People were crossing the street, pretending to look for some address to avoid the insane couple.
He moved toward her, his hands still plunged in his pockets. Sasha threw his head back to clear the dangling hair from his eyes.
Elena said nothing as they walked side by side.
“My birthday is in three days. You want to know how old I’ll be?”
“Thirty,” she said.
“I look thirty?”
“You look fourteen,” she said. “My aunt and I have been invited to the party for you. If you are reasonably sane by then, we may come.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I think I like you better crazy than contrite,” she said. “Or even better, something in between.”
“I’ll try,” he said.
“Feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Then …”
“Let’s find an Arab girl.”
FOUR
Before he left Petrovka, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov called his wife. He knew she would be home. Sarah was recovering from surgery for a brain tumor. The operation had gone well, but the recovery was taking much longer than they had expected. They had gone on a vacation to Yalta, which had not been much of a rest, and some progress had been made, but Sarah still grew dizzy if she walked more than a few blocks and she needed at least ten hours of sleep each night.
“You’re home,” he said when she answered the phone.
“I was about to go through the door when you called,” she said. “I’m trying out for the circus in an hour.”
“Trapeze?” he asked.
“High wire. Only the Americans and the Brazilians still do trapeze. What’s the bad news?”
He was doodling again, trying to find … “I’ve got to go to Arkush today. I may not be back tonight. A priest has been murdered. Father Merhum.”
There was a silence on the line and then a sigh. “Iosef’s play,” she said.
Their son had been out of the army for almost six months, and a play he had written about his experiences in Afghanistan was scheduled to open that night.
“I’ll try to come back,” he said.
“Father Merhum,” she said. “Isn’t he the one …?”
“Yes.”
“Who would …?”
“That’s why I am going.”
She laughed. Her laugh had not changed and it always broke his heart. He had known her since she was a young girl, and now he saw a few film frames of the young pale girl with the long red hair laughing in the park. It was a laugh filled with sadness.
“Try to get back for the play,” she said.
“You’ll be all right?”
“My cousin Gittel will be here this afternoon.”
“Good,” he said. “Sarah, you remember my family’s apartment near the Arbat?”
“I was only in it twice,” she said.
“Were there three chairs in the bedroom or two?”
“I don’t know, Porfiry. Is it important?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I will be back tonight if I can. If not, I will call Iosef and tell him we will come tomorrow.”
“They still murder priests,” she said. “The Cossacks are back in the street.”
Sarah’s uncle, her father’s brother Lev, had been a rabbi. Just before services on a Friday afternoon in the winter of 1940, before Rostnikov had met his future wife, her uncle had been taken by the police and never returned. And when Sarah had married a policeman, a gentile policeman, most of her family had ceased to speak to her.
There was a silence. Then Rostnikov said, “I must go.”
“I think there were two chairs,” she said. “And a sofa.”
“Yes, perhaps. Rest.”
And she hung up.
Rostnikov stood and massaged his leg in the privacy of his tiny, unbearably hot, windowless office. He considered what he might need for his trip and decided he required his briefcase, which contained a clean shirt, a toothbrush, a book, and a change of underwear. He removed the briefcase from beneath his desk and walked into the next room, where Emil Karpo was hanging up the phone.
Rostnikov wondered if Karpo’s call had been to Mathilde Verson. Mathilde was the prostitute Karpo now visited every Thursday evening. Today was Thursday. Though she was a prostitute, she was also a friend. For four years Karpo had lived under the illusion that no one knew of his relationship with Mathilde Verson. Karpo the emotionless, unsmiling vampire in black, devoted only to his work and the party, wanted no one to know of his human need.
But Rostnikov had discovered the relationship, and Karpo had learned to accept this exposure just as he had learned to accept the need. At first he had seen his relationship with Mathilde as a weakness. Over the past year, however, he had begun to recognize that his dependency on her went beyond the animal needs of his body.
Mathilde was a large woman of forty, with a handsome face and billowing red hair. She worked as a telephone operator during the day and as a prostitute at night and on weekends. Age and increased competition from young girls seeking survival had cut into her clientele and she had seriously begun to consider retirement.
“We are ready?”
“I am ready,” said Karpo, picking up a black plastic briefcase.
“Then,” said Rostnikov, “we are off to see the wizard.”
“He was a priest,” Karpo said. They walked along the aisle between desks where a few investigators were on the phones or talking to each other. Far off in the Petrovka 38 kennels dogs began barking.
“I think I have an assignment for you, Emil Karpo,” Rostnikov said. Approaching the elevator, they passed a trio of uniformed officers guiding a very sullen and bruised little man. The little man glanced up at Karpo’s face, turned white, and looked away, a bit less sullen than before. “Learn a joke and tell it to me.”
“A joke?”
“Something that makes people laugh,” said Rostnikov.
“What would be the function of my learning to tell you a joke?” Karpo asked as the elevator reached the sixth floor, its door opened, and out stepped a plainclothes officer and a group of civilians, all male, who hurried in the direction of the three policemen and the sullen little man they had passed.
“To broaden your emotional potential. To make you better company on train rides such as the one we are about to take,” explained Rostnikov as both men stepped into the elevator.
“It will be a waste of our time,” said Karpo. “Every minute I spend learning a functionless joke could be devoted to the investigation of a crime. A minute lost might hinder the successful conclusion of an investigation or the apprehension of a criminal who might need that minute to run or cover his trail.”
“That is reasonable,” Rostnikov agreed. “But if you develop a sense of humor, you will have greater insight into the workings of people’s minds. This will make you more capable of understanding them, innocent and criminal alike.”
