Stuart Kaminsky - Death Of A Russian Priest

“Shchyee, ” said Pulcharia, putting her fingers in her father’s bowl of borscht.

Sasha had no worry that his almost-two-year-old daughter would burn her finger in the soup. He had been drinking his mother’s soup for almost thirty years and knew that she believed in tepid soup and room-temperature meat and chicken. What troubled Sasha at the moment was the strange thing in his borscht that looked like an animal claw.

“What is this?” he asked, picking up the object, which was definitely a claw.

“Don’t change the subject,” Lydia shouted, sitting down. “You’ll frighten the baby.”

“Why should changing the subject frighten … what is this?”

Lydia glanced at his spoon. “Meat,” she said. “Gives flavor to the soup.”

“That looks like the claw of a-”

“Kroolyek,” said Maya.

Her voice, with its touch of the Ukraine, usually pleased and soothed Sasha, but there was a rage in him. He had awakened with it and had come through the door this evening determined to hide it. “The foot of a rabbit, yes,” he said.

Pulcharia reached for his spoon. Sasha moved it out of her reach.

“Times are hard,” said Lydia loudly as she poured herself a bowl of soup from the pot she had placed on the table. “Lines are long.”

“You may have the foot of the rabbit,” Sasha said, leaning over to drop it in his mother’s bowl. “The Americans think it is good luck.”

Maya looked at her husband with mild disapproval, but he ignored her.

“So?” Lydia said, looking down at the dark red liquid in which the foot of the rabbit had disappeared.

“You are not eating,” Sasha said to his wife.

“I am not hungry,” Maya said softly.

“The baby inside of you is hungry,” he said.

“Answer my question,” Lydia insisted. She reached over the table to hand Pulcharia a piece of bread. “Without rabbit tricks.”

“‘So?’ is not a question I can answer,” Sasha said, brushing the wild patch of hair from his eyes. He knew he would not drink this borscht, could not drink this borscht. He had a full hour before he had to meet Elena Timofeyeva, but he knew he would soon say he had to leave. Though they were hard-pressed for money, Sasha knew he would buy himself something on the way, possibly even a pahshtyehtah, a meat pie with little or no meat, if he could find someplace to buy one. A woman in a white apron had set up a table inside the Journalists Union Building two days before. She might be there again.

He had bought two pies and asked the woman what kind of meat she had used. The pained smile she had given him made him regret his question. Still, it had not tasted at all bad.

“Eat and answer,” Lydia went on.

Sasha took a piece of bread and pretended to dip it in the soup. Pulcharia dipped her bread in the soup and dripped over her father’s pants and her own dress as she brought it to her mouth.

“She’s gotten you dirty,” Maya said, handing her husband a cloth napkin.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I have to leave.”

He put Pulcharia on the chair next to him and got up.

“So?” Lydia asked again. “How is she? The baby Rostnikov makes you work with while he runs to his son’s play?”

Sasha looked down at his best trousers. The stain was evident. He tried to blot it but had little success. “She is older than I am, and Porfiry Petrovich is on a very important case. He deserves a few hours to see his son’s … why am I arguing about this with you?”

“Good. Don’t argue. Tell us all about her, about this Timofeyeva.”

“Her name is Elena,” he said. “I told you yesterday, and the day before and-”

“So?”

“So, she is fine,” said Tkach. “She doesn’t know anything. She talks too much. She gets in the way. She asks too many questions. She may well get me killed, but she is fine. Does that answer all your questions about her?”

“Is she pretty?” asked Lydia. Maya found the question interesting enough to raise her eyes toward her husband.

“She is fat,” said Tkach.

“She can be pretty and fat,” said Lydia.

“I am fat,” said Maya.

“You are temporarily overweight from a natural condition which will soon end,” said Sasha, moving across the room toward the door. “You are not pretty. You are beautiful.”

Pulcharia was trying to find something in the borscht with her fingers.

“Ida Ivanova Portov, remember her? Married to your father’s partner, Boris. She was fat, but she was pretty. I remember the way your father looked at-”

“Ben,” Sasha interrupted, putting on his coat. “Father’s partner’s name was Ben not Boris.”

“You are changing the subject,” Maya said. “Your mother asked if Anna Timofeyeva’s niece was pretty.”

“Is Comrade Anna pretty?” he asked.

“Can you answer a question with an answer instead of a question?” asked Maya in a louder voice.

“You are upsetting your wife,” Lydia said.

Pulcharia began to cry.

“She is beautiful,” said Sasha. “She is ravishing. She is a painting by … Rubens. I want to make passionate love to her. We are supposed to go to the Nikolai Café on Gorky Street looking for a missing Arab girl tonight, but the hell with it. We’ll go make love in the snow.”

“What are you talking about?” Lydia cried. “It’s not even snowing.”

“You’ve made the baby cry,” said Maya. Pulcharia climbed onto her mother’s stomach and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

Sasha stood at the door, facing three generations of women who determined the course of his life, a life that was moving much faster than he wanted it to move. He wished that Maya would lose the child she was carrying. No, no. He wished no such thing. Instead he suddenly ached for a son.

“Your wife needs calm,” Lydia shouted.

“All right,” he said, opening the door. “I’ll give her a night of calm. I won’t come home tonight. I’ll sleep at my desk.”

“Sasha,” Maya said, shaking her head as she patted Pulcharia’s head and comforted her. “Don’t be …”

But he was in the hall and slamming the door before she could say more.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked Lydia.

“He will be thirty in two days and he doesn’t want to grow up,” said Maya, running her finger along her daughter’s nose.

“But he can speak French,” said Lydia. “And he did not finish his borscht.”

There was nothing to say to either comment by her mother-in-law, so Maya simply shrugged in resignation. She was reasonably sure her husband would be back, would climb into bed next to her, would hold her, would apologize even if he was sure she did not hear him. And if once he did spend the night at his desk, it would not be such a bad thing for him, though it would mean that Maya would have to face Lydia alone in the morning.

“I’m very tired,” said Maya. “I’ll help with the dishes, put Pulcharia to bed, and then go to bed myself.”

“I’ll do the dishes,” said Lydia, reaching for the borscht no one had eaten. “You put my precious child of the summer into bed. I have to go out tonight, anyway.”

Maya stopped herself from asking where her mother-in-law might be going. An evening with no talk would be a luxury she dared not hope for. Lydia had, in fact, been very helpful since Maya had been ordered to stay at home in bed, but the price that had to be paid for such aid was almost more than Maya could bear.

Nonetheless she did wonder where Lydia had suddenly decided to go.

Going to a play or a movie was a problem for Porfiry Petrovich, which was why he seldom went to either, though he enjoyed them both. During a movie he could at least stand, move about a bit, coax his leg back to life. It was difficult to stand during a play, or even to shift about to find a less painful position. The audience would be disturbed and his movements, even if he were in the rear of the theater, would distract the actors.