audience.
In the past, Rostnikov had seen only the finalists. He did not realize how many people in Moscow over the age of fifty considered themselves weight lifters. There were several hundred, and it was discouraging. The room was filled with people doing situps and pushups, running in place, turning red in the face from their efforts. It was madness. Some of the contestants looked too old to compete in anything. Others looked far younger than fifty.
Feeling awkward, he moved to a corner and flexed his muscles. Normally he warmed up by simply lifting. He had a terrorist killer to catch, a dangerous plan to execute. How long could he wait here to be called? Yes, it was Saturday, and most of the people here did not have to work, but for him this was a working day.
“Breathe,” said a robust woman doing situps next to him. “You don’t want to hyperventilate. Breathe deep.”
This discouraged Rostnikov even more. He must look like a novice if this woman was giving him advice. Many of the people in the gymnasium were wearing sweat suits like his. Others wore fancy European running suits in blue or red. A good number were in shorts and shirts emblazoned with the names of the cooperatives or factories they represented. Rostnikov’s sweat suit was gray and baggy.
“Breathe,” insisted the robust woman, coming up from a situp.
“I
Names were called. Weight totals were posted solemnly on a blackboard to indicate leaders. Losers trooped in silently, some angry with themselves. The bald man, as it turned out, was an early loser. He stomped past Rostnikov and threw his towel at the wall. It hit with a sweat-soaked splat. People around pretended not to notice.
And then Rostnikov was called. The robust woman who, he was sure, had warmed herself up into total exhaustion, wished him luck and reminded him to breathe. He promised to do so.
“Name,” said a man in a white shirt, dark tie, and thick glasses. He held a clipboard and did not look back at Rostnikov as he led the way. Rostnikov, dragging his bad leg, had trouble keeping up with him.
“Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich,” the chief inspector called ahead, following the man through the crowd and out of the building.
“That is right,” said the man, heading for the next building.
“I thought it might be,” said Rostnikov.
The man stopped and turned to the detective, his clipboard clutched to his chest. “This is a most serious competition,” he said. “We take it seriously.”
“As do I,” said Rostnikov, wondering if the man was using an editorial “we,” or whether “we” referred to the state, or to everyone competing except Rostnikov.
The man examined Rostnikov and found nothing impressive in the washtub with the oversized gray sweat suit.
As a participant rather than a spectator, Rostnikov’s first view of the auditorium was a revelation. The sense of being looked over and criticized was overwhelming. He followed the man with the glasses like a lost child latching onto the nearest adult.
There was little formality. When he got to mat number three, a no-nonsense woman checked his name again and pointed with a pencil for him to move to the weight that sat waiting. No one told him how much it weighed. Things were moving too quickly. The morning was too hot, and there were too many people to eliminate. A pair of bored, muscular young spotters with tight white shirts moved to either side of Rostnikov as he stood behind the bar and looked at the woman who held the stopwatch.
“Time,” she said.
Rostnikov took a deep breath, bent awkwardly with his bad leg braced. He had taped the leg to give it a bit more stability, but he knew he could not count on it for help. He looked down at the bar but not the weights. You will rise and become one with me, he commanded the bar.
Rostnikov had not practiced the snatch very often. It was too difficult to do with his leg, to bring the weight from the floor to a locked overhead position in one smooth move. In addition, when he practiced in his apartment, he was afraid of sending the weights through the floor onto the heads of the Vonoviches below.
Rostnikov grabbed the weight. Though this was not his event he would try not to embarrass himself. Up, he commanded, up as one, and he imagined Alexiev or young Anatoli Pisarenko flinging the metal overhead with that beauty of motion that demonstrated a man’s control over his own body.
He bent his good knee and moved his other leg to a firmer position and lifted. Up, up, up, he commanded, but he was lucky to get the weight as far as his chest. Fearing that time was running out, he paused only a fraction of a second, then pressed the weight upward and held it. It was heavy, but tolerable. He looked over at the woman and the man with the glasses for the sign that he could drop the weight and end the embarrassment of having failed, but there was something strange about their faces. Both had mouths open and the woman was not looking at her watch. Several people from the other mats had moved over quickly to look at him, and there was a buzz of words he could not make out. The weight above his head began to sway, and he was afraid he would drop it.
Rostnikov pleaded with the woman with his eyes, and finally she nodded to indicate that the lift was complete. He dropped the weight as easily as he could and pulled his bad leg back out of the way as the bar bounced against the mat as if alive. The two spotters bent over to stop it, and Rostnikov straightened up, a slight ache in his back. It was at this point that he realized the cluster of people around his mat were applauding.
“Why did you do that?” asked the man with glasses, a look of awe on his face.
“It was too heavy for me to snatch,” Rostnikov answered, bewildered.
“You weren’t supposed to snatch it,” said the man. “That was the weight for the dead lift. It was more than three hundred pounds. You were just supposed to lift it off the mat. No one has ever cleaned and jerked that much in this competition.”
Rostnikov’s eyes widened. So he was doing all right after all. Then again, he knew that Alexiev and Pisarenko and a handful of Americans, Poles, East Germans, and Bulgarians could clean and jerk almost 600 pounds.
Then things began to move quickly. Rostnikov developed a retinue led by the man with glasses, who became his guardian through the competition.
“Did you breathe?” asked the woman back in the warm-up building when Rostnikov returned between events. She sat cross-legged, red-faced, rubbing her cheek.
“I breathed,” he said.
“I forgot,” she said, getting to her knees and reaching for a blue bag. “Good luck.” And she was off.
With the help of the man with glasses, Rostnikov found out not only what the weights were but how he stood in the competition as the morning moved to afternoon. For the final rounds of each event, there was but one mat, and things moved more quickly.
Rostnikov’s snatch proved to be his weakest event, and there was even a moment of consultation among the judges when they had to decide if his awkward thrust counted.
One of the judges stepped forward, a young man with enormous shoulders and white-blond hair.
“How did your leg get like that?” the young man asked.
“The war,” Rostnikov explained. “Battle of Rostov.”
The young man nodded, looked at his pad of paper, bit his lower lip, and returned to the other two judges. They consulted briefly and announced that Rostnikov’s lift, good enough for third place, would stand.
In the dead lift, however, there was no problem or question. His 560 pounds won easily as did his 300 pounds for the clean and jerk. His totals for the three events were enough to give Rostnikov the championship.
“I knew it,” said the man with glasses, taking Rostnikov’s sleeve and leading him back to the platform to receive his awards. “I knew we could do it.”
Then applause, and lights. Rostnikov blinked back the sweat and wiped his face with his sleeve. He knew he
