Polar Star (16 page)

The bulkheads of the cabin were dyed a romantic maroon by a glass wind chime that hung before the porthole. The room was a little dizzying, a nautilus shell of colors, of inner folds and cushions, of warring perfumes as powerful as incense, of life crammed into a steel compartment. There were more pictures in evidence than before, as if the removal of Zina had released the last constraint on the three cabin mates remaining. The wardrobe
door was decorated with more Uzbeks and Siberian construction workers shimmering in the watery reflection of the chimes.

Arkady was looking under Zina’s stripped mattress when Natasha arrived. She was in a damp blue running suit, the universal outfit of Soviet sports. Sweat lay like dew on her cheeks, but her lipstick was fresh.

“You remind me of a crow,” she told Arkady. “A scavenger.”

“You’re observant.” He didn’t tell her what she reminded him of, which was her nickname Chaika for the big limousine. An out-of-breath Chaika in a blue tarp.

“I was doing calisthenics on deck. They said you wanted to see me here.”

Because Arkady was wearing rubber gloves from the infirmary his sense of touch took all his concentration. When he pulled open a slit in the mattress, a tape cassette slid out. “Van Halen,” said the case. Rooting around inside the mattress, he came out with three more tapes and a small English-Russian dictionary. Flipping through it, he noticed some words underlined in pencil. The lines had the heavy assertiveness of a schoolgirl’s, as did the words, which all had to do with sex.

“A major breakthrough?” Natasha asked.

“Not quite.”

“Aren’t there supposed to be two witnesses in a police search?”

“This is not a search by any official body; this is just me. Your cabin mate may have had an accident, maybe not. The captain has ordered me to find out.”

“Hah!”

“That’s what I’m thinking too. I was once an investigator.”

“In Moscow. I heard all about it. You became involved in anti-Soviet intrigue.”

“Well, that’s one story. The point is, for the last year I’ve been in the hold of this ship. It’s been an honor, of
course, to take part in the process of preparing fish for the great Soviet market.”

“We feed the Soviet Union.”

“And a wonderful slogan it is. However, not expecting this particular crisis, I have not maintained my skills as an investigator.”

Natasha frowned as if examining an object she didn’t know quite how to handle. “If the captain has ordered you to carry out a task, you should do so happily.”

“Yes. But there is another limitation. Natasha, we work together on the factory line. You’ve expressed the opinion that some men on the line are soft-bellied intellectuals.”

“They couldn’t find their pricks if they weren’t tied on.”

“Thank you. You come from different lineage yourself?”

“Two generations of hydroelectric construction workers. My mother was at the upper Bratsk Dam. I was brigade leader at Bochugany Hydroelectric Station.”

“And a decorated worker.”

“The Order of Labor, yes.” Natasha accepted compliments stiffly.

“And a Party member.”

“I hold that lofty honor.”

“And a person of underestimated intelligence and initiative.”

Arkady remembered that when Kolya lost a finger in the saw and blood was spraying from his hand over his face, the fish and everyone around him, it was Natasha who immediately tied her scarf tightly around his wrist, then made him lie down with his feet up and guarded him fiercely until a stretcher was brought. When he was taken to the infirmary, she searched on her hands and knees for the missing finger so it could be sewn back on.

“The estimation of the Party is sufficient. Why did you ask me down here?”

“Why did you leave construction work for the cleaning
of fish? You got double pay at the dams, plus an Arctic bonus for some of them. You worked outside in the healthy air instead of in the hold of a ship.”

Natasha crossed her arms. Her cheeks colored.

A husband. Naturally. There were more men than women at a construction site, but not as on a ship, where more than two hundred healthy men were trapped for months with perhaps fifty women, half of them grandmothers, leaving a ratio of ten to one. Natasha was always touring the deck in her running suit or fox-trimmed coat or, on a day with the merest hint of balminess, in a flower-print sundress that made her resemble a large, threatening camellia. Arkady was embarrassed for being so obtuse.

“Travel,” she said.

“The same as me.”

“But you don’t go into the foreign ports; you stay on the ship.”

“I’m a purist.”

“You have a second-class visa, that’s why.”

“That too. What’s worse, I have had a second-class curiosity. I have been so content on the factory line that I have not participated in the full social and cultural life of the ship.”

“The dances.”

“Exactly. It’s almost as if I haven’t been here at all. I know nothing about the women or the Americans—or, to be more particular, about Zina Patiashvili.”

“She was an honest Soviet worker who will be badly missed.”

Arkady opened the wardrobe. The clothes were on hangers in order of owner: Dynka’s girl-sized apparel, Madame Malzeva’s frowsy dresses, Natasha’s giant red evening gown, sundresses, pastel running suits. He was disappointed in Dynka’s clothes because he’d expected some colorful Uzbek embroidery or golden pants, but all he saw was a Chinese jacket.

“You took away Zina’s clothes already,” Natasha said.

“Yes, they were laid out for us very nicely.”

Three wardrobe drawers held lingerie, stockings, scarves, pills, even a swimsuit in Natasha’s drawer. The fourth was empty. He checked the backs and bottoms for anything taped to the drawers.

“What are you looking for?” Natasha demanded.

“I don’t know.”

“Some kind of investigator you are.”

Arkady took a hand mirror from his pocket and looked under the sink and bench for anything taped to the underside.

“Aren’t you going to dust for fingerprints?” Natasha asked.

“We’ll get to that later.” He checked under the berths, leaving the mirror propped against the books on Zina’s mattress. “What I need is someone who knows the crew. Not another officer and not someone like me.”

“I’m a Party member but I’m not a slug. Go talk to Skiba or Slezko.”

“I need an assistant, not an informant.” Arkady opened the wardrobe again. “There are only so many places to hide anything in a cabin like this.”

“Hide what?”

He felt Natasha tensing beside him. He thought he’d sensed her doing it before. She seemed to tilt as he opened her drawer a second time. It was the swimsuit, of course, a green-and-blue bikini that wouldn’t get past her knee. It was the suit Zina had worn with the sunglasses on deck that warm day.

The moral code on a ship was like the code of prison. The worst crime—more heinous than murder—was theft. On the other hand, it was only natural to divide up the possessions of someone dead. Either way, though, having the swimsuit and concealing it could cost Natasha her sacred Party card.

“I bet your cabin’s the same as mine,” Arkady said.
“Everybody’s always lending and borrowing from everyone else? Sometimes it’s difficult to know whose is whose? I’m glad we found this.”

“It was for my niece.”

“I understand.”

Arkady laid the bikini on the bed. In the mirror he watched Natasha’s eyes remain on the wardrobe. He did feel shameless about the mirror, but he didn’t have the time or means for an ethical, scientific investigation. Returning to Natasha’s side, he again perused the clothes rack. As a kind of generalization it could be said that adult Russian women went through a metamorphosis that provided them with a Rubenesque bulk against northern winters. Zina had been Georgian, a Southerner. The only one of her three cabin mates who could have worn any of her clothes was little Dynka, and the only piece of apparel with the sort of dash that seemed like Zina was Dynka’s red quilted Chinese jacket. In most foreign ports there were shabby stores that specialized in the cheap goods that Soviet mariners and fishermen could afford. Often the shops were in poor neighborhoods far from the dock, and groups of Soviets could be seen walking miles to save the cab fare. A prime souvenir was such a red jacket with golden Oriental dragons and snap pockets. The trouble was that this was Dynka’s first voyage and they hadn’t made any port calls yet. With a little thought he wouldn’t have had to use the mirror at all. Now he felt even more ashamed.

As Arkady removed the jacket from its hanger Natasha’s eyes grew like those of a girl watching her first magician. “And this,” he said. “Zina lent this to Dynka before the dance?”

“Yes.” More firmly she added, “Dynka would never steal anything. Zina was always borrowing money and never paying it back, but Dynka would never steal.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Zina never wore it. She was always fussing with it,
but she never wore it on board. She said she was saving it for Vladivostok.” The words poured out of her with relief. There were no more glances at the wardrobe.

“Fussing?”

“Sewing it. Mending it.”

The jacket seemed new to Arkady. He kneaded the quilting and the padded edge of the front. The label said “Hong Kong. Rayon.”

“A knife?”

“One second.” Natasha found one in an apron hanging by the door.

“You should carry your knife at all times,” Arkady reminded her. “Be ready for emergencies.”

He felt the quilting at the back and sleeves, then squeezed the edge at the neck and bottom hem. When he slit the hem at the center, a stone the size of a candy lozenge dropped into the palm of his hand. As he pinched the hem, more stones dropped until the hollow of his palm was filled with the red, light purple and dark blue of polished but uncut rubies, amethysts and sapphires. They didn’t look like high-quality gems.

He poured the stones into a pocket of the Chinese jacket and snapped it shut, then pulled the rubber gloves off his hands.

“They could have come from Korea, the Philippines or India. No place we’ve been, so Zina got them from another ship. Let’s just be happy that Dynka didn’t try to wear this jacket past the Border Guard.”

“Poor Dynka,” Natasha muttered as she considered the prospect of her friend being arrested for smuggling. “How would Zina get the stones through?”

“She’d swallow them, sew the jacket and wear it down the gangplank just as she said. Then she’d collect the stones later.”

Natasha was disgusted. “I knew Zina was brazen. I knew she was a Georgian. But this …”

Arkady struck while the Chaika was still awed by his
elementary reasoning and good luck. “See, I didn’t know she was ‘brazen.’ I don’t know anything about the crew. That’s why I need you, Natasha.”

“You and me?”

“We’ve worked on the same factory line for six months. You’re methodical and you have nerve. I trust you, just as you can trust me.”

She glanced at the jacket and swimsuit. “Or else?”

“No. I’ll report I found them under her mattress. The third mate and I should have found them before.”

Natasha pushed a damp curl away from her eyes. “I’m not the sort who squeals.”

She had nice eyes, as black as Stalin’s but nice. Striking, in fact, with the blue running suit.

“You wouldn’t be informing; you’d be asking questions. You’d be telling me what other people say.”

“I’m not sure.”

“The captain wants to know what happened to Zina before we reach Dutch Harbor. The first mate says we shouldn’t have a port call at all.”

“That bastard! All Volovoi does is run the movie projector. We’ve cleaned fish for four months.”

“You only have one more shift in the factory. Skip it. You’ll be working with me.”

Natasha studied Arkady as if really seeing him for the first time. “No anti-Soviet agitation?”

“Everything according to Leninist norms,” he assured her.

There was one final hesitation. “You really want me?”

12
Arkady enjoyed the view from the crane operator’s cabin: the top decks covered with nets and planks, the yellow gantries framing the fog, the gulls seesawing in the wind. Looking forward, around the gantries of the forward house was a spider’s nest of wire antennas strung to catch low radio frequencies. An array of whip dipoles cast in the breeze for shorter frequencies. Two interlocked circles were a radio directional finder, and star-shaped antennas picked up passing satellites. Despite all appearances, the
Polar Star
was not alone.

“Bukovsky is happy about my selection?” Natasha asked.

“He will be.” Arkady was pleased because the book from Susan was by Mandelstam, a wonderful poet, urban, dark and probably not Natasha’s cup of socialist tea. Even if it was only a collection of letters, Arkady had already stashed it as tenderly as gold leaf under his mattress.

“Here he comes,” Natasha said.

Indeed, the third mate was fairly flying across the forward
deck and around a group of mechanics lazily batting a volleyball back and forth over the net.

She added, “He doesn’t look happy.”

Slava disappeared below and Arkady thought he could hear the reverberations of his Reeboks as they ran up three flights. In Olympic time the third mate emerged on the top deck and pushed into the crane cabin. “What is this about another assistant?” Slava gasped. “And why are you calling me to meet you? Who’s in charge?”