by James L. May
Instead, I wondered: had she told him about our visit earlier in the day? Did he know about Antonov? They were not talking about it now, but what had they discussed while I waited to take my place under the window?
“Did you know a causeway connects the main island and Muksalma?” Veronika was saying. “Brother Kiril was telling me about it today. A pile of stones that snakes over the shallowest part of the channel. There was a dairy on Muksalma; any cows to be added to the herd had to be driven across. And they built it in the 1600s! Imagine the monks dropping one stone after another into the water. I picture them all lined up in a procession, each with his own stone. That’s probably not actually how it was. I’m sure the seventeenth century had its own techniques of engineering. But it was like they were building a wall in the sea. That’s what it is. The water itself was already a kind of wall against the rest of the world. Then the wall around the kremlin, and then, when they wanted to cross the water to another island, the causeway. Even when they were trying to get somewhere, they built a wall.”
She’d wandered back over to the window as she talked. Again the bottle made noise against the rim of a glass.
I could see her procession of monks: the ropes hanging from their waists a-sway, the heavy stones they carried straightening their elbows. Icons carried before them, incense rising into the gray sky. That was the woman whose file I’d fallen in love with—I’d known she would be capable of that kind of visionary non sequitur.
It hurt to have her lavishing it on someone else. He’d beaten her with an ax handle, sent her to the hospital, and this was her voice when she talked with him. How had she talked with Antonov? How would she talk to me?
Her footsteps moved away.
“Earlier today someone asked me whether I loved you,” she said. “I told him I might.”
Spagovsky smacked his lips and exhaled. The glass clacked down on a surface that sounded like wood. “Quiet with all that, now. Bring another, Veruchka.”
“That’s all you say, when I tell you something like that?”
“Bring another.”
Footsteps, clinking, more footsteps. “There,” said Veronika’s voice.
“No,” said Spagovsky, “you drink it. I’ve had two now to your none. Have to keep up.”
Silence for a moment. “There,” said Veronika.
“Just a sip? Take it all quickly, like I do.”
“You want me drunk? Even a little kvass makes my head spin.”
“Ahhh, give it here. Open your mouth.”
There were sounds of movement. Veronika laughed another of her stifled laughs. “Borya.” Then a thump, and the scuffling of feet moving on the floor. Something coppery and afraid came through in her raised voice. “Borya, no, I don’t—” She made a choking sound, and began to cough.
Spagovsky chuckled, perhaps a little nervously. “There, you see? It’s good for you. You women don’t know how to drink.”
She coughed once or twice more, but didn’t say anything. I heard only his heavy tread and the clink of the bottle, hard and careless, against the rim of the glass.
“You see?” he said. “You like it, don’t you?”
Here was another moment I could not picture. He was near the bottle—was it sitting on a table? Where was she? Her silence was charged.
“I am ready to go back,” she said in a low voice.
He didn’t say anything for a long time. At last he came out with: “It’s not time yet.”
“I am tired of being here. I’m ready to go back to the women’s dormitory.”
“You’ll see what happens,” he said sullenly.
“I know what will happen,” she said. Suddenly her voice was loud. It sounded again like the voice that had spoken to Petrovich and me that afternoon. “Get on with it.”
More snow joined what was already on my shoulders. Then there was a sharp sound, and the wall I was leaning against shuddered as something fell to the floor. Veronika cried out, first in pain, then yelling, “Boris—”
Before she could say anything else, I heard him hit her twice more. The blows were somewhere between a slap and a thud.
In memory, we only experience the past layer by layer, never swallowed in one dense bolus as we felt it at the time. I remember that I counted the times he hit her. Yes, counted them, all nine. And then I remember that, while I counted, the sound of struck flesh was reminding me of my mother pulling fish from a pail and slapping them on the kitchen table to kill them. That is another layer.
And then, of course, I did not know what to do. I thought I loved her. At least I loved her file. I wanted to help her. But also—also she had embarrassed me that afternoon, and I was lurking beneath her window. I wanted to see her, I wanted to hide, I wanted to hide my seeing her.
How many more times did he hit her while I crouched there counting, simply because I was ashamed?
I stood up, framing myself in the window, and rapped on the glass.
15
Staring into the room dazzled my eyes. A shape on the floor, supporting itself with one arm, was Veronika. From where I stood at the window, a metal bed frame and mattress blocked my view of her shoulders and face. The man was another shape, a hostile one. He lowered his fist and looked around. “What’s that?” he said in a loud voice, taking a step towards the window. “Who is it?”
It was my first view of Spagovsky as more than a figure moving over the dark road. Out of his coat he was splinter-thin. He looked thirty, though with a grizzled and angular face. The light cast by a lamp hanging overhead on a rafter made his eyes into pits.
“God damn it,” he said, muffled by the glass. He’d come the rest of the way to the window and began fumbling with the latch. I hadn’t thought beyond getting him to stop.
“Wait,” I said, leaving the square of light.
By the time I’d come around the corner of the house, he was waiting for me in front of the open door, a large wrench in hand. “What is this? What are you doing fucking sneaking around my cabin in the dead of night?”
This was the voice I’d been listening to silently only half a minute ago. Now I heard my own voice answering it. “Listen,” I said. “Leave the lady alone.” I sounded thin and distant.
“Fuck you. Who are you?”
Who indeed? Leave the lady alone was quite clearly a phrase from a detective story. Properly delivered, it might have had the characteristic Pinkertonian flavor of bravado, in which physical bravery guarantees a cause’s rightness. But the plaintive noises I’d produced did not match the voice that sounded in my head when the King of Detectives spoke on the page. What should a nonfictional detective sound like, then? Petrovich’s cantankerous, impatient authority depended on his age. That, I’d never manage. What model did that leave me?
Perhaps at the time I was only half aware of the answer, but in retrospect it is obvious. Wasn’t I acting as Infosec’s agent? Hadn’t Petrovich said our authorization from him would protect me from any threats of violence? Notwithstanding the persistent ache in my chest from where he’d hit me two days ago, only a version of the Chekist’s curt sarcasm gave me anything to say.
“I work for Infosec. Veronika Fitneva is needed. I’d rather she be able to talk when I bring her in.”
“Infosec? What—?”
“That’s right.” My voice still shook. I hoped he didn’t notice. “Is this going to be a problem, Prisoner Spagovsky?”
Hearing his own name brought him up short. “I—listen, what’s all this about? Why were you outside my window?”
“I’ve told you already. I need Fitneva. What we want her for is our business, not yours.” I jammed my fists into the pockets of my coat and took two steps towards him, feeling grateful to Petrovich for relieving me of my hat, which no one out on Infosec business after dark could ever have worn. “If you’re considering cracking my head with that wrench, I’d
advise against it. They will wonder what happened to me, and then who knows what will happen to you?”
“What? No, no, I—” He trailed off as I pushed past him and stepped to the doorsill. That was good. I had the investigation authorization in my pocket, but I didn’t want to have to show it.
“Prisoner Fitneva,” I said.
She’d risen, now leaning on the table in the middle of the room. On it were the glass and bottle of vodka I’d been hearing, along with the jar of pickled apple, a half loaf of black bread, a knife, and a small piece of hard sausage. Her face was already starting to swell—an impastoed canvas, as though he’d added something to her with every blow of his fist.
“Prisoner Fitneva. Come with me.”
It took her a moment to look up, then another to recognize me. She shook her head. “You? Why would I want to go with you?”
“Your presence is needed,” I said.
She stared for what felt like a long time. It was what I had come all this way for, to gaze into her face again. Even so, hunger intervened, the way it did at the worst moments on Solovki. I felt the sausage end on the table pulling at my eyes.
Finally, she shrugged and picked her coat up from where it hung on a chair. Spagovsky stood by the door as we went out, but didn’t block our way. “Veruchka,” he said as she passed him without looking. “What is this? What do they want with you?”
“How do I know, Boris?” she said. “Go back inside.”
We left the buildings around the old smithy and followed the narrow path that led back to the road, her walking ahead with quick, stiff steps. We’d gone a short way when, without any warning, she fell forward into the snow on her hands and knees. She shook her head when I tried to help her up.
“Are you all right?” I said.
Her voice sounded thick, as though she held something under her tongue. “No.”
I looked back at the lights of the buildings. When I turned back to her, Veronika had gotten to her feet, but she was bent, holding her side.
“Let me help you.”
She looked at the arm I held out to her, then took it slowly. We went a few steps. “I’m only dizzy. It will pass soon.”
After a moment I said: “You did know Gennady Antonov, didn’t you?”
“That was obvious, was it?”
“I knew him as well. So did Yakov Petrovich. They were cellmates. We aren’t quite as bad as you think.”
We went a little further, with her holding onto my elbow with both hands. “How did he die?” she asked.
Feeling her fingers gathered in the fabric of my sleeve, I had to remind myself she was a suspect. Petrovich had warned me in the museum the other day not to share information about the body too freely. “We are still trying to find that out.”
“I want to know if he suffered,” she said quickly.
I shook my head. “No. Petrovich doesn’t think so.” I looked at her face. Even in the dark her contusions were obvious. I went on, despite my better judgment. “His neck was broken. It would have been quick.”
“Oh.” After another minute of limping she stopped, taking her hands away from my arm. She straightened her coat, then looked at me. She was still hurting, I could tell. But suspicion has dignity, and makes certain demands. “So,” she said. “You told Boris Stepanovich you were bringing me in.”
“I only said that to stop him hitting you.”
“I see. A kind of figure of speech.” She reached down slowly to brush snow from the front of her pants. The thick quality was still in her voice. She worked at pronouncing the words. “In that case the question is, what are you doing here?”
She couldn’t have seen me flush in the dark, but I felt embarrassment bloom in my cheeks, caught once again in the leer of surveillance. My arm still seemed to tingle where she’d touched it. “We thought there might have been something you hadn’t told us this afternoon.”
Even the low laugh she let out made her wince. “So your boss sent you to listen under Boris’s window. I see. Well, whether or not I believe you, I suppose I have to be grateful for what you did, but you’ll understand if I beg off another battery of questions. Being spied on doesn’t make me feel forthcoming.”
“But why did you lie to us this afternoon?”
“Why should I tell you the truth? My relationships are my own business. As you see, there are reasons for me not to want my acquaintance with Gennady Mikhailovich to be too widely discussed. And I don’t much like the idea of helping the Cheka either.”
The going grew easier when we reached the main road and left the path. A wilderness of stumps attested to logging in the area around us. At a distance the road curved around the wall of pines that still stood between us and the kremlin. I could see its towers above them, vague outlines through the snow and the dark.
“I’m from Saint Petersburg, too,” I said.
“What?”
“I saw your file. My family lives a few blocks from Liteyny Bridge.” She didn’t say anything, and I heard myself stumble on. “I—I learned to swim there, in the Neva, by the bridge. I grew up there.”
Who knows why I said such a thing? I had been a good swimmer as a boy. Perhaps I was trying to brag.
She shook her head. It was restrained, as though the movement made her sick. “What was it your friend said your name was?”
“Anatoly. Anatoly Bogomolov.”
“Anatoly Bogomolov, something’s clicking in my jaw.” She reached up and massaged beneath her ear. “I can feel it when I talk. It hurts.”
“I can take you to the infirmary.”
“No. If I am not at the fishery tomorrow they’ll begin looking for someone else. I only need to sleep.”
“All right.”
She had mapped the afternoon’s struggle into a new space, transformed it while preserving its properties. In the game of information we were playing, she won, or thought she won, by withholding, whatever the means. What did it matter whether it was a flat refusal or a plea not to hurt her jaw anymore? My move had been to try being her friend, and she’d read me, read my desire to protect her and be thought well of, then played her injury and powerlessness like a card.
Well, and so? Maybe it should have been a winning card. In another version of his life, Tolya is a nice boy, one who pities and accommodates an injured woman, even when she uses her injury to thwart him. He’s not angry at her, he doesn’t wish to prove to her how wrong she is about his earlier leering. He is not driven by his need to find a killer and secure himself a place in Company Ten, nor by his desire for her, nor by jealousy of a relationship he thinks she may have had with his dead friend Gennady Antonov. Nothing drives him to make her speak to him with a possibly dislocated jaw.
This version of Tolya, however—he dies much earlier than the protagonist of our story. Starves, perhaps, or coughs his life out in the following year’s typhus epidemic, or becomes someone’s victim among the bunks or the trees.
Even in this version, I was silent for the time it took to bring us around the pines. I had been listening to Petrovich’s interrogations now for two days, long enough to be able to come up with a list of plausible questions. As the kremlin wall came into view, I put out a hand to stop her.
“What?” She didn’t pull away. There was something in her voice I couldn’t read.
“You’re the second person today to tell me they don’t want to go to the hospital.”
“Who was the first?”
“Yakov Petrovich. Beatings are going around.”
“The old man? I’d’ve thought the two of you would be protected. Who’d have beaten him up?”
“Things aren’t as easy for us as you think.”
She frowned. “Well, I’m sorry for him.”
“Where were you two nights ago?”
“You think I killed Gennady Mikhailovich?”
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p; “I don’t think anything. Others might. It looks suspicious if you won’t answer any of our questions.”
Sighing, she looked at the kremlin’s lights, then past the collection of buildings on the quay and out at the darkness of the freezing sea. “All right. I was in my dormitory. Any of the women there will tell you. That’s where I always am in the evenings, unless Stepnova sends me out with Boris.” She shrugged and I let her go. “That’s what you wanted to know?”
“What about Spagovsky? Where was he?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Petrovich will want to know.”
“Boris didn’t know anything about me and Gennady Mikhailovich. There’s no reason for you to suspect him.”
“Did you tell him we came to ask you questions earlier today?”
She pursed her lips. “No.”
I’d steeled myself to interrogate her as roughly as necessary, but a certain warm reluctance still rose as I approached the question. Snow-shagged branches encroached on the other side of the road. When I looked back, she was holding her hand to her bruised face, absently.
“Spagovsky wouldn’t have liked your relationship with Antonov.”
“He’s jealous.”
“Did he—was there something for him to be jealous about?”
She looked at me incredulously. “’Something to be jealous about’? Tell me, Anatoly Bogomolov: how old are you?”
“I—I’m twenty.”
“Twenty! Well, all right. But even at twenty I don’t think I’d have needed to mince words like that.”
I’d held the upper hand in questioning for a moment, but any advantage I had crumbled under her derision. “You know what I mean,” I said weakly.
“Do you mean were we lovers?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “What is a lover, here on Solovki? He never brought me flowers.”
“But you … spent time together.”
“Yes.”
If I could have analyzed it, I suppose my inner tumult would have proved to be nothing complex: it was jealousy again, a minor, predictable convulsion of the heart and lungs, exacerbated by her identifying the difference in our ages. It only felt incomprehensible. The sole mystery is why it should have bothered me in particular to have her relationship with Antonov confirmed. It was already clear what kind of arrangement she had with Spagovsky.