Bila Tserkva
Ukraine
The coffin lay in front of the altar. There were candles and the smell of incense, but no other mourners except for a middle-aged woman with a plain face and a withered leg, limping up the aisle toward them. The church was near a park, its gold-painted spires covered with snow. During the warmer months the park would be green, but now there were only naked trees, the branches heavy with ice and snow, creaking in the cold wind. They had found the church by a note taped to the front door of Alyona’s mother’s apartment.
“Laskavo prosymo.” Welcome. “Are you members of the family?” the woman asked in Ukrainian. Her name was Pani Shulhaska, and Iryna translated for Scorpion.
“We’re friends of her daughter, Alyona,” Iryna said.
“Is she coming, slava Bohu?” Glory to God.
“We don’t know,” Iryna said, glancing at Scorpion. “I don’t think so.”
“Would you like to look at her?”
Iryna translated, and Scorpion nodded, then walked up to the open coffin. It was the face of an older woman, white as plaster and made gaunt by disease. If Alyona had gotten any of her prettiness from this woman, he couldn’t see it. He returned to the pew, where Iryna sat with Pani Shulhaska.
“It’s sad no one came,” the woman said. “Most of her friends had already passed or moved away.”
“What did she die of?” Iryna asked.
“The breast cancer. It was terrible. I’m her neighbor. I did what I could to help,” she said, clasping and unclasping her hands in her lap. “I don’t understand. It’s so strange about Alyona. The son, we understood, of course.”
“She had a son?” Iryna asked.
“Her boy, Stepan. He was a few years older than Alyona,” Pani Shulhaska said, glancing at the coffin. “So sad.”
“I didn’t know Alyona had a brother,” Iryna said.
“They didn’t talk about him. He is in likarni.” She lowered her voice. “Ivan Pavlov Hospital.”
“Pavlovka, the mental hospital in Kyiv. The worst cases,” Iryna explained to Scorpion.
“What was the strange thing about Alyona?” Scorpion asked, Iryna translating.
“Four nights ago she called me. I told her she should come. The doctor said her maty,” her mama, “did not have long. She had to come home at once.”
“What did she say?” Iryna asked.
“She said a strange thing. She said she wasn’t sure she could come. She begged me to stay with her maty and not let her die alone. She said she would send money.”
“What happened?” Iryna said.
“I told her she should come say do pobachennya.” Goodbye. “It is your maty. We were both crying. That’s when she said something even more strange.”
“What was it?”
“She said she couldn’t come. She was doing it for Stepan. That’s all she would say. She had to do it for Stepan. It made no sense.” She looked at Iryna and Scorpion. “Stepan is in Pavlovka.”
Scorpion was doing the arithmetic. Four nights ago was the night before Alyona disappeared. The night before Pyatov left for Dnipropetrovsk. What about her brother was so important that it forced Alyona not to come see her dying mother?
“You knew Stepan?” Scorpion asked through Iryna.
“Tak, God help us!” Pani Shulhaska crossed herself. “A strange boy. So strange.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“The way he looks at you. Even when he was little. His eyes, like dead eyes. Like he is dead or you are dead.”
“What else?”
“He would kill things. Then he would burn them. He liked to play with fire. One day I came home from work and there were the burned remains of a cat in the snow in front of the building. I was afraid he would burn down the building. The other children were afraid of him. People used to turn away and spit when they saw him. They called him, ‘Syn Dyyavola,’ the Son of the Devil.” She crossed herself again. “Then one day I came home early, slava Bohu!” Thanks to God. “I smelled smoke coming from their apartment. I ran in. He had tied Alyona to the bed and set it on fire. His own sister!”
“What happened then?”
“The politsiy came. Olga Vladimyrivna, Alyona’s maty, had no choice. They sent Stepan to Pavlovka. That’s what is so strange.”
“What is?” Iryna asked.
“Alyona hated her brother. She hated and feared him. She wanted nothing to do with him. So why, when her maty is dying and trying to stay alive just to see her, would she not come because she has to do something to help Stepan? It makes no sense.”
Scorpion’s mind raced. The pani was right. It didn’t add up. And why, when Alyona was in the middle of a political assassination plot involving both of her lovers and needed a place to hide, didn’t she come home to her dying mother?
“And now this,” Pani Shulhaska said, opening a straw basket and taking out an envelope. “This comes in the mail today.” The envelope had money in it, about five hundred hryvnia. “With a note from Alyona,” showing it to Iryna, who translated it out loud.
Dearest Lyubochka Vasylivna,
Please take this money and look after my maty. I will come as soon as I can. I pray God she will still be with us. When I see you I will explain why and you will understand. Bud’te zdorovi, God bless you, and in Jesus’ name please forgive me.
Alyshka
She had mailed it the morning she disappeared or was murdered, Scorpion thought. Whatever plot she was involved in with Shelayev, she still thought she’d be able to come, until Pyatov or someone else stopped her. But it wasn’t of her own free will. The note made clear she didn’t want to let her mother die without seeing her, that if she could come, she would. That little triangle—she and Shelayev and Pyatov—was the key to everything. “We have to go,” he told Iryna. They stood up.
“You’re not staying for the service? He’s good, this priest,” Pani Shulhaska said.
“Pereproshuyu,” Scorpion said, I’m sorry, and he pressed a hundred hryven bill into her hand.
“Slava Bohu,” Iryna said. God bless. She kissed Pani Shulhaska on the forehead and held her hand for a moment. Afterward, she joined Scorpion outside the church. Although it was early afternoon, the winter sky was already growing dark. It was very cold.
“Now what?” she asked.
“If we find out what happened to Alyona, we’ll find Shelayev,” Scorpion said.
“It’s getting late,” Iryna said, looking at the sky.
“I know,” he said, shivering inside his overcoat.
The wind blew snow from the trees in the park across the way.