by Alan Furst
Mostly they avoided one another. A conversation with a tainted diplomat or scientist would be reported by the attentive security men and, how was one to know, might be made evidence in the cases against them, telling evidence, uncovered only in the last hours of the journey home-we thought you were clean until we saw you talking to Petrov-and dangerously sweet to the NKVD appetite for the fatal irony.
Szara spoke to one of them, Kuscinas, in younger days an officer in the Lettish rifle brigades that supported Lenin when he overthrew the Kerensky government, now an old man with a shaved head and a face like a skull. Yet there was still great strength in Kuscinas; his eyes glittered from deep in their sockets, and his voice was strong enough to hear above the gale. As the Kolstroi rose and crashed into the heavy seas off the Gulf of Riga, on the second day of the voyage, Szara found shelter under a stairway where they could smoke cigarettes and shield themselves from the bitter wind. Kuscinas never said exactly what he did, simply waved his hand when Szara asked, meaning that such things didn’t matter. As for what was about to happen to him, he seemed to be beyond caring. “For my wife I’m sorry, but that’s all. Foolish woman, and stubborn. Unfortunately she loves me and this will break her heart, but there’s nothing to be done about it. My sons they’ve turned into snakes, all the better for them now, I think, and my daughter married some idiot who pretends to run a factory in Kursk. They’ll find a way to disown me, if they haven’t started already. I’m sure they will sign anything put before them. My wife, though …”
“She’ll have to go to friends,” Szara said.
The old man grimaced. “Friends,” he said.
The Kolstro’s steel plates creaked as the ship pitched particularly high, then slammed down into the trough, sending aloft a huge explosion of white spray. “And fuck you too,” Kuscinas said to the Baltic.
Szara steadied himself against the iron wall and closed his eyes for a moment.
“You’re not going to give it up, are you? “
He flicked his cigarette away. “No,” he said, “I’m a sailor.”
“Will they arrest you?”
“Perhaps. I don’t think so.”
“You have the right friends, then.”
Szara nodded that he did.
“Lucky. Or maybe not,” Kuscinas said. “By the time you get to Moscow they may be the wrong friends. These days you can’t predict.” For a time he was silent, eyes inward, seeing some part of his life. “You’re like me, I suppose. One of the faithful ones, do what has to be done, don’t ask to see the sense of it. Discipline above all.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “And in the end, when it’s our turn, and somebody else is doing what has to be done, somebody else who doesn’t ask to see the sense of it, the discipline of the executioner, then all we can say is za cbtoi-why? What for? ” Kuscinas laughed. “A sorry little question,” he said. “For myself, I don’t mean to ask it.”
That night, Szara couldn’t sleep. He lay in his bunk and smoked, the man across from him mumbling restlessly in his dreams. Szara knew the history of that question, Za cbtoi Rumor attributed its initial use to the Old Bolshevik Yacov Lifschutz, a deputy people’s commissar. His final word. Szara remembered him as a little man with wild eyebrows, the obligatory goatee, and a twinkling glance. Shuffling down the tile corridor in the basement of the Lubyanka-you got it on the way, nobody ever reached the end of that corridor-he stopped for a moment and turned to his executioner, an officer he happened to have known in childhood, and said, “Za chto?”
Along with the purge, the phrase spread everywhere; it was scrawled on the walls of cells, carved in the wooden benches of the Stolypin wagons that hauled prisoners away, scratched into planks in transit camps. Almost always the first words spoken to the police who came in the night, then again the first words of a man or a woman entering a crowded cell. “But why? Why?”
We are all alike, Szara thought. We don’t offer excuses or alibis, we don’t fight with the police, we don’t look for compassion, we don’t even plead. We are the people who called ourselves “dead men on furlough;” we always expected to die-in the revolution, the civil war. All we ask, rational men that we are, is to see the sense of the thing, its meaning. Then we’ll go. Just an explanation. Too much to ask?
Yes.
The savagery of the purge, Szara knew, gave them every reason to believe there was, must be, a reason. When a certain NKVD officer was taken away, his wife wept. So she was accused of resisting arrest. Such events, common, daily, implied a scheme, an underlying plan. They wanted only to be let in on it-certainly their own deaths bought them the right to an answer-and then they’d simply let the rest of it happen. What was one more trickle of blood on a stone floor to those who’d seen it flow in streams across the dusty streets of a nation? The only insult was ignorance, a thing they’d never tolerated, a thing they couldn’t bear now.
In time, the cult of Za chto began to evolve a theory. Particularly with the events of June 1937, when the only remaining alternative to the rule of the dictator was ripped to shreds. That June came the turn of the Red Army and, when the smoke cleared, it was seen to be headless, though still walking around. Marshal Tukachevsky, acknowledged as Russia’s greatest soldier, was joined in his disappearance by two of four remaining marshals, fourteen of sixteen military commanders, eight of eight admirals, sixty of sixty-seven corps commanders, on and on and on. All eleven vice-commissars of defense, seventy-five of the eighty members of the Supreme Military Soviet. All of this, they reasoned; the shootings, the icebound mining camps, an army virtually destroyed by its own country- could have only one intention: Stalin simply sought to remove any potential opposition to his own rule. That was the way of tyrants: first eliminate enemies, then friends. This was an exercise in consolidation. On a rather grand scale, ultimately counted in millions- but what was Russia if not a grand scale?
What was Russia, if not a place where one could say, down through the centuries, times and men are evil, and so we bleed. This, for some, concluded the matter. The Old Bolsheviks, the Chekists, the officer corps of the Red Army-these people were the revolution but now had to be sacrificed so that the Great Leader could stand unthreatened and supreme. Russia’s back was broken, her spirit drained, but at least for most the question had been answered and they could get on with the trivial business of execution with acceptance and understanding. A final gesture on behalf of the party.
But they were wrong, it wasn’t quite that simple.
There were some who understood that, not many, only a few, and soon enough they died and, in time, so did their executioners, and, later, theirs.
The following day, Szara did not see Kuscinas. Then, when the Kolstroi steamed up the Gulf of Finland, the first ice of the season pinging against the hull, the lights of the fortress at Kronstadt twinkling in the darkness, the security men and sailors began a frantic search, combing the ship, but Kuscinas had gone, and they could not find him.
8,Rue Delesseux
“Andre Aronovich! Over here!”
An urgent female voice, cutting through the uproar of a densely packed crowd in the living room of an apartment in the Mochovaya district. Szara peered through the smoke and saw a hand waving at him. “Pardon,” he said. “So sorry. Excuse me.” He chose an indirect route toward the hand and voice, swinging wide to avoid the dangerous elbows of those who had managed to break through to the buffet. Moscow was ravaged by shortages of nearly everything, but here there was black Servuga, grilled lamb, pirozhki, salted peas, stacks of warm blini, and platters of smoked salmon. What you had, then, was desperation: a roomful of apparatchiks, mandarins of agriculture and road planning, timber and foreign policy, as well as the security services, trying to feed themselves for the week to come. More than one pocket was stuffed with meat, smoked fish, even butter-whatever one could swipe.
For an instant, Szara caught sight of a vaguely familiar face that appeared over the shoulder of a naval officer, then vanished in the crowd. A sophisticated woman, lightly
made up, with simple but stylishly managed hair and dangling silver earrings.
He figured it out just about the time they found each other: a curiously altered Renate Braun, wearing a full blouse of lime-colored silk and the modestly coquettish smile one saw in British films of cocktail parties. “Heavens, what a crowd!” she said, brushing his cheek with hers-a dear friend one simply doesn’t see often enough. Last seen slicing up a dead man’s pants cuffs with a razor blade in an Ostend whorehouse, here was an entirely different version of the woman.
“You must meet Mr. Herbert Hull,” she gushed, speaking in German-accented English.
Now Szara noticed that she had in tow a tall, sandy-haired man with a weather-beaten face and wildly overgrown eyebrows. He was perhaps in his late forties and, from his casual, loose-jointed posture, evidently American. He was smoking, with difficulty, a poorly rolled makhorka cigarette, a self-conscious attempt to be part of the local scenery, Szara thought. “Herb Hull,” he said. He had a powerful grip and sought something in Szara’s eyes when they shook hands.
“Herb has been so anxious to meet you,” Renate Braun said.
“We all know Andre Szara,” Hull said. “I’m a great fan of your work, Mr. Szara.”
“Oh but you must call him Andre.”
“Yes. Please.”
Szara’s English was at best uncertain. He was going to sound awful, hesitant and somehow importunate-an impression often created when Slavs spoke English. He already felt a hatefully ingratiating smile creeping over his face.
“Herb’s an editor with a new American magazine. A very important undertaking. You’ll know him, of course, from when he was with the Nation and the New Republic.”
“Ah yes.” Szara knew the names, prayed he wouldn’t be questioned about specific articles. The anxious smile grew. “Of course. Importantly.”
Szara saw Renate Braun wince, but plunged ahead. “You are liking Russia?”
“Never the same place two days in a row, things go wrong, but there’s a strength in the people that’s irresistible.”
“Ach!”-mock horror from Renate Braun-“he knows us too well.”
Hull smiled and shrugged. “Trying to learn, at any rate. That’s what we need. Firsthand knowledge, a feel for the real Russia.”
“I am certain that Andre can help you with that, Herb. Positive.”
“Yes?” Szara said.
“Why not?” Hull’s eyebrows rose. “After all, I’m an editor, you’re a writer. For a new magazine, well, a Russian writer speaking about the USSR would be a change, change for the better I’m inclined to think. No?”
“Ah, but my English.”
“No problem, Andre. We’d be happy to do the translation, or it could be done here. Won’t be perfect, but we’ll guarantee to preserve the sense of it.”
“I am honored,” Szara said. He was. The thought of appearing in a respected journal before an American audience, not the usual Daily Worker crowd, was immensely pleasing. Ilya Ehrenburg, Pravda’s number one correspondent, had done it, occupying the journalistic territory in the Spanish Civil War so effectively that Szara was virtually restricted to other parts of Europe.
Hull let the offer sink in, then went on. “Renate tells me you’re working on a historical piece that might be right up our alley. I won’t kid you, running something like that would get us the attention we need. And we’ll pay for it. Won’t be Hollywood, of course, but I think you’ll find us competitive in the New York market.”
Renate Braun seemed quite excited by the prospect. “We’ve even discussed a title, Andre Aronovich.”
Szara stared at her. What was she talking about?
“Just discussed,” Hull broke in. He knew what a certain look on a writer’s face meant. “Working title is all it is, but I can tell you it caught my attention.”
“Title?”
Renate Braun said, “The piece must be exciting-our plan fulfillment norms won’t do, I suspect. It must have …” She looked at Hull for the word.
“Intrigue?”
“Yes. That’s it. Intrigue! A story of Russia’s revolutionary past, its secret history. We aren’t completely sure what it is you’re working on-you writers keep close with ideas-but we thought perhaps something on the order of ‘The Okhrana’s Mysterious Man.’ ” She turned to Hull. “Yes? It’s good English?”
“Yes indeed. Good enough to put on the cover, I’d say.”
Szara repeated the title in Russian. Renate Braun nodded vigorously. “Your English is better than you think, Andre Aronovich.”
“Of course,” Hull said, “you can always use a pen name if you like, I’m not unaware how easy it is to get into trouble these days. We’d rather have your name, of course, but we’ll protect your identity if that makes you more comfortable.”
Szara just stared. How much did this man know? Did he have any idea what happened to people who played such games? Was he brave? Stupid? Both?
“Well, Andre, would you consider it?” Hull asked, eyes keen, head tilted inquiringly to one side, gauging his quarry.
“How could he not?” Renate Braun said. “Such an opportunity!”
Szara walked for a long time that night. His tiny apartment in Volnitzky Alley wasn’t far from the house where the party had been given, so he circled the center of the city, crossing the icebound river, a lone, January figure in fur hat and overcoat. He kept an eye out for bezprizorniye, bands of children orphaned by the purge who attacked and robbed solitary walkers of their money and clothing-you might just as easily freeze to death if your head wasn’t bashed in-but it was evidently too cold for hunting.
Sooner or later, he thought, things fall into place and, often as not, you’d rather they hadn’t. Now the long leash in Prague and Berlin made sense. They were letting him have his time with the dossier, counting on the fact that he’d stick his curious writer’s nose into the business. Seen externally, a well-known journalist had sniffed out a big story which, in the normal way of things, he’d tell the world. They’d protected him when the Georgian khvost operatives had him taken off the train, then left him free to work.
And now they were rather casually asking him to commit suicide.
Was it too much to ask? That one life should be sacrificed so that hundreds, perhaps thousands, might survive? All he need do was practice his natural trade. Who was the Okhrana’s mysterious man? Well, we know a few small details. A, B, C, and D. A new and provocative enigma from enigmatic Russia. Perhaps, someday, we’ll learn his real identity. Yours truly, Andre Szara. (Please omit flowers.)
Or, oh yes, the pen name. Boris Ivanov has served in the Soviet diplomatic corps. That would surely throw the NKVD off the scent. For perhaps a month. Or maybe a year. Not much longer.
Still, it would certainly communicate a point of view:
We know what you did and we can prove it, now stop killing us or we’ll finish you. Blackmail. Plain old-fashioned politics. Ancient as time.
He admired the plan, though he felt more than a little chagrin over his apparently boundless capacity for self-deception. Certain things now made sense. On the train to Prague, General Bloch had told him, albeit obliquely, just what they had in mind for him. Szara had triumphantly misunderstood him, of course, taking delicately phrased information to be some sort of pompous philosophy, a homily.
With some difficulty Szara won back from his memory the general’s statements: “Some men, in such circumstances, might be careless of their lives. Such men rise to an opportunity. And then we have a hero!” In an empty street coated with gray ice, Szara laughed out loud. Bloch had said something about Szara’s attitude toward himself after pointing out, dexterously enough, that he had neither wife nor children. What else? Oh yes. “To be a writer requires work and sacrifice, to follow any road wherever it may lead.”
Yes. Well. Now one knew where it led. Just as one knew in 1917 when one was twenty and what did death matter. From the beginning, in the park in Ostend, Szara had sensed his fate. He’d dodged a t
ime or two, yet here it was, back again. The Szara that Bloch found on the train was, like his revolutionary brethren, a dead man on furlough, a furlough now coming to its inevitable conclusion, as all furloughs must.
Suddenly, the walls of his irony collapsed and real anguish struck his heart. He stopped cold, his face twisted with pain and anger; a sob rose to the base of his throat and stuck there-he had to bite his lip to keep from howling the dreaded question directly at God and the streets of Moscow:
Why now?
Because now everything was different. Bloch had met a certain kind of man on the train to Prague but now he was not that man. He was instead that man who presses his face against the skin of a woman to inhale such fragrance as makes him want to cry out with joy. He was that man who spins between tenderness and raging lust like a helpless top, who wakes up on fire every morning, who spends his hours thinking of only one thing-yet how brilliantly he thinks of it!
He recovered. Regained himself, breathed deeply, resumed walking. The wall inside him must not be breached: it kept in, it kept out. He had to have it to survive.
He realized that the frost had stolen the feeling from his face and he turned toward home, walking quickly. Later he scalded his mouth with tea while sitting in his overcoat and fur hat at the table his wife, only a few months before she died, had insisted he put by the kitchen window. It had been a lovely table, an absurdly ornamental cherrywood thing with heavy, scrollworked legs. Using it in the kitchen they’d ruined it, of course. Now it was a place to watch the white dawn come up over the chimneys of Moscow, thin smoke standing motionless in the dead, frozen air.