he could win her love with new clothes, rare foods, day trips, and chocolate: it was pathetic. She’d vowed that her lapse would never happen again. There was one way to make sure: she’d taken the knife and resolved to kill him. She’d stood, as she stood now, ready to murder.
The same memory that had driven her into the room, the memory of her parents, was the reason she hadn’t killed him. They wouldn’t want this man’s blood on her hands. They would want her to look after her sister. Obedient, silently crying, she’d allowed Leo to live. Every now and then she’d come back, creeping in, armed with a knife, not because she’d changed her mind, not for revenge, not to murder, but as a memorial to her parents, as a way of saying she had not forgotten them.
The telephone rang. Startled, Zoya stepped back, the knife slipping from her hand, clattering to the floor. Dropping to her knees, she fumbled in the pitch-black frantically trying to find it. Leo and Raisa were stirring, the bed straining as they moved. They’d be reaching for the light. Working by touch alone, Zoya desperately patted the floor-boards. As the telephone rang for the second time she had no choice but to leave the knife behind, hurrying around the bed, running toward the door, slipping through the gap just as the light came on.
LEO SAT UP, his thoughts sluggish with sleep, intermingled dreams and reality — there had been movement, a figure, or perhaps there hadn’t. The phone was ringing. It only ever rang because of work. He checked his watch: almost midnight. He glanced at Raisa. She was awake, waiting for him to answer the phone. He mumbled an apology and got up. The door was ajar. Didn’t they always close it before they went to sleep? Maybe not; it didn’t matter, and he headed into the hallway.
Leo picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end was urgent, loud:
Nikolai: the name meant nothing to him. He didn’t reply. Correctly interpreting Leo’s silence, the man continued:
Leo remembered. He hadn’t heard from Nikolai in a long time. This man was of no relevance to his life now and he resented him calling.
Nikolai’s voice drifted off, before adding:
His words were slurred. He was drunk.
His voice cracked. He was on the verge of crying.
Leo wanted to say no.
Leo hung up. His annoyance was tempered by unease. Nikolai wouldn’t have got back in contact unless he had cause. When he returned to the bedroom, Raisa was sitting up. Leo shrugged an explanation:
Leo didn’t need to finish the sentence.
She didn’t finish. Leo nodded:
He grabbed his clothes, hastily getting changed. Almost ready to leave, tying his shoelaces, he saw something under the bed, something catching the light. Curious, he moved forward, crouching down. Raisa asked:
It was a large kitchen knife. Near where it lay there was a notch in the floor.
He should show it to her.
As Raisa leaned over to look he stood up, hiding the knife behind his back and turning the light off.
In the hallway he laid the blade flat across his palm. He glanced at his daughters’ bedroom. He stepped toward the door and gently pushed it open. The room was dark. Both girls were in bed, asleep. In the process of retreat, silently shutting the door, he smiled at the slow, shallow breathing of Elena sleeping. He paused, listening carefully. He couldn’t hear any noise coming from Zoya’s side of the room. She was holding her breath.
14 MARCH
DRIVING TOO FAST, LEO skidded into a turn, the tires slipping across black ice. He eased off the accelerator and brought the car back to the center of the road. In a state of agitation, his back damp with perspiration, he was relieved to arrive at the offices of the homicide department. He pulled up, resting his head against the steering wheel. In the unheated interior his breath formed a thin mist. It was one in the morning. The streets were deserted, layered with patchy snow. He began to shiver, having forgotten to grab a pair of gloves or a hat as he rushed from the apartment, hurrying to get out, to get away from the question of why the bedroom door had been ajar, why his daughter had been pretending to sleep, and why there’d been a knife under his bed.
Surely there were explanations, simple, mundane explanations. Maybe he’d left the door open. Maybe his wife had gone to the bathroom, forgetting to shut the door on her return. As for Zoya pretending to be asleep: he’d misheard. In fact, why did she need to be asleep? It made sense that she was awake, she’d been woken by the telephone and she’d been lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep, justifiably annoyed. As for the knife… he didn’t know, he just couldn’t think, but there had to be an innocent reason, even if he had no idea of what that might be.
He stepped out of the car, shutting the door, moving toward his offices. Located in the Zamoskvareche district, south of the river, an area with a high concentration of factories, his homicide department had been designated space above a vast bakery. There was mockery in the location as well as the message that their work was to remain invisible. The offices had been marked as
Entering the ramshackle reception area, the floor crisscrossed with flour footsteps, Leo climbed the stairs, running the events of the night over in his mind. He’d successfully dismissed two out of three occurrences, but the third — the knife — resisted attempts to explain it away. The matter would have to wait until the morning when he could talk to Raisa. Right now Nikolai’s unexpected phone call was a greater concern. Leo needed to focus on why a man he hadn’t spoken to in six years was calling drunk in the middle of the night, begging for a meeting. There was nothing between them, no bond or friendship, nothing except that year—1949—his first year as an MGB agent.
Nikolai was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, slouched in the doorway like a vagrant. Seeing Leo arrive he stood up. His winter coat was well tailored, perhaps even foreign made, but tatty with neglect. His shirt had come unbuttoned, his stomach overflowing. He’d gained weight, lost hair. He was old- and tired-looking, his face
