Death Of A Russian Priest

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  And then, as his father knelt at his side, Father Merhum could see that it was not his father but a woman from his childhood, Yelena Yozhgov, and suddenly it was not she but Sister Nina, her rosary of silver around her neck. She sat, put his head in her lap, and wailed, a wail that was pain and justification to the dying priest. He would be a martyr. He could simply be quiet now and die a martyr, but he could not keep his mouth from moving.

  “Sister, Oleg must forgive me,” he said, and she leaned forward to hear what he would say next, but there were no more words and the priest was dead.

  TWO

  IT WAS NOT AT ALL clear to Galina Panishkoya how she came to be sitting in the back room of the former State Store 31 with a gun in her hand pressed hard against the neck of a young woman in a faded and not very clean white smock.

  Galina was a sixty-three-year-old grandmother, a babushka, in a cloth coat. She had two arthritic knees and she had two granddaughters to take care of. If there was one place she should not be, it was here.

  She shifted on the rickety wooden stool in an attempt to get a bit more comfortable. The movement made the gun in her hand shift, and the young woman in white sitting in front of her gasped as the barrel tapped bone just above her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” said Galina.

  The young woman, whose name was Ludmilla, sobbed, and tried not to look at the body of Herman Koruk, her boss, who sat on the floor, his legs spread, eyes wide open in surprise. There was a spot in his neck just below his chin where Galina had shot him. There was very little blood.

  “Please let me go,” said Ludmilla.

  “Shhh,” said Galina, looking at the partly open door to the shop.

  She was trying to hear what the policemen were saying, but they were too far away. The first policeman through the door had been a young man. Most policemen seemed to be young. For that matter, most people seemed to be young. She had already sat the shopgirl on the floor in front of her when the young policeman had entered.

  “Stop,” she had told him, and though he was young, he was not stupid.

  He stopped and moved his hand away from his holster.

  “Don’t hurt her,” he had said.

  “Go away,” Galina had said.

  “I …”

  “Away,” Galina repeated, and he had gone away.

  Ludmilla, who was twenty-five years old and just a bit on the scrawny side, wanted to do two contradictory things at the same time: become invisible, and plead with the madwoman with the gun to let her go. She started to turn her head slightly to address the woman and felt, even smelled, the steel of the gun barrel against her ear. She decided invisibility would be the better choice.

  When the call went out on the police band that someone had been shot and a hostage taken at former State Store 31, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had been seated next to the driver of a new Mercedes police car speeding to the morning meeting of the Special Affairs Department. The car happened to be passing the massive gray block of the Lenin Library, which meant that State Store 31 was five minutes away.

  “Go,” said Rostnikov.

  When they arrived in front of the store at the entrance to Arbat Street, two uniformed policemen were trying to keep a crowd from pressing up to the store window and possibly getting their frozen noses shot off by the madwoman inside.

  Rostnikov stepped out of the Mercedes and closed the door.

  The cold began immediately to work its way up Rostnikov’s left leg. The leg, a tyrant in the tradition of the Czars, was quick to complain of changes in weather or requests for activity. The leg, rather badly served by a German tank during the Great War, placed full blame on Porfiry Petrovich’s youthful patriotism. In the forty-six years that had passed since the event Rostnikov had learned to endure the accusations of his leg.

  He addressed the appendage—internally, of course—and made deals with it. Give me only minimal discomfort today, he would bargain, and I will prop you up tonight with a pillow and not move for three hours.

  Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, wearing an imitation leather jacket over his still-serviceable black suit, moved slowly through the crowd that parted resentfully.

  “Go home, all of you,” shouted the young policeman who had seen Galina in the back room of State Store 31.

  “Why?” asked a gravelly voice that could have belonged to a man or a woman. “There’s nothing to eat at home.”

  “We’ve got a free country now,” came another voice, a younger male voice. “We can’t be ordered home by the police anymore.”

  “Yes,” shouted several people as Rostnikov broke through to the front of the crowd.

  A snaggle-toothed little man wearing an orange wool hat pulled over his ears and an oversized coat pushed his face toward Porfiry Petrovich and squealed, “No more pushing around.”

  Rostnikov could smell alcohol on the man’s breath.

  “The police will always push,” came the gravelly voice from the rear. “No matter what color they wear.”

  Two more uniformed police had arrived and were helping push the crowd back. The young policeman spotted Rostnikov and broke away from the man with whom he was arguing. Rostnikov, hands plunged into his pockets, was looking at the bare windows and the partly open door of State Store 31.

  “Inspector Rostnikov,” the young man said, assuming a position something like attention.

  Some people in the crowd laughed at the young police man. He tried to ignore them. He had joined the police when he came back from Afghanistan, thinking he could make a living and command some respect. He was wrong on both counts.

  “What is your name?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Misha Tiomkin.”

  Misha Tiomkin’s nose was red. His fur uniform hat was pulled down over his ears and he looked like a boy dressed up like a soldier.

  “It is an old woman,” said Tiomkin.

  “Go in and shoot her, why don’t you?” said the drunken little man with bad teeth. “Solve all your problems that way. People get hungry, shoot them. Bullets are cheaper than food.”

  Rostnikov and Officer Tiomkin moved away from the crowd, closer to the store’s open door.

  “It’s not clear what happened,” said Tiomkin. “People were pushing and shoving, complaining that there was so little in the store, that it was too expensive, ten times more than last week, even bread is—”

  Tiomkin stopped himself.

  “The situation got tense,” he continued. “Someone broke a glass case, took some cheese. Others started grabbing. The manager had a gun. He fired in the air. People were screaming. And then someone took the gun from the manager and … I don’t know. She’s in there with a clerk, a young girl.”

  “Tell me, Misha Tiomkin,” Rostnikov said, looking up at the gray sky and then at the angry crowd, “is it your impression that winters are getting milder in Moscow?”

  Tiomkin pondered the question. “I don’t know.”

  “I think they are,” said Rostnikov. “Mild winters are like full moons. People grow mad. The blood is affected like the tides, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps,” agreed Tiomkin.

  Rostnikov patted the young policeman on the shoulder, motioned for him to move back to control the crowd, and moved to the door of State Store 31.

  “He’s going to shoot her, look,” called a woman.

  “Who?”

  “The one in the fake leather jacket, the one there by the door. Use your eyes, the one that looks like a barrel.”

  Rostnikov stepped into the shop, closed the door behind him, and looked around. Broken glass and the beads of the store’s broken abacus lay before him on the floor.

  There was nothing that resembled food in the store except a spongy splat of white on the floor. The splat, which may have recently been cheese, bore the footprint of a large shoe.

  Rostnikov moved around the splat, behind the counter, and up to the door behind which someone was sobbing.

  He knocked twice.

  “Who?” came a woman’s
voice.

  The voice sounded dreamy, as if the woman had just awakened from a deep dream.

  “My name is Porfiry Petrovich,” he said. “I would like to talk to you.”

  “Are you a policeman?”

  “Would anyone but a policeman want to come in and talk to a woman with a gun?”

  “Do you have a gun?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not fond of guns.”

  “Me neither,” said the woman. “Why do you want to come in?”

  “Perhaps I might be able to help.”

  “You are alone? There is no one out there with you?”

  “No one.”

  “Come in and close the door behind you. I want to see your hands.”

  Rostnikov pushed the door open.

  The room held a small metal table, some empty shelves against the walls, several chairs, and a stool on which the older woman sat. The walls were gray white. The room was not large, but he was at least ten feet from the two women.

  “What is wrong with your leg?” asked Galina as Rostnikov came forward slowly.

  “Old injury, the war, Nazi tank,” he said. “May I sit?”

  Galina shrugged. “I don’t own the store. Sit if you want to sit.”

  Rostnikov moved carefully to the nearest chair on his right, almost a dozen feet from the two women. He sat awkwardly, his left leg extended, his right bent. The young woman on the floor looked at him with moist frightened eyes.

  “You were telling the truth,” said Galina.

  “The truth?”

  “Your leg,” she said, pointing at his leg with the pistol in her hand. “I thought you might be pretending so you could jump at me when I didn’t expect it. But … you are too young to—”

  “I was not yet fifteen when this happened,” he said.

  Galina nodded knowingly.

  “Your name is … ?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Galina Panishkoya,” said the woman.

  “And you are … ?” he asked, looking at the frightened girl on the floor.

  “Ludmilla, Ludmilla … I can’t remember my last name,” she said between tears.

  “That’s not possible,” said Galina.

  “It happens to some people when they are very frightened,” said Rostnikov. “It happened to me once.”

  “To forget your own name,” said Galina, shaking her head.

  “Perhaps if Ludmilla got up and went outside, she would be less frightened,” Rostnikov suggested.

  “But then,” Galina said, raising the barrel of the pistol to the girl’s head, “your police would come in here and shoot me.”

  “No. You would still have me,” he said.

  “You? What would I do with you?”

  “Talk,” he said.

  “Talk, there is nothing to talk about,” said Galina. “This stool is too low. When I was a girl in Georgia, I milked goats on a stool like this. Sat for hours. Now, backaches.”

  “You remember a—”

  A loud noise rose from beyond the door, on the street, laughter or anger—it was hard to tell which. Ludmilla looked at the dead man near the door and began to shake.

  “You remember a great deal about when you were a child?” Rostnikov asked.

  “One forgets the details,” said Galina. “Where was the chair? The bed? What color were the walls? These are important things. If we cannot remember our lives, what do we have?”

  Rostnikov nodded. “Ludmilla is growing more frightened,” he said.

  Galina looked down at the young woman in front of her as if for the first time. “I have two granddaughters,” she said. “Little. Eleven and seven. My daughter is dead. Her husband left them with me. He”—she nodded toward the sprawled dead man—“looked like him.”

  “Is that why you shot him?”

  “I don’t know if I shot him,” she said, looking directly at him. “But …”

  “I believe you,” he said, and he did believe her.

  “My savings are gone. My job, I used to work at the Panyushkin dress factory, gone. My legs, gone. And my memory is going. I can’t even remember if I shot a man a few hours ago.”

  Rostnikov did not correct her. The manager of State Store 31 had been shot no more than ten minutes ago. “I suggest you put the gun down and I take you and Ludmilla out.”

  “No,” Galina said, looking toward the door. “I’ll go to jail. I’m too old. I’m a good Christian. I’ll die knowing my girls are starving. It’s better I die here.”

  Rostnikov could now barely hear her over the sobs of the girl on the floor. He put a finger to his lips to quiet her and she made an effort, which resulted in more subdued sobs.

  “He came out,” Galina said, trying to remember what had taken place less than an hour earlier. “He shouted. He had a gun. He had no compassion. This one …” She touched the top of Ludmilla’s head with the barrel of the gun, and the girl closed her eyes. “She had no compassion. Now she cries, but we cried, my babies cry with hunger.”

  “It’s my work,” Ludmilla said, addressing the policeman. “I feel, but—”

  “Go,” said Galina, standing. “Go.”

  Ludmilla looked up at her and then at Rostnikov. “You’ll shoot me.”

  “Go,” Galina repeated, and Rostnikov nodded his head yes.

  Ludmilla stood, knees week, sagging arms and shoulders shaking. “You won’t shoot me?” she said, looking down at the corpse near the door.

  “No.”

  The girl took two steps to the door and stopped. “I can’t walk.”

  “Ludmilla,” Rostnikov said gently. “It is time to go.”

  “I’ve made in my pants. There are people out there. Customers. They’ll see me. Laugh at me …”

  “Go,” Galina said gently. “Now.”

  Ludmilla sighed deeply, brushed back her short hair, and ran out the door, slamming it behind her. They could hear the sound of her feet running on broken glass, a door opening, and then the mixed cheers and boos of the crowd.

  “I don’t even know what kind of gun this is,” Galina said, sitting back on the stool.

  “May I?” asked Rostnikov, putting his right hand up to his jacket.

  Galina nodded.

  Porfiry Petrovich reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and extracted a pair of glasses, which he placed on his nose. He looked at Galina and the weapon in her hand. “A Femara, Hungarian pistol,” he said. “Probably a 7.65mm Hege. Possibly a Walam model. Look at the handle.”

  She loosed her grip slightly and looked down.

  “A Pegasus in a circle?” he asked.

  “Pega … ?”

  “Flying horse.”

  She nodded.

  “The Hege,” he said, putting the glasses away carefully.

  “I thought you didn’t like guns,” she said, lifting her arm to aim the weapon at him.

  “It is, in my work, a good idea to know weapons. One is not required to like what one may be required to know.”

  “I think,” she said, “it would be best if I shot myself.” She raised the weapon and pointed it to her head.

  “I have a son,” Rostnikov said. “His name is Iosef.”

  “I had a daughter,” said Galina. “We were told not to have more than one child. We all listened except the Ubekistanis. Arabs. They were right. We were wrong.”

  “Your granddaughters,” he said.

  “I am not young and this gun is heavy.”

  “It makes an unpleasant hole,” he said, shifting his weight slightly. “A painful hole. I think you might not be in jail long, if at all, Galina Panishkoya. Have you ever committed a crime?”

  “I was born. I had a daughter. I’m sorry, I can hold this gun no—”

  “You shall see your grandchildren,” he said. “You shall talk to them, prepare them. Where are they now?”

  “Home, waiting for me, hungry,” she said.

  Rostnikov said nothing. He imagined two frightened little girls waiting all day. He looked into the dee
p brown eyes of the woman across the room and knew she was thinking the same or something very like it.

  The gun came down slowly.

  “You promise?” she asked.

  “I promise,” he said.

  “All I wanted was a small bread,” Galina said, taking a step toward the policeman and holding out the weapon to him. “I had the money to pay for it.”

  Rostnikov took the gun, placed it in his pocket, and moved to the woman’s side to take her arm and keep her from collapsing.

  The central police headquarters known simply as Petrovka stands at 38 Petrovka Street. It is, to those who see it for the first time, a surprisingly pleasant pair of white L-shaped buildings. Behind the black-and-white iron gates of Petrovka is a garden. In the spring the red flowers that bloom there recall the summer palaces of the long-extinct nobility and the recently extinct Politburo members.

  Entrance to Petrovka is through a narrow gate where each entrant must show his identification or invitation. The line moves slowly now because the guards who knew everyone by sight have been replaced, and many of the people who entered daily, some of them for decades, have themselves been told to seek other employment.

  Twenty minutes after he had left Galina Panishkoya with the policeman named Tiomkin and ordered him to take her to her apartment to get her grandchildren, Porfiry Petrovich was waiting patiently outside Petrovka behind an assistant procurator named Lavertnikov.

  “Madness,” muttered Lavertnikov, who wore a heavy coat and a hat with earflaps that made him look like a small bespectacled boy.

  Rostnikov nodded and grunted without looking up from the particularly grisly passage he was reading in his American detective paperback, an Ed McBain titled Widows, which he had read only twice before. His fingers were cold, and every few moments he shifted the book to the other hand and plunged the cold one into his pocket.

  The assistant procurator’s observation had seemed a reasonable one to Rostnikov in spite of its lack of a clear context.

  The line was moving slowly.

  Rostnikov closed the book and placed it gently in the wide pocket of his coat. “How well do you remember the house in which you lived as a boy?” he asked.