CHAPTER FOUR
Thegunshot came just as Rostnikov pushed open the door to the seventh floor of the high rise on Lenin Prospekt about four blocks from the New Circus. In spite of his leg, he had purposely taken a circuitous route to the address of Katya Rashkovskaya. It had been a year or more since he had roamed this neighborhood. So Rostnikov had wandered up Lenin Prospekt, watching the people shop, looking into the windows of the elegantly decorated shops, passing the Varna (which specialized in products from Bulgaria), the Vlasta (with goods from Czechoslovakia), and the Leipzig (with exports from the German Democratic Republic). Rostnikov bought nothing. He had limped along without putting words to his thoughts, paused to examine a window of shoes that would cost at least a month of his salary, ignored a quarrel between two men over a parking space near Lumumba Friendship University, and gradually made his way to the second of three white-concrete high rises.
He had trudged his way up the stairs in the elevatorless building, moving slowly to minimize perspiration. On the seventh floor he had paused for breath before opening the hallway door. That was when he heard the shot. It wasn't that Rostnikov didn't believe in coincidence. If one lived long enough, particularly in Moscow, one encountered all manner of coincidence. Cases were often closed through coincidence rather than hard work. An officer happened to see a car thief breaking into a car when it looked as if a particular ring of thieves would never be caught. The officer was not staking out the street, was not even on duty, but had taken a wrong turn looking for a movie theater that, as it turned out, was on the other side of Moscow.
In this case, however, when he heard the shot, Porfiry Petrovich did not assume that he had been fortunate or unfortunate enough to step onto the scene of a crime at the coincidental moment. He hobbled as quickly as he could in search of apartment 717. Here a door opened and a cautious eye peeped out. There a door opened quickly and closed. Beyond, a man in a robe, who looked as if he slept days and worked nights, stepped into the hall rubbing his eyes and almost running into Rostnikov, who barreled past him and found apartment 717.
There was a voice behind the door, a hysterical voice that might have been wailing wordlessly or might have been saying something. Rostnikov turned to the sleepy man in the robe, who looked puzzled, and said, 'Call Petrovka thirty-eight. Tell them Inspector Rostnikov told you to call. Say it's a possible shooting.'
The man nodded and hurried back into his apartment, where, Rostnikov hoped, he had a phone and was not simply going back to bed. Rostnikov pounded on the door once, hard. The door vibrated.
'Police. Open die door,' he said, loud but calm.
Nothing happened inside, though he thought he heard the sound of something, an appliance, something, above the wailing voice.
'Open or I'll have to break the door,' Rostnikov said, still calm.
Footsteps moved quickly inside and the door opened to reveal a thin young man in a blue T-shirt. His straight blond hair looked bleached and was combed back from his smooth and wide-eyed face.
'I told her not to,' the young man said, stepping back to admit Rostnikov. 'I told her it was stupid. That there were other things she could'
'Where?' said Rostnikov, grabbing the young man's arm. 'Where is she?'
The young man groaned in pain, twisted his body, and pointed toward a closed door across the room. Rostnikov let him go and hurried to the door. Behind the door was the sound he had heard in the hall, the appliance sound. He pushed the door open and found himself facing a quite beautiful woman of about thirty with a pistol in her hand. Her straight black hair was long, and tied behind her head with a yellow ribbon. She was wearing a yellow skirt and blouse and white sneakers. The gun was aimed directly at Rostnikov and looked none too secure in her grip.
'Who?' she shrieked, backing up.
'Police,' he said, keeping his voice down but still audible above the rushing mechanical sound in the small bathroom. 'You'd better give me the gun.'
Katya Rashkovskaya looked down at the gun in her hand as if she had not expected to see it there. She handed it instantly to Rostnikov, who dropped it into his pocket. Behind him, Rostnikov could hear the young blond man move to the open doorway of the small room.
'What did you try to do?' Rostnikov asked, gently reaching out to touch the young woman's arm. He had dealt with attempted suicides before, both those who succeeded and those who failed. His theories were different from the party line. His theories were based on experience. It was Rostnikov's belief that all but a very small, insignificant number meant to kill themselves, even the ones who later said and believed that they had only been acting out or pretending. It was, he guessed, like childbirth as Sarah had described it. When it is happening, it is terrible and real. When it is over, it is like a dream. A similarity between the bringing of life and the taking of it.
'She shot the toilet!' the young man cried behind him.
Rostnikov turned and looked at the nearly hysterical young man and then at the young woman, who looked as if she had been hypnotized. And then he looked at the toilet, and, indeed, there was a crack in the porcelain, starting with a hole the size of a blintz and zigzagging out into a series of tributaries. Behind the hole, the toilet gurgled loudly and angrily.
'It's true?' Rostnikov asked, moving closer to the young woman.
She nodded her head slowly, indicating that it was true. Rostnikov nodded back and led her out of the bathroom past the young man, who backed away.
'Close the door,' Rostnikov ordered. The young man closed the bathroom door, which cut back on but did not end the noise. After leading the woman to a chair and being sure she sat, Rostnikov pulled a straight-backed chair over and sat facing her. He took her hand and said, 'I understand.'
She looked at his face, expecting to see a lie, but saw instead that this man, whoever he was, this clothed trunk of a man with a flat face, did seem to understand, which puzzled Katya Rashkovskaya, who wasn't at all sure whether she understood what she had done. One minute she had been sitting in grief and anger over the deaths of Oleg and Valerian. Eugene, her brother, had been talking about himself. She had been drinking tea. And then the idea had come. No, it was not quite an idea. She hated the toilet. It had caused them, the three of them, nothing but trouble. Oleg had tried to get the building supervisor to fix it, had gone to the neighborhood party deputy in charge, had tried to bribe, beg, threaten, but nothing had helped.
And so, sitting there, vaguely hearing the voice of her brother suggest that now that she was alone in this large apartment he could move in, she had suddenly risen, gone to Valerian's drawer, moved the shuts he would never again wear, and pulled out the gun. The next thing she knew this sympathetic man with the face and body of a bear had gently told her that he understood.
'She's gone mad!' the young man cried, pacing back and forth. 'All this death has driven her mad.'
'Are you mad?' Rostnikov asked Katya. She shook her head no.
'She says she is not mad,' Rostnikov reported.
'She says!' the young man cried in disbelief.
'I believe her,' said the inspector.
'You…'
'Who are you?' Rostnikov asked, still holding the woman's hand but looking at the man.
'I, I don't have to tell you who I am,' the young man said.
'Yes, you do,' Rostnikov said sadly. 'I'm the police.'
The word police did nothing to the woman, but it froze the young man.
'I'm Eugene Rashkovsky, Katya's brother. I came to help her in her grief. She'
'He's a nakhlebnik, a parasite,' Katya said. 'He came to move into the apartment. He was afraid to come here when Oleg was… here. Oleg would throw him out. Oleg didn't like young men who'
'You've no reason to start that again!' Eugene screamed. 'No reason.' He looked at Rostnikov in fear and hurried to his sister. 'That has nothing to do with the police, nothing.'
'Go,' Katya said, reaching up with her free hand to wipe away hair that had not fallen in front of her eyes.
'I…'Eugene began.
'Go,' Rostnikov repeated, and Eugene stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
