Liza Alexandrova-Zorina - The Little Man

«What is public opinion?» Pipe asked one gangster, grabbing him by the arm as if he'd caught him red-handed.

The gangster had been keeping watch on him outside the Three Lemons and was so taken aback he merely shrugged.

«It's what they say on TV! But what about the opinion of the individual?»

«Erm…»

«That's what they say on TV too!» Pipe said again pointedly and raised a finger. «Or at least write on the front page of the local rag!»

«He said people have more faith in the TV than in their own eyes!» the gangster said when he relayed his conversation with Pipe to Saam. «That, he said, is the miracle of technology!»

«What did you say?» asked Saam, picking at his teeth with a matchstick.

«Me? I said, sure it's a miracle…»

«What did he say?»

«Nothing. He hid his speaking device in his jacket and went off.»

«What did you do?»

«I went after him. Saw him as far as the hotel.»

Saam flicked the matchstick into the bin, turning the conversation with the old man over in his mind. He couldn't get his head round what the strange utterances might conceal. It seemed as if the old man was offering a coded message. Saam played with the words and moved them around. He clicked the remote to try and find an answer on the TV and leafed through the latest newspapers, full of dull news and bureaucratic reports, but he couldn't solve the puzzle. In the end he became convinced the old man was making fun of him and there was no sense at all in what he was saying.

Karimov could feel the Arctic Circle tightening like a noose around his neck. He could see Pipe inquiring about Savely Savage, hanging around on the veranda and striking up acquaintanceships with everyone who was connected, one way or another, to the recent killings but he couldn't understand exactly how the old man hoped to make use of Savage. It even occurred to him Pipe would try and use Savage as a weapon, directing his hatred at Karimov. But to start with, he'd have to find Savage and that had proved impossible for the police, the gangsters, and the hunters.

«There was an old man in here,» he said, leaning towards the young librarian, bored with her glossy magazine. «What did he want to know? Did he read anything?»

Karimov knew women liked him and he bestowed one of the smiles he kept for special occasions on the librarian. Casting an eye at the mirror, however, he saw the smile hanging from the corners of his mouth like a torn curtain. Turning a page, the woman scanned the headlines.

«He read the papers and asked about the murders. He's probably a journalist,» she said with a yawn, covering her mouth with the magazine.

«Luck is like love: once it's gone, it won't come back,» his foster father taught him, carving his simple truths on his heart like a knife shaping a wooden balustrade. «One door closes, another opens,» joked Karimov. «Luck is like love,» his father repeated, more loudly. «It happens for the first time, it just happens, and it happens for the last time!»

Karimov tried to talk to Saam who had set spies on Pipe but the gangster had too keen a nose: he could smell putrefaction on someone who would die soon and money on someone about to have a lucky break. He shied away from Karimov like a vampire from garlic and, sensing that Karimov was going out of the game, he began to keep away from him.

Documents arrived from Moscow to state that Karimov now had a controlling interest but the news made him as black as thunder, aware that victory over Pipe would cost him dear. He regretted his haste already and felt the ground shift beneath him like ice on a river in spring. At one point, he decided to run away and at night, tossing in the sheets, he tried to pick a country the vengeful old man would never be able to reach. In the morning, however, exhausted from lack of sleep, he refused to run.

His foster father's words rang in his head: «Some people play with fate and play to lose, others enjoy the game. Still others meekly watch as fate lays their lives out like a game of patience. But fate's an inveterate cardsharp and cheats every time!» He remembered the steps outside the children's home where his father found him, wrapped in his mother's frock, and thought that the trials he had escaped and the misfortunes avoided had not stayed in the past but were running after him like unborn children so that the orphan who had been adopted would always be an orphan and the killer who hadn't been able to kill would still be a killer.

Pipe only started a game if he had all the aces up his sleeve so he never lost. Karimov came across him more and more often with a rolled up picture of Savage sticking out of his pocket as if the old man was teasing him deliberately. They were alike in this. They both liked to wind their enemies around their little fingers and to lead fortune a merry dance. As a result, they understood one another without speaking, reading each other's thoughts from a look in the eye or a pair of pursed lips. Pacing his office, Karimov fumed as he went over Savely Savage's story in his head but he couldn't grasp what revenge the old man had devised.

He summoned the head of the security service who was so suspicious people said he switched bugs on in his wife's bedroom when he left home.

«No news about Savage?»

«Not a trace. It's as if the swamp had sucked him in,» he answered, shaking his head and Karimov winced at his harsh glance.

«Any calls from Moscow? Shareholders, the board of directors?» he asked casually, thinking about the packet of shares he'd bought.

The man curled his lip and made a helpless gesture:

«It's as if they've forgotten all about us.»

Foreboding made Karimov's chest hurt.

He ran into the visitor from Moscow at breakfast. The hotel was empty and they sat in different parts of the dining room, separated from one another by empty tables. When he saw the dark shadows under Karimov's eyes, the two-day stubble and the nervous movements of his Adam's apple, Pipe shivered for a moment, feeling sorry for his ungrateful protégé. He had forgiven him so many times, smoothing his unruly curls with a rough hand, that he could forgive him as many times again.

The old man smiled, leaning back on his chair, and had Karimov looked up at him then, he would have known himself forgiven. Aware of Pipe looking at him, however, he kept his own eyes stubbornly on his plate, poking at his fish with a fork. The silence in the restaurant was so intense that the waitress threw open the windows to let in the fresh air. Fed up of waiting, the old man lost his temper and his grievances flooded back with renewed strength. His face flushed, he tore off the napkin, loosening his shirt collar, his mouth twisted. He'd been more malicious in the past and once he'd made up his mind was implacable, but he had aged now and loneliness tormented him like gout, twisting his joints. The old man shuddered and gave Karimov one last chance, looking at him the way people look at a foundling, hugging it to their breast. But Karimov hunched even more over his plate. Pipe got up and headed for the exit.

He met Saam on the veranda of the Three Lemons. The old man sat in Coffin's seat, which infuriated the gangster, but Pipe pretended he couldn't see his angrily narrowed lips and kept his eyes fixed on Saam.

«A killer shouldn't be small and pathetic. So other people don't get the idea that they can be killers too. And we really don't need avengers of the people. That's dangerous. Anarchy's not out on the streets, it's in people's heads!»

They were sitting by themselves like conspirators, surrounded by empty tables. Faded flowers drooped in plastic cups and sparrows hopped around their feet, pecking up crumbs of bread from the floor.

«People in small towns don't like change,» the visitor said, nodding towards a huge election poster. The late Antonov beamed from under the slogan: This is our deputy! «Before long they'll believe it.»