Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [93]
“Murder leads to sociology?”
“Soviet sociology.”
“Assuming people are honest. I would assume that people would lie.”
“Murderers do.”
Arkady noticed that Max’s retinue had regrouped around them. Stas watched from a corner. Irina was in conversation in the hall that led to the kitchen, her back to this exchange. Arkady regretted ever opening his mouth.
“Speaking of honest answers, how long have you listened to Irina on the radio?” Max asked.
“About a week.”
For the first time Max seemed genuinely surprised. “A week? Irina’s been doing the newscast for a long time. I expected you to say you’d sat devotedly by the radio for years.”
“I didn’t have a radio.” Arkady glanced toward the hall. Irina was gone.
“And a week ago you did? And here you are in Munich! At this very party! Now, that’s an amazing coincidence,” Max said. “Pure chance hardly explains that.”
“Perhaps it was luck.” Stas joined the conversation. “Max, we want to hear more about your new television career. What is Donahue really like? And about your joint venture. I always thought of you as an inspirational leader, not a businessman.”
“But Tommy was going to tell me about his book,” Max said.
Tommy said, “We were just getting to the interesting part.”
Arkady ducked away. He found Irina in the kitchen, taking cigarettes from a carton open on the counter. Tommy was a haphazard chef; carrot shavings and celery greens spilled from chopping boards and around bright plastic appliances. A portable television sat on a shelf of cookbooks; a poster of an Aryan mother hung on the wall. The clock said two A.M.
Irina struck a match. Arkady remembered that the first time they had ever met, she had asked for a light, a test to see how he reacted. She didn’t ask now.
That first time, he remembered, he had been unruffled. Now his mouth was dry, his breath stopped, without words. Why was he trying a third time? Was he intent on exploring how many levels of humiliation he could sink to? Or was he a kind of Pavlov’s dog that insisted on being kicked?
What was strange was that Irina looked so much the same and yet not at all the same. She wasn’t changed so much as an amalgam of someone he knew and of a total stranger who had moved into the familiar body, not recently but long ago. She folded her arms. The cashmere and gold she wore were a long way from the rags and scarves she used to sport in Moscow. The image of her he had carried with him still fit her, but only as a mask. Different eyes looked through it.
Arkady had been on Arctic ice. It wasn’t as cold as this room. That was the trouble with knowing a woman intimately. When you’re no longer welcome, you’re banished to the dark. You spin around a sun that turns its back.
“How did you get here?” she asked.
“Stas brought me.”
She frowned. “Stas? I heard he also took you to the station. I told you he was a provocateur. He’s going a little far tonight—”
“Do you remember me?” Arkady asked.
“Of course I do.”
“You don’t seem to.”
Irina sighed. Even to himself, he sounded pathetic.
“Of course I remember you. I simply haven’t thought about you for years. It’s different in the West. I had to survive, get a job. I met a lot of different people. My life changed, I changed.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Arkady said. The way she described it, they were two tectonic plates moving in different directions. She was cold, analytical, correct.
Irina said, “I didn’t set back your career too badly?”
“A Russian hiccup.”
“Don’t make me feel bad,” she said, though there was no indication that he could.
“No. I had inflated expectations. Maybe my memory was playing tricks.”
“To tell you the truth, I barely recognized you.”
“I look that good?” Arkady asked. A feeble joke.
“I heard you were doing well.”
“Who told you?” Arkady asked.
Irina lit a second cigarette from the first. Why do Russians need to burn a little all the time? he wondered. She stared at him, the smoke shifting, her face shrouded by her hair. He imagined holding her. No, it wasn’t imagination;