Kitabı oku: «A Game of Soldiers», sayfa 3
Andrianov had a happy moment. How far would these sanctimonious idiots go? He shook his head, gave a worried sigh.
‘What?’ Evdaev looked up, suddenly nervous all over again.
‘Well, I’ve been wondering who is paying for the vertika’s funeral. Someone should. We can’t just let her be thrown into a pit. In a way, she’s part of the Plan after all…She’s our sister.’
‘Ah…yes, I suppose so.’ Evdaev looked suddenly sad. Almost as if someone had taken away his puppy.
‘She’s our first real casualty. I suppose that in a way she’s fallen in the service of our battle, yes?’
‘Oh, yes. Very true, very true, very true, she’s a heroine.’
‘I suppose the bindery might cover the costs, that would be appropriate.’
‘Yes, you’re right, Sergei. I’ll telephone. The company will take care of it. I’ll personally see to it.’ Suddenly Evdaev had gone all pious, a tragic note had crept into his voice like a bad actor.
‘Yes, by all means. Let’s be seen to do the decent thing,’ Andrianov said, marvelling at the gullibility of ‘patriotic’ men.
FOUR
Barely awake, Pyotr Ryzhkov was the last one to climb out of the carriage that had drawn to a halt on the shady side of the Nevsky Prospekt. It was his team and he had the training, the seniority, the responsibility…and the list. Hokhodiev and Dudenko waited while he fished it out of his pocket, and then stepped back to look at the numbers on the building. Behind him a troop of cavalry passed noisily down the wide boulevard. It was only the beginning of what would probably be an excruciatingly long day – a series of extravagant military ceremonies designed to ennoble the Tsar’s dedication of a new dock on the Admiralty Quay, a break for tea, followed by a special performance at the opera – all of it more of the tercentenary celebrations.
‘This is it, right here,’ Ryzhkov told them. It was a storefront with ornate bars that protected the glass windows: Nevka Fine Sterling. There was a pair of golden double-eagle warrants painted on the glass to show that the shop served the households of the Tsar and Dowager Empress. He went over to the door and tried it. Locked. He tapped with one knuckle on the glass as he looked through the window.
Ryzhkov thought he saw a light inside. He tapped again, harder; held the list up to the window. The silversmith was a little man, maybe in his sixties, perhaps older. White wisps of hair that had come astray and a black apron protecting his white shirt.
‘We’ve closed for the celebrations, excellency.’ The old Jew was bowing and backing through the showroom as Ryzhkov pushed his way into the shop. An equally old woman peeked out from the back. The daughter came down the stairs. She was dressed in black and held a pair of binoculars in her hand.
‘You have to leave, Father,’ Ryzhkov said, smiling. ‘Sorry.’
‘But we’re closed, and…’
‘Hey!’ Hokhodiev said sharply from over in the corner where he was inspecting a display of silver samovars. The family had taken all of their merchandise out of the window for the day. There was an extra rack of bars that closed over the window from the inside of the shop. They probably had a safe in the back somewhere, Ryzhkov thought.
‘We’ve got you on our list. You have to clear out, eh?’ Ryzhkov held up the list so the old man could see it. As if the presence of the paper explained why a Jewish silversmith might be suspected of wanting to murder the Tsar.
‘We’re closed,’ the girl on the stairs said.
Dudenko walked over to the bottom of the stairs. ‘You have to close and lock the upstairs windows, too. Didn’t they tell you that?’ The mother came out from the back and scurried over to put herself between Dudenko and her daughter. ‘I’ll do it,’ the girl said to her mother.
‘Go up with them,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said to the old man. ‘He’s from Kiev.’
‘We were going to watch from upstairs, where will we go?’
‘Go home, or watch down on the corner, what about that?’ Ryzhkov said, trying to help a little. There were a lot of things about his job that he didn’t like, things he couldn’t escape, things that were just part of the atmosphere.
‘Yes…’ the old man said, staring at Ryzhkov’s chest, his hands clutching his apron. Upstairs Ryzhkov could hear Dudenko and the women shutting up the windows.
‘How did a family of Jews wind up with a shopfront on the Nevsky?’ he finally said, to break the silence while they waited.
The old man looked up at him, a little confused. ‘We inherited from my wife’s uncle. We were very fortunate,’ the old man trailed off. Ryzhkov shook his head. Why they wanted to watch the Tsar ride by when an Imperial eye-blink could exile them all to the Pale mystified him. ‘Well, just go for a walk somewhere. Anything. But you can’t stay here.’
Hokhodiev had lifted the samovar and was checking the workmanship on the base. The old man was watching him with alarm, one hand floating out, too frightened to ask him to put it down. The girl had come back down.
‘How long is this going to take?’ she said. Her voice was sullen and her face was red.
‘Well, how can I say? It’s not up to me. You know these priests, they go on and on. No one knows. When the Tsar is ready to go home, I suppose. Come back around two, that ought to be long enough,’ Ryzhkov said, trying to smile a little so she’d go along with the dance.
‘Yes, yes, of course. Two.’ The old man had overcome his fear, slipped around Ryzhkov and was heading for Hokhodiev, who had turned his attention to the valves on the samovar, screwing them this way and that. ‘Are you interested in this item, excellency?’
‘What? Oh, no. Just looking. Nice stuff, some of this.’
‘Yes, thank you, thank you.’ The old silversmith settled the samovar back on its base.
‘They can’t pray for all that time,’ the girl was still complaining. She had put on a jacket.
‘Probably not, but just lock up, now. We’ll stick around to make sure, eh?’ Ryzhkov said, and headed for the door.
‘Everything’s closed upstairs,’ Dudenko said, looking the girl over as he passed behind her at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Look,’ the girl started, still not giving up. ‘This doesn’t make sense –’
‘Don’t,’ said Ryzhkov, tired of it all, tired of cajoling. The girl stopped when she heard the edge in his voice. All of the policemen were looking at her. Ryzhkov reached into his pocket and pulled out his disc. He held it up so the Jews could all see that they weren’t just ordinary cops. ‘We don’t want to make any trouble. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to find somewhere to spend the day. Go and sit in a restaurant, but hurry up. We have others. We have a whole list to do before the procession starts.’
He turned to the old man. ‘Tell her what’s what,’ he said quietly.
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
They went outside and stood around watching the street start to fill up. Women, children, families all dressed up for the occasion. Little flags on sticks for the children to wave when the Imperial family passed by. Dudenko looked around and saw Ryzhkov’s sour expression and then looked away out into the street. Sometimes it was better to just leave Ryzhkov alone when he was looking like that.
‘What’s wrong?’ Hokhodiev asked, seeing Ryzhkov’s expression and watching him reach up and rub his jaw. ‘Are you sick? Toothache?’
‘I don’t know, maybe.’
‘Hmm. You’re not going to make a mess, are you?’ Hokhodiev asked, frowning.
‘No. It’s not like that,’ Ryzhkov muttered. The pain went away as fast as it had come.
Ryzhkov consulted the list and they moved further down the wide limestone pavements of the Nevsky. They followed the Jews to make sure they didn’t just come straight back. Dudenko still had his eyes on the girl. Hokhodiev looked over and nudged the young man out of his reverie. ‘You could convert, eh? I think she liked your dominating personality back there, you know? Having you visiting her bedroom, and all,’ he laughed.
‘Go screw yourself, Kostya,’ Dudenko said, but he still kept looking at the girl.
‘Here we are. This place here.’ Ryzhkov had found the next address. They ascended a narrow staircase that led to a set of offices used by three different suspect newspapers. The names of the publications had been painted on one of the glass doors, Beacon, Russian Alert! and Popular Knowledge. They banged on the main door that was marked as the entrance, and then went along the corridor banging on all the doors but no one answered. Ryzhkov got Dudenko to find the dvornik, a kind of combination caretaker, porter and concierge for the building, and extract him from his shack in the courtyard. Absurdly the dvornik had forgotten his pass keys, so Ryzhkov fished out his picks and in a few seconds they had broken into the offices.
Inside was a musty collection of desks, writing lamps, battered typewriting machines, and cluttered bookshelves. There were piles of paper on every surface. In one corner was a small hand press, something you could use to whip off a few hundred radical leaflets in half an hour and then wipe clean.
‘We ought to seal this place, eh?’ said Hokhodiev, but Ryzhkov shrugged. If the editors of the collection of newspapers had managed to pass the censors, who was he to shut them down? Maybe they were paying someone off. Whatever it was he didn’t want to fool with it.
There was only one more address on their side of the Nevsky, a café, supposedly a centre of wellheeled, intellectual, hot-blooded anarchism. When they got there the owners had already closed. Ryzhkov stepped down into the street so that he could see the topmost windows. Everything appeared to be shuttered.
‘Knock anyway,’ he told Dudenko. ‘Go around the back, Konstantin,’ he said to Hokhodiev. ‘See if they left anyone up there.’ He had started to fantasize that some assassin was waiting in an upstairs room for the Tsar’s carriage, a marksman with a hunting rifle and a lot of tangled ideas about starting a Slavic version of the French Revolution. He waited while they went about their tasks. Stood there and had a cigarette and watched the street.
The Nevsky: one of the great thoroughfares of Europe. Nearly two miles long, running arrow-straight from the golden spire of the Admiralty to Moscow Station where it turned, angling south towards the domes of the Alexander Nevsky monastery.
Ryzhkov loved the street at the sudden start of spring, when the pedestrians came out to promenade; all of them drawn to the bustle, the elegance, and the energy of the great boulevard. Along the sides of the street the cobbles had been replaced by hexagonal wooden blocks in an effort to dampen the noise of the carriages. Still, on a busy day it was the sheer cacophony that defined the prospekt – the shouts, the whistles, the clattering of the horses’ hooves, the carriages flying past, the splutterings of the motorcars, the yelping blasts of their horns, the ringing of the bells on the trams. The murmur of thousands of conversations, the buzzing of the throng as they moved from shop to shop; laughing, arguing, complaining, lecturing. Shop assistants mingled with soldiers, who mingled with priests, who mingled with tea-sellers and princesses. Some walked briskly, desperately about on some pressing business, faces grim. Others simply idled along, content to be part of the great stream of humanity with no place better to go, admiring their reflections in the shop windows. An endless promenade; a blend of the ultra-rich in silks and feathers, with newly-arrived peasants clutching their hats in their grimy hands, staring up at the fantastic buildings. That was life on the Nevsky; it was the spine, the vibrant centre of modern Russia.
But this morning all that vigour was restrained, forced off the balconies, and out of the windows, everything cordoned off to allow the Tsar free passage.
‘I got in up there. Nothing,’ said Hokhodiev from behind him. Dudenko was talking to a man on the corner. They were pointing to the café. The man was smoking, trying not to show his nervousness at being grilled by one of the Okhrana. Dudenko nodded and the man smiled with relief and ran back across the street. Coming back to them, Dudenko looked happy, almost blushing, Ryzhkov thought. Like a spring bride. Young, alive, and maybe even delighted to be pushing people around who were too scared to fight back. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he reported.
Hokhodiev looked over at Ryzhkov again. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling up to all this?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Fine for now anyway.’
FIVE
The upper tier of the Marinsky was more sauna than theatre; a miasma of stale perfume, cigar smoke, and sweat. After the procession, Ryzhkov and his team had been able to return to the dank dormitory that Internal kept in the basement of their headquarters building on the Fontanka. He was able to wolf down some soup, took just enough time to file a request for a St Petersburg Criminal Investigation report on the Peplovskaya Street murder, and then they were rushing across the city to the theatre.
The toothache had diminished in the late afternoon, but now he was in real pain, the throbbing in his jaw keeping pace with the tempo of Glinka’s score for A Life for the Tsar. All he could do was lean against the carved walls of the opulent blue-and-gold dress circle corridor of the Marinsky and feel the sweat trickle down his spine into his underpants.
Hokhodiev and Dudenko were pacing up and down the corridor, locked into one of their sporadic arguments. On this occasion it was over the ruthlessness of the fighting in the Balkans, the various armies like a pack of crows picking over the carcass of the Ottoman Empire and the waning hopes for peace. Dima was doing most of the talking, since he fancied himself a great critic of kings and politicians.
The bad tooth was his own fault, Ryzhkov decided. He had made more than one appointment to have it fixed, but had been scared of what his dentist would find. The molar had been cracked for years, the result of a violent confrontation with a group of metalworkers who had surprised him as they’d poured out of a clandestine meeting where they had been preparing strike plans. He had been caught right in their path, incriminated by the revolver he was loading. He hadn’t even got it closed before one of the metalworkers hit him with something hard, like a brick. He didn’t remember anything after that.
They had taken his gun, of course, and left him with a cracked jaw, swelled to the size of a coconut for nearly three weeks. Drinking through a straw. Listening to Filippa berate him a dozen times a day about his choice of occupation before she left for her uncle’s, tired of playing the role of nurse.
And so, yes, in typical Russian fashion, he deserved to carry a little bit of hell around with him. He had made mistakes, he had committed crimes. He had sinned, he had sinned repeatedly. He had never, never been good, never lived up to expectations, not really. So, then. All the pain was justified. Perhaps his father had been right all along. He should have tried to accomplish more, to have made more of himself. But he hadn’t. He’d either been too distracted or too lazy, and when he’d finally picked a vocation it had been for all the wrong reasons.
He’d ended up being the one who cleaned up the trash, swept the mess of the empire into a corner, and then saluted his betters as if nothing had ever been there. He could have been someone of worth, someone of substance. Instead he had become a kind of necessary rat, a creature devoid of status, respect, or glamour. Something vile, ruthless, and efficient.
Not just a policeman, but more than a policeman.
Pyotr Mikhalovich Ryzhkov was an Okhrana investigator, a member of the dreaded Third Branch of the Imperial Chancellery. He had advanced in his career to the point where he led a section of investigators, all of whom were supposedly elite policemen. They were charged with the task of suppressing all forms of dissent against the Tsar, the Imperial family, its property, or its policies.
Okhrana was divided into three branches. The Foreign Agency, sometimes called ‘The White Branch’, held the portfolio of international espionage. Its work was conducted by men and women whose annual budget for clothing exceeded Ryzhkov’s income by thousands of roubles. Their battles were conducted in the glittering salons of embassies spread around the globe.
Closer to home was the External Agency, responsible for the active policing of threats to the state. External rigorously monitored the activities of any organization that might have reasons to bring down the empire. They studied reports of terrorists’ comings and goings, read their letters, deciphered their codes, sifted through their rubbish, and analysed their publications. No cell was too small to avoid scrutiny. Thousands of External clerks maintained a vast system of files containing information and photographs of anyone charged with a crime; dossiers on all labour leaders, prominent members of the liberal and radical political parties, exiled or expatriate politicians, editors and journalists of magazines, books, or seditious literature of all kinds.
But Ryzhkov and his men were gorokhovniks – members of the Internal Agency. The nickname was a slur derived from the slang term for their long raincoats named after Petersburg’s famously drab Gorokhovaya Prospekt.
Internal investigators were considered little more than thugs and informants by the more genteel External agents. They operated out of safe-houses and flats, often used multiple identities and routinely dealt in conspiracies, blackmail, bribery, and assassination. They were on call twenty-four hours a day, filled in when the External needed them, snatched sleep and meals when and where they could.
There was no such thing as a normal day for an Internal investigator. Within the branch, marriages were doomed to failure; Ryzhkov’s was on its last legs. Children were neglected. He thought himself lucky that he had none. To relieve the futility, Internal investigators often fell prey to drink or the kind of low level corruption that came with nearly unlimited police power. It was more than a job, it was a way of life, a way of behaving. A way of thinking and existing to which Ryzhkov had grown accustomed. And gradually he’d come to accept that the purgatory of being in the despised Internal branch, like the pain in his tooth, was something for which he was uniquely suited. Something he deserved.
A man content to give his life for the Tsar.
‘…and the next thing is that the Hapsburgs are going to use the excuse and step in to protect their empire, and then it’s everyone rushing to be manly, eh? To protect the home and the hearth, eh?’ Dudenko was lecturing as the two of them paced by Ryzhkov, who had been propping up the wall.
‘Be quiet. Be quiet, for Godsakes,’ Ryzhkov said weakly. Neither of them could hear him. ‘Just, please…be quiet,’ he mumbled. Even moving his tongue hurt. Inside the theatre he could hear an alto singing desperately:
Oh, I wish I were a knight!
Oh, I wish I were a hero!
I would break down the gates be they of cast iron!
I would rush to the chamber where our Tsar reposes,
I would call ‘Servants of the Tsar!
Wake up!’
There was a commotion down the hallway and reflexively all three Internal inspectors straightened as the Chevalier Guards Officer-in-Charge came striding along the carpet. He was resplendent in his shining silver breastplate, skin-tight breeches and gleaming helmet. Beside him Hokhodiev looked like a small-town magistrate in a borrowed tailcoat.
The guardsman’s eye settled on Ryzhkov and he frowned. ‘Has this one been drinking?’ he asked.
‘Toothache,’ Ryzhkov muttered. The officer nodded sympathetically. Everyone had been pressed into service today. Normally a section of Internal men would be nowhere near the Marinsky, but extreme times called for extreme measures.
‘Bloody hell,’ the officer said. Ultimately he was in charge of the security precautions at the theatre. ‘Well, stay here. I’ll get you something.’ He headed back down the carpet toward the Imperial boxes.
Ryzhkov relaxed, took up his place against the wall and let his eyes shut. His dentist had a surgery on Vasilevsky Island, but after hours he had no idea how to find the man. And now he’d lose the tooth. Yes, it was his fault for ignoring it, but before the pain had never really been unbearable. A little twitch every now and then, but nothing like this.
‘Why don’t you sit down? If you hear me whistle, they’re coming,’ said Hokhodiev.
He began to pull Ryzhkov across the carpet to one of the satin-covered benches that ringed the corridor. No one sat on the benches. They were strictly ordered never to sit on the benches while on duty. ‘Sit, for Christ’s sake, Pyotr Mikhalovich.’ Dudenko had slipped an arm around him, and he suddenly felt his knees collapse as they heaved him on to the settee.
Immediately he heard the guards officer’s voice. ‘Has he collapsed? Here, make him take this.’ He pressed a round silver container into Ryzhkov’s palm.
‘Put it right on the tooth.’ The man grimaced. Beneath the moustache Ryzhkov could see that the officer had very few teeth beyond his incisors. Evidently he knew what he was talking about.
The officer stood back and appraised the three of them for a moment, then went back to his station. Ryzhkov screwed open the salter and found it full to the brim with cocaine.
‘Well, well, well,’ Dudenko sighed.
‘I expect that should do you for a bit, eh?’ said Hokhodiev with satisfaction, and he and Dudenko moved along the corridor so they could cover for him.
When he began dabbing cocaine on his tooth the relief was instantaneous, a wave of cool water that spread through his swollen gums. He made a mental note to repay the officer for his courtesy, and sat there sighing with gratitude. Maybe the cocaine would provide him with enough relief to get up and do his job before the end of the act. It wouldn’t do to get a citation on the Chevalier Guard nightly report, no matter what branch he was in. Ryzhkov’s career as an Internal agent might not be glamorous but it was, nevertheless, all the career he had.
A smart young man with no connections or noble blood, Ryzhkov had come into the Police Department in 1897, at what seemed to him to be the absurdly distant age of twenty-one. His first job had been to shadow the great Tolstoy while he visited St Petersburg. It was a bizarre introduction to policing, following an ageing writer as he browsed through the bookshops and markets of the city. But Ryzhkov conscientiously recorded Tolstoy’s every movement, the time and content of his meals, his conversations, and the numbers of the cabs he took across the city.
Now Ryzhkov caught sight of himself in a mirror. For a split second he thought it was someone else. One side of his face was swollen. He looked like a hamster or a man with a wad of tobacco in his cheek. His hair had come awry, his eyes were droopy and dull as if he had not slept in several days; perspiration had soaked his shirt front and the collar was stained and limp. Still, he had managed to restrain himself from pulling loose his cravat, and his suit was reasonably immaculate.
With a graceful flick of his fingertips he straightened up and shook his arms so the suit would settle across his shoulders. He tried to smile, tried to be debonair for a moment. The effort sent little spikes of pain across his jaw. He shook his head waggishly, as if he had just heard a naughty joke, made a smooth pivot, and with astounding grace began ambling down the corridor towards his men.
‘We should get into our places. Isn’t this the aria?’ Ryzhkov strolled towards the centre of the house.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling well enough, Pyotr Mikhalovich?’
‘Everything’s under control.’ He tried his debonair new smile out on Dudenko, who was obviously upset. Well, it was a very involving opera, a very emotional story, especially for a Slavophile.
He led them nearly halfway along the long curving corridor. At each entrance to the theatre two shining Chevalier Guards were posted, their gleaming helmets pulled severely down over their eyes. The golden chin straps, originally meant to keep the helmet on during the fury of a cavalry charge, had atrophied so that they fell ineffectually below each young guardsman’s lower lip. Now they couldn’t even bend over without losing their hats. Something about the young, blank, obedient faces of the guardsmen suddenly caused Ryzhkov to feel weary. A fresh wave of depression flooded over him and his step faltered on the carpet.
Suddenly there were footsteps behind them. ‘Shit,’ hissed Dudenko. Ryzhkov felt Hokhodiev tighten his grip, trying to hold him up straighter.
‘All right, that’s enough! Enough!’ It was the guards officer’s voice, angrily taking charge. ‘You people are disgraceful! Get him out of here…’ His diatribe got lost in a wave of applause. Suddenly there were young men in tailcoats rushing past them.
‘God Almighty!’ the officer spat. The young men in tailcoats flung open the doors to the boxes and instantly came a screamed command. The guards snapped to attention.
And then…
The very atmosphere began to hum. It was as if an electric charge had been sent through the corridor. A rustling of silk, a dazzling flash of white as a fan of eagle feathers flicked in Empress Alexandra’s hand as she swept out of the dark tunnel to the Imperial boxes. Simultaneously all of the men bowed, but Ryzhkov, caught dazed and unawares, could only stare at the Tsarina.
Empress Alexandra’s features were frozen, her expression was a metallic mask – as dead as an ikon, her skin nearly as pale as the white lace she wore. Only the impatience of her step betrayed her emotions. Her eyes were dark and glazed, focused on nothingness, blankly staring ahead. Immediately behind her came a Cossack bodyguard carrying the young Grand Duke Alexei, heir to the House of Romanov. A few steps behind them, the Tsar strode out, deep in conversation with the Minister of War. All sound ceased except for the Tsar’s voice softly fading as the Imperial entourage moved down the carpeted corridor between the ranks of gleaming soldiers, ranks so solemn that they could have been on parade for the dead.
Then, as abruptly as they had come, the Romanovs were gone, through the great doors and down the golden staircase, heading for their carriages at the front of the Marinsky. The tension instantly evaporated.
‘Finally.’ The officer turned on the Okhrana men, pushing them back against the wall so they would be clear of the swarm of Russia’s elite rushing towards the staircase. The corridor was suddenly full of gowns and jewels and bright uniforms. ‘What’s your name?’ the officer hissed. His face was red, angry.
‘Deputy Inspector Hokhodiev, sir.’
‘Get this one out of here. And you!’ Now the guardsman whirled on Dudenko. ‘You make sure he does it! Now go!’
‘Take us to Glasovskaya Street then,’ Dudenko called out to Muta.
‘Not all that far, eh, Dima?’ Hokhodiev said sarcastically. ‘Only a few hundred miles across the Fontanka, way down there by the gasworks, tucked in beside the race track.’
‘God,’ Dudenko sighed.
‘It’s a nice new place, though, right? A little noisy, but still a nice place, eh, Pyotr?’
‘Yes. Nice,’ Ryzhkov said underneath the rushing trees. Filippa had picked it out, the family had bought it for them. The best apartment in the best building on a second-rate street. Being from Moscow they’d known nothing about the neighbourhood.
‘You can keep this until the morning then, I suppose,’ said Hokhodiev as he shifted the salter full of cocaine back into his pocket. Ryzhkov sat up a little, unscrewed the lid and stuck his finger in for another dab of painkiller. They were manoeuvring around a park and for a few moments he tried to decipher their location by the undersides of the trees as they clattered along.
Ryzhkov succumbed to a reverie that kept pace with the rhythm of their horse’s hooves, only surfacing when he heard Hokhodiev tell Dudenko that the gendarmes’ official explanation was that the girl at the bindery had been drunk and imagined she could fly. She had jumped out of the window in a fit of hysteria.
‘But she had marks,’ Ryzhkov said. ‘Right around…’ He tried to make a little circling gesture around his neck. ‘Marks,’ he said again and closed his eyes, musing on the nature of suicide. She might have been sick. Lonely. She might have been tired, tired of the bad life. Tired of being a toy for any man with twenty roubles. There were plenty of reasons for the girl to want to die, but she hadn’t strangled herself first, he knew that.
And now officially they were saying he should forget all about it. Forget the smeared lipstick, the transparent dress. Forget.
At Glasovskaya Street they helped him up the stairs, helped him fish for his key, helped him open his great creaking door. ‘It’s almost time to wake up and go to the dentist…’ he mumbled.
‘All right, have a good night then,’ Hokhodiev said, Dudenko’s hand halfway rising in salute as he closed the door behind them.
Ryzhkov started undressing but he ended up just taking off his shoes and socks, walking out to the front room, covering himself with a dressing-gown and collapsing on the chaise. After only a few minutes he got up and moved to the writing desk. Under the blotter was the running letter he had started a week earlier. He pressed the nib of his pen into the blotter and made a series of dashes over the paper until the ink began to run, then he began to finish the letter.
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