Black Knight in Red Square ir-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Comrade Procurator.” Rostnikov’s voice came through her reverie, and she turned to him.

  “Porfiry Petrovich,” she said, trying to sound gruff.

  He looked, as always, solid, with something dancing behind his eyes. Today, however, the light dancing back there was particularly bright. Not many would have noticed, but she had made it her business to read the faces and minds of those who worked with her.

  “I have taken the liberty of examining the files on pending cases,” he said, “and I have taken care of your cat.”

  She nodded in acknowledgment, and Rostnikov changed the subject.

  “You are better,” he said.

  “It appears that I will survive,” she said. The woman across the aisle laughed. Both Rostnikov and Timofeyeva looked at her, but she seemed to be responding to voices in her own mind. The other beds were empty. Their occupants were having X-rays…or operations; Anna couldn’t remember which.

  The pause now was awkward. She was not given to small talk, and her helplessness was an embarrassment for both of them.

  “How is the investigation progressing?” she asked.

  Rostnikov shrugged and shifted his briefcase from his right hand to his left.

  “It progresses,” he said, reluctant to go into details.

  “Good,” she said.

  The pause this time was even more awkward.

  “Can I bring you anything?” he said.

  “I will be home in a few days and back to work soon.”

  Rostnikov reached into his briefcase, pulled out a book, and handed it to her.

  “Something I had at home,” he said.

  It was a book on the history and collections of museums in Moscow. He had thought for some time about what kind of book she might like and had settled on this, though he had been tempted to bring her a novel. He was sure that Anna Timofeyeva had not read a novel for several decades.

  “I will study it,” she said, putting it next to her. “What are you planning, Rostnikov?”

  “Me, planning?” he said, looking around the room. “Nothing.”

  “Be careful,” she said, closing her eyes. “Whatever it is, be careful.”

  “I will be as careful as I can,” he said, but he was thinking that there were times when one must take a chance.

  When he looked down at her, she was snoring gently.

  The woman across the way looked at Rostnikov as he stepped away from the bed. Her eyes met his, and she too seemed to know his innermost secrets. She smiled. He hid a shudder and left as quickly as he could.

  TEN

  “I don’t like movies,” said Lydia Tkach as she sat down in the Zaryadye cinema hall in the Hotel Rossyia. Most of the theater’s three thousand seats were full, and since Lydia Tkach was almost deaf and had spoken very loudly, many of those present were aware of her sentiments. Sasha gave an apologetic look to the well-dressed man sitting next to his mother and shrugged at Maya, who smiled sympathetically, having grown used to her mother-in-law.

  Lydia was a proud woman of sixty-five. During the day, she worked in the Ministry of Information Building, filing papers and telling anyone who would listen that her son was a high-ranking government official. Lydia was not a popular woman in the Ministry of Information Building. People avoided her because she drew attention to herself with her loud conversation. This tended to make her more lonely and crotchety, which in turn made her turn on her captive audience at home, her son and daughter-in-law.

  Sasha had more than once urged her to get a hearing aid, but Lydia had stoutly refused, insisting that there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Nor, she insisted, was there anything wrong with her common sense, which was why she disliked most movies.

  “Mother,” Sasha said in a normal voice, which he had little hope his mother would hear, “please.”

  He handed her the headphones attached to her seat and urged her to try them. Maya put hers on and played with the switch. The translation would be given in six languages on six separate channels. Nothing came through on the headset, so Maya put it down.

  “I understand this movie has no words,” Maya said to her mother-in-law, mouthing each word carefully. Lydia nodded, trying to get comfortable in her seat and staring down a woman in front of her who turned to indicate that she would allow none of this chatter to continue after the film began.

  Sasha was pleased that everything had worked out so well. Willery sat in the front of the theater, wearing a jacket and tie, looking about nervously. In spite of the jacket and tie, he still wore faded jeans. Tkach knew that Kirslov was at the door of the theater to pick up Willery after the performance. The program notes Tkach had been given made the film sound suitable for his mother. It was, he discovered, silent. There was no need for her to hear anything. To the Left was also dedicated to the great silent film director Eisenstein so it might tell a story his mother would like. In addition, it was made in America, so they could see a glimpse of that elusive country.

  “It’s about America,” Maya told her mother-in-law, leaning close to the woman’s ear. Sasha and Maya had flanked Lydia for their own protection as well as hers.

  “I don’t like movies,” Lydia answered emphatically.

  With this second assurance, a small titter of laughter erupted from some young people who looked like students sitting to the far right. Sasha urged the second hand of his watch to move more quickly. He longed for darkness. Then Willery, responding to Lydia’s second declaration, looked in her direction, spotted Tkach, and gave a sickly smile.

  “It will start in a minute,” Sasha said, sinking deeply into his seat and pointing to his watch. His mother looked down at the watch and pursed her lips.

  “I hope it’s funny,” she said. “If it’s funny, it will be all right. I’ve had enough tragedy.”

  Then mercifully the lights began to go down.

  “Isn’t it in color?” said Lydia as the film began. Shushing sounds came from nearby, but Lydia was right, the film was in black and white, and Sasha was disappointed.

  The audience soon discovered that To the Left was not silent. In fact, as the titles appeared in white against black, faint animal noises and the chattering of birds emerged from the speakers.

  Then the film began in earnest, and Tkach could see vertical bars on the screen. A prison, he thought, a political prison, but what was that moving black hulk in the corner of the cell? Before he could make it out, the camera began to move, at first to the left, just far enough to put the black hulk off the screen. The chattering sound continued, and as the camera began to move faster, the sound grew louder.

  The audience sat in rapt attention for almost ten minutes. Experimental beginning, Sasha thought. And then, in the twelfth minute, he began to lose faith. Luckily, Lydia had remained quiet. Sasha and Maya both glanced at her fearfully from time to time, but her eyes remained riveted to the screen.

  A quarter of an hour into the film Lydia said in her loud voice, “Monkey. That’s a monkey in the corner.”

  People called out for her to be quiet, but one man said, “She’s right. It is monkeys.”

  The audience fell silent once more, and the camera increased its spin to the left. Those who were fleet of eye could see the lumbering figure move forward.

  “A gorilla,” said Lydia Tkach with satisfaction, for while her hearing was failing, her eyesight rivaled that of an Olympic marksman.

  “Gorilla…gorilla,” came the echo of agreeing voices in the theater.

  Forty minutes into the film, however, people were extremely restless.

  “What is this?” came a voice from back in the theater.

  “A gorilla,” said Lydia Tkach smugly.

  The gorilla cries on the sound track had risen in volume, and one hour into the film, the majority of the audience was in open revolt.

  “Is this a joke?” someone shouted.

  “Shut up,” came a young woman’s voice.

  In front of the theater, Willery stood looking back at his
tormentors and defenders, a frail dark outline. Tkach could make out his flickering form. Very few in the audience knew who he was. If he keeps quiet, Tkach thought, he may escape without bodily injury.

  People began to leave, the better-dressed patrons first. With fifteen minutes of film to go, the screen was simply a blur as the camera spun around and the shrill blast of gorilla cries filled the theater.

  Sasha glanced at his mother, who was watching the screen with a smile on her face.

  “Shall we leave?” Maya asked, looking back toward the sound of what appeared to be a fight in the rear.

  Lydia gestured for her daughter-in-law to sit still.

  By the time the film ended and the lights came on, there were less than two hundred people left in the theater. Four young men and a woman stood up and applauded furiously, shouting “Bravo!” and looking defiantly at those who did not join them. Willery glanced back at his supporters with a thin smile.

  Tkach had a headache. The sound and the spinning image had affected him like a drug. His first impulse was to apologize to his wife and mother, but Maya simply agreed with him and Lydia actually looked elated.

  “Not as bad as I thought,” she said, leading the way up the aisle, ignoring the clusters of still arguing moviegoers.

  Tkach didn’t bother to look back at Willery, and that was unfortunate for at that moment Willery was looking around the nearly empty theater, lifting his dark glasses and scanning the walls and seats. Tkach, if he had seen him, would have wondered what he was looking for, and almost certainly he would have concluded that Willery was looking for something connected with the map of festival theaters Karpo had given to Rostnikov. Tkach might even have concluded that Willery was looking for a hidden bomb, which is exactly what the filmmaker was doing.

  Feeling misunderstood, angry, and hostile, James Willery was thinking that it might not be such a bad idea to blow up this theater while some of the people who had just ridiculed his film were still in it. James Willery had a marvelous imagination, and he could quite clearly imagine the writhing bodies, the screams, the burned survivors fleeing blindly.

  The cluster of students remained after everyone else had gone. The ushers came in and told them to clear out because the next feature would be starting soon. Willery considered beating a hasty retreat behind the screen, but the students had already begun moving toward him down the aisle.

  It would do his ego some good, Willery thought, to have a few drinks with some people who would reassure him about his creation. After all, this Russian audience was not as sophisticated as those in London, Paris, New York, or San Francisco. Yes, a few drinks with these students would help him forget the audience. And the young woman in the group did not look bad at all. Maybe she would even help him forget for a while the bomb that was hidden somewhere in this theater and that he would detonate the following night.

  The dark-eyed woman smiled at the young man next to her and nodded in appreciation at his assessment of the film he had seen a few hours ago. She had pleaded a headache, and now she was feigning interest in his infantile explanation of film, audience, and filmmaker.

  He had forgotten that it was she who had urged him to see To the Left and arranged for him to get the tickets. In fact, she’d done it so skillfully that he’d thought it was his idea. She reached over in the bed and put her hand on his pale leg. She wondered how he would react if she squeezed him like a vise until he begged for release. Instead, she pretended that what he said was not only interesting but profound.

  “And you had a drink with him?” she encouraged.

  “He is brilliant,” said the young man, looking at her with drunken dancing eyes. “His grasp of the need for destruction of structure is so pure, so clear. No wonder he is rejected and scorned.”

  “And,” she said, letting her hand move away when she realized he was too drunk to respond, “he seemed in a good mood even after what happened?”

  “Distracted, perhaps, but brave. He was laughing,” said the young man with admiration. “They all sat there feeling so superior, neo-capitalists every one, and they couldn’t face a true act of artistic revolution. He laughed at them. He has an inner strength, that man.”

  He will need it, she thought as the young man’s eyes closed and he fell asleep repeating “that man.”

  She got up, then turned off the light, and climbed back into the narrow bed. She pushed the young man over, and he grunted petulantly.

  The links were weak, perhaps, she thought. One or both might even break, but the job would be done. Of that she was quite sure.

  She was asleep, as always, within minutes, a light sleep always on the edge of cautious consciousness. She had learned to sleep this way from the one who had taught her, who was now dead. She told herself that it was the sleep of the professional. She did not acknowledge that it was also the sleep of one who fears dreams.

  From time to time, in spite of her training, she did fall into deep sleep for a few minutes, and the dream did come, the dream of circles within circles that turned to a spiral of wire on which she was skewered. She twisted downward on that spiral toward the ever narrowing center hidden in darkness, below which she would fall off the wire and plummet into the void.

  She ground her teeth furiously, awakening herself. She sat up breathing deeply; it seemed she had a weight on her chest. The void surrounded her. She willed it away.

  Beside her, she heard him snoring. It was reassuring for an instant, and then she hated having felt any reassurance in his presence. She got out of bed and went to the window, wishing it were Sunday.

  Rostnikov’s mouth was inches from Sarah’s ear as they lay in darkness well after midnight.

  “It will be,” he said so softly that even the most sensitive microphone could not pick it up.

  She turned to look at his stubbly, dark face with its knowing smile. She smiled back. He had managed to carry them this far, she thought; perhaps he could do it. There was much about it she didn’t like, but if he could do it, it would be beyond what she had ever really expected.

  If he failed, however, she knew quite well that neither of them would see another Moscow winter.

  Osip Stock lived near Druzhbin, not far from the Moscow Ring Road, which encircles the city, marking its perimeter beyond which it is exceedingly difficult to travel without private transportation. Osip Stock had no private transportation.

  Osip was almost thirty years old and looked rather like a tubercular bird. In spite of his dry appearance, with his thin chest and a hacking cough from too much smoking, Osip was a passionate man. In his free time he would take to the roads near his home, winter or summer, and in his precious running shoes, one of his few extravagances, take flight, losing himself in distance, not knowing how far he ran, returning sometimes hours later. Osip was well aware that his primary reason for running was to escape from the three-room apartment he shared with his parents, his aunt Sophie, and his cousin Svetlana, a grotesque creature.

  But Osip had a plan to end this lifestyle, which was the reason he arose so early this day. He was up by seven in the evening. He slept alone in the bed during the day. Usually when he arose, his parents were ready for sleep, and would take over the bed, occasionally changing the sheet. Aunt Sophie and Svetlana slept in the large room, which was not so large, in which they shared meals, conversation, battles, and comforts.

  “You are up so early,” said his mother. Cousin Svetlana made her familiar gurgling sound and agreed that he was indeed up early. Osip grinned, showing his silver teeth, and searched for his cigarettes. He couldn’t immediately find them and nearly panicked. But his mother, to head off his grumbling, joined the search and found half a packet.

  Lighting up, Osip leaned back in his chair at the wooden table, adjusted the buttons on his uniform, and drank some coffee to wash down the chunk of bread that was his meal. There was more food, but Osip was not much of an eater.

  “Why are you looking so happy?” asked his mother, a red-cheeked little woman.
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  “Why?” he answered, grinning more broadly. “Because it is a fine evening. I have a good job and a secret.”

  “A secret?” asked his mother, looking at Aunt Sophie and Cousin Svetlana for an explanation. They had none. Svetlana made her gurgling sound again.

  “Nothing important,” said Osip, standing up and adjusting his jacket. “We must have some privacy if only on the open road and in our own heads.”

  “It would be better if when you talked you made sense,” his mother said, again looking at Sophie. This time Sophie nodded in agreement. Svetlana seemed to be dozing.

  Osip looked at all of them with great tolerance. Soon he would be rid of them. Soon he would be a man of means, a respected man with his own apartment, far from this. Privacy. Oh, how he longed for it.

  His mother seemed about to pursue the subject of his secrecy, but he said, “I’m off,” and grabbing the small sack that contained his midnight meal, he hurried out the door. In the dark corridor, his father approached, moving slowly and wearily, returning from his job on a road repair crew.

  Father and son grunted at each other as they passed, and Osip hurried out into the light. He wanted to run or at least jog to the metro station, but the sweat would ruin his uniform. So he walked slowly, planning. There weren’t many people going to the heart of town at that hour, so there were plenty of seats when he got to the metro.

  It was almost nine when he got off at the Novokuznekskaya metro station and headed for number 10 Lavrushinsky Pereulok, a quiet side street across the Moskva River not far from the Kremlin. When he arrived, he paused in front of the low metal fence with the fancy repeated design of circles and pointed stars and stared at the building beyond. Yes, it was something from an old fairy tale, this gingerbread building, complete with its second-story frieze of Saint George slaying the dragon. He looked up at Saint George and smiled.