From the woods behind the house I could hear cicadas. Could hear the stream. At first I didn’t hear anything else. Then I heard the flick of a lighter, the sound of somebody lighting a cigarette. Soft footsteps fell on the path. I walked a few more yards, and I saw her.
Near the front gate was a silver bike, a girl leaning against it, looking at the house. It was all I could do to keep from crying. Valentina? Valentina! My God!
She was there, wearing her skinny white jeans and a little black top, her hair was short, dark red, and she was walking slowly, smoking a cigarette on her way to her grandparents’ house.
PART SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I watched as Valentina Sverdloff strolled to the gate of her grandparents’ house. Half in a trance, I followed her. I had seen her in New York on her own bed, had felt for her pulse.
That day, I had sat beside her, held her cold hand, absorbed, after a while-I never knew how long-that she was dead.
She was dead, and after they took her away, the ME had cut her up and stitched her back together on a metal slab. Bobo Leven had told me. Tolya had told me. I had read the report.
Russia, this fucking country, I thought. A country that makes you see things, makes you believe in shit that doesn’t exist, in ghosts. It was all I could think. I’d left it the first time when I was a kid, only sixteen. I’d come back once, got sucked in, gone away, swore I’d never come back. Never again. It did weird things to you, every part of you.
I knew that Val was dead. Again I pictured her on her bed, saw myself lean down and put my mouth in front of hers. No breath had come out. No breath, no pulse, nothing. In New York she had been dead.
But she was here in this strange evening light, in front of me, tall, lanky, hair ruffled by the breeze, wearing the white jeans, swinging her arms, back to me, smoking a cigarette and almost at the gates of the old Sverdloff dacha. I put down my bag and started to run.
“Val?” I shouted, stumbling on a tangle of uncut grass. Valentina?
Even saying it made gooseflesh run up my arms. I pulled on my jacket. I’d been carrying it, and I put it on and zipped it up and fumbled in the pocket for cigarettes. Val, darling?
“Artie, right?”
“Yes.”
She had turned around and was coming towards me, still smoking. Now she tossed her cigarette on the stone path and crushed it under her red sneaker.
“You don’t recognize me, do you? I met you a while back. I’m Valentina’s sister. Her twin. You remember? Maria. Everybody calls me Molly.”
They were identical twins, but only in looks. Different voices.
“You know he’s dead, don’t you?” she said.
Tolya was dead.
I wasn’t sure I could stand this. For a second, I was so dizzy I had to lean against the garden wall. What would I do without him?
“Ask me, I’m glad Grisha is dead, you know,” said Molly. “I never liked him. He was bad, every which way, he was a shit.”
“Grisha Curtis?”
“Who did you think I meant?”
“It doesn’t matter. How?”
“I don’t know. Somebody said he was drugged, somebody said a knife, other people thought he was strangled. This is Russia, Artie. Somebody will find out, I don’t care, I’m glad!”
“When did you hear?”
“Yesterday. They all gossip, like crazy,” Molly said. “I’m staying over at my mom’s dacha about a mile away. Over in Barvika. Grisha’s uncle has a place. Somebody found him in the woods, it’s all I know. And everybody was excited because there were police around, that kind of shit.”
“You’re sure?”
“Sure. You need a cigarette or something?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking the pack Molly offered. “Thank you.
Of course I remember you.”
“Val probably told you I was the good girl, the one who fit in, even in Florida, I dated boys who played football, I liked to shop, I was student president. You know my best friend in junior high was a little Russian tennis player from Almaty. When she lost some junior tournament, she killed herself. I decided I hated Russians right then.” Molly lit up, offered me her lighter.
Her hair was reddish brown, bangs over her forehead. A canvas bag was thrown over her shoulder. There was a wooden bench outside the dacha gates, and she sat on it. I sat next to her.
“He killed her, you know?” said Molly. “The bastard killed my lovely sister, he murdered her.”
“Grisha? You know that?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him,” she said. “I saw him in Moscow a few days ago and he looked at me, and I could see he was terrified, as if he thought I was Val. I tried to find him again, but I couldn’t. He’s only met me a few times. I felt it. Twins feel things about each other. Did he?”
“I think so. Tell me what you know about him.”
“I met him a couple times.”
“What?”
“I met him in London last summer. He was very good-looking in a sort of spooky sci-fi way, you know? Very, very handsome, carved features, always smiling, great smile, good low voice, and funny, well, sort of funny,” said Molly. “I met Grisha’s mother at that sad little wedding in London. Val was all lit up. I think for the first time, just plain in love. Regular old-fashioned love and sex and somebody your own age, a nice good boy you were going to be with forever. She was a different kind of girl, but she had that in common with all of us.”
“Go on.”
“Val always liked older guys, rougher, smarter, remember Jack Santiago? She liked interesting people, which got her into trouble, she didn’t have real good pitch for emotional stuff. So at first I thought, wow, about fucking time Val met a regular guy, a nice guy, her age. But she was coy about Greg, or Grisha, or whatever the fuck he was called, I think she was shy, she told me to keep it to myself. My poor mom, Christ, she didn’t even know Val got married. I had to tell her after Val died.”
“What else?”
“Something went wrong between Grisha and Valentina the last few months, and then she was dead. My father went off his rocker. I went to her place and looked for all her diaries and stuff, but most of it was gone.”
“I was there.”
“Where?’
“In her apartment. Her stuff was all there, everything, her pictures, clothes, everything.”
“After she was murdered?” Molly said.
“Yes. So somebody was in there not long afterwards.”
“It was him.”
“Why did you come to Russia?”
“Like I said, our mom has a place not far away. She said she had to come here, she said she had to come to
