Stuart Kaminsky: Fall of a Cosmonaut

“Do you think I am mad because I talk to the dead, Emil Karpo? Do you ever talk to the dead?”

“Yes,” Karpo said. “I talk to the dead.”

“Do they answer you as they answer me when I probe and explore them?”

“No,” said Karpo. “I talk to only one dead person. She does not answer. For me it must simply suffice that I talk to her.”

“I understand,” said Paulinin. “In many ways we are alike, you and I. In many ways. That is why we are friends.”

“Yes,” said Karpo. “I must acknowledge that. If it were not so, I would not be talking to you as I am, telling you things that I do not even tell Porfiry Petrovich and do not even tell myself.”

“What did you bring?”

“Cheese, bread, water. And two apples.”

Paulinin looked up from the rusty metal, still holding the brush, wiped his chin with his sleeve, and adjusted his glasses.

“Let us eat.”

A knock at her door brought Anna Timofeyeva out of her near slumber. She had been sitting at her window with her cat, Baku, in her ample lap, looking out on the concrete courtyard where children played, mothers and grandmothers sat on benches and talked, and a regular group of jobless men gathered in a far corner to smoke, complain, and make weak jokes about those who were better or worse off than they were.

The door was locked, as were all apartment doors in Moscow, so she had to rouse herself, place Baku on the floor, and make her way across the room. The first step made her dizzy and irritable. Not long ago, before two heart attacks sent her into retirement, Anna had been a procurator, a rising and respected figure in the Soviet Union. Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had worked under her. They had all worked under her, and she had worked tirelessly to enforce the law, to bring those who offended the State to judgment.

And now, at the age of fifty-seven, she watched women and children from her window and grew dizzy when she rose. Illness did not become her. There was a rage within her which she quelled with dreams, medication, and reading, because the rage did her no good and could, according to the doctors, actually kill her.

“We must talk,” shouted Lydia Tkach as soon as Anna opened the door.

The wiry, nearly deaf woman carried a plastic shopping bag from which a very pleasant odor reached out and struck the now-awake Anna. Lydia moved into the room, and Anna considered leaving the door open so that she could shoo the loud gnat from her presence, but experience told her that such would not be the case. Anna closed the door and turned.

“Did you see him?” Lydia shouted, moving to the kitchen area and the small table to her right.

“See? …”

“Sasha, on the television. My son, the hero.”

There was a bite to the word hero that required no special acumen to discern.

“No, I have not watched television today.”

The smaller woman was taking things from the plastic bag she had set on the table. There was a small cake, some croissants, and a large white cylinder carton with the unmistakable smell of coffee.

“I wish I had not,” said Lydia, going to the cupboard behind her to bring out two plates, two forks, a large knife, and two cups. “Sit.”

Anna, who had spent a lifetime giving orders, knew it was useless to argue with the woman. Besides, the confections and coffee drew her to the table. Listening to Lydia Tkach was the price she would have to pay for the guilty pleasure. “He was there, on the riverbank, right across from the Kremlin,” said Lydia, sitting and reaching over immediately to cut the cake. “Right in front, or almost, of the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moskau. You know?”

“I know where the-” Anna Timofeyeva began but was cut short by her guest, who served her a slice of wondrously aromatic lemon cake.

“Sitting there next to a madman with a gun. Hundreds of people watching, and thousands and thousands on television. He saved the life of a child. A madman-he had this child throwing moving-picture film into the river, as if the river is not dirty enough.”

“Sasha had a child throw moving-picture film into the Moscow River?”

The cake was delicious. The coffee was hot.

“No, the madman had the child throw the film in the river.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why? Why? Because he was a madman. He’s dead now. Sasha is a hero. The madman had already killed someone in a dacha outside of the city. You like the cake? I have a new baker. The old one left his family and ran away to Lithuania or someplace with one of my clerks. Why would anyone run away to Lithuania? But it was a blessing. The new baker is better, a Greek, and the new clerk is his daughter.”

“Sasha,” Anna said, considering the wisdom of having yet another slice of cake after she finished the one before her.

“And your Elena,” said Lydia, who had consumed a croissant and now sliced herself a generous portion of cake. “She was on television, too. Looking down from the embankment. You wouldn’t see her if you weren’t looking, but she was there.”

Lydia Tkach consumed enormous quantities of food without apparent joy in the process. She remained pole-thin. Anything Anna ate turned to instant fat, which was a danger to her. Normally she dieted according to the order of her doctor, but at the moment she told herself that she needed to fortify herself against the intruder. Anna had gotten Lydia into an apartment on the other side of the one-story building.

“He could have been killed,” Lydia said. “I have one son and he could have been killed. More cake?”

“A very thin slice, and then I want you to take the cake and croissants away,” said Anna.

“We’ll leave the rest for Elena,” said Lydia, putting an even larger slice of cake than the first on Anna’s plate.

Infinite are the ways this woman can be my death, thought Anna, unable to resist the call of lemon and the white sugar frosting. The new baker was very good indeed.

“So? …” Anna began.

“It is enough,” shouted Lydia, whose outburst was certainly being listened to by the pensioner and his wife who lived on the other side of the thin wall of Anna Timofeyeva’s apartment. “I want him safe. I want him out. Sometimes I think he is suicidal. That’s what I think sometimes.”

It was something which Anna also thought but not nearly as often as his mother. When she had been a procurator, Sasha had been a brooding young man, a protégé of Porfiry Petrovich. He had a promising career ahead of him, but Sasha could be difficult and on more than one occasion he had been drawn from his course not by bribery but by women who found the boyish brooding young man irresistible.

“I want you to talk to Porfiry Petrovich,” Lydia said, her eyes meeting Anna’s.

“To …”

“To insist that he get my son off the streets. Sasha is a hero now. Heroes deserve to be protected whether they wish to be or not. You agree?”

“Well, I think …”

“You can’t talk to Sasha. I’ve thought of that. Sasha is on his way to Kiev, on an airplane. I don’t trust airplanes. I’ve never been on one. I think they crash all the time and no one tells us. They keep it secret. Sasha has been strange lately. Happy … he even took me to a movie about men who for no apparent reason take off their clothes. And then he is back to feeling sorry for himself. I want my grandchildren back. I made him take airplane money to bring them back. I told him the only way to get Maya to come back with him would be to get off the streets, have normal hours and a normal job where he wouldn’t get into trouble.”

Anna sipped her coffee, which she should not be drinking. It was excellent coffee. She would resist a second cup.

“I think you are right,” said Anna.