"Smith, Martin Cruz - Polar Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

'That Bukovsky gives me such a pain in the ass.' Gury studied the picture of a colour television. 'Look at this: "nineteen inches". How big is that? I had a Foton colour set in my flat. It blew up like a bomb.'

'There's something wrong with the tubes,' Kolya said meekly. 'Everyone knows that.'

'That's why I had a bucket of sand by the set, thank God.' Gury leaned out to look up at Arkady. 'So what did the third mate want from you?'

There was just enough room between the overhead and the bunk for Arkady to wedge himself into a semi-sitting position. The porthole was open to a faint line of grey. Sunrise in the Bering Sea.

'You know Zina in the galley?'

'The blonde,' Gury said.

'From Vladivostok.' Kolya stacked his pots.

Gury grinned. His incisors were porcelain and gold, decoration as much as dental work. 'Bukovsky likes Zina? She'd tie his cock in a knot and ask if he liked pretzels. He might.'

Arkady turned to Obidin, who could be counted on for a judgment from the Old Testament.

'A slut,' Obidin said and examined the jars that lined the bottom of the wardrobe, the lid of each one plugged with a cork and a rubber pipe. He unscrewed one, releasнing the sweet exhaust of fermenting raisins. He examined a jar of potatoes.

'Is this dangerous?' Gury asked Kolya. 'You're the scientist. These fumes, can they explode? Is there any vegetable or fruit he can't make alcohol from? Remember the bananas?'

Arkady remembered. The closet had smelled like a rotting tropical jungle.

'With yeast and sugar, almost anything can ferment,' Kolya said.

'Women should not be on a ship,' said Obidin. On a nail in the back of the closet was a small icon of St Vladimir. His thumb to two fingers, Obidin touched his forehead, chest, right shoulder, left shoulder, heart, then hung a shirt on the nail. 'I pray for our delivery.'

Curious, Arkady asked, 'From who?'

'Baptists, Jews, Freemasons.'

'Although it's hard to see Bukovsky and Zina together,' Gury said.

'I liked her bathing suit,' Kolya said. 'That day off Sakhalin?' A warm-core ring of water had wandered north from the equator, making a false few hours of summer. 'That string bathing suit?'

'A just man covers his face with a beard,' Obidin told Arkady. 'A modest woman keeps herself from public view.'

'She's modest now,' Arkady said. 'She's dead.'

'Zina?' Gury sat up, then removed his dark glasses and stood to be at eye level with Arkady.

'Dead?' Kolya looked aside.

Obidin crossed himself again.

Arkady thought that probably all three of them knew more about Zina Patiashvili than he did. Mostly he recalled that freak day off Sakhalin when she had paraded on the volleyball deck in her bathing suit. Russians loved the sun. Everyone wore the skimpiest possible bathing suit in order to apply the greatest amount of sunshine to their pale skins. Zina, though, had more than a meagre bathing suit. She had a Western body, a bony voluptuosity. On the infirmary table she looked more like a damp rag, nothing like the Zina walking up and down the deck, posing against the gunwale, her sunglasses black as a mask.

'She fell overboard. The net brought her back up.'