A Whisper to the Living

“The tea is good,” she said, patting his hand.

“I’m glad.”

“Have you finished yours?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Let me look at your leaves.”

She took his cup and held it at a slight angle to catch maximum light from the bedside lamp. She looked at it long, perhaps a full minute.

“What do you see?”

Both mother and son knew they were endowed with certain connections to thoughts and events that others did not have. These visions, feelings, were not controlled by intent. They just came. Akardy Zelach knew his mother was not reading the leaves but looking to them to give her a flash of insight. She and her son had no great intellect, but they did have the insight.

Akardy’s mother felt the shudder of connection and put down the cup.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “Sometimes there is nothing. Another poem please.”

He obliged and she lay back with closed eyes, listening and wondering about the shadowy specter she had just seen. The vision was too dark to really see, but the dread, the certainty of death that clung to her son now, was evident not in images but in a certainty that pervaded without giving its name.

In the vision, the creature of dark dreams had been looking at her.

“You are still happy with the wedding plans?”

The studio apartment of Iosef Rostnikov was almost dark. The lights were out, but moonlight and street lamps managed to penetrate the drawn shade and thin drapes over the lone window. This was the way Iosef liked it when he slept, just a little light. He retained a dread of total darkness when he slept from an incident during his days in the army. The barracks held memories of a sleepwalker, Private Julian Gorodov, who appeared at Iosef’s bedside babbling. Then there were thieves: Private Ivan Borflovitz had reached gently under Iosef’s pillow looking for his wallet. Iosef had grabbed Borflovitz’s wrist and twisted until the arm of the transgressor strained with a pain that would endure for weeks. Sergeant Naretsev was not so gentle, and Iosef, a light sleeper, awakened to grab him by the neck and whisper a death threat.

“Yes,” said Elena, who lay at his side.

Both Elena and Iosef, on their backs atop the blankets, were looking up at the shadows on the ceiling. Elena wore one of Iosef’s gold T-shirts with the words “Lightning in the Woods” in crimson on the front. Lightning in the Woods was one of the plays Iosef had written, produced, directed, and acted in during the years after his military service.

Iosef, shirtless, wore a pair of gray sweatpants that he had cut off at the knees.

“We are too old for the nonsense,” she added.

“I know,” he said.

“Two days of eating and drinking and warding off drunken people I don’t know.”

“I agree. So do my mother and father.”

“And then,” Elena went on, “the ridiculous ritual of my being kidnapped and you having to get past guards to rescue me and find a way out of this apartment. Why can we not just go to our appointment at the marriage office, sign our papers, and have a small party at your parents’ apartment?”

“I agree with you completely,” he said. “That is what will happen. It will be as you wish. My mother and father and the guests know that.”

“The point of the wedding is to make us happy, not to make us miserable. And the cost of food and drink. .”

“Do you hear me doing anything but agree with you?” he asked, reaching over to touch her shoulder and move his hand down to her smooth stomach.

“No,” she said, moving his hand and turning away.

“I propose we make love one more time and then get up to greet the sun. I will make breakfast.”

“I accept that proposal,” she said, turning back to face him as she considered whether it was the right time to tell him.

Iris Templeton entered the darkened tobacco shop not far from the Kremlin. Daniel Volkovich had opened the door with one of several jangling keys taken from his pocket. He had held it open so she could enter in front of him and have to touch him as she moved.

“You are not afraid,” he said as he closed and locked the door.

“Should I be?” Iris asked, turning to him.

There was a single low-wattage lamp on the counter of the shop.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “You do understand why I could not bring you here with your police escort?”

“Yes.”

They had paused in the middle of the shop. Iris smelled an almost dizzying array of tobaccos. She had ceased smoking fourteen years ago while her father was dying from what he called “the last whacks of the Marlboro coffin nails.”

“Good,” Daniel said, and moved to a door at the rear of the small shop.

The door wasn’t locked. She followed him through it and into another room not much larger than a closet. Still another door, but when this one opened there was a flow, not a rush, of light and the light was a golden haze. Inside the room, eight girls stood or sat talking and smoking. When the door opened, they looked at Daniel and Iris and stopped talking. It was not the first time Daniel had brought a female client. All the girls welcomed female clients. The risks of disease were diminished, and extra money could be earned from voyeurs at peepholes or watching on television monitors. One wealthy customer had a video hookup to all three rooms in the back. The girls knew that the price of such a selection in one’s own home was enormous.

None of the girls were scantily clad. Most wore skirts and blouses or sweaters that accented their breasts. Others had the lean, slick, boyish look of models.

“You may talk to whichever one of the girls you wish,” Daniel said. “But I suggest Svetlana. She is the best educated and probably the smartest.”

He was looking at one of the svelte boyish girls. Svetlana paused in talking to another girl and looked at Iris openly with a smile.

Daniel motioned for Svetlana to come closer. When she did, her brown eyes were wide and fixed on Iris.

“Miss Templeton is not a client,” he said. “She is a reporter from England. You will answer her questions and Miss Templeton will compensate you for your time.”

Svetlana nodded.

“Room Two,” he said.

As Svetlana led her through yet another door, Iris looked back at Daniel, who met her gaze and grinned, a dinosauric grin that Iris definitely did not like. She followed the prostitute to a dark hallway and into an unmarked room. The room had a bed, a comfortable chair, a hat rack, and a small painting of an early-nineteenth-century Russian village street on the wall. The yellowish light in the painting was the same as that in the room from which they had come.

“You’re sure you don’t. .?” the girl asked, touching her red lips.

“Certain,” Iris said. “No offense.”

The girl looked puzzled.

“It means ‘please do not be offended.’ ”

“Your Russian is quite good. I wish I could speak English that well. I am learning.”

She motioned to the chair. Iris sat. The girl moved to the bed and sat facing her.

Iris looked around the room.

“Yes,” said the girl. “We are being watched and listened to. What do you want to know?”

Iris took out a small pad of paper and a click pen.

“How old are you?”