'This razor was my husband's, Arkady's father's,' she said, putting it on an open shelf lined with white paper near the sink. 'It was given to him by his captain when the war ended.'
'It's very sturdy,' said Sasha.
She looked at his freshly shaven face and said, 'You are a boy.'
He could say nothing, could not even smile. He touched her hand, said, 'He will be fine,' and hurried out the door.
It was late morning, warm, and the streets were full when Sasha reached the sidewalk. He was filled with a sense of urgency and wondered why he had not felt it before, why he had stumbled through the morning when what he should and must do was quite clear. Perhaps it was too late. He walked quickly, almost ran in the direction of the Engels complex. People stepped out of his way or cursed as he hurried for almost three blocks before he stopped, stood for an instant, and then went to the nearest Metro station.
Twenty minutes later, he was in the clearing beyond the park. He could see the telephone from which he had called Maya the night before. He walked past the bushes where the
two men had watched him, along the path where Tamara had walked with her laughing friends.
Sasha was filled with rage as he crossed the concrete square and entered the building. A woman on the stairway carrying a cardboard box tied with rope put her back to the wall to let him pass and then hurried down the stairs and out the building without looking back.
Sasha ran up the stairs, pushed open the stairwell door, and moved quickly to the door of the apartment. He knocked. There was no answer, but he heard someone stir inside.
'Open up,' he shouted.
'Who is it?' a man's voice asked.
'Police,' he said. 'Open the door or I will kick it in.'
Sasha knew in his heart that he would not be able to kick the door down, but if it was not opened very soon, he would vent his rage upon it.
The door opened. A frightened wisp of a man who was only as high as Sasha's chest stood before him, clasping a rumpled blue robe to his bony frame.
'Where is she?'
Sasha pushed the door open and sent the little man sprawling.
'Who?' the man bleated like a sheep.
Sasha said nothing. The room had been completely changed in a few hours. Sasha turned his fury on the little man, who squealed and put his hands up to protect himself.
'Who?' he repeated.
'Tamara,' said Sasha, advancing on him.
'Tamara? There's no Tamara here. Oh, the woman, the noisy one,' the man said.
'She is below, the apartment below.'
Sasha stopped, blood pounding in his head. He was on the wrong floor.
'I'm sorry,' he said, and ran into the hallway.
The door slammed behind him before he had taken two steps. He moved quickly to the stairway and hurried down.
Maybe it was too late in the morning. She would be gone, at work. She would have fled. He opened the door to the hallway and moved to the right door. Someone was inside. She was inside. He knocked.
'Yes,' she said. 'Who is it?'
Sasha opened his mouth to speak, but for an instant he had forgotten the name by which she knew him.
'Me,' he said, controlling his voice. 'Yon Mandelstem, your little Jew.'
'I'm getting ready for work,' she said. 'I'm late. Come back tonight. Come back at eight.'
He could hear her moving away from the door.
'Just for a moment,' he said. 'I have something for you. I'm late for work, too.'
He heard her walk back to the door, and then it opened.
She was wearing a black dress with a thick belt of many colors. Her hair was pulled back, and she was clearly in the process of getting ready. Her face was clear except for the lipstick on her mouth. It gave her a blank look, the look of an android, an unfinished face. She did not look at him but at the large hand mirror she held before her face.
'I look terrible,' she said. 'But I must go, love. What do you have?'
Sasha was grinning, a wide, awful grin as he pushed past her and closed the door.
'Maybe death,' he said, pulling Zelach's gun from his pocket and aiming it at her face.
She backed away from him, looking at him, the red lips of her mime face curled inward in sudden fear.
'What's wrong?' she said. 'What's wrong with you?'
He moved toward her, and she backed away till she reached the bed on which they had lain a few hours earlier. She had no room now in which to escape.
'Where are they?'
'They?'
'The two men,' he said. 'The two men who beat Zelach in my apartment. The two men you work with. The two men you gave my key to.'
'Two men?' she said. 'I don't know what you're talking about. I'm late for work.
I have no time for crazy Jews.'
She tried to move past him, tried to show him that in spite of her fear or because of it she was angry and would tolerate no more of his nonsense, even if he had a gun. He grabbed her arm and stopped her. The mirror was in her other hand. She held it like a frying pan and hit Sasha on the forehead. His grip did not loosen.
'The two men,' he repeated, tapping the tip of the gun barrel on the edge of the mirror.
She looked into his face and saw madness, and Tamara was afraid. She tightened her grip on the handle of the mirror, ready to hit him again, but he stopped her by saying very softly, 'If you hit me again, I will kill you.'
And she knew that he meant it. Instead of hitting him with the mirror, she turned it toward him so he could see his face. Blood meandered down from an ugly, raw cut above his right eye, and he saw the look of madness that now made Tamara open her mouth in fear.
'The two men,' he said. 'I'm a policeman.'
'I…' she began.
'Do not lie,' he said, putting his forehead to hers, whispering his words.
'Now I know why that man was in your room. They told me about it. If you're a policeman, you could get in trouble for what we did last night,' she said. 'You could lose your job, go to jail. You can't do anything or say anything. Get out of my way.''
She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he held tightly and said, 'If you do not tell me, I will shoot you, and then I will shoot myself.'
He let her pull back enough so that she could see his face again. As she looked at him, he reached down, took the mirror from her hand, and held it up so she could look at her
own frightened face, which was now covered with blood from his wound.
'I can't,' she said with a sob. 'You don't understand.'
'You will tell me where they are,' he said evenly, forcing her to look into his eyes. 'I will get them. You will have enough time to pack whatever you can carry and get out of Moscow. And you will never return to Moscow.'
There was no dealing with madness.
She nodded in agreement.
'In the next building,' she said. 'Engels One. Apartment 304.'
Sasha let her go.
'If you call them, I will come back for you,' he said, moving to the door.
'I won't call them,' she said, reaching up to wipe his blood from her face.
'There's no phone here.'
Sasha left the apartment.
He encountered no one on the way down the stairs, but outside in the concrete courtyard a quartet of old men parted for him as he strode toward Engels One.
