Free The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense by Otto Penzler Page B

groaned under his elephant weight, Glafira started and then relaxed again, reluctant to put an end to the blissful interlude of inactivity.
    “It’s a quarter to nine,” said Aniskin.“I’ll go to the farm board.There is some important business to discuss. Make me up a bed in the outhouse, will you.”
    He wiped his sweaty face with a towel, dropped the towel on the window-sill and waddled to the door. He walked in his usual unhurried manner. Glafira did not change her posture and still sat with her head bent low, her eyes staring at the floor. But she obviously was aware that her husband was at the door for she suddenly called out:
    “Aniskin!”
    “What is it?”
    “You’d better take your gun along,” she said very quietly.
    Aniskin stopped in the doorway, turned to her slowly as though his hinges were too stiff, and said after a considering pause with a wave of his arm:
    “No, I won’t. I’m not thinking of killing him.”

4
    At a quarter to twelve the moon was suspended high over the village, and its shadows had grown so short that they were no longer dogging Aniskin’s steps. The moon was yellow like a piece of cheap amber inserted into a dark fabric sprinkled with stars. The night was cool and bright.
    Aniskin felt fine at night. His heart did not ache, his legs did not hurt, there was no gnawing feeling in the pit of his stomach; he felt healthy, cheerful and strong and so perceived everything with youthful freshness of feeling. He liked the moon, enjoyed the distant sounds of the accordion and looked with pleasure at the silver zigzag of the moonlit Ob.
    The accordion sang the moving old song about young Komsomol lovers parted by the Civil War, about him pressing her hand and looking tenderly into the girl’s eyes. Aniskin stopped for a while listening to the accordion singing about himself, his own youth. “I am a cunning fox,” he thought of himself admiringly. “I certainly picked the right time for Genka’s arrest—at midnight.” The accordion made the inspector feel young and even handsome.
    Genka’s house was the last in the row. An empty bird box was nailed to an old willow tree. The young bull uttered short restless moos in the shed. The windows were gilded all over with moonlight. The yard was crowded with shadows thrown by the well pole, the numerous sheds, barns and outhouses. These shadows, dark-grey and shapeless, lived a life of their own, unconnected, as it were, with the moon. Aniskin walked up to the house and gazed at it for a while.
    “Here we meet again, Dmitri,” he thought.
    Nobody in the village knew why starlings never made nests in the little boxes put up by Dmitri Paltsev or his son Genka. The excited birds, reaching home after their long flight from the south, fought among themselves for the possession of every little box available, but, for some reason, gave a wide berth to the Paltsevs’ yard.
    “Eh, Dmitri,” Aniskin thought ruefully, “millions of people have been won over by Soviet power, but you remained what you have always been, a miserable, tight-fisted kulak.”
    Aniskin opened the gate soundlessly and entered the yard, dragging his dark-grey legless shadow along. The shadow went across the yard, winded its way among the outhouses and barns and stopped in front of the big shed. Moonlight made its way gladly and confidently into the opened door of the shed lighting its interior with pale mat reflection. In this paleness Aniskin could see two green dots and a strip of white.
    Entering the shed, Aniskin made out what they were, the two green dots and the strip of white. Genka was sitting on an upturned tub, staring glassily, his teeth bared in a snarl. He was holding a gleaming revolver in his hand, his arm bent at an awkward angle so that it was hard to say where the revolver was pointing. When Aniskin crunched his way across the sandy floor and stopped, the barrel of the revolver turned on the inspector. Turned and remained in that position.
    “I’ll