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By Root 833 0

the cars they found themselves in Kazakhstan, in Central Asia. Back home, the Chechen Republic was liquidated. Russian names were given to our towns. We were removed from maps, histories, encyclopedias. We disappeared. Twenty, thirty years went by before we managed to return to Grozny, even to Moscow. Like ghosts, we make our way back home to see Russians in our houses, Russian children in our yards. And they look at us and they say, ‘Animals!’ Now you tell me, who’s been the animal? They point fingers at us and shout, ‘Thief!’ Tell me, who’s the thief? When anyone dies, they find a Chechen and say, ‘Murderer!’ Believe me, I would like to meet the murderer. Do you think I should feel sorry for them now? They deserve everything that’s happening to them. They deserve us.”

Makhmud’s eyes became their most intense, dead coals come alive, and then dimmed. His fingers unclenched and released Arkady’s lapel. Fatigue folded into a smile across his face. “I apologize, I wrinkled your jacket.”

“It came wrinkled.”

“Nevertheless, I got carried away.” Makhmud smoothed the jacket. He said, “I’d like nothing more than to find Kim. Grapes?”

Beno handed back a wooden bowl overflowing with green grapes. By now, Arkady could see not so much a family resemblance among him, Ali and Makhmud as a likeness of species, like the bill of a hawk. Arkady took a handful. Makhmud opened a short knife with a hooked blade to carefully slice off a bunch. When he ate, he rolled down the window to spit on the ground.

“Diverticulitis. I’m not supposed to swallow the seeds. It’s a terrible thing to grow old.”

Polina was dusting Rudy’s bedroom for prints when Arkady arrived from the car market. He had never seen her out of her raincoat before. Because of the heat, she wore shorts, had knotted her shirt into a halter and tied her hair up in a kerchief, and with her rubber gloves and little camel’s-hair brush she looked like a child playing house.

“We dusted before.” Arkady dropped his jacket on the bed. “Aside from Rudy’s prints, the technicians got nothing.”

“Then you have nothing to lose,” Polina said cheerfully. “The human mole is in the garage tapping for trapdoors.”

Arkady opened the window over the courtyard and saw Minin in his hat and coat in the open door of the garage. “You shouldn’t call him that.”

“He hates you.”

“Why?”

Polina rolled her eyes, then climbed a chair to dust the bureau mirror. “Where’s Jaak?”

“We’ve been promised another car. If he gets it, he’ll go to the Lenin’s Path Collective Farm.”

“Well, it’s potato time. They can use Jaak.”

At a variety of odd locations—on hairbrush and headboard, inside the medicine-cabinet door and under the raised toilet lid—were the shadowy ovals of brushed prints. Others had already been lifted with tape and transferred to slides lying on the night table.

Arkady pulled on rubber gloves. “This isn’t your job,” he said.

“It isn’t your job, either. Investigators are supposed to let detectives do the real work. I have the training for this and I’m better than the others, so why shouldn’t I? Do you know why no one wants to deliver babies?”

“Why?” Immediately, he was sorry he asked.

“Doctors don’t want to deliver babies because they’re afraid of AIDS and because they don’t trust Soviet rubber gloves. They wear three or four at a time. Imagine trying to deliver a baby wearing four pairs of gloves. They don’t do abortions either, for the same reason. Soviet doctors would rather set women out about a hundred meters away and watch them explode. Of course there wouldn’t be so many babies if Soviet condoms didn’t fit like rubber gloves.”

“True.” Arkady sat on the bed and looked around. Though he had followed Rudy for weeks, he still knew too little about the man.

“He didn’t bring women here,” Polina said. “There are no crackers, no wine, not even a condom. Women leave things—hairpins, pads, face powder on a pillow. It’s too neat.”

How long was she going to be up on the chair? Her legs were whiter and more muscular than he would have expected. Perhaps she’d wanted to be a ballerina at one time.