said in Russian, “for coming into your house without invitation.”
The woman recognized him then-he was the man who had taken Khristo away from Vidin-and her hands flew to the knot of her shawl. The old man stared at the stranger.
“Who are you?” he said.
“He is the Russian,” his wife said. She let go of the knot, but her mouth was tight with anxiety.
The old man continued to stare. Finally, as though he remembered, he said, “Oh yes.”
The woman opened the door of the stove, inserted a few sticks of oak branch and prodded the fire to life with an iron poker. She poured well water from a bucket into a kettle on the stove and spooned black tea into a battered copper samovar. Almost immediately, the room grew warm and smelled sharp and sweet from the wood smoke.
The Russian spoke gently to the old man. “Won’t you sit down? “
The man sat, took off his cap and placed it carefully on his knee, as though he were visiting the house, and waited for the other man to speak. From the wind, there were tears standing in the corners of his eyes.
The Russian walked to the window, stood to one side, and looked out. “I came inside,” he explained, “so as not to be seen by your neighbors. We know how things are going down here-I don’t want to cause you trouble.”
The woman waited by the stove for the water to boil. “You will have tea,” she said.
“Yes. Thank you,” the Russian said, and sat down. “I’ve brought you a letter. From your son.”
“From Nikko?” the old man said.
The woman shifted the kettle noisily on the stove.
“No,” the Russian said. “From Khristo.”
The old man nodded.
“Shall I read it to you?” the Russian asked.
“Yes, please,” the woman said, her back to the room.
He reached inside his wool jacket and took out a square of paper, unfolded it carefully and smoothed it on the table. “There is no date, of course,” he said, “but I am permitted to tell you that it was written last week.”
“I see,” the old man said. His eyes narrowed and he nodded wisely, as though he well understood such complicated matters.
” ‘Dear Papa,’ it begins, ‘I greet you. I write in hope that you and Mama and Helena are in good health and that the fishing is good this year. I am well, though I work very hard, and there is a lot to learn. I am successful at my school, and my superiors are pleased with my progress. All here join me in hoping that the day may soon come when I can return to see you. Please kiss Mama for me. Your son, Khristo.’ “
The old woman walked over from the stove and the Russian handed her the letter. She could not read, but she held it up to the light, then touched the writing. “Thank you,” she said to the Russian.
“Look.” She showed the old man the letter. “It is from Khristo.”
He stared at the paper for a time, then said, “That’s good.”
“He’s doing very well indeed,” the Russian said, taking the letter back. “Better than most of the others.”
“And he is in Russia?” the woman asked.
The Russian smiled, apologetic. “I cannot tell you where he is. About that I am sorry, very sorry, because he would be proud for you to know it.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed.
They were silent for a time, then the Russian relented. “He is in the place where he has always most wanted to go. But you must not tell anybody that.”
The woman returned to the stove, the water was just beginning to boil. “We do not speak of him,” she said.
“But you can surely guess,” the Russian said.
She thought for a moment. “He is in Vienna? Khristo?”
“Perhaps,” the Russian said.
“Or Paris?”
The Russian spread his hands in helplessness, he was not allowed to tell.
“How he dreamed of such places,” she said, shaking her head. She poured a thin stream of steaming water into the samovar. “We have never been to Sofia, even,” she added. She left the tea to steep and went to her husband and squeezed his arm. “Nicolai,” she said, “did you hear that? He is in a great city. Vienna, or Paris, or somewhere.”
The old man nodded. “That’s good,” he said.
He woke at noon, lit a Gitane from the packet on the night table, then lay back on the pillow and watched the blue smoke curl up to the ceiling. There was a neatly spun web in one corner of the ceiling, a small spider fussing at its center strands. Max, Aleksandra called him. Their house pet. Cigarette smoke seemed to affect Max, provoking him into a spasm of housekeeping. On the top of the dresser, the food from the party was laid out like a miniature buffet-though Aleksandra had pretty much done for the asparagus. The other item he’d brought home was lying, tossed casually aside, in a nest of string and brown paper.
Aleksandra had gone off to work, at the bookstore near the Cafe Flor on the square in front of the church of St.-Germain-des-Pres. It was a communist-surrealist-anarchist-dadaist bookstore, a true Rive Gauche jungle of wild beards, curved pipes, black sweaters and sloe-eyed girls who stared. A serious place, at the geographical center of the city’s artistic and political whirlpool, decorated with clenched-fist posters of all sorts. According to Aleksandra, all the local celebrities-Picasso, Modigliani, Jean Cocteau, Andre Breton-were seen there, as well as at their customary tables at the Cafe Flor.
Cigarette in hand, he rose naked from the rumpled sheets, padded across the cold floor, and opened the shutters. Above the rooftops, the sky was sharply blue, with white scud racing in from the Brittany coast. There was a pale girl who lived in a room across the street, Khristo had once waved to her as she shook a dust mop out the window, and she had waved back. Her shutter was closed this morning. By opening the window and leaning well out, he could see down into the street. Women with long breads in string bags. School kids in their uniforms coming home for lunch. One of the Jewish tailors, in yarmulke, black vest and rolled-up shirtsleeves, put his cat out the door of his shop. The air smelled like dust and garbage and garlic and March weather. Not a sign of last night’s snow.
He put on pants and shirt and went down the hall and used the toilet, then returned to the room, adjusted the shutters so that he could still see a slice of sky but no one could look in, and took the pistol from its brown paper nest. He lit another cigarette and propped it on a Suze ashtray and went to work. Broke out the magazine and examined it in the light. It was a 9 mm automatic of Polish manufacture, designated wz/35 for the year of its design, called the Radom after the works where it was made. Large and heavy, it had an excellent reputation for dependability. He played with it for a time, discovering that what seemed to be the safety was in fact a slide lock that facilitated field-stripping the weapon. He took it apart, checked for burrs in the metal, found everything smooth and oiled. The wooden grip was scratched and nicked-the pistol had obviously been well used.
He had purchased the pistol at Omaraeff’s request-one couldn’t say no to one’s friend
Omaraeff had told him they would be having lunch at a place called Bistro Jambol-a pleasant coincidence since Jambol was the name of a town in Bulgaria. But, when Khristo opened the steam-fogged door of the restaurant, he realized with horror that it was no coincidence at all. The smell of the
