Truth and Fear

by Peter Higgins

  56

  Florian picked up the main route east. The outskirts of Mirgorod diminished to a tideline of subsistence enterprise–one-shed factories, workshops and junkyards, semi-collapsed smallholdings–but the road was getting more crowded, not less, and all the traffic was going in one direction. Away from the city. There were a few trucks and one or two private saloons, but mostly it was horse-drawn wagons and carts and nameless antiquated things hauled by donkeys and bullocks. There were whole families just walking, pushing prams and handcarts, lugging duffel bags, dragging suitcases along the ground, wearing layers upon layers of clothing to keep warm and leave room in the bags for more. The polished black staff car with its Vlast pennant drew hostile glares. From time to time somebody thumped the coachwork or spat on a window. Florian drove in silence, drumming his fingers on the wheel.

  It took them hours to get clear. At last the traffic thinned out and Florian gunned the throttle. They were on the open road east of Mirgorod, skirting the southern shore of Lake Dorogha. It was just after six but twilight was already closing in.

  ‘Tell me about Novaya Zima,’ said Lom.

  Florian tossed the road atlas onto the back seat.

  ‘Follow the Zelenny mountains north,’ he said. ‘You’ll find it.’

  Lom found Mirgorod and started turning pages. Page after page eastward from where they were, the country was a flat expanse of pale green, spattered with small blue lakes and the hairline threads of rivers. The atlas was a Solon and Dutke Standard & Comprehensive: the best you could buy, which wasn’t saying much. Only the largest towns and cities were shown, their names in florid black-letter script. There were a few highways picked out in pink, but citizens of the Vlast didn’t make long journeys by road. They used the slow looping sweeps of the waterways or, if they could afford it, the transcontinental trains. Most roads weren’t even shown, and those that were mapped weren’t necessarily there, or still maintained, or even passable. The same went for the railways.

  Even the map-green of the empty landscape was optimistic. It belied featureless horizons of sandy soil and scrubby grassland, or the silent monotony of birch and moss. If green on a map meant anything, it meant flat. For thousands of miles east from Mirgorod nothing rose more than a few hundred feet above sea level. Not until you reached the Zelenny Mountains, a third of the way between the city and the edge of the endless forest. On the map the Zelenny range was a north–south spine of taupe-shaded contours, but in reality they were scarcely mountains at all, just a spine of uplands slightly too elevated, distinctive and topographically important to be called merely hills. The spine of the Zelenny ran north all the way to the coast and continued out across the water, becoming two long thin islands hooked into the belly of the Yarmskoye Sea like a crooked skeletal finger. The south island was contoured taupe, the north island was the blank and featureless white of year-round ice, and adrift in the sea near the islands was a name in the smallest and faintest typeface that Solon and Dutke ran to: NOVAYA ZIMA.

  ‘That’s it?’ said Lom. ‘That’s where Chazia is going?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Florian.

  ‘It’s nowhere. Why the hell would Chazia go to a place like that?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know,’ said Florian. ‘A couple of years ago the Armaments Minister, Dukhonin, started spending money on his own initiative. He was Vlast Commissar for Industry then, but this was a private venture: secretive appropriations, diverted funds, nothing accounted for. He requisitioned building materials, heavy machinery, oil, coal. And it was all for Novaya Zima. He flooded the place with tens of thousands of conscript workers.

  ‘And then, while the heavy labour was still flowing in, Dukhonin started recruiting persons of a different kind: managers, architects, doctors, teachers. He collected specialists. Engineers. Chemists. Mathematicians. Astronomers. Physical scientists of every conceivable discipline. And always the best. Outstanding in their discipline. I say recruiting, but it’s a euphemism of course. Some of the people Dukhonin sent to Novaya Zima were zeks, prisoners he pulled out from other camps. In other cases bespoke arrests were made, and an eminent few were simply invited, though it was always made clear to them that refusal was not an option. And no one he sent north has ever come back. None of them has ever been heard from again. No communication comes out of Novaya Zima. None at all.’

  ‘So what is he doing up there?’ said Lom. ‘It sounds like he’s building a city. But why build a city up there? It’s thousands of miles from anywhere.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Florian. ‘I’ve been combing the archives for weeks, and I’ve found out some of what’s been sent up there, but as to why… there is no indication, none at all. And Dukhonin is dead now.’

  ‘I read about that in the paper,’ said Lom. ‘Josef Kantor killed him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Florian. ‘Perhaps it was Kantor. Maybe.’

  ‘What do you mean, maybe?’

  ‘It is something of a coincidence, don’t you think?’

  Lom felt his irritation rising again. He wished Florian wouldn’t play games.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘What’s a coincidence?’

  ‘Dukhonin dies and the very next day Chazia sets off for Novaya Zima with Maroussia Shaumian in tow.’

  ‘You think Chazia killed him?’ said Lom.

  ‘It is not unlikely, certainly. And there is something else.’

  Florian hesitated again.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ said Lom. ‘What else?’

  ‘Perhaps you have heard someone speak already of the Pollandore? Perhaps Maroussia Shaumian has mentioned this to you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lom cautiously. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘The extraordinary cargo to which I referred a moment ago,’ said Florian. ‘The cargo on Chazia’s train? It is the Pollandore.’

  Lom’s stomach lurched. He felt his skin prickle. A chill in his spine.

  ‘Shit,’ he breathed. ‘Shit. What the hell is Chazia up to?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Florian. ‘But you see now? You understand why I came for you? Why I think we should join forces?’

  An hour later twilight was thickening into night. Florian flicked on the headlamps. They were passing through level country, undrained and undyked, a patchwork of woodland and shallow lakes and reed beds. The beams splashed off scrubby birch trees and alders, vegetable patches and makeshift fences, stands of hogweed. From time to time a weathered wooden cabin rose out of the darkness and disappeared behind them.

  Lom had been turning over what Florian had told him. He didn’t doubt it, not really, but it didn’t make sense: the more he thought about it, the less it fitted together, and a big part of the puzzle was Florian himself. Who was he? What was he? What was he keeping back? He glanced at Florian’s shadowy profile.

  ‘You can’t drive a car all the way to Novaya Zima,’ said Lom, remembering the thousands of miles of empty green on the map. ‘It isn’t possible. You need to tell me where we’re going.’

  ‘Still you do not trust me, Vissarion?’ said Florian patiently. ‘We are going to Novaya Zima, but not by car. We are making for a small lake called Chudsk, but we will not reach it for some hours yet. Why don’t you get some sleep?’

  ‘I don’t need to sleep. You could let me drive for while.’

  Florian hesitated.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Fine.’

  Florian brought the car to a stop, killed the engine and dropped his hands off the wheel with a sigh. When he cut the headlamps and wound down the window, an immense silence rolled in around them, and with it the smell of damp earth and cold night air. Tiny night sounds could be heard above the ticking of the cooling engine: the wind moving across grass and snow, the nearby trickle of water, the shriek of a fox. Lom got out and walked round to get in behind the wheel. Florian slid across into the front passenger seat.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Florian. ‘I am tired. Just keep straight on. There’s only the one road: you just need to make sure you don�
��t turn off onto any farm tracks.’ He settled back in his seat and closed his eyes.

  Lom started the engine and pulled away.

  ‘Florian?’ he said.

  Florian stirred reluctantly and opened his eyes.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘You need to tell me how you know what you know. You need to tell me who you are.’

  ‘Who I am? In what sense, exactly? Are we discussing allegiances here? Sides? Motivations?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lom. ‘Absolutely. For a start.’

  ‘I am…’ He paused, choosing his words carefully. ‘I am… freelance.’

  ‘Freelance?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ said Lom. ‘You care to expand on that? Because you need to.’

  Florian settled lower in the passenger seat and closed his eyes again. Lom thought he wasn’t going to say any more, but after a while he started speaking quietly.

  ‘You think I am playing games with you, Vissarion? OK. Maybe. But really. You should look at yourself. You are angry, and you ask me what I am? You? You, who have that marvellous, that wonderful, that unique and beautiful opening in your head? You sit there and it’s spilling out… shedding… you don’t know what, you’re not even aware… and you ask me to say what I am?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Lom. ‘What are you trying to say?’

  Florian half opened his eyes and glanced sideways.

  ‘I think you should stop asking yourself what things are and start asking what they can become. I think you should work at yourself. I think you should, to coin a phrase, get a fucking grip.’

  57

  Colonel-General Rizhin put aside the name of Josef Kantor and the life he’d lived under that name without a backward glance. He killed Kantor without compunction or regret. There is no past, there is only the future. Commissar for Mirgorod city defence.

  Rizhin began to work.

  He had an appetite and capacity for work that were astonishing. Relentless. Prodigious. Terrifying. The more he worked the more energy he drew from it and the more work he did. No detail was trivial, no obstacle immovable. He had a nose for men and women whose capacity for work matched his, or almost, and he gathered them about him. Put them to work. Those that flagged or showed the slightest inclination to cling to a private life of their own (the very phrase an abomination in Rizhin’s lexicon) were ruthlessly obliterated.

  And Rizhin’s work was war, his purpose victory.

  Within hours of the departure of Chazia, Fohn and Khazar, the pyre outside the Lodka was extinguished. The number of recruitment booths doubled. That very afternoon, he told the people of Mirgorod what to expect. He broadcast on the radio, on the tannoys and loudspeakers. The film was played in cinemas and converted Kino-trams, over and over again. Incessantly. The text appeared that evening in special editions of all the newspapers. Every paper carried the same photograph of Rizhin’s gaunt, smiling, pockmarked face. By the evening it had appeared on posters in every public building, on every tram, on every city wall. Yesterday the people of the city might have been asking, who is this Rizhin? Today they knew.

  He called the city to war, a war against two enemies: outside the city were the forces of the Archipelago, and inside the city were the diversionists, the traitors, the looters, the spies. It wasn’t two wars, it was one war fought on two fronts, and there was nothing that was not part of it. No bystanders. No noncombatants. No civilians.

  ‘At last,’ he told the people of Mirgorod, ‘we are coming to grips with our most vicious and perfidious enemy The fiends and cannibals of the Archipelago, the slavers, are bearing down on our city. And they have accomplices among us! Whiners. Cowards. Deserters. Panic mongers. Spies. Saboteurs. Traitors!

  ‘The enemy’s soldiers and their secret allies must be rooted out and destroyed at every step. This is no ordinary war. Not a war of soldiers but a war of all the people. Everyone and everything is at war! Total war! Our homes are not our own, our dreams are not our own. Our lives are not our own. There is only one life, the Vlast, and only one outcome is possible. Overwhelming triumph!

  ‘Everything must be mobilised, all that we are. Private lives do not exist. Every man, woman and child is a soldier of the Vlast. We will fall upon our enemies as one body, an irresistible mass, roaring defiance, destruction and death with a single voice. With the angels on our side we will certainly prevail. All the strength of the people must be used to smash the enemy. Onward to victory!’

  In the cinemas and in the squares the people of Mirgorod broke into spontaneous cheering. The death of the Novozhd had left them adrift, afraid and grieving, but here was a leader again, come in their desperate hour.

  Rizhin.

  His face was everywhere, and his words.

  Onward to victory!

  58

  Elena Cornelius was working in the Apraksin when she heard from a customer about the forced evacuation of the Raion Lezaryet. She closed the counter immediately and went as fast as she could to the school, desperate to be with her daughters, to see them safe, but when she got there she found the teachers reluctant to let her take the girls away.

  ‘Our instructions are to keep them all together here,’ the headmaster said, ‘until the trucks come. They will all be taken to a place of safety, far away from the bombs. The whole school is to go, we teachers also. We don’t know yet where we are going, but we are excited about this great adventure and so are the children. It is best for them, don’t you think? I would think you would be pleased for them, Elena Cornelius. Your girls will be safer with us.’

  ‘I am their mother and I will keep them safe,’ said Elena Cornelius. ‘Not you. Me. They are coming with me now.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I am their mother and you will not stop me taking them.’

  ‘On your own responsibility, then,’ the headmaster said. ‘I wash my hands of them. Don’t come crying to me later, and do not expect to bring Yeva and Galina back to this school again when the war is over.’

  Elena did not return to Count Palffy’s house in the raion–all their possessions, their home, the workshop, it was all lost to them now–but she went instead with her daughters to her aunt Lyudmila Markova, who had a one-room apartment in Big Side. Aunt Lyudmila had never married. She kept a caged parakeet for company and was reluctant to take in her niece and two girls as well.

  ‘But there’s only the one bed, Elena! Where would you sleep?’

  ‘On the floor. I’ll buy a mattress.’

  ‘I don’t know, Elena. That doesn’t sound comfortable for the girls, and Bolto doesn’t like change. It unsettles him. He doesn’t like strangers coming in and out. He has his own little ways.’ Bolto was the parakeet.

  ‘We are not strangers, Aunt,’ said Elena. ‘And I’ve got a hundred roubles at the workshop. You’ll be glad of the help when the war comes. Things will get expensive.’

  ‘All this talk of war, I don’t like it, Elena. It’s nonsense. The Novozhd won’t let anything happen to Mirgorod.’

  ‘The Novozhd is dead, Aunt. The enemy is coming. There’ll be more bombing. There may be fighting.’

  ‘Oh no, not here. I don’t think so. They wouldn’t dare. Why don’t you just go home and wait till it all blows over? Bolto and I will be fine.’

  ‘I can’t go home. Everyone in the raion is being taken away on trains and nobody knows where to.’

  ‘I thought you were doing well at the Apraksin, Elena? I thought they liked you there? You’ve always said—’

  ‘It’s not to do with the Apraksin, Aunt. It’s everyone.’

  In the end Aunt Lyudmila relented.

  ‘Just for a couple of days, Elena, until you get yourself settled. I must say I’m disappointed in Count Palffy; it’s very shoddy behaviour to put you out like this. You don’t expect it, not from an aristocrat. The Novozhd always said they were enemies of the people.’

  When she heard Rizhin’s broadcast on Aunt Lyudmila’s radio, Elena Cornelius knew she
had to do something. She could not go to the raion again, she could not go back to the Apraksin and she could not simply hide away in her aunt’s apartment. Sooner or later she would be found and questions would be asked. The girls had to be safer than that. She had to do what she could to protect them. Immediately. That meant she had to have a role. She had to have a place. She had to have a story.

  ‘This new man, Rizhin,’ said Aunt Lyudmila. ‘He sounds like a strong man. He’ll sort out this nonsense about a war.’

  That same evening Elena went to the Labour Deployment Office and filled in a form. Where it said address, she put Aunt Lyudmila’s apartment in Big Side. She waited in line for two hours and handed the form to a woman at a desk.

  ‘My name is Elena Schmitt,’ she said.

  ‘Would I be in this job if I couldn’t read?’

  ‘No,’ said Elena. ‘Of course not.’

  The woman studied the form carefully. She had close-cropped fair hair and colourless eyes in a dry, sunless face, striated with fine lines. She must have been about forty. Her fawn uniform blouse was fresh and spotless. Crisp epaulettes. Sharp creases down the outside edge of her sleeves. Elena thought that, close to, she would smell of laundry. The woman pulled out a file and paged through sheets and sheets of typescript.

  ‘This is your address?’

  ‘Yes. Well, it is my aunt’s apartment. I live with her.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I’m sorry? I don’t understand?’

  ‘How long have you lived there?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘You’re not listed at that address.’

  ‘I came to Mirgorod two years ago,’ said Elena. ‘To work at Blue’s. Before that I lived with my parents. At Narymsk, and before that Tuga. Look, I want to work, citizen. I want to do something. For the city.’

  ‘So. And what can you do, Elena Schmitt?’

  ‘I am a carpenter. I have my own tools. I have a school certificate in mathematics and a diploma in bookkeeping.’