Martin Smith - Stalin’s Ghost

“That car?” The welder looked through the door.

He turned off the torch and removed his mask, freeing a ponytail of red hair. Arkady’s spirits sank. Rudi was tall and angular with a beefsteak face and a sickly mustache. He was the biker who had welcomed Arkady to Tver with a hearty “Fuck Moscow.”

Arkady said, “Sometimes people bring in bikes for repair and never return. Do you have a bike like that?”

Rudi picked up a shovel and held it like an ax. “Let me fix your car first.”

“I simply want a bike.” The last thing Arkady wanted was a brawl with someone bigger and uglier.

“It’s okay!” Rudi suddenly shouted past Arkady, who found an old man coming at him from behind with a pitchfork. The old man must have shrunk because his clothes looked strapped on. “It’s okay, Granddad! Thanks!”

“Is it Fritz?” the old man asked.

“No, it’s not Fritz.”

“Watch for tanks.”

“Got my eyes peeled, Granddad.”

“Well, they’ll be back.” The old man shook the pitchfork as he retreated.

“We’ll be ready this time.”

“For what?” Arkady asked.

“Germans,” Rudi said. “If the Germans come again, he’s prepared. Where were we?”

“I came for a bike,” Arkady reminded him.

Rudi glanced in the direction his grandfather had gone.

“Just stand still.” Rudi put the shovel aside and patted Arkady down and found his ID. “A senior investigator from Moscow. Are you investigating me?”

“No.”

“How did you even know my name?”

“You’re in the telephone book.”

“Oh, okay, no harm done.”

Arkady appreciated that. Rudi had the arms of a man who lifted heavy bikes. On his right shoulder was a round BMW tattoo and on his left shoulder a Maserati trident. No tattoos of girls or guns, and no OMON tiger heads.

The grandfather returned to the door in a jacket with war medals. He gave Arkady a salute and said, “Rudenko reporting in.”

When Arkady returned the salute Rudi said, “Don’t encourage him. He thinks he knows you.”

“From where?”

“I don’t know. Sometime in his past. Ignore him. You really want a bike?”

“Yes.”

“I have three.” Rudi pulled tarps off a flame red Kawasaki, a tiger-striped Yamaha, and a sidecar Ural the color of mud.

“Beauties. The Japanese bikes, I mean. Two hundred on a straightaway, screaming like a jet.”

“And the Ural?”

“You want to go fast in a Ural? Drive it off a cliff.”

It was a fact that the Ural was not a racehorse. It was the mule of motor travel, its sidecar used to haul trussed chickens or a farmer’s wife. People called it a Cossack for its lack of charm.

“It has a Tver license?”

“Yes, see for yourself,” Rudi said. “Two thousand euros for either customized Japanese bike, two hundred for the fucking Ural.”

“It needs a new front tire.”

“I have a retread somewhere.” Rudi waved vaguely toward the pile of tires outside. “You’re a real risk taker, I can see that.”

“Would you throw in a helmet with a face shield?”

“No problem.” Rudi rooted around a trash can and fished out a helmet with a crack down the center. “Slightly used.”

“Can you deliver it tonight? Say, ten?”

“To get rid of it? Anywhere. I suggest Pushkin’s statue on the embankment. At night the gays move in and the militia moves out.” Rudi was suddenly alarmed. “Watch out, Granddad. No, no. Don’t come in.”

Carrying a paper bag, the old man stumbled against a corner stack of shovels and rods that fell with a clamor on the floor.

“Granddad, why do you always do that?”

“You look familiar,” the old man told Arkady. “Were you here in ’forty-one?”

“I wasn’t born yet in ’forty-one.”

“Would you know if this is Fritz?” The old man opened the bag and took out a skull with a hole in the back.

“All Germans are Fritz to my grandfather,” Rudi said.

Arkady said, “I have no idea.”

Rudi said, “Call him Big Rudi. He used to be bigger.”

“There’s no need for formalities between old comrades.” Rudi’s grandfather found a loose tooth, a brown molar, and plucked it from the jaw. “I never understood that. The Germans were such big strapping fellows and they had such bad teeth.”

“Where did you get it?” Arkady asked.

“Everywhere. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than fighting with a toothache. I pulled my own tooth out.” He dropped the tooth in a pocket. “Don’t fret, Rudi, I’ll pick up the shovels. Have you got my eyeglasses?”

“You lost them ten years ago.”

“They’re here somewhere.”

“Gaga,” Rudi told Arkady. “He lives in the past.”

Arkady helped the old man pick up the shovels. Among them was a homemade metal detector, with an inductor coil and a gauge. While Rudi slammed through drawers in a search of sale documents his vest rode up from a gun tucked into the back of his jeans.

The cat leapt up to a shelf of Nazi helmets, some whole and some punctured. On a work counter, a metal canister with instructions in German was the explosive end of a “potato masher” hand grenade. The foggy eyes of an ancient gas mask peeked from a cabinet. A camouflage tunic on a hook had the same shoulder emblem-star, helmet and rose-that Arkady had seen at the rally in Tver.

“Did you go to the rally today?” Arkady asked Rudi.

“For Isakov? He’s a fucking fascist.”

“He seems popular.”

“He’s still a fucking fascist.”

“I met Stalin,” Rudi’s grandfather said.

Arkady took a second to adjust to such a broad change of subject. It was possible, Arkady thought. Big Rudi was old enough.

“When?” Arkady asked.

“Today.”

“Where?”

“On the hill in back. Look out the window, he’s there now.”

Enough light was cast by the window for Arkady to see there was no Stalin and no hill, only the stubble of winter grass.

“I was too slow. He’s gone. Did he say anything?” Arkady asked.

“To go to the dig.” The old boy became excited. “Come with us tomorrow. Stalin will be there.”

“Will Isakov?”

“Maybe. It doesn’t matter,” Rudi said. “You’re not a Digger. It’s members only.”

“Why?” Arkady asked.

“One, you’d be in the way. Two, since you don’t know what you’re doing you might get hurt or hurt someone else. Three, it’s strictly against the rules. Four, no fucking way. Why do you even ask? What did you expect to see there?”

That Arkady did not know. Signs? Maybe revelations?

“The monster not only knocked down an invading Fascist plane,” Zhenya said, “it came out of Lake Brosno and chased away the invading Mongols hundreds of years ago. Now scientists have to find out if it’s the same monster or a descendant. That’s what the expedition is all about. They have a picture of it, a photograph, not a drawing. I saw it on the television.”

Arkady switched his cell phone to the other ear; when Zhenya was excited his voice tended to be shrill. Nothing had excited him more than the Lake Brosno monster.

“What did it look like?” Arkady asked.

“It was kind of blurred. It could have been a form of apatosaurus. Definitely. The scientists went out in a boat with special equipment and detected something really strange underneath the surface.”

“What did they do?”

“They dropped a grenade on it.”

“Any man of science would.” Arkady looked out the apartment window at the roofs of Tver. He saw church spires but no onion domes to lend the city grace or fantasy. On the other hand, Arkady appreciated the local monster for turning Zhenya from a virtual mute into a chatterbox. “What did the monster do then?”