“Ah, Isaac Emmanuilovich, you do like your little jokes. I can’t grudge you them, I suppose, you poor thing you.” The old woman’s deep voice rumbled out from the kitchen she’d stepped into.

“It’s Captain Korolev, our new neighbor. I was just telling you about him.” Valentina Nikolaevna rose from the soft chair in which she’d been sitting. She was wearing a cocktail dress with a neckline that plunged low enough to reveal chiseled clavicles and swan-white skin. She smiled at him; not exactly a friendly smile, but not unfriendly either. Babel uncrossed his legs and rose to his feet, as did the others, and his smile was, in contrast, as warm as the sun. He waved Korolev to an empty chair.

“Welcome, Comrade. Valentina you know, and Shura it seems. This is my wife Antonina Nikolaevna-Tonya-and this is Avram Emilievich Ginzburg, the poet, and his wife, Lena Yakovlevna. Shura, bring Comrade Korolev a glass. Would you like wine or vodka, Comrade? We’ve both, you see.” He laughed, revealing even, white teeth.

“I’d drink a glass of wine, if I might,” Korolev said.

“Let me guess, Captain. You’re late home after a long day wrestling with evil, heard our little party and thought you’d introduce yourself. Thank God you did-poor Ginzburg was getting bored.”

The small man with wary eyes and a gray beard waved the suggestion away with a half-irritated smile, not shifting his gaze from Korolev’s. He looked ready to run, but that was a reaction you became accustomed to as an investigator. It used to mean people had something to hide, but that wasn’t necessarily the case any more; although, on second thought, there was something about the man’s pallor and frailty that suggested Ginzburg was no stranger to the Zone.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Comrade, but I’d hoped you were expecting me. Staff Colonel Gregorin suggested I come by.”

“Gregorin, ah yes,” Babel said.

“He thought you might be able to assist me with a case I’m working on. A murder.”

“A murder,” Babel said, his eyebrows lifting. “Did you hear that, Shura? I know you’re listening. Shura loves a good murder-the more horrific the better. And my beautiful Tonya isn’t averse to homicide either.” Babel placed a proprietary hand on the knee of the pretty, long-necked brunette, who shook her head in shy disagreement.

“Have you eaten?” Babel continued.

“I have cheese dumplings for him, haven’t I?” a grumpy Shura said, coming from the kitchen with a plate and an empty glass.

“I told you she was listening,” whispered Babel, and Shura leaned over and slapped his arm.

“Don’t be like that, Shura. Sit down now, and we’ll see what kind of a story Captain Korolev has for us.”

Babel poured wine into Korolev’s glass before crossing his legs beneath him.

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about this particular case,” Korolev said, feeling awkward.

“Don’t worry, Captain, I was only teasing. Have some wine and food and when you feel refreshed we’ll talk. Avram is telling us about Armenia.”

Korolev lifted the glass of red wine and enjoyed the warm taste of it, beginning to relax as the bird-like man began to speak. Korolev looked over at Valentina Nikolaevna and was struck by the sharpness of her profile and the way she listened to Ginzburg. Her look was benevolent, even motherly, as though she wanted to shield him from the times they lived in. His wife, Lena, regarded him with the same affectionate gaze, although when she looked up at Korolev her face became closed and careful.

When Ginzburg finished his tales of the sun-baked Armenian hills, the conversation wandered from talk of Paris, where Babel had spent part of that summer representing Soviet literature at a writer’s conference, to the construction of the Metro, on which Babel ’s wife Tonya worked as an engineer. Without being aware quite how it had come about, Korolev found himself telling the story of the rapist, Voroshilov-the trail of clues, the relief on the young man’s face when he was caught. Although Shura, leaning against the kitchen door, maintained her stony face, he couldn’t help notice the way she stared at him. Not at his eyes, he thought, but at his mouth, so that she didn’t miss a word he said. It was Babel, however, who asked what clothes the rapist had worn, how he’d managed to obtain such a fine pair of boots, which lectures had been on the list that led to his undoing, and so on.

“What happened to him, the dog?” Shura asked when he finished.

“He’ll get eight or ten years I should think, depends on what the court decides. It doesn’t matter.”

“How so?” Ginzburg asked, but Korolev was sure he already knew the answer. He’d been in the Zone, or close to it-Korolev was sure of that now. He had the prison pallor of a Zek. Babel coughed, then picked up a bottle of wine.

“Come, friends, let’s finish this off and we’ll open another.”

“Tell us, Captain, why doesn’t it matter?” Ginzburg’s wife asked now and there was accusation in her tone. Perhaps she didn’t understand. He looked at Babel, who shrugged his shoulders and poured out the wine, his eyes on the stream of red. Korolev sighed. Well, if they wanted to know, why shouldn’t they? There were no children present.

“There’s a hierarchy in a prison, even in a police cell. At the top sits the ranking Thief, the ‘Authority,’ then his lieutenants, then down through the Thieves to the lowest apprentice. Then beneath the Thieves are the other prisoners and then the politicals. At the bottom, beneath everyone, are the untouchables. No Thief, nor any other prisoner, will touch them except to commit violence upon them, sometimes sexual violence. They sleep underneath the bunks in case they contaminate a bed. They have their own cutlery, as a fork used by an untouchable would contaminate anyone who used it after them and bring them down to the untouchable’s level. They are given the filthiest jobs. And they don’t last long. Voroshilov will end up like that, as a rapist, unless he’s very lucky. It’s the Thieves’ morality.”

Shura nodded her head, a short jab downward with a hard mouth. It was peasant justice also. Harsh, even brutal, but just in a peasant’s eyes, and she approved. Babel gave a half-smile.

“They have their own rules. It’s difficult for cultured people to understand.”

Valentina Nikolaevna looked at him in confusion. “How could this be allowed to happen? The Thieves are not the law.”

“They are in the camps and the guards allow it,” Ginzburg said and his eyes burned. “The Thieves are the guards’ dogs, and the rest are the sheep. That’s what the Thieves call us-the politicals and the rest-sheep. And they can shear us whenever and however they want. The untouchables are there to tell us that, no matter how bad it gets, it can get worse. And to make us complicit because we all conspire against the untouchables. After all, if we helped them, we would become one of them. It’s a little microcosm of Soviet society, wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”

Korolev looked at Ginzburg in the silence that followed and saw how his chin was lifted, as though expecting a blow. Korolev sighed and shook his head.

“I’m a criminal investigator, Citizen. I find bad people who have done bad things and I put them in a bad place. What of it? As for Soviet society, it’s getting better. We know it isn’t perfect. Comrade Stalin tells us as much. It’s in the nature of Bolshevik self-criticism to recognize its current flaws. It’s where we’re going, not where we are.”

“We know where we’re going, Captain. We’re going to…” Ginzburg stopped and turned to his wife, who’d taken his arm and now shook her head. Babel passed a glass of wine to him and another to Korolev. He seemed comfortable with the break in the conversation, and when everyone had a glass in their hand he raised his own.

“A toast, friends. To our beautiful future.” He held the glass for a moment as though to contemplate the prospect in the color of the wine. Each of them seemed lost in thought and Korolev wondered if they, like him, were imagining what such a beautiful future might be like.