Wolves Eat Dogs

By the time Arkady entered, the Woropays were gone. He heard them, but in the dark it was difficult to see which way they had gone, and the path was obsructed by stage flats stacked in the lobby. What dramas had been left behind, to rest cheek to cheek for eternity? 'Uncle Vanya, meet Anna Karenina.' Of course, there would have been children's productions, too. 'Mouse King, meet Raskolnikov.'

A crashing of piano keys came from deep inside the theater, and Arkady pushed through the flats and the clatter of cloakroom racks into a passageway of near-total darkness. He used his cigarette lighter to see along a wall defaced with curses, threats and crude anatomy. He had been in the theater before, but in the daytime. The dark gave no warning of the broken glass that slid underfoot or of the ripped wires that dangled in the face.

Finally Arkady groped his way to a drawn curtain and ropes and the light of a kerosene lamp. A piano with broken and missing keys was onstage, and Taras Woropay played as he sang, ' 'You can't always get what you want, but you get what you need!' ' while Dymtrus, night goggles flipped up, skated and danced wildly from one side of the stage to the other.

The audience seats were tiers of red benches strewn with broken chairs and tables, bottles and mattresses, like furniture thrown down the steps of a house, while Dymtrus's shadow stamped around the walls. A couch had been dragged to the other side of the piano, where Karel Katamay lay propped by pillows and covered with shawls. Arkady barely recognized the virtual skinhead he had seen in photographs at the grandfather's house. This Karel Katamay wore his hair long and beaded around a chalky face with pink eyes. A hockey shirt-the Detroit Red Wings-swam over him. Small, thoughtful pansies sat in jars of water around the couch, and a liter of Evian was tucked between his legs. Arkady didn't know what he had expected, but not this. He'd read descriptions of the court of Queen Elizabeth. That was what Karel Katamay looked like, a powdered Virgin Queen with two oafish courtiers. A satin pillow cushioned his head; a corner of the pillow was embroidered 'Je ne regrette rien.' 'I regret nothing.' When Karel smiled, tickled by the sight of Dymtrus whirling like a dervish, he showed pulpy gums.

' 'Get what you need! need! need!' '

Taras collapsed over the keys while his big brother weaved dizzily on the stage, and Katamay made more a gesture of clapping than actually bringing his hands together.

Dymtrus steadied himself and pointed in Arkady's direction. 'Brought him.'

'A chair.' Katamay's voice was not much more than a whisper, but Dymtrus immediately jumped off the stage to bring a chair from the benches and set it in front of the couch so that Arkady and Karel Katamay would be at the same eye level. Close up, Katamay looked crayoned by a child.

Arkady said, 'You don't look well.'

'I'm fucked.'

Katamay's nose sprang a leak. He pressed a towel against the blood in an offhand, nearly elegant way. The towel, to judge by its blotches of brown, had been used before.

'Summer cold,' Katamay said. 'So you wanted to know about the dead Russian I found?'

'Yes.'

'There's not much to say. Some old fart I found in a village.'

The hoarseness of Katamay's voice brought the volume down to a level of intimacy, as if they were theatrical types discussing a production to be presented on this very stage. Katamay said he had never seen the Russian before, and couldn't know the dead man was Russian, since his papers were missing. He was found in the morning lying on his back, his head at the cemetery gate, bloody but not too bloody, stiff from full rigor mortis, disorganized because of wolves. Katamay found the body coincidentally with a squatter he had seen before, a guy called Seva, about forty years old, missing a little finger on his left hand. Arkady took notes in case the Woropays wanted to stomp on anything afterward. Notes were a good target. But around Katamay, they were like dogs under voice command, and he had obviously told them to be still.

'Just a few questions. How was the dead man dressed?'

'He was rich. Expensive gear.'

'Nice shoes?'

'Beautiful shoes.'

'Well cared for?'

'Beautifully.'

'Not muddy?'

'No.'

'His shirt was damp. Was it clean or dirty?'

'A few leaves, I think.'

'So he had been turned over?'

'What do you mean?'

'A man who drops dead to the ground doesn't roll around much.'

'Maybe he wasn't dead yet.'

'More likely someone turned him over to relieve him of his money and threw away the ID later. Did you find anything else on the body? Directions, matches, keys?'

'Nothing.'

'No car keys? He left them in the car?'

'I don't know.'

'You didn't notice that his throat had been cut?'

'It was under his collar, and there wasn't that much blood. Anyway, wolves had been messing with him.'

'Moved him? Torn him up?'

'Didn't move him. Yanked on his nose and face a bit, enough to get an eye.'

Lovely picture, Arkady thought. 'Do wolves go for eyes?'

'They'll eat anything.'

'You saw their tracks?' Huge.

'Did you see a car or any tire tracks?'

'No.'

'Where were the people in the village, the Panasenkos and their neighbors?'

'I don't know.'

'People in black villages don't get a great deal of entertainment. They're pretty nosy about visitors.'

'I don't know.'

'Why were you there that day?'

Dymtrus said, 'That's enough. He's got a million questions.'

'It's all right, Dyma,' Katamay said. 'On the captain's orders, we were taking a count of villagers in the Zone, and items of value.'

'Like icons?'

'Yes.'

'Would you like to stop for a minute and drink something?'

'Yes.' Katamay sipped French water and laughed into his handkerchief. In case he spits up blood, Arkady thought. 'I still can't get over Wayne Gretzky. Tell the truth, do you know Gretzky?'

'No,' Arkady whispered, 'no more than you know a squatter named Seva missing a little finger.'

'How could you tell?'

'The bizarre detail. Keep lies simple.'

'Yeah?'

'It's always worked for me. Give me your hands.'

The Woropays shifted anxiously, but Katamay put out his hands, palms up. Arkady turned them over to look at purpled fingernails. He motioned Katamay to lean forward, and held up the lantern to observe tendrils of bleeding capillaries in the whites of Katamay's eyes.

'So tell me the truth,' said Katamay. 'Am I fucked or am I fucked?'

'Cesium?'

'Fucked as they come.'

'Is there a treatment?'

'You can take Prussian blue; it picks up cesium as it passes through the body. But it has to be administered