The brandy came and Arkady drank half a snifter in one hot swallow.
“See, you did want it,” Pacheco said.
“What was the trick?” Arkady asked.
“Pardon?”
“Getting people to say they saw Stalin. What was the trick?”
Wiley smiled. “That’s simple. Create the right conditions and people will do the rest.”
“What do you mean?”
“People create their own reality. If four people see Stalin and you don’t, who are you, Arkady, to dispute the majority opinion?”
“I was there.”
“So were they. Millions of devout pilgrims believe in visions of the Virgin Mary,” Pacheco said.
“Stalin was not the Virgin Mary.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Wiley said. “If four out of five people say they saw Stalin in the Metro, then Stalin was there as much as you. From what I’m told, your father did pretty well by the old butcher, so maybe you should have given him a salute instead of breaking up the party.”
As soon as Arkady left the Metropol he used his cell phone to call Eva’s. There was no answer. He called the apartment phone. Again, no answer. He called the number of the clinic desk and the receptionist said Eva wasn’t there either.
“Do you know when she left this morning?”
“Doctor Kazka wasn’t on duty this morning.”
“Last night, then.”
“She wasn’t on last night. Who is this?”
Arkady turned the phone off.
The sun was up, backlighting the snow. From the parking lot of the Metropol he looked directly at Theatre Square. The Bolshoi was being renovated and a chariot drawn by four horses was trapped high in the scaffolding. A man and woman walked arm in arm along the theater steps. They had a melancholy air, the classic scene of lovers hiding from a jealous mate.
“How would you describe yourself? A cheerful, sunny personality? Or serious, perhaps melancholy?” Tatiana Levina asked.
“Cheerful. Definitely sunny,” Arkady said.
“Do you like the outdoors? Sports? Or do you prefer indoor, intellectual activities?”
“The great outdoors. Skiing, soccer, long walks in the mud.”
“Do you have books?”
“Television.”
“Would you prefer a concert of Beethoven or gambling at a casino?”
“Of who?”
“Smoke?”
“Cutting back.”
“Drink?”
“Perhaps a glass of wine with dinner.”
Arkady had told Tatiana that he was a Russian American hoping to find a Russian bride. The matchmaker eyed him dubiously from his thin Russian shoes to his winter pallor, but her salesmanship responded to the challenge.
“Our women expect to meet American Americans, not Russian Americans. Also, I have this feeling you are a little more intense than you may be aware of. We try to match men and women who are alike in their interests and personalities. Opposites attract…and then they divorce. Tea?”
Tatiana had bright hennaed hair, an optimistic smile and a scent of sachet. She filled two cups from an electric kettle and wondered aloud how Arkady had found Cupid’s basement office with so much snow on the Arbat. The Arbat was a pedestrian thoroughfare designed to funnel strolling tourists into shops selling amber, vodka, nesting dolls, imperial knickknacks and T-shirts with Lenin’s face. Or, in Cupid’s case, introductions to Russian women. Today the snow had blown away the sketch artists, jugglers, Gypsies and all but the hardiest tourist. Arkady had seen Zoya leave, sleek in a full-length fur coat and matching hat, but the office lights had stayed on and he thought that before Victor descended on the morgue again it might be wise to see the business Zoya co-owned with the husband she wanted dead. Victor had stopped by the apartment and jumped to copy Petrov’s mini cassettes. Pornography was wasted on Arkady, who had dashed through it, but all evidence demanded study, Victor maintained. Anything less was unprofessional.
Cupid had a waiting area, a conference space where the matchmaker and Arkady sat, two cubicles separated by frosted glass and a closed inner office he assumed was Zoya’s. Framed photographs of happy couples covered the walls. The wives were young and Russian; the husbands were middle-aged Americans, Australians, Canadians.
“What is most important is that you and your mate are alike. Wouldn’t you want someone educated, cultured and deep?”
“That sounds exhausting. Did you introduce some of these?” He pointed to a photo of a man in a cowboy hat with his meaty arm wrapped around an embarrassed woman transported from Moscow? Murmansk? Smolensk?
“I’m here only part-time, but I have put some very nice couples together. The problem is we don’t usually do Russian and Russian.”
“I noticed.” His eyes fell on a stack of American visa forms.
“Well, what can I say about Russian-American matches? Nothing in common, true. But Russian women don’t want a Russian man who lies on the couch and does nothing but drink and complain about life. American men don’t want an American woman who’s either spoiled or aggressive. We serve mature, traditional men who want women whose intelligence and education does not get in the way of their femininity.”
The cell phone vibrated in Arkady’s jacket pocket and he checked the caller ID. Zurin. Arkady turned the phone off. “I’m sorry.”
“We’re not just a Web site and a telephone. We’re not a club or a dating service. We don’t just take fifty dollars and send you a list of e-mail addresses of God knows what kind of women, or of women who have moved or married or died. At Cupid we take you by the hand and lead you to your soul mate. May I?” She opened what looked like a wedding album and turned the pages for him. On each was a professional-quality photograph of an attractive woman in a gown or tennis gear; her first name-Elena, Julia, or whatever-and her vital statistics, education, profession, interests, languages, and a personal statement. Julia, for example, yearned for a man with a good heart and his feet on the ground. Once or twice Tatiana stopped at a page to mutter, “She’s been on the shelf awhile. Maybe…”
Arkady noticed a blonde named Tanya in a ski outfit who looked like she could have a good man’s heart for dinner.
“A dancer, I believe.”
“Not only a dancer, a harpist. She plays at the Metropol. I just saw her.”
“Take my word, she’s not your type.”
As distant as Tanya had seemed with the harp, her smile in the picture was fully charged. Her ski suit was made of tight silvery material only very good skiing could justify. The signs in the snow behind her were black diamonds.
“Anyway, she’s taken,” Tatiana said. “Not available.”
“Well, if I were interested in someone else, what is Cupid’s fee?”
“American men pay for quality,” she said. For $500, Cupid promised three serious introductions, preparation of the man’s special “fiance visa” to Russia, and if romance bloomed, all the legal paperwork for her visit to his American hometown. Travel and hotel were his responsibility. “We make sure you find your soul mate.”
She opened another album and flipped through photos of satisfied couples at the front door of a house, at a fireplace, around a backyard grill, by a Christmas tree.
