Red Chameleon (21 page)

“May I sit?” Rostnikov said, still in English. “I have a bad leg. The war.”

“Sit,” said Posniky in Russian, and Rostnikov sat. Rostnikov could see a faint resemblance between this old man and the young one in the photograph. This man's face was a dry landscape, a parched riverbed filled with crevices. “You like wine, chief inspector?”

“That would be nice.”

Rostnikov glanced at the younger man, who was looking around the room. His eyes stopped first on Zelach, then circled and found Tkach. If he panicked, Rostnikov was prepared to reach out and grab him. He looked trained, formidable, possibly even a challenge. Posniky's very blue eyes came up and met Rostnikov's.

“Don't do anything stupid, Martin,” the old man said in English.

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov, accepting a glass of dark wine.

“The wine isn't as I remembered it,” Posniky said, looking at this glass. “Has it changed that much, or have I?”

“It has changed,” said Rostnikov. “But you've been gone for a long time. If you would feel more comfortable speaking English …”

“More than sixty years,” Posniky said with a little smile. “I'll try Russian, though my phrases may be a bit out-of-date and there are many words I've forgotten. I am over eighty years old. Do I look it?”

“I would have guessed sixty,” said Rostnikov, sipping the wine. It was awful.

“Let's try—” Martin said, leaning forward, his voice urgent.

“Sit and do what you are told,” Posniky said with authority. Martin sat back and divided his attention between the three policemen in the room.

“The candlestick,” Rostnikov said. “You have a story. I would like to hear it.”

“I have a story,” the old man said. “Do we have time?”

“We have time,” said the detective, placing his half-finished drink on the table.

“In 1891—” he began. “You'll forgive me if I go back that far. It might help you to understand the—how do you say, ugly?”

“Nekrasivyi,”
said Rostnikov.

“Ah, yes,” said the old man, shaking his head at the memory of the word, “the ugly details. In the winter of 1891 the Gentile soldiers of the
fonie,
the czar, came to Yekteraslav for their quota of boys twelve and older who were to go for an indeterminate period, which the
fonie
forever varied from five to forty years. The longer the period of service, the more likely the boy to die or accept Christ, though Jewish boys had proved stubborn and deaths outnumbered conversions among Hebrew soldier children. It had been agreed that only one son would be taken for each family. According to my father, the Russian officer who came that day was a foolish man, a stupid man. He took who he wanted, which meant my father and his two brothers, one of whom was only eleven. My uncles died. My father came back in six years, half mad.”

Rostnikov nodded to show that he was listening, but the old man was not watching the policeman. He was holding his wineglass in both hands and watching the last drops as he spoke more to himself.

“My father was arrested in 1909 by an officer who came to the door in a blue coat and fur hat. I was only a few years old, but I remember my father, or—who knows?—my mother may have described him so often that I think I remember him. He was arrested because we had a local shopkeeper's son working for us during the small harvest of our farm. The soldier at the door quoted the May Laws of 1881 stating that Jews could not hire Christian domestics without the express permission of the regional governor. The shopkeeper's son was only half Christian; and we paid him only with a few vegetables. We had no money, but”—Posniky shrugged—“they took my father, and we never saw him again. … My father, the village lunatic.

“And now,” Posniky said, looking up with narrow eyes at the uneasy Martin, “and now ten years later, the Revolution. I was a boy. My friends were boys. Yekteraslav was an isolated Jewish village. We knew little of the Revolution. We didn't know which side was which. Some said the Jews would be better off after the Revolution. Most of us didn't believe it. Shmuel Prensky believed it. Abraham Savitskaya and I had lost too many relatives to the Christian Russia to believe it.”

“And Ostrovsky,” Rostnikov added, reaching for the bottle of wine. It was awful wine, but it was wine. “The actor.”

Posniky looked up warily, not quite startled. “It will be easier to tell my story if you let me know what you know so I don't have to repeat—”

“I know names,” Rostnikov said, biting back a bitter sip. “I know events of the last days, the murder of Abraham Savitskaya by you and your companion, the theft of the candlestick.”

“It was no theft,” the old man said with some emotion. “It was mine. It was my mother's. When the Reds came to our village in 1919 or 1920 to collect young men the way the
fonie
had collected our fathers, Abraham and I decided to get out. My mother and his gave us some food, and my mother gave me the candlestick. It was all she could give, and it was worth little. I said good-bye to my mother and sister, and we left on a winter morning. We were young, too stupid to see the uselessness of what we were trying, to get to Riga, to walk to Riga or steal a ride, but to get to Riga and get on a boat for Canada or America. We didn't know about passports. We didn't know that the few rubles in our pockets would buy not even enough bread for the trip. We assumed other Jews would help us on the way. We had names of friends of friends in towns along the way. We never found the towns or the friends. How much detail do you want, policeman?”

“As much as you wish to give,” said Rostnikov, checking to see that Zelach and Tkach were alert. Zelach, across the room, looked puzzled by the scene.

“When we got to the road leading out of town,” Posniky said, “we were too stupid even to go across the fields. We met two soldiers who had been left to stop just what we were doing. One was young. One was quite old. Their uniforms were makeshift, and they were surprised when we killed them. They expected docile young Jewish boys to run back into town, weeping. They had one horse between them, and both were standing on the ground, ordering us to turn around, when I pulled out the brass candlestick from my cloth sack and hit the young one in the face. His cheek gave way, and he tried to scream. I hit him again while the old soldier watched. Neither of them were real soldiers. The old one turned to run, but Abraham leaped on him, and I beat him to death, too. Since then, I have killed others.”

“Including Abraham Savitskaya,” said Rostnikov.

Martin was examining the faces of the two men across from him, trying to understand odd words in a foreign language, tense with frustration. Rostnikov was sure the young man would have to be dealt with before the afternoon was over.

“Including Savitskaya,” agreed Posniky. “We dragged the bodies into the gray weeds off the road, and we ran through the field, leaving the horse standing in the middle of the road. Neither of us even considered taking the horse.”

“Young boys often do very foolish things,” said Rostnikov.

“And old men,” added Posniky, holding up his glass, which Rostnikov refilled with wine.

“Mr. Parker,” Martin said, glancing at Rostnikov. “I think—”

Posniky didn't even bother to look at the man. He shook his head and held up a wrinkled hand to quiet him. And then he went on with his story, interrupted only by a waiter, who brought a fresh bottle of wine and some bread.

“The trees were thin in near spring, and they gave little protection in the light of day, so we had to walk deeper in the woods to be sure we weren't seen from the road. When we heard a cart passing, we found shelter and waited. By early evening we had circled around a pair of small villages and watched a line of men on horseback heading in the direction from which we had come.

“‘They're coming for us,' Abraham said softly.

“‘No,' I told him, rubbing my lower back and putting down his sack. ‘They are riding slowly and laughing.'

“‘Why are we still hiding in the woods instead of walking the roads?'

“‘We will take no chances until we are far away.'

“‘And how will we get on a boat at Riga? We have no money.'

“‘When we get to Riga'—I sighed—‘we will find the money.'

“‘God willing,' said Abraham.

“A savage cold rain hit by evening, driving us under an outcrop of rocks where children had been before us, leaving a few torn books and pieces of glass. We shared the last of our cheese, drank rainwater from our clothes, and slept chilled. I remember dreaming of a town I had never seen, a town with no people, a town where rows of houses were being torn down. I had to run from house to house to stay ahead of the men and machines that moved forward to knock down the walls and send the dust of brick and mud into the air. I fled to a river and a long bridge that frightened me. I trembled and hesitated to put my foot on the white bridge, but behind me I heard the breathing of a sick cow, and I put my foot forward just as I woke up.

“We moved slowly, so slowly that our feet sometimes sank ankle-deep into mud in the woods and fields. The roads were a bit better, but we still avoided them. Sometimes we saw or heard someone working in a field, and one time we moved boldly through a nameless town and asked a ragged water carrier if we were on the right road to Riga.

“‘You're on the right road, but you'll both be old men by the time you walk there.' The water carrier was a dry old man himself, a stick of a man, a kindling of a man with a brittle beard and no teeth. Very much like Abraham Savitskaya was in the bathtub when Martin and I found him.

“‘We haven't any money,' Abraham said.

“The old man opened his mouth to comment or laugh but said nothing. Instead, he held out his water bucket to us, and we took a drink. The street was cobbled, and three little children wearing sacks for clothes played near us, some game with sticks and a little ball. I thanked the old water carrier, and we hurried out of town and back off the road.

“After three days of travel, Abraham was shivering and estimated that we had gone no more than a tenth part of our journey at most. Even if we could keep up our present pace, it would be at least thirty days before we reached Riga, and Abraham, always fragile, could not keep it up for thirty days.

“‘We can go back,' he said, sitting on a wet tree stump. ‘We could hide in the fields until we're sure it's safe.'

“I remember searching my sack for the last of our bread, finding it and tearing it in two for us.

“‘We killed two soldiers,' I reminded him. ‘We will not be soon forgotten. And I don't want to go back. You can go back if you want to.'

“We sat in the darkness, hugging ourselves, waiting for the night cold to take us. Abraham was first to give in to the chill and let it carry him to sleep, but I fought it, gritted my teeth, challenged until I felt I had proven myself and could allow my body the reward of rest. Before I slept, however, I planned.

“The next day's travel was like the last, and we spoke little. The road turned, and we followed it, afraid that we had made a mistake and were now bound in the wrong direction, had somehow missed a turn and were headed into the vastness of an endless Russia toward Moscow; but the road gradually turned back in a direction I thought was north. Late in the brown afternoon we came to a large town and circled it. It took us an hour, and we never discovered the town's name.

“‘We'll wait here,' I said. We were at the side of a road leading north from the town, and we sat in the woods about five hundred yards from the last house.

“‘I can go no further, Mikhail,' Abraham said.

“‘We'll go no further,' I said, pulling my mother's brass candlestick from his sack. I probably looked mad as the falling sun hit my face. Abraham backed away in fear and sat in silence.

“A few carts and wagons, and even an automobile, went by, away from the town, followed by a few people on foot, and then a rather elegant carriage went into the town. From behind a bush we watched them all as I held the brass candlestick tightly in the dark, dirty palm of my right hand. We looked at each other, two wild men, creatures of darkness, and in the midst of this meaninglessness I felt a power of nothing to lose.

“When the sun had almost disappeared across the wide field opposite us, a carriage clattered slowly from the town.

“‘Now,' I said, rising, and Abraham rose, knowing what we would do without being told, transforming the deed into a ritual to allow us to do it, a pagan act born of despair as we two dark figures hurried forward, a brass candlestick in my hand, a stick in his.

“‘On the road,' I said. ‘Stop the carriage. Even if you have to kill the horse. Stop the carriage.' And I disappeared behind a ridge of low rocks.

“Abraham hurried forward, lumbered on legs turned stiff from sitting for hours, blood pumping to his throbbing head, probably thinking he might die before the deed was done, but he did not die. When the carriage with one horse turned the bend in the road, Abraham, a dark, spindly mantis, as much animal as man, stood in the road and frightened the gray horse. Had the driver urged him on, the horse would have run Abraham down and hurried into the coming night, but the driver, like the horse, was startled and stopped.

“The driver, a middle-aged man with a fine black coat and glasses, stood up and shouted something at Abraham, who reached up for the horse and held its muzzle. The angry man seemed frightened. I could see Abraham simply watch and wait as the man reached for something under the seat. Abraham strained his neck over the horse's head as he petted it to see what the man was doing. When the gun came out, Abraham did not look afraid, only curious. He was not even afraid when the man raised the weapon in his direction and sputtered something. He did not become afraid even when he saw me work my way around from behind the carriage. The bullet and my swing of the candlestick came at the same time. The bullet leaped into the darkness above Abraham's head, and he turned to watch it but saw nothing as the sudden night swallowed it. He had to pet and talk softly to the horse, whose eyes opened wide with fear at the sound of the struggle behind him.