Stuart Kaminsky: Death Of A Russian Priest

“What is your name?” asked Rostnikov.

“Misha Tiomkin.”

Misha Tiomkin’s nose was red. His fur uniform hat was pulled down over his ears and he looked like a boy dressed up like a soldier.

“It is an old woman,” said Tiomkin.

“Go in and shoot her, why don’t you?” said the drunken little man with bad teeth. “Solve all your problems that way. People get hungry, shoot them. Bullets are cheaper than food.”

Rostnikov and Officer Tiomkin moved away from the crowd, closer to the store’s open door.

“It’s not clear what happened,” said Tiomkin. “People were pushing and shoving, complaining that there was so little in the store, that it was too expensive, ten times more than last week, even bread is-”

Tiomkin stopped himself.

“The situation got tense,” he continued. “Someone broke a glass case, took some cheese. Others started grabbing. The manager had a gun. He fired in the air. People were screaming. And then someone took the gun from the manager and … I don’t know. She’s in there with a clerk, a young girl.”

“Tell me, Misha Tiomkin,” Rostnikov said, looking up at the gray sky and then at the angry crowd, “is it your impression that winters are getting milder in Moscow?”

Tiomkin pondered the question. “I don’t know.”

“I think they are,” said Rostnikov. “Mild winters are like full moons. People grow mad. The blood is affected like the tides, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Tiomkin.

Rostnikov patted the young policeman on the shoulder, motioned for him to move back to control the crowd, and moved to the door of State Store 31.

“He’s going to shoot her, look,” called a woman.

“Who?”

“The one in the fake leather jacket, the one there by the door. Use your eyes, the one that looks like a barrel.”

Rostnikov stepped into the shop, closed the door behind him, and looked around. Broken glass and the beads of the store’s broken abacus lay before him on the floor.

There was nothing that resembled food in the store except a spongy splat of white on the floor. The splat, which may have recently been cheese, bore the footprint of a large shoe.

Rostnikov moved around the splat, behind the counter, and up to the door behind which someone was sobbing.

He knocked twice.

“Who?” came a woman’s voice.

The voice sounded dreamy, as if the woman had just awakened from a deep dream.

“My name is Porfiry Petrovich,” he said. “I would like to talk to you.”

“Are you a policeman?”

“Would anyone but a policeman want to come in and talk to a woman with a gun?”

“Do you have a gun?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “I’m not fond of guns.”

“Me neither,” said the woman. “Why do you want to come in?”

“Perhaps I might be able to help.”

“You are alone? There is no one out there with you?”

“No one.”

“Come in and close the door behind you. I want to see your hands.”

Rostnikov pushed the door open.

The room held a small metal table, some empty shelves against the walls, several chairs, and a stool on which the older woman sat. The walls were gray white. The room was not large, but he was at least ten feet from the two women.

“What is wrong with your leg?” asked Galina as Rostnikov came forward slowly.

“Old injury, the war, Nazi tank,” he said. “May I sit?”

Galina shrugged. “I don’t own the store. Sit if you want to sit.”

Rostnikov moved carefully to the nearest chair on his right, almost a dozen feet from the two women. He sat awkwardly, his left leg extended, his right bent. The young woman on the floor looked at him with moist frightened eyes.

“You were telling the truth,” said Galina.

“The truth?”

“Your leg,” she said, pointing at his leg with the pistol in her hand. “I thought you might be pretending so you could jump at me when I didn’t expect it. But … you are too young to-”

“I was not yet fifteen when this happened,” he said.

Galina nodded knowingly.

“Your name is …?” asked Rostnikov.

“Galina Panishkoya,” said the woman.

“And you are …?” he asked, looking at the frightened girl on the floor.

“Ludmilla, Ludmilla … I can’t remember my last name,” she said between tears.

“That’s not possible,” said Galina.

“It happens to some people when they are very frightened,” said Rostnikov. “It happened to me once.”

“To forget your own name,” said Galina, shaking her head.

“Perhaps if Ludmilla got up and went outside, she would be less frightened,” Rostnikov suggested.

“But then,” Galina said, raising the barrel of the pistol to the girl’s head, “your police would come in here and shoot me.”

“No. You would still have me,” he said.

“You? What would I do with you?”

“Talk,” he said.

“Talk, there is nothing to talk about,” said Galina. “This stool is too low. When I was a girl in Georgia, I milked goats on a stool like this. Sat for hours. Now, backaches.”

“You remember a-”

A loud noise rose from beyond the door, on the street, laughter or anger-it was hard to tell which. Ludmilla looked at the dead man near the door and began to shake.

“You remember a great deal about when you were a child?” Rostnikov asked.

“One forgets the details,” said Galina. “Where was the chair? The bed? What color were the walls? These are important things. If we cannot remember our lives, what do we have?”

Rostnikov nodded. “Ludmilla is growing more frightened,” he said.

Galina looked down at the young woman in front of her as if for the first time. “I have two granddaughters,” she said. “Little. Eleven and seven. My daughter is dead. Her husband left them with me. He”-she nodded toward the sprawled dead man-“looked like him.”

“Is that why you shot him?”

“I don’t know if I shot him,” she said, looking directly at him. “But …”

“I believe you,” he said, and he did believe her.

“My savings are gone. My job, I used to work at the Panyushkin dress factory, gone. My legs, gone. And my memory is going. I can’t even remember if I shot a man a few hours ago.”

Rostnikov did not correct her. The manager of State Store 31 had been shot no more than ten minutes ago. “I suggest you put the gun down and I take you and Ludmilla out.”

“No,” Galina said, looking toward the door. “I’ll go to jail. I’m too old. I’m a good Christian. I’ll die knowing my girls are starving. It’s better I die here.”

Rostnikov could now barely hear her over the sobs of the girl on the floor. He put a finger to his lips to quiet her and she made an effort, which resulted in more subdued sobs.

“He came out,” Galina said, trying to remember what had taken place less than an hour earlier. “He shouted. He had a gun. He had no compassion. This one …” She touched the top of Ludmilla’s head with the barrel of the gun, and the girl closed her eyes. “She had no compassion. Now she cries, but we cried, my babies cry with hunger.”

“It’s my work,” Ludmilla said, addressing the policeman. “I feel, but-”

“Go,” said Galina, standing. “Go.”

Ludmilla looked up at her and then at Rostnikov. “You’ll shoot me.”

“Go,” Galina repeated, and Rostnikov nodded his head yes.

Ludmilla stood, knees week, sagging arms and shoulders shaking. “You won’t shoot me?” she said, looking down at the corpse near the door.

“No.”

The girl took two steps to the door and stopped. “I can’t walk.”

“Ludmilla,” Rostnikov said gently. “It is time to go.”

“I’ve made in my pants. There are people out there. Customers. They’ll see me. Laugh at me …”