The Case of the General's Thumb by Andréi Kurkov

pace.
    Seated at the funeral board, Viktor looked about for the two men who had been standing with the widow, but they were nowhere to be seen.
    After a few vodkas, people quietly took themselves off. Bronitsky senior alone seemed set to sit on over his cabbage rissoles, chops, sandwiches and roast chicken. Viktor felt sorry for him. It was as if he, the old Donyetsk miner, had died, not his son.
    When no more than a handful were left at table, Viktor asked gently after Ivin.
    For a moment Widow Bronitsky seemed at a loss.
    â€œGone to his hotel. He’s got a train to catch.”
    â€œWhich hotel is that?”
    â€œThe Moskva.”
    Ivin had returned his keys an hour earlier, Viktor was told at reception, but since he’d paid for a second night, he might well be back.
    â€œYou have, I take it, a record of everyone who has stayed here.”
    â€œOf course.”
    Returning with chocolates from the foyer kiosk, he asked whether a Maksim Ivin had stayed in the second half of May.
    The receptionist consulted a ledger.
    â€œYes,” she said at last, “18th to the 21st.”
    â€œSingle room?”
    â€œDouble, but he was alone.”

19
    Nik expended his surplus of Belarusian currency on the luxury of a sleeper for two. Sakhno, having persuaded Nik to stock up with three of vodka and three of wine, was travelling recumbent. The allowance for travellers crossing into Poland being one bottle of wine, one of spirits per person, or of three bottles per person for two travelling together, Sakhno had made the best choice. And now, having discarded an empty vodka bottle under the table and deposited two passports – his dog-eared one and another of Soviet foreign-travel vintage – on it, he was in his bunk snoring and twisting from side to side. Nik examined the red-covered newcomer. Valid for three more months, it had Czechoslovak, then simply Czech, visas adorning almost every page, the last for ten days in April. At that moment a young border guard entered in quest of passports and tourist vouchers.
    Ten minutes later, the coaches were uncoupled and lifted on jacks for the bogies to be removed, rolled away and replaced by bogies of Western gauge.
    Nik lay on his bunk trying without much success to calculate just how far Brest was from Dushanbe, then fell to thinking of his wife and son, and the great, slow-moving expanse of the Volga at Saratov. Till now the frontiers between him, Tanya and Volodya had been of the homely, knowable variety, but in less than an hour, itwould be different. Belarus, the whole Soviet Union that once was, like everything else, would be behind him. From then on there would be the anticipation of returning. But where to? Saratov? Kiev? In Saratov he had his nearest and dearest; in Kiev the promise of a flat. Once he had a flat, they could come, he’d meet them at the station, take them home in a taxi. But in what sort of a block? How many floors? On which would theirs be? Third would be best. A third-floor flat with a room for Volodya was what he’d ask for. Now the boy had left school, he’d need a room of his own to bring friends and girls back to …
    The carriage began its noisy descent, connected with the new bogies, then rocked this way and that until finally reunited with them.
    Fifteen minutes later the border guard returned their passports. The train slipped from the floodlit glare westwards into the night, and Sakhno slept on.
    Waking to his companion’s snoring and a Polish dawn, Nik saw that their passports had been dealt with while they slept, and was grateful for the consideration shown.
    Fields, villages flashed by to the accompaniment of Sakhno’s snores, and the further they travelled, the bigger and better the houses became.
    Suddenly, eyes still tight shut, Sakhno reached under the table, setting the empty vodka bottle rolling before locating his carrier of provisions for the journey. From this he took a length of smoked