Polina Dashkova - Madness Treads Lightly

“Hello, Elena Nikolaevna,” he said. “Please, come in. Take a seat.”

“Hello,” Lena echoed back. She took a few steps into the room and sat in the armchair facing the bald man.

The two goons stayed in the doorway behind her.

“Coffee? Tea? Something stronger?” the bald man offered with a polite smile.

“Coffee, if I may.”

The bald man’s eyes were light brown, almost yellow, small, and lashless.

“Okay, Vadik, get some coffee for us.” He nodded to one of the goons. “Don’t worry, Elena Nikolaevna,” he addressed Lena kindly, even rather paternally. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions, we’ll have our coffee, and we’ll part on good terms. On one condition, of course. You know perfectly well what that is. You’ll answer my questions honestly. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“Question number one.” The bald man grinned. “Who is Michael Barron?”

“Michael Barron is a US citizen, a professor, and a historian,” Lena said calmly.

So that’s what this is about! They really have taken Michael for someone else. And Gradskaya has nothing to do with it. I wonder where Michael is now. I hope Sasha had the sense to send him to Moscow.

“Elena Nikolaevna, we did agree that you would answer honestly.” The bald man frowned slightly.

“I have no reason to deceive you. Dr. Barron really is a professor and a historian. To figure that out, you certainly didn’t have to go through this charade of searching our rooms and abducting me. This is as obvious as the fact that there was talcum powder in that tin can, not drugs.”

The bald man burst out laughing, though with a wheeze.

“Well, fine. Let’s continue. Why did you come here with this, as you say, historian?”

“Dr. Barron is studying the history of Russian Siberia. He’s interested in schismatics and the small ethnic groups of the North. He hired me as an interpreter since he doesn’t speak Russian.”

“And who is the young man who drove you around?” The bald man’s eyes became altogether yellow, and his pupils narrowed to a pinpoint.

“We needed a driver. We hired the first one we came across. He asked for very little money.”

The goon called Vadik silently walked up to the table with a tray holding two small cups and a sugar bowl.

“Drink your coffee, Elena Nikolaevna, and think a little more,” the bald man suggested politely.

“May I smoke?” Lena asked.

“Yes, of course.”

Parliaments, a lighter, and an ashtray appeared on the table. Lena greedily sipped the hot, strong coffee and took a cigarette out of the pack.

“Well, fine, and what did you talk about for so long with the two old women on Malaya Proletarskaya?”

“I was visiting the mother of an old acquaintance. It’s an old story.”

“I’d be happy to hear it.”

Lena calmly laid out the story of Vasya Slepak’s poems. Curly listened and thought that she was telling the truth. Not the whole truth, of course, but the truth. He knew that the killer really did once write poetry. And one of his poems was even published in a popular youth magazine.

“Was it hard to get him published?” he asked with some sympathy.

“What do you think?” Lena smiled.

“What did you do that for?”

“I felt very sorry for Vasya Slepak.”

Right then she heard laughter. The bald man was laughing, though with a wheeze. The two young goons standing in the doorway were laughing hard.

“Sorry for him, you say?” the bald man said when he’d finished laughing, and he wiped tears of laughter from his eyes with his fingertips. “You should have felt sorry for yourself!”

His face hardened. His bare yellow eyes stared at Lena in a way that made her shiver.

“Do you miss your daughter?” he asked insinuatingly.

Lena didn’t respond. She felt everything inside her turn cold. The hand holding the coffee cup started shaking noticeably. Lena put the cup down on the table and squeezed her hand into a fist.

“You do,” the bald man answered for her, and he quickly licked his thin lips. “Do you want to take a look at her?”

Lena suddenly got very dizzy. This can’t be happening, she told herself. He’s bluffing. This can’t be.

A remote appeared in the bald man’s hand. Only then did Lena notice a large television and VCR on a zebrawood stand in the corner of the room. The bald man pressed a few buttons. The screen turned on, and a minute later Lena saw the broad drive of the Istra holiday house. Liza was running down the drive wearing her bright, colorful snowsuit and her striped knit cap with the pom-pom. In one hand she was holding a red plastic bucket and in the other her stuffed monkey. She was running toward the camera. Her rosy little face now took up the entire screen. Her blond curls poked out from under the cap, and her big blue eyes looked straight at Lena.

“Nanny Vera!” she shouted gaily, then turned and ran off to the side.

On the side, Vera Fyodorovna was standing in her warm jacket and loose woolen trousers. She leaned over to Liza, smiling, straightened her cap, and fastened a snap on her snowsuit.

“Let me look, Liza. Are your little feet wet?”

The scene changed. Now they were looking into the bedroom through the window on the balcony. Liza was sleeping in her pink flannel pajamas. Vera Fyodorovna was knitting, sitting in a chair in front of the television. The glowing screen cast pale patches of light on her calm face. The picture was so peaceful and cozy that Lena wanted nothing more in the world right now than to be in that room, to stroke Liza’s silky hair, and to kiss her warm cheek creased by the pillow’s folds.

Vera Fyodorovna rose heavily from her chair, went over to the bed, straightened the blanket, and did exactly what Lena so wanted to do—stroked Liza’s little head, leaned over, kissed her little cheek, and quietly made the sign of the cross over the sleeping girl. Then, yawning sleepily, she turned off the television and left the room.

The screen went dark. Lena took out another cigarette and lit it, trying to stop her whole body from shaking.

“You have a beautiful daughter,” she heard the bald man say. “Who does she take after to be so blond? Your husband? Speaking of the colonel, is he still in London? When will he be back, do you know?”

“What do you want from me?” Lena asked, and she forced herself to look straight into his yellow eyes.

The young deaf-mute woman silently approached the coffee table and began clearing the coffee cups. Lena didn’t notice when she’d appeared in the living room.

“You do realize,” the bald man continued thoughtfully, “I have much experience in loosening the tongues of people who preferred to keep quiet. Mostly men, though. I don’t much like dealing with women. There are all kinds of ways to make a person talk. You’re an educated woman, you know how this is done. But each person requires a unique approach. Now you, for example, you’ll probably pass out at the first touch. Physical pain is one of the easiest ways to get a person to talk. But I don’t like that. You end up with a lot of noise and blood. None of my boys has laid a finger on you yet. And they won’t. And, so far, we’ve only filmed your Liza. We won’t harm your child for no reason. But we will if we have to, and you’ll have only yourself to blame. Believe me, it will give me no pleasure whatsoever to show you another movie of your beautiful baby in a few days.”

Lena suddenly noticed that the deaf-mute had stopped by the table holding the empty cups and was looking steadily at the bald man’s lips.

“This is how it is.” His stubby-fingered hand lightly chopped through the air. “Give this some proper thought. I’m not rushing you.”