“The rain, the truck, they made it hard to see, but I saw the farmhand bury two bodies, and the same man drove off with the couple.”
“It has to be a different Parsky family.”
“We can easily find out. In the morning, we’ll ask.”
Galina stared into space and mumbled, “Viktor never said anything to me, but then he hasn’t written in ages.”
“As usual, he’s plotting.”
“Vladimir Lukashenko?”
“Yes.”
But Galina’s mind was not on Commissar Lukashenko. It was on Sasha. She never slept a wink that night in anticipation of morning and the opportunity to confront Citizen Parsky. Petr had slept on the couch. Before breakfast, while Galina was asking Sasha questions, he played with Alya. His turn would come later.
No longer able to keep his secret, certainly not while staring into the large puzzled, tearing eyes of Galina, Sasha confessed—and lied—at the same time. “Yes, the murders occurred at my parents’ farm. But I was away at school. So shocked was I by the crime that I volunteered to call on you and Viktor Harkov.”
“Occurred at your parents’ farm?” she dumbly repeated. “Then you must know who the murderer is.”
“All I know is that after I returned to school, my parents were planning to hire one of the free laborers roaming the road to help with the farmwork. A day later the police were questioning me. Me! As if I knew anything. I would have gladly assisted them, but I was as shocked as they . . . as shattered as you.”
“But surely your parents have friends and relatives in other parts of the country. Right?”
“Yes, and I made inquiries, but to no avail.”
“When you first came to see me, you said nothing. Why?”
“I thought it would only increase your suffering.”
“Even though you knew I was desperate for information.”
“And once you learned where the crime had occurred, and that my parents owned the farm, what then? That information leads nowhere.”
Incredulous that this man with whom she’d been sleeping was the son of accomplices to a crime in which two men were killed, one of whom could easily have been her husband, she lashed out sarcastically, “Do your parents always hire killers to work their land? They probably abetted the murderer.”
He bowed his head, occasioning a muteness from Galina worse than her scalding words. Squeezing his eyes closed with such force that his nose wrinkled and his teeth clenched, he wanted to scream at the tangled web he had woven. Where would it end? To prevent discovery of his perfidy, he was leaving his parents unprotected, not only from the law, but also from the calumny of the victims’ relatives. His parents, models of goodness, did not deserve to be thought of as criminals. That he had put them in that position, and that he now found himself suspected by a person he loved of covering up a heinous crime . . . of keeping from her information that she believed could lead to the apprehension of the murderer . . . introduced him to a thousand torments.
Obviously hurt, she challenged him with a question. “How could you have told Viktor and not me?”
“I told him nothing.”
“You must have said something . . . maybe while playing chess, because he knew about you and passed the information to Petr. That’s how Petr found out.”
To persuade her, Sasha would have agreed to trial by ordeal—fire or water or both—but Galina remained convinced that Viktor could have learned about the Parskys and Sasha from only one person, and that person was sitting in front of her at the kitchen table. When he reached across the table, intending to touch her consolingly, she withdrew her hand. Defensively, he allowed that if he were Viktor’s source, she could draw a knife across his throat; and he begged her to prove his innocence by contacting Viktor.
“He goes through moody periods. I suspect he’s in one now.”
Hoping to turn her attention from him to Viktor, he said, “Frankly, Galina, he must be privy to confidential police information, and that worries me. We know that conspiracies in this country are rife. Tell me about this obsession of his with Commissar Lukashenko.”
She rose, looked down at him distrustfully, and replied, “You’ll have to ask Petr.” Then she stiffly strode out of the room, returning to her own quarters.
Through the kitchen window, Sasha could see Petr leading the pony with Alya atop the animal she called Scout. She had taken the reins to show him how well she could ride, turning, stopping, and backing up the horse. With each move, Petr clapped and ostentatiously tipped his hat to celebrate her equestrian achievements. She glowed. When she finally dismounted and came from the stable, they walked hand in hand into the house. Alya clearly adored him. Sasha exited the kitchen and returned to his own room, guessing correctly that Petr would make his daughter a cup of hot chocolate. He could hear Petr telling Alya a story, “The Tale of Stalin’s Barber.”
“As you can imagine,” Petr said, “anyone entrusted with the job of giving the Vozhd a haircut would have to be expert with a razor and scissors, as well as with matches. Why matches? Because our Great Leader likes having Turkish haircuts.”
Petr then went on to explain that a Turkish haircut is one in which the barber singes the auricle hairs, the unsightly black growth on the inside and outside of men’s ears. A barber trained in this manner applies alcohol to the site, lights the liquid, and immediately fans out the flames with a towel—without burning the skin. Koba’s barber, Georgian, like Koba, had learned his barbering in Istanbul, the former Constantinople, where the practice began.
“Now, as you can well imagine,” Petr continued, “Stalin’s barber had to have a steady hand, because one slip and he would be in big trouble. Also, the barber had to be trustworthy because anything our Great Leader said to him could not be repeated. What passes between a barber and his client is strictly confidential. Do you know that word, ‘confidential’?”
“No.”
“It means to keep a secret. Well, one day, when the barber was trimming Comrade Stalin’s famous mustache, he found a mouse in it, a baby mouse no bigger than your fingernail. This discovery created a problem. Do you know why?”
“Because Stalin hated mice.”
“You’re close. Yes, he hated mice, but if the barber had said, ‘Comrade Stalin, you have a mouse nesting in your mustache,’ that would have suggested our leader never washed his face. Now no one wants to be thought of as dirty or unclean, especially not our leader. So what was the barber to do?”
“Secretly take away the mouse.”
“And if Stalin found out?”
“He’d be glad the barber took it away.”
“But then, every time he looked at the barber, Stalin would be saying to himself: That man found a mouse in my mustache and thinks I never wash my face, and what if he tells others about the mouse?”
“Then he should get a new barber.”
“But the old one still knows the secret of Stalin’s mustache. So would you advise Stalin to send his barber to another part of the country or maybe shoot him?”
“No, just ask the barber not to tell the secret to anyone.”
“But even if the barber agrees to say nothing—ever—how can you be sure you can trust him?”
Alya’s unresponsiveness indicated that Petr’s question had stumped her. He had, in fact, touched upon a problem that pervaded the country. Whom could you trust?
“I have an idea,” announced Alya triumphantly, “just leave the mouse where it is and don’t tell Stalin.”
“The barber still knows.”
“Yes, but Stalin doesn’t, and if our leader should find out, the barber can always say . . .”
“What? The moment he says anything, Stalin will have him dangling on the end of a hook.”
“I give up,” said Alya. “What’s the right answer?”
“There is none. If the man is wise, and some men
are not, he will tell Stalin nothing and keep the secret to himself. But even then the man isn’t safe, because if Stalin discovers the mouse and asks the barber why he never told him about it nesting in his mustache, the man must admit either to ignoring the creature out of fear or to being a very bad barber. Which would you choose?”
“Fear.”
“That’s what most people choose.”
“Then am I right?” she asked eagerly.
“You are certainly no more wrong than most of Russia.”
8
Galina had asked Petr to dinner. A walk afterward provided the occasion for Petr to question Sasha. Galina remained at the farmhouse reading Alya a story. As the men crunched through the fallen leaves, recently golden and orange and red, Petr breathed deeply and commented that the countryside held far more riches for him than did the cities he’d seen in the last year. “Just look at that moon. Spectacular! Mind you,” he said, “I never made it to Moscow, and everyone seems to want to go there.”
“It’s a lively city but not a beautiful one. Leningrad is the jewel. The Hermitage, the architecture, the canals. Dostoevski’s city. It inspired him.”
“The largest one I saw was Kiev.”
“Never been.”
“Not very interesting. Some old houses with charm. Wide boulevards. A few hills. The Ukrainian nationalists there are busy stirring up trouble. If I were Polish, Jewish, or Lithuanian, I’d get the hell out. That goes for the Romish, too.”
“Stalin won’t let Ukraine become independent.”
“Agreed, but he won’t lift a finger to stop the pogroms. They serve his purpose. In comparison to the nationalists, he looks good.”
They walked silently for some time, each ostensibly lost in his thoughts. Petr stopped to collect some desiccated horse chestnuts. “In their day,” he observed sardonically, “they were shiny and hard. Now look at them. I feel the same way. Shriveled. So many young people in Russia feel used up, even though they have sixty and seventy years in front of them. I know that’s how Viktor feels. He says he wants to do at least one thing for which he’s remembered.”
“Namely?”
“Before we talk about Viktor, I’d like to talk about you, if you don’t mind.”
Sasha broke off a branch for a walking stick, which he trimmed with his penknife. “Fire away!”
“Have you ever heard the name Martyn Lipnoski?”
Here was the first test. Should Sasha plead ignorance or admit to knowing the name? If he admitted to knowing it, the next question was naturally “how”?
“I can’t say that I have.”
“He’s one of the two soldiers murdered on your parents’ farm. He was a comrade.”
Petr threw a horse chestnut, hitting a distant tree silvered by moonlight.
“Did you aim for it?”
“Yes,” replied Petr.
“Then I’d better not enter into a shooting match with you,” remarked Sasha casually, trying to suggest unconcern, all the while on the verge of exploding.
“Martyn’s wife had left him for being a dissolute whoremaster. He was raising his six-year-old son, Konstantin. Whatever Martyn’s vices, he loved his boy.”
“Where is the son now?”
“With his grandmother. The wife disappeared.”
“I hear similar stories wherever I go.” Petr looked at him strangely. “I don’t mean about fathers being murdered, I mean parents leaving their children behind to be raised by grandparents.”
Petr skied all his remaining horse chestnuts and watched them fall. “With all the families sent into exile, there are millions of children parentless. You suppose Stalin ever worries about them?”
“Isn’t that why the Bolsheviks adopt children—to show that they care for the homeless and orphaned?”
Sullenly, Petr replied, “Those kids would be a lot better off if they could live with their real parents.”
“Is that how you and Galina came to adopt Alya?”
For a moment, Petr walked without answering. “How? Yes. Why? No. We knew the orphanage directoress, and once we saw the child . . .”
Given that untold orphaned children and their adoptive families were kept in the dark, Sasha haltingly asked, “Who were her parents?”
Petr’s surprising answer rendered Sasha mute. “One of Stalin’s barbers, he has several. A man from Tashkent, Yefim Boujinski. He and his wife, Maja, were sent first to Ryazan and then to a work camp. I have no idea of the charge, but given the problem with Muslims and other nationalities, I would guess he was exiled on religious grounds. The couple left behind a daughter, Alya, five, who was put in an orphanage. The director, Bella Platonova, knew Galina. We saw Alya, fell in love with her, and she with us. That’s how it happened.”
Sasha could feel the tears running down his cheek, and caught their glint in the cold light. He tried turning his head to keep Petr from seeing them. But why was he weeping? It was a question he would have found hard to answer. He knew Alya was adopted and simply assumed that her parents had fallen afoul of the government and been deported; wasn’t that the fate of all enemies of the people? And yet Alya was cheerful and affectionate, playful and intelligent. Was it those qualities that had moved him to tears, her apparent triumph over madness? He fought for an answer, but none came. Petr filled the void, feeling at one time the same way.
“She is extraordinary, though at times lonely.”
“I saw you with her when she was riding Scout. She loves you very much. If you’re on the run, you’ll have to leave her.”
An uncomfortable pause halted the conversation.
“It’ll be awful . . . as bad as you losing your parents. Worse, probably. You’re an adult. They disappeared, right?”
At last they had come to the sensitive subject, the one that both men wished to dissect. Petr wanted to discover whom the Parsky’s had hired as a farmhand, and trace Sasha’s journey from the farm back to school. When had he left the house (the day, the hour), how did he travel to the station, which itinerant farmers did he pass on the road, who told him about the murders, why had he not returned to the farm to look for clues to where his parents had fled?
Sasha had an equal number of questions. How did Viktor learn about the deaths, who told him and why, and under what conditions? What did the police hope to gain? Why did Viktor tell Petr that Sasha might be the key to the crime? Was Viktor resentful that Galina had taken a position in Balyk and now shared a house with Sasha?
They began their discussion by agreeing that Viktor, a notorious malcontent, had numerous axes to grind. Sasha recounted his story yet again about leaving at five in the morning the day after Easter, boarding a ten o’clock train (he had carefully checked the rail schedule), and learning about the murders from the police who had come to his room at school. Sasha added only that he had met numerous workers on the road to the railroad, but none struck him as criminally insane. Hungry and in need of work, yes, but bloodthirsty, no. His failure to return to the farm could easily be explained. One, the state had confiscated it. Two, he had examinations to prepare for and a thesis to defend. Three, the site of his childhood house and the gruesome murders was too painful to bear. Surely, Petr understood his feelings.
As a matter of fact, Petr’s expression was inscrutable. He listened without interrupting and seemed to accept Sasha’s story uncritically, except for one thing.
“You have a driver’s license. Most farmhands do not. And a police truck is more difficult to drive than a car. The murderer couldn’t have been just any prole. Did you or the police give any thought to this fact? Also, no farm tools belonging to the itinerant were found, and none were missing.”
Best, thought Sasha, to acknowledge Petr’s perspicacity. “Damn clever of you, Petr. Although (the famous Soviet “Although”) you are absolutely right about who’s licensed to drive and who isn’t, keep in mi
nd that the collectives have been training the farmers to drive tractors and trucks. If the killer ran from a collective, he could have learned there. You are also wise to mention the tools. But it would be my guess that the killer took them with him, probably throwing his canvas satchel in the back. I’ve seen hundreds of farmers do the same.”
Petr collected more chestnuts, but this time he pocketed them, murmuring they could spice his soup. For quite a while, they walked without talking. Sasha presumed that Petr was mulling over what he had said, at least he hoped so, since he wanted to pursue his own questions about Viktor.
At last, Petr remarked with a sigh, “I suppose you’re right. Here I thought I was onto something, but what you say makes perfect sense. Now I’m no further along than before.”
A relieved Sasha took Petr by the arm, and they walked on as comrades, into the night with the temperature falling. The trail was not unfamiliar to Sasha, but he knew that wild animals cavorted in these woods. He wondered, without asking, whether Petr was armed. A second later, he hoped not, lest Petr take it into his head that Sasha and Galina were lovers, and decide to settle matters. Releasing Petr’s arm, he said:
“When the police questioned me about the crime, they made it clear I was not to say anything to anyone. By keeping the details secret, they hoped to trick the killer into revealing himself. So why would they tell Viktor?”
A rustling in the woods. They paused. Was it a boar or a deer or just a rabbit?
“Does that stick of yours have a point?” asked Petr. “If not, maybe you ought to sharpen it.”
They waited. Nothing. Then they turned and headed home, passing a deserted hunter’s shed that lovers used for trysts.
Petr said simply, “Perhaps they suspect Viktor. He and his brother were not always on the best of terms. Alexander didn’t feel toward Lukashenko the way Viktor does. I think it likely the police were talking to Viktor about both men, Alexander and Lukashenko.”
“Because of his diatribes against the commissar?”
“And his threats.”
Sasha silently prayed that the police would link the two men. Perhaps then he could finally sleep the night through without waking up in a sweat. But was he prepared to see an innocent man hanged for his crimes? Whether he was or not, he now believed that Viktor was trying to save his own neck by casting doubt on Sasha, a clever ploy, particularly if Viktor fancied Galina and regarded Sasha as a rival. In addition, Viktor could divert attention from his hostility to Lukashenko by implicating Sasha.
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