St. Petersburg Noir

by Julia Goumen

  Reaching Petrogradskaya in my new boots, I went into the café, took a free newspaper from the counter, ordered a brandy, and got ready to wait for the fence. There were only two people and the waiter, who was wearing an idiotic getup with braids. The floor was sprinkled with sawdust, in the Parisian manner, to make the mud easier to clean up. The second customer was sitting by the window chewing something, he had a mug of mulled wine in front of him, and the light from the window fell on his hair, which looked like soaked linen thread. The guy must have been wandering around town all day without a hat, I thought, but then he turned around and I saw his face.

  “You’re not missing anyone?” I myself don’t know what power lifted me from my chair and made me walk up to the blond guy. “You look like a dead man I know ... sorry, like someone I saw recently. He looks an awful lot like you, like your brother really. Are you looking for him?”

  “You want money?” He raised his eyes to me, dark and quick, like the river water under the ice.

  I’d already raised my arm to punch him in the nose, but the waiter appeared beside the table with another steaming mulled wine, and his scornful look told me that I hadn’t shaved for two days and I looked like a tramp in my damp, ash-spattered coat.

  “The alms seekers have multiplied. Here, take it.” The guy dug up change from his jacket pocket and sprinkled it on the table. I recognized the jacket too, and my mind went dim. Blood surged to my temples, I leaned on the table and looked into his eyes. His face was smooth and welcoming. I remembered how two days before I’d thrown spongy gray snow on that face, trying not to look at the snow-dusted eyes and the dark depression of his sunken mouth.

  “Listen, buddy.” The waiter put his hand on my shoulder. “You need to get out of here, leave the man alone.”

  “He’s a dead man,” I said, pointing to the blond man. “Touch his hair, it’s linen yarn. My granny would hang some like that on her fence to dry, and then she’d straighten it with a steel comb. He’s a drowned man, I buried him, but he dug himself out and ran away.”

  “I see.” The waiter let go of my shoulder. “Get moving, sicko. Don’t worry about the brandy. It’s on the house.”

  “Hey, look.” I reached out cautiously to tug at the man’s bangs. “He’s going to be bald now, and if you give him a swift kick he’ll fall to pieces.”

  The guy moved my hand away, stood up straight, proving taller than I’d thought, pushed his chair back with a rumble, and started for the exit. I followed him, hearing the waiter’s voice behind me.

  “Kind gentleman, your two mulled wines and croissant?”

  The blond guy pulled a five hundred out of his pocket and threw it on the floor, on the dirty sawdust. I walked out after him and tried to grab his sleeve, but he pushed me with such unexpected force that I flew back into the café’s window, slipped, and struck my temple on the stone sill. Blood gushed into my eyes,

  I sat down, leaned against the wall, and wiped my face with my sleeve. The drowned man sped off, and for a while I could see the shiny blue dot of his jacket in the crowd, then I lost it. I tried to get up but couldn’t, and I remained sitting. Pedestrians gathered around me, a fellow in a leather jacket started clicking his cell—I think he was photographing me, the bastard—the curious waiter stuck his head out the door like a lizard, some girl chirped something about the police, and I gestured that I was fine—but it was too late.

  “Can you stand?” A cop who had come out of nowhere leaned over me. “The van’s on its way, I called it. Do you have your ID? Citizen, can you hear me?”

  I could, but I couldn’t speak, the air was thick, and I had a hard time pulling it through my windpipe. I’ve got to get out of here, I thought, feeling the bills in my pocket, small change. I had to get out of here, I had the diamond in my sock, they’d find it if they searched me, and this would all get many times worse. I couldn’t go to the station.

  What would I tell them? That I was a fence? That the river was giving birth to monsters? That for the first few days they were helpless and couldn’t climb out of the hole? That I had to drag them out so that they could rise after a few hours, shake themselves off, and head to town?

  That this was the cycle of dead water in nature? That Petersburg was in danger?

  The first thing they would do would be to pull my file, then they’d beat me in the kidneys, and then they’d call the orderlies. That was at best. At worst they’d find that dodgy old jeweler with knocked-out teeth and the glade with the silver sheep. The blood was pouring down my cheek and now creeping onto my neck.

  “Listen, friend,” I said with difficulty. “Lean over. I have a stone worth twenty grand in my sock. Take off my boot, take the sock, and put me in a taxi. And do it quick, before your guys come. Come on, before I change my mind.”

  After getting all this out, I heaved a sigh, stretched my leg out, and shut my eyes. An eternity passed, the cop was in no hurry, I could hear the street noise—the rattling windows, the streetcar rumbling, the radio muttering, the shuffling of soles over the wet snow—but still no sirens. The gawkers seemed to have started to disperse, and I no longer heard their alarmed voices.

  “What, are things really that bad?” the cop whispered, leaning toward my ear. “Stop it, this is just a scratch. It would be different if you’d been smashed in the head with a silver ingot.”

  He smelled palpably of slime and diesel. I unglued my eyes. Or rather, just my right eye because the left wouldn’t open anymore. The cop’s smooth, welcoming face spread like an oil spot in water. Behind him there was some lady with a string bag looming, and behind her the young woman who had shouted about the police, a linen fringe covering her forehead all the way to her eyebrows. Behind the young woman was a snow-covered square with a view of Kamennoostrovsky Prospect. There were people walking down the avenue, a lot of people, a whole lot of people, more than usual in this part of town. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I knew that many of them were wearing yellow scarves. I looked at them with one eye until the siren went up at the corner of Avstriiskaya Square.

  “Get up, Luka,” the cop said, holding out his hand to me. “The van’s here. Very well, we’ll drop you off at work.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  BARELY A DROP

  by Andrei Rubanov

  Liteyny Avenue

  Translated by Marian Schwartz

  T he writer headed off an hour before midnight.

  Usually he took the sleeping car: he liked his comfort and did not care for traveling companions. In fatter, richer times he might take a whole double. For the sake of solitude.

  His best friend once said, “Don’t confuse solitude and loneliness.”

  Now leaner times had come upon the writer. He wasn’t poor, of course, but he had no desire to pay extra for solitude. Thirty-nine. At that age you no longer feel like paying the world extra; it’s time to arrange things so the world pays you. And the sleeping cars were worse now. The creak of cheap plastic, the gray sheets. The brown railroad dust. Last time he’d traveled with his son. He’d wanted to show the boy springtime Petersburg; it had been a cold May, and the heat on the train wasn’t working. (The conductor apologized nonchalantly: “It broke; we’re fixing it.”) The writer froze and promised himself he would never travel in sleeping cars again. The cold and dirt—that was no big deal. He’d known worse in prison and barracks. Only there it was part of the rules of play, whereas here it just added to his irritation. A train plying between the two capitals and made up of “luxury” cars should be heated on cold nights, right?

  So this time he took a regular compartment. He tossed his meager backpack on the rack, went out into the passageway, and waited for his neighbors: first an unshaven guy with an ordinary man’s ordinary face; then a young woman with a light smile and a heavy ass skillfully raised on too-high heels. She might have worn simpler footwear for travel, the writer thought censoriously, and he headed for the dining car without lingering.

  He had found muddle-hea
ded, unintelligent women annoying since his early youth. For some reason, though, he was drawn to the muddle-headed types more than the others. Muddle-headedness has its own energy and charm too.

  One day he chose the least muddle-headed of all the muddle-headed women he’d met and married her.

  In the dining car he immediately felt good. He had a shot of vodka, turned on his computer, and started working. The vodka had nothing to do with it. He liked his work. And travel. Spatial displacement was stimulating. The writer valued detachment. To describe something, you have to detach from it.

  He wrote for two hours, then was tired and had another drink—not because of his weariness but in order to prolong his pleasure. A little later the young woman came into the dining car with the same heels, the same smile, and the same ass, and sat down opposite him. The writer—an experienced night train passenger—had gone to the dining car earlier than the others and now occupied a four-seat table; he had set up his smart electronic device among the coffee cups and not a single hungry person had sat down with him all evening. Everyone had appeared in groups or pairs and found free seats without disturbing the writer; or, more likely, they had taken the writer not for a writer but for the restaurant manager tallying his debits and credits, since the table was the last one, next to the kitchen. Whatever it was, the writer was not surprised at the stranger’s proximity. It is fairly risky, when you have such high heels, to sit alone in a dining car at two in the morning when four traveling salesmen—wet brows, ties askew—are dozing in one corner, and two crew-cut alpha males, together weighing five hundred pounds, are drinking beer in another. If the writer were a young woman in heels, he would have sat with someone like him. Short, almost sober. Computer on his left, notebook on his right.

  And so, she was on her way to see her lover. She was free, he was married; she was in one city, he was in the other. He didn’t want to divorce (his kids? the writer asked; his companion nodded), he paid for her weekly trips and hotel (generous, the writer said; his companion shrugged).

  The writer introduced himself as a writer and added that the titles of his books were scarcely known to the general public.

  She livened up a little.

  He bought her alcohol.

  “I feel like a fool,” she admitted, relaxed after her third shot. “The relationship has no future. I don’t want to be wasting time. He’s much older and I don’t love him. But he’s nice. Respectable, strong, and smart. High-ranking,” she clarified, slurring a little. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Have another drink,” the writer suggested.

  “No, I’ve had enough,” she responded. “I want to but I won’t.”

  “What should you do?” he repeated. “It’s very simple. Relax. You’re young. Enjoy yourself. You want to sleep with a man—do it. You want to drink some more—do it. Be happy. Do you feel good now?”

  “Yes,” she answered after thinking it over. Her drunken gravity and the gaze into nowhere of her well-fogged eyes cheered the writer up.

  “That’s just great,” he said. “Hold onto that feeling. Savor your pleasure. I’m forty. I got married at twenty. I dropped out of college and got a job. I haven’t stopped ever since. I kept thinking like you. I worried about the future ... I was afraid of wasting time ... To hell with that. Live in the here and now and don’t be afraid of anything. Youth is given to be enjoyed.”

  “Yes,” the young woman said, and she gave him a grateful look. “Ask them to bring more vodka . . .”

  He excused himself and went out on the platform to smoke a cigarette. When he returned, one of the alpha males was leaning over his companion. Evidently he had made a vulgar suggestion. The other was waiting at their table sucking on a pale shrimp.

  The writer thought ruefully that he had no chance. If, say, he smashed a bottle and jammed it into his back or shoulder ... In any event, the only way to beat the square-shouldered heavyweight was by surprise and cunning. He’d never last in hand-to-hand. The young woman, however, politely and curtly rejected the solicitation, and the alpha backed off before the writer could come within striking range.

  “It must be time,” she said.

  He nodded and asked for the check. As they moved past the alpha males, the writer turned away, and a few seconds later thought that he shouldn’t have walked by as simply as that, and he felt a primitive vexation.

  He didn’t want the girl and didn’t care whether the girl wanted him. He should have jammed something sharp into the alpha-giant’s shoulder for his own sake, not the girl’s. The writer had grown up in a small factory town and from his early youth had known that a girl sitting at someone else’s table was someone else’s girl. It didn’t matter who she was, who she came with, or who she left with. What was important was who was pouring for her at that moment. This simple thought should have been brought home to those alpha-jerks, preferably with the help of a blow to the head. But the writer didn’t strike, didn’t even throw them a look. He was afraid. He had the good sense not to look for adventure.

  Good sense has a nasty aftertaste, he thought sorrowfully as he climbed up onto the top berth and turned toward the wall. When his new acquaintance returned from the bathroom and wanted to continue their conversation, the other neighbor, now awake, joined the conversation desultorily, and she started talking about love (what else?); the writer thought with relief that the girl just liked to chatter, and he fell asleep.

  ~ * ~

  The hotel was a five-minute walk from the train station. The writer had stayed at this hotel a few times before, and when his wife asked him to recommend a decent place, he not only told her the address but called and reserved a room himself. The same one he usually stayed in. He reminded them that he was a steady customer and they immediately took care of everything. By all accounts, the minihotel belonged to intelligent people; the staff was good-natured, and they valued steady customers. And the writer valued those who valued him—if not as a writer, then at least as a steady customer.

  A private five-room hotel, a former communal apartment in an ordinary apartment building—no, not ordinary, the real deal, a classic Petersburg building with a series of mercilessly asphalted courtyards linked by arches. Iron roofs, sprawling staircases— special twists for those in the know. Around the corner, three local cafés right there, each with its own local color: alcohol and bikers in S&M leather in one; ladies with cakes and no smoking in the next; and in the third, the food was good and cheap. Fifty paces away was Nevsky Prospect.

  The damp immediately grabbed hold of his face and hands. Cold and humid; the writer was shivering even before he reached his destination.

  He watched the dark, curtained windows of the room for a long time. Eight in the morning. Either she’d already run off on her affairs, which would be bad, or else she was just about to wake up and turn on the light, which would be good; then he could see the silhouettes. He could tell his wife right away by her lush, long hair. If there was someone else in the room, the writer would try to tell if it was a man or a woman. If it was somehow clear that the second lodger was a man, the writer would head back to the station and leave on the very next train.

  For instance, if the room’s other guest pulled back the curtain, opened the window, and lit up.

  Although his wife couldn’t stand tobacco smoke and would scarcely allow him to smoke.

  Or did she love him and allow him anything?

  His best friend once said, “They should love us smoking, drinking, and poor.”

  When the windows lit up the writer panicked a little but quickly calmed down.

  In his youth he’d done a bit of surveillance. He would get hired to find people who had borrowed money. Strange though it seems, in the early ‘90s the business of collecting debts was considered boring and not very profitable; smart people who began working on these cases switched at the first opportunity to something more interesting, like selling candies or trousers. The writer did exactly the same and subsequently recalled his street expl
oits without the slightest pleasure. Surveillance requires someone with an unremarkable appearance, and the writer was a skinny, mean kid; when the time came to send someone to prison, the citizen victims would have easily identified the writer.

  In any case, he quickly realized he had overestimated his experience. Shapeless shadows moved behind the curtains; he watched for nearly an hour, but all he could tell was that there were two people in the room.

  She had said an entire delegation, four of them, were going. The writer didn’t try to pin down the details.

  The lights soon went out and a few minutes later his wife emerged. With her were two women and a man. Encouraging each other, the foursome headed toward Nevsky. The writer was standing too far away to form an opinion of the man’s appearance. Regardless, he was young, not badly dressed, and strode broadly, boldly, ahead of the three ladies.