death of a young man, took place while she was with her father in Paris. Have you anything else that might be of service to us in our work?”
“And this, too, has been brought to the attention of-”
“Secretary Panyushkin, yes,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “A pity you had not come to me a bit sooner, so that your report, which seems to be somewhat in error, could be coordinated with our investigation. Do you have any other assistance you wish to give my department, Colonel?”
“Not at the moment,” said Lunacharski. He plunged his fork deeply into a square of cream-covered meat that looked absolutely repulsive to him, but he forced himself to raise it to his mouth.
“What do you think?” asked the Wolfhound.
“Most palatable,” said Lunacharski.
“You don’t find it a little tough? Just a bit too hard to swallow?”
“Not at all,” said Lunacharski. “It is delicious.”
Lunacharski had not simply underestimated this great maned peacock and his staff, he had underestimated him badly. Lunacharski’s impulse was to make an excuse, to claim another appointment, to run. He had errors to cover and reports to retrieve, if possible. But he would force himself to stay, to finish the food, even to have coffee with Colonel Snitkonoy.
Lunacharski was a man of patience. There would be changes in his staff and there would be another time, and at this other time Colonel Vladimir Lunacharski would be far better prepared.
At midnight, in the town of Arkush, in the church with four towers, Aleksandr Merhum helped the new priest put on his robes.
The ritual was familiar, for many times the boy had helped his grandfather perform the same ritual.
This priest was young and serious. He neither spoke nor sang under his breath. He neither noticed Aleksandr nor looked away from him, and this was fine with the boy.
When he was ready, the priest nodded to the boy and moved to the door beyond which the soft sound of singing could already be heard.
“You are the grandson of Father Merhum,” the priest said.
Aleksandr looked up at the man. His beard was long but showed no gray.
“Yes,” he said.
“You know the Gospels,” said the priest.
“Some, Father.”
“What comes at this moment to the mind of the grandson of Father Merhum?”
Without knowing why, Aleksandr Merhum thought of his father and mother, who were beyond the door waiting for the service to begin. Then he thought of the policeman with the sad eyes and the bad leg. Finally, he thought of Sister Nina and his grandfather, and the boy said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.”
The priest opened the door, and the sound of voices came in. As he closed it behind him there was silence again. Alone, the boy continued the passage from Saint John which he had begun:
“In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Then the boy knelt, lifted the loose floorboard, and reached into the darkness. He pulled out the thick notebook he had seen his grandfather put there when the priest thought he was unobserved.
The boy carefully put the board back in place and moved to the table. Beyond the wall the voice of the new priest called out to the congregation.
Aleksandr Merhum opened the book and began to read.
HOLY FATHER, TO ACCEPT THE SINS YOU HAVE IN YOUR WISDOM IMPRESSED ON THIS WEAK VESSEL WHICH IS THE BODY OF VASILI MERHUM, I HEREBY COMMIT THIS CONFESSION IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1962:
In the Spring of the year 1938, in the village in which my father was priest, two weeks and ten days following my 15th birthday I entered for the first of many times the bed of Yelena Yozhgov, the mother of my best friend Oleg Yozhgov.
Since that time, I have committed many sins of the flesh and mind and sought in vain to control this test you have given me.
I will herein enscribe all of my transgressions in the hope that it will show me the path to righteousness.
In the sanctuary, the voice of the congregation swelled in song. Young Aleksandr Merhum continued to read. He understood little of what he read, but he knew that he had discovered a terrible and powerful secret. The policeman with the bad leg had known, but Aleksandr had not been weak. He had learned well from his grandfather, and the book would teach him more.
But it was well past the time he should have joined the congregation, so Aleksandr closed his grandfather’s book. He returned the book to the hiding place below the loose floorboard, straightened his cloak and walked to the side door that led to the narrow street. He would walk around and enter the front of the church.
SIXTEEN
“You have twenty minutes,” Sarah said. She was looking at the table, which was really the regular kitchen table and the metal folding table, covered with the white embossed linen cloth her mother had given her almost twenty years ago. With the help of Lydia Tkach, Sarah had set an appetizing table of
“It may be years before we eat this well again,” Sarah said.
“It looks very good,” said Rostnikov. He was still wearing his gray sweatsuit, and he held a large pipe wrench in his greasy hand.
Lydia, who was carrying out glasses and placing them next to each plate, made a disapproving sound. “Sasha may be late,” she said. “It is hard for him to walk.”
She looked accusingly at Rostnikov, who rubbed the back of his right hand against his already smudged nose. “It is also hard for him to see,” she added.
“I’ll go wash,” Rostnikov said.
“Did you fix the toilet?” asked Sarah.
“Ah,” said Rostnikov, looking at his wrench. “It was a challenge, an exercise in sympathetic imagination. Where was the first curve, the second? Where might the constriction be? I imagined myself as small as a mouse, crawling through this maze. Then it came to me. The problem was on the third floor, where the pipes come together and separate to serve the lower part of the building.”
“You fixed it,” said Sarah.
“I persuaded the Romanians to let me in,” he said with satisfaction.
“Toilets,” said Lydia. “He worries about toilets when people around him are being beaten to death.”
“Not toilets,” explained Rostnikov to Lydia’s back, unsure of whether she heard or was even trying to listen. “Plumbing. Plumbing is a hidden universe requiring concentration, expertise, ingenuity. The Chinese are magnificent plumbers. There is a great apartment building in Shanghai-”
“Porfiry Petrovich,” said Sarah. “They will be here soon.”
Rostnikov nodded. He imagined the grand design of arteries and veins within the walls of the apartment building in Shanghai, bringing in fresh water, taking away waste. The building was almost alive, a pulsing meditation in which he could lose himself.
The small shower stall in their bedroom was nearly perfect. Ideal circulation, even spray. The water was
