Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [54]
Arkady looped around the horse track to Gorky Street, stuck the blue light on the car roof, leaned on his horn and raced down the middle lane while traffic officers, like so many semaphores in slickers and batons, cleared the way ahead. The rain had started again, marching in gusts up the street, raising umbrellas on the sidewalk. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. It was the sound of water tearing under the wheels, the blur of a windshield without wipers, the gondola flow of running lights and the melting of store windows that he pursued. At the Intourist Hotel, prostitutes fluttered for cover like pigeons.
Without braking, Arkady swung into Marx Prospect. Rain turned the wide square into a lake that taxis surged through like motorboats. Move fast enough and you could move through time, he thought. Gorky Street, for example, had been given back its old title of Tverskaya, Marx Prospect was being renamed Mokhovaya and Kalinin, just ahead, was once again New Arbat. He imagined Stalin’s ghost wandering the city in confusion, lost, looking into windows, frightening babes. Or worse, seeing the old names and not being confused at all.
Through the rain Arkady saw that a traffic officer had stopped a taxi in the middle of the square. Trucks blocked him on the right; to his left were oncoming cars. He hit his brake pedal and fought the squirming wheels as the faces of the officer and the taxi driver gaped in the lights. The Zhiguli skidded up to their trouser legs.
Arkady jumped out. The officer wore a plastic cover on his cap. A license was in one hand and a blue five-ruble note in the other. The taxi driver had a narrow face with eyebrows frightened to his hairline. Both looked as if they had been struck by lightning and were waiting for the thunder’s clap.
The militiaman stared at the car bumper, miraculously stopped. “You almost killed us.” He waved the ruble note, which was damp and limp. “Excellent, it’s a bribe. A lousy five rubles. You can take me off and shoot me, you don’t need to run me down. Fifteen years and I make two hundred and fifty rubles a month. You think my family can live on that? I have two bullets in me and they gave me a traffic light, as if that made up for it. Now you want to kill me over a bribe? I don’t care. I no longer care.”
“You’re not hurt?” Arkady asked the taxi driver.
“No problem.” The man snatched his license back and dove into his car.
“You, too?” Arkady asked the officer; he wanted to be sure.
“Yes, fuck, who cares? Still on duty, comrade.” The officer saluted. He became braver when Arkady turned his back. “As if you never saw a little extra. The higher you go, the more you get. At the top it’s a golden trough.”
Arkady sat in the Zhiguli and lit a Belomor. He was soaked—soaked and likely crazy. As he put the car in gear he noticed that the officer had stopped all traffic for him.
He drove more carefully along the river. The major question was whether he should pull over to put the windshield wipers on. Was it worth getting even more wet just so he could see? Was he a good enough driver for it to make a difference?
Clouds drifted in his way as the road dipped south by the swimming pool where the Church of the Saviour used to stand, and he found himself forced to drive onto the sidewalk and stop. It was stupid. Stalin had torn down the church. How many Muscovites actually remembered the Church