The Secret History of Moscow Page 3

  Man. Wings. Scottish terrier abandoned in the empty field. Yakov banished the thought. “Racketeers,” he said.

  "It's happening all over Moscow. Thirty people in the last week."

  "Racketeers are all over Moscow."

  Zakharov rested his aristocratic skull on his hands folded over the back of the chair, his gaze traveling up the freshly whitewashed walls and to the ceiling blinking with naked bulbs. He sighed. “I suppose. God, why me?"

  Yakov shrugged and reached for the bag with his little crow.

  "Neat,” Zakharov said. “Where'd you get it?"

  "He fell out of the nest Saturday,” Yakov replied. “It was windy.” And there was no man turning into a bird.

  "I can keep an eye on him,” Zakharov said.

  "Oh? And I will be doing what exactly?"

  "You'll be visiting the families of the missing persons and finding out whether they were involved in any sort of commerce."

  "Who isn't nowadays?"

  "My point exactly. See who they worked for, see if any Chechen gangs were involved."

  Yakov looked up. “Chechen?"

  "Yeah. Armenian, Georgian-whatever. Caucasian nationals."

  "Most thugs I see are Russians,” Yakov said.

  The lieutenant frowned and tossed a notepad with names and addresses at Yakov. “Go see to it."

  Yakov went.

  * * * *

  He couldn't understand why his mother had decided to move to this city. Sure, the center, the old city, was beautiful. But they lived in the suburbs, which were dreadful and empty and grey, all natural vegetation twisted and starved by overturned dirt, by too many people, by the incessant burrowing of new construction. One couldn't cross a yard without accumulating great clods of clay on one's boots, and their weight inevitably dragged down the spirit. By the time Yakov reached the well-paved streets and the bus stop, he would usually lose the desire to live anywhere, let alone this place. The anorexic poplars bent in the persistent wind given free rein in this neighborhood, rarely more than corridors between tall flat buildings that begat drafts and winds; Yakov hoped that one day the confluence of air streams and accumulated depression in the air would create a tornado. He pictured it in his mind, a perfect whirlwind picking up the discarded garbage, the construction bricks carelessly left in sloppy piles, cars parked by and occasionally on the sidewalks. Just clearing out all the trash which hard life had deposited here and forgotten about. He went back and forth on whether he wanted the people gone as well.

  His first visit took him into the heart of this desolate labyrinth. He imagined himself a Theseus in a police uniform; only a thread and an Ariadne attached to it were missing. Sweat trickled down his neck and cooled in the hollow between his shoulder blades as he imagined a minotaur waiting for him-a terrible creature brought forth by the upset of the world's order, born from the chaos that ruled the land and the pungent dreams of the new Russians, a misshapen embodiment of lawlessness and despair.

  The hoodlums hanging out by the building gave him oblique looks but didn't heckle. He was grateful for that, for being able to go by without being called names. He ducked into the entrance and ran up two flights of stairs to the second floor where his first appointment waited.

  He rang the bell and waited. He pushed the door and it swung noiselessly, admitting him into a crammed one-bedroom apartment, where pride masked poverty with knick-knacks and imitation wood furniture. He saw a cockroach, scuttling away shyly, and called into the empty place, “Hello?"

  "Over here,” he heard from the kitchen.

  A young girl, maybe seventeen, sat at the kitchen table, her hands folded in her lap. Her gaze never met Yakov's, and remained directed toward the single window. “When we first moved here,” she said, “there were apple orchards. This house was the first to be built in this district, and all the rest was just gardens, and the woods past the railroad tracks. There were owls there-I could hear them hooting every night. The trains whistling and the owls hooting, this is how I remember it. Especially in the summer."

  "I'm with the police,” Yakov said. “We got a report of a missing person?"

  "My mom,” the girl said, stubbornly staring out of the window. Her voice wavered a bit, and with a sinking heart Yakov realized that she'd been crying.

  He never knew what to say to the crying people, especially the younger ones. It made him panic and make promises he couldn't possibly keep, just to stem the tears and the heartbreak. “Please,” he said. “Don't cry. We'll find your mom. But you'll have to help me there, all right?"

  The girl rubbed her face with her palm angrily, and shot him a smoldering look, furious that he'd seen her like this, red-eyed and snot-nosed. He pitied her for her grief and for her plain face and sharp nose, for her thin mousy braids, for her obvious awkwardness.

  "When did you last see her?” Yakov asked, and sat down at the table though no invitation was forthcoming.

  "Friday morning,” the girl said. “She went to work but she didn't come back."

  "Where does she work?"

  "At the meat processing plant across the railroad tracks.” The girl pointed. “Where the woods used to be. They say she didn't come to work Friday."

  He wrote it down. “Do you have any relatives you can stay with meanwhile?"

  "No.” She gave him a dark look from her eyes reddened with recent tears. “I can take care of myself."

  He nodded. “We'll call you if we find anything. Your name is…?"

  "Darya,” the girl said. “And you?"

  "Yakov,” Yakov said. “If you call your local police station, just ask for me, all right?"

  "All right,” the girl said, and turned back to the window.

  Yakov headed for the door. There was a yelp, and he spun and ran back into the kitchen, imagining something horrible happening to the girl. Instead, he found her unharmed but pale as she pointed at something outside the window. He looked at the flock of birds winging their way toward the building, not understanding at first. And then he saw.

  The birds were owls, squinting in the luminous sunlight, but circling nonetheless.

  "Where did they come from?” Yakov muttered, looking over the expanse of asphalt and construction.

  The owls seemed confused as well. They remained silent, and their wings, soft as down, made no noise; they were phantoms, not birds of flesh and bone, he thought. They were not real because they were not supposed to be here, had no right to exist, had no reason to fly about in daylight. Yet Darya saw them too and waved at the birds, shooing them away or inviting them closer, Yakov couldn't tell.

  One of the owls split from the flock and headed directly for the window. Its eyes, huge and round and yellow, set in a white triangular face, gripped Yakov's. The bird screeched once and slammed into the windowpane, its speckled feathers erupting at the impact and showering down, falling just seconds before the dead owl's body hit the asphalt below. Darya cried.

  * * * *

  It was dark when he arrived at the last address, not too far from the station-he planned it that way. An older woman opened the door; her eyes were haunted. A stained and wet housecoat clung to her spindly legs, and the buttons were missing, showing a yellowing slip underneath. The woman motioned for him to come in, and he heard water rushing into the bathtub and a baby crying.

  "Doing the laundry,” the woman explained. “My daughter's missing. This is her baby."

  "I can wait a little,” Yakov said.

  The woman nodded and disappeared down the hallway, muttering to herself and sighing. Yakov felt for her, left like this with a double burden of a missing child and care for the grandchild. He didn't dare to venture inside the apartment and waited by the door, resting his back against its smooth surface, until a lock clicked and the door shoved him into the hallway.

  "I'm sorry,” the woman who entered said, and eyed him suspiciously. She was taller than Yakov and about his age; she carried grocery bags. “Are you with the police?"

  "Yes,” Yako
v said, resisting the impulse to sarcasm. “I'm sorry it took me so long-I'm interviewing many people today. A lot of folks seem to be missing. I think I just spoke to your mother?"

  The woman nodded. “My sister disappeared two days ago."

  "Where did she work?"

  "She was a student, at the Pedagogical Institute. Started last year. She just had a baby."

  "A boy or a girl?” Yakov asked.

  The woman looked at him with a strange expression in her dark eyes. “I don't know,” she said. “I was so shaken, I never thought of asking."

  The old woman reappeared, wiping her hands on the housecoat. “It's a boy,” she told Yakov, pointedly ignoring the woman with grocery bags. “Come on in, son. I'll tell you all about it."

  She led him into the living room, where he sat on the collapsed couch, a spring digging into his thigh, and asked questions. Just like everyone else, the missing girl had no criminal connections and led a startlingly ordinary life. The only unusual thing was the circumstances of her disappear-ance-giving birth in the bathroom and then melting into thin air.

  "And you haven't heard or seen anything?” he asked. “And are you sure the bathroom door was locked?"

  "I'm sure,” the woman said. “And there wasn't anyone else, except myself, and Galina."

  "And a jackdaw,” the tall woman said from the doorway where she apparently stood for some time, silent.

  Man. Wings. Scottish terrier.

  The old woman shook her head in exasperation. “Excuse her,” she told Yakov. “She's not-right."

  There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the woman, except that at her mother's words she shrank and retreated into the hallway.

  "Wait,” Yakov called. “Did you say a jackdaw?"

  The woman peeked in again. “Yes. Other birds, too. And I think I know someone who can help you look. Only…"

  "Stop that,” the older woman said. “You're embarrassing me."

  And Galina faded from view, silently disappearing into the darkness of the apartment. She reappeared once, when Yakov was leaving, and shoved a crumpled note into his hand. “Call me at work. There's a street artist who knows something,” she whispered and fled under her mother's withering stare.

  3: Fyodor

  Fyodor was afraid of gypsies; when he was little, his mother used to warn him of straying too far away from the house. “Gypsies will get you,” she said. “They steal children and sell them."

  Fyodor played by the porch, in its cool shadow smelling of rotting wood, and rarely wandered past the outhouse and the fence discolored by weather.

  When his stepfather came to live with them, he was much less aware of the gypsy problem. “Go play outside,” he would tell little Fyodor. “What are you, stupid?"

  "But the gypsies,” he tried to explain. “They'll get me."

  The stepfather laughed, and gave him a shove away from the porch. “Gypsies are not dumb. Why would they steal a kid who'd fetch no more than a quarter?"

  Fyodor went then, sobbing silently to himself. He hoped to run into some gypsies and to be stolen away, both to get away from the stepfather and to prove him wrong. He wandered past the fence and down the only earthen street of Vasilyevskoe, the village where he was born and lived all his life. It was just a row of one-story wooden houses and a gaggle of filthy geese fraternizing with a few disheveled chickens. He passed the only store, and then the road led him out of the village, to a small clump of pines overgrowing sandy dunes-the Barrens, too grand a name for such a little place. But it smelled of fresh pine resin, and the sun shone, and wild strawberries stained his fingers with their sweet blood.

  He spent all afternoon lying on his back, melting into the heated sand and pine-scented air, swallowing sweet melancholy tears as he thought of the gypsies that would come by to steal him away into some magical and sinister land, and how sorry his mother would be-perhaps sorry enough to tell the stepfather to go away forever since it was his fault.

  The sun stretched over him, touching the tops of dunes in a sizzling white flash, and sank behind them. The shadows of the dunes grew blue and touched his face; the sand chilled him, and the strawberries grew indiscernible in the dark. He hated the gypsies then, for scorning him as defective merchandise. It was time to return home, to look into the stepfather's smug face and admit that he was right-there was no value inherent in Fyodor, and even gypsies knew that.

  Fyodor's family moved when it was time for him to go to school. Like pilgrims, they took trains north and west until they arrived at Zvenigorod. Fyodor did not sleep on the train and just repeated the word-Zve-ni-go-rod-in rhythm with clanging of the wheels. A twinkling city, a happy city, he imagined, animated by the merry ringing of a thousand church bells, a city promising happiness and sunshine. It turned out to be covered in asphalt, and even the trees were dusty. Seven-year-old Fyodor felt the familiar sting of disappointment as he discovered that the name was a lie.

  However, there were gypsies here. They were just leaving the train station as his mother and the stepfather bickered about whether the trucker they paid to transport their belongings to the new residence had arrived yet, when his stepfather paused and spat. “Fucking gypsies,” he said. “I don't believe this."

  Young Fyodor traced the direction of his gaze and stared at the colorful group-men and women, brightly dressed, sat on sacks and rolled-up blankets, talking loudly in a language Fyodor didn't understand-a secret Gypsy language, he surmised. A few half-naked toddlers played in the dust. All of these people had dark skin and shining black eyes, and the women wore long flowered skirts and jangling earrings and necklaces. The men's teeth shone white in their bearded faces. It was the first time he'd seen real gypsies, and he stood entranced until his mother tugged his hand and dragged him along.

  "Don't stare,” she said, irritably, and turned to Fyodor's stepfather. “Both of you. They'll see you looking at them."

  It was too late-one of the women rose from the bundle she sat on and approached them calling out in a smoky accented voice, “Wait up, beautiful, I'll tell you your fortune if you gild my hand."

  "No, thank you,” Fyodor's mother said firmly, and turned away to leave. “We don't believe in this stuff."

  The gypsy woman was not so easily discouraged. Her dark fingers grabbed Fyodor's mother's wrist, and she spoke so quickly her words blended into a threatening chant, “If you don't gild my hand, your eyes will burst, your womb will wither, your child will suffer…” All the while, she held her other hand palm-up, as if offering something invisible.

  Fyodor's mother stopped and rifled through her handbag. “Here,” she said, and put the money-not coins, real paper money-into the woman's open hand. “Just leave us be."

  "Tell me it wasn't our grocery money,” the stepfather said. “I can't believe you just did that."

  Fyodor's mother did not answer but shot him a fierce look and pulled Fyodor closer to her in a protective gesture. Even though she did not believe in hexes, she preferred to pay them off rather than dare to prove them wrong. Fyodor was too young to verbalize his new knowledge, but he was now dimly aware that even the most remote threat is too much when it is directed against someone one cares about. His suffering was worth actual paper money. He had never forgotten that.

  * * * *

  Young Fyodor's life was quiet, and as the result his formative experiences were few. Later in life he marveled that he could count them all on one hand. First, there were gypsies, a vague threat, and his mother's protectiveness and the stepfather's indifferent malice; then there were watercolors his mother brought for him as a gift for his first day of school. He remembered the first of September, he in his new school uniform-a blue jacket with matching pants-in file with the multitude of other children in the schoolyard. The girls were wearing white ribbons in their hair, and brown dresses with white aprons. All children carried flowers to present to their teachers; gladioli predominated. He did not remember the rest of the school day, but he remembered the set of twenty-four pai
nts, neatly arranged in tiny wells sunk in the ornate wooden case, which his mother presented to him when he got home. She also gave him an album of porous, fibrous paper, which drank the paint thirstily, absorbing it.

  He painted so much that he ran out of colors, and only the black well retained a sliver of paint, like a curving strip of dirt under a fingernail. He went through a brief black period, until his mother grew worried and bought him another set. He dreamt of painting and daydreamed about it during the interminable school days. When the winter came, he left the pages blank to depict snow that covered everything, and punctuated it with sets of lonely footprints, of birds and humans. He wanted to draw the gypsies but resisted, fearful that the act of art was magical enough to attract their dark attention. But they hid in the edges of his paintings, hinted at by shadows and an occasional flash of white teeth and gold jewelry. He struggled to keep them out but still they found their way in.

  During the summer, students descended upon Zvenigorod, coming from Moscow for their summer practice. They were future biologists, and Fyodor watched them shyly as they marched from the train station to the bus stop, where the bus took them to the mysterious Field Station. They carried knapsacks, laughed loudly, and smoked, and acted as if they owned the city. The stepfather disapproved of them. “Look at those kids,” he would say. “Damn Muscovites. Act as if they own the place, like their shit smells of lilacs."

  "Are Muscovites worse than gypsies?” Fyodor dared to ask.

  The stepfather spat, his rough face furrowing. “Thieves are thieves, however you paint them."

  Fyodor watched the receding backs with knapsacks, jeans, canvas sneakers. They didn't look like thieves, and he shared the observation.

  "Moscow is privileged,” the stepfather said. “See this?” He pointed at the cracking asphalt and stray dogs sleeping in the shade of the storefront that hadn't ever sold anything worthwhile. “We don't have anything so all the party bosses in Moscow can eat and drink and do what they want. They rob the rest of the country and take it to Moscow. Whoever lives there is a thief, plain and simple. Just like those gypsy pickpockets, God help us."