somewhere.” He waved his arms futilely at charts, at audio equipment, at photographs of small brown people with oversize bows and arrows. Two blue macaws in separate cages cocked their heads skeptically at Arkady and blinked their sapphire eyes.
“Do they have names?” Arkady asked.
“Fuck off,” said one bird.
“Piss off,” said the other.
“Don’t get them started,” Kunin said. “It’s bad enough that the tropical forest they came from has been despoiled. . by international corporations. . logging in the Amazon, paradise lost. My charts are virtual tombstones. . Thank God for DNA. . For example, who the devil are the Lapps? Really.”
“A good question. Do you have five minutes to look at this?” Arkady produced the notebook.
“Ah, as you mentioned on the telephone; your piece of evidence.” The professor pushed books off his desk to make room. “You’re in luck. I have been making a study of ‘interpretation’ to see whether it tells us something about the foundations of language. The basic words.
“You get the drift. Because each interpreter creates his own language.”
“Ah.”
“You’ll see.” Kunin sipped oxygen and studied the pages. “I can tell you, to begin with, one thing that’s odd. Usually the first thing a professional interpreter does is write on the cover of his notebook the name of the event, the parties involved, and the place and date the notes were taken. Also his name, mobile phone and an e-mail address in case the notebook is lost or stolen. Perhaps promise of a reward if found. This notebook has no identification. There is the name Natalya Goncharova, Pushkin’s wife, but of course she was a historical figure and a slut to boot.” The professor emeritus stopped for air and returned to the first page. “It’s hard to say with so few pages actually written on but it seems to be a notebook commonly used by journalists or consecutive interpreters. I would say that by the use of some commonly used symbols this was the notebook of a consecutive interpreter. Party A speaks in one language, which the interpreter relays in a second language to Party B. So it goes back and forth. If he keeps good notes, he can deliver a complete and accurate translation whether the parties speak for one minute or ten. It’s an amazing mental feat.”
Arkady was more confused than ever. Each page was blocked into four panels with a dizzying solar system of hieroglyphs, half words and diagrams. He felt like a fisherman who had hooked a creature far below the surface of the water with no idea of what he had caught.
“From these pages an interpreter can reconstruct an entire conversation?”
“Yes. And aren’t they lovely? Beyond arrows signifying ‘up’ or ‘down.’ A bumpy line for ‘difficulties.’ A loop and an arrow meaning ‘as a consequence.’ Genius. A ball and line for ‘before’; a line through the ball for ‘now.’ An interpreter creates a new symbol and other interpreters follow. It’s the creation of language before your eyes. A ball in a three-sided box? ‘A goal,’ naturally. Crossed swords? ‘War.’ A cross? ‘Death.’ ”
“Then we should be able to read it too.”
“No.” Kunin was just as definite.
“Why?”
“These are just the commonly accepted symbols. I can write them in for you. The rest are his. We don’t know the context.”
“If we knew, could we read the notes?”
“Probably not. It’s not a language and it’s not shorthand. Interpretation is a system of personal cues. No two interpreters are alike and no two systems are the same. For one interpreter, the symbol for ‘death’ might be a gravestone, for another a skull, for another a cross like this one. Symbols for ‘mother’ run the gamut. Cats can be sinister or cozy.”
“They don’t look warm and fuzzy to me.”
“See, the double triangles could be a map, or a constellation, or a route with four stops.”
Arkady had seen the shape before; it danced just beyond his grasp. He tried not to try too hard to remember because answers came when the mind wandered. Stalin used to draw wolves over and over.
“Or a bicycle frame,” Arkady said. He remembered going into a bike shop with Zhenya. Hanging from the shop ceiling had been a row of bicycle frames in different colors. “Someone was building a bike.” He walked the idea through. “An expensive bike for a serious biker.”
“You don’t know that for a fact.”
“This was custom-made. Not like adding a bell to the handlebars.”
“Renko, I’m dragging around an oxygen tank. Do I look like I know from bicycles?”
And that was it. Abruptly, Arkady was dry. He had gone as far as this slender branch of guesswork could support him.
• • •
“Is this Lieutenant Stasov?”
“I’ll put you on hold.”
“Tell the lieutenant that Senior Investigator Renko is on his cell phone from Moscow and wants to talk to him.”
“You’re first in line.”
Arkady was first in line for twenty minutes, time enough to return to his apartment and heat a cup of stale coffee.
Finally, a voice as deep as a barrel answered.
“Lieutenant Stasov.”
“Lieutenant, I need just a minute of your time.”
“If you’re calling from Moscow, it must be important,” Stasov said. Arkady could picture him winking to his pals in the squad room, taking the piss out of the big shot from Moscow. “What can I do for you?”
“I understand that you are the lead detective in the case of a dead body found ten days ago on one of your beaches.”
“A male homicide, about forty. That’s correct, at the spit.”
“The spit?”
“Where the land narrows. Beautiful beach.”
“Is the victim still unidentified?”
“No ID and no address, I’m afraid. If he had a wallet, it’s gone. I’m just glad it didn’t happen in the summertime when the beach is full of families. Anyway, we dug a bullet out of his head. Low caliber, but sometimes that’s what professional killers use.”
“A contract killer?”
“In my opinion. We will conduct a thorough investigation. Just keep in mind, we don’t have the technical gear that you have in Moscow. Or money, after Moscow drains the coffers. Moscow is the center and we are the stepchild. I’m not complaining, only putting you in the picture. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“What did he look like?”
“We had some photos. I’ll find them.”
“Besides photographs, what was your general impression of the victim?”
“Skinny. Short and skinny.”
“His clothes?”
“Tight and shiny.”
The lieutenant was going to drag it out, Arkady thought.
“Tight and shiny as in biking gear?”
“Could be.”
“Shoes? There’s no mention of them in your report.”
“Is that so? I guess he took them off to walk in the sand. Or one of the local boys stole them.”
“That makes sense. Did you find anything else?”
“Such as?”
“Well, if he were an artist he might have brushes and an easel. Or if he collected butterflies, he’d have a net. If he was a biker, he had a bike. He was found on the beach. There was no bike?”
“Who bikes in the sand?” Stasov asked.
