2017

by Olga Slavnikova

  “Fine, then.” Krylov jerked to his numb feet, and the parquet seemed to flow under him like a wave of wood. “You know, I never did get a chance to tell you that I’m on your side no matter what. I don’t care whether you’re guilty or not. You’re dearer to me than the forests and the little beasts. And now, if you really don’t need me, I’m going.”

  “Wait.” Tamara stood up, too, and grabbed Krylov’s hand, which was already holding his jacket. “Wait. That’s not all yet.”

  Krylov turned to see stars shining in Tamara’s eyes, which were half-covered by wet eyelashes. This was a familiar sign. He must have slipped and said something he shouldn’t. Was this really that insane hope of hers that Tamara had tortured him with for four years? No, apparently not. Tamara really had changed; something about her was different. Enchanted by this change, Krylov allowed himself to be pulled back to the couch, which looked like it had been crushed by passionate lovers.

  Still not letting go of Krylov’s wrist, Tamara took the wrecked folder out from behind her back and scratched off the magnetic seal. The zipper hiccupped as it opened, and Krylov saw two pieces of white paper stapled crookedly in the folder.

  “I have something for you.” Tamara put her barely trembling hand on the file softly and mysteriously. “But before I give it to you, I have to tell you …” At this Tamara squinted so that there was no gleam left at all between her Assyrian eyelashes. “I have to tell you that Professor Anfilogov and his friend Kolyan are no longer among the living.”

  Krylov felt his insides heave hot and terribly. Maybe the second time it had finally hit him. Watching him stealthily, Tamara probably could not have guessed for the world that what she had to say was not news for Krylov. Still, it was too sudden a blow, moreover at his fresh pain, which Krylov now felt like a flashing emergency light inside him, complete with sirens and droning. He felt as though his hands were blazing red through his skin.

  “Go on!” Krylov threw back at Tamara, who was looking at him with suspicion and had already risen to look for medicine.

  Tamara was smart and didn’t start to argue. Sitting very straight on the couch, she continued in a precise voice, as if she were reporting to her board of directors.

  “Anfilogov’s and Kolyan’s bodies were found in the north of the province, ten kilometers to the east of Balakayevsk logging. According to the preliminary conclusion, death came as a result of cyanide poisoning.” At this Tamara seemed to choke on something, and Krylov guessed that the feeling of guilt she reflected so clearly was simply very well sealed up. “Actually, that is in fact what happened. Apparently, your friends were just swimming in the cyanide solution. Their mucous membranes had turned to mush. And there were other obvious symptoms, too.”

  “That’s all right.” Krylov reached to touch Tamara’s silky knee. “I already told you you’re more precious to me than the forests and beasts. You and I have enough life lived together to withstand the professor and Kolyan, too. So tell me more.”

  “It just so happened I was able to buy the conclusion from the local native healer who went out for the bodies,” Tamara continued in an even voice. “Unfortunately, right now I can’t allow corpses to be added to my ‘cyanide autumn.’ Therefore my trusted staff has moved the dead bodies to one of Granite’s last remaining morgues. The official death certificates were written out there. The cause of death was listed as acute cardiovascular insufficiency. Naturally, my employees immediately got in touch with the dead men’s relatives. And got official agreement for rapid cremation. The cremation and placement of the urns in the necropolis took place this morning.”

  Krylov turned around. For some reason he recalled the professor’s collection, which was kept in dilapidated cardboard boxes under his sagging iron cot—and how the very first night he and Tanya had felt the collection with their moist bodies, as if their magic boat had brushed the rocky bottom.

  “I realize all this is highly regrettable. Believe me, if I’d been in the country this morning, I would have thought of a way to bring you there to say goodbye. But at that time I was flying across the ocean.” Tamara held her pause for a few seconds. “What I’m leading up to is the main thing. The dead men’s relatives.”

  “What of it?” Krylov asked aloofly, trying with all his might to call to life his image of the professor’s niece who had come for the session and nearly seduced him. But the evasive young woman, her watery little eyes playing, her luminescent nails flitting, stubbornly refused to be embodied.

  “There turned out to be only a few,” Tamara spoke with restraint. “All that was found at Kolyan’s registered address was his one great-grandmother. And I mean found: in this crooked hut, like a potato rolling around in a box. The old woman is ninety-two and can barely scrawl her name. She was very grateful for our money and thought it was her great-grandson’s pension. Well, and the professor, if you can imagine, turned out to have a young widow. Ekaterina Sergeyevna Anfilogova. Your blonde.”

  That was it! Although even that was not really news. Krylov had been wrong so long about Tanya and the professor because he’d seen the kind of identicalness of their palms at the station that happens only with close blood relatives, a brother and sister, for instance. Those precise Latin letters that coincided perfectly through the thick train car window, as if a copy had been taken of the gray glass. There they were, the Stone Maiden’s things, the Stone Maiden who so thirsted for all of a man’s love, his entire being, that she couldn’t help but acquire him physically: she stole his ears, his nails, and his lifelines, and she wore his hair like a cap.

  “I get it. So, Ekaterina Sergeyevna,” Krylov spoke, randomly touching his stubbly face. “So that’s her name. But tell me, did you pay the professor’s widow, too? Did she take the kickback from you?”

  To this Tamara replied with an impenetrable silence. She sat with her eyes lowered to her folded hands, where her two randomly crossed index fingers displayed a slight tremor, like short-circuited wires. It was obvious she was going to remain silent as long as it took but she would not stoop to confirming the unseemly fact. But she wasn’t going to shield Ekaterina Sergeyevna either—she simply wasn’t going to deign to give her rival the slightest comment or a hint of her attention. Only now did Krylov really see how terribly the denunciation and harassment had hardened Tamara. Her silence was monolithic. This silence stripped Ekaterina Sergeyevna of any qualities whatsoever and made her something it was indecent to discuss.

  “That means the widow took the kickback,” the grimly smiling Krylov confirmed for himself.

  And so Tanya had revealed the first signs of her real life. Krylov was choked by waves of mounting shame, as if he had been heated up and sprinkled with sugar, as if he had benefited from the professor’s death by taking the shameful bribe from Tamara. Along with the shame a nausea rose up inside him, possibly an acute presentiment or poisoning by some future time.

  Tamara meanwhile was not coming to Krylov’s aid but was simply maintaining the proper pause.

  “Relations between Granite and its clients are regulated by a standard contract,” she spoke finally, almost officially. “When I found out who the professor’s spouse was, I asked her to fax me the contract in New York. There’s no doubt as to Mrs. Anfilogova’s identity: the professor and his partner were being watched by the same people as you for purposes of your safety. I brought you the contract. I think it will come in handy.”

  With these words, Tamara handed Krylov the crookedly stapled pages. The fumes from his shame made it a little hard for him to see. The narrow, pointy handwriting, which was strangely even, as if the words had been written not with a pen but with the tines of a fork, all four at once, was completely unfamiliar to Krylov. Actually, he didn’t know Tanya’s hand; he’d never received a letter or a note from her. “Ekaterina Sergeyevna” just didn’t stick to her; and “Tanya” had been obliterated. The nameless woman referred to as “Client” in the contract confirmed in writing that in such and such instances she would have no
claims whatsoever against the “Principal.”

  “Her address and phone are on the second page,” Tamara prompted him, having suddenly brightened with a weak but genuine smile.

  Trying not to hurry, Krylov turned the page. Tanya’s signature was a brush with a strand of hair. Indeed, an address: 28 Eremenko Street, apartment 17. Krylov bent lower, pretending he couldn’t make it out. Evidently it was not Tamara’s fate. No matter what she did, no matter what presents she gave him, no matter how sincerely she tried to help, it was all to Krylov’s advantage. Right now he didn’t even remember where he had hidden his collector’s Pamela Anderson: maybe in one of his Alexandre Dumas volumes, maybe in the box under his cot. Nonetheless, it was all a little too much: the third false address in this long day. He and Tanya had gone to Eremenko Street, to the professor’s apartment, in a crazily beat-up taxi. That day she hadn’t let on that she knew the place. That day she’d had that ridiculous bra, two tussocks of ratty lace on tight straps. That day she hadn’t been able to find the switch in the bathroom and for a long time ran her hand over the wall, which looked like a white mosquito in the semi-gloom, until it finally flicked on. Evidently, all this had to be put down to the caprice of the deceased professor. She may have had no idea whose apartment she was in unless she recognized the old shirt hanging on the back of the chair or some of the books.

  Tamara was waiting, shining with a quiet, moist light, her forehead gathered into small velvety wrinkles.

  “Thank you very much.” Krylov’s sentiment was heartfelt. He was delighted that the spasms of laughter in his clenched voice resembled suppressed tears. “I’m very touched, really. I appreciate it greatly.”

  “That’s just fine. You see, I carried out your request, albeit with some delay.” Tamara smiled with restraint, and her eyes loomed and tossed like night fires on a dark autumn river. “So now, really, you should go. I’m tired. Tomorrow—or rather, today—I have a very hard day.”

  They rose from the sofa simultaneously, like people who had sat briefly before a long journey, as custom would have them, and were now ready, tickets in their pockets, to set out. Here now was the parting Krylov had thought about for so long and had always hoped to see. It had truly come. Right now he loved Tamara as much as he had in the days just after their wedding, but he knew this would soon pass.

  Then Krylov laid out before Tamara a set of steel keys, pulled out the drawer of the empty end table, and showed her the spare sets pushed into the corner. He didn’t leave himself a single one. He took out sheets that smelled of flowery soap and had been crammed into the cupboard. His refuge’s space changed markedly. Evidently a dehermetization had occurred, and outside air flowed through the window cracks in layers, like jam from a pie. What was left of the lacy tulle rustled, and the cornice mounts creaked. For the last time, Krylov cast a sentimental eye over his former holdings—with the distinct feeling he was seeing all this for the last time. The old lady’s century plant was vigorous and green. The faceted glass ornaments on the chandelier shook, casting blurry stars on the ceiling. Tamara, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, saw Krylov out as far as the hall. There he quickly kissed her palm, where slightly bitter moisture gleamed like golden sand along her strong life lines promising a long life and happy marriage.

  Dashing out onto dim Kungurskaya, which sent its runny electricity rolling downhill, Krylov looked around and saw that his former window, which he had always kept only partly drawn, was now firmly curtained. He thought about Tamara there, inside: if God hadn’t been in his refuge before, that meant no one was looking out for her. Next to the information kiosks and phone booths, where so recently Tanya had stood in her flat, worn sandals, two large poplar leaves, which looked like wet soles, trembled at the gusts of moist wind, as if hesitating to take a step. In the phone booth Krylov stuck the card into a tight crack, dialed Farid, and briefly laid out for him the latest circumstances and received instructions to get over there right away.

  Part Nine

  1

  GOODNESS WAS FARID’S OLD SECRET, WHICH HE TRIED TO HIDE, literally running away from the scene of the crime and not showing his face for a while. But now that Krylov had moved in with him, he had nowhere to hide his goodness, nowhere to put it out of sight. Since Krylov came without extra clothes, Farid immediately gave him his brand-new leather jeans and good sweater. Farid’s refrigerator, which was always almost empty, was now well stocked with food. Farid, a kitchen towel tied at his hip over his crumpled checked boxers, threw together dinners and suppers, working the burners of skillets and kettles like a jazz drummer working his drum kit. Krylov was moved into the narrow back room with every possible convenience. An ancient television that its owner, he assured him, almost never watched, was moved there. When the rains kept up, a lined raincoat bought on sale appeared as well as sturdy army boots on thick tractor-tread soles. Those soles remained virgin for a while, though, because Farid thought it was too dangerous for Krylov to be walking the streets.

  The night Krylov showed up at Farid’s place, shivering from an attack of nerves, they sat up until morning again. They recalled Kolyan and the professor, without clinking glasses, each staring into his own faceted drinking glass. The story about the death of the spy, who had turned out to be Leonidich’s killer, was paid great attention; the flight from the body, which was probably still lying there damp in the bushes, was, contrary to expectation, deemed the correct action.

  “No one would have taken the time to get to the bottom of this with you. There’s a big soap opera being created about your Tamara. You’d suit them just fine, and that would be that,” Farid told him, crumbling the pillow-soft, tasteless round loaf on his plate.

  They recalled Leonidich and Viktor Matveyevich Zavalikhin, who may now have met somewhere in the heavenly sphere and discussed all this. Farid poured Riph Special into their glasses with such amazing accuracy that the cloudy glasses seemed like communicating vessels; the levels of liquid in them evened out of their own accord. The vodka, much more decent than what had been drunk in his refuge, didn’t claim Krylov at all, it just glassed over his consciousness, which made it feel as though he and Farid were also communicating through some little pipe, and when Farid stood up to add something to eat to the table, Krylov felt palpably heavier on his wobbly stool.

  Farid asked him to repeat every detail of his conversation with Tamara, who had suddenly arisen out of the night. Naturally, Krylov concealed a few things. Farid listened, drinking and scratching his lynx nails over the jagged oilcloth.

  “Valuable information,” he summed up when Krylov fell despondently silent. “This isn’t the address or phone of Mrs. Ekaterina Anfilogova, who I never heard of before. Ten kilometers east of Balakayevsk logging! That is a royal present from your Tamara!”

  “Not a bad present,” Krylov muttered.

  “Don’t forget, I’m the only professional geologist in the whole rock-hound community,” Farid spoke didactically, nodding to himself. His head resembled nothing so much as a dried-out head of garlic and was covered with dry gray hair. “Just look. The cyanide catastrophe occurred in the Neivinsk District, not far from the village of Kedrovoye, in about 1999. Hydrogeology isn’t my exact specialty, of course. But I can assume that this district has a confined aquifer defined by the syneclines there, that is, by the downwarping of the rock. The cyanide infiltrated the groundwater. For eighteen years it’s been moving through the water-bearing stratum to where the aquifer discharge coincides with the dolomite outcrops. This could be an interface between aquiferous and impermeable strata stretching a thousand kilometers. But your Tamara gave us our hint of the second point. Are you following me?”

  “No,” Krylov answered stupidly, looking into Farid’s squinting eyes, which burned with nonidentical sparks.

  “Listen up one more time,” Farid spoke patiently. “Everyone knows the infiltration spot, they even showed maps on television. Lots of people already know about Kolyan and Petrovich dying. Every last one of our people
knows, naturally, and the information about where the bodies were found is spreading. But only the two of us have the information about the reason the expedition perished. Therein lies our advantage, even if it is only temporary.”

  “What are you planning to do?” asked Krylov with a sudden chill in the pit of his stomach.

  “Find the corundum deposit,” Farid answered angrily.

  The next evening he dragged in a roll of Whatman paper interleafed with something slippery. He dropped the roll, which was as heavy as a rug, in the hall with a deafening crash. Out of his backpack he took folders made of antediluvian cardboard with yellowed labels. Right after dinner, he dumped the dishes in the sink and spread the papers, which had been mended along the folds and edges with wrinkly plastic, on the table. These were strange maps consisting primarily of concentric lines, fragile in spots; the plastic made them look like mica. Concentrating, Farid brought up the same images on his computer screen, which labored to boot up—but even to the dilettante’s eye it didn’t all match. The holographic editor, which the underpowered machine didn’t really support, kept locking up. Muttering through his teeth, Farid tried to transfer certain clarifications from the pages into the files, which made the picture on the screen break up into black and white squares. After making a mess of the petrified forty-year-old knots, he pulled out of the folders yellow stacks of frayed documents and rusty staples, and transparent roaches that looked like flat flowers dried for an herbarium came spilling out. Spreading out over the chairs and the balding rug, this documentation consisted of old typed pages and a few manuscript scraps that had faded not from light but time and looked like they’d been written in brown blood. Often they came across hand-drawn diagrams of deposit positions and photographs attached to the documents. The photographs barely showed the quarries and mugfaced trucks with small drilling rigs that looked like stepladders.