to rise, and once he had risen he stood silently for two minutes coping with pain.
“The metal snake,” he said, pointing to a drain auger, perhaps his most valued tool.
Laura handed it to him, and he began to drive the coiled metal serpent into the sink and through the new piece of plastic piping. She leaned over the sink to watch the metal coils disappear as Rostnikov pushed the device deeper and deeper into the piping. Finally it was as far as it would go. Rostnikov tugged, twisted, and pulled the metal snake carefully out of the pipe.
“Well, it is done,” he said with satisfaction, holding out his right hand. The girl took the large hand and they shook on their success.
“Why do you like doing this?” the girl asked as they put the tools away and cleaned up the mess they had made.
“This is very simple. The work I do as a policeman is very complicated,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I must deal with people, and people are seldom simply good or bad. It is rare for a policeman to be able to fix a problem. One problem creates another one. It doesn’t end, and when it does, the end is not simple and the system is not working any better. Does this make sense?”
“A little,” she said. “It’s like what happened to my grandmother.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “When I fix plumbing, I search for the problem, find it, repair it, and receive the gratitude of those who live with the system. Like this leak.”
He gathered his tools, took the girl’s hand, and went out to report his success to the Karenskovs. They were young, in their early thirties perhaps, and she was pregnant. He worked in the Moscow office of Pizza Hut.
“Fixed,” Rostnikov said. “But don’t use it till morning.”
“Thank you,” said the husband, taking Rostnikov’s dirty hand.
“Yes,” said the pregnant wife. “Thank you.”
“Please take this,” the man said. “I know you won’t take money.”
Actually, Rostnikov was getting close to the point where he thought he might accept a few kopecks to replace equipment. Money was tight and his salary small. Combining his salary and that of Sarah, who had gone back to clerking at the music store, they could make it through each month, but there was nothing left over. Money was there to be had for a policeman, but Rostnikov had never considered selling himself. Once he took even a few kopecks from a suspect or a criminal, he would have sacrificed the very meaning of his commitment to the law. There was a line. He would never cross it.
However, he could accept the four pieces of paper young Karenskov handed to him.
On the way up to the apartment the girl asked, “What did he give you?”
Rostnikov reached into his pocket and handed the four pieces of paper to the child.
“What do they say?” she said. “They are in …”
“English,” he said. “They say we can have four large pizzas free.”
“Pizzas. Like on the television.”
“Better,” said Rostnikov. “Better.”
When they opened the door to the Rostnikov apartment, Sarah was sitting at the table near the window drinking tea with Major Gregorovich, who was dressed in what appeared to be a new, dark gray business suit. Gregorovich stood, looked at Rostnikov and his toolbox with disapproval, and said, “Colonel Snitkonoy wishes to see you immediately.” There was clear satisfaction in Gregorovich’s tone.
“I’ll wash up,” Rostnikov said, moving toward the bedroom where the other child was sleeping.
“The colonel specifically said ‘immediately,’” Gregorovich said.
Sarah shrugged and Rostnikov sighed. He let go of the girl’s hand. “Then by all means let us go.”
“Thank you for the tea,” said Gregorovich.
“You are most welcome, Major,” Sarah said.
“And the biscuit,” he added.
“For that too,” she said. She took Laura’s hand.
“Don’t wait up for me,” Rostnikov said.
“I won’t,” Sarah said. “I have to be up early to get the girls ready for school.”
Both Porfiry Petrovich and Sarah knew she would be awake when he returned.
“You have a car?” Rostnikov said as Gregorovich hurried down the hall.
“Of course,” said the major.
“I’m afraid I will make the car a bit dirty,” said Rostnikov.
“That can’t be helped.”
“Major, no matter what the urgency of this summons, I can walk no faster than I am now doing. So you will either go ahead and meet me or make an effort to match my pace.”
Gregorovich slowed down, and Rostnikov patted him on the back in thanks, leaving a large, dark handprint on the major’s new suit.
Bakunin leaped at Elena before the door was fully open. Once the cat had been lean and the leap had been high and often. Now that Baku had grown old and heavy, his leaps came less frequently, and they fell far short of Elena’s arms.
Anna Timofeyeva sat in her chair at the window, a book in her lap. She was fully dressed in a particularly hideous brown pair of slacks and an almost-matching long-sleeved blouse. She was a heavy woman with short gray hair and a look of suspicion that had come to dominate her face sometime before her career-ending heart attacks. She had begun as an assistant to one of the commissars of Leningrad in charge of shipping and manufacturing quotas. She had no background in law, no training for a position as procurator, but she had been rewarded with the position after almost twenty years of service in Leningrad, and she had taken to it with the same zeal with which she had hounded shippers and manufacturers. In her second ten-year term as procurator in Moscow her heart had reenacted the history of the Revolution. At first it complained and she ignored it. Then it protested and she pretended that she did not hear. Next it rebelled and she sought professional advice and was told to make peace with her heart. That, too, she ignored and continued to work fourteen-hour days and indulge in her only vice, cold tea. And then revolution-heart attack-and she had no choice but to capitulate. Now, at age fifty-seven, Anna had been retired for more than three years.
Elena walked over to her aunt’s chair and gave the woman a kiss on her warm cheek. “Did you walk today?” Elena asked. She was carrying a small bag in one hand and her aunt’s old briefcase in the other. She put them both down.
“Walk,” Anna repeated. “I went out in the brisk, cool air and ran, ran like the wind. Neighbors gawked. Strangers marveled at the sight of a sack of potatoes in a blue sweat suit running through the streets.”
“Did you walk?” Elena repeated, starting to unload the small bag of groceries.
It had taken Elena two hours and four visits to black marketeers to get the three cans of soup, two onions, four potatoes, one large yogurt, and a piece of meat that was purported by an earnest Latvian to be from the finest cattle raised on the great pampas of Argentina.
“I walked,” Anna Timofeyeva said, starting to get up.
“Have you eaten?”
“We, Baku and I, had some bread, cheese, and tea. I think I have lost weight.”
Elena nodded. Bakunin rubbed against her leg.
“I’ll make something,” said Elena.
“Yes,” said Anna.
Having learned what little she knew of cooking from her busy mother, Elena was a poor cook. Her aunt was far worse, as they both knew-indifferent to ingredients and seasonings, inclined to let things almost burn or else to serve them long before they were ready.
“You had a good day?” asked Elena, kicking off her shoes in the general direction of the front door.
“Mine was fine,” said Anna. “For over three weeks now I’ve watched the skinny woman with the fat little boy steal small items from the other mothers in the courtyard. She is so good that she was probably a professional thief before she became a responsible mother.”
Elena found a pot, rinsed it in the sink, opened a can of soup, and poured the soup into the pot. She filled the can with water from the tap. The water looked a bit browner than usual today. As she brought the soup almost to a boil, adding water slowly as well as the handiest of the spices and condiments on the counter, Elena sensed
