Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

“You didn’t go to the police?” asked Yevgeny calmly.

“No,” said Leonid, his shoulders slouched forward. “What would be the point? They’d never find what was stolen. They wouldn’t even look. And I don’t think we want to go near the police. Not now.”

“Anything broken?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good,” said Yevgeny. “We do it tonight.”

“Tonight?” asked Leonid. “That wasn’t our plan. I’m in no condition to …”

Yevgeny was aware that his frightened roommate knew full well from the note that had been passed under Georgi’s door that Yevgeny had decided to move tonight.

“Our plan has changed. I have reasons. The police came to the hotel and questioned me about Igor. They plan to question you. The policeman who questioned me suspected something. I want to do it and get out of Moscow before they find you. If they ask you questions, they might trick you. You understand?”

“I understand,” said Leonid. “Tonight.”

“I’ve already told Georgi,” Yevgeny said. “I left him a note.”

“Tonight,” Leonid said, lying back on his bed. The move caused a punch of pain in his stomach where Georgi had hit him. Well, at least he would not have to go to work that night.

Minutes later Leonid was asleep and gently snoring.

Yevgeny looked at his friend and considered killing him right then. It would be easy. A pillow over his face. His arms pinned down. But Leonid would be useful in the night’s work, and it would have been difficult to get rid of the body anyway.

Yevgeny went back to his musing after checking his watch. Eight more hours and with a little luck he would be a very wealthy man.

Elena and Iosef quickly finished their calls to the stations and began to do the paperwork that had piled up on both their desks. Forms, reports, tedium. Sasha had volunteered to go out and take all the photographs. Iosef thought Sasha had done so to leave them alone, out of either goodwill or a desire to get away from their courtship ritual. Elena, who knew Sasha better, thought he had volunteered because of his personal problems. Thanklessly running from station house to station house to take pictures of surly, uncooperative police officers would both keep him busy and let him feel sorry for himself. In any case, he was gone.

“Have you made a decision?” Iosef called from his cubicle.

“The answer is no. I will not marry you,” she said.

“Is that a no for now because you want more time, or a forever no because you don’t love me and you never want to marry?”

“A no for now,” Elena said, trying to read the new form on her desk.

“Then dinner at your aunt’s is still firm?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Elena, wondering when she would shop and cook, what she could make that was quick and easy.

Elena forced attention back to the form that lay flat in front of her. She had gotten to the fourth question: “Is the suspected, perpetrator of the crime able to understand the difference between right and wrong?”

Elena had no idea. Even if she were to question the perpetrator when he was caught she would have no idea. She could ask the suspect questions about whether certain things were right or wrong, but she had learned that answers could seldom be trusted. It was how you felt about the suspect sitting before you that formed your opinion.

The question before her had no answer now and would have none later. She left it blank and went on. Of the twenty-seven questions, she left more than half blank. She was sure when she finished that the form had been created by someone who had never done any criminal investigation work. The form wanted answers where there were no answers. The form wanted certainty where there was usually uncertainty, even if there was some conviction on the part of the officer. She put the form aside and reached for another, going through the pile for something more familiar.

Perhaps there would be sahsseeskee, sausage, at the market. Perhaps it wouldn’t cost too much, though she knew it would. Although it was against her principles, she would move to the front of the line at the market, showing her police identification. The people would boo and hiss and tell her she should be ashamed of herself. She had never done anything like that before. The people behind her would be right. She knew that many police still moved ahead, though they could no longer do so with the indifference or resignation of the people behind them as they had in the Soviet Union.

Am I capable of knowing the difference between right and wrong in such a case? Elena thought. She decided quickly that she was capable, that what she considered doing, annoying as it might be, would cause little harm. It was wrong, but it was expedient and, she felt, necessary if she was to prepare dinner tonight, a task she would never leave to her aunt with a guest coming. But she also knew that she wouldn’t do it. She would wait her turn, read a book, pay more than she could afford for inferior food, and not complain.

It is not whether the person knows right from wrong but whether they believe what they have done, no matter how terrible it might be, was done because it was necessary and expedient. Right and wrong, Elena thought, were lost concepts in the new Russia. She believed in obsolete ideas.

Sasha was on his last roll of film in his last station. He took two group photographs and three individual ones. A few policemen protested mildly. Most simply looked bored.

From this final station, he called home. Maya answered. The baby was doing well.

Nonetheless, a quiver in her voice told him there was something else happening, that the baby was doing well but Maya was not.

“Lydia is here,” Maya said. “She has given me many suggestions on how to take care of the baby. Would you like to talk to her?”

Sasha definitely did not want to talk to his mother, but Maya had given him no choice.

“Yes,” he said, wearily playing with the most recently shot roll of film, a roll marked in black with the number of the police station.

Seconds later his mother screamed into the phone. Across the room an officer taking another call looked up at the sound.

“Mother,” Sasha said as calmly as he could. “The baby is fine now. You can go home.”

“My grandchild needs me. Your wife needs me. Where are you in this crisis?”

“Working, Mother, and there is no crisis.”

“I’ll judge for myself when there is a crisis,” she said, her voice only a meaningless decibel or two lower.

“The doctor told us the baby would be fine,” he said.

“No he didn’t,” Lydia said.

“Ask Maya,” he said.

“I did. She said the same thing. I don’t believe it.”

“You think Maya and I are lying.”

“I didn’t say that,” his mother countered. “You believe the doctor said that. I don’t believe the doctor said that. We respect each other’s beliefs.”

Sasha was momentarily confused.

“I should respect that you think my wife and I are liars?” he said.

“You believe what you want to believe. I believe what I want to believe. This is a democracy now. I can believe what I want.”

Sasha took a deep breath and, as calmly as he could, said, “Mother, you must leave now. Maya needs rest. She’ll get no rest with you there.”

“She’ll get more rest,” said Lydia. “I’ll take care of the children. She can go rest.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sasha, surprising himself. “I believe she’ll get more rest if you leave. You believe she will get more rest if you stay. This is a democracy. You believe what you want to believe. I believe what I want to believe. Go home now.”

“But Maya wants me to stay. Ask her,” Lydia shouted.