Stuart Kaminsky - A Fine Red Rain

"Mathilde," Karpo said, without looking at Ivanov. The policeman's eyes continued to scan the room. The noise level had dropped perceptibly since his entrance. A few men tried to engage him in a staring duel. Karpo paid no attention.

"Mathilde, as you can see," said Ivanov, looking around the room, "is not here today." He cleaned his palms once again against his trousers.

For the first time, Karpo looked into the eyes of the potbellied proprietor, and Ivanov wilted instantly.

"I'm just a small businessman," Ivanov bleated like a sheep. "I… in the back. A private party. What can I tell you? I forgot for a moment. It's been busy here like Bastille Day. Bastille Day is our busiest…"

Karpo moved past the tables of people who had been having a good time before his arrival and were now seriously thinking of all the work they had to do elsewhere. Ivanov followed him, smile fixed, head twitching.

"A small, private party," Ivanov said. "What's the harm?"

Karpo said nothing as he moved behind the bar and past a new waiter, who seemed about to step in front of the advancing ghost and then changed his mind.

"At least let's knock," said Ivanov, moving to Karpo's side. "It's only polite, reasonable, common courtesy to"

Karpo reached down and opened the door with his left hand. The hand responded well, with little pain, and Emil Karpo was pleased.

The room he stepped into was remarkably large, almost as large as the outer room through which he had just come, but this inner room had only two tables and a dozen chairs. The tables were no more substantial than the ones in front, but they were larger. Two large blue sofas, badly contrasting with the brown walls, rested in the comer. The room reeked of tobacco and alcohol. There were only four people in the room when Ivanov and Karpo entered. They were seated at one end of the table farthest from the door. Two men and two women. The two men and one of the women looked up, surprised. The other woman glanced at Karpo and Ivanov and shook her head wearily.

"I tried," Ivanov said to the large man who stood up to face Karpo.

The big man had a pink face and a recent haircut. He was wearing an expensive jacket with medals. As he lumbered toward Karpo, the policeman could read the red enamel print on the largest medal: "Participant in the Achievements of the Economy of the Soviet Union."

"This is a private party," the big man said, clenching his fists. "I am drunk and this is a very private party."

"Inspector Karpo is a policeman, with the Procurator's Office," Ivanov said, his head twitching.

The big man did not seem impressed. His face was pink. He was drunk.

"I am an achiever," the big man with the pink face and fresh haircut said, thumping his chest with his already clenched fist. "My factory meets quotas and I'm on vacation."

Karpo ignored the man and took another step forward, which brought him almost face-to-face with the florid man, but the policeman was looking at one of the two seated women, a woman in her thirties, tall, with billowy brown hair, handsome, firm, but not quite pretty.

She shook her head, smiled without humor, and stood up.

"I'm talking to you," said the man with the pink face. "Policeman, I'm talking to you."

The woman grabbed her small bag and stepped around the table toward the policeman.

"There's no need" Ivanov pleaded, grabbing the big man's arm.

The big man flung the owner away without looking at him. Ivanov stumbled to keep his balance and miss a nearby chair. He was either very graceful or very lucky, because he hit nothing and came to a stop not far from the wall, where he stood panting.

The woman walked past the two men to the door.

"I'm…" the big man said, grabbing Karpo's left arm.

"Boris!" cried the man who had not stood up, but Boris had gone too far to back down.

Pain ran through Karpo's arm and hand. The pain, like all pain, was good because it tested, confirmed, or denied.

By chanceluck, good or badthe drunken man had grabbed Karpo at the most vulnerable point of his healing arm.

"… talking to you. Answer me, damn you. What are you doing here, breaking into a private" The man stopped speaking when he realized that the gaunt, possibly insane, policeman had gripped his right arm just above the elbow. It was as if the policeman were about to embrace this man who was confronting him.

"There's no need…" Ivanov whimpered from the wall, afraid to step in again.

The other man at the table rose now. He was as cleanshaven as his friend, but was dark, not pink of face. He looked much more sober than did the man gripping Karpo's arm. The big man squeezed and Karpo tightened his own grip.

"Get out," said the big man to Emil Karpo.

Karpo said nothing.

The other man approached from the table and said, "Boris, mis is ridiculous."

The woman who was still seated sat back to watch.

Karpo could see a half-finished bottle of Tvishi, a sulguni cheese that was definitely no longer hot, a bowl of red cabbage, and a large platter of what looked like chicken giblets on the table.

"Gentlemen!" cried Ivanov.

"Boris," whispered the other man.

The woman at the table reached over for a giblet, popped it into her mourn, and smiled at Karpo, who did not react. He felt nothing but the breath of the pink-faced man who panted like a hot terrier.

"Never," said Boris through clenched teeth. "Never."

Never came quickly. Boris suddenly let go of Karpo and backed away with a scream of pain that sounded something like "Ouosuch." He grabbed his arm where Karpo had squeezed it, grimaced, and stepped backward. The second man moved to help him. The seated woman continued to eat giblets, and Ivanov stayed out of the way. Karpo couldn't see Mathilde behind him at the door, but he was sure she had not left. He turned, ignoring the electric ache down the left side of his body and his left arm, and took a step toward her. Suddenly, behind bun, he heard the pink-faced man plunging forward. Karpo turned to face him directly, to look into his eyes. What the charging man saw in Karpo's face was enough to put fear into him and send his alcohol-filled stomach tumbling. The big man stopped, stood panting, threw up his hands, which made him wince from pain, and turned back to his reduced party.

Mathilde led the way through the outer restaurant in which those patrons who had stayed after Karpo's entrance had been facing the private door and wondering. Mathilde and Karpo wound their way through the tables and out the door into the street.

"It's not Thursday," Mathilde said on the street, facing him.

"No," Karpo agreed.

For slightly over seven years, every other week on Thursday afternoon, Emil Karpo had come to Mathilde Verson, the prostitute. They seldom spoke. Even after all these years it was difficult for Emil Karpo to acknowledge what he did with her. It was not that the act of sex confirmed him as an animal, that much he knew and accepted. The animalism was a distraction, one his body would not let him deny. It got in the way of his duty, but it demanded that he respond, demanded that he acknowledge the un-asked-for ache, and threatened to keep him from his work. He acknowledged and controlled this need with Mathilde Verson. What bothered Emil Karpo was that his sexual encounters with Mathilde were illegal, counter to the needs of the state. The crime was not a particularly serious one, but the fact that it was a crime was a source of discomfort for Karpo. It also disturbed Karpo that he felt something beyond sexual need when he was with Mathilde.

Rostnikov, who knew about Mathilde, considered Karpo's reluctant acceptance of illegality one of the few antidotes for the hubris of the zealot.

"That was your bad arm he was playing with back there," Mathilde said, walking by his side. "Are you all right?"