They walked out of Masha’s apartment ten minutes later, carrying the packed bag, and Innokenty closed and locked the door.
ANDREY
Andrey had never seen such a beautiful woman. Not beautiful in the contemporary sense, when some disproportionate feature gives a face its charm or makes an actor famous. No. This woman carried a kind of nineteenth-century grace about her. The regularity of her features combined to make the perfect portrait: the gentle oval of her face, the big blue eyes, the even, light-colored eyebrows, the slight nose, the smooth forehead. The face was astonishing, but Andrey was surprised to find that it did not seem to affect him. Was it because he was in love with Masha? Or was it just that perfection like this inspired only chaste admiration? That was probably a load of bull. According to Fomin’s interview with the downstairs neighbor, Masha’s stepdad’s feelings hadn’t been chaste in the least.
“Ms. Kuznetsova,” he began. “Why didn’t you show up at your meeting with Dr. Belov yesterday?”
Anna raised her perfect eyebrows just a bit. Evidently, her repertoire of facial expressions was limited.
“He canceled it.”
“Did he call you?”
“Yes. Well, no. Someone he works with called, and said that Yury—Dr. Belov—was stuck at the office. They said he wouldn’t be able to come.”
“Had he ever canceled a meeting with you before?”
Anna paused to think. “Yes, two or three times. But he always did it himself. I didn’t think he trusted his colleagues enough to give them my phone number and let them in on that, uh, side of his life. It startled me a little.”
“And how long have you two been—meeting?”
“About two years,” she answered calmly, brushing a shining lock of hair out of her face. Andrey couldn’t help watching. Beauty really was a force to be reckoned with. “I used to be his patient.” She smiled simply, revealing her perfect teeth. “He felt sorry for me.”
Andrey didn’t have time to be surprised before she looked him straight in the eye and asked, “Did something happen to him?”
“He”—Andrey cleared his throat—“he died. He was murdered yesterday evening. I’m very sorry.” Andrey thought he was ready for any sort of reaction, from crystalline tears to muffled sobbing. But the beauty surprised him. Her face, up to then so exquisitely immobile, suddenly began to shake as if she were having a fit. Her lips gaped open, contorting her mouth; her temples throbbed; her chin jutted forward, then back again; and her eyebrows shot up high, buckling her perfectly smooth forehead into accordion-like folds. The whole effect was so ghastly that Andrey jumped up, nearly knocking over his chair.
“My medicine!” Kuznetsova moaned, in a strange, low voice, through a clenched jaw, and she pointed to a cupboard.
Andrey yanked open the door and saw it right away, a vial in the very center of the lowest shelf. There was a stern warning on the label: “BY PRESCRIPTION ONLY.”
“Thirty drops,” she wheezed, and Andrey began counting out drops into a glass that was waiting conveniently nearby. Time seemed to stand still. Andrey switched off his peripheral vision. He could see nothing but the drops of medicine splashing one by one into the glass. Fifteen. Sixteen. He couldn’t make a mistake, and he couldn’t look at the terrifying sight sharing the room with him.
When the medicine was finally ready, he held the glass as she drank it down, her lips trembling, and fell back in her chair. Andrey turned to the window. Kuznetsova’s apartment was on the third floor of an old building, and it looked out over a quiet courtyard. How many of these were left in Moscow? Must be expensive, he thought suddenly. I wonder what she does for a living. Or is she just the fortunate spouse of some crooked cop?
“Excuse me,” a calm voice finally pronounced behind him. “I didn’t expect that. I should be used to it by now.”
Andrey turned around, and saw the flawless beauty restored.
“It was all so strange. The phone call, the fact that Yury didn’t cancel himself. He knew how important it was for us to meet at least once a week. You probably think he was just my lover,” she said, bowing her head a little, and laughing sadly. “But he was my therapist, too. Do you have any cigarettes?”
Andrey nodded and got the pack out of his pocket.
Kuznetsova took an awkward drag. “I really don’t smoke much. But Yury said it was all right after an attack. It calms me down. Anyway, yes. My husband was the one who first brought me to the clinic. He didn’t even know the difference between psychologists and psychiatrists. They were all just head doctors to him. That’s what I thought, too. It seemed all right, fancy, nice and clean. Not some haunted old asylum. But Yury—he realized quickly that I needed a different kind of doctor, not a psychologist. He was scared for me. My husband was, too.” Kuznetsova laughed again. “But I was only scared of my husband. Anyway, Yury prescribed some medicine and some intensive therapy. My husband got jealous. He thought I wanted to go to the clinic just to see Yury. And that was true, actually, but Yury didn’t know it. To make a long story short, my husband forbade me to go back, saying he’d kill Yury if I did. By that time, I had stopped being afraid of dying myself. So Yury volunteered to go on treating me, but somewhere other than the clinic. I don’t think he really knew, at the start, how things would end up.”
“What about your husband? Did he ever guess? From what I understand, he’s—”
“Yes, he’s a police officer, too. But no, he never knew. I filed for divorce. He didn’t want to let me go. He watched me like a guard dog. A nervous, vicious guard dog! I knew,” she said, lowering her voice, “that he had killed people before. He swore he hadn’t, but I could feel it! I couldn’t go on living with him. Before Yury came into my life, I had thought about leaving him some other way. I tried suicide, but he always caught me in time. When I met Yury, though, it was like someone had switched on the light at the end of the tunnel. As long as I saw him at least once a week, I wasn’t afraid anymore. So it’s actually hard to say what he was for me. Did I need him as a man or as a doctor? He actually said I didn’t need him anymore. He said I was almost all better and that I’d learned how to control myself.”
Kuznetsova paused. “So now I get to test that theory out.” She turned to look out the window. One shining tear rolled down her perfect face. She looked like a fairy-tale princess.
Andrey waited a few moments before asking her the next question, the decisive one.
“Ms. Kuznetsova, how can I get in touch with your husband? Your ex-husband, I mean.”
“That would be difficult.” A remarkable smirk crept across her face.
“I can go see him at work, or—”
“He’s at Vostryakovsky.”
At first, Andrey didn’t understand.
“The cemetery. My husband is dead. He was killed in the line of duty a year and a half ago. He never did give me that divorce. And he never planned to. Yury and I didn’t meet in this apartment, because it was too far for him to travel. Besides, I shared this place with my husband, and Yury was squeamish about things like that.”
Andrey said nothing. A police officer, capable of murder. Someone indirectly acquainted with Masha’s stepfather. Judging by his disappointment, Andrey could tell how much he’d been counting on this interview to confirm his new lead. He stood up slowly and said good-bye.
As she showed him out, the princess made one more comment, seemingly less to Andrey than to herself.
“They were both so scared for me. But here I am, alive and almost well. But not them. It’s so surreal.”
MASHA
Masha followed Innokenty into his apartment and felt as if she were exhaling, finally, for the first time this whole long day. There were suddenly so many things she wanted to do. Sleep. Call Andrey just so she could hear his voice. But the first thing, probably, would be to get some food.
“Kenty?” she asked beseechingly as she kicked off her shoes. “I don’t suppose you have anything to eat?”
Innokenty put down M
asha’s bag and shot a wry glance in her direction.
“I’m so glad you associate my home with sustenance, my dear. Come on.”
In the kitchen, Masha sat on a high bar stool and swiveled around quietly, this way and that, while Kenty studied the contents of his enormous French-door refrigerator. He adored it for its capacity, and referred to it lovingly as his root cellar. Now he pulled a stock pot, wet with condensation, out of cold storage and put it on the stove. The deep recesses of the machine also yielded up some fresh dill, and Kenty got out a huge heavy-looking cutting board and set to work chopping the herbs up. He turned on the oven and slid in a tray of pirozhki. When the pot started boiling, he removed it from the burner, ladled out some chicken meat, and cut it up into small pieces. He got out a serving bowl with a delicate floral pattern—Dutch, he explained, a Delftware piece—and neatly poured the broth into it. He selected a linen napkin from a drawer and set it on the table next to Masha, along with a solid-silver spoon.
Usually Masha teased him about the care he took, his desire to make sure everything in his life, especially everything pertaining to the stomach, was just right. Even when it was his one and only best friend at the table, someone he had known forever, and whose stomach was growling in a completely indelicate way. This time, though, Kenty’s dance around the table had a calming effect on Masha. After all, in a world where a Delftware tureen could survive since the eighteenth century, how bad could things be?
“So where’s the silver napkin ring?” Masha couldn’t help ribbing him now. “No respect, I tell you!”
Innokenty looked up from the last step in his ritual (he was pouring vodka from a bottle into a crystal pitcher already chilled to readiness), smiled, and reached out a finger to tap her nose. He poured some vodka into a small, thick-walled shot glass, ladled the broth into a deep bowl, and moved a plate full of pirozhki closer to her. Masha breathed deeply, lifted her glass, and, without pausing for a toast, took her shot. She chased it down with a bite of the pirozhki and tossed some of the lovely bitter dill into her bowl to soak.
“Kenty—” she started, then stopped. He froze with the spoon in his hand. What could she say to him? Thanks for being you? You’re my best friend in the world, and I don’t know how I would have survived all these years without you? Could she tell him the things she might have said, but never did, to her other best friend, Katya? Or to her stepfather? But thinking like that scared her. It was as if she were getting ready to say good-bye to him, too. So instead of finishing her sentence, Masha took her first spoonful of the radiantly golden chicken broth. Only after that did she lift her eyes to meet his again.
“Who taught you to make such excellent broth?”
For a second, it seemed that Innokenty had been expecting some other sort of declaration. But he smiled and wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“My only teacher is Elena Molokhovets, the Russian master cook.” He could even quote her: “‘To be sure the soup comes out clear, let it simmer on the lowest possible flame while removing any scum. Then your soup will taste delicious and will be so transparent that you will not need to skim off the fat, but merely strain it through a napkin.’ That’s the 1911 edition.”
“Oh God,” moaned Masha in exaggerated horror. “And to think, all I can make is an omelet!”
“Sure, but what an omelet it is!”
“Sometimes I think you’re just a mirror there to reflect my own faults,” Masha told him, finishing up another bite. “Did you bake these yourself, too, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle?”
“The pirozhki came straight from the bakery,” Innokenty admitted gracefully. “But what do you mean about the mirror?”
“Oh, I dunno. It just occurred to me. You have so many good qualities that when I look at you, I see all my own faults. You understand, right? You’re good-looking and elegant. You’re a great housekeeper. You can cook! Any girl would be happy to share your well-equipped household.”
Innokenty smiled, and turned back to the stove.
“Want anything else?” He cleared his throat. “Dessert?”
“No, Kenty, but thank you,” said Masha sincerely. She walked over to him and for a second leaned up against his broad back. She could feel the muscles tighten, just slightly, under his thin, silky sweater. Cashmere, thought Masha. Dear little fashion plate! She stepped away again.
Kenty sighed, then turned to face her. “Masha, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
His somber tone and the look on his face were so alarmingly out of character that Masha knew, suddenly, that all the effort he’d made to lure her out of the dark woods she had been wandering in—the hot soup, the cold vodka—would be in vain. She could feel her heart dropping, then freezing solid.
“Sit down, please,” Innokenty said, and he sat down next to her, resting his large, handsome hands on the table before him. “There’s something you don’t know about me. I never thought it was important. I still don’t think so.”
“Kenty,” said Masha softly. “Just tell me.”
He sighed again, looked her in the eye, and tried to smile.
“It’s about my family, Masha. You never asked, but my family . . . They’re Old Believers. My great-grandfather donated the money to build the church on Basmanny. My great-grandmother came from an Old Believer community in the Urals. None of that ever mattered much to me, since I’m not a very religious person. But my father . . .” Now he was looking down at his hands. “That’s why I almost never invited you over to my place when we were kids.”
Masha stared at him. Hundreds, even thousands, of memories that had collected over the course of her childhood danced before her eyes like dolphins cresting at the surface of the water. Innokenty’s father, with his full beard and archetypically Russian face. His mother, who always had a kerchief wrapped tightly around her head, no matter how warm the weather. The shadowy icon in the kitchen. The smell of old books in their home, their time-worn leather covers embossed in gold, lined up on the top shelf, out of the reach of children. The thesis Innokenty had defended two years ago about the Old Believers, the one the dean had told him ought to be turned into a dissertation. Why hadn’t she guessed? After all, they had told her practically the same thing about her own thesis on murder. Innokenty had always been obsessed with the schismatics, and he told endless stories about them, some terrifying, some strange, some even funny. None of that could have come out of nowhere, any more than her own fascination with serial killers did.
Masha looked at Innokenty and felt like she no longer recognized him. He seemed to have grown. He was enormous now, and he took up every square inch of the kitchen. And there were things about him buried so deep that Masha had never even suspected.
“Don’t look at me like that! It’s just a branch of Russian Orthodoxy, you know, one with a difficult past. You wouldn’t be staring at me like that if I had told you I was a Protestant! And I’m not even religious! You know that. I’m a historian, first and foremost!”
Masha gulped. “You said your great-grandfather had something to do with building the church on Basmanny?”
Innokenty ran a hand over his face. “Yes. That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about. Some people came to see me. The head of the church, in fact. He asked me to talk to you, to try to convince you that the killer you’re looking for isn’t one of us. He’s worried that the detectives will ruin things for them, that there will be articles in the paper. The Old Believers have only just started growing again, building churches, and people have begun returning home from the US and South America. All of that progress could be stopped by stupid prejudices, gossip, and rumors with no basis in reality.”
“And you agreed?” Masha asked. “You agreed to talk me into dropping it?”
Innokenty smiled morosely. “I told them I’d try, Masha. I didn’t promise anything.”
“Well, great.” Masha’s lips twisted into a frown. “At least you won’t have to break your promise! I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you viol
ating any sacred vows.”
“Masha, please!” said Innokenty, leaning closer to her, but Masha slid back away from him. He hunched back in his chair unhappily. “I have only one thing to say in my defense,” he said. “It’s a historical argument, and it might not seem convincing to you and the detectives, but for me, and for all the Old Believers, it puts the schismatics beyond all suspicion. This Heavenly Jerusalem our Sin Collector is so obsessed with? It’s directly connected to the life and work of Patriarch Nikon, who promoted the idea of Moscow as a second Jerusalem. Nikon wanted to unite all branches of the Orthodox Church under the patriarchate in Moscow, especially the Greek and Ukrainian churches. To that end, among other things, he replaced the Russian two-fingered sign of the cross with the three-fingered sign the Greeks used. He revised the liturgical texts to follow the Greek versions. And you know what happened as a result. Some refused to follow the new rules, there was the schism, and the Old Believers split off from everyone else. For the Old Believers, Nikon and everything that he stood for is the lowest point in our history. Every ideal he worked for is diabolical to them, Masha. He wanted to be like the Catholic Pope, and he even built a new monastery, called New Jerusalem, outside Moscow. Nikon did it all in an attempt to imitate the Vatican. All of that is anathema to us. Believe me, no Old Believer would ever drink from that poisoned cup.” Innokenty lifted his hands, seeming to give up. “I could tell you more, but—”
“I get it.” Masha slipped off her stool. “I need to think about this. Sorry. I really need to get some rest.”
“Sure, sure, of course,” Innokenty said, fussing around her again. “Sorry. I just didn’t want to keep that from you any longer. Forgive me, Masha, I’m not—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ll fix up a bed for you in the study.”
He rushed off, but Masha sat still for a minute. Then she made herself put her dirty bowl in the dishwasher and lug the soup pot, still slightly warm, back to the refrigerator. Innokenty reappeared in the kitchen doorway. He looked harried, but Masha didn’t feel sorry for him. She didn’t feel sorry for herself, either.
The Sin Collector (Masha Karavai Detective Series) Page 24
