Red Chameleon (23 page)

“It was all the young man said to us, and he was gone without looking back. We found a space on a bench next to a tree stump of a father and fat son in clean work clothes. The father and son ate garlic sausage and talked. For five hours we pretended to sleep. The train was another hour late, and we pretended to sleep some more. I needed a toilet but was afraid to leave the bench.

“The platform was filled with passengers, many of them Russian soldiers, one of whom bumped into me when a few of them playfully pushed each other. The man fell momentarily in my lap, but I pretended to sleep through the incident. I didn't even know which side of the Revolution the soldiers were on.

“When the train arrived, we got to the next to last car. People were sitting on all the benches, but we found space on the floor near the window wall. There were pockets of conversations, including a low conversation about something called Zionism held between two shabbily dressed men. When I could stand it no longer, I asked someone where the toilet was. To get to it, I would have to move to the front of the train through the Russian soldiers. Instead, I made my way to the space between the two cars and urinated into the night.

“In two days and many stops the word ‘Riga' spread through the car. People began to check their cloth sacks and thin suitcases, to prepare, though the word was we were still many hours away. Abraham smiled, and I nodded, touching the flattened roll of bills in my jacket.

“When the train jerked into Riga, the people spewed forth as if they were already in America or England. We tried to stay in the middle of the crowd. The Russian soldiers got off, joking about the smell of the people still pushing each other and the crowd.

“A trio of soldiers and officers forced their way through the confusion and headed right past us. To clear the way, the officers pushed with their sticks and hands, moving against the flow of the crowd. One young officer stood in front of me and prodded me with his stick.

“The soldier was amused at what looked like a confrontation with a simpleminded Jew, and he turned to his comrades to share the joke. They looked equally amused.

“We followed the crowd into the darkness to a vast foggy waterfront where thousands of people sat on their luggage, talking, looking at the huge metal boat with peeling paint, a boat that was as big as the entire village of Yekteraslav, maybe as big as two Yekteraslavs.

“I grabbed the arm of a well-dressed Jewish woman who was talking to another well-dressed woman seated on a trio of matching cloth suitcases. The woman turned on me in anger, but something in my face frightened her, and she stood mute.

“‘Tell me,' I whispered, my voice cracking. ‘How do we get on that boat. Where is it going?'

“‘To America,' the woman said. She was about thirty, not pretty but womanly.

“‘You have to get an exit visa,' the woman said. ‘You go to the end of the dock. If you didn't get one in your district, you go there and stand in line.'

“‘And,' said her friend, an overflowing older woman with a very wide hat, ‘when you get in, you tell them you want to go and you pay them a bribe, and they make you wait a few days. If you don't bribe, you wait a week or two weeks or ten, but you go, anyway. You go because you are Jewish, and they want to get rid of you as much as you want to go.'

“‘I know,' I said.

“‘Yes,' said the woman, whose arm I still held. I let her loose, and Abraham and I walked in the direction to the visa' shack, stepping over sleeping families, couples huddled together. The heavy mist from the sea and the ship drifted over the crowd, a cloud that covered clumps of people, that blanketed but didn't protect us.

“Shifting my sack from one shoulder to the next a dozen times, I finally found a long line stretching for what looked like miles. We watched the line for fifteen minutes, but it did not move.

“‘The office is closed until the morning,' said a man we were standing in front of. Abraham and I had made the man nervous, and the fellow, a frayed creature in a gray foreign-looking suit, wanted us to be gone. ‘Go to the end and wait till it opens.'

“We nodded and moved toward the end, a hike almost as long as the one we had taken from the two women to the line itself. We sat at the rear behind two old couples and watched an old man with a long beard hugging himself hard to keep out the cold, though the night was not as terrible as others we had suffered in the last two weeks. I watched Abraham's eyes turning into the night mist in the direction of Yekteraslav, not expecting to see anything but unable to turn away.

“‘You want a visa?'

“The voice was soft, pleading; the words in Yiddish I found hard to understand. I turned my eyes to the voice and automatically put my hand out to protect my jacket and money. The man before me was short, almost a dwarf. He was clean-shaven, and his mouth showed an incredibly jagged line of teeth, distorting his face so that he had a permanent look, which might have been a smile or a grimace of pain.

“‘You want a visa?' repeated the little man.

“‘Yes,' I said. ‘We need visas.'

“‘And a passage on that ship?' the little man said, nodding back toward the dock.

“‘Yes,' I said.

“‘Can you pay?' said the man.

“The old man, hugging himself, leaned into the conversation and looked at the little man.

“‘He's a
shtupper,”
said the old man. ‘A pig sticker. He gets people who don't want to leave to sell him visas, and then he resells them, taking places away from people who should be on the ships.'

“‘You don't know,' hissed the little man. ‘You old cocker. You don't know.'

“‘How much do you want?' I said, grabbing at the possibility of immediately departing from fear and memory.

“‘Maybe more than you can pay?'

“I reached out and grabbed the little man by the collar, clapping my hand over his mouth to quiet him. The feel of the wet mouth disgusted me.

“‘Just tell me.'

“‘Show me what you have,' whispered the little man.

“I turned my back and pulled out my money, but the man had maneuvered to see it.

“‘I'll take that,' said the little man. ‘All of it.'

“‘Show me the visas and the tickets,' I demanded.

“The little man pulled a crumpled package from his pocket and held it out. Inside the package was a folded piece of cardboard.

“‘That's only one visa, one ticket,' I said, looking at Abraham, who had said nothing, only looked like a frightened cow since we had descended into the nightmare of Riga.

“The old man nodded yes, that he had only one ticket, one visa, that we would have to make up our minds if we wanted it. I said no, and lifted my sack, stepping out of line and back into the mist and the tangle of waiting bodies. Abraham hesitated and followed. He said something to the old man, who nodded, and I called over my shoulder to Abraham to join with me. I'll tell you the truth. I planned to find two people, get them out of line behind a shack and take their tickets and, if need be, their lives, but I never got the chance. Abraham and I huddled in the chill fog behind a storage shack on the dock, and I dozed. Being hit is supposed to knock you out. It woke me for an instant like a headache, and I found myself looking up at Abraham, who stood over me, my mother's candlestick in his hand. He brought the candlestick down again on my head. I was stunned, couldn't move, blood coming into my eyes. I'm sure he took me for dead. I know I was unconscious.

“When I woke up, it was just dawn. My sack was gone. The money was gone. I lurched to the dock as people were boarding the ship, and I could see Abraham in the crowd. He saw me, too, and fear was in his eyes. I tried to get on the ship, tried to push past the people crowding the gangplank, screamed like a mad bloody fool, and was thrown from the dock by ship's guards.

“I had passed out again and lay there, in the crowd gathering for the next ship. People moved around me, waiting for me to die. Some went through my pockets. I could feel it, but there was nothing to take. Abraham, my friend from childhood, had taken everything. Obviously, I did not die. I was too stubborn to die. I crawled away that night, stole some food, and the next day, when I felt strong enough, I washed my face in stinging seawater and found a solitary man who had a ticket and a visa. His name was Vasili Rosnechikov. I became Vasili Rosnechikov, and I got on the next ship with a small sack of food purchased with Vasili Rosnechikov's money. Two hours later I felt the boat creak and lurch and heard sailors running around and yelling, heard old women crying and being comforted by old men, heard young people laugh with joy, touched with fear of the unknown future, but I sat looking at my filthy hands and the deck of the ship, not back at the shore, at Russia. I was on my way to America to kill Abraham Savitskaya.”

The story had taken a half hour or more, but Rostnikov had not interrupted. It had been an old man's story, a story remembered or imagined in vivid detail, the fairy tale of his life, the justification for his existence. In the corner near the door to the restaurant, Zelach had begun to slouch, losing whatever alertness he had managed to muster. Tkach, mindful of recent embarrassment, stood alert. Martin, the gunman, had folded his arms and leaned back, refusing drinks from the bottle shared by the policeman and Posniky.

“And so,” said Rostnikov, pouring himself and Posniky the last of the bottle and feeling slightly drunk, “you went to America and were unable to find Savitskaya.”

“I did not find him,” Posniky agreed, clenching his worn teeth and remembering his frustration. “I found other things while I looked. I found how to take care of myself. I—let us just say that I made a good living. I raised a family. I have grandchildren, even two great-grandchildren. I don't show photographs anymore. I can't remember which one has which name. But I kept looking for Abraham. I almost caught up to him in St. Louis.”

“That is in Missouri,” said Rostnikov with pride.

“Right,” agreed Posniky. “But he found out I was after him. Then I found he had come back to Russia. He came back here to hide from me, came back with my mother's candlestick. Through contacts I found that he had a protector who had helped him get back into Russia, to get away from me; at least that's what they said.”

“And who was this protector?” asked Rostnikov, knowing that he would have to rise soon or his leg would lock in pain.

The old man shrugged. “Whoever it was”—he sighed—“he didn't protect him this time. You can't imagine the feeling I've lived with, the feeling of unfinished business. You wake up with it every morning.”

“Like finding the last few pages missing from a mystery novel you like and knowing the book is so old that you will probably never know the ending,” said Rostnikov.

“Exactly,” said the old man, looking up and brushing back his mane of colorless hair.

“And now?”

“And now,” said Posniky with resignation, “I am finished. I've read you the last two pages of your mystery, and you can close the book. A question: is there some way we can get Martin on the plane? Somehow this reminds me of that day in Riga sixty years ago. Only this time it is me and Martin and an airplane.”

Martin, hearing his name mentioned, came alert and looked at the two men.

“We will see,” said Rostnikov, starting to get up. “But not now. I think we must now go to my office for an official statement.” Posniky leaned forward, and for an instant Porfiry Petrovich feared that the tough old man was going to have a heart attack or cry. Instead, he reached under the table and came up with a brown package, which clearly contained the brass candlestick.

“Let's go,” he said, but Martin was not prepared to go without trouble. He pushed his chair back, looked to the two doors, chose Tkach's, and ran toward him. Rostnikov reached out to grab him but was too late. Martin bumped into one table where a couple was eating soup, which went flying.

Rostnikov could but watch as Martin, a head taller and much more solid, rushed at Tkach, who appeared to step to the side to let him pass. When Martin hit the hinged kitchen door, he threw Tkach a quick warning look that Tkach answered with a solid right fist to Martin's throat. Martin twisted, clutching his throat, and Tkach hit him again with a nearby chair.

Customers watched. Women screamed, and Zelach ambled over to help subdue the writhing American.

“He's still young,” said Posniky, who was standing at Rostnikov's side with the candlestick under his arm. “He doesn't know when he has lost. I was the same. Let's go, chief inspector.”

Ignoring the crowd, which seemed to realize that a police or KGB action was taking place, Zelach and Tkach handcuffed Martin's hands behind him and led him out behind Rostnikov and Posniky, who moved slowly through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.

“This is the first time I have been in Moscow,” Posniky said, looking around. “When I was a boy, my family wouldn't let us come to the city. They thought Jews were routinely slaughtered on the streets of Moscow.”

Rostnikov turned to watch Zelach shove the gasping, angry Martin forward. The turn, as it was, probably saved Rostnikov's life. A dark car screeched down the street away from the curb. It roared in front of a taxi that was just pulling away from the Metropole, leaped the curb, and hit Posniky, who had no idea that it was coming. The fender of the moving car missed Rostnikov by a shadow as he fell back to the sidewalk. Posniky was sucked under the car and disappeared for an instant, though Rostnikov could hear his body thud against the undercarriage of the automobile. Then the car jerked forward, hitting a young woman, who was lifted into the air. From the rear of the black car Posniky's twisted, bloody body was spat out toward the seated Rostnikov. The packaged brass candlestick was still clutched tightly in the gnarled hand of the corpse.