The Buryat decided to play a little joke on me, that’s all. She’d hooked the drowned man’s bow tie and dragged it back to the hole. She’d had her revenge for my not wanting to wind her beastly hair on my hand and go at it with her on that narrow cot in the unsqueamish Luka’s place. All right, woman, do this again and you’ll be the one floating with a bow tie around your neck. I went back to the vessel for the boathook and rope, pulled out the drowned man, who looked bizarrely fresh, dragged him over the ice to the shore, and buried him in the same place but didn’t stick a pet cross in, and tied the yellow scarf to a handrail on the gangway. When I’d brewed the last of the tea, I heard voices near the boat and climbed on deck, went into the latrine, and peered out through the porthole. Fishermen were standing a few meters from shore, examining the hole, but they were reluctant to move any closer. One of them, wearing a down coverall, gestured and I heard something like honeycombs and yellow.
I spent the day in Lakhta, there was no point showing my face in town, and by now the boat made me sick. I bought brandy, drank it on the shore sitting on a solidly frozen log, relaxed, and tried to call the Latvian a few times, but she apparently had either turned off her phone or just didn’t want to talk. A couple of months earlier Anta had told me that they had a program at the consulate that could pinpoint the location of any employee, therefore she took the battery out of her phone when she played hooky from work. This had made an impression and I’d surrendered to a moment’s paranoia, leaving my phone in the conductor’s apartment. At least I didn’t toss it in a ditch.
It was too cold to sleep, I had enough wood left for a couple of hours, and toward morning I picked up what was left of the partition and used it for heat along with the wood carving of Esenin that was hanging over the bed. When I woke up, I went to the hole and checked out a new dead man. This one had the scarf wrapped up to his ears so all you could see was his smooth, celluloid forehead and whitened, pruney cheeks. His hands were in his jacket pockets, as if he’d been searching for his wallet or cigarettes before dying, and in general his look was bizarrely matter-of-fact, sullen even.
Load-unload, that meant. There’s the job the locals have thrown your way, you sorry-ass beggar, I thought, observing the long scarf bobbing in the water like a floater on a giant’s fishing rod. He cleaned up after criminals, sly old Luka, founder of the seasonal cemetery. In a couple of weeks the snow would melt and your burials were going to go floating down the Greater Nevka past Elagin Island. I’d like to know where they sunk them so cleverly that they all landed here, near the harbor. Though who said I’d seen them all? Maybe they’d released an entire excursion under the ice and I was just getting the guides in identical scarves.
All right, boys, I’m done being your gravedigger. I’m clearing out of here in a couple of days and you can catch your own rotten smelt. I took a walk as far as the shore, examined the footprints in the snow next to yesterday’s grave, collected a bucket of snow, and returned to the boat. After I’d started making breakfast I suddenly realized I couldn’t eat and drank some hot water with sugar I found in the galley. Then I shaved in front of the shard of mirror, cleaned my coat, and walked down the shore to Staraya, to the Datsan Gunzechoinei.
“You sit alone too often,” I was told by the monk I asked about the slant-eyed woman, showing him the cap she’d lent me. “You sit alone and think about women. You’re already late for the khural, it ended at noon. And if you came for the seminar of the venerable lama, then get your five hundred rubles out and go to Malaya Pushkarskaya. Not now, in two weeks.”
“What seminar’s that?” It was clear I wasn’t getting past the gates.
“The practice of samatha and vipassana.” The monk was hunched over in the wind in his robes, but he spoke with me willingly. “Or maybe you want a lunar calendar? You’ll know your bad days.”
“Lately that’s been pretty clear without a calendar. Maybe you do remember the woman after all, she looks like a Kalmyk, rosy-cheeked, with lots of hair. She was at the New Year’s celebration, and before that she cleared the snow from the courtyard.”
“Women come to us to help with the housekeeping, but I don’t know their names.” The monk frowned. “You can leave the cap here and she’ll see it herself. Come at three o’clock, we’ll pray together. For a favorable reincarnation and for the departed.”
“I’ve got stacks of departed,” I said mechanically, and all of a sudden I bumped into his attentive gaze. The monk’s face was ochre and doughy, and for some reason I imagined him shaving his head with a curved, ivory-handled Tibetan knife. He turned and started down the alley toward the sloping stairs with the columns, signaling me to follow. Hanging above the datsan entrance was a wheel that resembled the wheel on my boat, only that had been hacked to pieces and was lying on the floor in the pilothouse.
“Have you ever dreamed that bamboo was growing out of your head?” the monk asked. “Or a palm growing out of your heart?… Why are you limping?”
“I broke the heel on my left boot at a train crossing. I’m living on a boat,” I added for some reason, “and I dream of dogs chasing a vixen.”
“You spend too much time alone,” the monk repeated, leaving me by the doorway. “You should see people. Take a walk here, look around. We need a boilerman, a jack-of-all-trades. The roof leaks, there’s lots of work.”
“Oh no, lama, I’m not here about that.” All of a sudden I felt cheerful. “I may not be a church thief, and I don’t rob temples, but I don’t advise you to let me into the cabbage patch. I might not be able to help myself.”
“I’m not a lama,” the monk said, turning away from the doors, “and you’re no thief. You’re Luka, the man from the boat.” I had no desire to tour the datsan, so I waited for the monk to go inside and then went back to the street in search of a phone booth, cursing myself for ditching my Nokia so hastily. The fence was home, but he was reluctant to speak to me—even the description of the ripe pear didn’t excite him, and eventually he told me to meet him at the French café on Petrogradskaya, but he immediately added that I’d have to wait awhile for my steaks. Not only that, twenty was a bit much, the trickster commented gloomily, I’d have to make do with sixteen, since they were looking for me all over town. I said we’d talk there, but as I hung up I already knew there was no point talking, his type had an animal instinct for other people’s troubles.
The city stretched on like a solid snowy canvas, my ruined boot had taken on water, and I had to drop into a cheap cobbler and buy whatever they had—loafers on a ripple sole. In the repair shop I spent a long time looking at the guy, who seemed familiar, he was obviously the shop owner because he was chewing out the salesman for some cracked window. As I left the store I realized what had made me stare at him. The owner had a yellow scarf wrapped around his neck, kind of dirty, as if it had been pulled out of the river.
Reaching Petrogradskaya in my new boots, I went into the café, took a free newspaper from the counter, ordered a brandy, and got ready to wait for the fence. There were only two people and the waiter, who was wearing an idiotic getup with braids. The floor was sprinkled with sawdust, in the Parisian manner, to make the mud easier to clean up. The second customer was sitting by the window chewing something, he had a mug of mulled wine in front of him, and the light from the window fell on his hair, which looked like soaked linen thread. The guy must have been wandering around town all day without a hat, I thought, but then he turned around and I saw his face.