is that? I appreciate the fact that you restrained yourself.”
“No problem.”
“Look, do us all a favor. Leave Tver. Go away and we can forget our paths ever crossed. Or did she call already?”
“Who?”
“Eva. She was going to tell you she was coming back.”
“But she isn’t, really?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
“But she is going to call?”
“You think I’m just trying to fuck up your mind?” Urman had a soft laugh. “Frankly, I wish you would take her with you. I’m sick of the radioactive bitch.”
Arkady was taking a long route to the apartment, looking for any car following him, when he saw Isakov on Sovietskaya Street. It was two a.m., the hour between sweet dreams and black despair, a time to pace the floor, not the sidewalk. Arkady went around the block, turned off his headlamps and coasted to the corner.
A light snow melted on the ground. Isakov could have continued down Sovietskaya and taken shelter in the portico of the Drama Theater, instead he walked back and forth along a wrought iron fence. He wore a poncho with the hood back and by the dampness of his hair he had been outside for some time. Arkady thought Isakov might be waiting for someone, but he showed no signs of looking up and down the street.
The buildings behind the fence were obscured by trees, but they seemed to be typical pre-revolutionary mansion turned municipal office. Walls maybe yellow, white trim. The gate had a guard post, but the night guard had been replaced by closed circuit surveillance cameras. Nothing special, except that it was the same gate that Sofia Andreyeva had spit at.
The cell phone rang. Arkady snatched it up. Across the street, in his own world, Isakov didn’t appear to hear.
On the phone Eva said, “I want to see you.”
He had imagined there would be conversation, explanation, expressions of regret.
Instead, when she came through the door of the apartment, he removed her jacket and pressed her against the wall and found the hook of her skirt, a voluminous Gypsy affair, while she unbuckled his belt. In a moment he was in her, past the cool skin to the heat within. Eva’s eyes were huge, as if she were in a car that was rolling over and over in slow motion.
“Take off your blouse.”
Just the way she lifted the blouse over her head was graceful, Arkady thought. Her Chernobyl scars melted and every line of her was perfect. He pulled her to the floor. She managed to pull out the lamp plug and in the dark she hung onto the cord as if it were a lifeline. The back of her head hit the floor with every thrust, and when his anger was spent she kept him inside until he was hard again, so that the second time he could be gentle.
22
Arkady said, “I think Napoleon slept here. This bed is about his size.”
“It’s perfect,” said Eva. “I slept like a cat.”
He was always struck by her smoothness. In comparison, he was wood, bark and all.
“How is your head?” she asked.
“Improved.”
“But you haven’t seen Stalin?”
“No.”
“Or his ghost?”
“No.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts.”
“Not flying through the air, but waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” Eva asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe political consultants.” He reached to the floor and refilled two glasses of the professor’s Bordeaux. “Today is the last day of the campaign. Is Isakov confident?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, but I don’t want to talk about him. This is good wine.”
“French. Everything here is French. In fact, even our situation is extraordinarily French. Until someone dies, then it’s Russian. Pushkin had over a hundred lovers and then died in a duel defending his wife’s honor. She was a flirt. Is that irony or justice?”
Eva said, “We had a seminar on Pushkin at the hospital.”
“Poetry in the workplace. Excellent.”
“They said that the bullet that killed him penetrated Pushkin’s right pelvic bone and traversed his abdomen.”
“I think he would have preferred one through the heart.” He set down his glass and pulled her close to draw in the scent of her neck. “Have you ever noticed that when one lover leaves the bed, the other rolls into that space?”
“Is that true?”
“Absolutely true.” Something struck him. “Are you aware that Isakov gets up in the middle of the night to pace up and down Sovietskaya Street?”
Eva took a moment to adjust to the change in subject. Her voice flattened a little. “I didn’t know he did. Marat mentioned once when we were driving on Sovietskaya that Nikolai’s father used to work there.”
“Where was ‘there’?”
“I didn’t notice. You don’t like Nikolai.”
“All I know for certain about Nikolai Isakov is that he’s a poor detective.”
“He’s a different man here. You don’t see the real Nikolai in Moscow or Tver; his natural setting is a battlefield. Do you want to know how we met?”
Arkady didn’t want to know.
“Sure.”
“The Russians were shelling a Chechen village of absolutely no military value. All the village men were in the mountains and only women and children were left, but I think the Russian artillery had a daily quota of houses to destroy. I was picking hot shrapnel out of a baby when Nikolai and Marat arrived with their squad. It was a situation I always dreaded, caught giving aid to the enemy. I half expected to be shot. Instead, Nikolai shared his medical supplies and when the Russians began shelling the village again Nikolai got on the radio and told them to stop. The colonel in charge of the guns said orders were orders. Nikolai asked his name so he could personally punch his teeth in and the shelling stopped at once. All I can tell you, Arkasha, is that Nikolai and I met under strange circumstances. Perhaps we were both at our best. We were people who couldn’t exist in the real world. Anyway, this was all before I met you. It has nothing to do with you. Don’t get involved with Nikolai.”
Something rustled at the front door. Arkady rose from the bed, pulled on pants and looked through the peephole. No one was in the hall but on the apartment floor was a string-tied envelope. He turned on a lamp.
“What is it?” Eva sat up.
He opened the envelope and drew out two glossy photographs. Major Agronsky had delivered and fled.
“Pictures.”
“Of what? Let me see.”
He brought them to the daybed. The first photo was taken from about a hundred meters in the air and included a stream and a stone bridge with a van on one side and an armored personnel carrier on the other. By the APC was a campfire. The picture was grainy and enlarged to the max, but Arkady counted half a dozen bodies slumped around the fire. The Chechens were in sweaters, sheepskin vests, woolen caps, running shoes, boots. Skewers of meat, flatbread and bowls of pilaf were scattered with them. Six more bodies were facedown on the
