The Benefactor Index: Chapter Six - Further from the eye

Throughout November, I will be participating in National Novel Writing Month, where the aim is to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

As I am treating this as a writing exercise, anything that I produce will be posted on this blog, one chapter a time. The text will have been edited for spelling and coherence but is otherwise a rough first draft, written at speed. There will be no second draft.

~

The Benefactor Index

By Sam Redlark

Prologue - A Sin of Gold
Chapter One - Pochka
Chapter Two - An arrow made of eagle feathers
Chapter Three - The milking of chickens
Chapter Four - Street without drums
Chapter Five - Swans to the snow
Chapter Six - Further from the eye
Chapter Seven - The nephew of vodka
Chapter Eight - The mayor of sidings
Chapter Nine - The enemy of the good
Chapter Ten - If even just one is absent
Chapter Eleven - The friend of an unlucky man
Chapter Twelve - The riches that are in the heart
Chapter Thirteen - What fell off the cart
Epilogue - New-forgotten old

~

Chapter Six – Further from the eye

image generated by Craiyon

“Dog!” said Pestov, under his breath.

The three men paused in the snowy driveway leading to the house. The soldier indicated a silhouetted canine perched on its haunches atop a round plinth, or possibly an old well, that stood a good distance from the house, in line with the porticoed entrance.

“It does not appear to have noticed us,” said Orlov.

“Or it is well-trained and is waiting for us to get near,” said Garin.

Orlov drew his gun.

“I will settle the matter,” he said. “Be ready to shoot at it. Please take great care not to shoot me.”

He advanced cautiously. The dog gave no response.

When he was in about ten feet of the animal, he lowered his gun and walked normally towards it.

“Statue,” he said, placing his arm around it.

Garin and Pestov holstered their weapons.

“Is brass,” said Orlov, rapping the dog's cranium.

Pestov peered over the brick curtain wall that edged the circumference of the well. The interior was screened-off by a sturdy grate made from strips of black metal. Through the lattice, a distant indication of dark water absorbed any light that was offered to it.

“It is a strange thing to put on the side of a well,” said Orlov. He stroked the dog's back as if it was a living animal.

“It is a strange house,” replied Garin.

The compact mansion that stood before them consisted of two wings with shallow sloping roofs. Along the middle section the roof was flat, with a stone balcony rail. A wide chimney stack bristled with a row of smaller chimney pots. The red brick walls were almost completely covered in a powdery green moss that luminesced slightly in the darkness.

“It is ostentatious, even for a Party member,” observed Pestov.

“It is considered an open house that can be used by the Party for social gatherings,” said Garin. “That is how Katin justifies his ownership. I have have heard recently that the place has fallen out of favour.”

“You have visited here before?” enquired Pestov.

“Never,” said Garin. “I have heard all about the place.”

“If this is no longer a fashionable spot for the elites to socialise, then he is likely to be alone,” said Orlov.

“It seems like nobody is home,” said Pestov, eyeing the tall rows of vacant windows.

The beam from Orlov's torch beam haloed a round marble frieze embedded in the brickwork of the upper storey; bringing to life the soft contours of a Greek myth. He shuffled backwards and forwards in the snow until the pool of electric light perfectly fit the circumference of the piece. He shifted the beam a few feet to his right illuminating the next piece in the sequence.

“Comic strip,” he said.

They converged under the flat roof of the portico, the two soldiers providing cover while Garin rang the bell. They heard it reverberate inside the house as if there was nothing inside to absorb the sound. When the chime began to slowly fade he pushed the button again.

Pestov had wandered over to the nearest window and was peering in through the glass. A net curtain on the opposite side provided him with a grainy impression of the darkened interior.

“It is difficult to see anything,” he said.

Garin tested the door. It was locked.

“Find another way inside,” he instructed. “In only the most dire of circumstances should you kill Katin.”

“I will not know the man if I do see him,” said Orlov.

“He wears round glasses. He has dark hair, receding at the front,” said Garin. “You will not easily mistake him for a soldier or a bodyguard.”

Pestov disappeared around the side of the property. Orlov took a few a few steps back from the portico and looked up.

“I am going to attempt to gain access through the upper floor,” he said. “I will need some help getting up there.”

Garin gave him a boost, raising him high enough to grasp hold of the stone balusters that lined the edge of the portico. The grip of Orlov's boot sole pressed down firmly into his palm, then he felt the pressure recede and the heel glance against the side of his head as the soldier hooked himself over the stone rail and pulled himself onto the flat roof of the porch.

He waited. He could hear Orlov moving around above him, but he couldn't see him. A few seconds later the soldier reappeared. He was inching his way along a slender stone ledge that underscored a pair of tall windows and the intervening brickwork. Small stones began to rain down from the sill peppering the snowy ground at the foot of the building.

“You are making a beach down here,” said Garin.

“It is shingle that has been left out to make life difficult for burglars,” replied Orlov. His breath fogged in the air.

The first window was secure. He moved on past it, not lifting his feet but instead shuffling along the ledge clearing the stones with the side of his boot. The lower half of the second window along appeared to have some give when he tested it. Half crouching, he leaned into the building as best he could. His left hand gripped the upright part of the frame. He manoeuvred his other hand underneath the window and slowly lifted, drawing it away from the bottom of the frame in small increments. At one point, he almost lost his grip. In the immediate aftermath, he stood completely still for a few moments while he composed himself. Renewing his efforts he continued to expand the gap. When it was wide enough, he forced his arm inside, followed soon after by his head. After that he was able to worm the rest of his body inside.

He picked himself up off the floor and turned on his torch. On one side the room there was an L-shaped bar made from different-size bricks. The light reflected off the varnished countertop. A wedge of rustic brick cladding scaled an adjacent wall around a small fireplace. The ceiling had been painted a glossy dark green. Above his head, in the centre, there was a sepia portrait of a patriarch's head and shoulders in profile, surrounded by painted filigree, followed by a garland of golden maple leaves. Any loose furnishings in the room had been removed leaving behind the indentions of their legs and their darkened shapes on the surface of the sun-faded carpet.

He opened a door onto a long U-shaped room where an arrangement of tables and wooden chairs echoed the extended horseshoe arch of the wood-panelled walls. Beyond that there was a large lounge area where the only remaining item of furniture, besides an assortment of old portraits, was a settee upholstered in studded maroon leather. A rotting raffia mat occupied the centre of the patterned green carpet. Lying on the floor, parallel to the windows, there was what appeared to be a ladder. The mat disintegrated to husks of straw under his boots, while the beam of his torch went ahead of him, undulating over the metal rungs. It was not a ladder at all, but a section of narrow gauge railway.

He moved through a barren music room with a bare wood floor. Framed turquoise diamonds embellished the ceiling where simple three-armed, wooden chandeliers dangled from colourful plaster mandalas. An upright piano and an accompanying hard-backed chair had been pushed into a corner.

An octagonal chamber with a door in each wall and an ornate ceiling was being used as a furniture store. In another, equally ostentatious room, a throne-like leather armchair, that matched the settee in the lounge, was framed by a gilded fireplace.

An angled staircase twisted its way around the walls to the ground floor. Here he found more sparsely-furnished lounges and drawing rooms. The patterning of the marble floor in the hallway resembled television static. A chandelier overhead was attached to the ceiling by crooked brass tendrils that resembled tree roots.

He could not find a way out through the ground floor and so returned to room where he had entered. He climbed out of the window, pulling it down behind him as best he could, leaving an inch gap at the bottom. He made his way back along the ledge, then lowered himself down over the rail of the portico.

Garin was waiting underneath, leaning against one of the pillars.

“It does not seem lived in,” said Orlov.

Presently, Pestov appeared from around a corner. He was holding a dead pigeon by its broken neck.

“Another for your pie,” he said.

He tossed the bird towards Orlov who easily caught it with one hand.

“Where was it?” said Garin.

“It was strutting up and down on a balcony outside one of the upper windows,” said Pestov. “It came when I called it down.”

“Muratov should have trained his pigeons to be more wary of strangers,” said Orlov.

He examined the brass ring on the bird's ankle.

“It was unfortunate we visited the farmer first,” said Garin. “If we had not done so, the others would not have been warned.”

“I do not think Katin has been here for a while,” said Orlov. “It is likely he missed the bird.” 

“It is possible that each member of the conspiracy had their own way of warning the other,” mused Garin. “There is something in front of us that we are failing to see. Muratov did not know that he was on the donor list. That is not the thing that binds these people together. It is the photo in the orphanage. Yubkin was there. Two of the boys must be Muratov and Katin. I will wager my paycheck that two of the other men on the list are in the photograph as well. We will not know until we look. The older man in an unknown quantity. I do not understand his part. I think Yubkin was expecting his arrival when we interrupted her. She was planning to leave with him.”

“Why go after boys?” said Pestov.

“It is a long time since they were boys,” said Garin. “Now they are all powerful men.”

“Two boys in the photo, maybe more, begin their lives in an orphanage. They grow up to occupy positions of power, instead of going into the army or the factories, or ending up in prison, as is often the case with orphans,” said Orlov. “It is beyond coincidence.”

“I agree,” said Garin.

He surveyed the darkened grounds beyond the portico, where the brass guard dog maintained an eternal vigil.

“Frolov, the Chief Cardiologist, lives nearby,” he said. “I have been to his place before. Him and Katin are good friends. We will go and ask him where the railwayman might have gone.”

~

A blanket of ice had formed itself into a rutted pavement, imperfectly replicating the flagstones that lay an inch underneath, awaiting the arrival of spring.

A teenage boy, wearing a fur hat, was dragging a tiny toboggan by a taut length of rope. Wooden crates of glass Pepsi bottles were piled five-high in adjacent stacks on the plank seat, overhanging dangerously at the rear, where another man, who could have been the boy's father, was holding them steady. The sledge jolted and skidded on the rough surface. Occasionally it came to an impotent full stop, its progress stymied by an imperceptible flaw in the frozen ground and by its own weight.

“Through the night market is quicker than by road,” said Garin.

A man wearing a dark coat was approaching from the opposite direction. A red and white checked shirt filled the triangular space between the buttoned lapels. He was leading a small, sullen girl by the hand. Her face was swaddled by a furry, leopard-print hood, that was garnished with a pair of fluffy pompoms. Her chin was buried in the creases of a pink scarf that rose from the collar of her beige skirt-coat. A large quantity of oranges dangled from a netting sack in the man's other hand.

“Where did you find the oranges, friend?” enquired Orlov.

“At the market,” said the man. “They have just come in on a ship from Egypt, but the queues are very long.”

“I will buy them from you.”

“It is long past my daughter's bedtime,” said the man walking on.

Orlov was about to turn and follow him, but was stopped by Garin.

“This is no time to make trouble,” he said.

Under the streetlamps, further along the road, a team of men were unpacking rectangular, white cardboard boxes of oranges from the back of a lorry, and transferring them to a long stall that was made from a pair of trellis tables. The word 'EGYPT' was spelled-out in English on the flanks of the boxes, in blue capital letters. A large crowd were gathered around the front of the stall, jostling, haggling and grousing over quality and price. One of the boxes had been opened and hands were straining from within the scrum to reach inside and test the fruit for ripeness. A man at the rear of the crowd waved a crooked fan of crumpled roubles. One of the stallholders managed to stretch far enough to grasp the cash with the tips of his fingers. As he withdrew his arm, a single loose note drifted down into the sea of fur hats where it disappeared. The stallholder began to gesticulate in anger and shoo away a small group of people within the huddle. A man among them threw up his hands and returned the missing note grumbling as he did. Two sealed boxes of oranges were passed over the heads of the crowd towards the man in the back, who tucked one under each arm. Readjusting his load he began to walk off down the street.

This is a slick operation,” observed Orlov. “You can tell the State has no hand in it.”

“We have no time to mess around here,” said Garin.

Nearby an elderly woman, wearing a spotted headscarf, was bent over, and using both hands to decant small potatoes from an old wooden crate, into the wide opening of a tan handbag that her customer had propped up on the wide rim of the open box. Behind the pair, an old grandmother, wrapped up in tattered old coats and shawls was sitting on the bare pavement, with her back resting against the decorative tiled wall of a building. A mangy teddy bear was seated on a crate next to her, partially wrapped in a blanket. Its googly eyes were poorly positioned on its face. The round, dark pupils pointed in directions that were almost opposite.

“How much is it for the bear?” said Orlov.

The woman muttered something under her breath and waved him away. After he was gone she patted the bear on the head with a gloved hand. Leaning in towards its furry jug ear, she spoke some words to it.

“What did she say?” asked Pestov.

“She told me it is her son's bear. She says, if she sells it, then how will he recognise her when he comes back, now that she is so very old?”

“Wherever that man is now, I do not think he will return,” said Pestov.

“Why would you even want it?” said Garin. “It is no use to you.”

“I accidentally shot a toy bear in the orphanage,” said Orlov. “It is bad luck. I am trying to square my debt with the universe before payment is taken some other way.”

Between a pair of small tables that were selling small amounts of produce, a bearded man wearing a beige raincoat was perched on a two-tier step stool, engaged in the task of weighing a man who was standing on a set of manual scales in front of him.

Leaving the market behind them, they entered a quiet, and obviously wealthy, residential part of the city that had survived the various purges and the ensuing reconstructions.

The spindly snow-covered branches radiating from a pavement-side column of bare trees had fractured the view of the bottom and middle floors of a burnt-yellow apartment block. The ground floor walls were clad in large bricks. The neat, gridded lines of faux mortar in between was painted brilliant white. A row of identical black cars were parked on a frosty-stretch of flat cobbles out front with their red tail-lights facing onto the road.

“Frolov is in one of these,” said Garin. He led the two men towards a set of double doors. A line of four dark panes were framed in the wood at head height. Orlov attempted to peer in through one of the windows. It was like trying to see beyond the grey of a television screen.

“Seriously, do nothing to piss this man off,” said Garin. “He is all smiles but underneath he has no tolerance for any bullshit. Whether you spill a glass of his wine or kill a member of his family, it is all the same to him. He has ways of hurting those people who cross him. He will tell you all about it himself. You will not have to ask.”

Carefully he examined the doorbells that studded the lintel like shellfish left behind on a rock by an outgoing the tide. Under most of them there was a strip of paper and some explanatory writing.

“It is complicated,” he said. “Some apartments share the same bell. In such cases the number of rings is important.”

He finger hovered over a round white buzzer with a black button at the centre . He pressed it firmly three times, then stood back.

“My boss, Vasnev, lives in this block,” he said.

“Maybe he could help us with our growing number of problems?” said Orlov.

“No,” said Garin. “I cannot get him involved.”

There was a buzzing sound and one of the double doors clicked open. The lobby and stairwell of the building were well-maintained spaces, with two-tone dark brown and beige walls. 

Outside the door to Frolov's apartment, Garin said: “Remember what I said about Frolov. Do no fuck with him. Remember, he is worse than you are now. He is worse than you will ever be.”

He pressed the button an intercom.

There was a pause then a crackly voice enquired: ”Who is it?”

“It is Pavel Garin – Vasnev's aide.”

“Come up the stairs then follow the carpets around to the living room,” said the voice.

The intercom went dead and, a second later, the door opened.

They entered a lobby. The roughened walls were painted a brilliant lime-green. A short staircase ascended between a pair of square white pillars to a mezzanine balcony that was carpeted with overlapping red rugs.

“I like it it,” said Orlov, looking around as they climbed. "This is what I want for my place."

At the top of the stairs, Garin followed the overlay of the rugs. A door on the right, at the end of the balcony, opened into a modestly-sized living room with a varnished hardwood floor. The walls were a bright shade of line-green. The soft furnishings were upholstered in very similar tones. The wall to his left was dominated by an immense piece of wooden furniture comprising short and tall cupboards, stacks of draws, ornamental shelves, glass-fronted cabinets and a rectangular nook, into which a medium-size television had been inserted.

Leonid Froliv was waiting for them in the middle of the room standing at the centre of a red and white patterned rug.

He was stocky, muscular man with the bearing of a veteran soldier. Beneath his crew-cut, the mottled skin of his face seemed to have been appropriated from a man who spends a great deal of his time outdoors in all weathers. He was wearing suit trousers and a pastel pink T-shirt. Garin always found it hard to imagine him performing delicate heart surgery.

“Garin,” he said, firmly shaking the hand of his visitor. “You do not come to my parties anymore.”

“Now that the spotlight is off, Vasnev keeps me on a short leash,” said Garin. “I am sorry if we awakened you. We are on an urgent matter of State business.”

“A short leash. Hmm, but evidently not tonight. These are your bodyguards?”

He walked through an archway into a modern, lime-green kitchen. Garin followed in his footsteps. The wooden furnishings reflected in the peppery grey glaze of the marble floor tiles.

“You should know, men like us do not sleep," said Frolov. "How can we after all we have done? Tell me, how is Vasnev? I have not seen him. Is he well? You mentioned urgent business. He is not the reason for your visit, I hope?”

“I assumed you would have been made aware of Chairman Sherstov's condition,” said Garin, “Given your medical expertise.”

A predatory combination of suspicion and curiosity leaked through the gaps in Frolov's narrowed eyes as he regarded Garin.

“I am unaware of any medical emergency involving Sherstov,” he said. “Is he dying?”

“His kidneys are failing,” said Garin. “I have been given a list of donors.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and brought out the folded list.

“We are having difficulty locating Radmilo Katin,” he said. “He is not at his home. I know that the two of you are close.”

Frolov took the list from him. He opened the paper and scanned the names on it.

“This is all nonsense,” he said, dismissively. “Who came up with this list?”

“It was given to me by Chendev. I do not know who created it. Possibly Dragan Avilov. He at least has seen it.”

“Avilov – the First Deputy Health Minister?” said Frolov. "You are being played, my friend. This is not a serious list.”

“With respect, in what way is it not serious?” enquired Garin.

“For one, Katin is not the same blood group as Sherstov. He is not a viable donor. Then, who else do we have here... Muratov, again the wrong blood type.”

“Is it possible that you could be mistaken?” said Orlov.

Frolov smiled at Orlov, the way a wolf smiles at a baby pig.

“The man covered in bird feathers, with a broken-necked pigeon sticking out of his coat pocket offers his expert medical advice,” he said to Garin, with sketchy incredulity.

“Muratov is blood type B-negative,” he continued. “He is obsessed with his physical fitness. He comes to me every three months for an update on his heart. In his youth, he could have been an Olympian but he would not take the steroids.”

He returned his attention to the list.

“I do not know the blood groups of all these men,” he said. “I would hazard a guess that none are matches for Sherstov. What you have here is for something else.”

He refolded the paper into thirds and handed it back to Garin.

“Also, there is a notable omission,” he said. “My name is absent. I am a donor match for Sherstov, So am I not included?”

“I could bring you in with me, if you are feeling left out,” said Garin.

“I think you know by now that you a chasing a different rabbit,” said Frolov.

He opened a cupboard and removed a brown glass bottle with conical shoulders. The exterior was pitted as though it had been exposed to a mild acid. An off-kilter yellow label, bearing chemical information was taped to the side. He placed it on the kitchen table in front of Orlov.

“I noticed your name on the list, at the bottom,” he said to Garin. “You should consider yourself fortunate under the circumstances that you are not chasing kidneys. I have harvested organs on behalf of Sherstov before – not for him directly, but for others with his blessing. They always tell you: 'Take everything!' Not only what is needed. They treat people like banks that they can withdraw from at will. Sherstov would take your heart if he needed it.”

“My heart is my own,” said Pestov.

“Your heart beats to the sound of an old drum,” said Orlov.

“I think your heart has been beating to some wild rhythm of its own making.”

Orlov turned his attentions to the bottle on the table.

“Is it beer?” he said. He leaned over, studying the laboratory label.

“Not everything is beer,” said Pestov.

“It is heart serum.” said Frolov. “In extreme cases, it is sometimes necessary to pump out all the blood during a surgery and replace it with a man-made substitute. It is agony for the patient, even under anaesthetic. Of course they do not consciously remember the pain afterwards but it lingers somewhere in the psyche.”

He opened one of the kitchen draws and removed a disembodied piece of metal surgical equipment. He lay it face up on the table alongside the bottle. The white front-plate was held in place by multiple flat-headed and domed-topped screws. A rectangular hole in the centre housed a pair of glass tubes with black measurement scales etched into their sides. A pair of cog-shaped valve heads, a black dial, and black button-switch protruded from the front.

“This is the driver that pumps the serum into the body,” he said. “These dials allow me to control the flow and the viscosity of the fluid. There is a man who was once impolite to me. He has been on my operating table four times. Every time he comes, I torture him. He never remembers any of it. He is always grateful towards me for saving his life. He sends me wine at Christmas. I allow him to continue living only so I can continue to inflict pain upon his person. If you want to truly hold lives in the balance, then do not be a soldier. Be a surgeon instead.”

He returned the driver to its draw where he lay in down in a space alongside a cut -off box that was filled with different coloured pills and tablets.

“What are the pills?” said Orlov.

“They are doctor's helpers. They are medicines that I cannot find a place for, or a mouth to put them inside.”

“You have no idea where Katin is?” said Garin.

Froliv leaned at a slant against the counter with his arms folded. He regarded the man before him with an expression that blended concern with disdain.

“You are still persisting in your task, even though you know the justification behind it to be false,” he declared.

“I think I have no choice,” said Garin “I must play the game and see what comes of it.”

“Katin has not been resident in the house for months,” said Frolov. “He has a bolthole in the Pickets. I believe he lives there now. The trains there may be on strike, but they must still be kept in working order.”

He walked them back through the living room. On the mezzanine balcony Pestov almost tripped on the overlap between two rugs. Frolov seemed to take note of the misstep. Garin quietly shook his head.

“I think you are marked man,” he said to Garin, as he opened the door onto the communal hallway. “You should question why this is. We may not see one another again.”

They descended the back and forth staircase to the ground floor.

“You two did exactly what I said not to,” said Garin. “You should be very careful not to have heart problems while he is still in charge. Adopt a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise.”

“I wished to ask him for some of his pills, but felt that it might be impolite,” said Orlov.

“You should have doubled-down,” said Garin. “By that time, you had already caused offence.

“We are going to get Katin?” said Pestov.

“Not immediately. Konev is nearby. He is First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Cinematography. He lives in the television district, in that building on the hill that resembles a smashed vase. We will scoop him up on the way and see what he tells us.”

Outside the yellow apartment block, a man was walking alone in the middle of the road, holding a box of oranges in front of him as if it was some delicate treasure,

“Friend, give me an orange, I am having a difficult day,” shouted Orlov.

“It is late.,” called the man. “Either your bad day is ending, in which case you should go to bed. If it is just beginning then there is still time to turn things around.”

He continued walking, leaving behind a trail of pale grey footprints in the frosted asphalt.

They walked back through the market, where the night-time crowds were beginning to dwindle.

“I am starting to think we are being fucked harder than Bereunik whores,” said Garin.

image generated by Craiyon