Red Chameleon

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Your father said this?”

  “In the dark, once or twice. At night. To my mother when she lived. Inspector, have you ever thought that being alive is very difficult?”

  “I have thought this, yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I eat my borscht, lift my weights, read my books, do my work.”

  “Do you have a wife and children?”

  “A wife, a son, a grown son.”

  “You said your wife is Jewish. You said that the day my father was killed. Was it a lie?”

  Their eyes met and Rostnikov smiled. “It was no lie.”

  “Shmuel Prensky is Jewish,” she said almost to herself.

  “So were all the men in the photograph,” Rostnikov said in return, wanting to reach out and pat the nervous hand of the woman as it rested on the hard wood table. But he did not reach out.

  She shrugged, dismissing the thought.

  “Where is your brother?”

  “At the home of a friend,” she said. “He grew tired of all the police. All the questions.”

  “All the— You mean more policemen came to talk to you since I—since your father’s death?”

  Her head was shaking in confirmation.

  “They came, asked these same questions. Came again. We can’t move. Can’t hide. We can only sit and answer. In life, no one ever came to see father. Now that he is dead, he has many visitors. Do you think it is hot in here?”

  “It is hot,” Rostnikov agreed. “I must go.”

  He could tell her now that the investigation was closed. It wasn’t too late. What could she do? Could she cry, wail? This was a woman with dreaded dreams who wanted her candlestick, her photograph, and a reason for insanity.

  Rostnikov stood up with the help of the table, because, as usual, his leg had begun to stiffen. Sofiya watched and, he noticed, rubbed her own crippled leg. As he moved to the door, she rose, took a step toward him, and looked up at his face with a question. He opened his arms, and she put her head on his chest. He held her, patted her head, and waited for her to weep. He felt her cheek against his shoulder, her breasts against his chest, and wondered how long it had been since anyone had held and comforted Sofiya Savitskaya. He wondered, in fact, if she had ever been held and comforted, and inside himself he wept for her.

  They stood that way for several minutes, and she was so silent that Rostnikov thought she might have fallen asleep. He could feel her breathing against him.

  “I must go,” he said gently, but she didn’t move back. He took her arms and held her a few inches away as he repeated, “I must go,” and then he sat her in the kitchen chair. Her eyes were closed, and her shoulders remained close together as if she had been hypnotized.

  “I will come back when I know more,” he promised, going to the door. The woman did not move. He went out and closed the door noiselessly behind him. Then he paused to listen. If she cried, he might go back, invite her for dinner, stay with her and tell his life story, spin a tale about Isola in America, about Ed McBain’s world of police who caught criminals and knew nothing of politics, of police who were supported by their system, policemen named Carella, Meyer, Kling, and Brown, of policemen in a nightmare world but one in which they could comfort each other and those they encountered who were the victims of the madness.

  Rostnikov went home. He wondered when he looked up at the evening sun if Sofiya Savitskaya would remain in that chair, her shoulders together, her eyes closed, until a prince came who would break the spell. Rostnikov felt the grit and sweat under his rapidly wilting collar and knew he was no prince. He was, at best, a comic knight or a guardian of the secret, but he was no prince.

  He almost wandered into a hole in the street clearly marked with a sign indicating remont, or repair, and he put off going home by entering a bakery where the line to find out the price was reasonably short. He got the price and then went to the line to pay the cashier. Ten minutes later he had gone through the third line, the one to pick up the bread, and was on his way home.

  “Let’s go to a movie,” he growled when he finally returned to his apartment and saw Sarah, her red hair tied back, her face solemn, her dress dark, placing food on the table.

  She stopped, looked at him with her hands on her hips, and cocked her head to one side, which reminded him of the way she had looked one afternoon in 1962 when he had teased her about going on a vacation. He remembered that it was 1962, because he had just finished the investigation of the murder of the three shoe-store clerks on Lenin Prospekt, and he had been feeling wonderful.

  “The Mir has a French movie about Napoleon and Josephine,” she said, testing him, for she knew that Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov’s taste went to action films and comedies.

  “The Mir sounds perfect,” he said, putting his bread on the table.

  “Maybe, we could find—” Sarah began, ready to concede some ground.

  “The Mir it shall be,” he said. “We will eat after I lift my iron babies. I will wash, and we will lose ourselves in decadent history and French romanticism. You smile? Does that mean we shall hold hands and kiss in the darkness like children?”

  “You were never a child, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said, checking something cooking that smelled sweet and indefinable to Rostnikov, who had begun to remove his clothes and prepare himself for his beloved weights. It would, he decided, be a perfect night. He would merge with the weights, sweat upon his own sweat, exhaust himself, and eat. He would eat as if he were in a terrible contest in which he had to extract all taste and savor all odors to win. Then he would go with Sarah to the French movie and love it, talk about it, imagine himself Napoleon. For one night he would not be in Moscow. One night. That was all he could do, and deep down he thought that was all he really wanted to do.

  EIGHT

  EMIL KARPO OPENED HIS EYES, expecting to see the gray sky above the roof of the Ukraine Hotel. Instead, he saw pale gray walls, the solid, unsmiling face of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, and he heard voices around him.

  “I saw a French movie last night,” Rostnikov said, looking down at him. “The French laugh too much, with too little feeling and with almost no reason. Do you agree?”

  “I’m not an expert of the French mentality,” Karpo croaked through his painfully dry throat. He realized now that he was in a bed, in a hospital.

  A man was standing beside the chief inspector. He was about forty with a birdlike chest and glasses with wire rims that made him look like an intellectual from a 1930s movie about the Revolution.

  “The woman who fell from the roof,” Rostnikov said. “She was the Weeper?”

  Karpo nodded.

  “This is Monday morning,” Rostnikov said. “I’m going to sit on your bed.” He did. “They didn’t call me yesterday when it happened. I think it was Procurator. Khabolov’s way of punishing me for the destruction of his Chaika. Well, you are supposed to be curious. You are supposed to be amused. You are supposed to be burning with curiosity about this destroyed Chaika, and you just lie there.”

  “Comrade inspector,” Karpo whispered painfully, “I have neither a sense of humor nor a morbid curiosity about the humiliation of others.”

  “See?” said Rostnikov, turning to the man with the glasses. “Didn’t I tell you he would steal his way into your heart, Alex?”

  “You told me he would steal his way into my heart,” Alex agreed, moving forward to Emil Karpo’s side and looking down at him intently.

  “She jumped,” Karpo said, his eyes on those of Rostnikov’s companion. “I will detail it in my report. Did she injure anyone in her fall?”

  “No, no one, though the street had to be closed off for almost half an hour, I understand. The rifle she had with her went through the window of a clothing shop.”

  Karpo took in the six other patients in the ward room. None had a visitor; three were displaying mild curiosity about Karpo and his guests, and three were in no condition to respond to their environment.

  The man named Alex put his
hand on Karpo’s forehead, leaned down to look into his eyes, and then reached for the numb right arm.

  “Comrade inspector, I take it this man is some kind of health professional and not a morbid lunatic you encountered in the hall,” Karpo said, watching his arm being lifted, seeing the dingy gray sleeve of his gown slide back, feeling a tingling in the fingers as the man examined.

  “See, Alex, I told you he had a sense of humor. He can deny it all he likes, but Emil Karpo could make a living as a comedian.”

  “He is very funny,” Alex agreed blankly as he ran his hand over the limp arm and bent it at the elbow.

  “Alex is a doctor,” Rostnikov whispered, “but we will keep that a secret. The woman who is supposed to be your physician would not take consultation with exuberance. Alex is my wife’s cousin. Remember? He went to a real doctor’s school in Poland.”

  Alex prodded away, ignoring Rostnikov, who continued, “On the way in we stopped at the X-ray department and told a slight lie which enabled Alex to examine your X rays.”

  “They were botched.” Alex sighed, working ahead. “But I could see enough. I just want to be sure …” He rolled Karpo’s shoulder firmly and caused a pain that brought a minor grimace to Karpo’s pale face.

  “You are supposed to give vent to some feeling when you have pain,” Alex said, looking at Karpo’s pale face. “How am I supposed to know I’m hurting you if you do not cooperate?”

  “I will scream the next time,” Karpo said.

  “Would you like some water? They stuck a tube down your nose, but I don’t know what the hell for,” Alex said, shaking his head and reaching for the water glass on the small table. “These sheets aren’t even properly cleaned.”

  Karpo took a drink of water, a small sip that burned as it rolled over inflamed and tender nodules at the base of his tongue.

  “I’m going to tell you what you should do,” Alex said, adjusting his little black tie professionally. The room was warm, but a breeze did flow through the open windows. A spot of sweat showed, clearly etched like the outline of an amoeba on Alex’s white shirt. “You should get out of here as fast as you can. Tell them you feel fine before they operate on you and maim you for life or, worse, infect you in an unsterile environment. They are controlling your fever with drugs. Who knows what drugs. Do you know why you have a fever?”

  “I—” began Karpo, but Alex ignored him.

  “You have a fever because you have an infection in your shoulder resulting from an improperly reset dislocation. You also have a severe cold. You can recover from the cold at home after I reset your arm in my office.”

  “Listen to him, Emil Karpo,” Rostnikov whispered.

  “Here you get treated free,” Alex said, adjusting his glasses. “A service of the state. I’ll treat you for two hundred rubles. That’s a month’s salary for the doctors who work in this hospital, and as you probably know, it is less than a factory worker makes, which explains something about the quality of care you get here.”

  “The system will eventually operate if corruption is controlled and the people accept the sacrifices necessary,” Karpo croaked.

  Alex turned to Rostnikov with a shrug. “You ask me to see the man, and I get quotes from Lenin and insults. When I was in medical school in Poland, we had a regular underground railroad of your Soviet sacrificers in high places shipping themselves and their families West for real medical treatment. The head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Keldysh, got an American doctor when he had heart trouble.”

  “I’m sorry, doctor,” Karpo said. “Then why do you stay in the Soviet Union if you feel this way?”

  Alex shook his head at the density of some people and leaned over to breathe on Karpo and examine his face through the thick glasses.

  “They won’t let me go,” he said. “No more quotas for Jews. No more doctors getting out. But you know what I really think. They want to keep us around for when they really need competence. There are little rooms full of Jewish doctors, Catholic writers, Mongol craftsmen, all of whom will be plucked out in emergencies or rot until one comes. Meanwhile, two hundred rubles is a small price to pay for the use of your arm.”

  “Pay him, Emil,” Rostnikov said.

  A man two beds away shouted, “Don’t be a fool. You have two hundred rubles; pay him. If he could cure rotted lungs, I’d pay him five hundred rubles.”

  “See,” said Rostnikov, “even the proletariat support this exception. You will violate no law, Emil, and you’d be doing me a favor. I’m getting tired of visiting you in hospitals every time you catch a criminal. There is something in you that seeks destruction.”

  “Not so loud,” said Alex, pouring himself a drink of water from the nearby pitcher, examining it, and then deciding that it was too suspicious to drink. “The state frowns on any suggestion of neurosis. Everything is organic. Neurosis is decadent, something for the West Germans, French, English, and Canadians. Don’t drink any more of this water.”

  “I think he should be treated in the hospital,” cried a man in the corner. “We have to stay here. The state takes care of us. He should stay here.”

  “Shut up, you old nakhlebnik, you parasite,” said the man with the rotted lungs. “You’d pay a thousand rubles if you could get a new pair of balls.”

  “Gentlemen,” Rostnikov said, standing because his leg would no longer permit him to sit. “There is merit to what you both say, but if you don’t stop shouting, a doctor will come in.”

  “A doctor,” said the man with the lung problem. “That would be a novelty.”

  “Capitalist traitor,” coughed the man with no balls.

  “Eunuch,” countered the man with no lungs.

  And then both fell silent.

  “I’m going,” said Alex. “I can hear this kind of talk at home. Porfiry Petrovich, tell him how to get to me if he decides he prefers going through life with two arms instead of one.”

  And off went Alex, leaving the two policemen alone.

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I will see what the doctors here say,” whispered Karpo. From the bed Karpo could not see the woman who had entered the ward as Alex was leaving, but Rostnikov watched her enter, look around, see them, and head in their direction. She was tall, perhaps in the late thirties, with billowing brown hair. Her face was not pretty in any conventional way, but it was handsome, strong. She strode with confidence, her green dress slightly tight, very Western.

  “You are Chief Inspector Rostnikov?” she said, holding out her hand.

  Rostnikov took it and nodded.

  “I am Mathilde Verson,” she said.

  Karpo looked at her as. did all the other patients in the room who were awake or capable, but Karpo was the only one who had seen her before. In fact, for seven years he had seen her regularly, every two weeks on Thursday afternoons for about an hour. He had also seen her occasionally to get information about other prostitutes who might be involved in or have information about some crime he was investigating. Karpo looked at her without betraying surprise but with a question.

  “How did you know I—” he began, but Mathilde was looking at Rostnikov, and Karpo understood. He stopped the question and addressed a new one to the chief inspector. “How long have you known about Mathilde?”

  “Who knows?” He shrugged, dismissing the question. “A few years. I’m a detective, remember? I know things. So what’s so important about this? Did you think someone would blackmail you, discover you might be human and not just an efficient pawn of the state? It was refreshing to discover that you are a man like other men, Emil Karpo.”

  Talking was difficult for Karpo, but things had to be said. “We are all animals,” he said dryly. “We cannot deny our animalness. We must acknowledge, channel, and control it so we can carry out our duty.”

  “Can you believe it, chief inspector?” Mathilde Verson said, sitting on the bed. “He is always this romantic. Am I here for pay, Karpo? Do you think I came here to do business? There’s a performance o
f Swan Lake at the Bolshoi this afternoon. That’s four intermissions. You know how many tourists I could line up today? I’m giving up as much as one hundred dollars in American money by coming to see you. You know how Americans spend rubles? They think they’re play money, little dollars with funny pictures of Lenin on them.”

  “I’m moved by your sacrifice,” Karpo muttered.

  Mathilde looked to Rostnikov for support. He gave her a shrug and adjusted his jacket to show that he was about to leave.

  “The chief inspector said you might enjoy a visitor,” she said to Karpo. “I’ll just sit here a few minutes, exude personality, and have you smiling before you control yourself. You believe that?”

  “I do not smile,” Karpo whispered seriously.

  “I’m going,” Rostnikov said. “See if you can convince him.”

  “What’s all this?” bellowed a woman in a white coat, striding toward them, a black file folder under her arm. She was of no known age. Her size was small, her hair was pulled back tightly, and she wanted control.

  “Visitors,” said Rostnikov.

  The woman eyed Mathilde, appeared to discern her profession, and turned to Karpo.

  “They are parasites,” shouted the man with no balls.

  “Hah,” croaked the lungless one. “You can’t even keep your insults straight. You are the parasite.”

  “Quiet,” shouted the woman. She turned to Karpo, and Rostnikov hesitated so he could listen. “You are awake.”

  “I am awake,” agreed Karpo.

  “I am Doctor Komiakov,” she said, opening the worn, dark folder and examining it. “I’m afraid I have some difficult news for you. Your right arm is infected and will have to be removed. I would rather not be so abrupt with this information, but you must know that the situation is severe, and you are a police officer. The surgery will be performed sometime tomorrow, and you should be functioning several weeks after that. There is even the possibility of a prosthetic device. Do you have a question?”