The house smelled of chicken and he was hungry.
His wife made a sound but asked nothing. It was as he hung up his jacket that he noticed the blood on the left sleeve. How could he have missed the blood? He had checked in the car mirror and washed himself at the station. Was he growing careless? What would his wife have thought had she seen the blood? Had she seen it? She would think, he concluded, that he was a policeman and it is not unusual for a policeman to be in contact with blood from time to time.
His wife, whose name was Svetlana, was not the kind to ask questions. She had never been a beauty. Too thin. Almost no breasts. But her skin had always been smooth and clean and her eyes a perfect blue. Her hair was cut short. It was blond, a dark blond, but still …
The policeman spat on his hand and wiped the spot away with his fingers. Now his jacket was relatively free of blood, but his fingers were a watery red. He moved across the room to the sink behind his wife and washed his hands.
Svetlana was a good wife, a quiet wife. She used to ask about his days, but he had never told her much, and as the years went on, he told her less and she asked less. Instead, at the dinner table they talked of her day, which consisted of taking care of their daughter and trying to edit technical manuscripts at the kitchen table. Svetlana was educated, far more than her husband, though she was careful not to show it. Her editing brought in much-needed extra money. But she didn’t talk much about her work. She talked about their daughter and any visitors they had, including his sister. She talked about how she had gotten food for the day. She talked a bit about the news and who was sick and who was well. More and more she talked with her head just a little bit down, not quite looking him in the eyes. He noticed, but he said nothing.
After dinner, if it was not too late, they watched a little television sitting next to each other. They made love infrequently, but when they did, it was gentle and sad and he was careful with her as if she mighty easily bruise or break. There was no passion in their coupling. There had never really been much, but in the beginning it had been better. Now she had no desire.
Tonight it was too late to watch television and he was tired. When they entered the bedroom quietly, they could hear their daughter’s even breathing. The room, like the apartment, was just a bit cold. He was a big man and didn’t mind the cold. But she was thin and wore a sweater to bed.
He whispered to her that the chicken had been delicious and kissed her on the cheek. Light from the street lamp created shadows in the room. Either one of them could have pulled the curtain, but neither did and neither wanted to. They lay in the bed, eyes closed, pretending to fall instantly asleep.
Tonight he had raped his twelfth woman. She had been tall and he had seen her from the front as he had passed her in the car. She had seemed pretty in the lights of the street and in the headlights of his car. Too much makeup but pretty and no more than forty. Her coat was warm and heavy and she wore red boots. The coat had a hood, which she wore over the back of her head of dark hair.
He had followed her from the Polezhayavskaya metro station. He had almost missed her. He had hoped she wasn’t too skinny beneath that coat, that she had big breasts or at least full ones. When the street was clear of traffic, he had turned off his lights and followed her slowly. She did not seem to be aware that the car was behind her. She turned into a small street and he followed, pulling the car to the curb behind her. This street was dark and empty. Had she turned around, he would have, as he had done before, simply identified himself as a policeman and suggested that it was late and he should escort her home, which was exactly what he would have done unless she had refused his offer. In either case, she would have been safe.
But he had gotten out of the car quietly, not closing the door all the way, and quickly followed the woman, who did not look back. He had attacked her from behind as he had all the others except the first, the old woman who had seen him, the old woman he hadn’t raped.
Tonight had been a different experience. He had grabbed the tall woman from behind, hand over her mouth, knife to her throat. She had not struggled as he pushed her into a doorway and ordered her to put her hands on the wall and lean over. He had whispered to her that if she turned around and looked at him, she would die. If she did as she was told, she would live.
The woman had not wept and had not struggled. He had reached under her coat and pulled down her skirt and ripped off her panties. She did not move. He had his erection, had it almost before he had spotted the woman. Now he slipped on the condom and tried to enter her. She was tight and dry. He had told her to loosen up. She had not done so or could not. She did not plead. She did nothing but comply. She did not beg. She did not have the look of a prostitute, but maybe she was an expensive one. Yet her apparent indifference angered him, and it was only with great effort that he began to enter her. He didn’t get far.
He had stepped back in failure and fury and struck the woman on the side of the head with his fist. She had gone to the ground huddled in a fetal ball, her panties in the snow, her hands over her head. Still she didn’t whimper or beg. He went mad and began to hit her with both fists, kicking her as he buttoned his pants. It was he who made the noise.
He heard a car. It was a block or so away, but it seemed to be coming toward them. He left her lying there after warning her not to move. She remained perfectly motionless and at that instant he thought he may have killed her. The last he had seen of her was her still body and her red boots.
Now, lying in bed next to his wife, he thought it definitely possible that he had murdered the woman. She had made him lose his sanity for perhaps a minute. She had been nothing but a stiff log. His frustration had turned to fury. She might be lying dead in that doorway.
He was not exactly frightened. He was confident that he could continue to control the situation, especially if the woman was not dead. He should have paused to check, but the car had been coming and he had run back to his own vehicle, continuing to button his pants as he hurried.
He had long ago stopped trying to understand what he was doing or why. It simply came to him from time to time that he had to find some woman alone, to attack her, humiliate her. He would feel a surge of power when he entered her and for hours later, remembering her pleas, her weeping, her fear. But tonight had been different. Tonight had been very bad and unsatisfying.
He had placed his holster and handgun on the high shelf near the apartment door. He had placed his watch on the table next to the bed. The dials glowed in the darkness. He lay on his side watching them, watching the second hand, trying to hypnotize himself into sleep.
It took only ten minutes before he was snoring gently.
His wife, however, now that he was asleep, rolled on her back and looked out the window toward the light. She had a vivid imagination, which she kept to herself, and she was a careful observer. She had seen her husband wipe something from his jacket and then immediately move to the sink to wash his hands as he made very small talk about visiting her mother on his next day off.
She got up slowly, quietly, and tiptoed across the room. She listened to his gentle snoring, knowing it was real. Normally she was lulled by the duet of her husband’s gentle snore and her child’s more subtle breathing, but for months it had been more difficult to hear this music of the night. One instrument was flat.
She opened the door and stepped into the living room, closing the bedroom door almost all the way behind her. There was a window in the living room, too, but the light was not as bright as in the bedroom. She moved in faint shadows to the front door and turned on the small overhead light they seldom used. Then she pulled the sleeve of her husband’s jacket into the light and looked at it carefully. The stain was faint where he had attempted to remove it, but he had done so hurriedly. She could see it. She was not sure what it meant. He was a policeman. He had no reason to hide a bloody spot on his sleeve. It was not the first time he had come home with a sign of what he did to earn a living. Once he had a broken hand. Another time, a deep bandaged gash on his forehead. She shivered inside her sweater, turned off the light, and went quietly back to bed.
She slept little that night.
Yevgeny Tutsolov went over all of the mistakes he had made as he sat in the one-room apartment he shared with Leonid Sharvotz. At the moment he was sitting, alone in his underwear, applying compresses to his aching leg where the rabbi had kicked him.
It had been a disaster, a farce.
The towel was cool. He took it off and limped to the small stove in the corner, where he kept the water just below boiling. He dipped the towel in the hot water and wrung some of the water back into the pot. His hands burned, but that would pass quickly. He limped back to his chair and placed the towel on the black-blue-yellow patch above his right knee.
