The Librarian Read online

  There weren’t any graves in the crematorium section—only concrete walls in which the urns were immured. My uncle had been placed close to the ground, I had to squat down to read the words engraved on the brass plaque:

  MAXIM DANILOVICH VYAZINTSEV. 1952–1999.

  And in slightly smaller letters:

  REST IN PEACE.

  I put off the conversation with the administration of the cemetery until the sale of the apartment was settled.

  THE BUYER

  BUT AT HOME a surprise was waiting. A note, folded in four and wedged in the door, with a message for me from a certain Vadim Leonidovich Kolesov. He wrote that in Housing Department Office No. 27 he had heard from the manager, Mukhina, that I intended to sell the apartment and, as an extremely interested party, he wished to meet with me. His aged parents lived nearby, so the purchase of accommodation in this precise location would be ideal, and he asked permission to call round that evening at about ten.

  The polite tone of the letter suggested a man of delicate manners. True, the thought did briefly flash through my mind that I hadn’t really told Antonina Petrovna anything much, but it was easier to convince myself that in my tired state I had simply not attached any significance in that situation to the question: “What are you thinking of doing with the apartment?”—and had replied automatically, without even realizing it.

  Everything, of course, was suddenly going rather too well, but after a long sequence of setbacks in this worldly life, a minor indulgence from destiny seemed entirely justified.

  A quick sale was the outcome that suited my plans to return home soon better than any other. I reread the message excitedly and put the sheet of paper in my pocket, promising myself that in the event of a successful deal I would give Antonina Petrovna a more substantial present than a box of sweets.

  I still had half a day in reserve, so I put my feet up for a while and took a nap, and then tidied the apartment, washed the floors and slipped out for half an hour to the grocery shop. Outside I saw the couple from the previous day chatting to each other again—the bald man with the bundle and the dacha lady in the headscarf. On my way back, they had been joined by another two: a man with a moustache, who was clearly another vegetable gardener, clutching the handle of the spade on which he was leaning with strong, sinewy hands, and a floppy-haired young guy in a threadbare mechanic’s boiler suit, with a toolbox. The young guy was cracking simple-minded little jokes to the dacha lady, and the sinewy man with the spade was laughing loudly.

  An elderly woman in horn-rimmed spectacles who was sitting at the entrance to the building set aside her knitting and asked me sternly: “Who are you visiting, young man?”

  I replied politely, “Only myself. I’m the late Vyazintsev’s nephew.”

  Satisfied with my answer, the stern woman took up her needles again.

  I spent the time until Kolesov’s arrival sorting through my uncle’s bunker. In addition to preserved goods and all sorts of builder’s lumber, the cupboards under the ceiling in the hallway contained a photographic enlarger, a Kharkov electric shaver in a box, a slide projector and a whole bundle of copies of the old Outlook magazine, with the flexible blue plastic records that came with them. I even tried to play one, but the speakers of the radiogram had a loose connection somewhere, and the sound kept cutting out. While I was edging my way in behind the wardrobe to drag out the wires, someone rang the doorbell.

  At this point I must admit that Kolesov did not at all resemble the ideal buyer nurtured by my dreams—the bashful father of a small family consisting of a wife and a five-year-old daughter.

  Vadim Leonidovich was bony and lanky, with intensely black slicked-back hair that was receding deeply above the temples, like Mickey Mouse. He smiled and gesticulated continually, and he had a very shrewd look about him, but in theory a shrewd man ought not to be interested in my apartment.

  Instead of a wife and a little fair-haired daughter, Kolesov had brought with him a friend by the name of Alik. Vadim Leonidovich introduced him and immediately broke into profuse, staccato apologies for descending unannounced on me and for bringing his workmate along as well. Apparently this Alik—a character with a face as red as sunburn—had kindly given Vadim Leonidovich a lift in his car. Alik stood in one spot with his fists thrust into the pockets of his leather jacket, swaying to and fro from his heels to his toes with a springy movement, like a rocking chair, and only once asked for some water.

  Vadim Leonidovich scampered round the sitting room as nimbly as a spider, glanced briefly into the kitchen, and soon I heard him cry out in joy from my uncle’s bedroom:

  “Alik, Alik, come here quickly!”

  “What’s up in there?” the sullen Alik muttered, but he answered the summons anyway.

  Kolesov was standing in front of the shelves, exultantly leafing through a book.

  “Would you believe it, eh?”

  His eyes met Alik’s and Alik coughed.

  “The Quiet Grass! Have you read it?” Kolesov asked, skewering me with a piercing glance.

  “No,” I replied drily. I was thoroughly fed up of Kolesov’s scurrying about and fatuous exclamations. “Is it worth reading?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said with a smile. “It’s a rubbishy little book. It’s just that for me it’s associated with a certain romantic memory that can’t be expressed in words. Koktebel, the sea… Alik here knows about it. I can tell you if you like…”

  I took the book out of his hands and examined it cursorily. Published in the late 1970s. The narrow spine was half worn away and it was hard to understand how Kolesov could possibly have discovered this “romantic memory” on my uncle’s shelves.

  “Listen!” he suddenly exclaimed. “You don’t need the book. Sell it to me, eh?”

  I said guardedly that if we made a deal, I would make him a present of this piece of trash.

  Vadim Leonidovich started fussing.

  “Didn’t I say that everything suits me just fine?… I’m willing to lay out er, er, er… eight thousand greenbacks. What do you say?” he asked, and froze with an anxious air.

  It was two thousand more than my very boldest forecasts. Inwardly exultant, I paused sagaciously to maintain gravitas, as if I were weighing up all the pros and cons, and then nodded.

  Vadim Leonidovich declined tea and delighted me by taking a tape measure out of his pocket and measuring the walls, drawing the conclusion: “The suite will be a perfect fit.” Then, in confirmation of the seriousness of his intentions, Kolesov informed me that he would like to start registering the deal the next day. I reminded him that on a Saturday everything would be closed. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, postponed our meeting until Monday and dictated his home and work telephone numbers for me.

  Vadim Leonidovich wheedled The Quiet Grass out of me anyway. “Oh, please, now we’ve struck a deal,” he whined jokingly, and I decided not to be petty and mean-spirited.

  Vadim Leonidovich pressed the book to his chest and said it was this “lucky find” that had decided everything; for him it was a “good sign” about the apartment. He suddenly recollected that an acquaintance was waiting for him in the car and it was terribly impolite to keep him waiting. Vadim Leonidovich hadn’t mentioned any third party before that…

  Now I realize it was my obliging nature that saved me. Who knows what would have happened if I had refused to let Kolesov have his present…

  Somehow it happened, no doubt because the conversation ran on, that I followed my visitors out. As we walked down the stairs, Kolesov joked happily, saying that he had been searching for The Quiet Grass for a long time, and now a stroke of luck had brought the book to him.

  In the hours that had passed since I came back from the shop and then received Kolesov, it had turned completely dark. The yard was empty. The woman knitting by the entrance, the garrulous dacha folk, the bald man with the bundle and the mechanic had all gone home.

  The car, a Zhiguli 2106, had two people in it: the driver and a pas
senger sitting beside him. When we appeared, they got out and Vadim Leonidovich waved the little book to them, after which the driver relaxed and leaned back against the car, while his companion came towards us. I had just enough time to realize that my visitors were not even a threesome, but a foursome…

  THE AMBUSH

  AND THEN CAME the whirlwind, breakneck sequence of bloody events with which my new life began. It all happened literally in seconds.

  The man who was walking towards us suddenly shuddered and collapsed to his knees, holding one hand to his temple, and beside him the short crowbar that someone had flung out of the darkness landed on the ground with a dull thud. The previous day’s Yeltsin-hater, the bald, husky man with the paper bundle, was already beside the driver. He made a stabbing movement and the bundle suddenly buried itself in his adversary’s stomach, so that the paper folded up concertina-wise around the bald man’s fist. He jerked his hand back out, and I saw a long, straight blade. The bald man drove his weapon into the driver’s side for good measure and the driver slumped down, lifeless, onto the ground. The killer deftly wiped down the blade with the crumpled paper.

  Kolesov manage to run off a couple of metres, but he was overtaken by the false dacha folk. I heard the dull sounds of a struggle.

  Alik tried to say something, but instead of words he belched out blood. The point of a knitting needle was protruding from his throat. Standing behind him was an elderly woman, the same one who had been knitting on the bench. Alik shuddered and another needle ran through the hand that he was holding over his Adam’s apple.

  The mechanic appeared, picked up the fallen crowbar and finished off the dying man with a sharp blow to the back of the head, then informed the elderly woman who had done in red-faced Alik with her needles:

  “This one’s finished, Margarita Tikhonovna.”

  Tucking the crowbar into his belt, he gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, “No noise now!”

  A dark-coloured RAF minibus drove up with its lights off. Two men jumped out of it and started deftly throwing the corpses into the back. The men acted swiftly, in unison.

  Repeatedly casting anxious glances at me through her glasses, Margarita Tikhonovna whispered:

  “Quietly now, quietly, everything’s fine, just keep it quiet…”

  The dacha lady came running up to her. Her vegetable-garden implement turned out to be a short pike. She held out the confiscated book and called in a whisper:

  “Pal Palych, hurry up.”

  The man with the moustache dragged over Kolesov, bound and gagged, and flung him crudely into the RAF.

  The bald man said to Margarita Tikhonovna:

  “I’ll go with Palych in their car and we’ll follow you.”

  “No, Igor Valeryevich, you come with us and Pal Palych will manage on his own,” she said, carefully tucking the book into the cuff of her cardigan before adding the command: “Let’s clear out!”

  Nudging me gently in the back, the bald man moved me onto a side seat in the minibus and perched on the seat beside me. The mechanic and the women also climbed in, the door slammed, and the RAF set off into the darkness.

  I should say that while the massacre was taking place I stood there without stirring a muscle, as if I had turned to stone, and probably couldn’t have given a shout, even if I had wanted to—I was struck completely dumb by the shock.

  Scenes flashed in front of my eyes from television reports about bandits who found out about apartment sales from inside informers. If Kolesov himself were not in a rather sorry state, I would have assumed that he had set everything up, but since we hadn’t signed any documents yet, such behaviour made no sense.

  Nightmarish questions buzzed around inside my head like an enraged swarm of bees: “Could the bandits really have made a mistake in their haste? What’s going to happen to me? I have been left alive and they haven’t even laid a finger on me. But why, or more to the point, for how long? Until it becomes clear that I don’t have any money and the sale hasn’t taken place?”

  Kolesov squirmed in his bonds on top of the corpses on the jolting floor of the RAF. It occurred to me that he had every reason to assume that I had set him up, although that also seemed absurd—no one takes the money with him to look at an apartment.

  Of all the people around me, the mechanic could certainly be taken for a genuine bandit—he had a really brazen face. The bald, husky man, who looked like a butcher from the market, also made a sinister impression. But looking at Margarita Tikhonovna and the dacha lady, it was impossible to believe that these genteel-seeming women had proved to be cold-blooded killers.

  The elderly woman immediately rebuked the mechanic:

  “Sanya, have you got any brains at all? If that crowbar had fallen on the asphalt, what a clang it would have made!”

  The young guy apologized.

  “Margarita Tikhonovna, honest to God, I was going to throw a mallet at first, but then I suddenly felt afraid—he was such a big, strong brute.” The mechanic prodded the dead man with his foot. “What if it didn’t stun him…”

  “Don’t scold Sasha,” the dacha lady interceded for her partner in crime. “I think it all went off quite excellently.”

  “Exactly,” the driver agreed. “Clean as a whistle.”

  “Tanechka, I know what I’m saying,” Margarita Tikhonovna objected. “And another thing, all of you; I asked you not to mention any names on an assignment! And there you go, like little children, ‘Margarita Tikhonovna’, ‘Pal Palych’…” she said, mocking them. “What did you think you were doing?”

  The dacha lady and the mechanic smiled guiltily.

  “Oh, come on now, Margarita Tikhonovna,” the bald man put in, “they were whispering… And you yourself, as it happens, addressed me in full form, name and patronymic, you just didn’t mention my surname,” he laughed.

  “I’m sorry, Igor Valeryevich, I should be thrown on the scrap heap too,” Margarita Tikhonovna said dejectedly. “But nonetheless, you young people, be more vigilant next time.”

  The mechanic, who had been sitting there, hanging his head, stopped acting out his contrition and suddenly held his hand out to me.

  “Alexander Sukharev.”

  “Alexei Vyazintsev,” I forced out.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the mechanic said, smiling. He looked about the same age as me, perhaps a little younger. “Well, how are you doing? Your pants are probably filled to overflowing, right?”

  While I was still pondering my reply to this familiar suggestion, Margarita Tikhonovna rapped the mechanic over the knuckles first.

  “Stop that, Sasha!” She gave a deep sigh and said in an exceptionally solemn tone of voice, “Alexei… Dear Alexei Vladimirovich, I can only imagine the conclusions you must have drawn from what you have seen. But let me tell you that you are in no danger whatsoever in our company. If only because all of us…”—at these words the mechanic, the dacha lady, bald Igor Valeryevich, the driver and his navigator nodded in unison—“… loved and respected your uncle Maxim Danilovich Vyazintsev… I swear on his cherished memory, we did not wish to frighten you, but unfortunately we could not warn you either. Too much would have had to be explained, you might not have believed us, and the criminals would have escaped unpunished. I hope that in the near future you will be able to make sense of everything for yourself and will not condemn us for this violence. Six months ago these… monsters…”—her voice trembled—“… villainously waylaid and murdered Maxim Danilovich…”

  The bald man turned over the lifeless Alik (a knitting needle protruded from his throat, running through his hand and holding it in place), threw back the leather flap of the dead man’s jacket and took out a very long awl, as slim as a needle, covered up to the handle with a narrow plastic tube.

  “There, feast your eyes on that,” he said, turning to me, “just so you won’t have any doubts about these characters. Their own make. They temper them specially in sealing wax—the blade’s as strong as diamond, it’ll pierce
anything you like.”

  “Ooh, the bastards!” said the mechanic Sasha Sukharev. He grabbed Kolesov by the scruff of the neck, shook him a few times and tossed him back onto the dead bodies, throwing in a heavy punch to the kidneys. Kolesov groaned.

  Margarita Tikhonovna observed this scene without the slightest sign of sympathy, and then mockingly waved the confiscated book under Kolesov’s nose.

  “Well, then? What’s that your name is? Vadim Leonidovich? How did you make such a mess of things, eh?”

  Kolesov squirmed in his bonds and his eyes flashed, full of torment and fear.

  “Now listen carefully. Your informer Shapiro has been detained. And therefore I hope you will be appropriately forthcoming at the interrogation… I can’t guarantee you your life, by the way, but even in the worst-case scenario, you’ll still see Saturday. Is there anything you want to say?”

  The mechanic Sukharev lifted Kolesov up, ripped the plaster off his mouth and pulled out the brownish, blood-soaked gag. Kolesov gurgled: “I didn’t kill anyone. That’s nothing to do with me… It was Marchenko who gave the orders…” Then the gag stopped his mouth again.

  “So you are prepared to cooperate?” Margarita Tikhonovna asked severely. “Or… were you killed during arrest? In principle Shapiro is enough for us. What do you think, Igor Valeryevich?”

  The bald man pressed the confiscated awl to Kolesov’s side and the miserable Vadim Leonidovich started nodding his head rapidly. What else could he do? In his place I would have accepted any conditions too.