ghost girl was not one of the girls in Devochka.
Lillita was no more than ten. She was very thin, but not because food was unavailable. He had spoken to eleven little girls so far this morning, and all of them had been examples of baby fat or healthy fullness. This one was different. She had short, dull amber hair, a pinched, sad face, and moist eyes. Her lower lip jutted out just slightly in what may have been a pout. She wore a dark woolen skirt and a yellow shirt with buttons. She kept pulling up her sleeves, and they kept slipping down.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s Boris.”
She had not bothered to look at the old man.
“You know what his job is?”
“He goes into the mine. He knows the mine. He takes people around.”
“I am responsible for much more,” said Boris defensively.
The girl shrugged. She didn’t care. She had been doing her best to keep from looking at the plate of cookies on the table next to her.
Rostnikov had moved his chair in front of the table to be closer to the girls, but he was careful to gauge the distance so that he allowed plenty of space.
“Have a cookie,” said Rostnikov. “Have two cookies.”
The girl rose slightly from her chair and reached over to take two cookies.
“You know about the dead people in the mine?” asked Rostnikov, reaching for two cookies.
“Yes.”
“You knew Anatoliy Lebedev?”
“Old Lebedev,” she said, watching Rostnikov eat a cookie. “I did not know the American.”
“He was a Canadian.”
“They are the same very much,” she said, putting a cookie cautiously to her mouth.
“They might not agree,” said Rostnikov.
Boris mumbled something, wanting to be heard but not wanting Rostnikov to know that he wanted to be heard. It was a very Russian way of making a point. And so, Boris had mumbled, “I will be dead and buried before he finishes talking to little girls and feeding them cookies.”
Lillita Kapronopovich took a deliberate bite of her cookie.
“You think there is a girl with a lantern who wanders through the mine?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.
“Yes,” the girl said.
“Who is she?”
“A ghost.”
“Whose ghost?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve heard, but I would like you to tell me.”
“The ghost of a girl who died in the mine,” she explained, “the old mine, when it first opened, the year my grandfather was born. They had little girls carrying lanterns and crawling into holes where adults could not go. The roof fell down and crushed her. Only her lantern was left. She haunts the mine now because she knows she should not have been sent down there. She knows. She tricks men into going into little spaces and then kills them.”
“She makes the room fall?”
“She stabs them in the face,” said the girl sweetly, finishing her cookie.
Boris groaned. He had heard twenty versions of this tale from little girls this day and most of them had gotten it wrong. Boris knew the true story, though he was not quite sure how he had heard it. He took it on faith that his version was the right one.
“I have two girls around your age at home in Moscow,” Porfiry Petrovich said.
“You are too old to have little girls.”
“They are not my children or my grandchildren. They and their grandmother live with my wife and me.”
“In Moscow?”
“Yes.”
“Is it really warm half of the year in Moscow?”
“It is,” he said.
“I think I will live in Moscow when I get older.”
“St. Petersburg is better,” said Boris, and then added, “What am I saying? I don’t want to be followed by little girls. Forget it. You are right. Moscow is better.”
The girl gave Boris a tolerant look.
“Who told you the story of the ghost girl in the mine?”
“My grandfather,” the child said.
“Where is he?”
“In his little room cleaning his guns. He thinks the Japanese are going to come and try to kill us all. He is a little crazy.”
“I think I would like to talk to your grandfather,” said Porfiry Petrovich.
“Why?” asked Boris. “She told you. He is crazy.”
“I will humor him.”
“Can I go now?” asked the girl.
“Yes, and take two more cookies.”
She got off the chair and took two more cookies.
“Do I have to go back to school?”
“No,” said Rostnikov. “You can eat cookies and drink beer and use bad words all day. You have my permission.”
“You don’t mean it.”
She was smiling now.
“Well, no.”
“Can I see your wooden leg?”
She was standing in front of his chair.
“If you show it to her,” said Boris, “you will have to show it to all of them.”
Rostnikov leaned forward awkwardly in his chair and pulled up the cuff of his left pant leg. The girl stared seriously and said, “Does it hurt?”
“No, we are becoming friends.”
“Friends with a wooden leg?”
“It is plastic and metal.”
“I see,” said the girl, starting on her third cookie. “Friends? You talk to it?”
“Sometimes, but I was friendlier with my bad leg when I still had it, but if I wish I can always visit it.”
“Your leg? Where is it?”
“In a laboratory in a lower basement of police headquarters in Moscow where I have my office.”
“You are making a joke,” she said, tilting her head to one side.
“No,” said Rostnikov seriously. “It is best to keep old friends nearby, when possible.”
Rostnikov let down his pant leg and Boris shuffled behind him.
“Can I tell my friends that you talk to your leg?”
“You have my permission.”
“Thank you,” she said and left the room.
Emil Karpo stepped in.
“Would you like a cookie, Emil Karpo?” Rostnikov asked.
“I do not eat cookies,” said Karpo, who was dressed in his customary black.
Rostnikov knew his associate’s diet quite well, but it did not stop him from an occasional foray into the hope of temptation. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov firmly believed that the regular consumption of cookies was essential to the well-being of every reasonable Russian. Rostnikov ate a cookie.
