He removed his clothes and placed them all neatly on a chair after removing something from his pocket. He held it up, looked at it, and brought the ocarina that Porfiry Petrovich had given to him to his lips. He blew into it gently, one note only. The cat’s ears turned to him and twitched. He placed the ocarina on his desk.
After two hours of rest on his bed in the nude and cold, he would rise and report to Chief Inspector Rostnikov.
Completely nude, Emil Karpo lay back atop the tautly tucked rough khaki military blanket on his bed and closed his eyes. Seconds later he was aware of a gentle movement on the bed to his left. The cat nestled down against his hip. Emil Karpo’s fingers touched smooth, silky hair. Then cat and man fell asleep.
Iosef knew that Elena was as uncomfortable as he as they stood before the desk of the ZAGS officer.
ZAGS (Zapis Aktov Grazhdanskogo Sostoyaniya), the official bureau that handled Russia’s weddings, had to grant permission for every wedding, and once a request was denied, little or no recourse existed in the Russian bureaucracy.
ZAGS, an unimposing two-story half-block-long building, sat on the Butyrsky Ulitsa. In front of the shoe-box building, traffic ran heavily down the wide street and horns blared.
The mandatory thirty-second day after they had applied for their wedding license had come to an end. This was the final chance for either of them to back out of the
Behind them stood the witnesses, Iosef’s mother and father and Elena’s aunt and cousin Edith. Iosef thought his father, two days out of the hospital, should not be there. Elena thought her aunt Anna, who awaited her probably inevitable fourth heart attack, should not be there. Elena and Iosef had no luck in convincing either one of them. Both Porfiry Petrovich and Anna Timofeyeva stood a few paces back, with Anna Timofeyeva between Porfiry Petrovich and Sara. Once Elena’s aunt had been a robust and often-uniformed procurator in the Soviet Union with Rostnikov as her chief investigator. But then both Anna Timofeyeva and the Soviet Union had collapsed.
According to tradition, Iosef had been picked up at his apartment by his parents, and Elena had come with her aunt and cousin. An unmarked police car, a black ZiL, had been provided by Porfiry Petrovich to transport Elena.
They had all met in the stark lobby that carried a nervous echo. Iosef wore his only suit, heavy and navy blue, with a white shirt and a blue-and-red-striped tie. Elena wore a white dress that Iosef had not seen before. She also wore a touch of makeup. To Iosef she looked healthy and beautiful.
Papers had been signed. The ZAGS officer, a lean, smiling man of about sixty, bore an uncanny resemblance to the American actor John Carradine. Iosef remembered an old movie in which Carradine, a consumptive prisoner in an Australian hellhole, saved the life of Brian Aherne by killing an oppressive guard by throwing sheep shears into the guard’s back. Iosef imagined the ZAGS officer reaching into his desk, pulling out scissors, and hurling them toward someone in the room.
The officer spoke, but Iosef, on the one hand, did not hear from his hiding place in the Australian outback. Elena, on the other hand, struggled to keep her attention on the words.
Abruptly the officer stopped and looked at both of them, waiting. Neither knew what to say or do. They looked at each other and smiled broadly, sharing a thought about the officer and the ceremony.
Iosef was instantly happy and Elena’s look conveyed that she was too. They embraced, kissed. Iosef took in the distinct scent of Elena mixed with an unfamiliar perfume while Elena was aware of his smell of bath soap and the familiar touch of perspiration.
Porfiry Petrovich handed his son two plain gold marriage bands. Iosef placed one ring on the ring finger of his right hand. He then placed the other band on the same finger of Elena’s right hand.
Then on to the party, which began with a toast from Porfiry Petrovich, who raised his glass and said, “
A Russian wedding traditionally takes at least two days. Elena and Iosef had decided theirs would take one afternoon. Traditionally, the guests drank vodka and got drunk. Elena and Iosef had decided that vodka would be poured freely, but the length of the party would minimize drunkenness. Traditionally, the groom’s friends would block his way to the waiting bride. They would demand answers to embarrassing questions and, if not satisfied, would reject passage, forcing him to find another way into her room, possibly through a window. Elena and Iosef would skip that too, though they had both laughed one afternoon while at Petrovka imagining Karpo, Tkach, and Zelach blocking a stairwell. They added Paulinin, the Yak, and Pankov for more broken-up laughter.
The party, held in the small third-story corner apartment of Sara and Porfiry Petrovich, quickly spilled into the hallway, where several neighbors joined in. Elena and Iosef stood in the living room greeting guests who brought white envelopes containing traditional gifts of money. The envelopes were handed to Porfiry Petrovich, who handed them to his wife.
A twig of an old man from the second floor congratulated Iosef and Elena saying, “Your father fixed my toilet.”
“Good,” said Iosef.
“It was full of shit and wouldn’t flush. The man is a great plumber.”
“Thank you for sharing that,” said Elena with a straight face.
Iosef couldn’t hold back. He turned and pretended to cough.
On the stairwell, Galina’s granddaughters, Laura and Nina, had come upstairs tentatively but had soon met Pulcharia Tkach, who took them under her wing along with her four-year-old brother. The four of them played on the stairs with squeals and shouts.
In the crowded living room sat a table continually being restocked with glasses, knives, forks, and plates. New rounds of tableware and empty trays were constantly being gathered and washed in the small kitchen by Galina and Lydia, whose shrill voice could be heard chattering above the rumble of conversations around her. Having left her hearing aids in her apartment, she was barely aware that anyone was speaking.
In addition to vodka, bowls and platters piled high with food crowded together, some threatening to topple to the floor. The food included
On the sofa with a glass of Pepsi-Cola in hand sat Anna Timofeyeva, who was keeping a secret that weighed upon her; she had promised to keep it, and keep it she would. Next to her sat Maya Tkach, who looked no happier than Anna Timofeyeva or the other person on the couch of gloom, Sasha Tkach. Sasha held a plate that had been piled high with food and handed to him by his mother. With the plate in one hand and a fork in the other, he ate dutifully.
A man laughed, more the sound of a horse than a human. A man whom Porfiry Petrovich did not recognize called out, “Has anyone seen Victor?” A glass broke. The party went on.
In the middle of the room with Pankov dutifully at his side, Igor Yaklovev, in a perfectly fitted blue suit and red tie, checked the time on his gold pocket watch. The watch was rumored to be a gift from Vladimir Putin. The Yak and Pankov were given room by the guests, who either knew who they were or recognized the presence of persons of power. It did not hurt this aura that the Yak looked very much like Lenin.
Against the wall leaned Emil Karpo and Akardy Zelach. Hands folded in front of him, Karpo looked like a sentry before a secret conclave. An unbidden thought came to Emil Karpo, the flash of the face of Mathilde Verson, killed in the cross fire between a Chechen and a Russian gang. Mathilde, the only woman he had ever been involved with, had been a prostitute. That did not matter to either of them. She found him amusing and worried about him, but it was she who had been flung back against the window of a restaurant, her waves of red hair flowing as she flew.
“Can I get you anything?” asked Zelach.
The image was gone. Mathilde was gone.
“No, nothing.”
Zelach leaned back against the wall again and caught a glimpse of Sasha Tkach.
Zelach knew that Maya had agreed to come to the wedding reception, where she would decide whether or
