Polar Star (37 page)

Karp’s shoulders wore frozen beads of rain; their outline made Arkady think of the mist in a cloud chamber that betrayed the dewy track of ions.

“It’s the one way a worker can make real money as long as he has the nerve,” Karp said. “That’s why governments hate drugs—because they can’t control them. They control vodka and tobacco, but they don’t control drugs. Look at America. Even blacks are making money.”

“You think it will happen in the Soviet Union, too?”

“It already is. You can buy ammo off a Red Army base, run it right over the border and sell it to the Afghans fighting us. The
dushmany
have warehouses with cocaine piled to the roof. It’s better than gold. It’s the new currency. That’s why everyone’s afraid of the veterans—not just because they’re drug users, but because they know what’s really going on.”

“You’re not part of any vast Afghan network, though,” Arkady said. “You’d be dealing in Siberian goods,
anasha
. What’s the rate of exchange as the nets go back and forth?”

Karp’s smile flashed gold in the dark. “A couple of bricks from us for a spoonful from them. It seems unfair, but you know what a gram of cocaine brings at an oil rig in Siberia? Five hundred rubles. You figured out the nets; that’s clever of you.”

“What I don’t understand is how you got
anasha
past the Border Guard and onto the
Polar Star
.”

The trawlmaster became both flattered and confiding, as if it were a shame that the two of them couldn’t pull up chairs and split a bottle. At the same time, Arkady was aware that Karp was only playing a role, enjoying a situation over which he had complete control.

“You’ll appreciate this,” Karp said. “What can a
trawlmaster ask for in the way of supplies? Net, needles, shackles, ropes. The yard always gives you the worst, you can depend on that. What’s the cheapest rope?”

“Hemp.” Manchurian hemp was grown legally for rope and packing;
anasha
was merely the potent, pollinating version of the same bush. “You packed
anasha
in the rope, hemp in hemp.” Arkady was forced to admire it.

“And we end up trading shit for gold. Two kilos are a million rubles.”

“But now you’ll have to sign up for another six months to bring back a second load.”

“It’s a setback.” Karp looked thoughtfully up the ramp. “Not like the one you’re going to have, but still a setback. You say you came here in the rain in the middle of the night just to see where Zina went in? I don’t believe it.”

“Do you believe in dreams?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“You know why I killed that son of a bitch in Moscow?” Karp asked suddenly.

“In the train yard with the prostitute?”

“The one you nailed me on, right.”

“So it wasn’t an accident; you meant to do it?”

“Long gone, fifteen years ago, you can’t charge me a second time.”

“So why did you kill him?”

“You know who the whore was? It was my mother.”

“She didn’t say. She had a different name.”

“Yeah, well, that son of a bitch knew it, and he said he was going to tell everyone. It wasn’t like I was crazy.”

“You should have said so then.”

“It would have made her sentence worse.”

Arkady remembered a coarsely painted woman with hair dyed Chinese red. At that time prostitution did not officially exist, so she was sentenced for conspiracy to rob.

“What happened to her?”

“She died in corrective labor. In her camp they made padded jackets for Siberia, so maybe you or I wore one. They had a quota like anyone else. She died happy, though. There were a lot of women there with babies, a kindergarten with its own barbed wire, and they let her clean up there. She wrote and said she’d gotten better being around kids. Except she died of pneumonia, which she probably picked up from some runny-nosed brat. It’s funny what can kill you.” He shook a knife from his sleeve.

Arkady turned at the sound of steps. Against the faint glow from the trawl deck he could make out someone in a hard hat descending the ramp, holding on to the rope that led to Karp.

“It’s Pavel,” Karp said. “He took his time getting here. So you really did come alone.”

Arkady started back up the rope, pulling himself hand over hand. Karp was faster. Though the lifeline was tied around his own waist the trawlmaster didn’t seem to need it and strode easily up the icy slope.

Ahead, the figure from the trawl deck stopped. Arkady would have to go wide to get by, and he knew that as soon as he left the rope he would slide down the ramp to the water. His boots slipped. How did Karp move up the ramp so quickly, like a devil flying up steps?

“This was worth waiting for,” Karp said. He shook the rope so that Arkady slipped again, and then he had him by his jacket.

“Arkady?” Natasha called. “Is that you?”

“Yes.”

The shape looming on the ramp above wasn’t Pavel. Now that they were closer he saw that what had looked like a man’s helmet was a scarf over her hair.

“Who are you with?” she demanded.

“Korobetz,” Arkady said. “You know Korobetz.”

Arkady could almost hear the calculations in the trawlmaster’s
mind. Would it be possible to kill him
and
Natasha before she reached the trawl deck and called out?

“We’re old friends.” Karp still held on to Arkady. “We go back a long way. Give us a hand.”

“Get on deck,” Arkady told her. “I’ll follow.”

“You two?” Natasha asked suspiciously. “Friends?”

“Go,” Arkady ordered. He stayed where he was so that Karp couldn’t get past.

“What’s the matter, Arkady?” She stood her ground.

“Wait,” Karp told her.

“Wait there,” Pavel added as he came down the ramp above Natasha. An ax dangled from his free hand.

Arkady kicked Karp’s leg. The trawlmaster landed on his stomach and slid down the ramp the length of his lifeline. Arkady hoped he would go into the water, but Karp stopped just above the spine of the wake. At once he was back on his feet and scaling the ramp, but by then Arkady had reached the hook where the chain holding up the safety gate was fastened. He released the chain. With a rush of air, the gate swung down and with a metallic clap slammed shut in Karp’s face, trapping him on the lower end of the ramp.

Arkady got ahead of Natasha. Behind him, he heard Karp shaking the gate as if its steel mesh could come apart in his hands. Then the gate was still. “Renko”—the trawlmaster’s voice came up the ramp.

Pavel hesitated as Arkady approached. His eyes were round hollows, more afraid of Karp than of Arkady. “You’re fucking up everything. He said you would.”

Karp’s laugh filled the ramp. “Where are you going to run?”

“Piss off.” Natasha said the magic words and Pavel backed away.

27
“We make a good team,” Natasha said.

She was still exhilarated by their escape from the ramp, her eyes bright, a long strand of hair hanging loose. Arkady led her into the cafeteria, which they found turned into a dance floor.

There had been no announcement over the loudspeakers. Third Mate Slava Bukovsky, the officer in charge of entertainment, had for purposes of morale spontaneously gathered his band and sent word belowdecks that music would be offered to the crew. As no nets were being taken and the night was foul, the entire ship’s company had been holing up, bored and stifling, in their cabins. Now they holed up happily and communally in the cafeteria. This time there were no Americans, not even reps, and for some reason no rock. The ball of mirrors spun, its reflections scattering like snow over dancers who moved in dreamy slowness. Onstage, Slava squeezed from his saxophone a sweet, dirgelike blues.

Arkady and Natasha crowded onto a back bench with Dynka and Madame Malzeva. “I wish my Ahmed were here now.” The Uzbek girl clasped her hands together.

“I’ve heard musicians in the Black Sea Fleet.” Malzeva wrapped a babushka around her shoulders for dignity’s sake, but unbent enough to add, “Actually, he’s not so bad.”

Natasha whispered in Arkady’s ear, “We should go to the captain and tell him what happened.”

“What would we say? All you saw was me and Karp. A trawlmaster has any number of reasons to be on the ramp. I don’t.”

“There was Pavel with an ax.”

“They’ve been chopping ice all day. Maybe he’s a Hero Worker.”

“You were attacked.”

“I dropped the gate on Karp, not the other way around, and all you heard him say was that we were friends. The man’s a saint.”

The next song was “Dark Eyes,” a syrupy tale of gypsy love. The girl on the synthesizer plunked out a sound something like a guitar’s while Slava produced lush, brassy melody. It was shameless and irresistible. The floor was a slowly surging tide of dancers.

“You and Karp are like a mouse and a snake,” Natasha said. “You can’t share the same hole.”

“Not for much longer.”

“Why were you on the ramp?”

“Would you like to dance?” Arkady asked.

A metamorphosis came over Natasha. Light glowed not only in her eyes but from her face. Like a woman who has arrived in sable, she slowly removed her fishing jacket and scarf, gave them to Dynka and then pulled the comb from her hair so that it cascaded softly down.

“Ready?” Arkady asked.

“Absolutely.” Her voice had softened, too.

They made an unlikely pair, he had to admit: the Party’s model member and a troublemaker from the slime line. As he led her between tables to the floor she met
astonished glances with a gaze at once imperious and serene.

Soviet dancers don’t expect much room to dance in; there’s always an attendant amount of bumping, like ball-bearings in a bottle. It’s a good-humored aspect of the dance, especially one in the middle of the ice sheet with an Arctic wind frosting the portholes. For all her size and strength, Natasha seemed to float in Arkady’s arms, her hot cheek tentatively touching his.

“I apologize for my boots,” she said.

Arkady said, “No,
I
apologize for
my
boots.”

“You like romantic songs?”

“I am helpless before romantic songs.”

“So am I.” She sighed. “I know you like poetry.”

“How do you know that?”

“I found your book.”

“You did?”

“When you were sick. It was under your mattress. You’re not the only one who knows where to look.”

“Is that so?” He pulled back for a moment. There was a frightening lack of embarrassment in her eyes. “It wasn’t even a book of poetry,” Arkady said. “Just some essays and letters from Mandelstam.” He didn’t add that it was a gift from Susan.

“Well, the essays were too intellectual,” Natasha admitted, “but I liked the letters to his wife.”

“To Nadezhda?”

“Yes, but he had so many other names for her. Nadik, Nadya, Nadka, Nadenka, Nadyusha, Nanusha, Nadyushok, Nanochka, Nadenysh, Niakushka. Ten special names in all. That’s a poet.” She laid her cheek a little more firmly on his.

Slava and his sax leaned into “Dark Eyes,” extracting amber from sap. Dancers revolved slowly under the revolving ball. There was a cavelike quality to the low ceiling and flickering lights that eased the Russian soul.

“I have always admired your work on the factory line,” Natasha confided.

“I’ve always admired yours.”

“The way you handle the fish,” she said. “Especially the difficult ones like hake.”

“You cut the spines off so … well.” He wasn’t good at this, Arkady thought.

She cleared her throat. “That trouble you had in Moscow? I think it’s possible the Party made a mistake.”

A mistake? For Natasha that was like saying black might be white, or an admission that there might be gray.

“Oddly enough,” he said, “this time it didn’t.”

“Anyone can be rehabilitated.”

“Generally after they’re dead. Don’t worry; there’s life outside the Party. More than inside.”

Natasha fell contemplative. Her train of thought seemed much like the Baikal-Amur Mainline, with whole sections unfinished and tunnels going off in mysterious directions. Poetry, fish, the Party. He wondered what she would come up with next.

“I know there’s someone else,” Natasha said. “Another woman.”

“Yes.”

Was that a sniff he heard? He hoped not.

“There had to be,” she finally said. “There’s only one thing I ask.”

“What’s that?”

“That it’s not Susan.”

“No, it’s not Soo-san.”

“And it wasn’t Zina?”

“No.”

“Someone not on board?”

“Not on board and far away.”

“Very far away?”

“Oh, very,” he assured her.

“That’s good enough.” She rested her head on his shoulder.

Well, Arkady thought, Ridley was right. This was civilized, maybe the acme of civilization, these fishermen and fisherwomen waltzing in boots on the Bering Sea. Dr. Vainu clung to Olimpiada like a man rolling a boulder. Keeping a straight-armed, semi-Islamic distance, Dynka danced with one of the engineers. Some men were on the floor with men, some women with women, just to keep in practice. A few had taken the time to pull on fresh jerseys, but most of them had come as they were, in the spirit of a rare impromptu event. Arkady also enjoyed the dance because now he had some idea of Zina’s last hours on earth. There was a nice aptness to ending up with Natasha here, as if Zina herself might come dancing by.