Karpo stepped outside and closed the door. Petrov moved across the room toward Rostnikov. “The other policeman told me you wanted to see me. I came right over,” he said.
“Please sit,” said Rostnikov. “I prefer not to look up.”
Petrov eyed the chair across from Rostnikov and sat wearily.
“Do you know where our Officer Gonsk might be?” Rostnikov asked.
“Looking for Peotor, I suppose,” said Vadim Petrov.
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “You look tired.”
“I’ve had little sleep since this began,” said Petrov. The darkness under the farmer’s eyes looked painted. His hair needed washing and his clothes looked slept in.
“You’ve had a great responsibility,” said Rostnikov.
Petrov looked up at the policeman, who continued, “Party chair, leader of the community, keeper of secrets.”
Petrov said nothing.
“May I ask you a question, Comrade Petrov?”
Petrov looked up.
“Do you have a scar on your chest?”
Petrov looked away.
“It won’t be difficult to find out,” said Rostnikov gently.
“I have nothing to say,” said Petrov.
“Then I will speak,” Rostnikov continued, looking down at the notes before him. “You came to Arkush in late April of 1959. You were twenty years old. You came in search of your father, the priest. You identified yourself to him and agreed not to reveal your identity. You remained close to him, even accompanied him on a religious mission to protect a monastery. Shortly after you returned, in 1974, you joined the Communist party and became a zealous leader who opposed the church. Then, two days ago, you murdered your own father with an ax.”
Petrov turned his gray eyes to the policeman.
“And yesterday,” Rostnikov added, “you murdered a nun. At least that is what makes sense to me. If you have any other explanation, let’s have some tea and discuss it.”
“Then she died for nothing,” Petrov muttered.
“I didn’t hear …” said Rostnikov.
“Sister Nina,” he said. “She died for nothing.”
“Would you like tea?” asked Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Petrov.
Rostnikov poured and handed the tepid glass across to the farmer, who took it in his large hand. The policeman waited silently while the man drank.
“My mother lived in the small town near Kiev where my father was born,” said Petrov. “Merhum was a boy, but he seduced her, more than once. The son of a priest who would become a priest seduced a married woman, the mother of his closest friend, Oleg Yozhgov.”
“Oleg,” said Rostnikov.
“Oleg,” repeated Petrov. “Merhum, his father, and his family fled the village when Stalin’s purge of priests began in the west. He did not know that my mother was pregnant with me. I barely remember my half-brother Oleg. He and his father, Viktor, were forced into the army when the Nazis came. I was a little boy. They died in the war. My mother survived, and when I was eighteen, just before I left for my army service, she told me of my real father. He was not as famous as he later became, but his name was known and she told me of him and where he could be found. She thought if I revealed myself to him, he would take me in with open arms. I had no such illusions, but I wanted to find him, to face him. My mother died when I was in the army. I had nothing to go back to in my village, so I took the name of Petrov and came to Arkush. More tea, please.”
Rostnikov poured another glass and Petrov drank it quickly. Then he held out his glass for more.
“He had a family,” Petrov went on. “Wife and son. He did not deny me, but he did not want to reveal my identity. I accepted that. I joined his faith, believed in him, and then, little by little, I learned.” He stopped and looked down at his empty glass.
“You learned?”
“That he had only begun with my mother, that he had touched many women, girls, taken them, lied to them. Though my wife was ill by then, dying, he even made overtures to her. I turned from him, but I didn’t renounce him. And then he had a son, my brother, and later a grandson. I had no children, no family. I befriended Peotor and his family. Helped them. Peotor was weakened, beaten, almost broken by our father’s strength. I supported him.”
“But you never told him you were his brother?”
“No.”
“And then?” asked Rostnikov.
“He set himself upon Sonia, the wife of his son. The mother of his grandson. He took her, tricked her, and then shamed her. He made her … I found out about it three weeks ago. I went to him, told him to stop, said I would expose him. He said no one would believe it, that it would bring ridicule upon me, Sonia, Peotor, and Aleksandr. I tried and he said to me … he said to me, ‘Vadim, there is much that I believe in in this world. I do the work of God and man with my full heart, but the Lord has also given me a lust that age has not ended. It is the burden I carry. I cannot overcome it. In many ways that which I have accomplished has come from the guilt I feel because of what I am.’ That is what he said to me and that is why I killed him on the morning when he had planned a meeting in Moscow with Sonia. Sonia looks very much like my own mother’s pictures.”
“I am sorry,” said Rostnikov.
“I killed Sister Nina for the family I never had,” Petrov said, his head bowed. “For the secret she had kept for him. I was mad. I killed her to keep that secret and now I’ve told you and-”
“Where is Peotor?” asked Rostnikov.
“In the tower of the church,” said Petrov. “I was going to kill him, to keep him quiet, but I couldn’t. My brother is worth more than my honor. I am very tired.”
Petrov stood up and looked around the room as if it were some completely unfamiliar landscape. “Comrade Inspector,” he said. “Do you have a wife?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov.
“Children?”
“A son.”
“Parents?”
“Long since dead.”
“Consider what it is worth to destroy the name of a beloved priest and the family of his child,” said Petrov, leaning forward, both hands on the table.
“You must go to trial. I have no choice, Vadim Petrov?”
“I will give you one,” said Petrov, picking up the bread knife.
As the knife rose Rostnikov put his hands against the table and shoved. Petrov tumbled backward. Though his leg kept Rostnikov from lunging forward, he did manage to shove the heavy table out of the way as the door opened and Karpo ran in followed by Misha Gonsk.
“Wait,” cried Petrov, his back against the wall.
The three policemen hesitated and Vadim Petrov plunged the bread knife into his throat.
From the window through which the crow had looked the day before, Klamkin the Frog watched Petrov’s suicide. He had heard little of the conversation, but enough for his needs.
He hurried back into town and attempted to reach Colonel Lunacharski by phone, but the colonel had left his office and no one was sure where he had gone.
Instead of waiting for the four o’clock train, Klamkin went to the home of a former KGB informant in Arkush. Colonel Lunacharski had supplied him with the name.
The woman had not been happy to see the ugly man at her door. She wanted to tell him that she was no longer able to perform any duties in Arkush, but recognized that this was not a man one wanted for an enemy.
She let him take her car, a very old Moscova, which he promised to return “soon.”
