The City Rate (Городской тариф)
by Alexandra Marinina
Click here to read the author's biography
Click here to read a synopsis
***
Sample translation by Andrew Bromfield
Hopelessly stuck in the traffic, Nastya cursed the laziness that had made her accept the offer of an official car from her new boss, Bolshakov. It would have been so much quicker by metro. Of course, if only she’d bothered to think for just a moment, she wouldn’t have taken the car, but everything happened so fast, she was caught on the hop. First thing in the morning she’d made time to visit an important witness in a murder case – the killing of a banker’s widow, whose husband had been murdered himself only recently. After that, she’d dropped round to the investigator’s office to report, dashed across to headquarters on Petrovka in a real lather and started getting to grips with all the paperwork she’d been putting off for two weeks. And then, out of the blue, the investigator from the Municipal Public Prosecutor’s Office, Fyodor Davydov, phoned to tell her Milena Pogodina’s car had been found somewhere and she had to get over there. Nastya couldn’t even think who Milena Pogodina was at first and when she realised, she felt really annoyed and frustrated: this was something she could have done without. Of course, Korotkov had warned her in the morning that the investigator might call, but she’d just put the idea straight out of her mind, gone ahead and planned her work for the day and then – wham! But at least the investigator was Davydov: Nastya had known old Fyodor Ivanovich for a long time and she knew there was still a thing or two she could learn from him. Before setting out for the address where the missing woman’s vehicle had been found, Nastya followed procedure and phoned Bolshakov, and he suggested she should take an official car. And she did ... So it was her own fault she was sitting in this traffic jam – and that she’d have to make excuses to the investigator for turning up when the examination was almost over. Monday had started things off with a real fiasco yesterday and now the rest of the week was down the tubes.
But things didn’t turn out too badly, after all. When Nastya reached the address Davydov had given her, the examination had only just begun – everybody else must have got stuck in traffic jams of their own. The car had been opened up already and the forensic technician had got to work inside it, checking the contents of the glove compartment.
“So what do we have here?” Nastya asked as soon as she’d said good morning to the investigator.
“A car, as you can see. But the address is good,” Fyodor Davydov replied mysteriously.
“How’s that?”
“A certain Oleg Kanunnikov lives in this building, rents a small flat here. Our missing Pogodina spoke to him on the phone quite a lot and the last time was only yesterday, about two o’clock in the afternoon. And in point of fact, he was the very last person she did speak to on her mobile. After that, there’s nothing but unanswered calls. You get the general drift?”
“And what about Sedov? Where’s he?”
“Where else would he be?” Davydov muttered angrily. “Hanging round my neck like a stone, thinks no one can make sense of anything here without him. He’s over there, having a smoke.”
Davydov pointed to a tall, strongly-built man who was hovering beside the car, shuffling his feet nervously. He kept trying to say something to the technician. Yes, that washim all right, Pavel Sedov. Nastya remembered him, though not very clearly.
“Does he know who Kanunnikov is?” she asked.
“Says he’s never heard the name before.”
“But does he at least have a theory?”
“His guess is that he’s the lecturer she went to see to finish off her odds and ends of coursework. He hasn’t got any other theories.”
“And what’s the real story? Have you identified this character?”
“Not yet, not entirely. Of course, I’ve sent a man to the university but the local militia officer is certain Kanunnikov’s not the academic type. And his mother confirms that her son is more into construction work than jurisprudence – we got Kanunnikov’s passport details and phoned the address where he’s registered in Moscow. His family say he went away on a business trip for a few days. But as for the organisation that sent him, they’re totally clueless on that score. Some construction firm or other, they say, but they don’t have any name or address.”
“And no one answers the door of the flat?” Nastya said. It was more of a statement than a question.
“That goes without saying.”
“Are you going to have it opened?”
“We-ell now, what do you think?” Davydov said with a smile. “The local man will be here with a locksmith any minute – then we’ll offer up a prayer and go at it. What’s got you so surly? Short of sleep?”
“No, I slept all right, it’s just that the day’s all shot to hell.”
“Well, I’m in the same boat. Can’t be helped, Nastyukha, that’s the way our life is. D’you reckon I was over the moon when Sedov over there and his girlfriend were suddenly landed on me? I’m up to my eyes in work already. And listen, what have you done with that Afanasiev of yours? You’ve got a new boy now instead.”
“That’s exactly what he is all right, a boy,” Nastya said with a shrug of annoyance. “And brand new. Just started yesterday.”
“Well, well. The young generation on the way up. And how is he? Does he know the ropes?”
“Who knows? How can you tell from just one day? Fyodor Ivanovich, does Sedov rule out the idea that Kanunnikov is his girlfriend’s lover? Or does he know for sure that she doesn’t have a lover? What made him think the lecturer lived here?”
“Oh-ho, so many questions, Nastyukha!” Davydov laughed in his rumbling bass. “There’s been no mention of a lover so far, I don’t know why. Either Pavel is absolutely certain of his live-in girlfriend, or he knows for certain that the lover is someone else. Ask him yourself, if you like.”
“You mean you haven’t asked?”
“Not yet. It’s too soon. The man’s already stressed out and it’s a touchy subject. We’ll open up the flat first, then tell him the bitter truth. Or he’ll see it for himself – the truth, that is.”
“The truth? You mean you’re sure that Kanunnikov and Pogodina ...”
“Oh, come on now, Nastya,” Davydov interrupted, watching the movements of the technician sitting in the car. “Don’t try to write me off before my time, I’m not a total halfwit, I had a good long talk with Kanunnikov’s mother while I was in the car on the way here. And she told me her son and Milena Pogodina have known each other for about six years and their love is so strong, it’s frightening, it’s proof against any disaster that life can throw up. And the only reason they don’t get married is because they don’t have a place to live, and Oleg wants to earn some money first, and buy a flat and then have a family. Makes good sense, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Nastya said with a nod. “But what about Milena living with Sedov? How does that fit into the picture?”
“Well, it doesn’t,” the investigator admitted, “but Kanunnikov’s mother doesn’t know about that. She thinks Milena lives in some hostel or shares a rented room with a girlfriend. Or something of the kind, give or take.”
“An interesting scenario. But ...”
“Ah, here’s the local man with the locksmith,” Fyodor Davydov interrupted her again.
The local militiaman – a very well-proportioned, attractive thirty-something in a uniform that fitted well – held his hand out to Nastya and introduced himself.
“Captain Doroshin. Just call me Igor.”
“Anastasia,” she replied.
Captain Doroshin ... She’d heard that name before somewhere. Or read it, maybe? There was a famous singer called Doroshin, but it was definitely a militia captain that she’d heard about. Yes, of course, in January she’d read a report on the results achieved last year by the Moscow branch of the Interior Ministry, and it had mentioned a Captain Doroshin, in the section about involving “other services” in solving crimes and tracking down criminals. What crime was it now? Murder? Yes, that was it: some businessman’s wife who was murdered near the opera house. That was why Nastya remembered it, because the opera house was mentioned – a very rare event in the context of “businessmen and murders”: the usual thing was country houses, restaurants, casinos and offices.
“Fyodor Ivanovich,” said the technician, sticking his head out of the car, “you can take a look now. Nothing special, just the usual girly clutter.”
“Aha, just a moment.”
Davydov turned to Nastya:
“I’ll take a quick gander in there, then we’ll go up.”
“Hey, boss,” the locksmith called, started to get agitated, “how much longer do I have to wait?
The captain over there pulled me off an enquiry, get a move on, he said, this is urgent business, the investigator from the prosecutor’s office is waiting, so I dropped everything and came running, but now I see you’re in no great hurry. I’ve got work to do, you know.”
“I’ll go up with you for the time being,” the captain said amicably. “We’ll take a look at the door and you can choose your tools. And we have to warn the neighbours we’re going to break in, or they’ll get the wind up when they hear the racket and call out the duty detail from the station. And while we’re at it, we can try knocking and shouting a bit. Maybe the man of the house is home, but he’s asleep or up to something else and that’s why he doesn’t open up. Come on, let’s go, the investigator’s got his job to do, and we’ve got ours.”
He gave Nastya a jolly wink that somehow made everything seemed funny. A really nice guy.
They hadn’t found anything in Milena Pogodina’s car that might suggest what had happened to its owner. No notes, no addresses on pieces of paper, no threatening letters. Just the usual stuff: a couple of street atlases of Moscow, a few music CDs, sunglasses, paper tissues, a powder compact, a folding umbrella, a ballpoint pen, a little notepad with nothing written on it and a few other bits and pieces.
“Hi-de-hi,” said Davydov, heaving a sigh. “What a rotten, thankless job this is. You know what’s going happen now, don’t you, Nastyukha? We’ll enter the flat and catch the lovebirds indulging their sexual appetites, so to speak. And apart from the scandal because they’ll say we’ve violated Mr. Kanunnikov’s right to personal privacy, our Pavel here will wade in, fists flying, and start having it out with his girlfriend in public. Just what we need, eh? But what option do we have? The case has been opened, and we have to search for the girl who’s gone missing. But who was the jerk who opened it, eh?”
“Have they started going round the flats?” Nastya asked instead of answering.
“We’ve done everything we could. We managed to get quite a lot of things done while you were on the way. Of course there’s no one at home now, they’re all at work, but when someone did answer the door, we had a talk with them. And it helped that they sent us a whole three detectives from the district, that moved things along a bit faster. One of the occupants saw Pogodina get out of her car and walk into the entrance yesterday afternoon, about half past two.”
“Is he quite certain it was Pogodina?”
“Quite sure, Nastyukha. He’s seen her plenty of times, he couldn’t be mistaken.”
“And did anyone see Kanunnikov after that?”
“Nothing doing there. Not after that or before that. Nobody we’ve been able to talk to so far happened to see Kanunnikov yesterday, but that’s not surprising. What is surprising is that someone noticed Pogodina and remembered her. Nobody remembers anybody else’s face or takes any notice of anybody these days. No one in this house seems to know Kanunnikov, for instance, but the girl was noticed. She must be something special. Right then, let’s get up there and take a peek at what’s in this little flat.”
They set off towards the entrance. Pavel Sedov, who was standing about twenty feet away, dropped his half-smoked cigarette on the pavement and followed them with a determined air.
* * *
Nastya had never regarded herself as a great expert on examining crime scenes. There was an investigator, and a forensic technician, two detectives from the “slaughter” division of the district criminal militia had already arrived, the district team, including a forensics analyst and a forensic pathologist, had already been called, and they’d show up any minute now, even the criminal prosecutor was going to come, so there really wasn’t anything for Nastya to do in Kanunnikov’s flat. Especially with the witnesses and Pavel Sedov there as well. Too many people for a small one-room flat. Milena Pogodina’s body was lying in the room, and even Nastya, with her superficial knowledge, could see she’d been strangled about twenty-four hours ago.
“Igor,” she said, touching the local captain on the sleeve. “Let’s get out of here and have a talk.”
They went out onto the landing and up one flight of steps. Nastya immediately sat down on the windowsill and took out a cigarette, but Doroshin started fidgeting, turning his head this way and that, taking short sharp breaths in through his nose, as if he was sniffing at something.
“What is it?”
“That smell. Can’t you smell it?”
“No.” Nastya sniffed, but she didn’t smell anything unusual. “What kind of smell is it?”
“Urine, I reckon. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and inhaled. “I’ve been smoking for so many years, it’s blunted my sense of smell. Don’t you smoke?”
“No, so my sense of smell is quite keen.”
He walked quickly up another flight of steps, and a few seconds later she heard his voice from up there.
“Just as I thought, someone’s been relieving himself here without holding back.”
“Street bums?”
“Not very likely, I move the bums on.”
He came back down, squatted on his haunches beside the windowsill and started looking for something.
“There,” he said triumphantly, pulling a tin can full almost to the top with cigarette butts out from behind the radiator. He held it up to Nastya’s face: “See?”
“The usual staircase ashtray,” Nastya responded indifferently. “You can find them in every building. “When someone isn’t allowed to smoke in the flat, he goes out on the stairs, and every half-decent persecuted smoker has a can like that out there for his ash and dog ends.”
“Agreed. But not many people go very far from their flat for a smoke. Only those who live on the ninth floor would smoke on this windowsill. But there isn’t anyone on the ninth floor who does, I can guarantee you that.”
“You know the domestic scene here that well?” Nastya enquired sceptically.
Doroshin laughed.
“It’s probably the only part of my job I do know really well. Look here, there are four flats on the ninth floor. Pekarsky from number 105 rents his flat out. Kanunnikov lives there, we already know that: he’s alone, and there’s no one to persecute him, even if he does smoke. In 106 there’s a married couple, with no children, but he’s had the wheels of his car stolen twice, so I’ve been in there. The air’s so thick you can hardly catch your breath, and both of them smoke, husband and wife. In 107 we have a young lady with two dogs, a non-smoker. And in 108 a solitary old pensioner who recalls the days of her youth every so often and smokes a few papiroses. But these ...” – he lifted up the can of butts again – “... are filter cigarettes. And they were smoked by someone who came in from outside. He sat here for a very long time, smoking and waiting for something. Every now and then he went up one flight to take a piss. Does that sound right?”
Nastya nodded slowly. It did, but only if you made a lot of assumptions.
“It could have been a young couple,” she objected. “No cosy corner of their own, and even if one of them happens to live in the building, they came up here to be alone together, so their parents wouldn’t catch them at it, Suppose one of them smokes, and this is their regular spot, then it’s not really surprising to find their permanent ash tray here. This is where they wove their little love nest. How does that sound?”
“That sounds right too,” Igor agreed. “But a young lad in love isn’t very likely to tell his heart’s desire: ‘Hang about for a moment, I’ll just go and take a leak’. That doesn’t sound right at all. Of course, cynicism and crudity are thriving nowadays, but not to that extent. Maybe there is a young couple lovey-doving here, but it definitely wasn’t them who used the landing outside the attic door as a public toilet. Let’s check something.”
He took a thick A4 notepad out of his bag, tore off a clean sheet and tipped the cigarette butts out on it. Nastya noticed that right from the start he’d been holding the can very carefully, by the top and bottom rims.
“Look here,” said Doroshin, stirring the butts about with a pencil and not touching them with his fingers. “The cigarettes were all the same brand. And not a cheap one, by the way. Not a single trace of lipstick anywhere, so the smoker was most likely a man. Imagine a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old kid who can afford to smoke cigarettes like this. In other words, he always has pocket money to spare, he buys his own smokes and doesn’t bum them or nick them from his parents. Can you picture him?”
“Not very clearly,” Nastya admitted. “I hardly ever come into contact with juveniles and I don’t know that milieu very well.”
“I can see that,” the captain said with a smile. “But I know them very well. Believe me, a boy who always has money in his pocket and always smokes the same expensive cigarettes wouldn’t hide away from his parents with his girl. He’s the wrong psychological type for that. There are exceptions, but they’re very rare. A boy who always has money in his pocket would take his girl to a bar.”
“And where would they do their smooching?” Nastya asked with a sly smile. “In the bar?”
“These days kids like that don’t smooch,” Doroshin retorted very seriously. “They have sex, the whole works. But not here, in open view.”
She hopped down off the windowsill, gasped and winced, snatching at her back.
“What is it?” the captain asked sympathetically. “Your leg?”
“My back. Hang on Igor, I’ll just be a moment.”
Nastya went down to the flat and found Davydov. The investigator didn’t really seem to be listening to her, and she started feeling like an interfering fool who ought to mind her own business. But it turned out that Fyodor Ivanovich had heard everything and understood it perfectly well.
“So then either the killer is Kanunnikov himself, or the perpetrator waited for Milena Pogodina to get here, he was stalking her. Excellent! Seva! Come over here!”
The forensic technician stuck his head out of the kitchen.
“What is it, Fyodor Ivanovich?”
“Get out on the stairs and collect a tin can of cigarette ends and secretions, they’ll show you where. And put that camera down, will you, you can clickety-click to your heart’s content later!”
The technician put on a resentful face, grabbed his little case and walked out of the flat.
“Just a kid,” Davydov sighed dejectedly when he left, “can’t get enough of playing with his toys. He loves to photograph the crime scene – just has to do it, no matter what. Some investigator or other once complimented him on his photo layouts, told him the focal shots were excellent, and his wide angles were an absolute masterpiece, so now our Seva thinks he’s a top-flight photographer, and he does everything else with just a lick and a promise. And I can’t say a word, he could take offence, might even resign, God forbid, and we’re short of technicians already They’ve axed so many jobs and put in a stack of places for boffins instead, but where are we going to find that many people with the right degrees? And who’s supposed to go out to the crime scene? The analyst, is it? In some districts at least they divide the jobs up, some stick to doing the analyses, and others always visit the scene, but everywhere else the boffins work on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. So what do we end up with? They’ve added the jobs, taken on the people, but there’s nobody anywhere to train them right, no way they can really get the hang of anything. Today I’m Punch, tomorrow I’m Judy and the upshot of it all is, I can’t learn my lines properly for either part. But a forensic technician is someone specially trained to work at the crime scene. And those are the ones they’ve axed. So now forensic technicians are like sacred cows, we have to treat them very carefully, never lay a hand on them and never say a word to hurt their feelings. In some places, to keep hold of people they’ve moved them into Patrol and Inspection Service jobs, and those are sergeant level, so apart from the loss of prestige, their pay’s gone down too, and it’s no wonder they come back with: ‘I’m an a Patrol and Inspection militiaman now, I don’t have to do this ...’ I’d love to get just a glimpse of the high-up who arranged the whole thing. I wouldn’t punch him in the face, of course, just take a look him, out of curiosity. Maybe he has some special kind of pointy head, specially designed to make it harder to solve crimes. Hi-de hi, what a life ... And who found the cigarette ends? You, I suppose, sharp-eyes?”
“No, it was the captain. “Good for him, he’s a fine fellow. And the spot that was used as a public convenience? Was that him too?”
“Yes.”
“He’s a fine fellow twice over then. I’ll ring his boss and tell them to give him a bonus for helping the investigation. Oh, and by the way, the man I send to the university has called in already. Just as expected, they don’t have any lecturers called Kanunnikov on the books.”
“And have you told Sedov?”
“About Kanunnikov being his common-law wife’s lover? No, I haven’t told him yet.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no hurry. So I tell him, and then what? The man will fall apart. He’s just barely hanging on after all he’s been through already. He found his woman dead, how easy do you think that is for him? And then he gets this news on top of everything else ... I’ll wait for a while. Especially since Kanunnikov’s mother isn’t the kind of witness whose testimony you can rely on without checking. Who knows what stories her darling son might have told her? She’s not even really sure where he works. They haven’t lived together for five years and she doesn’t know for certain what he does for a living, so we can’t be certain about the connection with Pogodina. When we get finished up here, I’ll send a man over to talk through the hard facts and details with her, get his whole life story clear. And I’ll send a man to Pogodina’s parents too. If they confirm the connection with Kanunnikov, then I’ll tell Sedov. And anyway ...”
Fyodor Ivanovich nudged Nastya gently towards exit of the flat. Once they were out on the stairs, he closed the door and said in a low voice:
“I don’t like this Sedov. He’s too bigheaded by half. Of course, he’s an injured party, but I just have a feeling that we shouldn’t tell him everything.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t trust him. I’ll have the body identified first, and then we’ll see.”
“Identified?” Nastya was so astonished, she almost dropped her bag. “You mean you still have doubts?”
“How shall I put it? The victim’s passport is in her handbag and, to judge from the photo, everything seems to be in order. Sedov himself alleges that the dead woman is his common-law wife, Milena Yurievna Pogodina, but you and I don’t know that, do we? Never mind what he alleges ... Fake passports are a dime a dozen nowadays, buying one’s no problem, especially if you work in the militia. Maybe it isn’t Pogodina back there in the flat at all, and at this very moment Milena Yurievna is far away on some distant island, covering her tracks as previously agreed in secret with her cohabitant Sedov. Who knows what kind of shady business she might have got mixed up in! Let her parents identify her first, and then I’ll be certain.”
“And what if her parents are in on it too?” Nastya suggested. “Suppose Pogodina really did get involved in something criminal and she had to disappear, and Sedov warned her parents they’d have to identify a complete stranger as Milena in order to save their daughter’s life?”
“It happens,” Davydov said with a nod. “Everything happens. That’s alright: I’ll find people who can identify her, people Sedov couldn’t have roped in. I’ll find them all right, don’t you worry about that. You know how stubborn I am, when I take a dislike to someone, hell can freeze over before I’ll trust him.”
Nastya knew that was the way it was, but even so Fyodor Ivanovich’s theory seemed fanciful in the extreme. Milena Pogodina was a first year student in the faculty of law, so what shady business could she possibly have got mixed up in? She had no education, no profession, she hadn’t even worked anywhere since she met Sedov, and before that she was a sales girl in a grocery store, and then a secretary in some small office. At least, that was the way Sedov told it. Everything could be far simpler, even assuming that Sedov was lying. He could have found out Milena was cheating, killed her and set the whole thing up to throw suspicion on Kanunnikov – end of story. And that was why he kept doggedly pretending that the idea of Milena being unfaithful had never even entered his head. But if Sedov was telling the truth, then Milena had been killed by her lover, Oleg Kanunnikov. Or if not Sedov and not Kanunnikov, then some third party, the one who had waited patiently for her, sitting on the windowsill between the ninth floor and the door of the attic.
She glanced sideways at Captain Doroshin, who had been standing by that windowsill all this time, writing something in his thick notebook. Davydov was right, he was a fine fellow, with a good head. And cultured manners too. That was really strange. Yesterday Nastya had acquired a smart, cultured boss, and today she’d met a smart, cultured local officer. Where had the militia got all these smart, cultured people from all of a sudden? It had to be one of those amazing coincidences, the kind that happen in fairytales.
* * *
The two men walked slowly along the path between the graves. A cold November drizzle was falling and the older man was holding an open umbrella over his head. His companion, about ten years younger, walked along behind, bareheaded, with the water streaming off his hair onto his cheeks and neck. They stopped beside a gravestone from which the faces of a woman and a teenage boy gazed out at them. The inscription was terse – “Larisa and Georgy Bezborodov” – with the years of their lives, but no precise dates. The older man laid an armful of dark-red roses on the grave, and the younger one put down four modest carnations. They stood there for a while without speaking until the older man finally broke the silence.
“So, how are you getting on, Boris?”
“Surviving,” Boris replied calmly. “Everyone survives, and so do you.”
“You haven’t got married again yet, to that nurse’s aide of yours?”
“She’s not a nurse’s aide, Sasha. She’s a nurse. Is it really that important for you to humiliate me?”
“All right, so she’s a nurse, that’s not much of a difference. She’s still a village biddy with two children, no matter what you call her. So have you married her or not?”
“We’ve registered a marriage,” Boris replied distantly.
“When?”
“Two months ago.”
“So you’ve really gone and done it,” Sasha – Alexander Kumaev – said, in a voice filled with contempt. “Not only have you betrayed Larochka’s memory, you’ve actually made it legal. How could you?”
“Sasha, calm down, will you?”
“I won’t calm down! You drove my sister to her death, you destroyed your own son’s life, and now you’re prepared to say to hell with it, forget it, just brush it off and marry someone else! How can I calm down? Well, well?”
Alexander had raised his voice until he was almost shouting. His pain was genuine, not affected, Boris realised that. Alexander Kamaev had loved his younger sister very much and he still mourned her loss to this very day, even after many years had passed. And although Boris Bezborodov thought what he said was unjust, he didn’t try to argue because he respected his relative’s grief.
“I’m sorry, Sasha, but everybody’s different,” was all he said.
“Yes, everybody’s different. Some remember their loved ones all their life and others betray them and prefer to forget,” Kamaev said angrily.
“No, Sasha. Some people prefer to weep for themselves and be miserable, while others prefer to rejoice in life. That’s where the difference lies.”
“That’s just empty rhetoric. I weep for Lara and Georgy, not for myself
“That’s not true,” Boris objected firmly. “It’s a lie you use to comfort yourself. In actual fact, you are weeping for yourself. We say we’re grieving for the dead, but we’re really grieving for ourselves, surely that’s clear? We suffer without them, we’re lonely, we miss them. We want to see them, touch them, talk to them. But they’re not here with us and so we suffer. Do you understand what I mean? Do you hear how many times I’ve used the pronoun ‘we’? We, us ... It’s always about us, not about the ones who have died. WE suffer! And that’s what makes us sad. But the person who has left us isn’t suffering. If the soul is immortal, then it’s in heaven and it’s happy. And if there is no immortality of the soul, then there’s no way the departed can be suffering. So why grieve for them? No Sasha, you’re grieving for yourself. It was your personal choice, and you have a right to it. But you can’t demand that I make the same choice.”
“I wonder what it is that you’ve chosen?” Alexander laughed contemptuously. “You could have stayed in Moscow, but you went away to some dump of a village, forgot about Larisa and found yourself some semi-literate peasant woman with two children who washes your smalls, pickles cucumbers and raises chickens. Is that your choice? A man has no right to rejoice in life when his loved ones die.”
“You’re wrong, Sasha, if that was true, then only little children would rejoice in life, because we all start losing our loved ones early on. Great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers, grandmothers and so on and on ... The world would be filled with nothing but black, unbearable grief. But that’s not the way things are, is it?”
“Don’t play games with words,” Kamaev said with a frown. “You know perfectly well what I mean. I’m talking about betraying the memory of the departed. When members of our family die, we can’t find ourselves new ones. We don’t find another mother, another father, another brother or sister. We don’t betray their memory. But we can find a new wife. And a new child too. And that’s nothing but betrayal, cynical and abominable betrayal. Especially if it was your fault that your wife and child died. And it was your fault that Larisa and Zhorik died, and you have no right to forgive yourself, you should suffer for it until the day you die. But look at you, you’ve chosen to rejoice in life! You’re dancing on their graves! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“No,” Boris sighed, “I’m not ashamed. I do the work I love, I heal people, I save their lives, I’ll bring happiness to one woman and her two children, who’ll spend at least part of their childhood in a complete family. What out of all the above should I feel ashamed of?”
“You’ll never understand me,” Kamaev said bitterly. “We speak different languages, I always said so. I talk about one thing and you talk about something completely different. You just don’t want to understand me, because you don’t have any answers to give. You can stop coming here, you’ve no business at Larisa and Zhorik’s grave. You’re not worthy to be here.”
“Are you serious?” Boris asked in amazement.
“Absolutely. Let’s say I forbid you to come.”
Bezborodov shrugged, leaned down and rearranged the flowers on the grave, then he straightened up and looked at Kamaev.
“You never cease to amaze me, Sasha. Do you really believe you can forbid me to do anything? I live my life the way I think is right and that’s what I’ll keep on doing. And I’ll come to the cemetery as often as I think necessary. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem, not mine. And if you like to spend your life grieving and mourning, that’s your problem too, but it’s not mine. And there’s something else I have to say to you, not as a relative, but as a doctor. In your place I would think very carefully about why you made that particular choice and no other. Delve a bit deeper into yourself. If you can find the reason, you’ll feel a lot better, I promise you.”
Boris turned and walked slowly towards the way out. Alexander Kamaev watched him go with a glance in which contempt and hatred mingled with a completely different feeling, one of which he was only vaguely aware, although it has a very specific name: fear.