Punishment of a Hunter Read online

  He knocked a handful of photos against the table, straightening up the pile. He placed them in the folder and tied it up.

  “My father was a priest, Vasya.”

  “Serafimov, you didn’t hide your background from the authorities. You declared it openly on the form,” continued Zaitsev as he put the folder away in the safe, “when you applied to join the police. The only people who should be afraid are those with something to hide.”

  “That was then! It didn’t matter back then. Now it does. The purges are real, Vasya. They’re going to send me packing. You get blacklisted, you get a wolf ticket on your passport. Then there won’t be any jobs on the trams. They send you away, Vasya—beyond the 101-kilometre boundary. For being an anti-Soviet element. Categorized as hostile to the Soviet social order. Whereas if I leave now of my own accord, there won’t be any questions. I might be able to set myself up as a shop assistant, or a mechanic.”

  Serafimov was afraid that his eyes would well up. The injustice of it hurt.

  Zaitsev still looked straight ahead with his cheerful, cold eyes. Only now they were more cold than cheerful.

  “Don’t take it personally, Serafimov.”

  The tears did well up. Serafimov turned away.

  “It is personal, Vasya,” he forced out. “Why should my dad have anything to do with it?”

  “What are you—a baby?” Zaitsev snapped. “Let the real troublemakers get hot and bothered, not you. You know what?” he added, changing his tone. “The only category you come under is police officer, and the most Soviet kind at that. End of story.”

  Zaitsev saw that what he’d said hadn’t made any impact.

  “Listen, Serafimov. I’ve had an idea. There’s no point trying to convince our comrades in the commission. They don’t understand how much we need you. And there won’t be time to explain.”

  Serafimov looked at him with hope.

  Zaitsev once again pressed his fingers to his eyes. This time the pain behind his eyes didn’t go away.

  “Look. Here’s an order. I’m sending you on a posting, Comrade Serafimov.” Zaitsev paused a moment to think. “For a skills exchange with your comrades in the provinces. Is your mission clear?”

  A rosy colour gradually returned to Serafimov’s cheeks.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “And when you get back, no one will be any the wiser. Whoever they end up purging—good luck to them. But it’ll all have blown over by the time you’re back. Is that clear, Comrade Serafimov?”

  “It is. But where to?”

  “Where what?”

  “Where am I being sent to?”

  Zaitsev thought about it. “Kiev? Magical city—so I hear.”

  Serafimov nodded. “Kiev would work.”

  The Remington crunched as Zaitsev fed a sheet of paper in. He began to pelt the keys with one finger, the letters clinking as they jumped about. His message to their Kiev comrades was a brief one, it seemed. Zaitsev turned the wheel, pulled out the sheet and scrawled a loopy signature at the bottom.

  “Tomorrow go and collect your ration cards for the trip and they’ll issue you with the tickets. So this purge—when’s the meeting?…”

  Zaitsev turned over the page of the diary on his desk.

  “OK, it’s at eleven. So, come in tomorrow at eight sharp to get ready. Then off you go.”

  “Tomorrow morning?…”

  “And I’ll go to the meeting instead of you. If they want to purge someone, let them pick me. My background’s about as prole as you get. They won’t find anything on me—nothing but my trousers.”

  Serafimov opened his mouth, but before he could say “Thank you”, Zaitsev frowned at him.

  “Girls say thank you—when you give them flowers,” said Zaitsev.

  Serafimov stopped, unsure what to say.

  “I’ll gladly go and sit in this meeting instead of you. Give my legs a rest. OK, go. And sleep!”

  II

  Zaitsev was somewhat surprised to see metal trolleys being wheeled in from the morgue. A gurgling dissonance echoed off the high ceilings and the painted walls, hung with portraits of party leaders. This was the purge itself, Zaitsev realized. The members of the commission were sitting at a table at the front. Zaitsev spotted some comrades from other police squads. He couldn’t help noticing his boss Kopteltsev, head of CID, among the corpses. His eyes scanned the room for his team. He saw Samoilov, and Martynov, and old Demov, and even the dog handler—what was his name again? And Serafimov.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked.

  Neither Samoilov, nor Martynov, nor Serafimov seemed surprised by the metal trolleys or the unbearable, dazzlingly bright ceiling lamp that shone its ghastly light straight in your eyes. Nothing ever surprised Demov. Zaitsev suddenly threw off his jacket and slipped off his braces. He realized in horror that he was getting undressed, and quickly. With monstrous, incomprehensible speed and ease. His satin boxers had already dropped to the floor. He stepped out of them, shook them off his foot. And woke up.

  The room was chilly in the morning half-light.

  “Damn it, I’ve only slept an hour or two,” Zaitsev estimated. How annoying. A metallic glint caught his eye as it glimmered on a huge, delicate spider’s web on the ceiling. Quietly, gently, it started to descend towards him. Zaitsev knew then, even before they touched him, that the gossamer threads weren’t delicate and sticky, but razor sharp and taut.

  At this point he woke up completely, his heart thumping and his pillow crumpled in his hands.

  The sun shone low through the window. That must have been the garish lamp in his dream. Light poured onto the white ceiling and the stucco plasterwork, showing up the dust that filled the nooks and crannies: eternal shadows lending a touch of character to the vestiges of former luxury. There was no other luxury in Zaitsev’s room.

  Zaitsev reached for the crushed cigarette packet on the stool. He tried to pull one out, tapped the box and gave it a blow. He eventually got one out and put it in his mouth. He took it out again right away. He gave up yesterday, he remembered. It always used to be so easy to get up in the summer. Zaitsev threw back the sheet.

  Outside, the sparrows screeched. The summery Leningrad morning had already revved up its motor and was rumbling through the streets, chattering with a cacophony of voices. The black hands of the alarm clock stood like an upside-down letter v, or that obsolete letter izhitsa. A radio prattled away in the corridor.

  Zaitsev pulled out a drawer. He got dressed. As he did so, he nudged the pack of cigarettes under the chest of drawers. A shame to throw it away completely, but out of sight, out of mind. He pulled out another drawer. Pasha had tidily left his change in a meticulous metal pyramid on top of the unspent ration cards. Yesterday’s purchases were in brown paper bags. They rustled as he checked the contents: tea, coffee, sugar. Wrapped in an off-white linen napkin was a loaf of black bread.

  At the helm of the sprawling communal apartment, and the front entrance, the entire courtyard and arched passageway through to the second courtyard, indeed the entire house—which legend has it was home before the Revolution to the famous mezzo-soprano Anastasia Vyaltseva, and which now housed ordinary workers—at the helm of the entire building was, of course, Aunt Pasha. Or, to some, Pashka. A large, middle-aged woman, with a large metal badge on her apron, Pasha was to be found on summer and autumn mornings wielding her prickly broom in the courtyard, and on winter and spring mornings sprinkling sand and scraping the snow with her shovel. In her spare time, when not serving the state, Pasha sat at her sewing machine, her stout foot pressing rhythmically on the square cast-iron pedal inscribed with the name “Singer”.

  And it was she, dear Pasha, who managed Zaitsev’s lean bachelor household.

  The criminal investigator was so busy with his work that he didn’t have time to manage even his very meagre domestic affairs. Zaitsev left Pasha in charge of his money and ration cards and she left his groceries for him in the top drawer. The second drawer house
d all of Zaitsev’s summer clothes and the bottom one was for his winter clothes. For convenience, he had given Pasha a key to his room. Zaitsev had nothing to steal except a cast-iron kettlebell in one corner and a worn-out armchair in the other. The wiry horsehair was escaping from the fabric. The people in their house lived poor, meagre lives. But even they were unlikely to be tempted by the kettlebell or the armchair.

  For Zaitsev it was all perfectly sufficient.

  Zaitsev made himself coffee in the shared kitchen, with its ten Primus stoves and ten tables of all different shapes and sizes. He cut a rough slice of bread and sprinkled it with sugar.

  “So, Comrade Zaitsev, still not found yourself a wife? I never see you eat a proper meal,” tutted his neighbour Katya as she plonked her frying pan on the stove and tossed in a lump of butter. She wore a chiffon headscarf over her curlers. Katya didn’t like to be “untidy” in front of her neighbours: she was an intelligent lady, an accountant at the Krupskaya factory.

  “Good morning, Katerina Yegorovna.”

  The eggs hissed in the butter. Waiting for them in their room were Katya’s husband and their daughter, a student. The daughter planned to get as far away as possible from her roots and become quite the aristocrat: a dental technician.

  “And what do girls need from a husband? Someone with nothing wrong with him, arms and legs in the right place. Accommodation, a salary, you’ve even got an officer card—what more can you ask?!”

  “Have a nice day, Katerina Yegorovna.”

  This was their regular morning ritual, where each had their allotted role. Katya played hers with indifference—her daughter was already spoken for.

  Looking at Katya, Zaitsev was particularly perplexed: how did these people find themselves a spouse? Who would look at a hulking body like hers and see the girl of his dreams? And yet, supposedly her husband had actually chosen her, this Katerina Egorovna. It just didn’t make sense, he mused, munching on his bread. People decide to get married. They sign the register. They fill their rooms with Primuses and mattresses, then cots and washtubs. They build their little nests together. To Zaitsev, this aspect of ordinary human life seemed unfathomable. And all the rituals that went with it. Asking a girl to dance. And then the indispensable draping your jacket over her shoulders, with the endless River Neva as a backdrop. Not to mention the poems, the flowers… Zaitsev shuddered. He brushed the crumbs from his front and downed the rest of his coffee in one gulp.

  “What, Comrade Zaitsev? Has the tea gone cold?” His neighbour Palych had just come into the kitchen. “I just had some. Nothing but grass in there. I had a look—all kinds of filth mixed up in there. No more than twenty pro cent actual tea.”

  Palych said “pro cent”. It seemed to make no difference to him if anyone was actually listening. Sometimes it seemed like residents of the apartment purposely steered him towards the kitchen, when they could no longer take any more of his incessant chatter.

  “Pure burdock, that is, it’s not tea.”

  “I’m having coffee,” Zaitsev answered.

  In a world where Faina Baranova was murdered—where such a calm, unnecessary and savage murder was possible—there was no space for bouquets of flowers or asking girls to dance. The brain simply didn’t have the capacity to process it all. This strange case of Faina Baranova now occupied Zaitsev’s mind to the exclusion of all else.

  The neighbours were already swarming in the corridor, queuing for the bathroom laden with towels and soap. As he walked out onto the embankment of the River Moika, Zaitsev slammed the door behind him. Pasha had already swept outside: the ground was still marked by the circular tracks of her stiff broom. It was a long time since there had been any kind of lawn in front of the house.

  Spotting the tram turning on St Isaac’s Square, Zaitsev sped up, jumped on as it passed and clung on, standing on the footboard. The tram led him through this beautiful city where for the most part people lived a poor, dreary, unkempt life. Squabbling in their communal kitchens, struggling amid the chaos and stench of life to rest from the tedium and exhaustion of work, with hours on end idled away queuing for horrible foodstuffs grandly described as “nutrition products”, painfully squirrelling away enough for a pair of shoes or a suit for special occasions, paying off government loans from their meagre salaries, struggling to stay awake through endless party meetings. But you wouldn’t know all that from the Leningrad morning with the sun sparkling on the spires and in the windows.

  Even at this early hour when all the shops were still closed, the longest queue was a rabble winding its way along the street towards the vodka store. A meandering line of indistinct, crumpled faces that made Zaitsev think of the old euphemism “the green serpent”. When he got to 25th October Prospekt, he jumped down from the tram.

  III

  The copper nameplate for “F. Baranova” had not yet been unscrewed from the front door. Pinned up next to it was a handwritten note saying “Two short rings”. The door was dotted with signs giving the names of all the tenants and instructions on how to summon them specifically. Every sign in its own way expressed the character of its owner. Together they made for a motley sight.

  The name “Zabotkina” was inscribed with oil paint on a rectangular piece of plywood. Zaitsev pressed the bell as instructed: two long and one short. And then he thought of joking with the music teacher. Why this little ditty and not a more complex composition?

  Zabotkina came to the door.

  “Comrade, are you from the police?” she asked reverently, timidly.

  And Zaitsev decided against his joke.

  In shape, Zabotkina resembled a large, pale, unripe pear. Her slightly dishevelled hair was tied back in a bun. Round glasses like fish eyes. Zaitsev noted a vague resemblance to Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya.

  “Zaitsev, investigator.”

  “Come in, comrade.” Zabotkina’s voice turned out to be as quiet and pallid as her appearance suggested.

  As soon as he stepped into the flat he could tell which was Zabotkina’s room from the faltering tones of Für Elise. Zabotkina let Zaitsev into the dark corridor, where Elise stumbled along, dragging her feet. And in a mysterious whisper, Zabotkina added, “I knew right away that it was you.”

  The string with the brown seal was still stretched across the door to Baranova’s room from the previous day. Zaitsev turned away.

  Most of Zabotkina’s room was filled by the piano. An instrument of torture. Its current victim looked to be about ten years old. The girl had her fingers outstretched on the keyboard. A huge bow was fixed to her cropped hair, though it was unclear what physical force held it in place.

  “Valya, elbows down,” her teacher commanded with a fearful glance at Zaitsev. He gestured as though to say, “Not at all, don’t worry.”

  Zaitsev looked around for somewhere to sit. Zabotkina quickly pulled an oblong cushion away from the couch to make space. Zaitsev sat down and realized it wasn’t a couch but a chest covered with a rug. Another rug was nailed to the wall above.

  The girl played a wrong note, shook her head, again picked up the slippery, looping melody. From the dripping sound of the notes, Zaitsev could almost imagine it was a rainy autumn evening outside, not a summer morning. His temples filled with heaviness. Keeping her voice low, the teacher gave her student some corrections.

  Finally, her victim noisily scraped back the chair and began to gather up her music in a red folder embossed with a golden treble clef.

  “Right, now I can speak,” said Zabotkina in that pallid, expressionless voice, once her pupil had gone. She sat on a swivel chair with her back to the piano, her large white hands folded on her lap.

  Zaitsev imagined her palms to be cold and moist. Like squashing some kind of slimy sea creature.

  “The neighbours don’t complain about the music?” he asked with a smile.

  “No. We’re all on good terms in this apartment,” said Zabotkina, peering through her round glasses.

  A much-repeated phrase, mus
ed Zaitsev.

  “She’s a funny one, that Valya. And among your students, do you have more boys or more girls?” he asked, just to make conversation.

  Zabotkina looked at him in astonishment. “I’ll have to check my notes,” she answered seriously. She jumped up.

  “Oh no, it doesn’t matter. I was just curious.”

  He smiled again. The teacher didn’t answer his smile. Her face showed something akin to panic.

  “You called and said you had remembered something important,” Zaitsev reminded her softly.

  Her face immediately came to life. She seemed to light up, to glow with purpose and direction.

  “Yes. Or rather, no, I didn’t remember it. I knew it from the very beginning. It was just the way the question was worded.”

  “And what was the question?”

  “Your colleague asked if anything was missing. The one with the red eyes.”

  Martynov. I shouldn’t have made him come with us on the call-out, Zaitsev thought.

  “And was there?”

  “No,” Zabotkina replied quickly. “I don’t think so. Not as far as I know.”

  “Are you familiar with the contents of Baranova’s room?”

  “Yes, I think so. Faina is a kind lady. She was. She liked having me over to tea in her room. Or just to sit and talk. Over some needlework.”

  “She enjoyed needlework?”

  “Me more than her. Perhaps not a lot. But now and then. For relaxation.” The music teacher looked frightened again. As if she had found herself back in the middle of a swamp.

  “And what was it about the way the question was worded?” Zaitsev asked, carefully guiding her back to solid ground.

  “There wasn’t anything missing. Something had appeared!” A little colour even came to her cheeks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Faina was a very calm, ordinary person,” she began, seemingly out of the blue.

  Zaitsev let her talk.

  “The curtain. It wasn’t there before. And the dress. Faina didn’t have a dress like that. And the feather duster!”