Kostya had already left for school. Olga made coffee for the men and sat on the floor to go through the books. She had already read everything there. Among the small volumes she found a Khodasevich with a coffee stain on the cover—a sort of tree, and a road.
“Igor, is your boiler room at Sokol, in the Generals’ Building?”
“Yes, why?”
“Oh, no reason. It’s just that I read all these books in college. The owner has probably died. He was a general.”
THE FUGITIVE
The storm took place at half past two in the morning. It was like an opera or a symphony—with an overture, leitmotifs, and a duet of water and wind. Lightning bolts flew up in columns, accompanied by incessant rumbling and flashes. Then there was an intermission and a second act. Maria Nikolayevna’s heart pains, which had plagued her all day, stopped immediately, as did Captain Popov’s headache, from which he had been suffering for the past twenty-four hours. He even managed to get some sleep before going to work. The only thing he didn’t manage to do was put a stamp on the document. But he could do that later.
At nine o’clock sharp he rang the doorbell. No one opened for a long time; then he heard a commotion behind the door.
“Who’s there? Who is it?” a tentative female voice called out.
Finally, the door opened a crack; but the chain was still secured. Sivtsev and Emelyanenko shuffled impatiently from foot to foot. They wanted to get this over and done with. Greenhorns. Popov showed his badge in the narrow space between the door and the door frame. Again, there was a commotion, and the door opened.
The witness, his man at the local housing authority, trotted up.
“Does Boris Ivanovich Muratov live here?”
Right then, Muratov appeared. A hefty fellow, about forty years old, with a beard. Wearing a blue robe that looked like it could be made of velvet.
We don’t have robes like that, Popov thought suspiciously. It’s foreign. Where do they get the stuff?
“Passport, please,” Popov said with absolute civility.
Muratov went into the next room, from which his wife was just emerging. She was a real beauty, of course, also wearing a blue robe! Amazing—two of them, exactly alike!
When Muratov returned, Popov held out the search warrant for his perusal.
“Take a look at this, please,” he said, standing some distance away, still clutching it in his hands.
“May I?” Muratov said, reaching out for it.
But Popov refused to part with it.
“What is there to read? It’s a search warrant, you can see that yourself. I’ll hold it, and you can read it if you think it’s necessary.”
“I can see it’s a search warrant. But it isn’t stamped.”
“Oh, hell!” Popov grew irate. “That’s unimportant. A warrant is a warrant; it’ll get its stamp, don’t worry about that.”
“First stamp it, then you can enter,” Boris Ivanovich said haughtily.
“If I were you, I’d try being more polite. Having words won’t help either of us. Now let me get on with my work, please.”
He moved deeper into the apartment, followed by Sivtsev. Emelyanenko stood in the tiny entrance hall, keeping an eye on the door and the living room.
“One moment, please,” Boris Ivanovich said, going into the smaller room.
Popov knew the layout of three-room apartments like this like the back of his hand. First a tiny entrance hall, then a larger pantry space with built-in wall cupboards where they kept everything. He had seen plenty of them.
He blocked the door so Muratov couldn’t enter the larger room. Muratov turned red, moved the captain aside, and went in to rummage through the top drawer of his desk. Popov lost his composure. In this petty struggle, Muratov was right. The warrant, strictly speaking, was invalid.
The captain couldn’t admit defeat, however, and barked out:
“Don’t touch the drawers! We’ll need to look through them.”
But Muratov, apparently, had found what he was looking for. He unfolded a thick piece of paper, yellowed at the edges, bearing an official red letterhead and a profile of the “greatest of the great” leaders.
“My Certificate of Honor.”
The artist thrust the paper at the captain, but at such a distance that he couldn’t read anything it said.
Again, Popov’s head started to throb.
“What is the meaning of this?”
The wife, blue-eyed, in her blue robe, her face pallid, looked beseechingly at her husband. Maria Nikolayevna, his mother-in-law, poured out tea for them as though nothing at all were happening.
Boris Ivanovich held the paper at a more reasonable distance: the captain could see it, but he couldn’t snatch it from him.
“I’ll hold it, and you can read it. I’ll hold it.”
The captain read it through. The captain heeded it. He turned around to go, his detachment following at his heels. They didn’t say a word.
Muratov flung the saving document into a corner.
With a graceful flourish, Maria Nikolayevna placed a teacup and a sandwich in front of Boris Ivanovich.
Boris Ivanovich loved his mother-in-law; in her he saw Natasha, but with a more decisive character. In his wife, Natasha, he saw features of his mother-in-law—the first signs of a gentle fullness, small lines around the mouth, and a burgeoning soft pouch under the chin. Good, healthy stock. The generous plumpness of Kustodiev’s women, but all the more alluring for it.
Natasha picked up the letter, which had been casually cast aside.
“What is this, Boris?”
Boris made a gesture indicating that walls have ears.
“Well, my dear Natasha, I got that Certificate of Honor after my Sculpture and Modeling Plant entrusted me with the task of manufacturing an object with the code name ‘SL,’ in two copies, as a matter of fact. This remarkable object represented, my girl, the sarcophagus of the leader and teacher of all times and peoples, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And just look at the signatures! The highest authorities express their gratitude to me.”
After this booming announcement, he made an obscene gesture, visible though inaudible, at those very walls.
Maria Nikolayevna smiled. Natasha put her white hands on her still whiter neck.
“What’s going to happen now?” she said quietly.
Boris picked up one of the pages of thin gray paper that were heaped about the room in multitudes, and wrote with a penciclass="underline"
“He disappeared to an unknown location.”
And on that same piece of paper he drew his usual cartoon of himself—a large head hunched into his shoulders, a short, straggly beard, and a forehead framed by two bald patches on either side.
“Another cup of tea, please, Maria Nikolayevna!” he said, jangling his cup for effect.
Natasha sat rigid in her chair. Maria Nikolayevna went to put the kettle on again.
Boris embraced his wife.
“I knew this would happen. It’s all so awful,” she said.
Then she took a pencil and wrote in the margins of the page:
“They’re going to arrest you.”
“I’m leaving home in half an hour,” he wrote back. And he drew himself somersaulting down the stairs.
The page was filled. He tore it up and burned it. He waited until the flame burned the entire page, nearly to his fingertips, then dropped the vestiges into the ashtray.
He took a new page and drew himself running down the street. At the top of the page he wrote “Train Station,” and showed it to Natasha and Maria Nikolayevna, who had just come back. His mother-in-law grasped the situation faster than his wife, and nodded.
“Right now,” Boris said.
“Alone?” Natasha said.
Muratov nodded.
Then he started rummaging around in those very walk-in cupboards that Captain Popov had been so eager to inspect, and pulled out a folder, in which he kept exactly what the captain had been looking for.