Natalia Smirnova - Moscow Noir

“Why are you limping?”

“I’m limping? What do you mean I’m limping? What do you mean? I know why I’m limping, I know. But I won’t tell you. Never!” Then she mutters under her breath, “Maybe I’m Madame de La Vallière! Listen, Ryaba, I’m limping because I’m Madame de La Vallière!”

If Ryabets had known how to put his emotions into words, it would have come out something like this: Did I really lust after this woman once? Her? Me? Incredible! Ryabets crinkles his nose.

“… How I’ve lived this long I don’t remember, Ryaba. I took a leap from the second floor! Broke both my little legs. I could’ve suffocated. All the others did: my Alik, and Lidukha, and those other two, I don’t remember who they were. And that fat one who carried around the pictures of women.”

“Boltyansky?”

“That’s it, Ryaba, exactly! He suffocated.” And suddenly she winks. “Should I tell you?”

“What?”

“This! Remember how you used to moon over me, Ryaba? Remember? Hee hee hee! You did, I know you did! But I wouldn’t give it up for you! I would for anyone else, but not you.” She falls silent and starts rocking from side to side.

“Is it true there was a prison here?”

“Definitely. Yes!” And now he can’t tell whether it’s the drink talking or she’s serious. “I won’t let you have any now either, so don’t get any ideas! Don’t you look at how old I am… You’re no stud yourself. All skin and bones. They used to call you Skull, remember?” She fell silent for several moments, then suddenly: “Andryukha died here. Kirei died and Sabel died. We were four in this pipe—I mean the four of us lived together… I’m all alone now… Andryukha left a week ago, said he’d grab me some booze… He didn’t… It’s scary here, Ryaba. Where can I take Polkan? Huh? They won’t let him into the train station. Will you take him?”

“That’s all I need.”

“Yeah, right. You like a little port now and then too, I see! Like when we were kids. Don’t you make enough for a little brandy, Ryaba? What’s your job these days?”

“Cook.”

Buratina whistles. “In a restaurant?”

“A cafeteria. I feed the black-assed negroes at the university. Fortunately, it’s only ten minutes from home.”

“What do you cook for them?”

“Oh, everything: goulash, groats, cabbage soup.”

“Did you ever try foie gras?”

“That’s only a name: it’s goose liver. What’s there to try? Put it in rassolnik, potroshki—just the ticket. And the cucumbers have to be thickly sliced, preferably marinated.” Ryabets pauses to pour for Buratina. “Here’s to our meeting!” He takes a swig.

“Ryaba, you know why I wouldn’t let you have any? You look all cold, but on the inside—phooey! One of those. Us girls didn’t like you; you had this look, like you wanted to maul us. Maul us with your eyes and go down there with your nose. Hee hee hee! Our dear departed Bolt was like that too, but I felt sorry for him. Who was going to give that fatso any? He carried those dirty pictures around, but you mooned, you just egged me on. Oh, poor Bolt! And poor Mesropych, even if he was a stinker.”

“Why be sorry? They’re gone.”

“Who would have thought? Not one gray hair,” Buratina mutters.

“How’d you see me?” They’re sitting in total darkness now and can’t even make out each other’s faces anymore. Buratina’s smoking, a cheap bitter smell.

Ryabets stands up to pee. He’s not shy.

“Don’t piss on the grave!” Buratina cries.

Ryabets says nothing.

“Listen, Ryaba, here’s what I’m thinking. Maybe I could come to your place? With Polkan…?” The dog growls huskily. “I’ll wash up. Do you live alone? Are your mother and father dead?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t even remember the last time I slept anywhere clean. What’s there for me here? They killed Andryukha! And Kirei… and Sabel… What about you, Ryaba, not married?”

“No.”

“Why not? Waiting for a princess? Or for me? Hee hee hee! Maybe I’ll give you some today, but Ryabets…” Buratina babbles.

Sometimes he can’t tell whether she’s really drunk or just pretending.

“You didn’t answer me, Ryaba. Why haven’t you gotten married?”

“I’ve been waiting for my dick to grow up.”

“Hee hee hee! You? I don’t believe that! Why did you jerk off outside my window? I remember…”

“My first little darling is lying over there.” She nods toward the fence and a night-black honeysuckle. “Do you think his little bones are still there?”

Ryabets imagines the child’s half-decayed bones. “Of course not, after all those years. Maybe a skull… or the tibias, they’re thick.”

“You’re a chef, you should know. And the second one next to him. I buried them at night, the snow was coming down; I remember, it was November.”

“You got the first from Mesropych?”

Buratina nodded and hiccupped.

“Whose was the second?”

“I don’t know. I was sleeping with everyone. I’d go to sleep under one and wake up and another’s going at it. Let the dogs have their way! And my baby girl. She’s lying right over there. She’d be nine… Pour me a little, why don’t you.”

Ryabets splashes some in the cup and Buratina drinks greedily.

“My baby girl was Andryukha’s. We lived over there, where you see the gazebo now. We had a concrete pipe, like this.” Buratina tries to show him how big with her hands. “We lived there a good five years. Or more. With Andryukha and Sabel, and Kirei came later.”

“You mean you gave birth there?”

“Where else, I’d like to know! Andryukha sterilized the knife in the fire and cut the cord. I wanted to leave my little girl, my baby daughter, with them , the people with the fanciest house. I thought at least then she’d have a life. Only she died a week later. Right when I was about to give her up. Andryukha would bring her food, he knew the cashier at the store on Zhivopisnaya, a good woman, and she gave it to him for free. Milk, Ryaba, and cereal. You can imagine what my milk was like. My little girl…”

Buratina strokes the ground and weeps silently, only her sniffling gives her away.

The noises on the other side of the fence have died down completely. Only occasionally does a car whoosh by, unseen.

“It was nice when we lived in the pipe, Ryaba. Even in the winter, it was a palace! We’d fill up the opening on one end and hang a towel over the other. A foursome makes it cozy—terrific! Tchaikovsky Hall! There weren’t any windows, but what good would they do? And the other cops left us alone. They’d come, take a look, and leave. There was this one, Lieutenant Bessonov, he was old and had a red nose, a lush. He’d come have a smoke at our fire. He used to say that when he retired he’d move in with us. Hee hee hee! He’d just grab his fishing rod from home, he didn’t need anything else. That’s what he used to say. He was joking, that cop. Later he disappeared. And the cops turned mean! They set all my stuff on fire twice, Ryaba, they burned it! Oh, what good stuff… mattresses! We moved over under the bridge, then to the church—you know the one, past the bridge? But now, Ryaba, that’s it, it’s time to stop!”

Buratina stirs, and Ryabets listens.

“Pour me some more. I’m going to drink my fill today, as if it were the last time, Ryaba! My life’s been bitter. And now I have to go to Kazan. They must have their own ways there, those station whores must be on top there!”

“Did you think I didn’t know? Hee hee hee! It was you who burned down the dacha, Ryaba. You! You! Damn it all.”

“Cut the crap.”

“You always wanted me. I remember the way you used to look at me, the way you hung around outside my window, peeping! Hee hee hee!” Buratina’s voice is so raspy he can hardly make it out. “You still had your beret, the brown one. Ryaba in his beret!”