Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

“True meaning comes from feeling, not from words,” Boris’s wife said, looking at one small painting that suggested to Rostnikov a sky on fire.

The room was spare but comfortable, the furniture basic and wood with one old, patterned and upholstered sofa. There was a large radio on a table near the window but no television. Television stations were too far away.

They moved through the rooms and Boris explained that they had originally built two bedrooms. A third had been added. Everything was on one floor, so adding rooms was not a problem. Boris and his wife had one bedroom, which was small and neat with a free-standing wooden closet in one corner, the bed, covered by a colorful quilt, next to the window, and what Boris described as his wife’s pride, a dresser with a mirror on top. The dresser was dark wood and elaborate, covered with carved flowers and leaves.

“It is an antique,” Boris said. “Two, three hundred years old.”

“Tsimion loved it,” his wife said. “He liked to run his fingers over the flowers.”

The room of Konstantin and his wife was the same size as the first bedroom. This room was furnished with a bed, closet, and a rocking chair. A trunk stood in the corner. It was open and filled with toys. On the walls were scribble drawings of a small child. The dresser was plain and large with six drawers. A small bookcase stood next to the dresser. It was filled with children’s books.

The final bedroom was a duplicate of the other two except this had only a single-size bed. A desk stood at the window with a wooden chair before it. A dresser, almost a duplicate of the one in the last bedroom, stood in the corner. A large simple bookcase filled with books and magazines took up most of one wall.

“This was Tsimion’s room,” said Boris. “It was here if he ever wanted to return. Now it belongs to my granddaughter, Petya, my little one.”

He reached down to touch the head of the little blond girl who was clinging to his leg.

“Now,” Boris said, gently prying his granddaughter loose and guiding her toward his wife, “the barn and some of the fields. The tour, I’m afraid, is short because there really is not much to see.

“We can forgo the barn,” said Rostnikov, “and I would like to look at the fields myself. I want to know what it feels like to be alone in such a vast sea of green and yellow.”

“It feels … comforting,” said Boris solemnly. “And when there is a breeze, the vines and leaves sound as if they are talking a soft, foreign tongue.”

“I see where your son got his sense of poetry,” said Rostnikov.

“No,” said Boris. “He listened to his own silence in the darkness of the skies.”

Outside the house in which they left the family, Iosef said, “You want to go for a walk in a potato field?”

“I must,” Rostnikov said, looking around. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

“I thought we were here to get some answers,” said Iosef, following his father’s gaze.

“We are,” said Rostnikov. “Go back inside. Ask about farming. Tell them of your life and mine, of your engagement to Elena. Talk to them of dead czars and dark, silent skies.”

“Now you are trying to be a poet.”

“It’s an infection,” said Rostnikov. “Highly communicable.”

With that, Porfiry Petrovich set off into the field.

The rows were even, but navigating them with one healthy and one independent leg was difficult. After a hundred yards, Rostnikov knew that what Boris had told him of the fields was true. There was a rustling calm. But growing potatoes was certainly not always romantic. In fact, Rostnikov was sure, such idyllic moments were probably reserved for visitors who did not have to work the fields, or men like Boris Vladovka who held on to their dreams and passed them on to their children and grandchildren.

It took Porfiry Petrovich twelve minutes to catch up to the tractor. The bearded driver saw him coming, turned off the engine, and waited as Rostnikov approached.

“Vladovka, when we have finished talking I would be very grateful for a ride back to the car.”

Rostnikov looked up at the man and shielded his eyes from the sun.

“You have a question for me?”

“Yes, several. First, I would like to know what it feels like to be weightless and alone in the darkness of outer space.”

“How would I know?” he said with a shrug, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“Because,” said Rostnikov, “you are not Konstantin Vladovka. He is dead and buried. You are his brother, Tsimion.”

Valery Grachev had not arrived at work today. And, Sasha and Elena quickly discovered, he was not at home. No one was at home. They had gotten the landlady to open the door to the apartment where Valery lived with his uncle. They found no film negative, but they did find books on chess, eight of them.

“You are sure this is the man?” Elena asked as they stood outside the door of the apartment.

“I don’t have to be sure,” said Sasha. “We find him, bring him in, and let the beggar woman identify him. The man in the drawing is one of the assistant editors who works for Yuri Kriskov. I saw him when I posed as the French producer.”

The only question for Sasha now was whether they would find Grachev before he decided to destroy the negative.

At this point, they did not know that they were already too late to stop him from destroying Yuri Kriskov. When they left the apartment, Grachev was already setting himself up to fire his first shot.

They had arrived in a motor-pool Lada with bad brakes. Elena, who was by far the better driver of the two, had picked up the vehicle and now was driving it to the house of Yuri Kriskov. They were no more than half a mile from their destination when the first shot was fired.

Elena stepped on the gas as more shots were fired. Sasha opened his window and saw a glint in the window of a house two streets away from the Kriskov’s. It could have been a … another shot. The object in the window caught the early-morning sun again and jerked upward.

“Let me out here, now,” said Sasha. “You go to the house.”

Elena hit the faulty brakes and the car skidded to the side of the street, almost turning back in the direction from which they had come. Sasha was out of the car before it had quite stopped. He kicked the door closed behind him and took his gun from the holster inside his unzipped jacket as he moved.

He crouched low as Elena stepped on the gas behind him and headed for the Kriskov house. There were more shots now, and he was sure they were coming from that window.

Sasha got behind the house and made his way through a waist-high growth of wild bushes. His left hand was scratched by something sharp and he thought he might be bleeding but he didn’t look. His eyes were fixed on the back of the house and the motor scooter parked next to the rear door.

As he stepped into the clearing, gun in two hands, knees slightly bent, the back door of the house suddenly opened. They saw each other at the same moment and hesitated. Sasha fired first. Valery Grachev fired next. Grachev’s weapon was far more powerful and had great range and accuracy, but Sasha was a policeman who had been shot at before and who had shot at others.

Sasha’s bullet went into Valery Grachev’s left shoulder. Grachev’s entered the ground in front of Sasha, who dropped to his stomach and rolled to his left. When he had rolled back to his right and leveled his weapon, he saw Grachev on the motor scooter, rifle in his hand. Sasha fired again. The bullet hit the front fender of the scooter just in front of Valery. The bullet made a strange ziiiinging sound as Valery started the bike with a kick of his foot and a twist of his hand.