The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  It didn’t look as if they were in danger of killing themselves with overwork when she got to the newspaper offices. Yes, there was a tape recorder on Oleg’s desk, and a sheet of paper had been inserted in the typewriter, but his colleague Gurfinkel was seated on that same table and was telling one of his Jewish jokes. Oleg saw Tanya putting her head round the door, and his face brightened, but he did not want to interrupt his friend, so he just waved at her to come in.

  “Well,” Gurfinkel recited, “there’s this old Jew travelling on a train, and there’s a general in the Red Army. The Jew takes out a herring wrapped up in newspaper from his greasy bag and starts to eat it with relish. The herring smells horribly, and the general, who is loaded with medals, turns up his nose and stares at the Jew furiously. After a little while, the Jew stops eating and explains that the herring has been sprinkled with a secret ingredient prepared by his rabbi, and it is precisely that ingredient that makes Jews more intelligent than Christians. The general starts to get interested and after a while he can no longer resist:

  Listen, dear fellow, allow me to taste a little bit, will you?

  Initially the Jew refuses indignantly, but as the general insists, he agrees to negotiate; in the end, as these things so often go, he sells the herring for twenty roubles. The general bites into it and starts to chew with an expression of complete disgust. Then with his mouth still full, he looks at the Jew and says: You’re not by any chance making fun of me? And the Jew replies: Did you see that? It’s already started to work!”

  Oleg laughed and so did Tanya, out of good manners, but she was in such a hurry to be alone with him that the laugh did not sound entirely sincere. Gurfinkel noticed, and even if he drew the wrong conclusions, he was right about the corrective action: Let’s leave the lovebirds to themselves…

  As soon as he was out of the office, Tanya started to tell Oleg about the purple notebook, but he stopped her almost immediately, and got up to close the office door. Then he had her start the whole thing from the beginning.

  “And the notebook,” he said, “did you leave it at home? I would like to see it… Drug trafficking, no, nothing surprises me. And they’ve four crates down in the archive? Taken there on the quiet? Enough to make your head spin!”

  “But can you trace the addresses from these numbers?”

  Tanya asked. Oleg shook his head.

  “Not as far as I know; you’d have to go to the police. But there is a way if you’re that keen, and it’s very easy. Hand it over… Who would you like to call first? Thrush?

  Philosopher?”

  “Philosopher,” Tanya decided out of some obscure presentiment. And she was curious to see how Oleg was going to produce this particular rabbit from a hat. But then she said to herself, What an idiot, I could have worked this one out on my own!

  “Okay, eighty,” Oleg read as he lifted the receiver and started to dial the number, “sixteen, eighteen… Let’s see what happens!” he laughed and was looking sideways at Tanya while he was waiting for someone to answer. But then he grimaced: a recorded voice announced that the number he had dialled had not been recognised as a subscriber in the Moscow Region.

  “Nothing,” Oleg was disappointed and replaced the receiver. “Either they’re false numbers or they’re in code…

  But hold on! Are you sure that these are Moscow numbers?”

  Tanya had a sudden inspiration, and then for the second time in a few minutes, she called herself an idiot: I should have realised this long ago. “I’ve got it! You know, yesterday evening, while I was rummaging in that crate and was randomly looking through those lists, I got the impression as I encountered some surnames and addresses… But it didn’t click. What are you going to do, Oleg, you’ve gone and got yourself an idiot for a fiancée, but now you’re going to have to take me as I am. No, it’s not Moscow; I’m certain it’s Baku!”

  Oleg did not look very convinced. “A bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?… Well, let’s try. What’s the code for Baku?” Tanya told him and Oleg started to dial the Philosopher’s number. They had to try three or four times before they could get a line, but eventually Oleg gets a ringing tone and waits.

  After a few seconds, someone replies. Tanya sees him go pale, and then put the receiver down in a hurry.

  “What’s up?” she asks in a terrified voice.

  “Do you know who answered?” said Oleg through gritted teeth. “The KGB… The head office of the Azerbaijan KGB.”

  Now it was Tanya who turned pale.

  “Listen, honey, this stuff is big,” Oleg said slowly. “I would turn it over to the Prosecutor’s Office; let them sort the matter out…”

  “But couldn’t you do something here at the newspaper?”

  Tanya ventured. Oleg shook his head; he knew only too well that this was not the Washington Post.

  “No, what do you want us to do? Do you think one of our reporters is going to turn up at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism: You appear to be holding the archive of a criminal gang in your cellar, please hand it over… And now the KGB are also involved, and I have no idea why. No, you need someone to go there with a warrant, and that means going to the Prosecutor’s Office. And you know what? We’re going there now!”

  And thus the papers Nazar once confiscated from Barrikadnaya Street started their return journey and would end up in his hands again.

  XXVI

  Animals in the city

  Moscow, September 1988

  That evening at Nazar’s home, the television was on and Misha was totally absorbed in following the news. No, he was not a child prodigy, and he would not have listened to an interview with the Foreign Minister, but in this particular moment the television camera was filming an elk, a herbivore that interested him enormously. The elk was looking around with a slightly worried expression; it did not have that air of superiority normally associated with those beasts, as though nothing under the sun could possibly surprise such an ancient species (and it is curious that the elk is indeed a very ancient mammal, a contemporary of the dinosaurs or of the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger.

  Once you would not have cut such a fine figure with such distinguished neighbours, but now, who would have thought it, they are extinct and the elk is still strutting around and enjoying itself, living proof that Darwin didn’t understand a damn thing… I don’t know why, but the elk reminds me of the academician Likhachyov, although the elk, as we know, does not wear spectacles, but the expression is the same and the age is not that different). So the elk for once in its life allows the mere suggestion of a worry to pass across those globular eyes, and with good reason! After all, it was trotting along one of the Sadovoye Koltso Boulevards, the Sukharevskaya to be precise and just a few metres from Kolkhoznaya Square, and its unlikely legs were reflected in the windows of the hard-currency shop, Beryozka number 26, amongst the car headlights… Hell knows exactly how it managed to get there; yes, of course, there are quite a few animals in the Abramchevo Woods, and further out towards Mytishchi, on the other side of the ring road. And not only elks, but also red deer, fallow deer and wild boars – and who knows, perhaps the occasional wolf. But how do these animals manage to get into the city centre, just a kilometre from the Kremlin. It is incredible and someone should be held responsible. And yet they keep coming, and the news programme, having filmed the unfortunate elk, interviewed some guy in a white overall, a certain… Skvortsov or something like that; he was a real laugh! Worked in the Kuskovo Park in a so-called “City Animals Centre”, and there, we were assured by the television, they provided a genuine 24-hour rapid-intervention service! The problem, he was saying, is a serious one: these animals get lost and somehow end up in the city, where they can cause road accidents: this is no laughing matter – and you’ll know about it if you find a wild boar in the middle of the road. We have sixteen specialists armed with the latest equipment, rifles that shoot paralysing gas. Every day there are about seven or eight emergency calls. For example, a badger was living in S
aint Basil’s Cathedral. The rascal had made himself quite at home, but now he has ended up in Penza Zoo… So much for the badgers, but the other week a young woman was jogging in Kuzminki Park and she found herself face to face with a wild boar, a hungry male. Well, it charged her and everyone scattered. Five people ended up in hospital. Interesting, the journalist jabbered as she shook the microphone under the man’s nose, and could you tell us about your work? Well, the man says, in teams of four: a driver, a zoologist, a vet and a hunter, the one who shoots the gas – a difficult and important task. But perhaps, the cretinous journalist continued, the animals are trying to tell us something; perhaps they have a message from the taiga?

  And instead of laughing in her face or telling her to get lost, he went along with her: clearly this Skvortsov had got a taste for pontificating on the television cheek to cheek with the journalist and sniffing her French perfume: But of course! But of course! One statistic alone is the demonstration of this – the increasing number of incidents every year: last year we recorded eighty cases of large animals being found on the streets of Moscow, but this year we have already had more than a hundred! And elsewhere there have been even more dramatic events: Siberian tigers have now gone right into the centre of Vladivostok! Of course, man is invading the taiga, attacking it and threatening their environment, so the animals are reacting against that… While the journalist was agreeing and showing herself entirely persuaded, the cameramen went back to filming the elk: it had now halted and appeared to be completely undecided. In the distance you could vaguely make out a crowd of people who had rushed there to enjoy the spectacle. Some of them were shouting and whistling, and the elk was floundering about with its enormous head. What do you want? he seemed to be saying. But just look at this shit-hole…

  “Look!” shouted Misha, after having contemplated the quadruped staggering about on the tarmac for some time.

  “Wha that?”

  A few days earlier, this had become his favourite question. In the evening when darkness came, he would go to the window, lift his finger in the direction of the moon that glistened in the night sky and ask abruptly, “Wha that?”

  “The moon,” people would reply, but this information was entirely unsatisfactory. No, the thirst for knowledge was immediately accompanied by the no less urgent yearning for possession.

  “Oon!” he started to fret. “Get me oon. Can I?” And he could not be reconciled with less. When the evidence of this incomprehensible injustice, by which the moon, so close to the end of his nose, could not be grabbed by any means, became overwhelming, he would purse his lips, but then decide that the spectacle was nevertheless worthy of enthusiasm. So when somebody came into the room, he would rush to tell them of his discovery, “Look! See that?

  Oon!”

  The television, however, was different. Misha had immediately understood that there was nothing you could grab hold of there, nothing you could take possession of – that glowing spectacle was ultimately a fraud. He never stretched out his arms, not even when confronted with the most marvellous temptations, but just peacefully stayed where he was and took it all in.

  “Wha that?” he therefore asked, after having contemplated the elk for a long time.

  “A deer,” came a prompt reply from Asya, whose understanding of the animal kingdom was extremely rudimentary. “Can you see its antlers?” she added pedagogically.

  “Me too antlers!” the child became excited.

  “But no,” Asya laughed. “Misha doesn’t have any antlers.

  We don’t have antlers.”

  The child furrowed his brow on hearing this news: yet more limitations and complications.

  “Damablast,” he protested. “Damablast we not antlers!” “Yes, damn and blast,” exclaimed a familiar voice from the doorway. Asya and the child both turned.

  “Dada, dada!”

  Nazar, just back home and still in his raincoat, gathered up the child who leapt towards his arms, and he approached his wife and kissed her.

  “How was your day?” Asya asked.

  “Normal,” he replied with a grimace. He looks tired, she thought and worried, but then this was not unusual. “So good to be home; today they have sorely tested my patience.”

  He seemed to have lost his taste for his work recently. There was no denying that his investigation into the Pashayev case had run out of steam, and although Nazar made a great show of optimism when he spoke to his superior Stepankov (he could take me off the case or close it, if I tell him that it’s not moving forward), he had lost his own conviction that one day he would be able to empty that particular cesspit. And not only because, in the absence of those damned papers confiscated from the Accountant’s home and lost in the airport, the investigation had ended up in a blind alley. In spite of it all, Nazar was under the impression that if only he could concentrate on that aspect and reflect on it without being pressured, sooner or later some idea would emerge.

  But no, quite the opposite had happened. We know what it’s like here in Russia; you are perhaps investigating an important and difficult case, shall we say of national interest, which could give rise to a political scandal.

  Elsewhere, say in France or Belgium, a case like that is more than enough for one investigating judge, but not in Russia! At the same time, you’ve got to look into the case of the chicken thief or the shortfall on the balance sheet of some grocery store, and not one or the other, but both of them or all three or four of them at the same time. You’re in trouble if you let any investigation grind to a halt, because that will be the one your superiors will ask you about.

  Now, Stepankov had offloaded on him this ridiculous investigation – just thinking about it made him want to throw it all up and retire. There was this Tolmakov Anatoly Stepanovich, a priest with some country parish about a hundred kilometres from Moscow, in a village called Voplino or Volpino, hell knows. Well, one day the priest is arrested and charged with membership of a criminal gang involved in stealing chickens, as it happens – stealing them from some enormous battery farm. Stepankov had warned him that it was a delicate and risky matter: those guilty of the larceny had all ended up behind bars, including the priest, who could not expect any special treatment from our socialist legality, heaven forbid! And the laugh was that they really were guilty – the whole lot of them had pleaded guilty. So the case appeared to be open and shut, and the Bishop of Vologda, Yuvenaly, who was responsible for the unhappy parish, had signed the decree dismissing Father Anatoly.

  But rumours were beginning to spread because of a local newspaper that over-zealously published a satirical article entitled “Crime Wave on Poultry Farm”, which ridiculed the priest and his accomplices. As a result, the faithful, as reported by the local delegate from the Council for Religious Affairs, Comrade Matveyev, had started to get restless and everywhere they were vociferating that it was all a KGB provocation and the bishop in question was an atheist, no less; no, actually he too was in those secret services. In other words, Soviet power in Voplino was tottering and all because of a few chickens… And I repeat, the laugh is that they were all guilty, and as for the priest, well he had a few other minor sins on his conscience, as Nazar had wasted no time in discovering. For example, Timofeyeva, the Chairwoman of the Parish Committee, had declared that the priest had on more than one occasion persuaded her to withdraw money illegally from the parish strongbox and hand it over to him personally. I took the money on the quiet, the chairwoman said, but I told Father Anatoly that every time I said: Oh Lord, it’s not me who is stealing this money, but the parish priest, and Father Anatoly replied:

  What a calamity! Nazar checked the books and came up with the figure of seven hundred roubles stolen by the priest in that manner from the parish funds. When an audit committee turned up to check the strongbox on Easter Monday, the priest told them not to and declared that it would be a mortal sin, and then effectively made it impossible for them to carry on by physically attacking members of the committee. One of them, Citizen Fe
doseyev, had ended up in hospital, but then the other members somehow managed to persuade him not to press charges…

  And that scoundrel Stepankov laughed as he dumped this job on me: You know about priests, don’t you? Of all the investigating judges I have here in the Prosecutor’s Office, you’re the only one who could deal with this case… And then he became serious: Listen, I’m not joking, Kallistratovich, when I tell you that this is a delicate matter; if we are not careful, they will accuse us of persecuting religion, and that is not something you want to do at the moment. I hope I have made myself clear.

  Misha listened open-mouthed to these stories, and clearly did not understand them. So what exactly was floating around this little two-year-old’s head? That it had something to do with chickens – well, perhaps he would have understood that: he knew what chickens were. Down in the courtyard at Chkalova Street, there was an auntie who kept two chickens in a pre-war cage – a wooden crate with a lid made of tin covered with little holes – and once she had given him an egg… In the meantime they had finished supper, and Mum had started to carry the plates to the sink, but suddenly she stopped and looked at her watch: My God, it’s late, much later than usual, and isn’t our little Misha going to bed?

  “Tory fist!” the child declared as he vigorously shook his head. And it was true that a story or even two or three before going to sleep was an entitlement long established by custom: he would listen while tiredness gradually weighed down his little eyelids.

  “Well,” said Asya, “which story would you like? The one about the baby girl?”

  “Yes,” he approved enthusiastically. Asya sat down, took him in her arms and started to tell the story.

  “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had gone to pick mushrooms in the wood…”

  As she spoke, Asya looked up and encountered her husband’s equally proud eyes: what a child, what a child we have… This makes life worthwhile, thought Nazar; how lucky I have been. Who could credit it! Here I am at fifty years: there is already a long road behind me, but one of our roads, a Russian road full of dust; you turn round and you cannot see a thing, just a great cloud of dust that blocks out the horizon, and there is nothing to be proud of except perhaps this: we didn’t get a punctured tyre on some of the slightly sharper stones, as could well have happened. And that dust on the road has turned everybody else’s hair white by the age of fifty: the wives have become fat and stupid and you no longer want to touch them, and the children only have rock music in their heads and they couldn’t give a damn about you… And yet look at my wife, this young woman with firm nipples like strawberries… hmm, perhaps I should leave that stuff alone – it’s not the moment… and look at my son, he is only just starting to talk!