The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  “No, no, now it really is getting better,” Tanya slurred.

  And she was right, the colic was beginning to subside and a little colour had come back to her cheeks.

  “Is that better? Are you sure?”

  Tanya swallowed; she felt like a punctured blister – all her insides had leaked out in blood, diarrhoea and sweat.

  “Yes, much better. Help to pull me up. Oh God, I have completely dirtied myself!”

  “Don’t you worry; we can deal with that. Up you come, grab onto my arm.”

  “And Glafira?” Tanya remembered suddenly, while she was trying to wash herself as best she could at the already dirty washbasin in the women’s toilets, still with Svetlana Aleksandrovna’s arm holding her steady.

  “Who’s this Glafira?”

  “But you know; that girl that was with me!”

  Oh yes, Glafira… It seemed that she had vanished into the ether; her large bag was no longer in the locker. The two notebooks she had attempted to steal were still there on the floor in front of the locker with its door open wide, and so were the coloured cards. Once she had gathered them together, Tanya went back down to the basement, and again no trace of Glafira or her notebooks or the black volumes of the Ministry of Petroleum. Everything was back in place as though by magic.

  “All right, would you like to explain what’s been going on?” Svetlana Aleksandrovna was brusque and behind the cold lenses her eyes shone with curiosity, and perhaps not only that. Tanya suddenly became more prudent, more reserved. “Nothing really. I mean… No, nothing really. Now I’m much better. Svetlana Aleksandrovna, I don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t here!”

  The archivist softened and even ran her hand through Tanya’s hair, “But what are you doing? You’re not thinking of going back to work? Go home, dear!”

  “No!” said Tanya – alarmed. And then, recovering her composure, careful not to raise suspicions, “I’m absolutely fine now. Really, I want to get on; I have nearly finished!”

  “As you wish,” a perplexed Svetlana Aleksandrovna gave in and went back to her newspaper and her apples.

  But there were more excitements in store that day, as they say in bad novels and possibly, who knows, also in good ones. That evening, when Tanya got home, Tamara Pavlovna was not lying down behind the screen in her dressing gown and watching television as she usually would be, but sitting in the kitchen and waiting for her. It was this that unnerved her: everything else – the dark courtyard, the smell of rotting rubbish and the key that wouldn’t turn in the lock – was fine, but not the lady of the house up and about, sitting and waiting with the light on and window open, even though this meant the mosquitoes were coming in. Tanya took a fright: it’s clear that they’ve called from home. Mum is not well! Or perhaps it’s Granny, or Aunt Olya, but in any case, there can be no other explanation, some misfortune is hanging over us: she is going to be hit with a club like a bullock at the abattoir.

  “Has something happened?”

  It was more than she could bear, she cannot wait.

  Tamara Pavlovna seems annoyed: in her own house she would like to be the one who decides what she will and will not do, and if she wants to stay in the kitchen all night without this girl imagining who knows what, then that is her business. But the truth is that she was waiting for Tanya and so she has no choice but to come right out with it.

  “They telephoned a short while ago…”

  Right, I knew it. In an instant the anguish has subsided; Tanya steels herself in the face of tragedy. It’ll be Mum without doubt, otherwise Tamara Pavlovna would not have spoken in that manner. She would have said, Your mother phoned, and then she would have known that it was Granny… but no: They telephoned. With trembling knees, Tanya sat down on the sofa next to Tamara Pavlovna. “They rang from the KGB; it appears that you put in an application and now they want to speak to you. They expect you tomorrow afternoon at three o’clock. Do you know where it is? Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers, No. 14.”

  Oh, is that all! Thanks be to God, what a relief. And I had thought… It is true that a call like that does not augur well.

  Tanya takes a few seconds to realise exactly what such a summons could mean. At the very least, they’ll take away my permit to work in the Archive! But what if it were exactly the opposite? If, in the end, they had decided to let me into their building? But what about Glafira, then? Who would have sent her, if not them? Overcome with tiredness, Tanya doesn’t know what to think; she only knows that she feels dizzy again. Fortunately Tamara Pavlovna is there; she knows nothing about what happened today, of course, but a call from that address… well yes, she knows very well what effect that can produce.

  “You’ve gone pale. Would you like a little tea?”

  Tanya feebly signals that she does not.

  “No, thank you. I’m tired; I had better go to bed.”

  Tamara Pavlovna looks her over with a critical eye.

  “I’d say tired! You look half dead. Tell the truth, are you frightened?”

  What should I reply? No, I’m not frightened of the KGB; I want to see what they can do for me! On the other hand, if only they would leave me in peace, if only they would stop tormenting me? No, I’m not frightened, but I am tired and I can hardly stand. It would make no sense to tell Tamara Pavlovna that I’m not afraid; in any case she wouldn’t believe me. You would only have to look at my ashen face; any minute now, my teeth will start chattering.

  “A little.”

  Good! Now Tamara Pavlovna is satisfied; of course the little girl is frightened; she’s got herself involved in a game that is too big for her, but we will protect her!

  “Do you know what we’ll do now? You come and sleep with me. In the bed, no longer on that sofa. You cannot possibly sleep on your own in your present state.”

  And so that is what Tanya did! It was a long time since she had slept like that, snuggled up against her mother’s side and under her protection. That night she had no nightmares. You just wait, down at the Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers!

  XXII

  Cooking the lamb

  Baku, August 1988

  The decision to convene a meeting with Tanya had been taken by the KGB only a few hours earlier, when Second Lieutenant Glafira Ryabcova had returned empty-handed from her clumsy attempt to steal the notebooks. Captain Musayev had been thinking for a few days that the only way to rid themselves of this irritant was to meet the woman and put all their cards on the table. In fact this had been in his mind from the moment that Glafira had reported that Tanya was working on the papers for a trial – and not just any trial, but the one that took place in 1949. In truth the captain knew very little about that trial, and had no desire to know anything more, but he did understood his chief’s discomfiture. In fact, some of the signals he’d received confirmed the gravity of the matter, but to explain this, we must first describe General Yusuf-zade’s office. An oil portrait of Lenin coated in the grime of fifty years hung behind his desk – perhaps even more than fifty… There were two small hatches in the right-hand wall, one for the safe, where the most confidential files were kept and one for – well, a bottle of whisky. On the wall, there was just a single photograph in a gilt frame: Geydar Alyev standing on the podium in Lenin Square at the time when he was not yet a member of the Politburo, but simply the First Secretary of the Party in Baku. It must have been the First of May and there was a blaze of red flags. Yusuf-zade was standing next to him in full dress, so close to the leader that their shoulders touched with a familiarity that the regulation smile made no effort to disguise. Now Musayev knew very well that when the general was worried – about a serious matter, that is; one that afflicted not just him (if only!) but risked creating a ripple effect that would expand with its concentric waves until it lapped at the highest seats of power – he was in habit of taking an involuntary look at that photograph, as if to ask himself what Geydar would have said, or perhaps, who knows, to reassure him: Don’t you worry, we’ll get
this sorted out – as we always do! Well now, Musayev found a scowling general hurriedly glancing in that very direction on hearing the news of the girl-historian who had turned up from Moscow and had not only got into the Party archive, God knows how, but had rummaged around so widely that she had uncovered the papers for that very trial. Musayev, too, felt in his heart that this was a serious cause for concern.

  In other times, we all know, you would not have had to trouble your head too much. Hardly an affair of great moment: you arrest the girl, you leave her in a cell for a few days just to cool her off, and in the meantime you confiscate all her papers – and would she ever see them again, I think not! To avoid any unexpected developments, Musayev has already looked into Tanya’s temporary domicile and gathered information on Tamara Pavlovna. Well, between ourselves, there’s quite a lot you could say about that. Just for starters, she took in her guest without registering her with the police; I know that no one does that any more, but the legal obligation is still there. It’s not as though they had repealed the law! But we’ll sort her out sooner or later; we are very good at waiting for the right moment, and it has been written, “Stern indeed is the vengeance of your Lord” (Koran, LXXXV, 12). Musayev, as I was saying, has even got himself a plan of the apartment: if he wanted to, he could search it with his eyes shut. There would be no problem with withdrawing Tanya’s permission to visit the archive, and if necessary the collection of papers in question could be transferred to another building, even though it appears that they have already tried and much good it has done us!

  That was how they did things in those days – those glorious days when such irritations did not occur! Now, however, it is quite a different matter. Some government offices which have received our confidential memoranda have sent them back to Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers, with a notification that it does not conform to the new directives or is in breach of some law: some of them are so brazen that they even cite the article and paragraph that have been infringed. So we should also be a little cautious with this girl; it would be so much better if she was from here – from Baku! When it’s amongst ourselves, we don’t have to be so fussy; here we are the capital and we know our own chickens. But no, this one has to come from Moscow, and who knows what’s behind it; it could, God protect us, be some kind of set up, a provocation, and at the first false move, they’ll come down on us like a ton of bricks – and we’re all IN THE SHIT. And this too is not like it once was: relations with the KGB in Moscow are increasingly difficult, as though those bastards no longer trust us. True enough, they have good reason – you have to grant them that, but nevertheless it is an additional complication. They responded with the affirmative to our request for information on Tanya Voznesenskaya, but with such bad grace that they might as well have not bothered. And they had nothing interesting to tell us. If only there were some enemy of the people in her family history, because we all know that here in the Soviet Union children can be blamed for the sins of the fathers. There was, of course, the grandfather, but that is of little use: they may have had him shot, but then in 1956 they rehabilitated him along with all the others, and so it no longer counts as a means of putting pressure…

  However, the more he thought about that grandfather, the more Captain Musayev became convinced that he was the key to it all. He had spent an afternoon comparing the information provided by Moscow and the questionnaires Tanya had filled in when she submitted her application for admission to the Baku archives. The very same day that Second Lieutenant Ryabcova came back to report that she had not managed to get her hands on Tanya’s papers – and God, she was so relaxed, as though it were all the fault of fate and not her own clumsiness and stupidity! Our lads in the old days were young wolves, but these ones now are wet behind the ears – just puppies! As I was saying, that very same day Musayev went to see the general and opened up a yellowed file in front of him. There amongst the other papers there was a photograph of a man taken from the front and from the side, and a passport from many years ago. The general looked at the photograph and flicked through the passport impatiently. He then looked questioningly at the captain.

  “Read on and you’ll understand,” Musayev said calmly, as he lit a cigarette.

  After a quick glance at the mug shots, the general began to read, but after just a few lines he looked up again.

  “Listen, I still don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you remember this guy? You interrogated him many years ago…”

  The general lost his patience, “You can’t expect me to remember that! We interrogated hundreds of them, you know.” “Well, he was an engineer working for Azerneft, and he was called Parsamov. He was condemned to death in 1949.

  And he was the grandfather of the girl, what’s her name?

  You know – Voznesenskaya.”

  “Well, well, who would have thought it,” said the general.

  “In my opinion,” Musayev became animated, “this is the reason why the little shit is here. She wants to find her granddaddy. Huh? There’s a fashion for these things now; they say that they want to rediscover their lost relations, pick up the threads… Why else would she give a damn?”

  “So! This may very well be the case,” the general narrowed his eyes, “but does it change anything?”

  “Change? Don’t you understand, we can get rid of her! All we need to do is to have her find something… I don’t know, a passport perhaps or the Instruction to the Firing Squad, as your names don’t appear on those documents. You could even take her to see his grave! You take her to any garden and show her the roses: Here you are, dear; why are they so beautiful! And she toddles off home. What do you think?”

  Well, he’s cunning, this Captain Musayev; no sooner said than done, and the captain rang the home of Tamara Pavlovna, and summoned the girl for the following day… But to tell the truth, the general was not entirely convinced by this plan. In fact the more he turned it over in his mind, the less he was satisfied. He continued to think about it all evening; he was on his own at home, having sent his wife to the seaside with his sisters and brothers-in-law, and he was cooking on his own. He liked cooking, although he rarely had time. There was a piece of lamb left in the freezer. He had taken it out to defrost in the morning and was now dicing it on a wooden chopping board with a butcher’s cleaver. There were no two ways about it, he really didn’t like Musayev’s idea for many, many reasons. He would have much preferred that damned 1949 trial never to be mentioned again, and instead they now had to hand over a file! No, no, they should be denying everything – denying, denying – and then getting rid of all the evidence before the bloody journalists got a whiff of it. It would be such a stroke of luck for one of those bastards in Moscow to come up with Geydar’s signature repeated a thousand times under those interrogation transcripts, and what interrogations! That was when he started to understand what was happening: THOSE GUYS are setting up a campaign; there have already been a few articles in their newspapers that are cause for concern, but they’ve never yet come out into the open.

  They’re preparing the ground with their insinuations, but they lack the pretext for landing the final blow – the kind of blow from which it is not easy to get back up on your feet, not even if you’re as heavily built as Geydar is! And if Geydar falls, then you go down too… No, it would be better to deny everything, and to put the frighteners on the girl, rather than congratulating her! Clenching his teeth, the general used a cloth to wipe away the blood that had dripped on the table and, as he now discovered, also splattered on the floor – it had even gone on his trousers.

  For a while he attempted to clean them with the same damp cloth, but then he stopped, shrugged his shoulders and forgot about the whole thing. He took the chopping board and with the cleaver blade he pushed the meat into the casserole, where a piece of butter was slowly melting.

  A sudden buzzing caused him to turn around: a dragonfly had come in through the open window, and hovered above the cooker as though undecided about which
direction to take. Then with a sudden movement it shifted to the white wall, where it came to rest. The general cautiously approached. The dragonfly was immobile and vertical on the wall; its long body glazed with blue and black curled up and uncurled rhythmically. It was breathing… The general brought two fingers round it and grabbed the insect just under the attachment of the wings. The dragonfly gave out a sharp screech and wriggled around convulsively. In that precise moment Yusuf-zade remembered something that had been buried in his mind for many decades: it was before he became someone, before he came to the city, indeed before the War. He was still living on the kolkhoz and was running barefoot with a gang of other children. They used to lie in wait at the ponds to capture the dragonflies and burn them with a match, so that they could hear them scream…

  The general considered the insect with a mixture of admiration and revulsion, and then he went up to the window and threw it out; for a second or two, the dragonfly hovered in the air and buzzed loudly, as though it was thinking of coming back into the room, but then it decided not to tempt fate any further and disappeared into the night.

  The general took a swig of iced whisky from the glass he’d placed next to the little packets of herbs, and then proceeded to chop an onion finely, which he threw in a pot with a piece of butter to cook the pilaf. As soon as the onion had browned, he added a ripe tomato and crushed it. After fishing around in various tins that he had paraded with military precision on the table, he added sugar, coriander, cinnamon, dried prunes and raisins. And finally he poured broth over the whole lot and increased the heat to bring it quickly to the boil. His eyes were burning because of the onion; he washed his face at the tap, dried it with a towel and then went back to the cooker, where he puffed on the cigarette that had been slowly burning down on the edge of the ashtray. He lifted the lid of the casserole in which the chopped lamb was sizzling, and experienced the enormous satisfaction of inhaling the warm oleaginous fragrance that came out of it…