Bannerman grunted. “Live for today. Is that what you're saying?”
Zivic softened his voice. “It is true, I think, that Susan sees you through a prism. She knows what you are and yet she doesn't. Is it your concern that her vision will one day clear?”
“It's crossed my mind.”
“What will she see?”
“I'm not always such a nice person, Anton.”
“You are also not Heinrich Himmler. Also you have been more than two years with Susan. Why does this arise only now?”
”I told you. I think she wants to get married. I know she wants a child.”
“And this child may one day discover that his tree-planting father is Mama's Boy.”
A pained expression. “It's something to think about.”
“So is bowel cancer from not enough roughage. If you like, I will help you worry about that as well.”
A tickle of hair and a kiss from Susan brought him back to the present. She set his breakfast plate in front of him, then slipped into the chair opposite. The shirt teased him again. Her omelet was a third the size of his.
The lunch with Anton Zivic had not resolved much of anything. Perhaps it had helped to give form and voice to random thoughts, but he had left the table feeling a little stupid.
Still, although his concern about a nonexistent child might have been ludicrous, he thought that his concerns about Susan had substance. Susan had never even heard him shout at another human being, much less do harm to one. A woman can see a man . . . beat up another one, for example ... and never quite get over it. Regardless of what caused the fight. And especially if he showed no distaste for it afterward. She might even begin to fear him.
”I will tell you the greater danger,” Zivic had scolded him that day in the restaurant. “One day, in Susan's presence, an emergency will arise. It will be a time to act but you will hesitate.”
Bannerman began to answer, but didn't.
“You see?” Zivic rapped the table. “Even now you hesitate. The best thing for you . . . tonight, take Susan down to the Bronx and do a few drive-by shootings. If you need a motive, shoot one of those annoying young men who extort money for wiping windshields at stoplights. That way you put this behind you before you end up risking your own life and those who depend on you for the sake of Susan's good opinion.”
It was not the most helpful advice Anton had ever given, but he'd made his point. If you're not going to end it, stop brooding about this and deal with it. Bannerman knew he was right. He should probably sit Susan down and speak his mind, but he knew perfectly well what she'd say. She'd said it before: “Bannerman ... eat your breakfast. I never thought you were Robin Hood.”
She had also told him that she's not “some Mafia princess whose husband brings her furs that keep falling off trucks and then says ‘Never ask me about my business.’ ” She would tell him that there's no need to protect her, no need to pretend.
But he liked protecting her. He liked pretending. He liked pretending that he was just another Westport businessman, owner of the travel agency that those women at the bar had just visited. No, not pretending. Being. Having people stop him on the street and chat with him. Having neighbors, like the young doctor next door who occasionally comes over for some one-on-one in his driveway, using the hoop left by a previous owner. Loser buys the beer.
Bannerman even liked raking leaves. He liked grilling steaks. Going to garage sales. Most of all, he liked being loved by Susan Lesko.
From inside, he heard the muted ring of a telephone. The call was on a private line, connected to an answering machine and scrambler which he kept locked in a cabinet. Bannerman chose to ignore it, let the machine take it. It was too nice a morning for the sort of calls that came in on that line.
The ringing stopped. Susan took a piece of bacon with her fingers and brought it to her lips. She paused, listening. Bannerman heard nothing but he knew that Susan probably could. She had ears like a bat.
“That sounds like Carla,” she said. “She wants you to pick up.”
Bannerman grumbled. He pushed to his feet.
As he neared the locked cabinet after first grabbing his keys, he began to pick up words and phrases. They seemed disjointed. Something about Aldo, the man she was seeing. Her voice was profoundly sad. Now she cited a telephone number, which she said was Yuri Rykov's. Bannerman's first thought, due perhaps to his own state of mind, was that Càrla and her Italian had a fight and she had gone to Yuri for solace. Perhaps she was calling to say she wanted to come home. He wished that she had called Anton instead. It would serve him right.
Bannerman had the cabinet open and was reaching for the handset when he heard the words,. ”I had to cut him. I cut him good.”
Then came a choking sound. The beginnings of a sob.
Carla broke the connection.
6
“Keep an open mind, Lesko.”
Belkin kept saying that.
“Moscow is not Zurich.”
Lesko shrugged and nodded.
“You land at JFK, first impressions of New York are not so positive either.”
“Leo . . .” Lesko spread his hands.
“Just keep an open mind.” ' ·
The thing was, he hadn't said a word.
True, he was less than overwhelmed so far, but he was trying not to let it show for Leo's sake. No, it wasn't Zurich, but it wasn't Calcutta either. Relax, Leo.
The Finnair jet had landed at Sheremetyevo Airport. It was fairly new, according to Belkin. He said it was built for the 1980 Olympics and designed by the French. With that, thought Lesko, you'd expect it to have just a little glitz. It didn't. Everything was brown, poorly lit, low ceilinged, only a few little shops and snack counters, half of which were closed. Guards everywhere. No smiles.
But he was trying to keep an open mind because Leo Belkin kept reminding him that he had to. Near the passport control booths, they walked past a tour group from England whose guide was telling them the same thing. It's like a blind date, thought Lesko. When the person fixing you up keeps telling you to keep an open mind, this girl has great qualities, a terrific personality, you know right away she's going to be a bowser.
Belkin got their bags through pretty quickly. No one with a Western passport seemed to have any trouble either, although most of the Russians were getting their luggage picked apart item by item. A customs agent took his time writing down what Elena's diamonds looked like so that they didn't grow bigger by the time she came back out.
One thing was really dumb. Sheremetyevo had these red and green customs lanes like in every European airport. Green was for “nothing to declare” and you're supposed to walk right through. But in Russia you had to declare all currency, any currency, in excess of fifty dollars' worth. Nobody, therefore, ever got to use the green lane.
A border guard checked his passport and visa, very carefully, then looked him up and down, then handed it back with a look that said We know all about you. Don't think we won't be watching you. Lesko did not take this personally, because every tourist got the same look. They must teach it in guard school. Welcome to Russia.
Belkin had arranged for a limousine and driver. The car, waiting at the curb, was a roomy but ponderous-looking thing called a Chaika. It reminded him of the old Packard sedans. The driver, named Valentin something or other, was a good-natured young guy who reminded him of Yuri. He seemed genuinely delighted to see them and eager to practice his English.
“We show you beautiful places, beautiful things,” he said. “Totally awesome,” he added. This cracked him up. Belkin winced.
The ride into Moscow, he said, would take forty-five minutes. Belkin spent the first twenty of them tempering Valentin's enthusiasm and finding new ways to say they should keep an open mind. In one way it was kind of sad. The guy really wanted them to like his country, but he was as much as saying that he's ashamed to show it to them. In another way, it kept raising these little red flags that Lesko had been sensing for at least the
past week. If he thinks his country is such a toilet, why didn't he buy them a toaster or a salad bowl and let it go at that.
There was not much to see during the ride in. They passed one more monument showing how close the Germans got. It was a group of tank traps in the shape of giant red jacks, maybe ten miles out. Almost everything else along this road had been bulldozed before the airport opened. Before that, it was mostly shacks and shanties. Might have given the wrong impression.
Lesko knew this because he'd asked John Waldo about Moscow the day before the wedding. He'd heard that Waldo had been there. Waldo explained Moscow in terms he could visualize:
“You been to the Motor Vehicle Bureau, right? In New York.”
“So?”
“You been there, in this peeling dump, standing in line, waiting for some putz who hates his life, who can't be fired, couldn't give a shit, to try being a little helpful.”
Lesko thought he understood. Bureaucracy. But it's probably the same all over. No big deal.
Waldo read his mind. “Now imagine that anything you want to do with your life, any change you want to make, like painting your kitchen, you have to go to maybe five different places just like it for a permit.”
Lesko grunted.
“It gets worse. Next imagine an entire country that is not only run like the Motor Vehicle Bureau but also looks like it. Imagine whole cities where one of those shlubs behind the desk also designs all the buildings.”
Lesko was still doubtful. From pictures, it didn't look that bad. And he heard the subways were nice. “When were you there, by the way?”
“Last time was '85, I guess.” Waldo rubbed his chin. He did this very gingerly. “Couple of times before that.”
“They say it's loosened up since then.”
“You should live so long.”
Waldo was careful about his chin because it was still fairly new. Last year, in Los Angeles,Waldo had gotten it into his head that he was the only person in the whole city who looked his age. Also, some young punk with diamond studs in his ear had called him Pop.
This, to make a long story short, makes John Waldo crazy. So he sneaks off to some Beverly Hills knife to get maybe a little tuck here and there and ends up getting sold on $15,000 worth of reconstructive surgery. That, plus the same Clairol color Ronald Reagan uses, takes off a good twenty years. Then Belkin tells him he could have had the same job done for $80 at the Moscow Cosmetological Clinic and Waldo says that's fine if he wanted to spend the rest of his life looking like he'd just been goosed.
Waldo could be very negative.
Lesko never asked him why he went to Russia or how he got in and out, but Waldo could get in and out of anything. Basically, he was Bannerman's cat burglar. The trips were probably for paybacks of some kind. Lesko didn't want to know. But Leo Belkin probably knew, because, of all Bannerman's people, it took him the longest to be comfortable around John Waldo.
The Chaika sedan suddenly veered right, tires squealing, and exited the airport expressway. Valentin grinned an apology. He turned east onto the Moscow Ring Road, massively wide, sixteen lanes, and accelerated.
“Big, big road,” he said. “Good that you see it.”
The young driver was smiling into the rearview mirror, but Lesko could see that he was also watching the road behind them. Instinctively, he started to turn in his seat.
“Apartments for the people,” Valentin said loudly, pointing forward. “All new, very nice.”
Lesko took the hint. He settled back.
Ahead, as far as he could see, were row upon row of pink or off-white concrete buildings, all prefabricated, most in various stages of assembly, but quite a few were completed. They were a uniform eight stories high, long rectangles, and some had a row of storefronts across the street level. All the apartments seemed to have terraces. He did not see much in the way of landscaping, but there was no graffiti either. Good-sized playgrounds. A couple of swimming pools. In fairness, they looked a lot better than some of the projects in New York.
Belkin said that the Hitler war had left 25 million people homeless and they were still playing catch-up. Until the sixties, he said, anyone who had a three-room apartment could be forced to take in a family of perfect strangers. By law, even now, the individual space allotment was only seven square meters per person. This, thought Lesko, was roughly the size of one of Elena's guest bathrooms. It would also explain Moscow's divorce rate. Over eighty percent, according to Waldo. Highest in the world.
In a democracy, Belkin went on, this sort of law could not have been imposed. But in a democracy, most of those millions would have had no roof at all over their heads. Marxism. To each according to his needs.
Lesko could have done without the captive lecture. It seemed to him that they could have built a lot of housing for the cost of all those klunky monuments and war memorials he'd seen in the tourist books, but he said nothing. Once again, Valentin lurched onto an exit ramp. Elena lurched into Lesko. Another apology from Valentin. Belkin turned to add his voice to it, but, as he spoke, his eyes washed over the road behind them.
“Prospekt Mira,” said Valentin. “More interesting to go this way.”
Lesko couldn't see why. More apartment blocks. Except these were much bigger, not so new, and on closer inspection they seemed to be falling apart. Cracks everywhere, tapering streams of rust, no terraces, no visible amenities of any kind, few cars parked outside. Come to think of it, Lesko hadn't seen more than a handful of passenger cars on the road since they left the airport expressway, let alone a possible tail. He wondered what those sixteen lanes were for. From what he could see, Moscow had fewer private cars than Westport.
He remembered something else that Waldo had told him. A lot of these apartment blocks had no numbers on them. They had addresses, said Waldo, but the address of one building might have no sequential relationship at all to that of the building right next to it or even to another section of the same building. Waldo said that this was deliberate. The idea was to make it hard for people to get together, keep them from moving around too much.
Lesko found this hard to believe. Even in Russia, he argued, there had to be a line between repression and chicken shit. Waldo said just wait. Try to find an ordinary street map of Moscow. Also try to find a phone book. You can get a phone if you behave yourself and you wait long enough, but no one can find out your number—because there aren't any phone books. The last batch was printed maybe ten years ago, and only fifty thousand copies for a city of eight million. You can go to these little booths on the street and ask for someone's number, but you have to know the full name—first, middle, and last—and the exact address. This is fine if the number you want is your mother's. Otherwise, don't waste your time.
Valentin was pointing again.
Off to the left there was a sprawling farmers' market where there seemed to be plenty of produce. “All private,” said the young Russian. “All capitalist. You see? Market economy.”
They continued southward, Valentin describing an enormous sports complex on the left and the massive Kosmos Hotel on the right, both also built for the 1980 Olympics. Ahead, Valentin pointed out the soaring monument to Soviet space exploration, a 300-foot rocket trail, chrome-plated, with a little rocket on top and, further on, a stupendously turgid statue called “Worker and Collective Farm Woman.” They seemed to be striding forward as if into the future, determined expressions on their faces, the worker holding a hammer aloft, the woman holding a sickle. Judging by the buildings nearest it, the statues and pedestal must have been fifteen stories tall. For this, people went homeless.
Valentin's description of these monuments was more dutiful than enthused. It did not seem that he counted them among his beautiful things.
Belkin told them that the statue marked the entrance to the Economic Achievements Exhibit, which was easily twice the size of anyone else's World's Fair. He said they were shutting down a lot of it now because it was too expensive to maintain, but mostly because the people
had stopped coming to see it. They regarded this exhibit as belonging to another era. It had no relevance to the struggle of their daily lives. They no longer believed in its promise of the future. These days, he said, anything communist was totally and automatically discredited.
This was shortsighted, he said.
The past is fact. One does not reject the past. One learns from it, builds on it, or one repeats it. `
Lesko blinked. He nudged Elena with his elbow.
The future, said Leo Belkin, could be beyond their wildest dreams.
With the right sort of leadership. The right sort of help.
This last was followed by a flicker of eye contact between Belkin and the young driver.
Lesko saw it. So did Elena. She placed her hand on Lesko's thigh and patted it. The gesture said, Be patient.
7
The number, Bannerman realized, had a Zurich exchange. Yuri Rykov lived in Bern. He punched it out all the same. Yuri answered on the first ring. At hearing Bannerman's voice he asked, “You are home, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Ten minutes, please.” The line clicked off.
While Yuri, presumably, hurried to a public phone, Bannerman replayed Carla's message. Susan listened at his side. At the words ”I had to cut him,” she only frowned. A year ago, thought Bannerman, she would have been horrified.
Some of Carla's words were slurred as if she'd been drinking. That was not like her. Bannerman had never known her to drink anything but wine, two glasses at most, and only with a meal.
Susan found a snapshot of the man Carla brought to the wedding. “Here,” she said. “What was his name again?”
“Corsini. Aldo Corsini.”
“She sounds heartbroken. Do you suppose she caught him with another woman?”
Bannerman shrugged helplessly. He doubted it. In that circumstance, Carla would probably not have bothered calling. Or if she did, having used her knife, her manner would have been defiant. ”I taught the fucker a lesson. Leave me alone.”
Bannerman's Promise Page 7