Stuart Kaminsky - A Whisper to the Living

“Comely in life, serene in death,” Paulinin said, scalpel in hand as he looked down at the naked bodies that lay side by side on their backs only a few feet from each other.

Paulinin had the urge to help them reach out and clasp each other’s hands. They made an interesting couple. She was young, dark, and when the blood was cleansed quite beautiful except for the bruises on her face and the crushed right cheekbone. He was a man of no more than forty-five. His was a muscular body with no chest hair. There were a few scars, one on his stomach, another on his forehead. His face was roughly handsome, with a much-broken nose that made him more interesting than he might otherwise have been. The blood had also been cleansed from his face, but the man’s fists and knuckles were quite bloody. He must, Paulinin tentatively concluded, have fought back and done some damage to whoever had beaten him to death. Paulinin did not clean the knuckles. The blood of the killer might still be on them.

“Do you have secrets, my pair of lovers? Secrets that you will share with me as we talk?”

Paulinin reached for the cup and drank lukewarm coffee. He had been working for more than forty hours straight, taking time off only to eat, shower, change his bloody and fluid-stained whites. He could have taken pills that would guarantee that he would stay awake, but it wasn’t necessary, at least not yet. The sight of this pair in front of him woke him with great interest.

“What shall it be?” he said, addressing the man and woman whose eyes were closed. “What have I not listened to yet in the last days? Ah, Mussogorsky, Night on Bald Mountain . Perhaps Pictures at an Exhibition . Yes? Good.”

Paulinin put down his coffee cup and, scalpel still held up high, moved to the new CD player on the cluttered desk a dozen paces away.

As the first eerie strains of Bald Mountain came through the speaker on the shelf just beyond the heads of his guests, Paulinin tried to decide with whom he would begin. He turned the woman’s head to her right and the man’s head to his left. They were now facing away from each other as if to hide the shame of the desecration to their skulls.

Paulinin leaned forward under the strong light looking first at the woman and then at the man. He repeated the look at each leaning closer, this time with a magnifying glass. He began to hum along with the music as he leaned ever closer.

He did not know how long he moved from one body to the other, but when he did stand upright his back signaled a familiar ache.

“Thank you,” he said to the pair. “I shall wake the Chief Inspector and Emil Karpo in the morning with the news you have given me. I admit that I am rather given to professional surprises when I am the one presenting them and not the one receiving. I would prefer you not pass on that truth. I am trusting you not to do so.”

He did not remind them that they were dead. It would spoil the mood.

Now, with music around him and the smell of alcohol and blood to give him encouragement, Paulinin began his work.

“The girlsare sleeping over tomorrow night,” Sara Rostnikov said as she watched her husband eat the Zharkoe pork she had prepared for him.

The dish was one of Porfiry Petrovich’s favorites, pieces of pork sautéed with onions, mushrooms, potatoes, herbs, and pickles. Tonight it tasted particularly good and the news of the two girls was welcome.

“Galina has the opportunity to work the night shift at the bakery. She will make double her salary.”

Laura, now eleven, and her sister, Nina, now nine, lived in an apartment with their grandmother Galina, one floor below the Rostnikovs. Until a few months ago, the three had lived with Sara and Porfiry Petrovich in their one-bedroom apartment.

The girls’ mother, Marina, had run off with a petty crook after trying to sell them. And then Galina herself had spent time in prison after shooting her abusive boss at another bakery. It had been his gun. She had wrestled it from him. In the struggle, he had been shot. Galina spent almost a year in prison. Without Rostnikov’s intervention, she might yet be working in the bakery of the women’s prison. During her imprisonment, the Rostnikovs had gladly taken in the two girls.

There were days like today that Sara and Porfiry Petrovich missed having the girls from early morning until they fell asleep on makeshift bedding on the floor of the living room only a dozen feet from where Rostnikov now sat.

“Good,” he said.

“The news or the food?”

“Both. How are you feeling?”

He paused in his eating and looked at his wife. It had been the crucial nightly question in their lives for years, particularly since the successful surgery to remove a tumor from her brain three years ago. The wound had healed, but her once vibrant red hair had quickly lost its flare and settled for a more subdued hue. Her face was still round and pretty. Her lips were full and her voice was still as husky as when he had first heard it almost forty years ago.

“I have an appointment with Leon tomorrow,” she said.

Leon was her doctor and Porfiry Petrovich’s. Leon was also her cousin.

“The headaches?” Rostnikov asked.

“Yes, but they could be caused by many things.”

Rostnikov nodded and resumed eating. They both feared the return of the tumor or a new one, but there was nothing to say that would enlighten them or give them hope.

It was almost midnight. Rostnikov would have to be up early and he had yet to do his weights, remove his leg, and quite literally hop into the shower to shave and wash. He hoped the water would at least be tepid. He had done his best to ease the flow of heating gas. His efforts had proved to have dubious success.

Rostnikov’s hobby was plumbing. Plumbing fascinated him. The pipes in the wall, the sinks, were all part of a system not unlike that of the human body that disposed of waste. Pipes and sinks were things that he could repair. There were many things he as a policeman dealt with every day that he could not repair.

The entire building in which the Rostnikovs lived counted on him and not the post-Soviet owners to take care of everything from leaking faucets to major assaults on the rusting system.

When they could, the two little girls accompanied him in his efforts. Nina was particularly fascinated by his efforts and tools. The older sister, Laura, joined them when she had nothing else to do.

He finished the food in his bowl and wiped it clean with a piece of heavy grain-filled bread.

“More?” Sara asked.

“Yes, please.”

She brought him more and smiled as he began working on another bowl.

“You are a great cook,” he said.

“When we first married, I believed that, but I have learned that you will eat almost anything and declare that it is delicious.”

“Your cooking is special,” he said. “Your chicken tabak is so good it would even make Vladimir Putin smile with gastronomical delight. Ask Iosef.”

“Our son is as undiscerning about food as you are. Almost every morning when he still lived with us he had the same breakfast as you, a large bowl of hot kasha with milk and sugar, and declared it delicious.”

Rostnikov said nothing. She was right. He too thought the morning bowl of kasha was delicious. He had thought so since childhood.

“Finished,” he said with a grin. “It was delicious.”

“And I am a great cook.”

“The greatest in all of Russia and all the former member states of the Soviet Union.”

Getting up took great effort. It was not just his leg but also a weariness in his bones. For some reason he thought of the boy on the bench that afternoon. What was his name? Yes, Yuri Platkov. He wondered if the boy would be back the coming afternoon. Rostnikov had enjoyed their conversation. The coming day was supposed to be mild, without either rain or snow. Trusting forecasts could be disappointing in Moscow.