Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

Grachev looked at the detective. “Don’t you play chess?”

“A little, badly,” Sasha said, looking across the water at the wall of the Kremlin. “My wife is the chess player.”

“She is a true Russian.”

“She’s Ukrainian,” said Sasha. “Her name is Maya. I have two children.”

“You are trying to make me feel sympathy,” said Grachev.

“Am I? I don’t know. Maybe. I was … I don’t know,” said Sasha.

Sasha continued to look across the river at the wall, at the flowing traffic, which paused as drivers looked across and saw the crowd of police vehicles and the two men and a boy on the rocks.

“I’ve always wanted to climb that tower,” Sasha said, pointing across the river.

“The Moskvoretsky Tower,” said Grachev.

“Yes. An interesting sight from this perspective. Have you ever been down on the rocks before?”

“No. I have a question. Do you love your wife?” asked Grachev.

“Is that the question you want to ask?”

“No, it just came to me. I’ll ask the other soon, very soon. Now I have a third question. What’s your name?”

“Sasha. And yours is Valery.”

“Mine is Kon,” he corrected.

“Yes, I love my wife. I love my children. My wife has taken them to Kiev, Kon.”

“Why?”

“Because I have behaved like an animal, a brooding animal in the zoo. You’ve seen the tigers in those small cages. Pacing, pacing. They are depressed. I was told that by my chief inspector. When he told me about the tigers, I stopped taking my older daughter, Pulcharia, to see them.”

“Sasha, I think I am dying. I have work to do and I don’t understand what you are saying, but I do understand love. I am sitting here like this because of a woman I love. No, that is not fair, I am sitting here because of what I wanted and because I seem to be growing more and more mad as I lose blood. Also, I think I have the flu.”

“I would say you are not having a good day,” said Sasha.

Grachev laughed and then coughed. The boy at his side made it clear by his look that he had no idea what this madman who had kidnapped him was laughing at.

“A very bad day, but I mean to salvage something.”

“That is understandable,” Sasha said. “Who is the woman, the one you love?”

“No,” Grachev said, shaking his head. “I am dying. I am going mad, but I am still playing and I will go down protecting my queen.”

“All right, then what is the boy’s name?”

“I don’t know. What is your name?”

He turned his eyes to the boy, the gun touching the black T-shirt.

“B.B.,” said the boy.

“Your real name,” said Grachev.

“Artiom. Are you going to shoot me?”

The boy seemed more curious and excited than afraid.

“No.”

“Are you going to shoot yourself?”

“You watch too many movies on television,” said Grachev. “You should be playing chess.”

“I don’t like chess.”

“Maybe I will shoot you.”

The boy who called himself B.B. suddenly changed. He was afraid.

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Grachev said. “And I’m not going to shoot Sasha here or anyone else. But that is our secret. I have killed enough for one morning. They are making a great deal of noise up there.”

“A great deal,” Sasha agreed, looking back over his shoulder. “I have no control over that.”

“I don’t mind,” said Valery Grachev. “Now, my third question. You said you know what I am going to do, or you think you do. What am I going to do?”

“Take the negative out of that bag and throw it in the river,” said Sasha. “The only reason you have not already done so is that you are waiting for a larger audience and the television cameras.”

“You really should play chess,” said Grachev.

Sasha shrugged.

“I don’t think I can wait longer,” said Grachev. “I think I see a television truck on the Kremlyovskaya Embankment over there across the river, and I am sure there are others and tourists with cameras. I would like your people to let the people with cameras come where they can see.”

“I do not have that power, Kon,” said Sasha.

“Then I will have to begin.”

“Would you like some help?” asked Sasha, who was now certain that Grachev was dying. “It will be awkward for you, keeping the gun on B.B. with one hand, staying alert, reaching in for the film. It will be painful.”

“I think I would prefer you to remain where you are,” said Grachev. “You can watch.”

With that, the young man reached into the bag and pulled out a tightly wound roll of film about one and a half feet across. Sasha could see the pain in the man’s face.

“You are going to destroy Tolstoy,” said Sasha.

“I am going to destroy a movie about the life of Tolstoy. I will tell you a secret, Sasha,” said Grachev. “From what I have seen of it, it is a very bad, bloated, lying movie about Tolstoy. It turns him into a tragic romantic figure with a big-budget background. The world is better off without this Tolstoy.”

“And without Kriskov?” asked Sasha.

“And without me,” answered Grachev, unwinding the film.

“I can help,” said B.B.

Grachev handed him the reel, and the boy began to unwind the film. There was a rattle and more than a murmur in the crowd behind the two men and the boy. Above the sound of voices and vehicles, Sasha could hear the crinkling of unwinding film. Soon the rocks in front of the boy and the man who now called himself Kon were covered with curls of black film. When there was still about half the film remaining in a tight circle, the circle collapsed and dropped into the boy’s lap.

“Throw it in,” said Grachev. “Stand up. Throw it in.”

B.B. wiped his hands on his jeans and stood. “Really?” he asked.

“Throw,” said Grachev.

And the boy threw.

Some people who had managed to make it to the concrete ledge began to applaud and some took pictures. The film now floated in a serpentine mass upon the water. The black bundle began to move away from the shore. Grachev reached for the second reel and handed it to the waiting boy, who eagerly took it and began to unwind.

“Sasha, would you like to cast black bread upon the water?” asked Grachev.

“No, thank you,” said Sasha. “I’m content to watch.”

And watch he did till there was no more film, just four dark clouds floating away on the water. The first cloud of film had begun to sink.

“Now,” said Grachev, his eyes blinking away perspiration.

“Now?” asked Sasha.

“Now you come close and I tell you a secret,” he said.

Sasha moved toward him carefully along the rocks, knowing that he was ruining a good pair of pants already stained by his earlier shoot-out with the man toward whom he crawled. Someone in the crowd gasped. When Sasha was a yard from the dying man, Grachev turned his weapon on the detective and said, “B.B., you may go now, clamber up the rocks, climb the wall, talk to the television people and the police. B.B., I have become the highlight of your life. You will remember me and what we have done till you die. You will tell the story many times. It will change. I don’t know how. I know. I once made it to the Moscow chess semifinals when I was your age. I remember every move and the watching crowd and I have convinced myself that the game I lost was much closer than it probably really was. Go.”

B.B. scampered up the rocks, slipped once, and continued.

Grachev was not watching, but Sasha was.

“Is he gone?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “You talked of a woman. Was it Vera Kriskov?”

“That is Kriskov’s wife?”

“You know that it is. You love her,” said Sasha.

“I have never seen her, don’t know her, but I will perhaps do her a great favor when I tell you my secret. Lean close.”