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

world. I just can’t lie. I’m always like an open book to you.”
    As Genka Paltsev chanted on, blinking his saintly eyelashes, Aniskin was moving away further and further from him, and soon Genka’s litany seemed to be coming to him from a vast distance. A thick netting seemed to curtain Genka’s face, the pallor and sickliness left it and it was no longer Genka’s head and body living separate lives of their own before him, but Genka’s father, Dmitri Paltsev, sitting in the darkish office. He looked at Aniskin with his icon eyes and suddenly the stool heaved under the inspector and the floor sank. The damp rotting smell of a gully was in his nostrils, a big green star hit him in the eye so piercingly that his head began ringing like bells over an empty church, the star-like scar under his left breast began to ache. Enveloped in powder fumes he felt the pressure of a blood stream on his palm that flowed out to meet the star.
    “Shut up,” Aniskin whispered and made a motion with his hand as though to brush off a cobweb from his face. “Shut up.”
    For a minute they were both silent. Then Aniskin asked:
    “What did you do at the farm, Genka?”
    “I lifted a watch from the hairdresser,” Genka answered. “A gold one.”
    “Well?”
    “She squealed, Uncle Aniskin,” Genka added inaudibly, “so I had to keep her quiet.”
    “Killed her?”
    “Oh, how can you think such a thing about me, Uncle Aniskin! Now, would I go and kill a person over a mere watch? You are always inventing things, Uncle Aniskin, things it makes me shudder to think about to say nothing of repeating them out loud, really, you’re being unjust to me …”
    Genka chanted on, but his voice kept getting lower and the pauses between words longer and he gradually stretched out his legs before him sprawling on his stool. He lowered and lowered his voice until it became a whisper as Aniskin stared at him with immobile meditative eyes. Something was flowing out of them towards Genka, an invisible but tangible force which bound him hand and foot; Aniskin seemed to be looking right through Genka.
    “That’s enough!” Aniskin finally said.“Now I know everything about you, Genka. I needn’t have received a telegram from the district station ordering me to arrest a dangerous criminal. See, I’ve found out everything from your own words, not from the telegram.”
    Genka was now lying rather than sitting on the stool, his muscly arms had slipped from his knees, the thick legs looked boneless and his Slav nose sharpened. Then he opened his mouth gasping fish-like.
    “When did the telegram come?”
    “Day before yesterday.… I never thought you were such a fool.”
    Aniskin made a grimace of distaste, sucked his tooth and rose from his stool with the resolute air of one who has been meaning to do something for a long time but somehow could not get round to it. Once risen, Aniskin walked over to the Russian stove, took off a box of insecticide from a shelf and sprinkled the front ledge with it.
    “The hairdresser lived for two more hours,” he said in a smothered voice. “Whatever made you switch on your torch when you strangled her? Oh, what a fool you are! With mug like yours, you shouldn’t go about picking pockets, to say nothing of murder. She recognised your photograph. Now you’ve had it, Genka. It’s the firing squad for you, as sure as daylight.” Aniskin shook his head ruefully. “I’ve been militia inspector in this village for thirty-two years, but I’ve never seen a murderer yet. There have been fights and stealing, but no murders. You are my first murderer, Genka.”
    “Don’t arrest me, Uncle Aniskin, don’t give me up to the district station,” Genka’s head pleaded piteously and passionately. “Don’t give me up.”
    There was a rural silence all around, with not a sound to be heard, except the cockroaches scuttling behind the stove.
    “I’ve never given up any of the village folk to the district station for