and no one is left to bury the dead but the grandparents, who take them home. No one keeps track. There were forty-one official deaths from the accident and half a million unofficial. An honest list would reach to the moon.'
'Then I went to the next village, where I found you. What were you doing on a motorcycle in a house? Let me guess. You take icons so they can be reported as stolen to the militia. That way scavengers and the corrupt officers they work with have no reason to bother old folks like Roman and Maria. Then you return the icons. But there were no occupied houses or icons in that village, so why were you there? Whose house was it?'
'No one's.'
'I recognized the bike by the broken reflector and recognized you by the scarf. You should get rid of your scarves.' He leaned across the bed to kiss her neck. That she didn't shoot him he took as a good omen.
Eva said, 'Every once in a while I remember this thirteen-year-old girl parading on May Day with her idiotic smile. She's moved out of the village to Kiev to live with her aunt and uncle so she can go to a special school for dance; their standards are rigid, but she's been measured and weighed and has the right build. She has been selected to hold a banner that says, 'Marching into the Radiant Future!' She is so pleased the day is warm enough not to wear a coat. The young body is a wonder of growth, the division of cells produces virtually a new person. And on this day she
'When I was a boy, I wanted to be an astronomer and study the stars. Then someone informed me that I wasn't seeing the actual stars, I was seeing starlight generated thousands of years before. What I thought I was seeing was long since over, which rendered the exercise rather pointless. Of course, the same can be said about my profession now. I can't bring back the dead.'
'And the injured?'
'Everybody's injured.'
'Is that a promise?'
'It's the only thing I'm sure of.'
13
In the morning the rain had passed and the cabin felt like a boat safely landed. Eva was gone but had left him brown bread and jam on a cutting board. While Arkady dressed he noticed more photographs: a ballet mistress, a tabby cat, friends skiing, someone shielding their eyes on a beach. None of Alex, which, he confessed, reassured him.
As he stepped out the screen door he couldn't help but notice how the willows, like timid girls, stood with one foot in the water and that the river, swollen with runoff, bore an earthy smell and a new full-throated voice. Arkady hadn't slept with a woman for a while and he felt warm and alive. Blow on cold ashes, he thought, you never know.
'Hello.' Oksana Katamay slipped into view around the corner of the house. She was in her blue jogging suit and knit cap; a wig, maybe, or lunch for her brother Karel was in her backpack. She ducked her head with every step forward and pulled her hands into her sleeves. 'Is everyone up?'
'Yes.'
'The lilacs smell so sweet. This is the doctor's house?'
'Yes. What are you doing here?'
'I saw your motorbike. That's my friend's Vespa next to it. I borrowed it.'
'A friends?'
'Yes.'
Arkady saw the bike and scooter in the yard but they were hardly visible from the road. Oksana smiled and looked around in a goose-necked way.
Arkady asked, 'Have you been here long?'
'Awhile.'
'You're very quiet.'
She smiled and nodded. She must have rolled the scooter the last fifty meters with the engine off to arrive so silently, and she obviously didn't find anything odd about waiting for him outside another woman's door.
'You're not at work today?' Arkady asked.
'I'm home, sick.' She pointed at her shaved head. 'They let me take time off whenever I want. There's not much to do, anyway.'
'Can I give you some coffee, hot or cold?'
'You remembered. No, thank you.'
He looked at the scooter. 'You can travel around here? What about checkpoints?'
'Well, I know where to go.'
'So does your brother Karel. That's the problem.'
Oksana shifted uncomfortably. 'I just wanted to see how you were. If you're with the doctor, I suppose you're okay. I was worried because of Hulak.'
'You knew Boris Hulak?'
'He and my grandfather would rant on the telephone for hours about traitors who shut down the plant. But my grandfather would never really hurt anyone.'
'That's good to know.'
Oksana seemed relieved. If a man in a wheelchair a train ride away was not going to attack him, Arkady was happy, too.
'Look.' She pointed out a stork skimming over its mirror image on the surface of the river.
'Like you. You simply come and go.'
She shrugged and smiled. For inscrutability, the
He asked, 'Do you remember Anton Obodovsky? A big man in his mid-thirties. He used to box.'
Her smile spread.
Arkady tried an easier question. 'Where would I find the Woropays?'
Dymtrus Woropay skated on a street of empty houses, gliding backward, sideways, forward, handling a hockey stick and rubber ball around potholes and grass. His yellow hair lifted and his eyes were intent on the rolling ball. He didn't notice Arkady until they were a few steps apart, at which point Dymtrus pushed forward and cocked his stick, and Arkady threw the trash-bin cover he had carried behind his back. The cover cut off Dymtrus at the ankles. He went down on his face, and Arkady put a foot on the back of his neck and kept him splayed.
'I want to talk to Katamay,' Arkady said.
'Maybe you want a stick up your ass, too.'
Arkady leaned. He was afraid of the burly Dymtrus Woropay, and sometimes fear could be exorcised only one way. 'Where is Katamay?'
'Get stuffed.'
'Do you enjoy breathing?' Arkady dug his heel into Woropay.
'Do you have a gun?' Woropay twisted his eyes up to see.
Arkady unclipped Woropay's pistol, a Makarov, militia issue. 'Now I do.'
'You won't shoot.'
'Dymtrus, look around. How many witnesses do you see?'