“First, Lieutenant Spaskov’s death will be listed as having occurred in the line of duty. He will not be officially listed as the serial rapist. He has a wife and a daughter.”
“Your people can so report,” said Yakovlev. “You have another request?”
Rostnikov told him.
“I think that can be arranged,” said the Yak.
“May I ask when?” asked Rostnikov.
“Perhaps as early as this afternoon,” said the Yak, rising and holding out his hand.
Rostnikov moved closer to the desk and reached over, supporting part of his weight on his left hand. They shook and Yakovlev said, “We have a new set of cases.” He reached into his desk drawer and pulled out three files: two thin, and one very thick. He handed them to Rostnikov. “Keep me informed.”
The meeting was over.
“No Lydia?” asked Elena when she entered her aunt’s apartment early that evening.
Elena had the late afternoon and evening off after working all night and most of the morning, not to mention almost being killed.
Anna Timofeyeva was sitting at the window, looking over her glasses at her niece. The apartment was a bit on the cold side, which Anna rather liked and Elena didn’t mind. Anna wore a thick beige turtleneck sweater. On her lap was a book she had been reading. In the chair opposite her was Baku. The cat was curled up sleeping.
“Lydia was invited out to someone’s apartment for dinner,” said Anna. “She didn’t expect to be home early, but she promised that if the hour was not too late, she would stop for a moment.”
“May we be so lucky,” said Elena, hanging her coat in the corner cabinet as the phone began to ring.
Anna didn’t move, though the phone was within reach.
“It’s him,” she said. “He’s called four times. Out of respect for my health and his father, I have displayed a politeness my closest relatives and colleagues in the procurator’s office would never recognize.”
The phone kept ringing.
“Hello,” said Elena, picking up after the fifth ring.
She stood, supporting her elbow in her hand, the phone to her ear and her legs spread.
“I would have told you, but you were out of the office all day,” Elena said, turning her back on her aunt in the hope of a semblance of privacy. “I want to take more time to consider. I do not want presents. I do not want flowers. I do not want poems. I want time. It is not that I don’t …” She looked at her aunt.
“Say it,” said Anna Timofeyeva, looking down at her book through her glasses. “I’ve heard it before. It does not make me ill.”
“It’s not that I don’t love you, Iosef,” she said, “but I have to imagine my future beyond the immediate romance-a year, two years, two decades. Don’t you understand? … Thank you. … Yes, Saturday night would be fine. An American movie will be fine. And yes you can make the dinner. … Yes, Sasha and I did have to tell Valentin Spaskov’s widow and child that he was dead. … We lied. Porfiry Petrovich approved the lie. Lieutenant Spaskov died in the line of duty on his way home saving the life of a man who was being attacked by a gang on the street. … Yes. … Saturday. Good-bye.”
She hung up and turned to her aunt, who looked up and said, “Sometimes I think I look like one of those old women in the movies and on television, the ones who wear shawls over their shoulders and sit in rocking chairs knitting sweaters no one wants and blankets no one needs.”
“I’m waiting,” said Elena. She picked up Baku, sat down across from her aunt, and put the cat on her lap. The cat continued to sleep.
“I never thought this would be my future,” Elena’s aunt said, taking off her glasses and looking around the room. “I thought I would die at my desk. Overwork. A massive heart attack. A well-attended funeral where I would be laid out in my uniform. And the surprise is, Elena, what has happened to me, what is so different from what I expected and even wanted, is not so bad. In fact, I am growing to like my existence. I like occasional visitors, like Porfiry Petrovich, who ask my advice and help from time to time, but I am learning to savor my repose, my view from the window, and my reading. You’ve read this?”
She held up a copy of
“Yes,” Elena answered, looking out the window and petting the sleeping cat in her lap.
“I was not a reader of literature as a young woman, or even as a middle-aged woman for that matter,” said Anna. “I read dictums, laws, revisions to the law, orders, cases being made and presented. I had no life outside of my work. No marriage. I never came close to considering marriage. I am very close to celibate, and those few experiences took place a long time ago and far from Moscow. Unlike your mother, I have never had very much in the way of a sex drive. Therefore, I do not regret my decisions, and I do not brood over my present state, though it has taken me some time to come to it.”
“That’s your advice?” asked Elena.
Anna shrugged.
“I don’t give advice anymore except to recommend reading and to be decisive about what I want to eat,” said Anna. “I like Iosef. I see his father and mother in him. It is a good combination. I also see something behind his good looks and his eyes. He has a sense of humor. He is creative. Whether you wish to keep your independence for a while or for the rest of your life is your decision. I can’t tell you what it’s like to share one’s life with a man. As you see, I am not much good at this kind of advice.”
Elena did not answer. If Iosef would give her the time, she would take it and probably in the long run she would truly accept him. If he grew impatient and wanted an answer soon, she would probably reject him as nicely as possible. Iosef was a man of both intellect and intuition. She doubted that he would continue to press her for an answer. He might, however, go on with his life if she took too long to decide.
“What have we to eat?” Elena asked.
“Cheese, lots of cheese, bread supplied generously by Lydia Tkach, one onion, one half of a sausage left over from last night, one suspicious-looking tomato, four imitations of American cola in cans with those pop-up things, and a half-empty package of chocolate cookies, which are forbidden to me but I am unable to resist.”
“Sounds fine,” said Elena, getting up and putting Baku back on the chair. “I’ll get it ready. I plan to go to bed very early.”
The surprise had been perfect. Rostnikov had taken the girls out for an ice cream. Russians eat ice cream in spite of the weather. It is a love, a need, an obsession that poets, psychiatrists, philosophers, and writers of novels have been at a loss to explain. Old men have been known to get into fights in near zero weather while waiting in line for an ice-cream cone. Children save almost meaningless kopecks for weeks to buy one small packaged ice- cream sandwich.
The girls had eaten their ice creams slowly, savoring them. Rostnikov had tried to do the same, but the habits of a lifetime die hard. He was done in five chilling but satisfying bites.
When they got back to the apartment, the girls were looking forward to reading and maybe a little television if there was something on that Sarah Rostnikov would let them watch. Porfiry Petrovich had done his workout before dinner, and no one was in need of a plumber. He might, however, read to them. Sarah wouldn’t let him read them American or French detective novels, though he said they could learn a great deal from Georges Simenon and Ed McBain. Sarah said they were too young. She had a neat pile of storybooks, with chapters, for them to read or have read to them.
They opened the door and looked across the room at the table where three women were sitting: Sarah Rostnikov, Lydia Tkach, and their grandmother, Galina Panishkoya. The girls stood for a moment with the door open, glanced at Rostnikov, who was smiling, and ran into the waiting arms of their grandmother.
Rostnikov took off his coat, hung it up, and looked at the table now surrounded by happy weeping women and children. The only one not crying was Lydia Tkach, not because she didn’t want to, but because she had an image to maintain, an image she had spent a lifetime perfecting.
“Do you have to go back to jail?” the older girl asked.
“No,” said her grandmother.
“Your grandmother will live here with us for a while,” said Sarah. “It will be a little crowded, but we’ll manage.”
“Apparently,” said Rostnikov, “your grandmother was confused. She didn’t do the thing we thought she did. It was someone else who has yet to be found. Your grandmother got caught in the middle of an unfortunate event.
