respect to a national monument. Come down now.'
The man moved down to sit on Gogol's shoulders and hugged Gogol's neck and laughed at the sky and the rain.
'Come down?' he shouted, the rain dripping down his dark face. 'I can fly down. I flew up here and I can fly down. I am a flyer.'
Rostnikov examined the man above him. He seemed familiar, not familiar like a friend, or even like the driver of a bus one sees over and over, but like a face one has encountered, examined. He was in his forties, wearing neat, wet-dark pants, a heavy gray shirt, and a jacket mat almost matched the pants. He was well built, like an athlete. He seemed to have some secret that he shared only with the sky and the ear of the statue, which he leaned over to whisper into.
'Officer…' Rostnikov said to the policeman.
He responded, 'Back, stay back.'
'I'm Inspector Rostnikov,' Rostnikov explained, wiping rain from his brow.
The police officer turned quickly, came to attention, and then relaxed openly, pleased to have a superior take over a situation that was beyond him. The officer, hardly more man a boy, had reddish cheeks and a pouty lower lip.
'Yes, Comrade Rostnikov, I recognize you,' he said. 'This man…'
'Officer?'
Tunis Korostyava,' the officer said.
'Korostyava,' Rostnikov said, looking up at the man above them, 'get some help and move the crowd back. Tell them they'll be late for work. I'll deal with the man who flies on statues.'
'Yes, Comrade,' Korostyava said with a relieved smile as he turned with great zeal to order the reluctant crowd back. The crowd argued, Korostyava insisted, and as far as Rostnikov could tell, the policeman did an adequate job. From the comer of his eye, Rostnikov saw two more uniformed officers making their way down the sidewalk. The crowd seemed to have grown to more than a hundred as Rostnikov took another step toward Gogol.
'I am Inspector Rostnikov,' Rostnikov called up to the man.
'Gospodin, Comrade,' the man called down with a smile. Then the smile turned to a frown. 'I don't care who you are. I am here to talk to Gogol, to cheer him up, to ask his advice.'
'Then,' said Rostnikov, 'you have chosen the wrong Gogol. The one you are on is the smiling Gogol, the standing Gogol. He was put here in 1952 after the war to replace the seated, sad Gogol. The Gogol you want is down there.' Rostnikov pointed over his shoulder down Suvorov Boulevard. 'Just on the other side of the underpass,' he continued, 'in the courtyard on the left, number 7a Suvorov Boulevard, right in front of the house where Gogol lived in Moscow, where he wrote. You can't see him from the street. Why don't you come down and we'll go talk to him, cheer him up?'
The man leaned forward, almost falling. From the crowd behind him Rostnikov heard a woman gasp in fear, anticipation of tragedy.
'You hear that, Nikolai?' the man whispered loudly into the statue's ear. 'This fire hydrant of a policeman who knows so much thinks I should abandon you.'
The man leaned dangerously forward to examine the face of the statue and then sat back again.
'Gogol is amused,' he announced.
'I was a young policeman when this statue went up,' Rostnikov explained. 'I helped to keep traffic back then as the young men behind me are doing now. It was even raining that morning.'
'History repeats itself,' the man said, shaking his head wisely.
'As Marx said,' Rostnikov continued. 'Where I now stand and you sit once stood the walls of the White City. This is where the Arbat Gate stood and where in 1812 Napoleon's army entered the city, set up their cannons, and destroyed the Troitskaya Gate of the Kremlin.'
'The 1812 Overture?' asked the man, letting go with one hand to clean his face of rain.
Rostnikov wasn't sure, but he nodded.
'You know history,' the man on the statue said.
'Some,' agreed Rostnikov conversationally.
'Can I ask you something, policeman who knows history?' the man said in a loud whisper no more than fifty or sixty people in the crowd behind Rostnikov could hear. Rostnikov nodded for the man to ask. Again he had the feeling that he had seen this man, even that the man looked appropriate clinging to the statue.
'What's a man to do? He works. His whole life he works until he can fly. And then he discovers that he can fly over the city, over the country, over the ocean. Would you like to fly over an ocean, Comrade Rostov?'
'Rostnikov,' Rostnikov corrected. 'Yes, I would like to fly,' he said, thinking of his own failed attempts to get out of the country with his wife, Sarah. 'But I have a bad leg and I am too old to fly. You need a special passport, special papers, to fly.'
'No, you don't,' the man said, leaning dangerously forward. He held the pointing finger of his right hand up to his lips to indicate that he was about to tell a secret. His lone, clutching hand almost failed him, but he balanced expertly and didn't fall. A smattering of applause from the crowd drew a small smile and a nod of the head from the man on the statue.
'I could tell you how to fly if you had property, money, not Soviet money, but money from the dirty' the man spat into the wind and rain at the thought' countries.'
'I would like to have you tell me,' said Rostnikov. 'But look,' he turned and pointed at the crowd, at the traffic, 'you are stopping people from going to work. I'm standing here soaking. I have only two suits and can't afford to lose one to the weather. I'm not such a young man and I have a leg'
'What do you take me for, a fool? May your father choke on half-cooked jelly if you take me for a fool,' the man said, and then, loudly to the crowd, 'He takes me for a fool.'
'Don't take him for a fool,' a young male voice called out, followed by a ripple of laughter.
'You're not a fool,' Rostnikov said gently. 'You are a little drunk, a little confused, a little unhappy, a'
'Of course I am!' cried the man. 'I'm a Russian. But the important question is, Do you like me?'
'At the moment.' Rostnikov sighed. 'But I will probably begin to grow impatient and have to call in a truck and ladder.'
'If you do,' the man announced, 'I will simply fly from here.' With this he let go with both hands, and Rostnikov leaped forward awkwardly to try to anticipate and possibly break his fall. But the man didn't fall. He clung to the neck of the statue with his feet, leaned backward, and then sat up, arms out, dripping with rain, as the crowd applauded.
Rostnikov turned, found Korostyava, and beckoned for him to come forward. The young officer came at a run, his black boots splashing in puddles.
'You and the others clear the area, break up the crowd,' he whispered. 'This man is playing to them. He might even jump.'
Korostyava nodded, turned, and hurried toward his fellow officers to begin clearing the street if they could.
'What's your name, Comrade?' Rostnikov called up to the man, who watched as the police started to disperse the crowd behind Rostnikov.
'What? My name? Duznetzov, Valerian Duznetzov.'
'Duznetzov, what do you do when you are not tying up traffic and whispering to statues?'
'I told you,' Duznetzov said. 'I fly. I leap. I fly. I bend. I spring. And sometimes, when I can, I drink. Gogol is not answering. You are not helping. It is time for me to fly.'
The man began to rise. Keeping his balance with one hand, and in spite of a definite drunken swaying, he managed to stand on the shoulders of the statue. A good wind would send him tumbling backward. In the street a bus or car driver hit a horn, though it was prohibited by law inside the city. Duznetzov touched his forehead in salute to the warning horn and looked down at Rostnikov. The rain had begun to fall harder, sending a chill through Rostnikov, a familiar ache through his leg.
'Why are you doing this, Duznetzov?' Rostnikov asked.
'Because I can neither go nor stay. It's very simple. They give me no choice. They never did.'
'They?' shouted Rostnikov. 'Who are they?'
