St. Petersburg Noir

by Julia Goumen

  I remembered his face, even though I only ever saw him for less than a minute—spongy cheeks, folds on his shaved skull, the dim eyes of a deepwater fish, round from surprise. He shouldn’t have been surprised. The stones were of an old-fashioned cut, and they hadn’t been in that safe two days. I grabbed his arm and tried to take the bucket away, but the old man yelled and sank his surprisingly strong teeth into my wrist. That made me see red and I pushed him down on the floor as hard as I could; the shepherdess broke off and stayed in my hand, but the silver glade with the sheep fell on the old man’s face, right on his wide-open, yelling mouth. Silence fell so unexpectedly that I didn’t realize right away that the owner had choked on his own blood, and for a few moments I tried to stop up his mouth with my jacket sleeve.

  The old man’s eyes were open and gazing past me at the ceiling, which was thickly overgrown with plaster molding, and I spotted one more camera eye hiding in the leaves. There was no point worrying about the camera because I’d turned off the server, removed the disk, and put it in my pocket. The shop owner, however, was a problem. There was nowhere to take him out, and nothing to take him out in—the old man was a big guy and he would only fit in a trash bag in pieces. I left him lying on the floor with the silver glade jutting out of his smashed mouth, the price tag white on the velvet glade: 299,999. I stuck the shepherdess into my jacket pocket, closed the safe, examined my footprints on the granite floor, grabbed the mop from the storeroom, splashed water on the floor from a pitcher, and gave the dirt a good smearing.

  I got out through the apartment over the store, the same way I’d gotten in, went down the back stairs, which for some reason smelled like apples, stopped on the first floor, turned my jacket inside out, pulled my cap down over my eyes, and walked quickly down the street. There wasn’t a soul on the avenue, four in the morning is a dead time, the leaden Petersburg dusk, even the ice underfoot seemed soft and gray.

  By the fish store on the corner I came upon a sleepy janitor who asked me for a cigarette. I swayed, grabbing his sleeve, put a whole pack into his hand, and complained about whores in a purposely Eastern accent. That accent and my three-day beard stuck in his mind, so that the sole witness would say he’d seen a tipsy Caucasian walking away from a local girl that morning.

  That was late last fall; in the winter I sold my cut to someone I trusted, managed to pay off my debts, bought Gulia the apartment, and spent the rest, and now the day had come when my money was gone and the lighthouse was empty.

  ~ * ~

  Rouser? Rover? Roarer?

  I stood on shore trying to read the boat’s name, but in the dusk all I could make out were the first two letters: R and O. Fine, who cares, this was obviously the tub the lush at the station had told me about.

  “Going toward Drunk Harbor, turn at the old Lenvodkhoz wharf,” he’d said. “You head down the shore from the datsan, and as soon as you pass the Elagin Bridge turn toward the water, and there it is, it’s got bushes around it and you can barely see the boat, but it’s there.”

  The bushes were young and prickly and looked like barberry. I tore my coat sleeve while I was pushing through them in search of a ramp or a gangway, but I couldn’t find anything. The boat was twenty paces from shore, locked in the filthy gray ice, and there were no footprints or boards leading to it. There were long puddles on the surface of the ice, and it was spongy, like bread crust. The hull of the boat wasn’t all that old, but it had rusted through from stem to stern, and the bottom had had concrete poured on it, the former owner probably hoping to take care of a leak. At one time the pilot house had been painted white with three red doors, but all that was left of the white paint now was flakes that resembled shredded eucalyptus bark, and the door latches had been sliced off. I rolled my pants up to my knees, took off my boots, tied them by the laces, hung them around my neck, and started out over the snow barefoot, it being harder to dry footwear than feet—and not only that, these were my only boots and there was no knowing when I would come by another pair.

  When I left the conductor’s apartment I already knew I wasn’t going to get in my place. I had almost no money with me, and actually there wasn’t much left at home either. I could forget about picking up the stone. Whoever paid me that visit had left in their scratched-up Toyota, but they could easily have left an ambush in the building, or just planted a bug so they could come back the moment I opened the door. They’d dawdled a long time—I’d sat on the windowsill for two hours until I finally saw my Latvian coming out the front door with two guys. The one on the left hoisted the iron lighthouse on his shoulder like an antiaircraft gunner carrying a rocket launcher. Anta had clearly spilled the beans and now they wanted to smash my hiding place to smithereens. You’re going to have to sweat, archangels.

  It didn’t look like they were dragging Anta by force. I couldn’t get a good look at her face, but her walk was easy, and she got in the car smoothly, showing her leg in a high boot. If these were cops they’d let her go quickly, as a foreigner, and they probably wouldn’t bother recording her information. If they weren’t, they’d taken her in addition to the diamond, which they were hoping to find in the lighthouse. Then she’d be back a little later. I left my cell on the table, stuffed my pockets with bread and cheese from the conductor’s refrigerator, took a flat bottle of brandy, and rifled through her dresser but didn’t find anything unusual. Though I did snag a baggie of grass, which I found in a wool sock, didn’t write a note, slammed the door, and tossed the key back in the snake’s tail.

  By seven or so I was on Primorsky, and forty minutes after that on shore, a kilometer from Drunk Harbor. The wind was at my back the whole way, and I counted that a good sign.

  “Boat’s nobody’s,” the homeless guy told me. “Don’t wet your pants, I spent all fall there until it got chilly, and if no one was using it for sailing then, now I’m sure no one’ll come. Sometimes the locals throw some work my way, loading and unloading, but I can tell you’re a strong fellow, you won’t break. Best not to argue with the locals—if they ask, help, and you’ll have a quieter time of it. In November I dragged a stove onto the boat, plenty of firewood in the forest, only it smoked something awful. I went to the datsan for chow, Buddha Balzhievich’s the abbot, they started feeding people there—only kasha, of course—but at least you don’t have to go scrounging in town.”

  I’d ended up at the station, where I met the homeless guy, out of stupidity. Not only did I have no reason to leave Petersburg, I didn’t really have anywhere to go, I had next to no money, my mother in Gatchina wouldn’t let me cross the threshold, and in the last year my buddies had become few and far between. Habit kicked in—hit the station and get out of town—but now things were different, and all I needed was to crash for a few days, keep an eye on the apartment from a safe distance, and somehow get to my kitchen. I was sitting in the station snack bar pecking at a cold omelet with my fork when this guy in a camouflage jacket sat down at my table and asked me to treat him to a drink—preferably two. I bought us each a shot of vodka and shared my omelet with him, and at that my change ran out, and my only thousand left in my wallet I’d stashed safely away that morning, for a rainy day. That shot got the man so muddled that he started calling me Stasik, grabbing my sleeve with his calloused paw, and dropping his face in his hand with a mournful look. This last part I understand, actually—I myself might as well have dropped my face in my hand, only I would’ve had to have drunk ten times as much.

  I glanced at him and thought about the cops at my place on Lanskaya. It could be the people I worked for a year ago, for a whole winter, and in the spring I said I was tired and jumped ship. I cracked four safes for them like Easter eggs. The last job was a surgeon, a collector of precious stones, that was quite a haul, but they held back my cut, said I’d done messy work at the jewelry shop, botched it, and they’d had to pay off some people. Perhaps my accomplices came to Lanskaya, deciding that if I hadn’t worked for a whole year I’d stashed away a tidy sum, and if they clea
ned me out I’d come crawling to them faster for a new assignment. In retrospect, they must’ve worked Anta over a long time ago. In the fall I’d noticed her asking incoherent questions, looking around furtively, and basically acting like an Estonian washerwoman. Of course, she’d searched the place long before—the pig with the white face rooted up the whole place—but I let it go, deciding I wasn’t giving her enough to cover expenses, and started giving her more.

  Anta was a minor pawn at the consulate, one step above cleaning lady, but she knew how to parlay her sweet diplomatic butt, which she brought to work by noon, carrying her office shoes in a paper bag. Anta did have kind of a big butt, but her legs were made for basketball, they went on forever.

  Skirting the boat, I saw a tree trunk to port that had one end resting on a stack of icy debris and the other on the iron railings. There was also a line of six small portholes to port, sealed tight, and there were old tires strung on a rope along the side. I grabbed onto one as I was pulling myself toward the railings, but it slipped out of my hands and I nearly collapsed back on the ice. I climbed on deck, sat on a coiled towline, and put on my boots, though they slid on the iron like skis down a mountain slope. There was a gaping black hole where the wheel had been, and the searchlight looked like a tin can—though a Chinese alarm clock jutted out of the compass niche, probably left by the previous lodger.

  I couldn’t open the door to the deckhouse, I just smashed my fingers for nothing, not that there was anything to do there—the glass had been shattered and inside was a slab of gray ice. I lit one of my last two cigarettes, and standing at the stern surveyed the shore. Far off, to starboard, loomed Krestovsky Island, looking like the face of a sperm whale; straight ahead was Elagin, black; and from the park past Drunk Harbor I could hear the lively metallic voice of a carousel.

  While I was scoping out my new quarters, the wind died down and wet snow started to fall, more like rain. My fleece soaked straight through and became heavy, like a greatcoat; I’d put it on in the morning so I wouldn’t look like a bum at my meeting with the passport dealer, and now I regretted not choosing something sturdier. Remembering the bum had said something about a cabin, I threw my cigarette overboard, walked across the deck, and discovered, next to the capstan, a hinged hatch on three busted bolts, and an iron rod stuck between the hatch and deck to keep it from slamming shut.

  I dropped into the hold and saw a basket of firewood on the table in the galley and an army stove squeezed into the cabin, and I burst out laughing. I’d had the exact same stove, loud and stinky, in my tent during muster outside Lisy Nos in the late ‘90s, when I was a reserve captain, not a thief. I found a stack of greasy girly magazines in the cabin, lit the iron stove, though not easily, shed my coat, and covered up head to toe with a prickly blanket, thinking about how if anyone pulled out the rod, for laughs, say, the hatch would shut and they’d be carrying me out in a tin box. Then I thought that it really didn’t matter, was surprised at the thought, and conked out till morning.

  ~ * ~

  I was able to shave in front of a shard of mirror attached to the galley wall, a rusty Gillette blade with dried foam lay in the soap dish, and when I saw it I remembered my train station friend repeating, stammering insistently, “Shave before you go to the datsan, you’ve got to look neat, not down and out.” The morning was chilly and dry, the gray ice sparkled in the sun, and about ten paces from the boat there was a black hole in the ice, like a mercury puddle, left by fisherman, and poking up around the hole were stakes with a metal net stretched between them. Ducks, half-crazed for lack of food, were jostling by the hole, trying to stick their beaks through the net, and I rejoiced to think maybe a box of fish had been left there. It would be nice to fry up a couple of whitefish for breakfast, I’d seen a bottle of congealed oil in the cockpit and an iron skillet.

  It was odd, I was two steps from Primorsky Avenue but I felt like a shipwreck survivor cast on a deserted shore. I found a pot in the galley and dropped a pipe down to the ice and walked over to the hole for water and someone else’s catch. The spiky net had been dropped deep into the hole—hell if I knew why, maybe so the edges wouldn’t cover over; I don’t know, I never liked fishing. I tried to pull out the wire, but it was frozen solid to the thick ragged edges, so I knelt down, leaned over the hole, and jumped straight back. Looking up at me was a man’s face, his mouth spread in a smile, dark river water in his eyes.

  I pulled out one of the stakes, perched on the edge of the hole, and armed with it, like a boathook, I snatched the scarf off the wire and tried to push the dead man back under the ice. If he’d floated here from Drunk Harbor, the current might carry the drowned man farther, toward Krestovsky Island, and the cops could fish him out there, at the Chernaya River. The scarf unwound and was left hanging on the wire net, but the body bumped into the icy edges and floated meekly onward, trailing light hair, like wet yarn. He was wearing an expensive jacket, which meant whoever’d thrown him into the water wasn’t a thief, a local showdown most likely, the Lakhtas against the Olginos. That was how I was going to float if I fell into my former companions’ hands, only I didn’t have a scarf and had nothing to snag, I’d float off leaving nothing behind.

  I didn’t feel like collecting water in that hole, so on my way I filled the pot with dirty snow and put it on the stove, which heated up amazingly fast. I’d picked up a piece of wood before climbing aboard, used it to replace the iron rod keeping the hatch from slamming shut, and stuck the rod under the folding cot because somehow my quarters didn’t seem quite as peaceful to me as they had the night before. My breakfast of cheese, smelly after sitting overnight, and stale bread didn’t exactly thrill me, so I decided to try the conductor’s joint, which turned out to be so strong I didn’t wake up until dusk, and then not on my own but because someone was tugging at my shoulder.

  Half-asleep but snapping to, I pushed the uninvited guest away, dropped my feet from the cot, rummaged on the floor for my rod, and only then unglued my eyes and took a good look at the guy, who seemed large and saggy in the dim light leaking through the open hatch.

  “Why’d you do that?” the person said in a reedy eunuch voice. “Are you shitfaced? Put down the stick, Luka, or you’ll kill me by accident.”

  “I won’t kill you,” I said when I was fully awake. “Where the fuck did you come from?”

  “Have a drink?” The person reached for something, making me jump up, but just pulled out a bottle of vodka, waving it in peace and hiding it away again.

  “Why don’t you come out and we’ll talk on deck?”

  The person wheezed and climbed up clumsily, and his coat was too long so the hem kept catching on the narrow, corrugated steps. When he reached the top of the stairs, the stranger swiveled around, gathered up his hem, and sat at the edge of the hatch, placing his feet firmly on the last step. Now I could see his eyes—long and a little puffy. His hair was gathered under a wide fur hat, but by now I’d realized he was a woman and relaxed. After I’d climbed two steps I caught her smell, sharp, lemony, a little like the furniture polish my Latvian used. Polishing furniture and combing her hair, those were the two things she could do from morning till night, humming her monotonous “Kas to teica, tas meloja.”

  “My feet got soaked getting here—what did you do with the logs? Use them up for heat? I have to dry my boots now!” My visitor swung her feet in front of my face, leaned over, took a good look, and gasped.

  “Holy moley! Who are you, muzhik? And where’s Luka?”

  “Gone. I live here now,” I said cautiously, holding onto her boot tops so I could pull the woman down in case she had a mind to do something foolish like slam the hatch. But the beggar’s girlfriend never even thought to be nervous, she just went silent briefly, then got out her lighter and shined it in her face.

  “Let me in and get warm. I’m pretty. I can’t go back to Primorsky with wet feet. I’ve got a bottle!” She pulled her present out of her shirt and licked her lips. Her mouth was conspicuous, with bri
ght turned-out lips, a working mouth.

  “I’ve got my own bottle.” I hopped back into the hold, signaling for her to come down. “Be sure you close the hatch carefully, you’ve got to slip that branch in there.”

  “I know,” she responded gaily. “It’s not my first time. Are you going to be here now instead of Luka? That bastard didn’t say a word to me. He and I agreed on noon, but I got held up at the datsan, they had Sagaalgan there at dawn and fed everyone pot cheese and sour cream and afterward my girlfriend and I stayed to clean up. I even put on my nice dress and got all dirty with ashes!”

  “Why do you go to the datsan? Are you a Buryat or something?” I tossed some twigs in the stove, the fire came up and started hissing, and the woman laughed and began undressing. The smell of lemon polish got noticeably stronger. She disrobed silently and efficiently, shaking out her hair—she turned out to have quite a lot of hair, a whole heap of it, I can’t imagine how she tucked it all under her cap. The Buryat turned out to be naked under her dress, no underwear, the ashen fur on her pubis reminded me of a crow’s nest. Tossing her rags on the other cot, she climbed under the quilted blanket and crooked her finger at me.