2017

by Olga Slavnikova

  Krylov’s damp hair stirred in the wind; the Siberian express was creeping by, its hot wheels screeching. In the windows, like frames on old-time film, stood passengers, singly and in groups, their bags already packed and ready to get out at the station. What did they see in the dark bushes at the bottom of the slope? One alcoholic still standing on all fours trying to rouse another, who was conked out. But here you had at least another hundred witnesses. The quick-witted reporter in the nice striped suit who’d taken a photo of Mr. Krylov and his unfortunate victim, who reeked of wine, did not yet guess his own good luck. Does the accused say he didn’t want the flying conclusion? No, the accused doesn’t say that. He had returned Leonidich’s death to his environment, that is, he was back to the zero to which he had always aspired.

  For any citizen who finds himself next to a corpse, that’s the time to think about his own neck. He should have called Farid and consulted with him about what to tell the cops and reporters who would pick up the scent and not delay in showing up. How should he draw his relationship with the dead Zavalikhin while avoiding the topic of the corundum deposit? How should he keep Tamara and himself from falling under the wheels of a protracted and frenzied trial against her? Not because he would immediately sort this all out but because only Farid would find this interesting. In this proletarian district that crowded around the railroad, he now had to find a payphone that happened to be working.

  Suddenly, a quick glance, and Krylov noted the beating of life on the weak-willed body. Not his pulse or his heart but, what was astonishing, his liver. It had literally poked out from under the dead man’s ribs and was shaking was if prepared to burst under his pulled-up jacket. In a superstitious and horrible hope, Krylov touched the tensely vibrating protuberance and immediately realized his own mistake: the dead man’s antediluvian cell phone was vibrating in his pocket.

  The jacket’s pockets were small and stiff, which spoke to its provenance from his uncle’s secondhand store. Krylov was barely able to free the cell phone, bringing with it a hail of rustling, almost sugary coins. It was clunky in its crude black case with its worn buttons—nonetheless the display was plasma and 3-D, and on it a nimble icon was rolling up, confirming the call. Incredibly shocked, Krylov mechanically hit “talk” and saw the hologram of his employer taken at some holiday table taking a big bite out of a luxurious, caviar-spilling, open-faced sandwich.

  The workshop’s owner immediately shouted out.

  “Vitek! Vitek! It’s me,” the employer announced ironically, as if the very fact of his existence were a joke. “We have bad news. Very bad news. They found our professor gentleman in the north, near a winter hut, dead. He was sprawled out under a birch all bent over, like he’d been digging himself a hole, like a dog, and died like that. His assistant was with him, all wrapped up. According to the reports, looks like he passed away a week or so before. And no corundums. Nothing. Zip. Vitek, listen to me carefully now,” his employer’s voice came closer, and Krylov thought he could feel his hot, wetly whispering mouth with his ear. “You know very well our partners are serious men. We pathetic creatures are no match for them. We promised them mountains of goods and took an advance. It was a sure thing! Now we’re coming to them empty-handed, too. Our partners could take offense. Gather up your people fast and take them to your favorite uncle. You know where. We’ll get this sorted out before you know it. We’ll explain ourselves and settle with them. Your uncle won’t fail you!” the workshop’s owner chuckled nervously, as if shaking his ever-present sadness before consuming it, a sadness he consumed steadily, the way a quiet alcoholic does homebrew. “Come on, Vitek, don’t dilly dally! If you’re really afraid, take some Pampers from your daughter and put them on!”

  With this mordant wish his employer hung up; his holographic portrait, which depicted complete happiness, immediately faded.

  If the professor really had died, then only Krylov was left…. He had nothing left. The unique rubies were going up in red smoke, and his lost woman was vanishing for good. Could he survive this?

  Moving farther away down the thoroughly fried, greasy, black track bed, as if the dead spy might eavesdrop on the conversation, Krylov dialed Farid’s home number on the fat buttons. A huge shudder went through him when he heard the baleful voice of its lawful owner coming from the telephone.

  “To use this phone, enter your password,” suggested the spy, whose spread-eagled legs were poking out of the bushes. “If you’re wrong three times, all the information in my phone will be destroyed. Fuck you to kingdom come, you lousy creeps!” he added with a kind of childish pleasure, and Krylov, taking the soaking wet receiver away from his ear, saw on the screen the implied organ, looking terribly like an angry turkey.

  Hastily disconnecting, Krylov bent double from sudden laughter. He literally vomited thick masses of laughter into the harsh grass—and simultaneously relaxed a little. No, no matter what Farid said, Krylov wasn’t going to surrender to the cops right away. Let his running away from the dead body be an argument for the prosecution. He himself was so weak and felt so guilty, he would give the investigation even more fatal arguments. Right now they could easily convince him a crime had been committed—and convince him in such a way that afterward he wouldn’t remember what had actually happened. Casting a final glance at the comfortably stretched out spy, who looked like he was enjoying his new oblivion—his body would probably be taken for a while longer for an unpicky drunk who’d had himself a solitary picnic in the bushes. Krylov dropped the cell phone with the unharvested information into his pocket and kept moving, stumbling, over the greasy reddish-brown ties and between the thundering, frenzied walls of the oncoming trains.

  2

  This was why he’d purchased and equipped his refuge. Entering it, Krylov experienced his accustomed transformation into a cloud of free molecules and a momentary stiffening—with the possible loss of some particles. It was like the steep drop in an express mirror elevator but only for one floor. The air in his refuge was just as he’d left it: the fumes from the sausage he’d burned the week before was bluish, and in the low sunbeam the same furry dust motes danced, some the size of tiny seahorses.

  Here Krylov really was safe—safer than ever. No one was going to come in here as long as he was alive, and if cops did get in, or neighbors, or, say, his former employer’s mysterious partners, that would mean Krylov himself was no longer among the living. All this could be described with the simplest mathematical model, by an elementary equation: Krylov = humanity. Today he had finally reached what he’d been striving for his whole conscious life: his equation, with its horrifyingly cumbersome right side and its uncountable unknowns, had acquired validity. Moving any element of one half of the equation to the other would mean a change of sign. This meant that any visitor who got into his refuge would immediately become a negative value; or, if he did succeed in destroying the territory’s sovereignty he would get only a minus-Krylov.

  Since there was no God on this territory, all cause-and-effect connections were launched manually. There was a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, which was full of water, like an abandoned, multitiered fountain with food scraps and blackened parsley leaves floating in it. Since he had to eat and drink out of something, Krylov started the washing up, squirting in a good dollop of liquid detergent and swishing it around cautiously. Any work here had to be done by Krylov himself, adding to the physical effort much more effort of will than in any ordinary place. In the old refrigerator, which dated from the old lady and kept products wet more than cold, lay three steel tins of preserved venison, and a piece of rubbery cheese covered with puffy white dots was shriveling up. Krylov decided he could hold out for a few days with these supplies. After a meager supper, which consisted of grated cheese and warped gray crackers, Krylov got under the shower, hoping to wash away the experiences and sweat of the day with the harsh water served up from the outside world. The showerhead, with its rusted little holes, looked like a pepper shaker, and the streams flaile
d his reddened skin, giving him the chills. Krylov mopped himself off haphazardly with a faded, threadbare rag with an occasional ivory button, flung himself on the couch, and stared at the ceiling with its yellow stains from old leaks. The time had come to assess everything calmly and work out a plan.

  Right then, though, the vacant, long turned off bell rang and right after there was a distinct rap with a hard little bone.

  This soon? How did they manage it? Krylov scrambled up without making a sound, as if he were rising into the air. His plans had changed drastically. What should he do if they started breaking the door down? Put up or shut up, as Krylov used to say when he was a teen. People don’t joke about things like this. Since the absence of God forced Krylov to keep each and every thing in his mind, he couldn’t keep a weapon on this territory. His loyal friend, his lovingly greased revolver, here was too heavy for his consciousness and had been left with his mother, in the bottom drawer of her heat-cracked sideboard. Now Krylov regretted this madly. What else was there? The kitchen knife with the wobbly blade was too short to reach the heart. That was the nitty-gritty, ridiculous though it was.

  The knock, exactly the same in tone, was repeated. This was too fast for the police. It hadn’t been even four hours. But what if … ? What if Tanya had searched for and found him? After all, it could happen, he did ask…. And although Krylov had had no intention of getting any closer to the safe door, he suddenly discovered that he was standing in the vestibule, in the darkness, staring at the shining peephole, which looked as though it was filled with a drop of hot oil.

  “Open up. It’s me.” A horrifyingly familiar female voice rang out very close by, a step away. The voice was silken from agitation, and in the peephole a white hat, pulled low, with a brim as wide as a skirt, swayed.

  “Hold on, wait a minute,” Krylov replied huskily. For some reason he ran on tip-toe back to the room and in a panic grabbed his only jeans, grass-stained, from the only table. He gave a hop getting into the too-long pant’s legs, which kept flapping in opposite directions, then pulled on a not very fresh T-shirt, and then, now almost calm, went back to the doorway, took the keys from the table, and carefully unsealed the door.

  He hadn’t been expecting Tamara, but it was she, like no one else, who was fit and destined to bring nonexistent God to his refuge. He who had created her had not begrudged her anything. She literally shone in the reverberating cave of the doorway. She was paler than her flax-colored coat, and her unpainted mouth reminded him of a shabby, wind-frayed poppy. At her feet, which had accumulated a deadly exhaustion visible to the naked eye, was an oval suitcase with a glossy scrap on the handle—a United Airlines baggage tag.

  “Hi. Can I come in?” Tamara asked without crossing the threshold, bringing her shoes right up to the invisible line, like in the airport in front of the passport control zone.

  “You don’t have to ask. Come in!” Krylov hastily dragged her into the vestibule and grabbed her suitcase, which had obviously been packed in haste and looked like a plump pancake with hard, uncooked lumps. “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you,” he said, smiling foolishly and not knowing where to put his awkward arms, which were trying to hug his unexpected guest.

  “You know, I’m not about to be bursting into tears,” Tamara announced gaily, taking a black speck out of her blinking eye with a fingernail.

  Krylov helped her off with her coat, which was crumpled in back and held the strong smell of her familiar warm perfume, and once down to her smooth dress of the same linen, in which her body looked like an asexual tailor’s mannequin, she removed her wavy hat with both hands. Under her hat, her hair was felted, like a chignon made of someone else’s caked curls, and there was a chunk of coal under each of her marvelous, tired eyes.

  “Listen, are you alone?” Tamara asked suddenly, craning her neck.

  “Yes. Why?” Krylov wondered.

  “No, it’s nothing. I just thought,” Tamara mumbled, still looking over Krylov’s shoulder into the open room.

  Then and there Krylov knew the specter he had fantasized about here all these lonely, hollow evenings, had materialized. He immediately took fright that the phenomenon, in all likelihood, would wander around naked—and do who knew what, considering Krylov’s past need for female companionship. Tamara’s presence let him feel that his essence, his soul, was more like an ape at the zoo. He himself, however, quickly turning around, saw only the plastic rack with colorful shelves that looked like playground equipment and a blue pillow on the floor.

  “Well, show me how you live,” Tamara spoke briskly, and following Krylov’s gesture of invitation went into the empty room, from which the smeared shadow slipped into the kitchen with a shine of its milky butt. Paying no more attention to the specter, now declared nonexistent, she sat down on the edge of the crumpled sofa, and, rubbing her legs together like a fly, kicked off her shoes, which fell heavily, as if thousands of kilometers of trekking had clung to them.

  “Are you just coming from Koltsovo?” Krylov asked, picking up the pillow, a half-strewn book, and a dusty cocoon-like sock and holding all that in his arms.

  “No, I flew as far as Orenburg,” Tamara responded, casting a dreamy gaze over the nursery-like atmosphere. “And from there by taxi. The driver was no fool. He got a thousand euros off me!” She burst out laughing, swinging her legs like a schoolgirl. “I pretended I didn’t understand Russian very well. My good driver kept explaining all the way that people shoot people in Russia and it was very, very dangerous. Bang bang, Bolshevik!” She made a hilarious face, pretending to shoot from her finger.

  “What can I feed you after your trip?” Krylov said, dismayed. “Let me run out to the corner and I’ll bring some salads!”

  “No, don’t go anywhere!” Tamara turned even paler, as if a grainy rime were coming out on her lips. “Do you have any vodka?”

  “A little.” Krylov extracted from his memory an opened bottle standing on a bare shelf.

  “Bring it!”

  Krylov took a look around and once again dropped everything he was holding and with a shaky step headed for the kitchen. There, as he had expected, he saw himself sitting on the stool, which shown through the singed towel draped over it. Krylov imagined himself more muscular, without these gnawed bones and jutting spine. The ghost was so unstable it could have been taken for an unsuccessful, low-quality hologram. First to melt were his tucked-under toes, then the hand holding the glare of a china mug disappeared—and the whole vision elongated, made a deep crease, and dissolved, glancing at Krylov afterward with its long hazy eyes from the peeling ceiling.

  Smiling, Krylov wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. Then he took the bottle of Stolichnaya out of the half-empty cupboard, ripped open the venison, which was coated in fat, like seventy-year-old northern snow, and grabbed freshly washed mugs, two of the three.

  When he got back to the room, Tamara had opened a pack of salty French crackers, probably taken out of her suitcase. In front of her, on the little plastic chair, was some pretty pink pâté, a tin of fat beads of glossy caviar, and next to her, on the couch, a white folder with some papers in it. Krylov added his venison, which smelled distinctly of blood, to the delicacies and gurgled the vodka into the fat mugs, where it looked like water.

  Their linked glasses clattered like stones knocking together. Tamara drank it down, frowned, covering her face, and suddenly bit her arm, leaving a wet violet trace on her wrist.

  “There’s no way I can go back to Koltsovo now,” she announced, taking a deep breath. “They’ve brought criminal charges and they’re looking for me. This is all complete nonsense, a spectacle to scare people. The governor’s team is going to fuck me over good. They’re going all out searching-and-smashing, arresting me, and jail. I don’t want to go to jail. A week there and your health is ruined for years. These guys are going to get what they want, you know.”

  “It’s that serious?” After all the day’s adventures, the warm foul vodka was delivering a jolt to
Krylov’s brain, and he gave Tamara’s shoulder, with its touching silky bra strap slipped out from her dress, a good squeeze.

  “Yes and no.” Without moving away, Tamara kept looking straight ahead with burning dark eyes, terrible eyes, like a silent film star’s. “I’ve already got good lawyers working for me. They’ll overturn the case. There’s not even anything to overturn. Right now they’re in talks about suppressing it. They’ll probably arrest me formally and free me on bail. But I have to hide out for a few more days. That’s why I came to you. You see”—she shuddered with a smile—“it would never occur to anyone that you might own any real estate. You aren’t registered at this address. Until they figure it out … Not only that, but everyone who needs to know knows that you and I are mortal enemies. Remember how we shouted at each other? Downstairs everyone was all ears.”

  “Of course, stay here, live here as long as you like!” Krylov exclaimed heatedly. “I’ll be sleeping by the door in any case. I’m just going to pop out to my mother’s for my revolver.”

  “Nonsense!” Tamara jerked her shoulder away. “No, really, don’t be angry. That’s all we need now, shooting. Preferably at the police. Everyone around us really is firing, but in the foreseeable future they’re not going to let anything pass. When are you ever going to grow up?”