“You’re sure?”
“Sure. You need a cigarette or something?”
“Yeah,” I said, taking the pack Molly offered. “Thank you.
Of course I remember you.”
“Val probably told you I was the good girl, the one who fit in, even in Florida, I dated boys who played football, I liked to shop, I was student president. You know my best friend in junior high was a little Russian tennis player from Almaty. When she lost some junior tournament, she killed herself. I decided I hated Russians right then.” Molly lit up, offered me her lighter.
Her hair was reddish brown, bangs over her forehead. A canvas bag was thrown over her shoulder. There was a wooden bench outside the dacha gates, and she sat on it. I sat next to her.
“He killed her, you know?” said Molly. “The bastard killed my lovely sister, he murdered her.”
“Grisha? You know that?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw him,” she said. “I saw him in Moscow a few days ago and he looked at me, and I could see he was terrified, as if he thought I was Val. I tried to find him again, but I couldn’t. He’s only met me a few times. I felt it. Twins feel things about each other. Did he?”
“I think so. Tell me what you know about him.”
“I met him a couple times.”
“What?”
“I met him in London last summer. He was very good-looking in a sort of spooky sci-fi way, you know? Very, very handsome, carved features, always smiling, great smile, good low voice, and funny, well, sort of funny,” said Molly. “I met Grisha’s mother at that sad little wedding in London. Val was all lit up. I think for the first time, just plain in love. Regular old-fashioned love and sex and somebody your own age, a nice good boy you were going to be with forever. She was a different kind of girl, but she had that in common with all of us.”
“Go on.”
“Val always liked older guys, rougher, smarter, remember Jack Santiago? She liked interesting people, which got her into trouble, she didn’t have real good pitch for emotional stuff. So at first I thought, wow, about fucking time Val met a regular guy, a nice guy, her age. But she was coy about Greg, or Grisha, or whatever the fuck he was called, I think she was shy, she told me to keep it to myself. My poor mom, Christ, she didn’t even know Val got married. I had to tell her after Val died.”
“What else?”
“Something went wrong between Grisha and Valentina the last few months, and then she was dead. My father went off his rocker. I went to her place and looked for all her diaries and stuff, but most of it was gone.”
“I was there.”
“Where?’
“In her apartment. Her stuff was all there, everything, her pictures, clothes, everything.”
“After she was murdered?” Molly said.
“Yes. So somebody was in there not long afterwards.”
“It was him.”
“Why did you come to Russia?”
“Like I said, our mom has a place not far away. She said she had to come here, she said she had to come to Russia, to her dacha, she’s half out of her skull because of Val, and because Dad went to New York to get her and bring her body back, apparently Val told him once she wanted to be with her grandparents in the cemetery, and I’m thinking, he’s out of his mind,” Molly added. “But I could imagine Val wanting it, for a while she became obsessed with Russia. We kind of stopped talking a lot, we were in different places,” she said. “Oh, shit, Artie, why did I make her feel bad?”
“No, she also loved New York. You didn’t make her feel bad.”
“I told her the Russian stuff was bullshit. Maybe it was because I always knew our dad preferred her. He never said or showed it, I just knew, they were connected in a different way.”
“I understand.”
“Thanks. Listen, I have to take my mom to New York. We don’t know if Daddy is ever coming. We’re leaving in the morning. But I wanted to see this place. I rode my bike over,” she said, pointing to the bicycle parked against the fence. “I don’t care about any of this Russian crap, you know, and the old house, our grandparents? It gives me the creeps. Daddy gave us the house, I told Val she could have my half. She said okay, but first we had to visit together, so we planned it for this summer.” She tossed her cigarette on the ground. “I miss her so bad, Artie.”
“Was she going to live here?”
“I think Val wanted to make it a country retreat for her kids.”
“Kids?”
“The girls she took care of. I don’t know what to do with it now.”
“Where’s your father?”
“I don’t know that either. We’ve only been here a few days. We were waiting for him. I think all that happens in this country is you get sucked in like quicksand and you can never get out. I hate it. It killed Val, and maybe it killed my dad. Fuck Russia, you know?” Her tone was defiant but her eyes were full of tears.
“When did you talk to him, to Tolya?”
“Over a week? Sunday? Maybe Monday. He was in London. He promised to come. He said, I’ll meet you. Wait for me. I’m still waiting. I called somebody in New York. Val’s body is still there.”
“You knew about Val when?”
“From my mom.”
I thought of something, “Do you ride a red Vespa?” I asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Somebody saw you on it not long before Val was murdered.”
“I brought it to the city, to New York. I was intending to give it to Val for a present, because I needed a car in Boston. I didn’t go right over to her place, I just rode around and saw friends, and I went out that night. My God, she was still alive while I was riding that fucking scooter, and I was too late after that. Somebody thought I was Val, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“I could have saved her.”
“No. Grisha killed her.”
“I’m glad the bastard is dead. Over in Barvika, they’re all talking about it, boo hoo. I bet he fucked every one of those stupid girls. All they want is to marry an oligarch,” said Molly. “I’m glad he’s dead.” I’m really glad you’re here. My dad always talks about you, like all the time. Like you would know how to deal with this kind of shit. He said if I was ever in trouble, and he was away, I should call you.”
I took a cigarette from her and we lit up and smoked for a few seconds in silence.
“We need to go inside the house,” I said finally.
“You think he’s here?” She glanced at the house where the windows were dark. “Maybe he’s hiding from somebody,” she said. “I need him to be here now,” she said. “I’m scared to go in.”
“Why?”
“I think I’ll find him in there. You know, not alive.”
“Why would he be hiding, who from?”
“It’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it Artie?”
“Yeah.”
“If Daddy knew Grisha killed my sister, what would he do?” said Molly. “He’s not like other people’s dads, you know? This is what we’re not saying, that if he found Grisha, that would be it. And then they’d get my dad, too, they’d put him away for murder.”
The light was fading, Russia closing in on us. I moved towards the house.
“Molly, look, I should tell you, just in case, I have a gun. I just don’t want to freak you out. Okay?”
She smiled.
“Oh, Artie, honey, I grew up in Florida, I’m like from America, from real America, from Florida where they fuck with the elections and everybody has guns,” she said. “It’s the American religion, you know that. My mother has a gun, for Pete’s sake, honey.” Molly had a slight Southern accent, and the sweet look of somebody who had been happy most of her life. She was a nice girl.
One hand in Molly’s, we went through the high gates, which were unlocked, then we stumbled through the weeds to the house.
The front door was locked. It had glass panes in the top half, and one was broken. I pushed it, and it fell in. I managed to push another one of the panes in too, and I heard it shatter lightly on wide planks inside the house.
It was very quiet. I listened to the house through the broken window. I couldn’t hear anything except a faint creaking noise, maybe a breeze, or a rat. Mice. Nobody was here. Sverdloff wasn’t here. Was he? It was a big house, two storeys. I listened some more.
“Let’s go,” said Molly. “Come on.”
I reached through the broken glass and found the doorknob, and turned it. The door opened and together we went inside the house.
Like a dog uncertain of what it was hearing, I stood in the doorway. Molly tried to go ahead. I tried to stop her, I put my arm out, but she went in anyway. She had a little flashlight in her purse. She turned it on and it made a narrow cone of light in the dark house. The old wide oak planks creaked under her feet.
“Molly?”
“Just wait, Artie,” she said, and I lost sight of her as she moved through the square hallway into the living room. “Wait,” she said, her voice echoing back at me. “Wait.”
I could hear her walking away after that, into the house. Her cell phone went off. She talked to it in a whisper and I couldn’t hear the words. I stood still and smelled the dust.
In the distance I saw a fluttering light, then I saw two. There are no ghosts, I told myself, except in the minds of Russians. But not in the real world.
I was beginning to hallucinate. Things swayed with the unreality of this candlelit world. Voices talked into my ear. My hand was ice cold on the metal of my gun. I held it in front of me. I watched the lights.
“You look like you saw something,” said Molly, reappearing. “Like you saw a spook,” she added, holding a couple of candles she had lit. “You okay?” In this light I saw how young she looked, much younger than Valentina had ever seemed.
“Come on,” I said, and we went through the house, one room at a time, looking for something. Anything. I thought I could smell Sverdloff’s aftershave, his cologne, the special scent he had made up for him in Florence in a medieval building on the Arno, he always said. It smelled of grapefruit. It arrived in New York in elaborate packages which contained the cologne in crystal bottles with carved gold stoppers. He had given me a bottle of it for a birthday.
“You smell him, don’t you?” said Molly.
“Yeah.”
“Me too. He always wore that stuff his friend Lorenzo made for him. He tried to get me to wear it. He was here, wasn’t he, Artie? He was in this house.” She spoke calmly, like a young doctor discussing the possibilities of a fatal disease.
“Yes.”
We moved through the rooms together, Molly with her candles.
Most of the furniture had been covered with dustsheets. One of the windows in the main room with its old beamed ceilings was broken, and a bird had left its nest in a corner of the room, high up, under the sloping roof.
In the kitchen, Molly put the candles on the long trestle table, a film of summer dust covering it, a huge tureen in the middle, the old copper samovar on a side table.
Everything the way I remembered it, but suspended in another time, unused now, empty, dusty. Except for the Grape Nuts. At one end of the table was a box of Grape Nuts, and an espresso pot, and a little empty blue tin that had contained caviar.
Molly picked up the pot, and made a face.
“There’s still coffee in here.”
The table looked as if somebody had left in the middle of breakfast. A cup was overturned, a napkin dropped on the floor.
“Only my dad eats Grape Nuts. He’s crazy for them. He always takes them with him. And caviar.” She picked up the little blue tin. “He’s so weird, he buys wine for a grand a bottle and drinks it like Coke, but he won’t travel without a box of Grape Nuts for breakfast, then he’ll have eggs with caviar, you know? Crazy asshole,” said Molly, smiling and then bursting into tears. “Where
is
he?”
“You okay here for a minute? I want to look around,” I said, after a while, and she nodded.
I left her one of the candles, took the other, and she looked at me and giggled.
“What?”
“You look like some kind of weird phantom, the gun in one hand, the candle in the other. God, Artie, where is he?” She lit a cigarette, and tossed the match in the empty cereal bowl.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Evidence?” she asked, taking it out of the bowl.
“I guess.”
“I was thinking of doing forensics anyhow,” she said. “Med school. I’m not going to be any good with people that are alive, you know,” said Molly.
“Yell if you need me,” I said, and went towards the study and music room that had been Tolya’s father’s domain.
All the time I could smell Tolya. He had been here. He had been here, but he was gone, unless there was something upstairs. I was hallucinating. From the kitchen I heard Molly singing an old Beatles tune.
“Hey Jude”, she sang to herself off key.
In the study, the walls were still jammed with books, books to the ceiling, new and old, in four languages. Records, old LPs were on other shelves.
There was a broken leather sofa under the windows. A big old-fashioned desk was on the other side of the room and above it was a portrait of Tolya’s mother.
I sat at the desk. There must be a caretaker or the house would have been stripped clean. Theft in the countryside had turned into big business. And Russians, like the Brits, once they had the dough, wanted a country life where they could pretend they were gentry. Or intellectuals. Or aristocrats. Or something they had never been and never would be. They could get the trappings. Books and furniture like Sverdloff’s could be cleaned up and sold for a bundle.
The leather-topped desk was scarred but there was no dust. Somebody had been cleaning up for sure. Somebody had been watching the house.
I left the study and climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. I checked all four.
The last room I went into had been Tolya’s when he was a boy. I sat on the lumpy bed with the sagging springs. I looked at the pictures on the wall, pictures of rock bands Tolya had played with and bands he had loved.
I went to the window and pulled up the shade, then pulled it down again. I looked in the closet. I could smell him here. I knew he had been here recently, but where was he? What had happened?
I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
I got on my hands and knees, and looked under the bed.
I lay flat on the floor now, and stretched myself so I could reach all the way under the bed where I saw something yellow on the floor. I reached out and grabbed it, and sat up and leaned against the wall.