Wolves Eat Dogs (26 page)

“Not a word,” said Bobby, “and saves the minimum. What a bastard.”

Perhaps Eva had gone to the Panasenkos’ to give Roman a physical examination, but the cow had gotten out during the storm and trampled the vegetable garden, and Maria and Eva were in the middle of trying to resurrect what they could when Arkady arrived and joined in. The air was hot and humid, the ground damp and baked and oozing humors, and each step produced a sharp scent of crushed mint or chamomile.

The old couple had laid out their garden in straight-as-a-string rows of beets, potatoes, cabbage, onion, garlic and dill, the necessities of life; celery, parsley, mustard and horseradish, the savor of life; buffalo grass for vodka and poppies for bread, everything chopped by the cow into muck. The root vegetables had to be rebedded and the greens salvaged. Where water pooled, Roman shaped drainage with a hoe.

Maria wore a shawl around her head and around her waist a second shawl to hold what she picked. Eva had laid aside her lab coat and shoes to work barefoot in a T-shirt and shorts, no scarf.

They worked separate rows, digging their hands into the mud and freeing the greens or replanting root vegetables tops up. The women were faster and more efficient. Arkady hadn’t worked in a garden since he was a boy, and that was just at the dacha to keep him out of the way. The neighbors—Nina on her crutch, Olga squinting through her glasses, Klara with Viking braids—came to witness. From the general interest and the size of the lot, it became clear that Roman and Maria fed the entire population of the village. Maria could have pulled a small train behind her, the way she leaned in to the work and smiled with satisfaction in it, except when she looked up from strangling red-veined greens of beets to gaze on Roman.

“You’re sure you latched the cow’s stall? She could have been eaten by wolves. The wolves could have gotten her.”

Roman acted deaf, while Lydia, the cow, peeked through an open slat of her stall; the two put Arkady in mind of a pair of drunks who remembered nothing.

Eva had ignored him since his arrival, and the more he thought about it, the more he realized that the night with her had been a mistake. He had gotten too involved. He had lost his sacred objectivity. He was like one of those telescopes launched into space with lenses so distorted it could be seeing either headlights or the Milky Way.

When the garden was done, Maria brought cold water for Arkady and Eva and kvass for Roman. Kvass was a beer made from fermented bread, and a summons to life for Roman. Eva managed to keep one of the old couple between her and Arkady at all times: a dance of avoidance.

Arkady’s mobile phone rang. It was the director of the Moscow children’s shelter.

“Investigator Renko, this is impossible. You must return at once. Zhenya waits every day.”

“The last time I saw Zhenya, he didn’t as much as wave good-bye. I doubt very much that he’s upset.”

“He’s not demonstrative. Explain to Zhenya.”

Again the void on the phone, from either the bottom of a waste bin or an undemonstrative boy.

“Zhenya? Are you there? Zhenya?”

Arkady heard nothing, but he could feel the boy pressing a receiver close to his ear and pursing his lips in a disagreeable way.

“How are you doing, Zhenya? Driving the director insane, it sounds like.”

Silence and perhaps a nervous shift of the phone from one ear to the other.

Arkady said, “No news about Baba Yaga. Nothing to report.”

He could see Zhenya gripping the phone tight with one hand and chewing the nails of the other. Arkady tried to outwait him, which was impossible, because Zhenya just hung on.

“We had a storm during the night. A dragon got loose and went on a rampage, tearing up the fields and knocking over fences. Bones everywhere. We chased him over the fields to the river, where he escaped because the bridge was guarded by a monster that had to be defeated in a game of chess. None of us was good enough, so the dragon got away. Next time we should take along a better chess player. Other than that, nothing happened in the Ukraine. We’ll talk again soon. In the meantime, behave.”

Arkady folded the phone and discovered Roman and Maria regarding him with astonishment. Eva seemed unamused.

Nevertheless, they carried scythes into the field behind the cow barn to cut grass and barley bent by the rain. The scythes were long two-handled affairs with blades so sharp they whistled. Eva and Maria bundled cut grass into sheaves with binding twine, while Arkady and Roman waded ahead. Arkady had cut grass in the all-purpose Red Army, and he remembered that the rhythm of scything was like swimming; the smoother the motion, the longer the stroke. Straws flew and insects spiraled in a golden dust. It was the most mindless labor he had performed for years and he gave himself over to it completely. At the end of the field, he dropped the scythe and lay down in high grass, in the warm stalks and cool ground, and stared numbly at the sky slightly spinning above.

How could they do it? he wondered. Work this field so happily when a short walk up the path, four grandchildren lay in unmarked graves. He imagined each funeral and the rage. Could he have stood it? Yet Roman and Maria and the other women seemed to approach every task as God’s allotment. Work is holy, he remembered one of Tolstoy’s heroes saying.

A body dropped nearby, and though he couldn’t see her, he heard Eva’s breathing. It was so normal, Arkady thought. Although it wasn’t in the least normal. Did he normally perform farm labor? Through closed eyes, he felt the dull pulsation of the sun. What a relief to think of nothing, to be a rock in the field and never move again. Even better, he thought: two rocks in the field.

Unseen behind the grass, Eva asked, “Why did you come here?”

“Yesterday Maria said you would be here.”

“But why?”

“To see you.”

“Now that you’ve seen me, why don’t you go?”

“I want more.”

“Of what?”

“You.”

Directness was not a language he generally spoke, and he expected her to leap to her feet and walk away.

There was a stir, and Eva’s hand grazed his.

She said, “Your friend Zhenya plays chess.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s very good?”

“Apparently.”

He heard a murmur of satisfaction in a guess confirmed.

“You didn’t ask,” Eva said.

“Ask what?”

“Whether the garden was radioactive. You’re becoming a real citizen of the Zone.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know.”

“For you,” he asked, “is it good or bad?”

She uncurled his fingers and laid her head on them. “Disaster. The worst.”

Arkady’s mobile phone rang as he coasted into town, and he turned onto the side street of beech trees to take the call. It was Victor phoning from the state library in Kiev. “Encyclopedia entry ‘Felix Mikhailovich Gerasimov, 1925 to 2002, director of the Institute of Extremely High Temperatures, Moscow.’ Blah, blah. National prizes for physics, esteemed this and that, theoretician, patents for fuck-all, different state councils on science, international atomic controls, ‘nuclear prophylaxis,’ whatever the hell that is, papers on waste management. An all-around guy. Why are you interested? He died two years ago.”

Arkady leaned the motor bike on its stand. The sun danced through the trees, belying the fact that the street was dead and the houses empty. “Something someone said. Any connection to Chernobyl?”

Sounds of paper flipping. “Not much. A delegation six months after the accident. I bet every scientist in Russia was there by then.”

“Anything personal?”

Eva had told Arkady that he and Alex Gerasimov had more in common than he knew. He had a suspicion of what, but he wanted to be sure. While he talked, he paced by houses, each in its individual state of decay. At one window stood a doll, at least the third or fourth he’d seen at windows in Chernobyl.

Victor said, “These are scientific books and journals, not fan magazines. Lyuba called last night. I told her about the lingerie shop here. She said to pick out anything I wanted. My choice.”

“Look for Chelyabinsk.”

“Okay, here’s an article translated from the French about an explosion of nuclear waste in Chelyabinsk in ’57. Which was a secret site, so we kept the lid on that. Gerasimov must have been a kid at the time, but he’s mentioned as helping run the cleanup. I don’t think they cleaned it up much. Okay, here’s more nuclear pollution on Novaya Zemlya test grounds. Gerasimov again. For a theoretician, he did weird shit. A peace prize for military research. Very astute. This is how you climb the academic ladder. What is the Institute for Extremely High Temperatures, anyway? Could build warheads, could cure cancer.”

Could dump radioactive water into the Moscow River when the pipes at the institute froze. Arkady remembered Timofeyev’s confession.

“More recent stuff,” Victor said. “Newspaper clippings. London
Times
portrait from ten years ago, ‘Physics in a Russian family: Academician Felix Gerasimov and his son, Alexander.’ Genius in the genes, blah, blah. Friendly debate between generations over safety of reactors. ‘Found dead.’ Sorry, I skipped to another piece. From
Izvestya,
‘Institute director found dead at home by his own hand.’ A gun. In good health but declining spirits after the death of his wife six months earlier. Last one, an appreciation in
Pravda
. ‘Career that touched the highs and lows of Soviet science.’ Here’s the wife again. ‘Tragic death.’ ”

A family tradition of suicide, that was the connection between Alex and Arkady. Eva had spotted the merry bond right away. “What is the date on the
Izvestya
piece?”

“May second. He was found on May Day.”

Imagine, Arkady thought. One day Felix Gerasimov is the respected and honored director of a scientific institute well enough funded to have its own research reactor in the middle of Moscow, a reactor he’s earned not only through his groundbreaking work in theoretical physics but also through his willingness to engage in the down-to-earth problems of nuclear this and that (test-site pollution and spontaneous explosions in the hinterland), all the signs of a politically shrewd careerist. And then the political system collapses. The Communist Party lies as gutted as Reactor Four. Bankrupt. The director and his faculty (including Ivanov and Timofeyev) have to walk around the institute in blankets and dump “hot water” on the sly. That did, indeed, seem like twists enough for one career.

“Arkady, are you there?”

“Yes. Call Petrovka—”

“In Moscow?”

“Yes. Call headquarters and see if there’s any record of a suicide attempt by the son, Alexander.”

“What makes you think there will be?”

“Because there will. Did you get anywhere with his off-time work in Moscow?”

“Sorry. I called, at Bobby’s expense, every major hotel in Moscow. Nine have business centers offering interpreting, translation, PCs and fax. But none round the clock, and none employed an Alex Gerasimov. To put not too fine a point on it, a dead end. Lyuba says you’re exploiting me.”

“Yes, that’s why you’re in Kiev and I’m in Chernobyl. Any sight of Anton?”

“I have my notes right here.” There was a rush of papers falling. “Shit! Fuck your mother! I have to call you back.”

Victor really wasn’t meant for the hushed confines of a library, Arkady decided. He looked at the doll in the window. Her face was bleached off, but the contours and a ponytail of golden filaments remained, and he glimpsed a shelf of more dolls, as if the house had been entrusted to a second, smaller family. The doorway lured him to the threshold. Close up, the doll’s arms bore a gauze of spider-webs that he untangled, and when his mobile phone rang, he almost saw her flinch.

Arkady answered, “Hello, Victor, go ahead.”

A raspy voice asked, “Who is Victor?”

“A friend,” Arkady said.

“I bet you don’t have many. I hear you got someone shot at the cooling pond.”

Arkady started again. “Hello, Karel.”

It was Katamay, the missing militia officer. Dust motes eddied around the doll as if she were breathing.

“I want to talk to you about the Russian that you found. That’s all, nothing else,” Arkady said and waited. The gaps were so long it was almost like talking to Zhenya.

“I want you to leave my family alone.”

“I will, but I have to talk to you.”

“We’re talking.”

“In person. Just about the Russian, that’s all I’m here for, and then I can go home.”

“With your friend Wayne Gretzky?”

“Yes.”

A seizure of coughing, followed by “When I heard that, I almost split my side.”

“Then I won’t bother your grandfather and sister anymore, and Dymtrus can have his gun back.”

A long silence.

“Pripyat, the center of the main square, ten tonight. Alone.”

“Agreed,” Arkady said, but to a dial tone.

Victor rang the next instant. “Okay, Anton was at a couple of casinos by the river.”