off. That was loyalty. The first time I met Pasha, I said, 'Jesus, it's the old man.' '
'We've got to go,' Arkady said.
'The old man was tight with the Irish. They thought he was Irish because he could drink and sing and fight. Women? They were like bees. My mother would say, 'So you've been with your shiksa ho'ahs?' She was very religious. The funny thing is, he was just as strict about me going to a yeshiva. He'd say, 'Bobby, what makes the Jews special is that we don't just worship God, we have a contract with Him in writing. It's the Torah. Figure out the fine print in that, and you can figure out the fine print in anything.' '
'Tell him again,' Yakov said. He was watching the street.
Arkady said, 'I got a call from Prosecutor Zurin ordering me back to Moscow. He was happy to keep me here on ice forever, so there's only one reason I can think of for him to pull me out in such a rush: Colonel Ozhogin is on his way.'
'Remember the nice police?' said Yakov.
'Captain Marchenko at the cafe?' Arkady reminded Bobby. 'The one who wanted your business? I think that little lightbulb in his head went on. I think he called Ozhogin, and to judge by the urgency in Zurin's voice, Ozhogin is commandeering a company jet to come and get you. Not to arrest you; they would have kept me here for that.'
'He wants to give Bobby a beating?' Yakov asked. 'We could let him have Bobby for ten minutes. A little pain…'
Bobby laughed gently, so as not to disturb the bees browsing on his hat. 'He's not flying in from Moscow just for ten minutes of 'Pound the Jew.''
Arkady said, 'It won't just be punishment-there's also the threat to NoviRus as long as you're around.'
Bobby shrugged, and it struck Arkady that, day by day, Bobby had been getting more inert.
'This is just guesswork on your part,' Bobby said. 'You have no proof that the colonel is coming.'
'Do you want to wait and find out? If I'm wrong, you leave the Zone a day early. If I'm right and you stay, you won't last the day.'
Bobby shrugged.
Arkady asked, 'What happened to the old elusive Bobby Hoffman?
'He got tired.'
Yakov asked, 'What happened to your father?'
'Prison killed him. The feds tossed him in just to make him name his associates. He was a stand-up individual, and he named no one, so they kept handing him more years. Six years in, he got diabetes and bad circulation. But decent medical treatment? Not a chance. They started whittling him down, one leg and then the other. They took a big man like my father and turned him into a dwarf. His last words to me were 'Don't ever let them put you inside, or I will come back from the grave to beat the living shit out of you.' When I think of him, I remember how he was before they put him inside, and whenever I see a bee, I know what the old man would be thinking: Where's this little guy going? To an apple blossom? A pear tree? Or is he just buzzing around in the sun?
'But not just waiting to be stepped on,' Arkady said.
Bobby blinked. 'Touche.'
'Time to go, Bobby.'
'In more ways than one?' A wan smile, but awake.
'The dormitory. It's a short walk and it's dark.'
'We're not taking the car?'
'No. I don't think your car can get through a checkpoint now.'
'Why are you doing this? What's in this for you?'
'A little help.'
'A quid pro quo. Something for you, too.'
'That's right. There's something I want you to see.'
Bobby nodded. He gently blew the bee off his fingers, got to his feet and shook the bees from his jacket, removed his hat and, with soft puffs, blew the bees off the brim.
Arkady led Bobby and Yakov to the room next to his, heard the vague tumult of a cheering stadium and knocked.
When no one answered Arkady used the phone card Victor had given him and popped the latch. Professor Campbell sat in a chair, his eyes shut and his head tucked into his chest, as stiff as a mummy, an empty bottle at his feet. Empties on the desk reflected the dim light of the television, where a soccer match surged back and forth, and the home crowd swayed and sang its fight song.
Arkady listened to Campbell 's breath, which was deep and smelled nearly combustible.
'Dead or drunk?' Bobby asked.
'He looks fine,' Yakov said.
Bobby settled into a chair next to Campbell to watch the game. It was a tape of two British teams playing a trench-warfare style of soccer devoid of Latin frills. Arkady doubted very much that Bobby Hoffman was a soccer fan; it was more as if he knew what was coming. Arkady ejected the game.
'Got any baseball?' Bobby asked.
'I have this.' Arkady fed Vanko's tape into the player and pushed Play.
Chernobyl, day, exterior: the crossroad of the cafe, commissary and dormitory established in a handheld shot. For atmosphere, a monument to firefighters, a statue of Lenin pushing out his chest, trees dressed in the bright green of early spring. A telephoto shot of an approaching bus that sinuously dipped up and down and spread into a long line of buses as they neared. Jump to buses parked in the dormitory lot and hundreds of bearded men, at first sight identical in black suits and hats, disembarking and milling around. At second sight all ages, including boys with side curls. And a separate bus of women wearing head scarves. A pair of militia with the sullen expression of the dispossessed. A close-up of Captain Marchenko shaking hands and welcoming a man whose expression was hidden in his beard.
'This was taped last year by Vanko,' Arkady said.
A disorganized march-carrying a murmur in Hebrew and English-filled the road and spilled over onto the sidewalk, trying not to get too far ahead of patriarchs with beards that spread like unraveling silk. They had come from New York and Israel, Yakov said, that was where Chernobyl 's Jews were now. A brief rinse cycle as Vanko ran ahead with his camera on. Cut to the bunker of the rabbi's tomb. Rabbi Nahum of Chernobyl, Yakov said. A great man, the sort who saw God everywhere. The visitors watched an elder arthritically remove his shoes, then enter. Yakov said that one grave in the tomb was for Rabbi Nahum, the other for his grandson, also a rabbi. Arkady remembered how tight the space was in the tomb, yet it appeared to swallow man after man, each shoeless and with an expression of walking on air. A pan of the ecstatic crowd, and there he was on the fringe, Bobby Hoffman in his suit and hat, but no beard to obscure his expression of agony.
Arkady asked himself whether any rabbi, dead or alive, could meet the expectations of the people waiting their turn to enter. Many carried letters, and he knew what they asked: health for the ill, ease for the dying, safety from the suicide bomber. Arkady set the tape on slow motion to catch Bobby, about to take his turn, dropping out of line. For everyone else, there was a curious relaxation, as if they were all playing on grandfather's lap. Men sang and danced, hands on the shoulders of the man in front, and snaked back and forth across the street. Bobby stayed apart and moved only to shun the camera. When people unwrapped sandwiches and ate, Bobby disappeared. Vanko cut to more dancing, continuous visits to the tomb, then finally a prayer said by a long line of men facing the river.
As Yakov sang along, his croak of a voice became sonorous:
The camera glimpsed Bobby with his lips sealed. Then the buses reloaded and formed their convoy and started the drive back to Kiev. In the room, Bobby's head dropped into his hands.
'Why did you come last year, Bobby?' Arkady asked. 'You didn't visit the grave or sing or dance or pray. You told me that you came to look into processing reactor fuel, and you certainly didn't do that. You arrived on the bus, and you left on the bus, but you didn't do anything, so why were you here?'
