2. Interlude Novodevichy
Interlude Novodevichy
Awoman in black stood at a headstone in Novodevichy Cemetery.
The granite was grey, simple, the kind bought by someone who understood that money and grief are not the same thing. No flowers. She had never brought flowers here. Flowers were for people who visited. She did not visit. She reported.
The ground was frozen solid. January had taken everything soft out of the earth and she did not mind. Softness was not what she came here for.
Moscow was visible through the iron fence, going on the way Moscow goes on: indifferently, completely, without her input.
The domes of the cathedral caught the last light.
Traffic on the ring road was a sound she no longer registered.
She had been coming here once a week for two years and the city had never once acknowledged it.
She stood for four minutes. The length of time was not sentimental. It was the length of time it took to remember everything clearly and file it in the correct place.
The name on the headstone read MIKHAIL MOROZOV.
The Morozov name was still useful in certain corridors.
Hong Kong. Moscow. The distance between the two.
Mikhail's nephew carried the name now, carried it into rooms where it opened doors and closed others, carried it on behalf of a man in Hong Kong who understood the weight of useful surnames.
She had opinions about the uses to which it was being put by the living, and she kept those opinions in the same place she kept everything else: where they could be reached.
One thought, standing at the grave of the man who had been the last uncomplicated thing in her world:
All of them.
She turned. She walked to the gate. The gate closed behind her. The city took her back into its cold and its traffic and its grey January light.