Zelensky listened to his music with his eyes closed, an occasional nod betraying the beat. Arkady had to give him credit; iPods were the most frequently stolen item on the Metro, but the filmmaker seemed blithely unconcerned. Mendeleyev and Antipenko snatched glances at Arkady, their eyes bitter and bright. Their youth had coincided with the peak of Soviet power and prestige. Little wonder they were wistful and furious at the downward course their lives had taken.
At the Lenin Library station the officer of the Frontier Guard got off and vomited in his cap. The station conductor, a stout woman in a Metro uniform, made sure he didn’t spill a drop on her platform. Eight passengers boarded, intellectuals by the thinness of their coats. One attended to his comb-over and vaguely acknowledged Platonov.
Platonov spoke over the rush of the train. “A so-called chess master, but really just a wood pusher. Oslo, 1978, he resigned against me in eleven moves. Eleven! As if he had sudden indigestion instead of a bishop shoved down his throat and a rook shoved up his ass.”
“Do you make many enemies?”
“Chess is war. Zhenya understands that.” Platonov puffed up a little. “I’m playing the winner of a local tournament match on Friday. That fraud across the aisle pretends he’ll show up. He won’t.”
At the Okhotny Row station two babushkas from the night before joined the car, bringing with them the scent of boiled cabbage to vie with Platonov’s cologne. The prostitutes briefly flirted with Arkady before deciding that he was a cold engine. Three were in the death grip of tight Italian skirts. The apparent leader, a redhead in snakeskin pants, seemed to listen to private music without the aid of an iPod. The others gasped when the lights of the car flickered and sparks shot up between the tunnel and the train. This was the oldest section of the entire system. Rails were worn. Insulation frayed. Blue imps danced around the switches.
Platonov asked, “Do you know the sad thing?”
“What is the sad thing?”
“That Stalin was able to enjoy the Metro as a passenger once only. On that occasion he was so loved by the public he was mobbed and the security forces never let him do it again. To think, we’re riding where he rode.”
The train approached the stop for Lubyanka, the legendary factory of woe, where men were beaten like metal into more useful shapes: collaborators, confessors, victims eager to accuse themselves. They were delivered by car or, in Stalin’s day, what seemed an innocent baker’s van, but never via the Metro.
Next station, Chistye Prudy. In spite of his skepticism, Platonov removed his cap and made other small adjustments to appear presentable, and Arkady noticed a general stir among the riders: coughs, straightened backs, attention to shoes. Medals suddenly appeared. Antipenko wore the gold star of a Hero of Labor. The babushkas were Heroine Mothers. Zelensky let his earbuds drop around his neck. The violinist dog-eared a page and slipped the book into his violin case. At a depth of seventy meters the train descended further and its breath grew cooler.
The door to the next carriage opened and a man in a warm-up suit entered with a boy and girl in parkas. The man had broad shoulders and a heavy brow, but his physical menace was undercut by his stumbling from pole to pole as he followed the children. They were about ten years old, with blue eyes and golden hair that could have come right out of an artist’s tube of paint. The girl held roses wrapped in cellophane. Zelensky took charge of her and the boy and marched them through the carriage to Arkady.
“What a coincidence. I said to myself that looks like Investigator Renko over there, and it is. Two nights in a row, is that coincidence or fate? Which is it?”
“So far, just a ride on the Metro.”
“We’re going to be on television,” said the girl. She raised the flowers for Arkady. “Smell.”
“Very nice. Who is the posy for?”
“You’ll see,” Zelensky said. “Okay, kiddies, go back to Bora. Uncle Vlad has to talk.”
Zelensky rocked like a sailor to the motion of the train while the boy and girl returned.
“Is Bora a filmmaker, too?” Arkady asked.
“Bora is protection.”
“You must need protection pretty badly.”
“Don’t underestimate Bora. Bora is a pit bull. But what are you doing here?” Zelensky grinned with bewilderment. “According to the television, you said there was no investigation, that no one saw Stalin. You changed your mind?”
“I thought it over and decided that maybe there was a chance that Stalin had been in hibernation for fifty years.”
Zelensky noticed Platonov’s interest in the conversation. “Getting nosy?”
“No.” Platonov shook his head vigorously.
Arkady asked, “Is this the first time on the Metro for Bora? He looks a little lost.”
“He’s new to Moscow, but he’ll catch on. He’s a handy man to have around.”
“For crossword puzzles?”
“Things are changing. I’ve had a bad patch, but I’m coming out of it. I admit I did some adult films. To you that might make me a pornographer.”
“That would do it.”
“That’s because you’re concentrating on me. What’s important, the messenger or the message?”
“What’s the message?”
“You’ve no idea what you’re getting into.”
“Will there be special effects?”
“We don’t need special effects. We have the secret.”
“Share it with me.”
“You’ll see what you’ll see.”
Zelensky let his smile hang in the air and returned to his seat. As the train slowed, passengers seated on the left side of the aisle migrated to the right. Instead of displaying the usual subway torpor they were increasingly excited, as if they were in a theater and the curtain about to rise.
Platonov cleared his throat. “Renko, I apologize for not backing you up a minute ago.”
“Don’t worry about it. You’re a chess player, not a policeman.”
The train went black and from black to yellow.
“Stalin!”
“It’s him.”
“Stalin!”
Full lights returned as the doors opened. All Arkady saw was an empty platform and marble columns. Platonov rose from his seat, drawn to the open door. The violinist had exchanged his book for a mini video camera and was taping the scene. Arkady recognized the camera because the prosecutor’s office had one similar.
Arkady followed Platonov onto the platform. “Did you see anything?”
“I…don’t know,” Platonov said.
Everyone filed out of the carriage and their numbers grew as curiosity attracted passengers disembarking from forward cars, some with vodka-sloppy steps, bottles tucked inside their coats. Where there had been fifteen people, fifty milled about. The doors closed and the train pulled away. Shorter people on the platform were tiptoe with excitement. Arkady saw no one carrying anything big enough to manufacture special effects, like a strobe light and battery. He also did not see any platform conductors, although they generally allowed no lingering from the last train. Every Metro station had a militia post at street level, but Arkady didn’t feel he had time to go up the escalator, wake the officer on duty and tell him…what?
“What do you mean, you don’t know?” Arkady asked Platonov.
“I…don’t know.”
Arkady turned to a babushka who looked as sweet as the Virgin’s mother and asked if she saw anything.
“I saw Stalin as plain as day. He asked me to get him a bowl of hot soup.”
Two men in fur hats and parkas hung back on the platform. They hadn’t been on the train or boarded it. They weren’t Russian. In winter Russians in general just added another layer of clothing, Arkady thought. It was Americans who wore parkas as round and bright as hot-air balloons.
“Friends, fellow Russians, brothers and sisters,” Zelensky said. “Please give us room.” He indicated how much platform space he needed and where his cameraman should stand, acting the role of a director very much in charge, moving slowly to intensify the moment. From his duffel bag he took a framed photograph of Stalin that he set against the base of a platform pillar. Bora relieved the children of parkas to show off their embroidered peasant shirts. Zelensky dug into his bag again and came out with a spindly votive candle and a candleholder he placed in the boy’s hands. While Bora lit the candle, Zelensky looked toward the men in parkas. The shorter one pantomimed holding something. Zelensky arranged the flowers in the girl’s hands. The cameraman went on taping. From the flesh trade to Stalin’s ghost, it was all the same to Zelensky, Arkady thought, but Zelensky was not even directing, he was taking his cues from the American. The children made a short procession and placed the candle and flowers before the photo. Stalin wore a white uniform in the picture. His vigorous mustache and hair were unmistakable, and the shifting flames of the candles brought his eyes to life.