Snow
Stuart M. Kaminsky
If there had been less blood, following the trail in the snow would have been quite difficult. For one thing, the sun was just beginning, slowly, lazily, to rise over Moscow. For another thing, the snow was still falling. Not as heavily as it had throughout the night but enough to quickly fill in footprints.
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, though the temperature hovered in the 20s, was warm in the heavy wool coat of his uniform. And his cap? He perspired under it and would gladly have taken it off as he trudged forward if it were not for the watchful eye of the detective with whom he had been teamed on the call.
Rostnikov had been a policeman for less than a month. His training had been minimal and his apprenticeship to an indifferent veteran had been enough to make the young policeman briefly reconsider his choice of profession.
"This way," Rostnikov said over his shoulder.
Behind him Inspector Luminiov grunted and though Porfiry Petrovich did not turn his head, he could tell from the smell that the inspector had Paused to light a cigarette.
The trail of blood went around a corner of the block of four-story concrete apartment buildings. Somewhere in the distance, Rostnikov heard the clang of a trolley.
Rostnikov wanted to run, to find the end of this stream of vermilion that rested atop the clean whiteness, but he could not. His leg would not permit it. Rostnikov talked to his leg, muttered to his leg, sometimes within himself, sometimes aloud.
Leg," he said now. "A child has been taken, a baby. The child is in the hands of a man who has killed, a man who may well be mad."
Although his leg did not use words, the answer was clear to the burly young policeman with a broad face that could only be Russian.
"When that German tank came, you could have pulled me out of its path," said his leg.
"We've been through this," said Rostnikov dragging his reluctant, crippled leg behind him. "I was a boy soldier, a little boy in a large ragged uniform. I was trapped."
"That does me little good," said the leg.
"Then," said Rostnikov, "we must simply learn to live together, to cooperate."
"I have no desire to cooperate," his leg responded.
"Then," said Rostnikov,"! shall have to resign myself to making the best of things."
"What? What did you say?" asked Luminiov, moving to Rostnikov's side.
"Talking to myself," said Rostnikov. "That way."
He pointed across the street. There was no traffic. In this forgotten neighborhood of crumbling ill-built tenements, there were no cars but those belonging to the police and no State-paid old women with brooms to tirelessly clear the sidewalks and streets.
The trail of blood led across the street toward the doorway of a building that looked like all the buildings that faced and surrounded it. Four-foot-high drifts of snow sloped up the side of the building, covering all but the very tips of the barred ground floor windows.
Luminiov let out a sigh of boredom, took a deep drag of his cigarette, and looked at the dark doorway. Luminiov was a lean man of about forty with white hair who looked as if he were half-asleep. Rostnikov knew his superior had been drinking heavily the night before, possibly even into the early hours of the morning. Vodka left no smell, but Rostnikov knew well the signs. They were with him every day on the streets of Moscow. Dos-toyevsky had written about those signs and the dazed dangers of vodka a century ago.
Luminiov wore a black overcoat. He unbuttoned it and removed his pistol from a holster that was badly in need of polishing.
"Follow the trail," said Luminiov. "I'll stay out here in case he tries to escape this way."
Rostnikov nodded. He had no choice. Had he been given the choice he would have left Luminiov outside in any case. If the man were in the building, he was probably carrying the child. Rostnikov had no doubt that the Inspector at his side would fire at man and child if there were even the slightest chance that the man might be carrying a weapon.
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov had no desire to die. He had a wife. She was pregnant with their first child. He had much to live for, but the murderer who had entered the building had taken a baby.
Rostnikov limped toward the entryway of the apartment building. As he moved, he looked up at the falling snow. Looking up saved his life. The block of concrete was coming straight at him. Rostnikov rolled to his right as the jagged missile crashed througn the snow a few feet away.
"Are you all right?" Luminiov called with a vague interest rather than real concern.
"I am alive. I appear to be uninjured," said Rostnikov, rolling over awkwardly and looking up to be prepared for any other rocks amid the snow.
"Good," said Luminiov.
Through the thin flurry of white flakes, Rostnikov could see a figure at the edge of the roof.
"Go away!" shouted the man. He had something in his arms. It wasn't a block of concrete. It was a baby. The baby was crying.
Rostnikov looked at Luminiov, who was drawing his gun, and shouted up at the man on the roof.
"Step back. I'm coming up."
"No."
Rostnikov rose awkwardly.
Though the distance was not great, the weather was a problem. Lumin-iov's shot struck the edge of the roof with an echoing RRRING.
"Don't!" shouted Rostnikov both at Luminiov and the man on the roof.
The man hesitated and raised the infant over his head.
"He won't shoot again," Rostnikov shouted to the man on the roof.
Luminiov was aiming more carefully now. Rostnikov turned to his superior and said loud enough for the man on the roof to hear, "If you are responsible for that baby's death, I will kill you."
"You will kill me?" said Luminiov, turning his weapon on the young officer.
"Yes," said Rostnikov calmly.
He had seen babies die in the war, had witnessed the bodies of many, but the babies, the dead babies had wounded him more than any wounds inflicted on him by the Nazis.
Luminiov put his gun hand to his side and said with a shrug, "We'll talk about this later. We will talk. Be sure of that."
Rostnikov knew that Luminiov had few choices. If he shot Rostnikov, not only would he have to explain why he had done so, he would also have to cope with the madman on the roof.
"Go," said Luminiov.
"I'm coming up," called Rostnikov. "Have you got a blanket, sweater, something up there?"
"Blanket? No."
"The baby must be very cold. Take off your coat or something."
The man on the roof stepped back. His uniform now wet with snow, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov moved into the entryway, which smelled of the thousands of cigarettes smoked by the out-of-work residents who gathered each day with nothing to do but argue and complain.
The door was not locked. None of the doors to these concrete tributes to Stalin were ever locked. There was no point to a lock. Any nine-year-old could get through with a piece of wire and a laugh.
The inner lobby was dark, cold, unheated. Since every building was heated by the central gas system, usually buildings like this were too hot or too cold. This one on this day was too cold.
There was a concrete stairway with a rusting metal railing. He went to it and began moving slowly upward, coaxing his complaining left leg, promising it rest later.
The climb was slow though Rostnikov wanted to move quickly. He encountered no one coming down. It was still too early and the gunfire may well have convinced those few who had reason to arise early that they had better reason to stay locked in their apartments a bit longer.
Luminiov had taken the call only an hour earlier. Rostnikov had been the only uniformed officer available in the district station. Luminiov had simply pointed to him and said, "You," not even asking the young uniformed officer his name. Rostnikov had been waiting for his partner, his senior partner who was, once again, late for their shift.
Rostnikov had followed the Inspector. They had said little on the way to the scene.
Rostnikov knew Luminiov by sight. Luminiov was vaguely aware of the short, burly policeman only because the man had sad eyes and a crippled leg. Luminiov, had he been able to stir enough interest within himself, might have asked how a cripple could become a policeman. Had he asked, Rostnikov would have told him that he had drifted through jobs in a factory, as a trolley conductor until, at the age of thirty-three, he had decided to become a policeman. His war record had been enough to get him the job and, until now, a series of crimes no greater than rousting drunks. Most of his brief career as a policeman had involved following his partner, who made the rounds of blackmarketers who doled out bribe money which Rostnikov refused to take a share of. His refusal, rather than making his partner suspicious, had pleased the veteran, who did not have to share his take.
This moment, however, this very moment was the height of his brief career as a policeman. He did not think of that now. He would later, but not at this moment. He had glimpsed the baby on the roof and that sight now drove him. As he moved forward, he remembered the apartment where minutes ago they had discovered what remained of the dead woman.
There had been a tiny, single room large enough for a bed, a makeshift crib, a torn sofa, a wooden table with a piece of wood under one of the four legs to keep it from toppling over, and three unmatched chairs. There was a very small alcove which had been turned into a kitchen area. There was also the dead woman in the middle of the room.
She was very thin, and still wore a sweater she no longer needed to help ward off the cold. She no longer had a face.
The reason for her lost identity was a bloody block of wood near the door, a block of wood like so many in Moscow apartments, a block of wood to jam against the door to keep out intruders who ignored locks.
Luminiov had stepped back into the second floor hallway and caught an old woman peeking out of her door.
"You," he called sternly. "Out here. We are the police."
The old woman reluctantly came into the hallway and down to the small apartment where Rostnikov was examining but not touching the body.
"Where is the baby?" Rostnikov asked before Luminiov could ask a question.
"Is she, yes, she is dead," said the old woman.
"The baby," Rostnikov repeated gently. "The crib is still warm, damp. The baby has a fever. Where is the baby?"
Luminiov had leaned back against the wall, lit a cigarette, and watched with a hint of amusement. This was routine. The husband or boyfriend had done this. Cramped in a little hole. No job. Too cold to walk off anger. Perhaps drunk. The baby crying. Regimes had changed but in more than 500 years, Russians had not. The baby was probably dead somewhere nearby. No one would miss it. And if it lived who would take care of it?
The sun was definitely out now though it was visible only as a vague sullen glow through the still falling snow. Now, people began to slowly emerge from the apartment buildings, bundled, trudging, glancing at Luminiov, who knew that he was supposed to secure the scene, keep people away. A falling child or, worse, a falling stubborn young policeman with a bad leg could hit one of them.
Luminiov looked up and saw nothing at the edge of the building. He stepped back a dozen paces into the doorway of a boarded֊up apartment building.
Rostnikov climbed the last narrow stairway to the door to the roof. If it was locked or barricaded, he would have to decide on whether he would go back or attempt to break through. A breakthrough might panic the bleeding man.
The door was not locked but the wind made it difficult to push open. When he did, he looked around for the man and baby. The snow was swirling harder atop the roof than on the street below, but it was not a terrible snowstorm.
Even without the trail of blood on the rooftop snow and the deep footprints, he would have quickly found the man who made no attempt to hide or respond. The baby, wrapped in a thin sheet, was cradled in the man's right arm. The left arm hung at the man's side. He wore a flannel shirt, which was not tucked in, and blood dripped from his dangling fingers.
The man himself was big, overweight, thin hair, about forty years old, and filled with panic.
"You shoot me and I throw him over the edge. I swear. And I'll jump too. If you don't care, shoot me. You know what? I don't care. What is there tor me? I'll go to jail, execution. Better to die now."
Below, on the street, a young woman urged on by her friends approached the policeman smoking in the doorway of the boarded-up building. Her mission was to find out what was happening. Her sister lived in the building the policeman was looking at.
She started to speak but Luminiov waved her away and looked up at the roof across the street. Loud voices were coming from up there and if there was silence Luminiov could just make out what was being said.
"What's the baby's name?" asked Rostnikov, moving forward a step.
"Alexander," the man said, looking at the baby.
"He is yours?"
"I think so. Who knows? She was no beauty. I mean . . . but there are men. And I'm not much . . . What difference does it make now?"
"Can you hold Alexander up so I can see his face?" asked Rostnikov as he limped another step forward.
"Stop!" shouted the man.
Rostnikov stopped.
"You mind if I sit over there? On the vent?"
"You'll be cold. You'll have to sit in the snow," the man said.
Rostnikov shrugged.
"Better a wet bottom than an angry leg."
"Sit, but I'm getting weak," said the man. "I'm going to throw him over the edge and then follow him."
Rostnikov moved to the vent and sat. It was cold. He looked around. The snow was now coming down harder.
"We're in for three feet at least," said Rostnikov, rubbing his left leg with his gloved hands.
"Is someone coming behind you? Are you planning to trick me? If someone comes through that door—"
"No one but me is coming," said Rostnikov. "You're cold. The baby's not wrapped warmly enough. Will you accept my coat? You can tuck the baby under it."
"Alexander," said the man.
"Yes, Alexander," repeated Rostnikov. "And you are?"
"A dead man."
"Yes, but does the dead man have a name?"
"Ivan," he said. And then he laughed. "Millions of Ivans. One more will die. Millions of Alexanders. Dead people don't need coats. When we were alive we could have used your coat but. . . dead people don't. . ."
"... need coats," Rostnikov said, shifting his wet behind.
"Yes."
"What do you know about plumbing, Ivan?" asked Rostnikov.
"Plumbing. Nothing. I am . . . was a painter."
"Apartments?"
"Yes."
Rostnikov nodded solemnly.
"Are you a good painter?"
"When I have enough time, good brushes, good paint but I haven't had work for ... I don't know."
Ivan tried to lift his dangling arm to put around the baby. The arm resisted and then slowly moved as Ivan bit his lower lip. When he did get his injured arm around the baby, the thin sheet was covered instantly in blood.
"Plumbing," Rostnikov said.
"I don't care about plumbing," said Ivan, tears welling in his eyes.
"Intricate," said Rostnikov. "Intricate but logical if done right like the inside of a body. You know, veins, arteries, intestines."
"I'm not interested," said Ivan.
Something stirred to Rostnikov's left. A man in an overcoat wearing a cap and carrying something in his right hand stomped up the stairs from below and onto the roof. Ivan moved to the edge of the roof, stumbling, bleeding.
Rostnikov forced himself up and called, "No, he is not a policeman."
The baby began to whimper, too cold to really cry.
Ivan looked back at the bewildered man, who carried a shovel.
"What?" asked the man, looking at the policeman and the bleeding Ivan.
"Who are you?" Rostnikov asked.
"Who am I?"
"Yes, that is the question," said Rostnikov. "The prize for the correct answer may be the saving of a life, maybe two lives."
"I ... I am Julian Korianovich. When it snows, I shovel the roof so it doesn't collapse the way it did in ... I don't know, a year, two years after it was built."
"You get paid for this?" asked Rostnikov, turning his back to Ivan and the whimpering child.
Julian Korianovich looked at the baby and bleeding man. Julian Korianovich touched his full mustache with his gloved hand.
"Paid? Something, a little, not much. I have a room, my wife and I. We don't. . . What is happening?"
"Snow," said Rostnikov, looking up. "We are talking and watching the snow fall."
"Stop!" shouted Ivan.
Rostnikov turned to the man.
"Why did you kill her?"
"She . . . No room. She complained, complained, complained. She drove me mad. I didn't think. I just wanted her to unfold her arms and stop looking at me like that, stop playing with the buttons on that damned sweater."
"How did you get injured?"
Ivan looked down at his arm. His face had turned nearly white from the loss of blood.
"She shot me," he said. "She had a gun. I didn't know she had a gun. We could have sold it. Instead she shot me. I had just hit her once. She said she had decided to shoot me the next time I hit her. She shot me and then . . . Where did she get money to buy a gun?"
"Where is the gun?" asked Rostnikov.
"I don't know. In the room."
"No," said Rostnikov.
The baby continued to whimper.
"Then," said Ivan, trying to think, "it is in my pocket."
With that he attempted to move his injured arm to the pocket of his pants, but the arm would not obey. He could not shift the baby.
"It is in my pocket," he said. "If I could get it out, I would shoot myself. Maybe I would shoot you and the shoveler too. Why should you live if my baby and I are dead? You don't believe me, do you?"
"I believe you," said Rostnikov.
"I believe you too," said Julian the roof shoveler.
"Now, it is time," said Ivan sadly, looking down at the baby.
Rostnikov began moving toward the man and the whimpering infant, circling to the left. Ivan moved back.
"I'm enjoying our talk," Rostnikov said.
"I am too weak to talk," said Ivan. "Too weak. And there is nothing to talk about."
"Did you know that the American president was murdered?" asked Rostnikov, moving slowly forward.
"Kennyadi is dead? You lie."
"Why would I lie? Would you like to know how he died? Where? It was in Texas."
"A cowboy shot him," said Julian the shoveler.
"Don't run at me," said Ivan, who had backed up to the very edge of the roof.
"With this leg? I can do many things, but running is not one of them. The snow is stopping. It is time to end this. Hand me the baby."
"No," said Ivan, crying. He bent his head, kissed the child, and with what little remained of his strength he dropped the baby off the roof.
Julian screamed in sudden fury and ran at Ivan, shovel held high. Rostnikov stepped between the two men and put his arms around the screaming attacker. The man found himself lifted into the air.
"Stop," Rostnikov said gently. "I have work to do."
He dropped the man gently in the snow and Julian began to weep.
"I just came up to shovel the snow," he said.
Ivan was tottering on the edge of the roof. With his free hand he fumbled at the pocket where the gun was awkwardly tucked. Rostnikov tried to move forward quickly but he was unable to reach Ivan before he pulled out the weapon.
Instead of aiming it at his own head, the pale bleeding man pointed it weakly in the general direction of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.
The shot crackled in the cool morning air.
Ivan let out a small sigh, crumpled, and tumbled backward off the roof. Rostnikov moved as quickly as he could to the place where Ivan had fallen. Below him, the dead Ivan lay sprawled, a snow angel, and Inspector Luminiov stood with his gun in his hand and a whimpering baby in his arms.
"The baby," cried a thoroughly confused Julian, tugging at his mustache.
"The baby."
"The baby is alive," Rostnikov said, limping to the open door.
When he got to the street, Luminiov stood alone next to the body in the snow. People were watching from a distance, uncertain about what they had seen beyond a baby being thrown from a roof and a man being shot by the police.
Luminiov handed the child to Rostnikov and took off his coat to wrap the baby in.
"You are a man to be watched," Luminiov said, putting his weapon back in the now exposed holster.
"Watched?" asked Rostnikov, touching the baby's cheek. It was cool but not cold and the baby was crying. A good sign. Rostnikov wrapped Alexander in Inspector Luminiov's coat, removed the glove on his right hand, and put his small finger into the infant's mouth. The baby began to suck. Another good sign.
"You maneuvered him to the edge of the roof," said Luminiov, lighting a cigarette. "I heard. You maneuvered him over the deepest drift of snow. You kept him talking while he grew weaker so he couldn't throw the baby, only drop it. And when it was clear the snow was about to stop and the drift wouldn't get any deeper . . . Confirm my observation, Officer."
Rostnikov was looking at the baby.
"I am not that smart, Inspector."
"Oh, but you are. You are a man to watch, Officer—?"
"Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov."
"I've had someone call an ambulance," said Luminiov. "Let's get out of the cold. When they take the baby and the body, I'll let you buy me a drink."
"I would like to go to the hospital with Alexander," said Rostnikov.
"Alexander?"
"The baby."
"Yes, Alexander. Sentiment can ruin a promising career," said Luminiov with a smile.
Rostnikov said nothing. The snow had completely stopped. Moscow Was covered in white. It was winter, the favorite season of Russians.