only rarely visited by these desires, and she’d reconciled herself, but right now it was all wrong. She tried to nudge Seva toward the center of town. But he took her arm and, jokingly ordering her, pulled her along. As always in these instances, they strolled through Kolomna, where Seva had lived as a boy and until he’d bought himself a place not far from Palace Square. From time to time they came across beautifully restored buildings, but there were entire swaths of rental apartment buildings, the refuge of the newcomers who were barbarizing the city. The Kolomna where Pushkin’s poor Evgeny lost his marbles was still Kolomna, and the little Pryazhka River still bore its waters past Blok’s sadly famous insane asylum, now a museum. The museum could do its museum thing, but the crazies were going to be moved elsewhere. There was no reason to be crazy in the center of town, and the freed-up buildings could be turned into VIP mental hospitals
Kolomna was probably the city’s last district where lots of courtyards still weren’t barred and there weren’t formidable code locks on the gates. Seva dragged Masha through courtyards and secret passages for hours. She didn’t like walking around here at night, even with Seva, and now the only thing that reassured her was the fact that they probably had a bodyguard following discreetly on their heels. She cursed under her breath. Where was he taking her? A man to whom all doors were open and who was received everywhere with respect was traipsing through the streets and kissing in strangers’ spit-covered entryways! Why would he never ask her whether she liked doing it in stairwells when someone could walk up at any time? True, Masha herself never protested, and his swift, silent pressure was not as important to her as the relaxation that followed it and the weakness that spread over his face. Sometimes he even wept. She never told anyone about that, but she was immoderately proud of his tears. The bodily part of it barely roused her. This coldness had been in her since the very start of their romance, and she may have derived the most pleasure from the awareness that she had complete mastery, albeit not for long, over this strong, omnipotent man. How could she have known that he had never been hers for a second. His whole life had been slave to a single passion which she actually could have understood had she chosen to—the thirst for power.
It wasn’t love that softened his features and brought him to tears, but the pleasure of unlimited power over her breath and life. Today, in the empty attic where he’d brought her, this passion flared up with unusual heat, for he knew the end was nigh.
At some moment in their tryst he picked Masha up abruptly and spun her around, and then, as if going rigid, dropped her on the floor. She waited for Seva to help her get up, but he stepped to the side, and without moving watched her lying on the floor, smeared in the dust. Then Seva remembered himself and gave her a hand. “Sorry,” he said, and he kissed Masha’s forehead.
That was it. She was the past. Like all those who had already been wiped out, all those he’d beaten.
But right then, as if on purpose—this was all he needed—a photograph fell out of his pants pocket. A photograph of the pale corps de ballet moth with freckles au naturel. Nude.
Not much to look at. Not really worth photographing. It was obvious he’d taken it himself, sitting on the couch in his kitchen, and she was covering her breasts with her hands, the tramp. What had compelled him to carry around her photograph?
Masha started screaming, calling Seva bad words that surfaced from out of nowhere, since she’d nev
er sworn before. They fought nastily and crudely, and the worst part was that toward the end he said to her with the most genuine contempt, “Who do you think you are? Look at yourself—an ordinary tradeschool girl!”
He zipped up his pants and ran out, zigzagging through the courtyards.
Masha remained there a little longer, staring straight at the wall, then went downstairs slowly and cautiously and came out on Printers Union Street. She walked home, constantly tripping on construction debris. She walked that way and farther—past Theater Square, past the monument to Rimsky-Korsakov, and for another ten minutes or so through the nighttime streets, though it wasn’t so scary. She came to a halt on the Kryukov Canal. She had just been waiting here on this bridge for Seva. How much time had passed? Two hours, three?
The most terrible thing had come to pass. What she had feared most in this life. She was a mediocrity, a faded part of this gray, worm-eaten mass, a trade-school girl! This was exactly what she had hoped to avoid when she had made for the Petersburg air, rotten though it was! Why, oh why had this nightmare come crashing down on her head? Because she’d never loved her chronically ill mother? In childhood, at the sight of her, Masha had wanted to get away, flee, deny everything so as not to be saturated with the smell of illness and death … But she was just a child, pure and simple. Why was she being punished now?
Masha had heard many times about women getting left … certain kinds of women, but that couldn’t affect her. She couldn’t be abandoned … but she had been, and that meant she was like everyone else … Such inflated pride, such an inflated sense of herself in this world … and now she was a mediocrity, a nobody, and my God, she looked around—this theater and this square, the music, the dance, even the dance wasn’t for her … It wasn’t the dance that had abandoned her, though, but vice versa … Seva … Was he really to blame? He’d just noticed that the gilt had rubbed off and there was nothing underneath … How could there be nothing? She would show him yet. Masha tried to come up with an idea … maybe she would write a letter that would make him understand … But a terrible devastation fell over her, there was a void in her head, and that meant it was true, she was a nothing—and everyone already knew it … No, if she went to see him and begged on her knees, he would explain that he’d just been joking around, he’d been drunk! Yes, that must be it, he’d been drunk!
* * *
Masha had not been wrong about the bodyguard. He was watching her right now, hiding behind the construction vans on the embankment. But he was no longer guarding her body, for it had come detached and had ceased to be a part of his boss. Protector was now hunter.
There was the quick clicking of heels. Coming toward the bridge from Theater Square was a maidenly figure holding a single rose. Masha glimpsed the girl’s face and wasn’t surprised to encounter the very same freckles from Seva’s photograph. Time had become dense, as if it wanted to gather up all events and encounters in a single night.
The killer saw that Masha more than likely had asked for a light because the click of heels stopped and the girl with the rose was digging in her purse. Then a weak flame ignited, but she couldn’t get it to light for a moment because of the wind. Another minute and again the clicking of heels.
Masha took a drag, but again, as a few hours before, cold water from the canal splashed her. She leaned over the railing; the water was far away. Masha thought she saw a reflection slip by in it, or no, someone’s shadow, but the water bore it away, and then another shadow, and again the current carried it off.
The hunter saw Masha slowly begin to dance, as if hearing music and trying to fall in with the beat. Preparation, sissonne, pas de chat, chaînés… transition to grand jeté en rond… No, that’s wrong! She threw her arm up, as if tossing away the learned technique, and abruptly dropped it, slicing the air. The bitterness of loss in the broken and terrible movements of her elbows and knees, the spinning of freakish suffering, the impotence after birth and the flight, the clumsy, insane flight, the fall full-force, and the slow awakening. Her body was buffeted like a banner of despair, her dance was the dance of the shadow, the dance of the reflection, death dancing and an incredible revelation, so unlike anything she had known before. Too bad there was no one to appreciate the birth of this insane whirlwind that had suddenly settled in her.
There was only one spectator. He squeezed the trigger when the dancer was right at the bridge and, continuing her pas, bent over very low, as if she wanted to examine her own reflection in the water. The bullet did not interrupt her movement, and a second later the waters closed over.
* * *
Seva was walking through the courtyards alone. He had sent his bodyguard away. Let him do his job. He knew everything here, he’d grown up here. Each building was marked by a fight, kisses, humiliation, because he’d known that too, he hadn’t always been on top, sometimes he’d been way down below … Right now he felt himself at full strength, fixed into this life like a screw, and if he was meant to go to the bottom, he would take the whole boat down with him. His fears and the neurosis that had once made his eyelid twitch were now behind him.
It was torture being a teenager with a twitching eyelid. So he had conquered that tic. His dream of becoming the helmsman in this life had come to pass, and that meant it was God’s doing—if, of course, He existed. If not, all the better. That meant he had earned his helm without outside assistance. In any event, there were natural laws that were helping him make his way up the ladder. A flat-out sprint, thank God. Donkeys never advanced, capable only of obeying, unable to live without idols such as he was, without his firm hand and approving smile. He began making plans for tomorrow. He wasn’t thinking about Masha.
* * *
“Look at all the water that’s accumulated, I have to hurry … So? … Don’t take the violin? You’re sitting in your burrow, and you think you need everything. But you go out and what is this stuff for? I’ll just pack up the little statue, the china ballerina, I have to wipe the dust off her and wrap her up in newspaper … We have plenty of ballerinas here, the Mariinsky Theater is next door, they’re like windup toys there, but this one always sits here sad, lifeless, as if she were ill. Goddamnit! A foot broke off! Rats … And the music is too loud, my ears hurt, beautiful music, who’s playing, I don’t know—there, upstairs, or maybe I’m going mad because the mind is a boundary and I’m trying to erase things. This is all a joke, though. I see perfectly well that the dust has to be wiped away. But the water is flowing, still flowing, I guess I need to climb on the chair. Let not the water overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.
“Here they are thinking they did me in … strange people, as if I could be done in. See, the flood has begun, I have to hurry, I’ll send for my things. Fine … there’s been so much that’s terrible I don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’m going away, yes, I said I’d send for my things, only I have to tell Masha. Here’s what she should be told: Dance, Masha!
“Masha! Hear me, Masha? Dance! Dance, Masha, otherwise we’re lost.”
* * *
Seva had just stopped to take out a cigarette when a heavy body fell on him from above. His head struck the ground and he no longer saw anything, he just felt a swift and powerful flow pull him along.
The comic death of a big shot killed by an old woman falling from her window—actually, it’s a sin to call her that since she wasn’t even sixty—kept newspaper readers entertained for quite a while.
Masha never was found, and they simply wrote her off as missing.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA FOREVER
BY JULIA BELOMLINSKY
Arts Square
Translated by Ronald Meyer
“Do you like street singing?” Raskolnikov suddenly addressed the passerby, a man who was no longer young and had the look of an idler, standing next to him by the organ-grinder. The latter looked at him startled and surprised. “I do,” Raskolnikov continued, but with a look as if to say that he wasn’t talking
about street singing at all. “I like it when they sing to the accompaniment of an organ-grinder on a cold, dark, and damp autumn night, it has to be damp, when all the passersby have sickly pale green and sickly faces; or even better, when there’s wet snow falling, straight down, and there’s no wind, you know? And through it shine the gas streetlights …”
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
We were walking along Italyanskaya Street. Italyanskaya Street was empty. Four thirty—the most unpopular time for White Nights.
All the carriages had started turning into pumpkins.
The coachmen into rats.
The crystal slippers fell off and shattered.
The ball dress turned out to be smeared with ashes.
The pumpkins rolled downhill to the bridges.
The rats readied themselves and were screwing around.
St. Petersburg Noir Page 17