Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

Moscow was a good place to be if one had money and knew the city. Pavel was very pleased with himself. He would finish packing, lie down, and play with some ideas he had for jokes.

He hoped that within the next week he would have enough material to put together a part of his routine about traveling on the Trans-Siberian Express.

He closed his suitcase, turned off the television, and got back on the bed to rest.

There was much to think about. Jokes, the relatively simple and safe job he had to do, and what he would do with the money he had already received and the rest that would be given to him when he had completed his task. Later he would get up for lunch. He would eat elegantly but lightly and perhaps treat himself to an early movie before dinner. For a resourceful man with a sense of humor, life could be very good indeed.

For breakfast, Misha Lovski received nothing.

He was hungry. He was angry. He was naked. Misha paced. He was in a cage. Literally. A cage with iron bars. There were no windows but there was a single ceiling light outside the cage, well beyond his reach.

The cage itself was empty except for a narrow mattress on the floor. Misha had grown cold during the night. He had wrapped himself in the mattress and awakened with a stiff neck, which he now massaged as he paced the ten-foot by ten-foot concrete floor.

“I’m hungry,” he shouted.

No one answered.

“I’m cold,” he shouted.

No one answered.

He could have been anywhere. He had only the slightest recollection of how he had gotten here. The night before last, two nights ago or was it three, he had been at Loni’s. He had been drinking. He had taken a respectable dose of acid handed to him by a skiny whose name he couldn’t quite remember. The skiny was big. He was with someone else who joined them when Misha was well into his trip. Misha couldn’t remember who the other person had been.

He remembered voices, music, loud music even for him, smells, sweet for a moment and then as acrid as vomit the next. And he vaguely remembered someone handing him a telephone and telling him he was going to be caged and killed. Was that at Loni’s? He had panicked, said something into the phone, called for help. And that was it. Or perhaps there had been no call. Perhaps he had dreamed or imagined it.

He had awakened in this cage. No watch. No windows.

He was not self-conscious about his nakedness, though he knew whoever had caged him might well be looking at him through some hole at this very moment. The Naked Cossack had torn off his clothes on stage more than once, more than a dozen times, maybe more than a hundred times. He had torn off, his clothes in the beginning when the music and the smell of girls in the flashing lights in front and the deep darkness farther back had given him an erection. The audience had always gone wild as he shouted his signature line, “Kher s nim, I don’t give a damn. Does anybody give a fucking damn?”

To which the audience always responded with a loud, cacophonous “Nobody.”

“That’s right,” the Naked Cossack would answer and launch into a new song filled with anger and attack, love for those who hated, and hatred for those who loved. He sang of strength and sex and the rights of those who were strong. The stompers. The raised fists. The heavy polished boots.

Misha moved to the bars of his cage and shouted with a driving angry voice that was all performance, “I’m the Naked Cossack, you dumb shits. What the hell do you want?”

For most of the first day Misha had maintained an angry scowl, had muttered curses, had been afraid that he was going to be killed. He had a dream the first night that he was a ritual sacrifice. There was an altar. He was tied down with ropes. The altar was outdoors, an uneven rock that scratched his back. A huge man with a bald head approached with an ax. On the blade of the ax was a swastika.

The man who looked familiar had clearly said, “We know you are Jew.

Misha had awakened, cold, sweating. The dream was the enactment of “Sacrifice the Son of God,” in which a Jew is killed on such an altar. It was one of Misha’s own songs. He had shivered. Not knowing if it was night or day, he looked at the ceiling light outside his cage, thinking for an instant that he was looking into the sun.

At that moment, Misha had lost some of his fear. If they had wanted him dead, he would already be dead. No, they wanted money, ransom. They were not rappery or rapists. They were not fans kidnapping their idol so they could have him for their own. They were simple kidnappers. They would keep him alive. If they had discovered who he was, they would go to his father for money. His father would pay. He hoped they would bleed him dry. If they did not know about his father, they would go to Acid, Anarchista, and Pure Knuckles. They would pay as long as it was not too much money. They needed the Naked Cossack. He was the band. He was the attraction.

All Misha had to do was to remain the Naked Cossack, the singer, guitarist, poet who didn’t give a shit.

But he was hungry. He was thirsty. And he had to use a toilet. He couldn’t imagine squatting in a corner and existing in the same space with his own feces. He had written about such things, sung of them, suggested that the weak enemies of all who heeded his word deserved the fate he was now enduring. But he didn’t deserve it.

Misha shouted again.

“I need a toilet. I need food. I need something to wear.”

He let out the yowl of a wolf. He laughed. His throat went dry. The lights went out. He was in total darkness, sudden total darkness. He stepped back. He could hear the door to the room outside the bars open, but no light came in.

There was a sound of footsteps on concrete.

Misha staggered back. Something clanked to the floor beyond the bars. The footsteps retreated. The door opened and closed. The lights came on again.

Outside the bars were a cracked metal pot, a roll of toilet paper, a metal platter with a half loaf of bread and a piece of sausage, and a metal cup of water.

Misha had trouble getting the pot through the bars. He had to force it. It was the single item he needed most.

“It was a meaningless comment,” Iosef Rostnikov said to Elena Timofeyeva as they headed slowly down the corridor two levels below Petrovka.

“It was not meaningless,” Elena said, eyes forward, stride steady.

“So, I said what? That there is a resemblance between you and your aunt? That is meaningful? An insult?”

“My Aunt Anna and I are alike in only one way physically. We both have a tendency, as does my mother, to be overweight. You were suggesting that I am growing fat.”

Iosef stopped walking. “I … your aunt is a shrewd, intelligent, highly capable person. See, I said person, not woman. That was the comparison I was making.”

A pair of uniformed policemen walked past them, talking softly and emphatically, taking a quick step to the side to avoid collision with the couple who now stood facing each other.

“I am watching my weight,” she said. “I eat carefully. I exercise. I am fit. I am also genetically disposed toward a certain plumpness which, I thought, pleased you.”

“This is not the place …”

“I’m well aware of that,” Elena said. “But where is a good place and when will we next be there? You said I am like my aunt. I am. She taught me to face situations when they arise, to accept confrontation rather than allow incidents to become infected.”

“I didn’t-,” Iosef said, holding out his hands.

“You did,” she said. “And you are smart enough to know that you did. I would not love you if I thought you were a self-deluded generic man.”