Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

Boris Vladovka and the people of the town of Kiro-Stovitsk knew the priests were wrong. Whether it was the church or government or a political party, the people of the town wanted no part of it. The church might well return. The government would grow increasingly corrupt and, if they felt it was profitable, appointed officials would set up an office and try to take a piece of the town’s small profits. Something calling itself Communism might even return, but the people were determined to survive. History had long since proved that they could.

When the commune farms had been disbanded and the land given to the people who had been tenants of nobles, kulaks, small landlords, and corrupt Communist commissars, most of the people had been frightened. They had no experience selling potato crops. They could not afford their own machinery. They prepared themselves for starvation.

But Boris Vladovka had reluctantly stepped forward. Boris, father of Konstantin the farmer and Tsimion the cosmonaut, had suggested that the farmers of Kiro-Stovitsk enter into a partnership, pool their meager money, buy two ancient trucks, and have Boris and Konstantin drive to the markets of St. Petersburg and sell the crops to one of the new dealers who had stepped in to serve as brokers for restaurants, the new supermarkets, and the growing number of hotels and clubs throughout Russia and beyond its borders.

Boris did not make the town wealthy, but as long as the weather did not destroy an annual crop, he did bring in enough for the people to live without fear of starvation or even hunger.

Boris was the unofficial mayor of Kiro-Stovitsk, a sixty-year-old patriarch of the entire grateful town, a town that had little to be proud of outside of Boris’s cosmonaut son.

In the center of the town’s only street there was a war memorial, a simple, six-foot-high weather-pocked concrete obelisk with the names of the eighty-one who had died fighting the Germans chiseled carefully into its surface. Many of the names on the obelisk were Vladovka, Dersknikov, and Laminski. The town, like hundreds across Russia, had been inbred for as far back as anyone could remember and farther back than that.

Kiro-Stovitsk was now a town of the very young and the very old. The young left, most of them as soon as they were able. They left with dreams of becoming business successes or cosmonauts like their most famous citizen. A few of them had returned, disillusioned, carrying a wisdom of the outer world that had drained a bit of life from them.

Most of the people of the town lived in the small farms well beyond the edge of the wooden buildings on the main street. Over the centuries, the farms and village buildings had been propped up, rebuilt, and reinforced so many times that there was no real sense of what they had been originally.

The wind blew hard enough in winter to knock a man from a tractor or lift a child into the air. But this was summer. It was hot and humid and the heavy clouds brought rain. It was a good season.

Into this town drove Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and Iosef Rostnikov in a ten-year-old tan Ford Mustang provided by the security staff by order of General Snitkonoy, head of Hermitage security and former director of the Office of Special Investigation. The general had not forgotten his debt to Inspector Rostnikov for helping to make his reputation. Not only had he provided a car but a driver too, a driver who had been born in the town to which they were going.

The driver, a very thin, talkative young man with a red face, named Ivan Laminski, wore a blue summer uniform and cap. The uniform was clean and the buttons polished. Ivan occasionally returned to Kiro-Stovitsk to show off his uniform and talk of his responsibilities in the city. Ivan was close to having saved enough money to buy his own car so he could return more often to his brothers, sisters, father and mother, and friends.

Ivan told the two detectives from Moscow about the town, its past and present.

“I don’t think Tsimion Vladovka has come back here more than once or twice,” said Ivan, looking at the two detectives in his rearview mirror. “Once, when his mother was sick with some problem, liver, gallbladder, he took her into town and used his influence to get her an operation. I think he came again but I don’t know if there was a reason. That was a few years back. I doubt if anyone in town knows where he is if he is missing.”

The road was not paved, but it was not particularly bumpy.

In his rearview mirror, Ivan watched the older policeman, the one built like a block of stone, listen and look out of the window. There was little to see but open fields of weeds and an occasional farm. The other policeman, the younger one, listened to Ivan, nodded at appropriate times, knowing he could be seen in the mirror, and occasionally asked a question.

“There it is,” said Ivan, pointing a little off to the right.

“Your great-grandfather came from a town like this one,” said the older policeman to the younger.

The younger policeman looked through the front window at the cluster of small buildings ahead of them.

“You are sure they are not expecting us?” Rostnikov asked the driver.

“They are not,” said Ivan.

“You are certain?” asked Rostnikov.

“I … well, who knows?” said Ivan. “But I don’t think so.”

Ivan was soon proved wrong.

When they drove down the street, a few dozen people stood in front of the stores and former church. There were five cars and two pickup trucks parked on the concrete street, which had no sidewalk. Ivan pulled the car to a stop next to the general store and beside the memorial obelisk.

The day was dark and damp as the Rostnikovs got out of the car. Ivan got out quickly and moved to a group of people, hugging first a narrow woman of about fifty and then some other men and women. Porfiry Petrovich and Iosef stood waiting while Ivan completed his greetings and basked briefly in the admiration of his family and friends. He was probably the second most successful of the sons who had left the town.

“Inspector Rostnikov, this is Alexander Podgorny.”

A heavy man took a step forward and extended his hand. The man had a large belly, a knowing smile, and a crop of white hair brushed straight back and whispered by the slight wind.

“And,” said Rostnikov, “this is my son, Inspector Iosef Rostnikov.”

Podgorny shook Iosef’s hand and stepped back.

The small crowd was silent, watching.

“Our meeting hall is inside,” said Podgorny. “We can go in and talk, or go to my home.”

“The meeting hall will be fine,” said Rostnikov, following Podgorny, trying to remain steady on his insensate leg.

Behind them the people who had stood on the street waiting for the arrival of the important visitors filed in after them. A table and chairs had been set up on the small platform where priests and party officials had once stood. Podgorny ushered the Moscow detectives to the table, where they sat.

An audience began filling the folding chairs facing the platform. Ivan the driver was not sure whether he should be on the platform at the table or in the audience. He opted for the audience and sat between the man and woman who Porfiry Petrovich assumed were his parents.

“You are looking for Tsimion,” said the fat man, whose eyes were very dark and moving from one to the other of the detectives.

“We are looking for information on where we might find him. We believe that he may be in great danger,” said Rostnikov, folding his hands. He had done his best to sit without looking awkward. He had done well but not perfectly.

Podgorny sat on one end of the table. Iosef and his father sat behind it, facing the audience. Iosef expected that when Podgorny was finished, the people before them would begin asking questions.