by James L. May
Her past was weighty, but as Veronika Fitneva drew closer and closer to the present moment, she converged to an insubstantial point, and vanished. We had to content ourselves with learning the floor and block number she’d been assigned in the women’s dormitory.
I suppose our consulting the inmate files was inevitable. If not at this point in the investigation, it would have been another. As Petrovich had said, there were benefits to conducting your inquiry in a prison. What detective could resist the archives? They were a palace built by surveillance, whose paper-and-ink corridors were much easier to walk than Solovki’s frozen trails. Personal history, a record of prior crimes, memos about work assignments and associations here on the island: individually, the details were almost too much to take in. If they didn’t add up to an all-encompassing whole, the aesthetic effect for the reader was the same as if they had, a kind of overload of the sense of suspicion.
They inspired grandiose thinking. You could almost imagine that Antonov’s murder had been witnessed and recorded by some diligent spy, who’d written it down in the illiterate style characteristic of confidential reports: Oct. 21, 1926, 4 a.m.: Subject X was observed to kill Prisoner GA, following which action GA’s body was dragged to the bay by Subject X, and thrown in. Subject X’s antisocial tendencies confirmed. Our work as detectives would only be a matter of finding the right document, then. Instead of looking for the killer out in the cold world, we would search instead for his file, among the indices and registers of the dusty one. Appealing thought—what else is a mystery novel, after all?
It can only have been Petrovich’s high respect for his own powers as an interrogator that had kept him from starting our investigation within the archives—that, and the Chekist’s odd unwillingness to grant us more access. In retrospect, it should have struck me as highly suspicious that we were not allowed to read Antonov’s file as a matter of course. At the time I took Petrovich’s meek acceptance of this as a sort of bow to the arbitrariness of Solovki Power.
What wasn’t in those archives? I wonder. Along with a record of the murder, it would have been possible to imagine my own involvement with the investigation logged in their pages, my every movement and idea tracked by someone unknown:
Subject A. Bogomolov exited the administration building in the company of Prisoner YP. His gratification at receiving the dry ration in Company Ten is apparent. Appears distracted by own good fortune. Follows orders from YP without complaint. Full extent of undesirable associations still undetermined. Subject does not appear to suspect he is under observation.
10
A shoulder-high barbed-wire fence surrounded the women’s barracks. The place was near the main administration building. We’d left the note the Chekist had requested, describing our anticipated whereabouts, at the Infosec office, and come here first, to see whether any trace of Veronika Fitneva could be discovered. Visiting the laundry for Varvara Grishkina would come later.
After showing our papers to the guard at the gate, we were allowed through the fence. Inside, the barracks were clean, but empty. Another converted building, their layout was much like the hospital’s, with large rooms opening off a central hall. The tap of Petrovich’s cane echoed in the uncluttered stairway.
The only lead we had was the floor Fitneva lived on, the third. There was no indication of which room or bed might be hers, but we found a woman nailing a loose board into place above one of the doors. “You’ll want Alexandra Stepnova, then,” she said when she explained we were looking for someone.
The room we were directed to was small and windowless, on the same floor. It was part office, part closet. Mops and brooms leaned against a few shelves of borax and soap along one wall. The middle-aged woman who sat at a table against the other stood as we came in. Alexandra Stepnova was tall and broad-shouldered, her brown hair piled in braids atop her head.
“We’re looking for a woman named Veronika Fitneva,” said Petrovich after we’d showed our letter from Infosec.
Her faint smile was less an expression than a way of holding herself. She gave the impression of being used to stepping out of the way as others tripped. “I see. And when you’ve found her?”
I looked to Petrovich, who raised his bushy eyebrows. “A few questions.”
“Of course,” said Stepnova. “Only, I’m interested in her, you see. Veruchka—Veronika—is by way of being one of my pets. I like to keep track of goings-on in her life.”
“Your pets,” said Petrovich slowly. “And just what is your role here, Madame Stepnova? The girl we talked to outside thought of you right away when we said we needed to find someone.”
“Only Citizen Stepnova, please. There are a few fancy ladies here on Solovki, but I’d rather be a simple Soviet woman.” She spoke slowly, confidently. This was not a woman who minded answering questions for Infosec. “I am only the floor mistress. My job’s divvying up cleaning and maintenance duties among the girls, and it’s me who decides when one of them needs to leave the dormitory. We’re enclosed here, for our own protection, of course. It would be chaos if the girls all went tramping about the island.”
“I see. A pet of yours would be in line to receive some favors.”
Her shoulders hinted at a shrug. “We all have to look out for each other.”
“Maybe you can tell us a little about Prisoner Fitneva. What kind of woman is she?”
Stepnova eyed him, her smile unchanging. “A charming one. Headstrong, perhaps.”
“Headstrong?”
She shrugged again. “Well, who am I to say? Perhaps she isn’t as receptive as some to the rehabilitation the Party hopes for all of us here on Solovki. But I am only the floor mistress.”
“I’m sure you underestimate your judgment,” said Petrovich dryly. “Would you say she knows many people on the island? Maybe one of your pets is able to go visiting more than others are.”
Stepnova was all friendliness. “I could hardly say who she’s acquainted with. Maybe I could be more help if I knew what you wanted her for.”
“We are trying,” said Petrovich, “to find out whether she knows a man named Gennady Antonov.”
“Ah,” she said. “Another man, then.”
The old man was getting impatient. He was in danger of violating his own rule about getting more information than he gave out. Even I had noticed that she hadn’t told us where to find Fitneva. “Another? Who’s the first?”
Stepnova relented a little. “My role puts me in a position to play a bit of the matchmaker. Yes, love blooms, even on Solovki! I thought things had been going well between Veruchka and an important man in the machinist’s shop, Boris Spagovsky. But something seems to have interfered.”
“You think Antonov is what interfered?”
“Well, of course, this is the first I’ve ever heard of your Antonov. But you have to understand how it was. Boris Stepanovich came to me at first because he didn’t know how to woo her, poor thing. He was bashful, as some men are. But Veronika had been coming around. He wanted to walk out with her, to spend time alone …”
Veronika’s file was still fresh in my mind. “You call that bashful?” I said.
“Maybe your young man hasn’t yet experienced the full flower of passion,” said Stepnova to Petrovich.
“Maybe not,” he said.
“Well, we had planned to have her transferred to work more closely with him. I was ready to give the transfer my full support. But then—well, then, all of a sudden, she was assigned somewhere else. Very unfortunate.”
“Where was she assigned?”
“Not every bucket carries the same amount of water. Boris Stepanovich and I wanted her to go to him, of course, but a bigger bucket wanted something else. And the way she acted was very irritating. I tried to talk to her about keeping them together, but she just wouldn’t listen. Now I wonder about your Antonov. Maybe there was someone else who wanted her near. It
’s too bad. Women need to be careful, or they’ll get reputations. Then no respectable man will have them.”
“Antonov wouldn’t have had that kind of pull,” I murmured to Petrovich.
“Of course it’s possible I’m wrong,” Stepnova said. “As I said, all of us here in the camp have to help each other. Perhaps you can tell me what’s so interesting about the man?”
Petrovich said: “You still haven’t told me where she is.”
Stepnova nodded sympathetically. “Ah, I understand. In the past, I have done a few little favors myself for the apparatus your letter mentioned. I know how to stay out of what is not my business. I certainly don’t wish to delay you. But I would like to know what is happening.” She lowered her voice. “It would be better if I knew why an interest has been taken in her. Perhaps, after you and she have spoken …”
Petrovich frowned before giving one of his barks of laughter. “Fine. What if I came back this evening, after Tolya and I have interviewed her?”
Stepnova’s smile broadened. “Perfect. It happens that Boris Stepanovich will be coming to see her this evening. I’ve arranged for them to spend time together away from the dormitory. If you came back then, you and I could talk without her feeling … uneasy about it. Maybe she will have said something I can help you understand.”
“Maybe so,” said Petrovich. “Where can we find her?”
“She will be at work. The transfer I mentioned moved her to the monks’ fishery. You can’t miss it if you take the southern road. It’s on the way to Muksalma.”
Petrovich lifted up his cane to stare at its head, then put it back down on the floor. “This Spagovsky you mentioned. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with Fitneva’s being sent to the hospital in July, would he?”
Stepnova’s face didn’t change—the same smile, the same faintness. She tilted her head to one side. “Do you know, that is an event she and I have never discussed?”
That was all we would get from her, it seemed. As we climbed slowly back down the stairs, I said to Petrovich: “That seems odd, doesn’t it? Her unwillingness to talk? Perhaps Veronika Fitneva really is our V.”
“Perhaps. Still want to talk to Grishkina, though.”
The laundry was inside the kremlin. Before we passed through Nikolski, Petrovich thought it would be wise to stop in again at Infosec and revise our report to the Chekist to reflect the trip we would need to take to Fitneva’s fishery. That done, we headed to the gate.
They hadn’t given us any trouble leaving in the morning, but this time the guard with the goiter, Vlacic, stood when we approached the sentry shelter.
“You two,” he said, picking up his rifle. He sounded excited.“Commander said bring you. Come with me.”
Petrovich planted his cane. “What for?”
“Just bring you, he said.”
“I don’t have time to traipse around at your boss’s beck and call. You saw our authorization yesterday. You know who we’re working for.”
The man sniffed. I could see his fingers tightening on the gun. “Going to have to make you come?”
I looked at Petrovich, alarmed all over again. Even with an authorization like ours, I doubted zeks could get away with defying an order from the guards outright. But the old man followed Vlacic through the gate, with me coming along behind. As before, the men in line behind looked anywhere but at us. You might focus the malignant gaze of authority on yourself by looking where it looked.
Just inside the gate, attached to the kremlin wall, the guards had a small building of their own, one that seemed as though it might have been a gatehouse under the monks. Vlacic led us down a hall before opening a door and motioning us in. We walked through into a dim space.
“Yakov Petrovich,” I said.
The old man already understood: “Just a minute—”
But the door shut behind us, and a lock clicked. We were trapped.
There was a knob, but it wouldn’t turn. While I rattled the door, Petrovich called out: “Damn it! What is this?” There was no response from Vlacic. It was impossible to tell whether he was even still out in the hall.
The place was freezing cold, bare. High in the wall, a shutter covered a tiny, glassless window. There would not have been space for both of us to sit down, even if we’d wanted to on the cold stone.
“They can’t keep us, can they?”
Petrovich shook his head. “Our friend in the cabin draws more water than this piss-bucket in charge of the gate. They won’t dare to do anything.”
“He wasn’t exactly reluctant to beat me up last time.”
“I tell you, we’ll be fine.”
Still, anxiety trickled from my clenched jaw down into my chest. I wished there were room to pace.
We waited for two fearful hours, standing close to each other in the cramped cell. Petrovich leaned with more and more of his weight on the cane. By the end, his arm was shaking. Walking from place to place over the last twenty-four hours, he’d done well enough, but this enforced stillness, with nowhere to sit, seemed to wear hard on him.
We spoke very little. I had the impression neither of us wanted to discuss what might be happening.
At last we heard a key in the lock again. A guard we hadn’t seen before appeared in the opened door. Like Vlacic, he carried a rifle. “You two go on, then. Commander says to tell you he can’t see you now after all. Says remember what he told you before about not making trouble.”
The old man said nothing, only pushed past out the door. No one stopped us as we left. Outside, he gestured for my arm.
“The man’s an idiot,” he muttered. Whether his hand shook with fury or exhaustion, I couldn’t tell. Perhaps he felt the same relief and fear I did. “Doesn’t want his authority challenged, but interferes just to remind us of his threats. Tell me, does he give me any option but bringing someone down on him? We can’t be worrying about the damned guards every time we go in and out!”
“I don’t understand what he wants from us,” I said.
“Always this way. Those guards’ boss is a man who gets things his own way—as long as no one pays too much attention to how he runs things. Out on the bureaucratic periphery, you see anyone who comes digging into your business from the center as a threat.”
“Are we from the center?”
“To him it looks that way.”
I considered that. It was hard to imagine the old man and myself as threatening, with him tottering along supported on one of my arms while I tried to pull my student’s cap down more effectively over my ears with the other. Still, we were, officially speaking, the Chekist’s agents. Just that morning, he’d been musing to Petrovich about the trustworthiness of Adminstrative Director Nogtev’s inner circle. That did seem to place us close to the center of Solovki Power.
Gray skies threatened, though the air was still clear. Above our heads, snow shelved from the kremlin’s eaves.
The laundry occupied the lower floor in one of the stone buildings along the southeast wall, not far from Nativity. When we arrived, two men were at work in front, unloading large bags of dirty clothing from a sledge.
“Just a minute, Yakov Petrovich,” I said. “There’s something I wanted to ask you. Would you mind if I helped with Grishkina’s interrogation? Maybe I could ask her a few questions.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Well—practice. I’m afraid I haven’t done well when you’ve asked me to question people before now. I was awkward with Terekhov at the alabaster shop this morning, wasn’t I? Perhaps I’d be less likely to hold back the investigation if I had some experience.”
An uncomfortable look creased his face. “You did fine with Terekhov. You did what was needed.”
“Even so. The Chekist said we’d need to finish within the week. Things might go faster if I were better able to help.”
“All
right,” he said slowly. “All right, if you want. Just follow my lead. With Grishkina, we only want to start by learning whether she knew Antonov or not. If she won’t admit to it, we’ll probe to see whether she has any suspicious connections to the museum.”
Inside, a few stairs led down into a low-ceilinged semibasement, white-washed, but green in patches with moisture. The damp air was cold and foul.
A dozen women scrubbed in front of a bank of windows along one wall, each at her separate sink. The rest of the narrow space was filled with soiled fabric, in places piled to the ceiling. While we watched, one of the men unloading the sledge outside shook another bagful out onto the floor. When a cascade of tiny bodies followed the shirts—lice and other insect vermin—he grimaced, tossed the bag onto the pile as well, then stepped back, brushing off his hands.
“Time to find our laundress,” said Petrovich.
Asking after Grishkina, we were directed to a room further within. Here, another dozen or so women were washing—in tubs this time, not at sinks—while four others ran wet clothes through two mangles in a corner. This was a larger room than the other, with the remainder of the space filled up with clothing drying on racks. Even so, the amount set out to dry was much less than what sat in dirty piles in the other room. They could not have been getting through their backlog very quickly.
That didn’t surprise me. I’d heard you might be offered a clean change of clothes every few months, turning your old stuff in, but it hadn’t happened yet to me.
All of the women had noticed us come in. Grishkina, a short-haired person at work at one of the tubs, opened her eyes wide when we came over and Petrovich asked her name.
“Yes, yes? Me? Who are you?”
“My name is Yakov Petrovich. My young associate, Anatoly Bogomolov. We’ve come from Infosec, with some questions for you.”