Natalia Smirnova: St. Petersburg Noir

“You already said they serve their dead in their restaurants.” Normally Tsukatov listened politely to Chelnokov’s stories over and over again, but today he didn’t have the patience. “Lera is the one who should get checked. I once brought my dog to the department, and she got so scared she nearly jumped up on the table.”

“As a rule, women are more wary of d-dogs than men are,” Chelnokov said. “And there’s a reason for it: women are cats at heart.”

Three weeks later, Tsukatov, who had just returned from his vacation in Vologda, was telling the story of the bear hunt in Chelnokov’s office. The story was colorful, adventurous, epic, and unbelievable, like the Iliad. The synopsis of his tale is as follows:

They approached the bear’s den on skis. Tsukatov stood behind a tree, not more than a dozen paces from the entrance. Behind him was the hunter, with two huskies on a leash. The general moved cautiously counterclockwise around the den, to get an idea of the surroundings. If you didn’t kill it right away, the bear would attack the dogs and run around his den from the entrance in the direction of the sun. So the general set out, and Tsukatov took off his skis and began packing down the snow beneath him with his feet—when you’re near a bear’s den, you want to feel solid ground beneath you. The bear must have heard them approaching—perhaps it was sleeping lightly, though the hunter had taken care to tread quietly and keep downwind. The hunter hadn’t even had time to let the dogs loose, when suddenly the bear emerged. He was shaggy and enormous, his head pressed to the ground, his chest hidden. Even if you shot, you wouldn’t kill him with the first bullet, and Tsukatov didn’t even have his rifle cocked. Fortunately, the bear didn’t attack them, but instead followed the general’s ski tracks. The hunter let the dogs loose, and Tsukatov finally fired his rifle, although the bear was already escaping. As it turned out later, the bullet hit the bear in the behind. Then the huskies got in on the action, nipping the bear in the haunches. The bear was enraged. The general didn’t let them down: he fired the fatal shot. Tsukatov had brought bear meat back with him, and the hide went to the sharpshooter as trophy.

Chelnokov listened greedily. He had the habit of reconstructing other people’s stories and telling them as his own in other company. He was like that.

Outside the window, everything was white again, except the black water of the Moika River, which had still not succumbed to the icy clutch of winter. Snow lay on the roofs and the glass dome of the atrium. The wings of Hermes’s caduceus on top of the trading house were also covered in a fine web of snowflakes. Yet St. Isaac’s and the spire of the Admiralty shone a bright gold against the gray skies.

“By the way,” said Chelnokov, apropos of nothing, “another student d-disappeared. A freshman. It happened ten days back but they only began searching a little while ago. Everybody thought he’d gone back home to Slantsy, but it turned out he wasn’t there either. Police inspectors came to see the dean.”

“This time it’s definitely a UFO.” Tsukatov’s thoughts were still at the bear’s den.

“And Demyan Ilich inquired about a van yesterday. The stuffed animal was delivered to his place, so it’s ready to be p-picked up. We should ask someone at the garage to drive over there.”

“Why didn’t he tell Lera?” said Tsukatov.

“Lera and Demyan Ilich don’t really g-get along very well,” Chelnokov reminded him. “And then again, she’s been so busy with her remodeling: first it was the plumber, then she had to choose the laminated floorboards, then the ceiling. Remodeling,” Chelnokov sighed, remembering the ongoing work in his own office. “That’s no beetle sneeze for you.”

Tsukatov drew in the corners of his mouth sharply, as a sign that he understood. No, no one could be trusted to do anything in his absence. Throwing his sheepskin coat over his shoulders with the firm step of a man who knows his own worth, Tsukatov headed down to the garage without delay.

Demyan Ilich dreamed that an ostrich nipped him on the finger. He gasped and woke up from the pain. His finger was intact, but somewhere within, underneath the skin, was a memory of that recent ephemeral adventure. The memory, though still pulsing, was quickly melting. It was indeed a most nonsensical dream.

For some time Demyan Ilich lay still. Then he turned his head to the window. At that instant his neck started throbbing with a burning sensation—the scratch, disturbed by his movement, seemed to be actually on fire. “My, some claws are just too nasty,” Demyan Ilich said aloud, wincing. Nothing would be nipping him now. She would stand there, beautiful, proud, and foolish, and he would stare at her. In the closet, wrapped up tightly, the material was shifting quietly. Demyan Ilich had no plans to give his would-be project away to some third party. Of course, he wouldn’t make any good money on it, but this was a special case. Really special. It wasn’t the first time he passed up the opportunity for profit, but he was pleased that he had decided things for himself.

Carefully turning his scratched neck, Demyan Ilich examined the room, flooded with light from the streetlamps—pale, cold, no discernible colors. The room was a mess. There were objects strewn everywhere, unrecognizable in the twilight: clothing, tools… and a mounted stuffed animal in the middle. Baring its teeth, it sat slightly back on its hind legs, leaning on the knuckles of its forepaws. The room seemed like some sort of uninhabited utility space, and looked more like a workshop than a living room.

“Ahem,” rasped Demyan Ilich. Examining his finger, he thought about the ghostly nature of suffering.

The next morning, in the interests of edification, Tsukatov decided to send Lera, along with two young men from the Student Scientific Society, to Demyan Ilich’s to pick up the stuffed animal. But she wasn’t in the lab assistant’s room, and no one had seen her at the department since yesterday. The van left without her.

Dismissing the matter from his mind, the chair of the department disappeared into his office and sank his teeth into writing an article full of new ideas about Dirofilaria nematodes—completely unprecedented ideas. Tsukatov had been working on the article for Parasitology for a long time, and the end, it seemed, was now in sight.

In the middle of the second lecture period, under the guidance of Demyan Ilich, the students brought in a large object, tightly packed in bubble wrap. They worked quickly, like grave-diggers. Demyan Ilich’s neck showed red around the coagulated crust of an angry scratch.

Having brought the parcel into the museum, they sent for Tsukatov. The chair of the department came in, accompanied by Chelnokov.

The parcel stood in the passageway by the oak cases housing the primates. In solemn silence, Demyan Ilich cut open the adhesive that held the bubble wrap with a pair of scissors and set about stripping it off the bulky exhibit, taking his time. A minute later the bubble wrap was lying on the floor. Chelnokov threw up his hands in rapture, and the severe wrinkles on Tsukatov’s face relaxed; for he had seen things, but this exceeded all his expectations. The chimpanzee’s fur shone. Each hair seemed to have been combed individually. The figure, frozen in motion, radiated a gush of fury. The teeth gleamed with moisture, the yellow fangs were bared threateningly, the skin of the face seemed alive and warm, the dark lemurlike eyes burned in watchful fury. The ape looked even better, brighter than it could have when it was alive. It seemed as though it wasn’t a stuffed animal at all, but rather a pure idea, the very essence of a new creature, as the Creator had imagined it before giving it life. It looked as fresh, as new, as clean, and as perfect as a beetle that had just emerged from its chrysalis, before having tasted the dung of life.