Moscow Noir (5 page)
There’s one little thing, one small thing that won’t let go of me. Like the dull end of a drill, it pierces my brain. Some business I forgot to take care of, or an unanswered e-mail, a mistake in a quarterly financial report, or the last piece of a puzzle that has fallen behind the couch.
I still haven’t been able to figure out what that little thing is. Maybe it’s just exhaustion, some inconsequential glitch in my nervous system, some whim, and it would probably be best to ignore it. I should just look out the window and not think, not think, not think …
I’m just looking out the window—at the road, at the traffic lights, at the Atrium.
The Mercy Bus driver turns on the radio:
“… record-breaking cold this month, temperatures tonight have plunged down to thirty-eight below! But it’s going to heat up today, we have a warm front coming in …”
“… to understand her you gotta know her deep inside, hear every thought, see every …”
“… shhhhhhhhhhhhh …”
The bus driver turns the dials mercilessly.
“… regardless of what you say, transformation on that scale is only possible in a democratic society …”
“… have you ever really really really ever loved a woman?”
“… I’ll send you sky-high for a star! …”
“And now for our top news bulletin. A police spokesman has confirmed that the primary suspect in the murder of Nikolai Starkovsky, State Duma deputy and owner of the Star Oil company, is Andrei Kaluzhsky, PR manager for Star Oil and organizer of the Merciful Monsters Charity Ball, which took place in Moscow on the night before the murder. According to police, they have ample evidence implicating Kaluzhsky in the murder. At present, according to investigative authorities, Andrei Kaluzhsky is in hiding somewhere in Moscow. He has not left the city. ‘I simply cannot believe that this man would commit premeditated murder,’ said Elizabeth ‘Foxy’ Lesnitskaya, girlfriend of the late deputy, in an interview. ‘Andrei was so kind and honest. The whole ChaBa was his idea. It was a lovely charity event, which has already helped hundreds of homeless people!’”
Foxy Lee, my red-haired girl. How kind and foolish you are to protect me. Hold on a little while, soon this will all be over. We’re already pulling up. Here we are at the station.
The bus comes to a stop.
No one in his right mind will go looking for me in a third-class car on the Moscow-Odessa train, will they?
“… police are doing all they can to find …”
The merciful in masks are walking down the aisle. Drowning out the blaring radio, they announce: “The Mercy Bus has arrived at Kursk station. Those who can leave the bus by themselves should do so now. Extra medical treatment will be provided for those who are sick or cannot walk. Those of you who are seriously ill can check in at the local hospital.”
The swollen, smelly passengers pry their eyes open, hoisting themselves lazily and awkwardly out of their seats.
“… A photograph and description of the suspect have been sent to all police stations, airports, and trains stations. Police are on high alert …”
I stand up and walk slowly down the aisle behind the stooped, stinking zombies.
Through the bus window I see a police car, its lights flashing. Standing next to the car is an officer—that asshole from yesterday—and a herd of other cops.
A photograph and description of the suspect have been sent to all police stations
. He’ll recognize me. Dammit! He’ll recognize me right away. He saw me here yesterday. He’ll remember me for sure. I won’t be able to get by without being seen!
Stay here. I have to stay in the bus.
“… The Criminal Investigation Department says that by today …”
“You can walk!” a person in a medical mask yells right in my ear. “Please get off the bus!”
“… Some news just in about the murder …”
“I can’t,” I whisper weakly in response. “Help. I need medical assistance.”
I need to stay here, no matter what, I need to be here. I’ll give them all the money. They need money too, right? They’re merciful guys, I’ll give them the whole wad of money. Hey, who in this stinking bus wants a stack of greenbacks for taking me to the hospital?
“I need treatment! I’ll pay—”
“Money?” The young man in the mask frowns, looking at my reeking clothes. “What are you talking about? C’mon, c’mon, get off the bus!” he says, giving me a gentle shove in the back.
I fall forward in the aisle and begin to moan quietly.
“Are you all right?” the boy asks in concern.
“It’s my heart,” I mutter into the floor. “Or blood pressure … I have a problem with my blood pressure.”
I roll my eyes back. I gasp for breath.
I’m staying here. I am not getting out.
“Lean on me,” says the young man in the mask. “It’s just a few steps, there you go. The nurse is in the driver’s cabin. Here, I’ll help you. She’ll check your blood pressure. There you go. Now sit down and roll up your shirt sleeve.”
They check my blood pressure. By some miracle it’s very high. Through the driver’s window I watch the herd of hungry cops. They’re not going to get me.
The nurse and the boy in the mask are whispering to each other.
“Hypertension,” the nurse whispers to him almost inaudibly. “We can’t let him go.”
“… Meanwhile, the Star Oil company will go to the wife of the late Andrei Starkovsky who will inherit, quote, only debts and conflicts with it …”
“An injection,” says the sister of mercy. “A diuretic. And check him into the hospital. That’s the only option.”
He goes outside. She pulls down my shirt sleeve, wipes my arm with an icy, disinfected cotton swab, and injects the needle. I guess I’m just lucky. I never had high blood pressure in my life, and now all of a sudden—there you go, hypertension!
“… ‘My husband neglected to pay his taxes,’ Ms. Starkovsky said in an open statement to members of the press. ‘Just a few days before his death, he transferred all the Star Oil shares to the account of a front organization. I have no intention of suffering for the illegal machinations of a person whom I haven’t lived with for a number of years’ …”
Front organization … front organization. I have hypertension and my head is swimming and everything is going dark. I am shaking my head and pinching my cheeks and my ears, and I want to crawl out of this darkness. I need to get ahold of myself, because I think I have just found the missing piece of the puzzle.
I watch as the transparent liquid leaves the needle.
“… These companies are formally owned by Elizabeth Lesnitskaya. ‘From a legal perspective, this is absolutely above board,’ said Lesnitskaya’s lawyer, Gennady Burkalo. ‘My client is the owner of the aforementioned companies. These companies were formed in accordance with the law. The funds transferred from Star Oil to the accounts of these firms by Mr. Starkovsky, regardless of his motives, now belong to …”
“One hundred million dollars,” says the nurse, and jerks the needle out of my vein.
I feel sick. I can’t breathe. It smells so bad in here I think I’m going to die. The gauze mask distorts her voice, but I recognize it anyway. She takes off her nurse’s cap and her red hair cascades to her shoulders.
“You thought I needed your shitty card? One hundred million, and it’s all mine!”
I feel sick to my stomach. Blood is pulsing in my ears.
My hands are shaking, but still I feel for the gun in my pocket.
“It’s not loaded,” Foxy whispers gently.
“I’ll tell them it was you.”
“You won’t tell them anything,” Foxy says, leaning toward my ear. She smells like perfume and apricot-flavored chewing gum. “You won’t tell them anything at all.”
“What did you give me?” I yell, crazed. “What did you put into me?”
There is no one but us on the bus. The merciful in masks are helping the bums toward the station.
“WHAT DID YOU GIVE ME!” I scream, and one of them turns at the sound of my cry. He leaves the bum he was walking with and runs toward the bus.
“Everything’s fine,” says the masked merciful Foxy Lee. “Don’t worry, we’re all right.”
He looks at me. I’m going to be sick. I fall onto the floor.
“She gave me with something …” I whisper. “Help me …” I can’t scream.
“Don’ be scared, it won’ hurt,” and he pulls his mask off. There he is. The leather guy from yesterday.
“Mercy,” he says with a smile. “We show mercy.”
Another guy in a mask comes up and nods at me. “What happened?”
“Hypertension,” Foxy answers. “We gave him a shot.”
No
! I want to scream. But my tongue won’t obey me. I want to scream,
Ambulance
! But instead I just mumble and drool.
I am lying on the floor of the bus.
I think I am dying.
“The shot didn’t help,” says Foxy Lee sadly.
“Should I call an ambulance?” asks the young man in the mask.
“It’s no use, he’s already dying.”
“Well then, you’ve suffered your last,” says the boy in the mask. “Great is the mercy of God. Blessed are the poor.” He snivels juicily and crosses himself.
They pick me up off the floor and prop me in the driver’s seat.
It’s cold. It’s so cold.
I am waiting for mercy. It should be here any minute now.
BY
V
YACHESLAV
K
URITSYN
Leningradsky Avenue
Translated by Mary C. Gannon
S
he was walking barefoot along Leningradsky Avenue. The occasional streetlight and moon hung in the puddles on the ground. She jumped from one puddle to the next, enjoying the warm splash. She held one red high heel in her hand by the strap. The other shoe she had lost while crossing the street around the Sovietsky Hotel.
His thoughts were steeped in gold, like the chest of a war hero buried in medals and crosses. Zemfira was singing about river ports. The highway was empty. The Sovietskaya Inn had recently metamorphosed into the Sovietsky Hotel. Prostitutes had become twice as expensive. Suddenly he saw a kitten on the road in front of the car. He stepped on the brakes, then got out. It wasn’t a kitten. He picked up a red high heel by its strap. The shoe was lying just next to the entrance of the Romany Gypsy theater.
For some reason he brought the red shoe into the car. A shoe without a girl. The clocked showed 2:55 a.m.
Once again he thought of shipments of Yakutst gold to jewelry factories in Smolensk. Stalls were scattered along the street like cheap bijouterie. Occasionally, a fat pearl of a foreign-made car would swim by.
Cheaper and flatter-chested girls loomed at the intersection with Stepan Suprun Road. They say that Suprun was a test pilot. The whole area was celestial. Across the street at Khodynka Field was the place Chkalov had crashed. The street itself ran all the way to Sheremetyevo Airport.
She’s nuts, he thought, nearing Airport subway station, when he saw her jumping along the sidewalk on one leg like she was playing hopscotch. He noticed a red high heel in her hand.
She watched intently as the door of a blue limousine opened on her left. Slowly, as though in a dream, so slowly that she was completely absorbed in it, she remembered her friend’s contorted face, a gold tooth in a ring of purple lipstick. Boney fingers shaking a wad of green bills that she had tried to steal from her friend earlier that day. It seemed to her it was a helicopter that had come for her, not a car. She thought she’d have to fly to take the ruby star off the Kremlin spire. She leaned toward the door. A man deep inside the car smiled at her and handed her the other high heel.
She hopped into the car and moved her lips. Inside it was warm, and she realized that she had been cold. She quickly fell asleep.
At home in the bright light he noticed heavy brown knots on her slim bare arms. He looked into her eyes and saw that her pupils were completely dilated, a shiny opaque red, and runny, like broken egg yolk.
“Hot … hot!” she yelled. Actually, she yelled the first word; the second she whispered. And fell silent, as though she had lost her voice.
“Hot tea?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“A hot bath, then?” he asked.
She nodded.
He pointed to the door. In one sharp movement she pulled off her short blue dress and was left wearing nothing but white panties adorned with an orange mushroom. And before he could focus his gaze on her small tits, she had already flown past him.
When he was young, he too could wander around the city aimlessly with no memories or money. In the beginning of his career he was a heroin dealer. He was a drug mule, moving bags of the stuff from Warsaw to Moscow. Once he got caught on the Polonez train at Belorussky station. By some miracle he’d been able to escape, fleeing underneath the cars and over the sidings. He’d probably still be in the slammer if they had caught him.
Through making counterfeit Adidas sneakers in an invalids’ cooperative, renting pirated videos, and running car dealerships in old movie theaters, he came to gold.
Gold is like heroin. It’s simple, homogenous, and omnivorous.
She had been in the bathroom for an alarmingly long time. He knocked at the door to tell her. And to give her a bathrobe. She didn’t answer, and he pushed the door open: she was leaning toward the mirror, staring into it, bent and skinny. Heavy black shadows seemed to pass over her face, although he couldn’t quite make it out. Maybe they were just reflections cast from the mirror. He called to her. She grabbed some small scissors from the shelf under the mirror and slipped her fragile body out of the bath. Her body was smooth, save for the overgrown shrubbery of her pubis—just the way he liked it.
She threw herself at him. He tried to catch her hand, but she dodged him and sunk the scissors deep into the skin just above his ear. He jumped back, spilling blood on the rug with a picture of a proud eagle on it. He tripped and bumped into the telephone. She waved her arm, the scissors snapped shut, and he was left with the receiver in his hand, its cord dangling uselessly. Okay then, he thought, and felt for the cell phone in his pocket. He took the scissors away from her and pushed her back into the bathroom. He called his friend, the owner of a private drug rehabilitation clinic, waking him up with the insistent ring.
She didn’t recognize him at first, but when he came to visit her the third or fourth time, she smiled. A crooked smile, as though her lip had been cut, like a two-way street. He wanted her even more.
They walked around the park on the grounds of the clinic, and she ate two or three berries from the festively ripe pound he had bought for her. She pressed her hand against the bark of a tree for a long time, carefully studying a ladybug. She traced circles and arrows in the sand with great concentration while his phone buzzed and he answered it.
It amazed him how slowly she did everything, how quietly her gaze and her bloodstream glided along. He slowed down too, dug at the bark of the tree, and found a mushroom. After he drove through the gate, leaving the clinic behind, he forced the arrow of the speedometer ahead sharply, to win back the minutes he had lost with her. This sharp change in rhythm shocked and disturbed him.
She asked him to bring her books, and not trusting his assistants, he went to the bookstore himself and bought her Pushkin and Dostoevsky, weighing the heavy volumes in his hand. He estimated how much a piece of gold that size would weigh, and how long it would take someone to read books that heavy. He even tried to read them. But reading was hard; life seemed to get out of sync, and lulls and pauses crept in, as though it had gotten soft and mushy, lost its elasticity. His own life, straight as an arrow, became entangled with his girlfriend’s, twisted and confused. During his visits to her he would suddenly find himself rehashing yesterday’s business meeting in his mind, searching for weaknesses in his performance.
And during important negotiations he would suddenly go quiet. Closing his eyes, he would see her face before him, and the brown knots on her thin arms. Two weeks later he realized he had an aching in his chest every day. Probably because of the changes in his blood pressure and pace of life.
He did something he had been planning to do for several years: he had an hourglass made for himself with real gold dust in it, and he put it on the desk in his office. He began to disengage from life more often. Suddenly interrupting a dictation or a dressing-down, he would turn the hourglass over, hanging on the steady flow of the dull yellow sand.
They pumped out half of her blood and filled her with many liters of somebody else’s. She didn’t know that it contained his blood too. She slept for a long time, lost in the drone of the blood of strangers rushing through her veins.
She tried to coax it along in her weak body: to tame it, combine it with her own, to learn to live with it. She prodded, nudged, pleaded, and persuaded. But some of the blood just didn’t want to fit in, the way the last fragment of an almost-finished puzzle can go alien and resistant. It was then that she would launch her body against a wall with all her might, or toss a water jug at the window, or throw herself at the feet of the janitor and start chewing the dirty mop. Her blood needed the comfort of a warm fix. Then she begged for the shot, which she was permitted at this stage in her treatment; only she had to wait, and the dose was smaller.
He asked his friend at the clinic whether she could be cured, and the friend answered that she could—but not right away, and never entirely, because of the quantities of heroin that had traveled through her system. He went on to say that he had an acquaintance with a clinic somewhere in the Alps on a magic mountain, where they slowed down the lives of their patients so much that they needed their fix only once every six months, and they could live like that for a hundred years. His friend said that he wouldn’t be able to keep her in his clinic for too long, that according to a new law, private rehabilitation clinics would soon be outlawed and their patients would end up either in basements or in state-run institutions no better than prisons, with beatings and bars on the windows. His friend said that the most important thing now was for her to get off the carousel of misfortune and blood transfusions, to stop spinning around and around in her body and mind. She would have to change her lifestyle, take a trip to the sea or spend time at a resort, reading books and sunning herself on the beach. She must not see her old friends or familiar streets, where every bush would remind her of a dirty needle. She should go somewhere filled with the babbling of an incomprehensible foreign language, where unfamiliar birds sing in the trees. And when he asked for how long, his friend thought for a while, then said: “Very long.”
He shut himself up in his office, turned off the phone, set down the gold-dust hourglass in the middle of the table, and counted out all his money in real estate, stocks and bonds, jewels, banks. He had enough to last a lifetime. There would even be some left over for his children. And if the bonds weren’t cashed anytime soon, even his grandchildren would have something. He told his partners that he wanted to bail out and disappear forever, that he was ready to hand over his shares on terms advantageous to them. But the important thing was that it had to be done immediately. His partners thought it over and sketched out a business plan on sheets of white paper, illustrating how much of the company was upheld by his own personal connections, which routes of money and gold were dependent solely upon him. “Give us all the connections, and then you can call it a day,” his partners said.
“That will take six months,” he begged. “That’s your problem,” they said.
He then transferred as much of his money as he could access to an anonymous account in a faraway bank. That money would not be enough for a whole lifetime, and would not be enough to leave something for his children, but it would be enough for half a lifetime. And that, if you think about it, is not such a short time. He deposited the rest of his fortune on an anonymous credit card, bought two false passports and plane tickets, paid a visit to the friend who ran the private clinic to get a note for the guard, and drove off to get her. By the Baku movie theater, where he’d had his first car dealership, there was a traffic jam unlike any he had ever seen in that neighborhood.
Distraught that he had not visited her in three days, and so must have decided to leave her, she decided to commit suicide that night. She had stolen the key to the attic long before, and now crawled to the edge of the roof from which she would throw herself headfirst into the dark green treetops. To fall right through them and end up lying lifeless on the neat gravel walkway. She concentrated, took a deep breath, and sucked in her stomach, calculating the angle of her leap. She mustered all her strength, then fell asleep from the exertion.
At that moment he was standing at the railroad crossing by Grazhdanskaya station, looking at his watch and waiting for a long freight train to pass. It must have had few hundred cars in it.
She stood, eyes closed, on the very edge of the roof, and slept. And she dreamed that she had changed her mind and returned to her room, that she lay down to sleep with a childlike smile on her lips, and that she would live. In fact, she stepped off the roof and out onto the long branch of a tall tree leading to the middle of the park; and she began to walk on it, not opening her eyes, like a tightrope walker. She had never walked on a tightrope before; she had a terrible sense of balance.
He hurried to the clinic, woke up the guard to show him the note, entered the grounds, looked up at her window, and discovered her walking high up above him. Her arms were flapping like the wings of a bird in slow motion. Her white nightgown was fluttering in the sultry night air. Inside his pocket, his beeper, which he had forgotten to turn off, sounded. It was his partners, who had discovered discrepancies in his accounts, as well as his disappearance, and were trying bring him to his senses. The beeper startled her. She opened her eyes, her foot slipped, and she fell down right into his outstretched arms.
There was an explosion on their airplane as it was landing. First, purple smoke filled the plane’s interior for about three minutes; these were the most frightening minutes of their lives. Then there was an explosion that knocked them both unconscious.
The burning plane gave off such unbearable heat that he came to very quickly. She was lying next to him, her neck at a strange angle, a little bird that had been executed. He turned her onto her back and she immediately opened her eyes.
He patted his pockets and pulled out his wallet. The credit card had snapped in half. The electronic notebook where he had saved the number of the bank account was smashed to pieces. The suitcase that contained a written copy of the number had burned, along with the rest of the luggage.
He no longer had any way of getting to his money. It was doomed to move around through the accounts of a distant bank, enriching the bank’s owners, just as the gold of Jews murdered during the war underpinned the might of Swiss banks many years later. He told her this, and she nodded.
“I
am
Jewish,” she said. “That’s great,” he said, then added, “We have to get out of here. If I’m seen on TV, they’ll find me and kill me.” They got up onto their feet and took off. All around them, dying people moaned. A woman mumbled in a foreign language, but more blood than words came out of her mouth. There were body parts strewn about. The head of a dog traveling in a special pet carrier in the next row over had been torn off, but was still trying to yap. It seemed that they were the only ones who had survived. It was a mile to the woods where they could take cover.