“You’re interested in the technical details?”

  “I’d like to understand the scale of what’s happened.”

  “It’s a bad scale, Pavlik. Very bad.”

  “But still?”

  Danilov passed his gaze over those gathered at the table and sighed.

  “The city’s not going to have any heat. But have no fear. I’ve got generators to keep everything running here—the heating and the electricity. There’s also enough food. We could sit out the whole winter here. There’s plenty of snow all around, so we won’t run out of water. We can bide our time.”

  The living room got so still that Rita could hear Tolik’s pencil scratching across the paper. The investigator continued drawing something in his notebook. True, his face was no longer untroubled, but his pencil was flitting from side to side like an enraged wasp.

  “And the city?” Peter put in. “Will the city freeze completely?”

  “I hope not. Right now they’re introducing a schedule of rolling blackouts. If they can restore operations, things will get back to normal. But right now it’s better to stay put. There’s room for everyone.”

  Danilov looked over at the investigator again, who finally responded to his glance.

  “No need to worry about me,” he said, leaving his notebook alone and looking Danilov coldly in the eye. “I’ll finish questioning the suspects and leave.”

  “What other suspects?”

  “That’s no concern of yours.”

  “Listen, detective . . .” Danilov rose to his feet and loomed heavily over the table. “You haven’t confused the time? Who invited you here, anyway?”

  “Forgive me, but we never did learn what happened,” Pavlik interjected. “What was the cause of the accident?”

  Danilov lowered himself silently to his chair. The investigator answered, looking calmly at the owner of the house, as if it were Danilov and not Pavlik who had asked the question. Or as if Danilov were to blame for everything.

  “A few days ago at the power station, a gas hydro turbine shut down. It was decided not to inform the public because the other seven turbines were functioning properly. Then yesterday, during a trial launch of the emergency GHT, two more turbines stopped, and, as a result, an electric power line went down. Mounting demand led to a shutdown of all operating GHTs. By three in the morning they were able to get three of them going again. As far as the rest go, we still don’t know. The airport’s been shut down. People are evacuating any way they can.”

  The investigator fell silent, casting his gaze over the grave faces.

  “And what now?” A subdued Zinaida now spoke without any challenge. “What’s going to happen to us?”

  “To you?” The investigator grinned. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. You’re under Danilov’s protection. But the city’s not going to have such a great time of it. God only knows what’s going on there now. There have been casualties.”

  “Excuse me?” Pavlik said, raising his eyebrows. “Are you saying people are dying?”

  “What did you expect?” The investigator stared at him. “In this kind of situation, riots are inevitable.”

  “Is that true?” Pavlik shifted his mistrustful glance to Danilov, who wiped his brow and then hid his face in his hands and sat like that for a few seconds. Everyone else tensely awaited his answer.

  “I’m very tired,” Danilov said from behind his hands. “I’ve been on my feet all night.”

  Zinaida rose abruptly from her chair. “Well, I have to get to town!” she said. “I have my cousin and her children and my aunt there.”

  “Sit down,” Danilov said in a muffled voice before taking his hands away from his face.

  “Let’s go!” She tugged her husband by his sweater sleeve. “Or are you going to wait for his permission again? Tyoma, take me! I have to find out how they are there.”

  “Sure,” her son replied, and he moved toward the living room door.

  “Fine, go,” Danilov said calmly. “You have a powerful, expensive car. They need cars like that there right now.”

  “In what sense?” Zinaida was taken aback.

  “The literal. People need good transportation so they can get the hell out of town. They’re fanning out to their relatives in the villages. But not everyone has a car. So they’ll be waiting for you there.”

  “Who’ll be waiting?”

  “Listen, you people in Moscow seem to have lost all connection to real life. People are waiting.”

  Zinaida became distraught. “What people? I don’t understand.”

  “Ordinary people. With a crowbar, a hunting rifle, or a baseball bat. Something for everyone. They’re killing people over cars. And you’re planning to go there alone with a boy.”

  “Are you trying to scare me?”

  “No. Yesterday they killed my secretary. In the morning her body was found next to her garage with her head bashed in. Her car was gone, naturally.”

  “Wait . . .” Pavlik awkwardly threw his arms up over his head. “Lyuda’s dead?”

  Danilov nodded wearily. Inga’s eyes started to shine, and she bowed her head.

  “Yesterday was the end of the world there,” the owner of the house went on. “Countless people were crippled. There was a horrible crush at the bus stops, and looting and robbery. Cash boxes were torn out of stores with their bolts still attached. Anyone who tried to stop them got beaten. Badly beaten. It was kids from the countryside mainly who went at it. Freshmen from the dorms. Sturdy guys not afraid of anyone. And not a drop of pity in them, either. They grew up in nature. Meat, carp, sour cream. Everything very fatty, organic. Their blood seethes.”

  Danilov shifted his gaze to the investigator.

  “You should be dealing with all that and not sniffing around here about me. What a moment you picked.”

  The investigator, looking at Danilov’s back, wanted to come back with something, but he stopped himself. Danilov turned around.

  A half-naked Filippov was standing at the living room threshold. His hands were bandaged up and his frostbitten cheeks were shiny from ointment. His wandering gaze slid not very intelligently over the people sitting at the table. Finally, he made a face and in an extremely hoarse voice asked, “Excuse me, please. Where am I?”

  At the investigator’s request, Filya was immediately installed in bed and barred from all contact. Rita tried to object and even faked minor hysterics, but all she achieved was getting the file of drawings handed over to Filippov.

  Spreading them out on top of the blanket, he rummaged through the sketches with his bandaged hands. His fingers barely obeyed him, so pages kept sliding to the floor. Filya followed them with a brief glance under puffy eyelids and immediately picked up more. He was impatient to see them all. His vision kept betraying him. The pictures would blur, so he would blink hard, holding the drawing back in his outstretched hand, and wait for the blurry spot to come into focus. In his mind, the spots gradually formed the fairly ghastly image Peter had created for the upcoming show.

  “Brilliant,” he muttered. “An entire set made of dead bodies. A zombie floor lamp and a zombie armchair. It’s Bosch. No, it’s way cooler than Bosch.”

  “You’re a real maniac,” the investigator standing by the door said with a grin. “The minute you wake up, you’re back to work.”

  Filya glanced in his direction with a watery eye.

  “This is why I came here. But who are you?”

  “You don’t recognize me?” The investigator smiled. “I’m Tolik.”

  “Tolik who?”

  “Your friend Tolik. We went to school together. You are the limit! But I recognized you right away. Even looking like this.”

  Filya squinted at the man. “You’ve changed.”

  “Oh, stop it,” the investigator said. “It’s just you’ve forgotten everything.”

  “No, I haven’t. I remember you. Listen, do you know how I ended up here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me?”

  “Not right now.”

  Filya set aside the sketch he was holding and looked carefully at the investigator.

  “Why?”

  “That’s not why I’m here.” Tolik took his ID out of his pocket. “I have to question you.”

  Filya looked at the name on the red cover and at the photograph, obviously taken a few years before, but he still didn’t remember this Tolik.

  “Don’t strain yourself. We were in the same grade but not the same classes. You once gave me ten rubles. Big money in those days, by the way.”

  “What for?”

  “Our class was on monitor duty for the school then, and I caught you in the restroom with a cigarette. You decided to buy me off.”

  “Bribing an official?”

  Tolik burst out in fine, very broken laughter. “Something like that. If you want, though, I can pay it back. Then it won’t be a bribe. Just a kind of loan.”

  “I don’t care. What did you want to talk about?”

  “So do you remember or not?”

  Tolik looked searchingly at Filya. Apparently, this was important to him.

  “Sure, I remember,” Filya lied. “How do you forget something like that? Now, I see, you’ve risen to new heights. You’re not catching boys in school restrooms anymore.”

  “No.” Tolik laughed again, and in his unpleasant laughter you could definitely hear how pleased he was with himself. “Now we’re just after big fish.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  Tolik was a little taken aback. “Well, meaning ‘I.’ ‘We’ is just a manner of speaking.”

  There was something fishlike in his face, and in moments of slight distress this similarity came out even stronger. Filya even thought he might remember him. There’d been someone at school who looked like a fish.

  “Clearly,” Filya said slowly. “For a moment, I thought there were an awful lot of you here. Listen, you don’t know what happened to me yesterday, do you? I hurt for some reason. All over my body.”

  “You got frostbite. You came here in the wrong clothing. And on top of that, there’s the accident at the power station.”

  “Accident? I did think there was something yesterday. Everything was kind of strange. But where’s my dog?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t seen a dog in the house.”

  “I see. Is there anything here to drink?”

  “Danilov doesn’t drink.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The owner of the house.”

  “Maybe he keeps some for his guests. Hey, go take a look. Or buy it. I should have some cash in my jacket over there. In the meantime, I’ll work with the designs.”

  Tolik didn’t budge. He looked at Filya silently, and as his gaze filled with cold, his face changed markedly. The talkative, slightly bug-eyed, but at the same time quite nice little fish turned into a spiteful, fat-lipped catfish. Filippov could almost see the prehistoric spiny fin stand up on his back, his colorless eyes get round and silvery, and his lips puff up unattractively. Up until that moment, he’d enjoyed shooting the breeze with Filya. He’d enjoyed reminiscing. He’d been pleased that his famous schoolmate had taken note of his rise in life. However, all it took was a poke, all it took was showing what to Tolik seemed like disdain, and he immediately bristled, immediately became himself. His moist eyes, which shone like cold metal, clearly said, You’d better not mess with me. Our school days are over, and now people notice me. I’m not a nobody anymore.

  No sooner was the transformation into an evil fish complete than Tolik got down to his questioning.

  “Were you in the car with the Neustroevs when they were going across the river?”

  “You mean you aren’t going to get me something to drink?” Filya said sadly. “Maybe some beer at least?”

  “I’ll repeat my question one more time. Did you go across the river with the Neustroevs immediately after you landed?”

  “The Neustroevs. Is that Pavlik and Zinaida or something?”

  “Yes. And they say you were with them.”

  “I was. I asked them to take me to my hotel, and they took me in the opposite direction.”

  “What for?”

  “They were taking money somewhere. They said it was urgent.”

  Tolik pulled his notebook out of his pocket and made a note.

  “And what happened on the way back?”

  Filya thought briefly and then curled his lips and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. No, I remember. On the port road we nearly ran into Rita. She was flying like a witch to a Sabbath.”

  Tolik shook his head. “No, I mean before that.”

  “Before that? Nothing. We just drove.”

  “What about on the river?”

  “What about what on the river?”

  “Did you come across someone on the river when you were returning to this side?”

  Filya sighed and shut his eyes for a second. Colorful little balls floated by under his eyelids.

  “Listen, I’m pretty tired. Let’s do this later. Or why don’t you find all this out from them, the Neustroevs? They’re funny . . . and probably remember more than I do. Lately, you know, I’ve been having problems with my memory.”

  “Pavel Neustroev admits that on the way back you drove past an automobile that had been in an accident.”

  “Oh, yeah. There was one crackpot who slid off the road. A cherry-red Zhiguli, I think.”

  “Absolutely right. License R466EV.”

  “Well, that I don’t remember. I’m sorry. All I remember is that he ran after us with a crowbar for a long time. Pavlik freaked out because of his money and wouldn’t stop. He thought they wanted to rob him.”

  “That ‘crackpot’ was trying to call for help.”

  “Holding a crowbar?” Filya grinned.

  “He had a pregnant wife in the car,” Tolik said drily. “She broke her leg in the accident. And your car was the third that drove by without stopping. Obviously, he wasn’t himself.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “A note was found with them with the licenses of the cars that drove past. Your license is third. There are four more after it. No one ever did help.”

  “You found a note?” Filya stared uncomprehendingly at Tolik.

  “Yes. In the pocket of one of the bodies. They froze to death in their Zhiguli. And you drove on by, though you could have helped them.”

  Filya blinked two or three times, not taking his eyes off the investigator, who was absolutely not who he saw right now. Before him now, running through the snow, was that foolish man with the crowbar, and it was Filippov, as it turned out, who had decided whether the man should go on living or die.

  The door behind Tolik opened wide, and Rita flew into the room.

  “No, have a conscience, Anatoly Sergeyevich,” she said impulsively. “I was waiting all morning for him to wake up. I have to talk to him, too!”

  Tolik walked up to her, turned her around by the shoulders, and, without saying a word, marched her out of the room. Rita immediately started banging on the closed door.

  “You’ve abandoned people in a hopeless situation before, after all,” Tolik said, holding the door, which was shuddering from Rita pushing on it. “A familiar feeling?”

  “I’ll tell Danilov everything,” Rita shouted behind the door. “About all your hints and insinuations!”

  Tolik opened the door slightly and gave the young woman a hard shove, which she wasn’t expecting. Filya heard the sound of a falling body and a brief, pathetic shriek.

  “Have you lost your mind?” he said, sitting up and lowering his feet from the bed.

  “Lie down immediately,” Tolik commanded. “I’m not done with you.”

  Filippov obeyed and pulled up the blanket to his chin. Tolik finally moved away from the door.

  “In the summer of ’86, your first wife died under mysterious circumstances. Do you remember how that happened?” he began, advancing on the now-quiet Filya. “Naturally, you had nothing to do with it. An ordinary accident. A person poisoned at a dacha by exhaust fumes. ‘So what was strange about that then?’ you’re probably going to ask. Are you? ‘What’s strange about that?’ Well, go on, ask me. And I’ll tell you that you were at that very dacha. That very night.”

  “Beast,” Rita muttered, opening one cupboard after another in the kitchen. “Viper.”

  Her left sweater sleeve was rolled up above her elbow and stained with blood. Every once in a while, she would turn her arm and look at the big ugly bruise, touch it cautiously with her finger, hiss from the pain, and mutter more angry words. Finally finding a Band-Aid, she tore off the wrapper with her teeth, though she wasn’t able to cover the injury. Inga walked into the kitchen.

  “Rita, is there any valerian in this house?” she asked in a tone that seemed to assume her daughter should know everything about Danilov’s house.

  “I’m not up on that,” Rita replied. “But I doubt it.”

  Inga stared at her bruise. “Who did that? Filya?” Fury seethed in her voice. She turned away sharply to run and immediately punish the perpetrator.

  “What does he have to do with this?” Rita said, trying to stop her. “I just slipped on the stairs. Someone spilled water on the steps. Probably.”

  Inga froze in the doorway. Rage was still brewing in her heart, seeking an outlet, but she crossed her arms over her chest, shutting the storm inside her, and looked at her daughter. Before her was that same little girl who so very recently she had told not to cross her eyes, not to make faces on the street, not to pick her nose. In Inga’s understanding, a child should remain a child—that’s how she was created; that’s how she had come. But her daughter had let her down badly in this regard. Inga didn’t think she’d sacrificed herself to her children, naturally, but she did have a right to expect some gratitude from them. Her husband had dissolved his pathetic pinch of salt in life’s waters even before Rita’s birth, so Inga had raised her children alone.

  Instead of showing her some gratitude, her son had chased after some beauty to Petersburg the moment beauties started interesting him. Her daughter had grown up without a conscience. All these young ladies with their slender necks, copious breasts, and elegant waists who seemed to pop up out of nowhere lately hadn’t bothered Inga in the least until she sensed how much they disdained her, how much she was for them dust under their feet, ashes and decay—their terrible future, which they hated even to look at. At certain moments, she felt the arrogance emanating from them so tangibly and so directly it was as if she were a slave without rights living in ancient Egypt and all these creatures were her mistresses. And now her daughter had gone over to their side; an elegant waist and luxuriant breasts had appeared on her, too. From time to time, Inga got scared that she was losing her mind, but there was nothing she could do with herself, considering Rita in some sense a traitor.