“Mashenka. What happened? What is it, sweetheart?”
“Katya’s dead,” Masha whispered, her throat clenching tight to keep back the tears.
“Oh my God. How can that be?” Masha’s elegant mother was wringing her hands like a country babushka. She sank down heavily onto the sofa. “When?”
“Yesterday,” said Masha softly. “It’s my fault.”
“What do you mean, sweetheart? Your fault?”
“Mama!” said Masha, staring at her with pain in her eyes. “Katya asked to borrow the car for the day. She came by and took the keys—then she crashed into a wall. Sorry, Mama, your car—”
Natasha waved that piece of news away and turned toward the window.
Katya. She seemed to be standing right there with them. Little Katya, enchanted by Masha’s toys and picture books. Teenage Katya, awkwardly trying to fit in with Masha’s bookish friends. Katya the struggling college student, wearing too much makeup and doing funny impressions of her neighbors.
Natasha sat down on the floor and wept silently, wiping away her tears. Masha went over and laid her head in her mother’s lap. Katya had been her oldest friend, and not even a friend so much as family, a sister. Funny, uncomplicated, and unlike anyone else. Plus, Katya had known her father. Katya had known the Masha from before Papa had been murdered. That was a completely different Masha, a girl who read Jane Eyre under the covers at night. Masha laughed more with Katya than she ever had with anyone else, because it was only with Katya—and sometimes Kenty—that she could forget about her constant hunt for the mysterious entity that had stolen away her father, her childhood, that whole other life.
“The funeral’s on Friday,” she croaked.
“Poor Rita,” Natasha said sadly. “Poor Rita.”
It rained the day of the funeral. Masha felt a strange lightness throughout her body. It wasn’t the pleasant effervescence a glass of champagne might bring, but a kind of half-conscious numbness. She couldn’t take the risk of driving. Her stepfather drove her, and Masha did not utter a single word the whole way there.
Why? Why had Katya lost control of such a manageable little car? Suicide, maybe? No. Masha shook her head sternly in the backseat, not noticing her stepfather’s concerned glance in the rearview mirror. She just couldn’t accept that Katya was the type of person who could bring herself to voluntarily depart this life in somebody else’s Mercedes. Unless . . . Could it be about Innokenty? Hadn’t she been madly in love with him? But Masha shook her head again. That was all in the past! Suddenly she desperately wanted to see Kenty herself, bury her face in his shoulder, and cry. She texted him.
Katya died. On the way to the funeral. Can I see you tonight?
The response was instantaneous. Sure. Send me the address, I’ll come pick you up.
Masha tapped out the address for the wake she’d be going to after the service, at Katya’s apartment, in what she had called her “blue-collar suburb,” a place that Masha had never been. Why? she wondered. Katya had always been eager to come to her place.
The crematorium was not especially gloomy. There was a businesslike air to the proceedings, like getting married at city hall. There were flowers and a small crowd of relatives. One ceremony finished up, and the next group filed in. A funeral march by Beethoven was playing, and Katya’s neighbor girls in their short black dresses stood around sniffling. Masha and her mother kept to themselves. They didn’t know any of these friends and relatives except Rita. Masha laid her bouquet of daisies on the gleaming, lacquered coffin and said a few words to Katya’s mother. But there was a line of other people anxious to express their condolences, so she left quickly.
Natasha departed for another ordinary, hectic day of work at her clinic, and Masha took a taxi to Katya’s apartment. She had promised Rita she’d help with the wake. Masha wasn’t the world’s best cook, so she’d picked up takeout from a restaurant nearby. Now she stepped inside, set down the heavy bags, and took a look around. She even sniffed the air, wondering if it would smell like Katya. The place was unattractive, both from a lack of money and a lack of taste. Masha could never have guessed that she was doing exactly what Katya had sometimes done in her home, tiptoeing around. The curtains were drawn shut, and the mirror was covered out of respect for the dead. Distraught, Masha touched a finger to a photograph of her and Katya, laughing, when they were little. There were more pictures. She recognized some—they’d been taken by her papa. Masha’s copies were hidden away in albums, but here they had stood proudly, all these years, in plain sight. So in a way, Masha had been in this apartment after all. Still, the place was so foreign she couldn’t even imagine Katya living here. She looked so much more natural, in Masha’s memory, framed in the doorway of Masha’s own apartment.
Masha found an apron and got to work. The table was already set, and she loaded it with the food she had brought, the cold salads and hardboiled eggs Rita had requested. She pulled a huge, sweating stockpot of soup out of the refrigerator and put it on the stove to warm up. She stood on a stool to reach the tray of freshly baked pirozhki Rita had put on top of the cabinets, up in the warm air near the ceiling, and she put them in the oven, preheated just as Rita had told her. Masha noticed she was breathing more easily now. That nauseating lightness was gone, her throat did not feel as tight, and the pinching feeling in her chest had disappeared, too. But still there was a name pounding away in her head, like a terrible metronome: Katya, Katya, oh Katya . . .
Soon the guests began arriving, and for a while, Masha was busy serving food to people she didn’t know. She could tell they were looking at her, confused: Who was this girl taking care of everyone like some junior lady of the house? But to both Masha and Rita, it seemed perfectly natural. Their ghost of a relationship, through Katya, was completely clear to both of them. But they also both understood that this connection, like a thread made of the finest crystal, would splinter quietly and break the minute Masha left today.
For now, though, Masha was carrying away dirty dishes, half-listening to people toasting Katya’s memory, soaping up dirty glasses and wiping them dry. She even tried washing the baking pan Rita had used for the pirozhki, though it obviously could stand to soak until the next day. She scrubbed away mercilessly, distracting herself from her own terrible thoughts, until Rita came into the kitchen and took the sponge from her hand.
“Leave something for me, all right?”
And Masha understood. Katya’s mother needed a way to forget, too, and Masha, selfishly, was taking that away from her.
They sat down on a couple of stools, hiding in the kitchen like a pair of conspirators. Neither Rita nor Masha wanted to go back into the room full of people.
“I didn’t do enough to protect Katya,” Rita said abruptly. Masha felt sick at what might be coming next. “I didn’t protect her. I knew she had it in her, that jealousy, that desire for what she didn’t have. Desire to be you, to have your perfect apartment, the clothes you and your mother had, that car . . . And beyond all that, desire for what you knew, your mind, your focus on your career. Your friends, the boys you hung around with. I saw that, and I felt sorry for her. But I shouldn’t have! I should have slapped it out of her when she was little!” Rita covered her face with her hands and sat silent for a second. “But I felt so guilty, bringing this child into the world with no father. I wanted so much for my little girl to be happy!”
Masha went to Rita and embraced her. She could feel her body jerking as she wept.
“I’m so sorry, Masha!”
“No, no, it’s my fault!” The tears were welling up in Masha’s throat now. “I’m the one who let her borrow the car!”
“The car!” moaned Rita. “And your clothing! She wasn’t wearing a single thing that belonged to her. It was all yours, Masha, right down to her underwear! What was wrong with her? Why would she do that?”
Masha, worried, said nothing.
“Here.” Rita fumbled in the pocket of her big, shapeless black dress and pulled out a set
of thin bracelets. “These are the only things of her own that Katya was wearing. They sent them back from the police station. She used her very first student stipend to buy them, and she never let them out of her sight. I wanted to give them to you. To remember her by.” Rita handed the jumbled pile of silver jewelry to Masha.
“Thank you,” said Masha quietly.
“One more thing, too.” Rita’s cheeks flushed. “I’m ashamed to have to tell you this. But Katya didn’t just take your clothes. I found this in her room. They’re your mother’s, aren’t they?” Rita handed her a small packet. Masha peeped inside and found a flashy gold bracelet and ring. Natasha had loved them once, but for the past ten years she had preferred jewelry that she thought of as more distinguished—which turned out to mean less flashy but much more expensive, set with diamonds. Masha thought her mother must not have realized these neglected pieces had disappeared, and she figured she could sneak them back where they belonged. She raised her eyes to look at Rita.
“No,” she said calmly. “You’re wrong about that. Katya asked me if she could borrow these.”
Rita’s tense posture relaxed a little, and she sighed in relief. Nodding, she stood up and reached out to touch Masha’s cheek with one hand. Then she wiped her red eyes and plodded sadly out of the kitchen. Masha sat back down on the stool and took out her cell phone.
Come get me, she typed.
It seemed to Masha that the moment they had admitted their mutual guilt and sin—for her, that she had let Katya borrow the car, and for Rita, that she hadn’t cured her daughter of that horrible jealousy—as soon as they had spoken those words, Masha and Rita had severed the thread between them. There was no more point to her being here, and suddenly she was desperate to leave. She found her coat and, without saying good-bye to anyone, slipped out. As she rode the elevator down, she mechanically counted Katya’s bracelets. There were ten of them.
“Idiot!” she said to herself, out loud. Those damn numbers had infected her subconscious. She was automatically counting everything around her, looking for a clue. “Enough! Stop it! Katya is gone, and it has nothing to do with the numbers on those dead bodies.”
She sat on a bench outside to wait, staring straight ahead, until Innokenty’s car pulled up. He opened the door for her without saying a word, and Masha climbed in. Nina Simone was drawling gently inside.
“Let’s go,” said Masha softly.
Kenty had been waiting for a chance to ask Masha what was going on.
“So she died on Nikolskaya Street?” he asked. “Via Dolorosa.”
“What’s Via Dolorosa?” asked Masha. Then she understood, and recoiled in her seat.
“I’m sorry, Masha.” He did, in fact, look ashamed. “It’s becoming some kind of perverse game for me. Every time I hear the name of a place, on TV, on the radio, I can’t help it—I do the calculations, I think about whether those places match up with Heavenly Jerusalem, or the earthly one.”
“So? Do they?” Masha asked, uncertain.
“Not usually.” Kenty rubbed pensively at the bridge of his nose. “But this one does. If you put the maps of the two city centers on top of each other, Nikolskaya Street takes exactly the same path as the famous Via Dolorosa—the route Jesus took on his way to the cross. It starts at the Lions’ Gate and goes west through the old city to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Nikolskaya Street, as you know, runs from Red Square to Lubyanka Square. But before they built Red Square, the street led directly to the Nikolsky Gate of the Kremlin.” Kenty interrupted himself. “What a bunch of nonsense, though, right? Why am I telling you all this?”
Neither spoke for a while, and Masha thought their theory might simply be a way for them to avoid facing reality. Maybe it was easier to wall themselves off behind a preposterous barricade of smoke and mirrors, of historical, religious, and mystical allusions. Only now, hearing the sadness in Kenty’s voice, did Masha understand that he felt guilty, too. And that guilt was a way to compensate for the absence of another sentiment. Maybe if he had returned some of Katya’s feelings, she could have found a way to put her childhood jealousy behind her. And then she wouldn’t have taken Masha’s car and wouldn’t have died on Via Dolorosa.
Maybe everyone had their own Via Dolorosa.
ANDREY
Andrey sat hunched over his computer, trying to figure out what sort of association the name Katya Ferzina was triggering in his subconscious. Danovich, the officer at the next desk, was talking about how this Katya Ferzina had died a couple of days ago in someone else’s car, in a crash right in the center of Moscow, and a weird crash, too. Instead of running into a mammoth SUV being driven just as badly by some other woman driver like you’d expect, Katya had driven headlong into the concrete barrier surrounding a construction project at the Rusich Centre Bank. Plus, the officers at the scene had found evidence that suggested this was no accident, but rather an elaborate assassination. But who would have gone to such lengths to assassinate young Ms. Ferzina? And where the hell had he heard that name before?
He tried typing her name. Looking at it on the screen didn’t trigger anything, so he must not have seen the name in print. He must have heard someone mention it. But who? Andrey couldn’t concentrate. All he could do was sit there and whisper, trying out different intonations. “Katya? Katya Ferzina? Katya! FER-zina! Goddammit.”
“Where’s your intern?” Danovich asked, looking over at the neat, empty half of the desk, which presented a sharp contrast to Andrey’s chaotic domain. Masha Karavay maintained impeccable order.
Andrey jumped. There, the memory had finally surfaced, and shot through him like the pain from a sore tooth. Masha had said the name on the phone, two days ago. Her friend Katya had died and she needed some time off to help with the funeral. Andrey remembered how uncomfortable her voice had made him, sounding strange and somehow dead.
“Hey,” he said, jumping up from his chair. “Who owned that car your Katya Ferzina crashed in?”
Danovich glanced at him in surprise, but he flipped through his file.
“N.S. Karavay,” he read. Then it hit him. “Karavay. The intern?”
Andrey nodded. His face had gone stiff and cold. Those weren’t Masha’s initials, but the car must belong to her family. And Masha’s friend had been murdered. And the only case Masha Karavay was involved in was Heavenly Jerusalem. No reason to worry, he told himself. No reason to worry!
“Let me have that file,” he barked, and with one more look at Andrey’s distraught face, Danovich handed it over. Andrey scoured every page until he found the statement by Rita Ferzina, mother of the deceased. Ferzina said that her daughter had been wearing somebody else’s clothes. And, she said, those clothes came from the same place as the car. They all belonged to the victim’s oldest friend, Maria Karavay. Masha!
“Andrey! Andrey!” Danovich had been tugging on his sleeve for a while now, but Andrey hadn’t noticed. “Maybe you should warn her, just in case?”
“Obviously I’m going to warn her,” Andrey growled, and shivered in the sudden cold draft blowing up from inside his mind. Could it possibly be a coincidence? Andrey believed in accidents of fate, but he hated them. Especially this kind. Especially when it came to Masha. He ripped his jacket off the back of his chair. “Right now.”
MASHA
Masha and Innokenty sat together in his car outside her building. He wasn’t talking anymore, just holding her lifeless hand in his, and she felt like crying. Why shouldn’t she cry here, with Innokenty? She had forbidden herself to indulge in things like that in front of her mother ever since her father’s funeral. She didn’t want to add to her grief. She wanted to protect her. But now she found she could not cry. Masha gently withdrew her hand from Kenty’s and reached to grab her purse from the backseat.
“I’m gonna go,” she said.
“Are you okay? Can I walk you to the door?”
“You sound like an American movie,” she huffed. “I’m not okay, but I’m much better off than Katya. I thin
k I can find the door myself.” She got out, walked into the building, and headed for the elevator. The doors opened, and out walked Andrey Yakovlev.
Masha was surprised, but in a passive kind of way. So you’re here, she thought. Why is that? Masha saw the pity in his eyes, and she looked away. She knew her eyes were puffy, and her face was pale. Damn it. She had wanted her boss to be impressed with her talents as a detective, but instead here he was looking at her with that mix of judgment and sympathy you direct at an old lady you’re about to give your seat to on the subway.
“Hello,” she said, surprised at the dull, heavy sound of her own voice.
“Masha, I was just talking to your stepfather. He said you were at the wake. I tried to call—”
“I turned off my phone. Did you need something?”
“Yeah,” said Yakovlev, finally catching her eye. “Can we talk?”
“Sure. Come upstairs.”
“Umm . . . I’d rather do this on neutral territory, if that’s okay.”
Masha nodded indifferently. She walked back outside and sat on a bench. Yakovlev settled down awkwardly next to her, unsure how to start. Masha didn’t speak, either, remembering the bench she had sat on in front of Katya’s building. A place she had gone today for the first and probably the last time.
“Too late,” she said quietly.
“What?” asked Yakovlev.
“I’m a bad friend,” said Masha, turning to look at him with a sad, almost childlike gaze, her lips twisted strangely in a contradictory grin.
He looked away. “We all feel like bad people when the people we love die,” he said, looking down at Masha’s delicate fingers, clasped tight between her knees. On one of her wrists a collection of thin silver bracelets sparkled in the deepening twilight. “Who ever says, when their mother dies, that they were a good child? Right? I’m sure you were a really good friend.” Yakovlev looked right at her. His eyes seemed completely black.
The Sin Collector (Masha Karavai Detective Series) Page 13
