Daria Desombre - The Sin Collector

Andrey hugged her then, the way he had dreamed of doing all day long, and he felt her hot, damp cheek pressed against his neck. He held her head to his shoulder, and moved his lips over the silky hair covering the back of her neck. He whispered, as soothingly as he could, “Hush, now. Shhhhh. Hush. Everything will be okay. Let’s go to my place. We’ll feed Marilyn. We’ll eat, too. We’ll go to bed and get a good rest, okay?”

And Masha only squeezed him harder and sobbed for a while before her breathing gradually returned to normal. Then he turned her to face him, and when Andrey looked into her sad, moist eyes, he thought he had never seen them look so piercingly green.

“Anything you want to bring with you?”

“That would be the third bag I’ve packed this weekend,” she said. “No. I don’t want anything. Just let me grab my purse.”

Without letting go of his hand, Masha rummaged in the coat rack for her purse, turned off the light, and pulled the door shut behind them. This time she didn’t bother to lock it.

Only then did either one of them remember Innokenty. They looked around, worried, but he was nowhere to be seen.

“Come on,” said Masha, pulling Andrey by the hand. “Let’s go. Marilyn Monroe must be starving.”

Moving with an easy, athletic stride, the man vaulted over the fence around the park and walked quickly toward the playground. The car was there, in place, black in the early-autumn twilight. He opened the door, sank down onto the worn seat, and sighed. He cranked the window down and lit a cigarette, then took a long, appreciative drag. The spicy smell of the leaves outside mixed with the cigarette smoke in his lungs. Now the trees are covered with colorful leaves, he thought, but soon all that will remain of these trees is their black branches, like a cryptic script written on the pale sky. In the mornings, those benches will be covered with frost. And then the first snow will fall, and finally it will seem that everything has become lighter. But that is an illusion, a trick of the eye. Winter will come. Catharsis. Death, with no hope of clemency. This year, too, would die. And he would die with it. No reason for regret.

The man carefully put out his cigarette in the ashtray, closed the window, and drove away. For some time, the road was completely empty. But suddenly, with a wailing of sirens, a fire truck flew into view from around a corner, and another one after it.

That was quick! The man laughed disdainfully. Everyone’s afraid of fire. They even say if you’re being attacked, you should cry, ‘Fire!’ instead of shouting for help. Who would ever respond to a call for help?

The man swallowed back a familiar bitterness in his mouth. He knew that bitterness would not pass, no matter how often he tried to gulp it down or how much alcohol he used to wash it away. He had driven as far as Kutuzovsky Avenue when the rotund silhouette of a traffic cop, waving his striped baton, emerged from the darkness on the side of the road to pull him over. The man frowned. He knew he had not broken any rules, simply because he never broke any. But he did not wish to be delayed here. Instead of his driver’s license, he handed the traffic cop his badge, and he watched as the officer’s gelatinous face quickly transformed into something like the formal grimace of a man in a military parade. “Have a good day, sir!”

The man could smell something burning. The wind must be blowing from that direction. His hands smelled like it, too. And a little bit like gasoline. He would have to remember to wash them with antiseptic. That would never fool the crime lab, but by the morning, at least, the smell would have to be gone, so that more inquisitive noses at work wouldn’t sniff anything out. He had work yet to do. Masha Karavay would suspect there was one more left when she heard the news tomorrow. But she would be wrong. There would be two more. And he smiled again, the honest smile of a hard worker who had just a short way left to go before a well-deserved rest.

But back where he had come from, farther and higher up Poklonnaya Hill, deep in Victory Park, the enormous bonfire raged, leaping with joyful, bright flashes of flame against the blue-black night.

Masha woke up because she was cold. They hadn’t bothered to light the stove last night and settled instead for the space heater, which had been a mistake. She huddled against Andrey as best she could, warming one icy foot against his side, then a frozen hand under his arm. They had slept all night, interlaced like a strange kind of jigsaw puzzle. But at about two in the morning, Andrey had gotten up to turn off the heater, not wanting to risk a fire, and by morning, the small bubble of warmth generated by their combined bodies had drifted away. Masha finally gave up that blissful state of forgetfulness she had forged out of Andrey’s sleepy breath on her cheek. It was time to get up and do some thinking.

Carefully, so she wouldn’t wake him, Masha stretched out her legs and swung her feet onto the cold floor, then jerked them back again, shivering. But the thought of turning on the heater in the kitchen and of the old fleece Andrey had lent her last night gave her courage. Masha got out of bed, grabbed a small pile of clothing, and hustled into the kitchen, where Marilyn Monroe was already sitting at the ready. The mutt watched absentmindedly as his master’s girlfriend slipped into a T-shirt and jeans in record time, then added a sweater, his master’s fleece coat, and then, with a satisfied hum, his master’s wool socks, which had been drying near the stove since last ski season.

Then Marilyn’s new mistress disappeared again into the bedroom and returned with the heater. She put on the tea kettle… and she opened the refrigerator ! Marilyn Monroe couldn’t wait any longer. He stood up and went to press his flank against his mistress’s legs, just in case she might have forgotten the poor hungry dog in the house. And the mistress, who was a kind soul, not yet spoiled by a strict master, offered Marilyn a pair of sausage links right away . She watched thoughtfully as Marilyn gulped them down as noisily as ever, and then gave him another one. Marilyn tried to handle that one with a little more sophistication, out of respect for the lady, and then he went to wait meekly at the front door. And the mistress understood him. She unhooked the latch and let him out to run around.

As Masha watched the dog forge a new path through the frosty yard, she wasn’t thinking about anything. She simply let her eyes absorb the fog outside the window, the dark mass of the hedges that separated their little cottage from the next one, and the absolute silence. All she could hear was Marilyn’s muffled tread over the freshly fallen, damp leaves, and the sound of his curious canine snout snuffling through the grass, crunchy with frost.

The boiling kettle brought her out of her reverie, tossing its poorly fitted lid. The lid landed with a crash on the wooden floor and rolled around the kitchen. A creaking sound from the bedroom told Masha she had woken Andrey after all. She frowned guiltily. He walked past her, looking adorable in just his jeans, his eyes still half-closed, and Masha couldn’t help reaching out for him, pressing his sleep-warmed body against hers for a second. But Andrey, trying to stifle a yawn, muttered something about having to take a shower before he let anyone get near him. Soon the makeshift outdoor shower was gurgling aggressively on the porch, and she could hear him whooping and hollering like a child.

Laughing, Masha set the table, putting out almost everything they had brought from the twenty-four-hour supermarket the night before: yogurt, cheese, ham.