And now, at the age of fifty-seven, she watched women and children from her window and grew dizzy when she rose. Illness did not become her. There was a rage within her which she quelled with dreams, medication, and reading, because the rage did her no good and could, according to the doctors, actually kill her.
“We must talk,” shouted Lydia Tkach as soon as Anna opened the door.
The wiry, nearly deaf woman carried a plastic shopping bag from which a very pleasant odor reached out and struck the now-awake Anna. Lydia moved into the room, and Anna considered leaving the door open so that she could shoo the loud gnat from her presence, but experience told her that such would not be the case. Anna closed the door and turned.
“Did you see him?” Lydia shouted, moving to the kitchen area and the small table to her right.
“See? …”
“Sasha, on the television. My son, the hero.”
There was a bite to the word
“No, I have not watched television today.”
The smaller woman was taking things from the plastic bag she had set on the table. There was a small cake, some croissants, and a large white cylinder carton with the unmistakable smell of coffee.
“I wish I had not,” said Lydia, going to the cupboard behind her to bring out two plates, two forks, a large knife, and two cups. “Sit.”
Anna, who had spent a lifetime giving orders, knew it was useless to argue with the woman. Besides, the confections and coffee drew her to the table. Listening to Lydia Tkach was the price she would have to pay for the guilty pleasure. “He was there, on the riverbank, right across from the Kremlin,” said Lydia, sitting and reaching over immediately to cut the cake. “Right in front, or almost, of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moskau. You know?”
“I know where the-” Anna Timofeyeva began but was cut short by her guest, who served her a slice of wondrously aromatic lemon cake.
“Sitting there next to a madman with a gun. Hundreds of people watching, and thousands and thousands on television. He saved the life of a child. A madman-he had this child throwing moving-picture film into the river, as if the river is not dirty enough.”
“Sasha had a child throw moving-picture film into the Moscow River?”
The cake was delicious. The coffee was hot.
“No, the madman had the child throw the film in the river.”
“Why?”
“Why? Why? Why? Because he was a madman. He’s dead now. Sasha is a hero. The madman had already killed someone in a dacha outside of the city. You like the cake? I have a new baker. The old one left his family and ran away to Lithuania or someplace with one of my clerks. Why would anyone run away to Lithuania? But it was a blessing. The new baker is better, a Greek, and the new clerk is his daughter.”
“Sasha,” Anna said, considering the wisdom of having yet another slice of cake after she finished the one before her.
“And your Elena,” said Lydia, who had consumed a croissant and now sliced herself a generous portion of cake. “She was on television, too. Looking down from the embankment. You wouldn’t see her if you weren’t looking, but she was there.”
Lydia Tkach consumed enormous quantities of food without apparent joy in the process. She remained pole-thin. Anything Anna ate turned to instant fat, which was a danger to her. Normally she dieted according to the order of her doctor, but at the moment she told herself that she needed to fortify herself against the intruder. Anna had gotten Lydia into an apartment on the other side of the one-story building.
“He could have been killed,” Lydia said. “I have one son and he could have been killed. More cake?”
“A very thin slice, and then I want you to take the cake and croissants away,” said Anna.
“We’ll leave the rest for Elena,” said Lydia, putting an even larger slice of cake than the first on Anna’s plate.
Infinite are the ways this woman can be my death, thought Anna, unable to resist the call of lemon and the white sugar frosting. The new baker was very good indeed.
“So? …” Anna began.
“It is enough,” shouted Lydia, whose outburst was certainly being listened to by the pensioner and his wife who lived on the other side of the thin wall of Anna Timofeyeva’s apartment. “I want him safe. I want him out. Sometimes I think he is suicidal. That’s what I think sometimes.”
It was something which Anna also thought but not nearly as often as his mother. When she had been a procurator, Sasha had been a brooding young man, a protégé of Porfiry Petrovich. He had a promising career ahead of him, but Sasha could be difficult and on more than one occasion he had been drawn from his course not by bribery but by women who found the boyish brooding young man irresistible.
“I want you to talk to Porfiry Petrovich,” Lydia said, her eyes meeting Anna’s.
“To …”
“To insist that he get my son off the streets. Sasha is a hero now. Heroes deserve to be protected whether they wish to be or not. You agree?”
“Well, I think …”
“You can’t talk to Sasha. I’ve thought of that. Sasha is on his way to Kiev, on an airplane. I don’t trust airplanes. I’ve never been on one. I think they crash all the time and no one tells us. They keep it secret. Sasha has been strange lately. Happy … he even took me to a movie about men who for no apparent reason take off their clothes. And then he is back to feeling sorry for himself. I want my grandchildren back. I made him take airplane money to bring them back. I told him the only way to get Maya to come back with him would be to get off the streets, have normal hours and a normal job where he wouldn’t get into trouble.”
Anna sipped her coffee, which she should not be drinking. It was excellent coffee. She would resist a second cup.
“I think you are right,” said Anna.
“You think I am right? You never think I am right.”
“This time,” said Anna, “I think you are right.”
“And what will you do about it?” Lydia asked insistently.
Anna felt like saying, “I’ll consult the neighbors and get their opinion,” but instead she said, “I will give Baku the rest of what I have on my plate and then I will call Porfiry Petrovich and ask him to stop by for a talk. I have never asked him to come visit me. He will come.”
Lydia said nothing and then opened her mouth to speak. Nothing came out. She began to weep. As loud as her voice had been, her weeping was nearly silent. Her thin shoulders shook and she leaned her head forward. Anna had no experience comforting people. People, even her niece, had never really looked to her for comfort. Anna was large, serious, stern in appearance. When she was procurator, she always wore her dark uniform. One did not go to such a woman for solace.
“I will do what I can, Lydia,” she said. “I will do what I can.”
“You are going out?” asked Rostnikov, sitting across the table from his wife.
Galina and the two little girls were watching television. The woman sat between the children, who were completely absorbed in the young men and women on very tall unicycles speeding around on a television-studio floor. The television was black and white. They could only imagine the spectrum of colorful glitter.
“Yes,” said Sarah, finishing her coffee.
“I know where you go each Friday,” he said softly as circus music vibrated excitedly from the television set.
“You are a detective, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said with a smile, reaching over to touch his hand. “I thought you would have figured it out long ago.”
“I did,” he said, picking up crumbs from the remains of the pastry on the plate between them and popping them into his mouth.
“And you want to know why?” she asked.
“It seems a logical question,” he said.
“And an emotional one.”
