Natalia Smirnova: St. Petersburg Noir

He put the emergency brake on and passed me the hand crank. I sighed and climbed out into the rain. But the engine wouldn’t turn over—not on the third try; not even on the tenth. Either I was too tired, or the jeep was. Farid, cursing up a storm, climbed out too.

“The morgue is just a stone’s throw away. Just over the bridge there.”

“What do you suggest we do?”

“We could push it to the middle of the bridge. It’ll start when we coast downhill.”

“We’ll have to stop someone to help us. We can’t manage by ourselves.”

There were no cars in sight, what with the late hour and all. It was getting close to one in the morning. When my uniform was sopping wet and my shoes felt like I had fishbowls on my feet, a traffic cop driving a Lada drew up alongside our jalopy.

“What’s the problem, boys?” the round-faced lieutenant asked, rolling down his window.

“Won’t start. Will you help us push? Or pull us, maybe?”

The traffic cop reluctantly got out from behind the wheel and walked around our jeep. “Why are you knocking yourselves out? Put that prizefighter back there to work.”

“He can’t. He’s not feeling well,” Farid explained.

“Well, who’s feeling good right now? Hey, buddy!” The lieutenant tapped on the glass. “The officers are out here bustin’ their asses in the rain, and you’re in there chillin’. You scared of a little work?”

“Let him be,” Farid said dismissively. “It’s like trying to squeeze water from a stone.”

“Well, make him get out, at least. It’s extra weight. Listen, buster, move your butt.”

“Don’t,” I said, stopping the lieutenant, who was reaching out to open the door. “He’s a wild one. He’ll get away, and we’ll have to chase him all over again.”

We finally got the jeep started up, but we had to cut the engine again at the morgue. Farid and I went up to the back entrance and rang the bell. While we were waiting for someone to come, I read a soggy printout that hung on the left side of the door:

Wholesale? Buy three coffins, get one free? Are you friggin’ kidding me? They might as well say, All incoming are free.

Footsteps sounded from inside, and a light went on in the peephole.

“Who’s there?”

“The police. We brought a client,” Farid said, pointing to his cap.

The lock and bolt jangled and the door opened. A whiff of something both foul and sweet-smelling escaped outside and enveloped us. An elderly man with a handgun was standing in the doorway. He looked like the night watchman. When he had convinced himself of our good intentions, he tucked the handgun back into his belt.

“Live ammo?” Farid asked.

“Tear gas,” said the watchman. The smell of beer suggested that the pensioner wasn’t just catching some z’s on the job. “Who did you say you brought?”

“A client,” I answered. “Where should we unload him?”

“No, no, boys,” he said, shaking his head. “We’re closed. You’ll have to register the person at eight a.m., please, those are the rules. Palich will be here, and you can hand the body over to him. Go on now.”

He didn’t seem in the least surprised that we weren’t transporting the corpse in the official morgue-mobile. Apparently corpses arrived in all kinds of things.

“Look, mister, he’s already registered,” Farid protested. He didn’t seem to relish the prospect of driving the builder around in the jeep until eight in the morning. “We already handed him over to your fellows at eight this morning. Here, look at the tag on his hand!”

“How come you have him then?”

“Found him on the road. I don’t know, maybe he fell out or something. Long story short, Pops, this ain’t no grocery store you’ve got here. Don’t give me that eight-to-nine business. Show us where to unload him.”

The watchman stared mistrustfully at our wet faces and asked us to show him the body. We did. When he had to admit we were telling the truth, he shrugged and nodded.

“All right, bring him in. I guess they really did lose him. Drunken morons.”

Then we repeated the trick with the curtain, as a result of which the long-suffering builder was moved to yet another resting place.

“Take him into the freezer,” the old fellow ordered us when we had entered the kingdom of the dead. “It’s this way.”

Thank God we didn’t have to go far, or else I might have gotten a hernia or a ruptured navel. The watchman flung open wide doors and turned on a switch.

“Go ahead. Put him in that empty spot.”

We were struck by a wave of cold. Here it was—the penultimate stop on the road to eternity. The grave would be the terminal station. To be honest, if I had ended up here in the morning, my nervous system would probably have given out. But now my nervous system had adapted somewhat, insulating me from any deep psychological perturbation. I had never been in a place like this. The watchman wasn’t fazed in the least. For me, however, the tables and shelves overflowing with the dead made a strong impression. Especially considering the fact that the appearance of many of them was far from aesthetically pleasing, and some of them had died in far from natural circumstances. There was one, for example, whose leg was no longer even attached to its body. It immediately reminded me of that little Hollywood gem I had seen on the box not long before, Resident Evil. People just like this guy suddenly up and came to life again. Not only that, they started forcing themselves on ordinary citizens, striving to get their fill of fresh meat.

The fluorescent lamps in the freezer cast an unnatural light, turning the dried blood on some of the bodies a bright red. Memories to last a lifetime. At a moment like this the only thing I could do to cope was to repeat Farid’s mantra to myself: They won’t bite. Really, what did I have to worry about? They were simply dead people. Dead for good. They can’t harm the living. They just lie there. And there they stay. When you see them in some thriller or an action film, no one rushes to turn off the TV. Farid there—he didn’t show a trace of emotion. But it set my teeth on edge. It could have just been the cold, though. My feet were already completely numb.

Some of the corpses were fully clothed. They had most likely been brought in not long before and still hadn’t been worked over. Farid found an empty space on the farthest table. With his free hand he nudged aside an old woman who was already lying there, then heaved the legs of the builder onto it. After that he helped me with the rest of him. He didn’t pick up the curtain.

“Done,” he said.

Turning around, he bumped into a stretcher that was leaning against some of the shelves. It clattered down onto a bucket with a mop.

What happened next made my feet and my blood burn hotter than any sauna or any amount of vodka ever could. If I had been a heart patient, the whole incident would have ended with yet another death certificate. For starters, I experienced a tremendous burst of adrenaline. A maiden parachute jump must be pure pleasure compared to what I felt. And I’m pretty sure I lost every last one of my marbles, at least temporarily. The next thing I did was cross myself multiple times, without even thinking about it, for the second time that day. Farid did too, by the way… As did the watchman, whose face was the color of an aging bruise from a billy club. So this is what you’re like, Ms. Schizophrenia. Well, hello there.

One of the corpses that had been lying peacefully on the table nearest the door suddenly stirred, and then uttered a hoarse expletive. After this it sat up on the table, steadying itself on its neighbor—the junkie we had picked up earlier in the park. I couldn’t make out the face of the resurrected one, but I had no burning desire to do so, either.