Petrov was conserving cassettes, recording new material over old. Arkady jabbed Fast Forward and the tape speeded to a race of men running around the girl, taking turns, on and off, on and off.
When Arkady found Marfa crying he returned to Play. She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, her face turned away from the camera as she wailed. The way she twisted emphasized the baby fat on her waist.
“She sounds like a bagpipe,” Bora said off camera.
A hand came into view and pointed to her tattoo. “A butterfly. How did I miss that before? Cute.”
Zelensky said, “Marfa, you were great.”
“You were great,” Bora said.
“You were great,” the third man said. “You were born to fuck.”
“This is a private tape,” Zelensky assured her. “No one’s going to see it. I had to find out how good you were and you were a pro.”
Marfa went on sobbing.
Zelensky said, “Remember, you told me you were a big girl and I took you at your word.”
The third man said, “Vlad makes porn, that’s all he does. What did you expect?”
“That’s not all I do,” Zelensky said.
“Really? Name something else.”
“I have other projects, other movies. You’ll see.”
“Right. It seems to me that as a film director you have one piece of direction. ‘Suck faster.’”
“Sasha, go fuck yourself.”
“No. Thanks to your little friend I’m set for the day.”
“Get the fuck out.”
“I’m getting out in a new Mercedes.”
“Heil Hitler!” Zelensky shouted as a door opened and closed. “Bourgeois prick.”
The camera remained on Marfa. Run, Arkady thought. Get out while you can.
She stifled a sob. “What other movies?”
By the time Arkady finished viewing the tapes it was seven in the morning. He locked the dossier and tapes in his safe and dragged himself to his car on the off chance Eva or Zhenya had returned to the apartment and ignored his phone calls; although it was rude, some people did that sort of thing.
But no apartment could have been emptier. There were no new notes, no messages on the machine. His footsteps sounded clumsy and intrusive and he couldn’t help but think of Eva moving lightly in bare feet. The mattress on the bedroom floor looked more temporary than ever.
An acrid smell drew Arkady to the window. Down on the street the road crew was boiling tar to fill the same pothole as the day before. The women shoveled while the man, the chief, waved cars by. A blue plastic tarp was set up as a shelter, a sign that the crew was settling in.
Eva’s clothes hung in the closet, which suggested that she was coming back to pack, at the very least. Her tapes were still in a box, fifty or more audiotapes stacked chronologically beside the recorder. He fed one into the recorder and pushed Play.
The heavy breathing of exercise.
“Arkasha, catch up.”
His voice from a distance. “I have a better suggestion. You stop.”
“I’m recording you. I am compiling evidence that on cross-country skis the senior investigator couldn’t catch a snowman.”
He listened to a winter day, a trail that wound through birches and voices ringing in the cold.
“Eva, I am carrying brandy, bread, sausage and cheese, pickles and fish, the full weight of luxury, while you carry nothing but a seductive smile. Perhaps you would like me to carry you, as well.”
He heard laughter and an accelerating slap of skis.
Another tape caught the arm-in-arm quality of a stroll. “Between the two of us, Adam was innocent.” His voice.
“Seriously?” Hers.
“He had no choice. Between keeping Eve happy and displeasing the Lord, the creator of the universe, any sane man would have made the same decision.”
“I should hope so.”
Nothing profound, the throwaway lines of life.
A third tape had only the drone and counterdrone of motorboats and the shouts of water-skiers treading water, for some reason a happy memory. Eva was a light sleeper and Arkady would find her in the middle of the night sitting up with a cigarette and vodka, concentrating on the tapes as if they were her proof of a new life.
He put the tapes and recorder back the way he had found them, stretched out on the mattress and closed his eyes. For just ten minutes. Just to keep going.
Snow pecked at the window. When the wind was stiff the window stirred in its sash. The grinding of plows seemed everywhere.
Arkady was on a frozen lake. Between the fringe of trees and gray clouds was a stillness and a pleasant nip in the air, and the length of the lake were dark dots, fishermen at their holes. The gear for ice fishing was simple: an auger, a hook, a line, a box to sit on and vodka to drink.
There was no better fishing companion than Sergeant Belov. He was insulated by layers of clothing, a fur hat and felt boots, but his red hands were bare, the better to jiggle the lure just so and feel any tug on the hook. The temperature could drop to minus ten, minus twenty, Belov never wore gloves. His prize, smelts the size of silver coins, lay frozen on the ice. “Zakuski size!” Belov said. “Appetizers!” When his hands and cheeks started to freeze he chased the chill with vodka.
The sergeant was usually full of good stories about tanks and trucks falling through the ice, or an entire company of troops who drifted away on ice floes never to be seen again. This time Belov was so silent that Arkady wandered off on a private dare toward the middle of the lake.
Only one fisherman had drilled his hole so far out. Arkady told himself that a word of conversation with the man would cap his achievement, although when Arkady looked back the sky was darker and all the other fishermen, including Belov, had picked up and gone. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the ice, but since the fisherman ahead seemed so busy and content Arkady pressed on.
The fisherman was wrapped and hooded in tattered coats and blankets, his face lost in shadow, his hands manipulating many strings simultaneously. Arkady couldn’t put a name to him, although he had seen the man many times before. Then the sun tunneled beneath the clouds and cast a sudden light. Under the ice Arkady saw Marfa, Eva and Zhenya. He hadn’t saved a single one.
7
The harpist onstage in the Metropol dining room played in languid, circular strokes, eyes closed, apparently oblivious of the Americans having breakfast at the nearest table. Wiley had a full face and fine hair like a six-foot baby in a business suit. He filled his bowl with cereal; here was a man, Arkady guessed, who planned to die healthy. Pacheco looked like his protection. In his forties with a bald spot and a bull neck, Pacheco was starting his day with steak and a stack of blini.
Why, Arkady had asked himself, would a scruffy character like Petya Petrov write the Metropol telephone number in a book of matches for a “gentlemen’s club” called Tahiti? What members of the Metropol’s international set might Petya know? Arkady could only think of the two Americans on the Metro platform at Chistye Prudy, and he recognized them as he entered the dining room. The maitre d’ surrendered their names from a buffet sign-in sheet and Arkady waited for the Americans to begin eating before he wended his way between pink tablecloths and red banquettes.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Arkady showed his ID as he sat. Socially, it was a little awkward, like pushing into a rowboat already occupied.
The Americans were unfazed. Wiley handed the ID back. “Not a bit. Cup of coffee? Breakfast? Load up.”
“Just don’t kick everything over like you did last night.” Pacheco had a voice deepened by a lifetime of cigarettes.
“Coffee at the very least.” Wiley waved to the waiter.
“So you do remember last night? Stalin on the Metro?”