Sacha questioned his students. His gaze went from one to another. They were struck dumb and searched for the answer. They looked down and consulted their notes without finding the solution.
‘Why?… You haven’t understood a thing, you bunch of idiots! Because a negative is always true! It’s what has been exposed over it that has been adjusted. Thanks to your contribution, questions as to its veracity will not be asked. What is true is what you see! Now, you must ask yourself about the usefulness of this photo, its political significance. What message do you wish to get over? If it’s a matter of sticking on a double chin, or a roll of flesh, or a wrinkle, the work must be invisible, like that of the retouchers in Hollywood. You can replace hair that has disappeared with age, make grey hair dark, you can wipe out the ravages of time. It is not acceptable for unflattering photos of our leaders to appear in the newspapers. Retouching a lined, pockmarked or puffy face, removing spots or getting rid of scars, requires experience. They must be credible and reassuring. The subject must not look younger, he must simply age more slowly than us. Ideally, one adds a smile or a glint in the eye. Our department has been blamed for producing conspicuous, even crude retouches. It’s a technical and practical application of historical materialism. I have often been asked to restore photos that have been touched up perfectly and to make the retouching blatant. We could have done it artistically, like genuine forgers, and no one would have seen a thing. But it’s about sending out a clear message: this is what happens to traitors! They disappear. They are eradicated. As though they had never existed. Those photos that are faked crudely are intentional. It encourages friends and relatives to follow the right example, to demonstrate their affection for the revolution by mutilating photos of traitors themselves, by removing them from family albums and from drawing room frames. How many thousands of women have erased their arrested husbands or brothers? How many sons have expunged their fathers for ever? All that remains of them are shadows, holes, voids, hacked out by a razor. At best, a hand, a shoulder, a boot: not much. In this way they prove what side they are on and their lives are safe. Otherwise, how can one forgive them for having married an enemy of the people? How can one trust the son of a scoundrel? Those who forget to tidy up must disappear. Keeping photographs of an enemy is a proof of guilt. In our schools, children are taught by their teachers to use scissors to cut out criminals who have not yet been removed from schoolbooks. When one is young, one understands better, and the new generations will be more efficient. In the end, the only photos that will remain of those who have disappeared will be those that we have taken full-face and profile. The moment they are placed under arrest, we do a clear-out. We retrieve photographs, letters, exercise books, notebooks, pieces of identity and we burn everything in the boilers at the ministry. Not a single trace of our enemies must remain. We can’t be satisfied with killing them. Their names must be obliterated. No one will remember them. They shall have lost and we shall have won. It’s the ultimate sanction. Their books are removed from the libraries. Their thoughts no longer exist. Neither must we forget to remove the books of enemies who fought against them. Had Trotsky not existed, the anti-Trotskyites would have no reason to survive.’
4
When Colonel Yakonov put down the phone, his hand was shaking and he was sweating. You didn’t receive a threatening call at night from your minister without having palpitations. How could this business have got back to Moscow without his having been informed of it by his department? He was certain of only one thing. It was not an accident. This did not happen in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, or in the Ministry for State Security any more than it did in the time of the NKVD troikas or the State Political Directorate, and neither would it happen in any future ministry should he live long enough to see it. You did not spend a thirty-year career in Soviet security departments, living through the turnarounds, party lines and alliances, purges and coteries, without mastering the basic rules of survival. He would deal with this malfunctioning later. It was time for the right decision. He had a few moments in which to make it. His life depended on it. When Abakumov, who only received his orders from the Little Father of the Peoples in person, took the trouble to speak to you for twenty minutes on the phone, giving you details that you were supposed to know, you might be regarded as an imbecile or an incompetent, which was not in itself a handicap if you wished to survive in this administration. When he employed this icy, sepulchral tone and ended the conversation with an ambiguous: ‘I give you forty-eight hours to rectify this matter’, it was a bad sign. You didn’t need to have studied at length to know that the countdown had begun. He picked up his phone.
‘It’s Yakonov. Is Commandant Markish in the building or has he left the department?’
‘One moment, Colonel, I’ll check… Commandant Markish is at his post.’
He hung up. He felt ill at ease. Yakonov was an instinctive man. He sensed and he knew. He had no degrees. He had risen through the ranks and had climbed to the top. This sixth sense was his strength. He owed his rise to it as well as his escape from the numerous traps into which his superiors and colleagues had fallen. He had known Sacha Markish for a long time. They were not friends. You didn’t have any when you worked at the MVD or the MGB. Only old acquaintances, fellow-survivors. There were not many officials of this rank who had over twenty-five years’ length of service. Markish was a conscientious and honest officer. Yakonov would have staked his life on his being innocent and not having done anything wrong, and it was a waste of time investigating him. You could count on the fingers of one hand the number of those who worked until ten o’clock at night without being obliged to do so. But he wasn’t being asked for his opinion. They required a result. Too bad for him. Markish would not be the first or the last to be reprimanded for nothing. Did he have a choice? It was his neck or that of the head of the photomontage department of the fourth bureau of the second division of the ministry. He had to play his cards close to his chest. Markish was too experienced to allow himself to be caught in the usual traps. He grabbed hold of the Aeroflot file, which would give him an excuse to justify his arrival and would allay any suspicion. He summoned two sergeants from the security department and ordered them to accompany him. They could be useful for the arrest. Yakonov could not risk any mistake.
In the photographic laboratory, lit by a faint yellow light bulb, Sacha, who was wearing a grey apron, was bent over a group photograph. About fifteen men and women in white coats were spread out over three steps in front of a wooden building. It looked like a gathering of doctors and nurses. It might have been the Tarnovsky Hospital on a fine June day. With their hands in their pockets, they were smiling and relaxed. Some of them had cigarettes at their lips, others had their arms round their neighbours’ shoulder. Igor Markish appeared on the second step, third from the left, with a stethoscope round his neck, a cigarette in his right hand, which he was holding up, as if he had just removed it from his mouth, and his left hand on Nadejda’s shoulder, who was also smiling, her hair blowing in the breeze. Sacha put a magnifying glass to his right eye. Igor’s face appeared, enlarged. He picked up a scalpel and checked the tip, which he stuck into the collar of Igor’s coat. He drew it along the neck, cutting out the face. The incision was so fine it was invisible. The blade slid down the coat as far as the step and was then turned in the opposite direction. He lifted up the photograph and pressed on the cut-out part, which dropped out. Igor’s silhouette lay on the board. Sacha opened a shoebox. He put his hand inside and brought out dozens of cutout faces. He chose five, which he positioned behind the photograph, in place of Igor’s face. He grimaced slightly. He brought out other faces and tried again. None of them was suitable. He put the cut-out faces back in the box. He placed the photograph on a marble plate and, with the scalpel, cut it widthways. He set about cropping the two sides without Igor. He scraped and he brushed, removed an overlapping foot, and aligned the two sections. With a fine brush, he pieced them together, adjusted them until everything fit
ted, and he breathed over the glue. He took a slightly thicker brush, which he dipped into a pot of white paint. He covered the splicing with a steady stroke. With another brush, which he inserted into a tube of black paint, he set about reconstructing the wooden step and the side of the door that featured in the background. When he stood up straight, the two parts of the photograph were joined together. The door was at the right distance. The step was replaced. Nadejda had her hand on another doctor’s shoulder. He placed the reconstructed photo on an upright easel and switched on several lights, which he arranged to create a cross-effect. He regulated the speed and distance on a box Rolleiflex and took several pictures. He took hold of the photograph. He picked up a cardboard folder and slipped the two prints inside: the original and the retouched version. He opened an enormous black register and, following on from the last name, he wrote in Cyrillic characters over ten columns on both pages. He closed the register which he put back in its place in the filing area where dozens of metal shelves about three metres high, open on both sides, stored the thousands of grey cardboard folders with straps around them, each with its label on the edge. He was about to file Igor’s dossier away when he heard knocking at the door.
‘Who is it?’ he asked.
‘It’s me, Yakonov.’
He unlocked the door. Yakonov came in on his own, a folder under his arm.
‘You seem surprised, Sacha Emilievitch?’
‘You don’t often come here, Anton Nikolaïeveitch. Especially at such an hour. What’s going on?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘About what?’
‘It’s your brother.’
‘Igor?’
Yakonov nodded, without replying.
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘Don’t you know?’
‘We’re not on good terms, as you know.’
‘He managed to escape before his arrest.’
‘I didn’t know. I’m not in touch with my family any more.’
‘Really?’
‘We haven’t seen one another for years. Once, we bumped into each other by chance, at the reopening of the Kirov. We hardly exchanged three words. He’s never forgiven me for standing up for my country and belonging to the NKVD.’
‘He’s escaped! He’s disappeared! Do you realize what that means?’
‘I’m not responsible for my brother. I parted company from him a long time ago.’
‘He received a phone call warning him of his arrest.’
‘I had no idea he was going to be arrested. How would I have known? You know very well that a decision like this is not up to our department. And even if I had heard about it, I would have had no reason, no interest, no desire to warn him. You know my loyalty, Anton Nikolaïevitch.’
‘The nurse who took the call wasn’t able to tell us whether it was a man or a woman. She had the impression it was a woman.’
‘Ah, you see.’
‘You could have found a woman to make the call.’
‘Who would pass on a message like this?’
‘Your wife.’
‘My wife is six months pregnant. Do you think I’d let her run such a risk? You’d have to be crazy! They can get themselves arrested, him and his lot, for all I care.’
‘At the moment he received this call, you were out of the building. You could have distorted your voice.’
‘You know me. If I had made this call, I would have arranged to have an alibi.’
‘There’s a doubt. And in our country, a doubt is a certainty.’
‘You know who I am. You know what I’ve done. I was recruited in 1927 and I’ve given a thousand proofs of loyalty to the regime.’
‘One more is required, Sacha Emilievitch.’
‘What more can I do?’
‘Give evidence at the Doctors and Nurses trial.’
‘I’m not a doctor. What would I testify to?’
‘To your brother’s guilt and that of others charged. To the fact that these doctors were plotting against the regime and were preparing to get rid of several important people who trusted them with their treatment. Their leader was preparing to poison our First Secretary in person. You could say that you overheard conversations, that you carried out your own investigation and that you informed your superiors of the result of your enquiries.’
‘I see no objection. I’ve told you that we had broken off all relationships. That means that this man is no longer my brother. One has no right to betray one’s country.’
‘You would be ready to testify? At the trial? In Moscow?’
‘Of course, Anton Nikolaïevitch. It’s the duty of each one of us to expose traitors.’
‘Are you quite sure?’
‘As you’ve often said: we are soldiers, we fight and we obey orders.’
‘I’m going to refer this back to the top level. Abakumov thought you wouldn’t agree. I’ll call him tomorrow morning. He’ll be pleased. This decision will make life easier for us. There wasn’t much evidence in the folder. I’m relieved that you’re taking things this way. It’s a weight off my shoulders.’
‘Does the fact that I’m a commandant in the Ministry of Internal Affairs not risk making my testimony less convincing in the eyes of the judges?’
‘The important thing is that you’re his brother and that you’ll give evidence spontaneously, without constraints. We’ll discuss it again tomorrow. Ah, I forgot: the Aeroflot file has come back. There were some omissions.’
Sacha took the bound folder and looked carefully at a note attached to it.
‘I see, the folder was dealt with by the second branch. This incident will not occur again. I’ll deal with it immediately.’
‘Another day won’t make a difference.’
‘I must correct the department’s error. I’ll adjust it right away.’
‘Ah, if only everyone had your professional conscientiousness, Sacha Emilievitch, things would be better in this country,’ said Yakonov as he left the laboratory.
For reasons impossible to fathom, following some rigging or unfortunate confusion, or a series of human errors or incompetence, the winner of the 1948 Aeroflot staff chess tournament always featured in a photograph in which competitors were shown wearing their pilots or stewards uniforms, or in their civilian clothes. This individual should have disappeared from the group portrait several years ago. He was standing in the front row. The president of the company was awarding him the winner’s cup. The appended note, which came from the director of internal security in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, provided no information about the offence committed or the verdict. It stated that the declared winner was the person who came second. It was logical that the original winner should be made to disappear on ideological grounds. It was a complicated job. If he had had the time, Sacha would have cut out the silhouette of this Leonid Krivoshein and shifted a row of twenty or so people from left to right. But he hadn’t a minute to spare. He made do with cutting out a square containing the man’s face. He groped around in the shoebox for some anonymous person to replace him. He couldn’t find any face that fitted. He smiled, took out his wallet and pulled his party card out. He removed his passport-sized photograph in which he was shown full-face, wearing his MVD cap, and he stuck it down in place of the face that had been removed. He added a few dabs of black paint with his brush. It belonged to a different period and was not touched up, but it would not be the first or the last time a photograph had been tampered with so as to be not what it seemed. He sealed the note with the department’s red rubber stamp, signed it and scribbled down: ‘Photo: the head of department of the fourth bureau’, and placed the folder in the ‘Return to sender’ pigeon-hole. He took off his grey apron. From a drawer, he picked out a couple of dozen notebooks and exercise books. He placed them in a bag which he stuck on his shoulder and put on his officer’s uniform jacket and his overcoat. No one could see that he had concealed something beneath his coat. He put on his cap, switched off the light and left the laborator
y for ever.
The Incorrigible Optimists Club Page 61