Legends

He produced the picture postcard and told her how he had tracked Samat from Israel to London to Prague to Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea to the Lithuanian village of Zuzovka, and finally to the village of Prigorodnaia not far from Moscow where Samat’s mother, Kristyna, lived in the empty dacha once owned by the most hated man in Russia, Lavrenti Beria. “She told me she was a raving lunatic when she needed to be,” Martin said. “She told me she wrapped herself in lunacy the way a peasant pulls a sheepskin coat over his shoulders in winter.”

“Sounds to me like a survival strategy.” Stella examined the photograph on the postcard—the men and boys attired in black trousers and black suit jackets and straw hats, the women and girls wearing ankle-length gingham dresses and laced-up high shoes and bonnets tied under the chin. She turned it over and translated the message. “Mama dearest, I am alive and well in America the Beautiful … Your devoted S.” She noticed the printed caption had been scraped off. “Where on God’s green earth is fast New York?” she demanded, squinting at the post office cancellation mark across the stamp.

“I’ve done my homework. The people in the photograph are Amish. Belfast, New York is the rough center of the Amish community that lives upstate New York, and the only town upstate that ends in fast. It makes tradecraft sense. All the men have long beards. Instead of shaving off his beard, which is what the Russian revolutionaries used to do when they wanted to disappear, Samat would keep his and dress like the Amish and melt into the madding crowd.”

“Who’s he hiding from?”

“For starters, Chechen gangsters bent on revenge for the killing of one of their leaders known as the Ottoman. Then there’s your sister, also his uncle Akim, who claims Samat siphoned off a hundred and thirty million dollars from holding companies he controlled. For some reason I can’t figure out, the CIA seems to be very interested in him, too.”

“Where do I come in?”

“When you described Samat to me in the pool parlor—”

“That seems so long ago it must have been during a previous incarnation.”

“You’re talking to a world-class expert on previous incarnations. When you described him, you said his eyes were seaweed-green and utterly devoid of emotion. You told me if you could see his eyes, you would be able to pick him out of a crowd.” Martin lowered his voice. “I don’t mean to push you past where you’re ready to go—how come you know his eyes so well?”

Stella turned away. After a moment she said, “You wouldn’t ask the question if you didn’t imagine the answer.”

“You saw his seaweed-green eyes up close when you slept with him.”

Stella groaned. “The night of the wedding, he came to my room in the early hours of the morning. He slipped under the covers. He was naked. He warned me not to make a commotion—he said it would only hurt my sister when he told her I’d … I’d invited him.” Stella looked into Martin’s eyes. “I’d know his eyes anywhere because I memorized them when he fucked me in the room next to my sister’s bedroom on the night of her marriage to this monster of a man. I was originally planning to stay in Kiryat Arba for three weeks, but I left after ten days. He came into my bed every night I was there …”

“And when you returned two years later?”

“I took him aside the first day and told him I’d kill him if he came into my bed again.”

“How did he react?”

“He only laughed. At night he would turn the doorknob to torture me, but he didn’t come into the room. Martin, you’ve got to tell me the truth—does this change anything between us?”

He shook his head no.

Stella permitted the ghost of a smile to settle softly onto her lips again.

1997: MARTIN ODUM GETS THE GET

DRIVING IN THE VINTAGE PACKARD HE HAD BORROWED FROM HIS friend and landlord, Tsou Xing, the owner of the Mandarin restaurant below the pool parlor on Albany Avenue, Martin and Stella reached Belfast after dark. The pimply boy working the pump at the gas station on the edge of town ticked off on grimy fingers the choices available to them: a bunch of descent hotels in town, some pricier than others; an assortment of motels along Route 19 either side of town, some seedier than others; several bed and breakfasts, best one by a country mile was old Mrs. Sayles place on a groundswell overseeing the Genesee, the advantage being the riot of river water which lulled some folks to sleep, the disadvantage being the riot of river water which kept some folks up until all hours.