'Well,' said Sasha with a shrug. 'I'll keep looking.'
Sasha turned toward the emergency door through which he had come. He was sure the brothers were exchanging glances behind him, making a decision.
'Wait,' said Felix.
Sasha turned. Felix was standing now.
'As it happens,' he said, 'we do deal a bit in videotapes, operate a kind of videoteque, quietly, for special customers, special friends.'
'I could use a machine,' Sasha said, looking at Felix. 'My father gave me an Electrokina VM12, but it isn't very good.'
'The Soviet factory is, unfortunately, inferior to those of the West,' Felix sighed sympathetically. 'Given a bit of time we can get a Korean machine or even American Magnavoxes.'
'Five thousand American dollars,' Osip said quickly.
'He doesn't have American dollars,' Felix rasped.
'And tapes?' Sasha asked before the brothers could launch into another argument.
'American or Japanese blank tapes, sixty rubles,' said Felix.
'And that's a bargain,' added Osip. 'Foreign movies, American, one hundred and twenty rubles. We're not talking about Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible or biographies of admirals.'
The trailer was hot. Sasha felt the sweat under his arms.
'I'm very interested,' said Sasha, 'but I've got to get to class. I can come back later.'
'Show him,' Felix said to his brother and nodded at the metal cabinet beside him.
Osip moved to the cabinet, took out his key, and opened the cabinet. On shelves, tightly stacked, stood hundreds of videotapes.
'You understand English?' Osip asked Sasha. Sasha nodded that he did.
'All English and American in this cabinet. Your choice,' said Osip proudly. 'Everything from Bambi to Blue Thunder.' Sasha felt his smile disappear just when it should be expanding. He thought of the book in his briefcase and of the little girl near the trailer, the little girl with the two yellow ribbons who had guided him to the book, the little girl who was probably the daughter of one of these men, both of whom were about to be arrested for an economic crime considered by the Soviet Union to be punishable by death.
CHAPTER THREE
Rostnikov knocked at one of the glass doors of the New Circus and shaded his eyes to peer into the lobby. Nothing seemed to stir. He knocked again and saw some movement. Behind him thunder cracked, but it was the thunder of a departing storm heading north. What had Duznetzov said before he leaped from the Gogol statue? Something about a man who saw thunder? A face appeared on the other side of the window, the face of an old man with sunken gray cheeks and steely gray hair that wouldn't stay in place. He wore a shiny old blue suit that looked at least two sizes too large.
'Zakri' ta, closed,' the old man shouted. Then he pointed a bony finger to the right. 'Kah' si, ticket office.'
Rostnikov pulled out his identification card and placed it against the glass. The old man fished out a pair of steel-rimmed glasses, donned them, and opened his mouth to read the card. Enlightenment came suddenly, and the man pushed open the door.
'But the police have already been here,' the old man said, stepping back to let Rostnikov enter.
'We are here again,' Rostnikov said, looking around the lobby.
'I see. I see,' said the old man, folding his hands and looking around for help that didn't come. 'I see.'
'Good,' said Rostnikov.
'You've come about the accident, about Pesknoko. Tragic. Tragic. Tragic.'
'And Duznetzov. You know about the death this morning of Valerian Duznetzov?'
'Comrade Valerian,' sighed the old man. 'Coincidence. Yes. Coincidence. Coincidence. Amazing. Two in the same act in one day. It never happened before. Patnietsko says bad luck comes in threes. I would not like to be Katya. No. I wouldn't want to be Katya.'
'Katya?'
'Katya,' said the old man with irritation. 'You know. Katya.'
'Katya?'
'Rashkovskaya.'
'The last…'
'… member of the Pesknoko act. Yes.'
With this the old man shook his head, looked down, and appeared to be lost in his thoughts.
'When I was a boy,' the old man said, still looking down, 'my father was an assistant to Lunacharsky. He, my father, called him Anatoly Vasilyvich. That's how close they were. They started the postrevolutionary circus together. I met Gorky. Stanislavsky used to pat me on the head. Right like this. On the head.'
With this, the old man reached down and patted the imaginary head of an imaginary boy. Rostnikov imagined his son, Josef, and interrupted. 'I'd like to see this Katya Rashkovskaya. Where could I find her? And the circus director?'
'The director?' the old man asked, stepping back. 'No. No. No. The director is away, setting up a tour. Been gone for… I don't know. Weeks. Perhaps the assistant?'
'An assistant will be fine, Comrade,' said Rostnikov, wanting to find someplace to sit. 'And Katya?'
'Rashkovskaya, yes. I'll see what I can find. If you'll…'
'I'll go into the arena,' Rostnikov said, walking to one of the entrance doors.
The old man mumbled something behind him, but Rostnikov kept walking. As he opened the door he heard the old man's footsteps echo away behind him. It was not quite dark inside the arena though the lights were down except in the ring in the center. There was, as in all Russian circuses, only one ring so that all attention could be focused on an individual performance or spectacle.
Two men in the ring were trying to get a pig to do something with a barrel. Rostnikov watched silently for a few moments and then turned and started to walk up a stairway toward the first of two promenade walkways that circled the arena.
Behind him, their voices pleading, demanding, the two men urged the squealing pig to greater effort. It was difficult to pull his reluctant leg up the stairs, but Rostnikov went higher, searching for something. He remembered the lights above the arena, the reflecting lights that resembled a rippling circus tent. He remembered the four huge, evenly spaced screens circling the arena above the wood-paneled walls. He remembered the complex rigging, with clinking metal catching the lights high above like stars. And then, among the 3,400 seats, he found the two he was looking for, the two seats in which he and Josef had sat one night more than a dozen years before.
Rostnikov sat in the seat he thought had been his and looked down at the two men and the pig, who seemed to be getting closer to whatever it was they were trying to do. Rostnikov watched in the semidarkness as one of the two men reached up to grasp a metal bar, suspended from the darkness of the ceiling, and bent backward. Then, suddenly, miraculously, the man kicked his feet upward, where they remained, perpendicular to the ground, defying gravity. The first man placed the pig on the contorted man's outstretched legs, and the pig himself rose on two legs, balanced on the contorted man. Meanwhile, the standing man cooed soothingly to the pig. It was an odd but fascinating sight.
'When we see the back of an individual contorted in fear and bent in humiliation, we cannot but look around and doubt our very existence, fearing lest we lose ourselves. But on seeing a fearless acrobat in bright costume, we forget ourselves, feeling that we have somehow risen above ourselves and reached the level of universal strength. Then we can breathe easier.'
Without turning to the deep male voice behind him, Rostnikov said, 'Karl Marx.'
'Yes, Karl Marx,' said the voice. 'You are a good Soviet citizen, Comrade.'
'I like the circus,' Rostnikov answered, still fascinated by the men and the pig.
'That is the Brothers Heuber and their pig, Chuska,' aid the deep voice. 'They are paying homage to the
