The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
“Money?” ventured Priyenko. “Maybe they were stingy old Soviets.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Joe agreed halfheartedly. “So you never ran across either
of these guys before?” To me and his uncle he added parenthetically, “He
works the Russian mob in and around the city.”
“No, I have never heard of either of them. But, you know, neither of them
lived in Wickenden, and I’ve only been here for maybe nine or ten months.”
Priyenko pulled a pack of Parliaments out of his shirt pocket with long, feminine
fingers and looked the question at Professor Jadid, who put an ashtray
and a book of matches in front of him.
Joe nodded philosophically and scratched the underside of his chin.
Every man has a part of his face that he is condemned to miss whenever he
shaves. That was Joe’s: an oblong patch of thick beard grew like moss in
the fold between his second chin and his neck. “Tell him the better part,
though.” Nobody knew who he was talking to. His uncle served a plate
of baked lamb to each of us. Joe elbowed Priyenko amicably and almost
knocked him off his chair. “Go on,” he said, a pink trickle of lamb juice running
inside his collar. “Tell him.”
“Oh, me. Sure. Well, it turns out that Ivanov and this man called
Pühapäev have Russian records.” None of us said anything. Priyenko made a
little fluttering gesture with his smoking hand. He wasn’t eating. “Yes, well,
this is nothing surprising, you know. Anyone going into the army or in Komsomol
or living in big cities really had to get fingerprinted. Surprising is that I
managed to find this out in a single day,” he said, giggling. “My brother, the
one in the town prosecutor’s office, told me that they just put newer records
on computer, but the old ones are still in the same huge room underneath
Novokuznetskaya, where they’ve always been. Fortunately, he’s had affairs
with four of the six records clerks, and three of them ended happily. The
only man in Moscow who can find out what we need to know.” None of us
was laughing, but he seemed to find this pretty funny.
“Get to the point, how about? And eat something, Slim.”
As soon as he was given permission, Priyenko also began eating enthusiastically.
“Thank you, this is wonderful. Turkish?”
“The recipe?” asked the professor. Priyenko nodded. “It may have
been Greek originally, but it’s entirely my own now. Excellent guess, though.
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