The Disappearing Body

by David Grand

  “How would I benefit by doing that? I could have just as easily done exactly what you thought I had done for my own selfish gain and then sent you back home. Why would I have gone to the trouble of getting that file if it weren’t out of concern?” Arthur put his elbows on the table and leaned in the professor’s direction. “Look, Mitya, let me start with this, so you can put it into perspective, all right? . . . Whether you want to believe it or not, the fear that you felt when they came to take you to Moscow? I do understand. I understand all too well. I have been living with that same fear for many years now. Many years. And not so quietly.”

  “Come, Arthur. You and I both know that you are the ‘they’ that we speak of when we speak of ‘them’ coming in the middle of the night.”

  “That’s just not so.”

  “But I have seen you as such only recently,” Tarkhov said, sounding more unsure of what to believe. “I have seen your picture in the papers with Party officials. You are a hero of the revolution.”

  Arthur laughed. “You of all people believe what you read in those papers?”

  “Of course not. But if you’ll recall, I spoke for you when you first arrived. I witnessed you endearing yourself to these people, working on their behalf.”

  “That was a long time ago, Mitya. A very long time ago.”

  There was a silence between the two men as they both got stuck reminiscing about the early days of the revolution.

  “I failed them,” Arthur said. He leaned his head forward a little more so that Tarkhov could see his face clearly when he said this, and suddenly his eyes seemed to soften a little. “Yes, I was a great hero of the revolution. I secured money from all over the world, made arrangements for businesses to come in and out of Russia. And, yes, it’s true, I once believed that I could help make the Soviets strong and decent. But, for reasons too complicated to even consider, every business venture that I started on behalf of the Party failed miserably, Mitya. Miserably. And for each miserable failure, I was held responsible for the huge sums of money that the Party lost. Do you understand what that means?”

  “I don’t know how much I care to understand what it means.”

  “It means that I was slowly but surely becoming a candidate for enemy of the people, enemy of Stalin. It’s a wonder that I survived the purges. But, I’ll tell you, if I suddenly disappeared one day, no one on the inside would have been surprised, or cared for that matter. All anyone would care about is that it wasn’t him.”

  “So then, if this is true, how is it you escaped?”

  “I ran. And I’ll continue running once these paintings are sold. Look, Mitya, what is important for you to know is that when I knew I would be returning here to the City, part of my plan consisted of selling my collection of paintings. I knew I would need money, and I believed that the Rodhinskys would potentially fetch more money if they were being presented to the world by an expert, by a man like yourself who knew Rodhinsky well, his writings, the world in which he worked. I thought if I offered you a percentage of the money earned at auction, and if I could arrange asylum for you and your family in the States—so that you could live freely, Mitya, write freely, show your face in public as the man that you are—you might be interested. . . . In any event, I made a phone call to a man I had done business with in the Cheka, to find out—if you were indeed interested—what would be involved in getting you and your family out of the country. And that’s when I learned that you were to be arrested.”

  “Why would this official give you that kind of information?”

  “Why? Because he knew I wanted you. He knew that by helping me, rubles would soon be in his pocket. That’s why. And as things sometimes turn out in a corrupt world—our greed and selfishness led to a decent act.”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “Yes, that’s what I’d like to call it. I paid him his bribe. He made arrangements for you to leave Russia and conveniently made your arrest warrant disappear. A decent act.”

  “If this is true,” Tarkhov said, his voice still sounding unsure, “what’s to become of me?”

  “It’s entirely up to you.”

  “And what’s to become of Irina and the children?”

  “Again, that’s entirely up to you. I’ve made arrangements to bring them here, if you wish it. I didn’t feel comfortable doing this without talking to you first, since you were the one in immediate danger. But if this is what you want, it’s already done. All I need to do is send word.”

  “And if I should return home?”

  “If you return, I can give you no assurances. This man in the Cheka, he may find a reason for that warrant to reappear. On the other hand, he could go through life without ever thinking of you again. I couldn’t possibly speculate.”

  “And if I stay?”

  “Then you stay. Lead a normal life. Learn to love baseball.”

  “I don’t know what to say. I don’t know, Arthur. I just don’t know . . .”

  “Say nothing for now if that’s what you want. Take some time to think about it.”

  Tarkhov’s eyes wandered from Arthur to the bottle of vodka on the table. Thinking of Irina and his children, he reached for it and filled his glass. Without letting go of the bottle, he drank down the vodka with an image of his wife’s face in his mind, and then he filled his glass again. With an image of his two children in mind, he drank this glass, filled it again, then just sat at the table with Arthur in silence. As the vodka warmed and numbed the back of Professor Tarkhov’s throat, he now saw in his mind the image of Rodhinsky falling toward the pickax wedged between the floorboards of his apartment, and then he drank some more.

  Arthur, this time, filled the professor’s glass, and then filled his own. And then, one glass after the next, they drank their way down to the bottom of the bottle. Finally, Tarkhov started to cry. He cried at his misfortune, he cried for the misfortune of Russia, he cried to God for making his life so difficult, he cried for the hardship he would place on his wife and children, and then he stopped crying and smoked a cigar with Arthur.

  “How did you get it?” Tarkhov asked, his body swaying, as Arthur unsteadily held a match out to the professor’s cigar.

  “I already told you.”

  “No no, not the file. The painting. The Rodhinsky. How in the world did you get it?”

  A downturned smile came over Arthur’s face and the severe mood that had been in the room just moments before lifted. “If I tell you, if I tell you, you must promise not to reveal my secret.”

  “I make no such promises!” the professor said ardently. “But if I feel it is a secret worthy of my discretion, I will seal my lips.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Arthur said. “After this, you deserve to hear it. After this, you deserve to tell the world.”

  “Then say it.”

  “I stole it,” Arthur proudly announced. His eyes filled with the light cast from the fixture hung over the table.

  “From where?”

  “You’ll never believe me.”

  “You may be a scoundrel, but you would never lie to me about something so meaningful to the both of us, this I’m sure of.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you. From Rodhinsky’s apartment, I stole it.”

  “When?”

  “The very night that he killed himself.”

  “How in the world . . . ? You? In Rodhinsky’s apartment? When he killed himself?”

  “If anything in this world is destined, Mitya, this undoubtedly was.”

  “Every detail, please.”

  “There’s not much to it, really. I was at the Ministry of Culture that night when I witnessed what Rodhinsky said to the minister. I wanted to talk with him. I wanted to understand why he was putting himself in such danger. . . . Well, I didn’t know him well, and perhaps I didn’t know what exactly he would do, but I knew him well enough to know that he was up to something. So I followed him from the party to his apartment.”

  “Do you mean to sa
y that you saw him die?”

  “No no, of course not. When I saw that he went home, I suddenly wasn’t sure what to think. I thought maybe it was just a fit of rage and nothing more. But then, as I waited outside, wondering whether or not I wanted to be in his company while he was in that congenial rage he was so famous for, I finally decided that I wanted to see him. Kchyortu! I thought. So I went upstairs, knocked on his door, and when the door opened from the force of my fist hitting it, there in the room that he used for his studio he lay on the floor impaled on that pickax.”

  The professor’s eyes looked as large as eggs, they were so large. “So it’s true then that he killed himself as he depicted it in the painting?”

  “Yes.” Arthur shook his head slightly. “It was very gruesome.”

  “Was he still alive when you entered?”

  “No. I placed my hand over his mouth and felt no breath, and then I saw the painting, and then my breath was taken away. I couldn’t believe it. I fell back on my ass, I was so astonished. The only detail missing from that room at the moment was myself, knocked nearly prostrate next to Rodhinsky.”

  “It was then you took the painting?”

  “Yes, because as I stood there, looking at it, realizing what it was, what it meant, how beautiful and important it was, I thought about what would become of it, and all I saw was some ignoramus setting it on fire. I couldn’t stand the thought of it. So I found a blanket and wrapped it up and quietly left Rodhinsky to his immortality.”

  “But how did everyone know about the painting then?”

  “Because . . .”

  “Because . . .” The professor wagged his finger at Arthur. “You were the one who wrote the pamphlets, weren’t you?”

  Arthur wobbled his head in affirmation.

  Tarkhov’s voice suddenly sounded thrilled. “In the voice of the policeman!”

  Arthur nodded again.

  “You were the anonymous policeman. I can’t believe it,” Tarkhov said, scratching his head. “I can’t believe it.”

  Arthur smiled again, and laughed almost giddily.

  “I can’t believe it,” Professor Tarkhov kept saying. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. . . .”

  “Mitya?”

  “I can’t believe it. . . .” Mikhail Alekseyevich Tarkhov puffed on his cigar and started to cry again.

  “Meeee-tya,” Arthur said in an avuncular voice. He got up from his chair. “Come,” he said tenderly. He walked around to Professor Tarkhov and took him by the shoulders. “Come come come, I’ll take you downstairs and put you in a taxi.”

  “Arthur,” Tarkhov sobbed, “Irina and the children will be all right, won’t they?”

  “If I wire my friends tonight, Irina and the children will be in Helsinki by the end of the weekend,” Arthur said solemnly. “They’ll be perfectly fine. Trust me. Trust me, my friend. Please.”

  “Yes, all right. All right. Please wire your friends and tell them to bring my family to me.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I know what needs to be done now.”

  “I’ll wire my friends from the lobby as soon as I put you in a taxi.”

  “I’m sorry for being rude to you, Arthur. Under the circumstances, I’m sure you understand.”

  “If anyone should be sorry . . .”

  “No no no . . . it is right, this. It must be.”

  Arthur walked Professor Tarkhov to the armoire in the foyer and dressed him in his coat, ascot, and hat. With his arm over his shoulder, he then escorted him down the paisley hall to the elevator, in the elevator down to the lobby, and onto the sidewalk, where Arthur put the professor into a taxi and sent him on his way back to the Martins’ estate. Once the taxi had turned off Shrine Avenue onto Thirty-sixth Street, he casually walked into the Ansonia’s restaurant, took a seat at the bar, and ordered a glass of whiskey. As the bartender poured his drink, he removed the envelope that Professor Tarkhov had given him and placed it on the bar. In the bar’s mirror, he watched as a man carrying an attaché approached him from behind. The man sat next to Arthur and set the attaché on top of the package.

  “Is he in a cooperative spirit?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Good.”

  The man, not saying another word, removed his bag from the bar, and along with it went the package. Arthur continued sitting at the bar for some time, nursing his drink, looking at himself in the bar’s mirror. He tried to recall the last time he had done something decent, but he couldn’t think of a single thing. And then he thought of Joshua, but the idea of him brought him no peace.

  Chapter 28

  As Arthur Brilovsky and Professor Tarkhov drank together, Victor Ribe continued to observe Elaine and Joshua Brilovsky from a near distance. He watched and listened as they strolled through the dim, empty corridors of the Natural History Museum, passing dioramas of early man and woman, taxidermied apes and lions, snakes, gazelles, wildfowl. Joshua, a tall gangly young man with a deep voice and world-weary eyes, eyes like those of a young sage, held his mother’s hand as they walked over the polished granite floor. He spoke English with a Russian accent. “What will we do when Father leaves?” Joshua asked his mother.

  “This is disgraceful the way they’ve represented these poor creatures. It can easily lead a young man like yourself to despair. They look so pathetic and hungry and tired and frightened. . . . Does no one ever relax in the wild? Recline on a bed of moss or pick at their teeth with a stick? They look so severe.”

  “When he leaves tomorrow,” Joshua persisted, ignoring his mother as she had ignored him, “he’s moving across the country. Won’t you want to at least be near him?”

  “I don’t wish to be anywhere near him.”

  “Will you ever forgive him?”

  Elaine shook her head. “If you want to be near him, Joshua, I won’t stop you. You’re a grown man now. You can do as you please.”

  “Mother, I don’t forgive him for what he’s done, either, but I would like both of us to be near him. . . . Maybe one day we will forgive him.”

  “You have a good heart, darling, but there’s much you don’t understand about your father.”

  “Tell me.”

  Elaine shook her head again as she found a pair of stuffed bonobo monkeys, face to face, hanging from a branch with their legs entwined. “Now, here, this is the way the wilderness should be.” Joshua let go of his mother’s hand. His mother immediately took hold of it again.

  Joshua looked at the two monkeys solemnly and read the plaque. “It says here that they’re very promiscuous, that they’re the only other animals in the wild to procreate while looking at each other’s face.”

  “A lot of good it does us to see the other’s face when we can’t see what’s behind it.”

  “Really, Mama, is he so bad?”

  “It’s true he can be sweet and adorable at times,” she conceded in such a way that it was obvious she didn’t believe what she was saying. “No,” she said, correcting herself. “He can appear sweet and adorable and deserving of love, but, Joshua, when it comes right down to it, your father is deceitful. He’s unapologetically selfish and ambitious and has done things in this life I hope for always you don’t know about.” Elaine turned to her son and with a pained look in her eyes tucked a small dark tuft of hair behind his ear. “When your father and I first met, he was very kind to me, and at that time, I needed a gentle man to be kind to me. But over the years, I realized that just like with everyone else he’s charmed, he was charming me in order to cast a shadow over his true intentions.”

  “Which were what?”

  “I don’t honestly know. . . . I’ll tell you this: your father’s ambitions know no shame. They never have. He is his father’s son, and that’s all I’ll say to you. Unlike my father—who was ruined for his foolish principles and for being taken in by your grandfather—Arthur Brilovsky is a shameless man with no tr
ue direction. He is a joke as a man representing any form of ideology other than his own narcissism. And I have seen him grow more and more ruthless as he’s grown older.”

  “You really despise him, don’t you?”

  Elaine kissed the place on Joshua’s head where she had just touched him. “I’m sorry, darling. I’m sorry I’ve said anything at all.”

  Joshua nodded his head. “Tell me, Mother . . . if his blood is in my body, will I eventually become like him? Into the type of man you say he is? Will you end up despising me as much as you do him?”

  Elaine stopped short. She grabbed Joshua by the shoulders. “Never,” she said harshly. “Never place that thought into your head! You are your own man. You have the power to shape your own future. There’s not an ounce of bad character coursing through your blood. If there’s anything I know for certain, it’s of your goodness, Joshua, your rightness. You will always be protected by your good conscience, I promise you.”

  “My mother can see the future?” Joshua’s mood seemed to lighten a little.

  “She can see beyond the future.” Elaine hugged Joshua’s arm. “She can see right into the window of your soul.”

  Elaine and Joshua held on to each other tightly as they continued through the prehistory wing of the museum. They stopped to look at the skeleton of a pterodactyl.

  “Mother,” Joshua said quietly, turning to Elaine so that the two of them were looking each other in the face, “please don’t look away from me when I say this. . . .”

  “What is it?”

  Joshua looked over his mother’s shoulder and watched Victor as he stood beside the immense foot of a brontosaurus. “I think there’s a man following us.”

  “Where?” Elaine asked. When she realized that Joshua was looking at him over her shoulder, she started to turn around.

  “Mother, don’t,” he said.

  Elaine turned around and saw Victor standing there, and when she saw him, she immediately knew it was him. Her father had called yesterday afternoon and told her that he was in the City looking for her. She had spent the last day anticipating this moment, wondering how she would feel when she saw him. And now that he was nearby, she found herself full of nostalgia for a time in her life that was much more simple; she was also intrigued by and fearful of what both she and Joshua would discover.