by James L. May
Vasily Minayev, the engineer. Yes, they’ve booted him. He’s gone.—No, no. They didn’t fire him, only took his Party card.—Isn’t he a member of the bureau?—He was. That was why he had no warning of it. They’d have had to write him a summons so he could answer the charge against him, but they knew he was going to be there anyway. That Ehrenburg, he’s a slick one with such tricks.—They’re saying it caught Minayev completely by surprise. He didn’t know whether to argue or to beg forgiveness and promise to do better.—Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The vote on the motion to expel was unanimous. Anyone could see he was going too far.
Just what the charge made against Vasily-my-neighbor is, no one seems to know. Hijacking the struggle for reform for his own ends. Parroting, for personal aggrandizement, the slanderous propaganda with which capitalist powers smear the Soviet state. Violation of Party discipline. It hardly matters.
We have not spoken. I should not be seen with him. Some of the men at the plant were claiming he would be arrested. Others said no, the Party never lets its members be punished, even after they’ve kicked them out. I cannot tell what will happen.
There was no way to ask for more details without demonstrating I knew him, without attracting suspicion to myself. And it would do him no favors to have Anatoly Bogomolov, class enemy and political criminal, setting himself up as his advocate.
If there is more suppression, I am not safe. I ought to burn all I’ve written. What’s the use of putting down these images that fly up before me in my basement nights? Why risk myself? Vasily Feodorovich’s pinched red-haired wife will have told them about our meetings. At any moment I could hear the boot on the stair, the knock on the door.
It was for a book they took me the first time.
And so, here I am at the point of decision again. I did not burn these pages before when I wrote that I would. Can I now? Can I cease producing empty wire spirals for my drawer? Can I forget this account?
No. I hardly need to think about the answer. No, I can’t forget. And I will not stop writing.
I will need to hide the manuscript. A place of safety for my story, like my place among the desks and painted walls in that chapel above the Holy Gates.
When the scrape of the door hitting my chairs woke me, I knew I’d survived the night. I roused myself to find Vinogradov regarding my improvised barrier, nonplussed, at the other end of the chapel. Gray light came through the three big windows on the eastern wall.
“Perhaps an excess of caution,” he said as I came over to the chairs. “Under the circumstances, I suppose I understand. Put them back where you found them. When your partner arrives, I’ll see the two of you in my office.”
My hand felt worse. It had been a bad night. Pain had affected my dreams.
Once I’d gathered myself, I went out to visit the lavatory. On the stairs, my gut began to cramp, and when I went for a drink my belly clutched at the icy water pulled up from the cistern. With the dirty bustle of men surrounding me, I brought up another dipper-full of water, but let it splash back into the bucket. Suddenly I felt I would be sick. I turned unsteadily, pushed my way back through the crowd, back to the museum.
On the landing I felt a little better. While I gathered myself to enter the museum, however, a problem I hadn’t worked through yesterday reared its head: by removing myself from the infirmary, I’d passed beyond the scope of bread distribution. Was what I was feeling now blood loss, illness, or simple hunger? Being without bread: that’s panic. While I watched, the arm I had supported myself with to lean against the wall began to shake. Again my stomach turned over.
The fish and potatoes I’d taken from Antonov were still in my jacket lining. There was no way to cook them in the museum, and I’d been warned against eating raw potato. You could tell when a starving, mad zek had gorged himself on discarded green spuds by the stains of diarrhea on the back of his pants. It was one of the signs of a dokhodyaga.
Neither of the ones in my jacket looked green, but even when the color hadn’t changed, potatoes were said to be hard to digest uncooked. I examined them again, sniffed them. The taste of the one I finally bit into was bitter, the texture slimy. I took another bite, then another, until I’d eaten the entire thing. With some difficulty, I bent and broke off a large piece of fish from Antonov’s salted slab, then pressed it in my cheek to soften.
It was a substantial fraction of the food I’d meant to ration over the next weeks, but so what? Who knew what might happen today? If my luck ran out, I wouldn’t be able to profit from it anyway. Going off to a penal cell, or dying, would be better with something in my belly.
I began to chew. The hard fish cut my gums, hurt my tongue with its salt.
When Petrovich arrived I still had cod stuck in my teeth, but felt little better for having eaten. The fish and potato were a gurgling mass in my gut. Vinogradov welcomed the old man as we stepped into his office. “A pleasure, Inspector.” A ghost of irony played across his face before he went on. “That is the correct title, isn’t it? I believe Bogomolov explained that you worked in Odessa’s police department before your retirement.”
“That’s right.”
The two of them evaluated each other, while I stood to the side and felt sick. Petrovich looked haggard, his mustache a gnarled fist of hair compared to Vinogradov’s neat one. Vinogradov stood calmly, smooth white hands at his side. After a moment he indicated the chairs in front of his desk, and we all sat.
Getting immediately to business, Vinogradov pushed over a paper. “I’ve made out a pass for the two of you. It will allow you to enter and exit through Nikolski. You should understand my authority does not extend to excusing you from your usual duties. That is for you to work out yourselves, although I suppose the infirmary will not be too troubled by your absence, Bogomolov. Moreover, I do not care to be seen to pit myself against Infosec in this. If I am asked, I will say I understood the two of you to be working on a matter for KrimKab, and that my assistance in the matter of the pass would be a favor to that department. Under no circumstances will I take responsibility for authorizing an investigation to be continued against orders from Information and Investigation. Is all of that clear?”
Petrovich caught my eye. “Nikolski is a problem. It would be better if you just wrote that we were allowed outside the kremlin.”
“What do you mean?”
“The guards there aren’t friendly. More to the point, when our contact in Infosec canceled our investigation, he met us to say so at the gate. They’ll tell him if we start traipsing through again on your say-so. That’s if they don’t decide to give us a beating and lock us up themselves.”
“I see. A problem. But I fear I cannot provide access to any other point of egress. Notwithstanding their passing under the museum, the Holy Gates are not mine to control.”
Petrovich shook his head. “Not those. The Herring Gate. Tolya has an arrangement worked out with the monks. They’ll let us through there, on the condition we are allowed free movement.”
Vinogradov looked to me with some surprise. I nodded, without adding anything. My head had started to swim. Petrovich had covered it well enough.
“All right,” he said slowly. Drawing the document back across the desk, he folded it once, then tore it neatly into four pieces. While he spoke, he deliberately wrote a few lines on a new sheet of paper, then stamped it at the bottom. “ ‘Prisoners Petrovich and Bogomolov are permitted free movement within and without the kremlin.’ I trust that will do? But I reiterate: officially speaking, you are investigating without my sanction. I have not taken you on as agents, and you must make your own accommodations with your work assignments. We proceed on these terms?”
We agreed. Whatever was being done in the infirmary, they wouldn’t be looking for me at Company Thirteen until the next day. As for Petrovich’s situation at KrimKab, that was his own lookout. He’d been able to come this morning, so it stood to reason he’d reached
some kind of arrangement.
“Now,” said Vinogradov, addressing himself to Petrovich, “at this juncture in our investigative partnership it is usual to share certain information, isn’t it? I am naturally most interested in Bogomolov’s suggestion that there is something amiss about the requisition orders. But it is hard to see who might have hoped to profit from what’s happened.”
He went again over what I’d told him the night before, with Petrovich adding comments here and there. I allowed the old man to take the lead. My head continued to swim, and anyway, I’d done my part last night. Let Petrovich bear the burden of the investigation for a while.
“There’s one more piece,” Petrovich said as Vinogradov came to the end of his summary. “Zhenov’s foreman, Ivan Kologriev. Contact of mine, an urka, says Kologriev is one, too. Or was. Specialized in armed robbery, apparently. But shortly after he arrived on Solovetsky, the spirit of socialist reform filled him and he accepted a position offered by Administration. My contact wasn’t happy about it.”
Vinogradov touched his mustache, pinching its edges with his thumb and forefinger, like a man straightening a tiny painting hanging on his lip. “Ah,” he said.
I’d been slouching, exhausted, but the tone made me sit up. “What?”
Vinogradov said: “I know that Kologriev.”
“Is that right?” said Petrovich. “You knew he was a stickup artist?”
“No. Not that.”
“Well then?” I said. “Are you going to tell us, or what?”
Vinogradov gave me a look. The window behind his desk faced west. With the sun still rising, most of the light in the room came from the lamp he’d brought in. The flame reflected steadily from the bright things on his shelves and desk. In his glasses, it quivered.
“I have been a curator for some time,” he said. “Before being sentenced here, I worked at the Museum of Kostroma Oblast. A fine regional collection, one I was sorry to leave. The so-called misappropriation for which I was convicted—a matter of a particularly fine set of Persian miniatures, which after all bore little relation to any other part of the collection—I regard it in the light of an unfortunate necessity.”
He let out a slow breath before he continued. “The pieces in the collection here, or at Kostroma—weapons, paintings, Stone Age figurines, whatever they may be—they are travelers in time. They pass through the hands of their ostensible owners the way an arrow flies through the air. To treat ownership as something permanent or important is absurd. Objects in a collection belong, at most, to each other. Sometimes the good of the collection as a whole demands that a particular piece be sacrificed. And then—sometimes a piece will exert a special pull on an individual. This is what I call necessity. It can overwhelm even other objects’ collective claim. But, you understand, it arises from the intrinsic qualities of the piece. It has nothing to do with any person’s so-called rights or prerogatives. I do not apologize for responding in the way I had to. It was all I could have done.”
Color had come into his cheeks as he talked, and he took a moment to regain his poise before he said: “Last night you mentioned two silver rizi, Bogomolov. Before we proceed I would wish to be certain that you and I take a similar view of these matters.”
I looked to Petrovich. “All we care about is who killed Antonov,” he said. “What you do with the collection is your business.”
“Very well.” He paused. “It was almost exactly a year ago that the first requisition came in, asking for icons to be used as lumber. I believe that this is the only time of year at which such an order would be possible, when so much lumber is going to the mainland. I should explain: Deputy Director Eikhmans held the position I do now before he began his rise through SLON’s highest Chekist ranks. He continues to value the museum. My relationships with him and others who are well placed in Administration are usually sufficient to protect the collection from depredation. However, my case is weakened in October, before the final ship of the season.
“At the time, I was more sanguine than I have become about preventing the order’s being fulfilled. Naturally I was anxious to stop it however I could. It struck me as a bad precedent—as, indeed, it has proved to be. You’ve talked to Zhenov, who is now in charge of supply for Anzer. But the name at the top of the first form I received was Prokupin.
“I made inquiries. What I learned was that Prokupin was a doctrinaire Bolshevik, of the type who would be gratified at the icons’ destruction. However, he was a drunkard, and incompetent. My sources told me that it was Ivan Kologriev, the foreman, who truly ran his warehouse. For some time I wondered what the best approach would be. In fact I discussed it with Antonov, although he had only been here a few months at that point, and had little to contribute.
“In the end, I tried to bribe Kologriev, reasoning that he would be in a position either to convince Prokupin that the icons were unsuitable for their purposes, or to deceive him about whether they’d been received. I’d selected from the collection a small candelabra, made by an unknown craftsman of the Veliky Ustyug school. An unremarkable piece, indeed mediocre, but with a certain amount of gold. For such a person, I reasoned, it would only be the metal that was attractive, not the craftsmanship.
“He refused me outright, however, without an explanation. Instead of staying to hear me explain how the thing could be turned to rubles on the outside, he interrupted, asking to be shown where the ‘timber’ was. He remained in the office for less than five minutes.” Vinogradov had absently picked up a pen that lay before him on the desk. While he’d been speaking, he’d begun drawing a spiraling shape on a sheet of paper before him. As I watched the nib start, stop, and double back, I recognized it as the outline of a labyrinth like the one I’d seen on Kostrihe. “Naturally I was surprised. In my experience there is always something dubious afoot when someone on Solovetsky won’t take a bribe. I didn’t know then that he was an urka.”
“You were suspicious already,” I said.
“Yes.” In front of him on the desk was a slim folder, which he opened and handed across. “As you can see, when the order came in this time, I required Zhenov to provide me an invoice. It was signed by him here at the kremlin, and then by his agent on Anzer when the pieces were delivered. Unfortunately it did not help me to discover anything out of the ordinary.”
“But the supplies went missing. That was out of the ordinary,” Petrovich said. “About them. There are some questions I wish Tolya had asked you the other day, when he went to you on the cape.”
I looked at him. It was a surprise: he hadn’t mentioned anything of the sort to me before. But I suppose there’d been no reason to. Short of going back to visit Vinogradov again on the cape, there would have been no way of getting answers until this morning anyway.
“You don’t consider this information about the urka Kologriev valuable?” said Vinogradov.
“Maybe it is. There something more you think we should be saying about it?”
Vinogradov paused. “No.”
“All right, then. The supplies. Ivanov showed us the records for them the other day. The gold leaf, some alcohol, some mineral spirits. Was there anything else?”
“I believe that was all. Those are the materials whose use I required Antonov to track. Pigment and varnish I simply resupplied at his request.”
“How’d you hear they’d gone missing?”
“Antonov reported it himself. He said he thought he’d left them in their normal place in his desk, only to find them missing the day after the men from Anzer Division came for the icons.”
“But you’d have had to find out eventually, eh? He’d have had to come to you to get more, and you’d have asked where what you’d already given him went.”
“That’s right.”
“What are you getting at?” I said.
“There’s nothing I’m getting at. I’m only making sure I understand the situation.” He j
utted his chin at Vinogradov. “What made you send Antonov to Zhenov’s? Someone else who works here would be more likely to know there was gold in Antonov’s desk than some warehouse worker who lives outside the kremlin. Why not check them first?”
“It is possible,” said Vinogradov slowly. “Not likely, but possible. I doubt any of my staff would risk their position for something as trivial as a book of leaf. But I will admit I did not consider it. Their desks have not been searched. At the time, I had my expedition to prepare for, and since learning of what happened I have not been back here. Antonov himself was the one to suggest he should go and inquire with Zhenov and his men.”
I could tell Petrovich was pleased from the way the words rattled in his throat. “Antonov came up with the idea of leaving the kremlin that night?”
“Yes. Now that I recall it, he seemed particularly focused on receiving a gate pass. In fact, I wondered whether he wasn’t intending to take the opportunity to visit the woman, Fitneva, whom I gather you know about. I didn’t imagine I would be sending him into danger.”
“This is interesting,” said Petrovich. “Are we even certain the leaf is gone? Maybe Antonov had some other reason to want to be outside—Fitneva, or something else—and reported a theft as an excuse.”
“We didn’t find the things in his desk,” I said. “And there was nothing like it with his body when they pulled him out of the water.”
Petrovich grunted. “True. All right. The woman, then. Tolya was right about your helping arrange her transfer, I take it. But when I had him ask you before whether Antonov had anything to do with women, you said you didn’t know.”
“Yes. I was hoping to avoid publicizing the … matter Bogomolov brought to my attention last night.”
“What can you tell us about the arrangement with her?”
“The position I secured for her in the fishery was a desirable assignment. I was able to prevail on one of my contacts in Administration, who handles the monks’ special dispensations, to grant it to her. I understood that there was another position contemplated for her, one that would have brought her into close contact with another man. I made no special arrangements to protect her from the other fellow, only had her moved to a different workplace. That was all Antonov requested. Other than that, I can tell you very little.”