by William Ryan
There was no mention of Lenskaya’s parents, though, or where she’d come from, or indeed where she’d acquired her education, and no information as to how she’d ended up in a Moscow orphanage, and that bothered him. After all, if she was able to help teach other children how to read and write, she’d surely have been able to tell the orphanage about her past. He made a mental note to ask Yasimov to look into it. Perhaps the Party record had been cleaned up to remove an embarrassing detail. She’d had a powerful friend – and such things were not uncommon. It might be nothing, but it would be worth looking into if this turned out to be more than just another suicide.
He turned to the next document. The author’s name and its recipient were blacked out, but it was a report on the film that Lenskaya had been working on when she died. He skipped through the background on the film director Savchenko – he wasn’t so uncultured that Savchenko’s reputation as a premier artist of Soviet cinema was unfamiliar to him. But here was another interesting thing – Savchenko was one more person who’d recently returned from Hollywood. He checked the dates. More interesting still, they’d all been there at the same time. Savchenko had tried to make some socialist cowboy film, or so Babel had told him once. It had been a failure, and he’d come back to Moscow with his tail between his legs. It was a reasonable assumption therefore that this film, The Bloody Meadow, was an attempt by Savchenko to re-establish his socialist credentials.
Of course, the subject matter of the film was tricky: the murder of the ten-year-old Pioneer Pavlik Morozov by his family when he betrayed them as wreckers was an event that could be looked at in different ways. As far as the Party was concerned, the message was clear – even the youngest citizen owed loyalty not to themselves or their family, but only to the State and the Party – even to the point of death. Some citizens, however, and Korolev was one of them, might just harbour the suspicion that the brat had got what was coming to him. So it would be important for the director of such a film to make sure that the correct message was received by all, and that might be a difficult proposition. It seemed this was also the opinion of the author of the report. Concerns have been raised at the highest levels which have led to constructive criticism being passed on to Nikolai Sergeevich Savchenko by GUKF Director Belakovsky and others in explicit and forthright terms. Such criticism has resulted in the reshooting of several scenes and the hiring of Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel to assist in rewriting parts of the scenario to place the political aspects of the case at the heart of the film. However, it would appear that N.S. Savchenko has persisted in his failure to address the Morozov incident correctly and has proved unable to show it as an unequivocal example of selfless socialist heroism. Furthermore the changes made by I.E. Babel have not reflected the direction required by the Party. Instead the story is fragmented, portrays sympathy to the traitors and appears ambivalent about Soviet Power. Comrade Belakovsky has made repeated efforts to persuade N.S. Savchenko of the necessity of developing the film within the bounds of socialist realism rather than bourgeois concepts of dramatic and psychological drama. It is to be feared that, following his visit to the United States, N.S. Savchenko is no longer capable, or willing, to portray the murder of Pavlik Morozov within the correct socialist parameters.
Korolev let out a quiet whistle. He didn’t understand exactly what this fellow was going on about, but he understood enough to work out that Savchenko was in trouble up to his neck, as was Korolev’s friend Babel. Korolev pulled out his notebook and made some notes, not convinced any of this was relevant to the case, but not prepared to discount it either. If whoever had written the report was of the opinion that Savchenko’s approach to the film was causing concern amongst Party members involved in the production, then that meant there had been tension, and possibly fear, amongst the cast and crew. If criticism like this was being voiced publicly, it could be as lethal as an aimed bullet. And if the girl had been the subject of criticism, it could be the reason for her suicide.
There was more to be read, including a brief note on Babel, which he took a moment to peruse, pleased to see that Ezhov himself considered the writer politically reliable, if recently unproductive, but by now the aircraft’s vibration was beginning to make him feel unwell and so he returned the papers to the envelope and turned to look out of the window, not without a further twinge of nervousness.
They were flying over a forest that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see but at such low altitude that Korolev was able to make out individual branches, and the snow that weighed them down. The sense of speed was quite terrifying as the long shadow of the aeroplane raced across the snow-dusted treetops in the flat winter sun. They were following a long straight road which was completely deserted until a cart drawn by two horses appeared beneath them. Korolev caught a glimpse of the terrified face of the peasant as he turned to see what devil was pursuing him, and how the horses seemed to lift in their traces as the plane roared over them. And then they were gone, vanished far behind them.
Soviet Power, Korolev thought to himself. It had a way of coming up on you when you least expected it.
Chapter Four
Korolev managed something approximating sleep for a good part of the journey, although he joined the other passengers to stretch their legs at Kursk, and by the time they landed in Odessa he was almost used to the strange experience that was flying.
He took his bag from the youth who was emptying the cargo hold and made his way over to the small wooden airport building, the word ODESSA attached to its roof in-between two obligatory red stars. Several small trucks and a couple of black cars were parked haphazardly in its vicinity and a small crowd of people stood around it, waiting for the passengers, he presumed. It wasn’t difficult to spot Major Mushkin.
He was a tall man, just over six feet, and if he wasn’t wearing a uniform as such, there wasn’t much doubt that he was a Chekist. Certainly every citizen within viewing distance had Mushkin marked, even though no one seemed to be looking in his direction. In fact, that was just it. Everyone was ignoring the burly man from State Security so pointedly that he stood out like a palm tree on an iceberg.
And of course it didn’t help that the major’s gaze was like a searchlight sweeping the crowd as he flicked the worker’s flat cap he carried against his thigh like a whip to the rhythm of a tune only he could hear. Korolev watched him reach for a cigarette case from the pocket of his double-breasted leather trench coat, then bring one the contents to his mouth. He was about to light it when he became aware of Korolev and, as their eyes met, Korolev felt a shiver run down his spine as every instinct told him that the fellow was bad news. Very bad news.
The strangest thing, he thought as he approached, was that the major was almost good looking. The nicotine-stained blond hair that he’d pushed back from his pale forehead was beginning to whiten around the ears, but was still thick, if a little tangled. His features were regular enough – a broad jaw, high cheekbones and a straight nose – and would have been pleasing on another man. But the major’s face had a weary, cynical cast to it that Korolev suspected must be permanent, and it robbed him of any attractiveness or warmth.
‘Major Mushkin?’ Korolev asked, holding out a hand in greeting.
‘Korolev,’ Mushkin said, ignoring the hand. ‘My car’s over here. We’ll talk on the way.’
‘Comrade Mushkin?’ It was Belakovsky’s voice. ‘Are you here to meet us?’
The major turned and looked at Belakovsky for a long moment. ‘No,’ he said eventually.
Belakovsky’s eyes swivelled towards Korolev, remembering him, before turning back to Mushkin with an apologetic smile.
‘Of course, I’m sorry – when I saw you standing here…’
‘Yes, you jumped to a conclusion.’ Mushkin spoke the words like a threat.
‘Excuse me, Comrade, my mistake. Please forgive me.’ Belakovsky turned away and, nodding to Lomatkin, walked quickly round the corner of the building in the journalist’s company. Mushkin looked at K
orolev for a reaction, which Korolev was careful not to provide.
‘Well, now you’ve met Belakovsky. You’ll see more of him. Lomatkin his sidekick as well, no doubt.’
The car rattled along a road so straight it could have been laid out with a ruler, although after months of freezing temperatures the surface had nothing of the same regularity. Not that Mushkin allowed that to affect his speed, manoeuvring round only the bigger pot-holes and leaving the car’s suspension to deal with the rest – a task that Korolev’s bruised body told him was beyond it. It was a good fifteen years since he’d travelled through the Ukraine, but he remembered the steppe all too well and the flat landscape extended unremittingly to the horizon. Rodinov had told him it would be warmer than Moscow, which it was, but only by a couple of degrees and ice still clogged the streams and lakes and scatterings of snow marked each variation in the relentless flatness.
‘We found her hanging from a wall bracket in the dining room,’ Mushkin said, his voice rising to compete with the car’s engine.
‘So I understand. Anything suspicious?’
‘No,’ Mushkin replied flatly.
Korolev looked out of the window at the passing landscape but after a while of staring at the endless road ahead, the temptation to ask another question got the better of him.
‘Where is this dining room?’
Mushkin sighed and, for a moment, Korolev thought his question wouldn’t be answered.
‘The dining room is in an old manor house where the cast and crew are staying – it was a nobleman’s country residence before the Revolution, now it’s part of an agricultural college. They call it the Orlov House locally. The College has plenty of room, is secure and it’s near the village where they’re filming. The students and teachers who would be there otherwise have been sent to nearby kolkhoz s to help them prepare for the new season’s planting, so it’s convenient for everyone.’
Korolev was surprised at such a thorough answer, so surprised that he decided to push his luck.
‘What time did she die?’
Mushkin’s lips tightened into a scowl, and when he answered his voice had acquired an undercurrent of irritation.
‘She was found at just past ten last night. The last time she was seen alive was after the evening meal at around seven-thirty. The caretaker passed through the room where the body was found at eight o’clock and saw nothing. So between eight and ten is what I would deduce.’
‘What about the other people staying in the house?’
‘A night shoot down at the village. It was a crowd scene, so everyone was involved except for the girl. It seems she was alone in the house after the caretaker left.’
‘Who found the body?’
‘The caretaker – at least he was the one who opened the door when they found her. But he was with Shymko, the chief production coordinator. They’d been down at the shoot – the caretaker was in the crowd for the scene they were filming.’
‘What’s a production coordinator?’
‘A fixer. He makes sure everything runs smoothly. He’s the adjutant to Savchenko’s colonel.’
‘And this caretaker?’
‘He’s nearly sixty – he’s taken it badly. To me it looks open and shut, no one else involved except for her, but I understand you have orders as to how to proceed.’ Again that note of irritability.
‘I’d like to see the body first.’
‘As you wish.’
‘Did you know the girl?’ Korolev ventured.
Mushkin nodded, and for the first time Korolev thought he detected a glimmer of sympathy.
‘Yes, I knew her – it was a surprise to me.’ He sighed, and his face took on a gentler, more thoughtful expression. ‘She didn’t strike me as the suicidal type. On the contrary – an able worker, a committed Party activist, well respected by her comrades. Popular. And I’m not aware of any reason why she’d have wanted to kill herself. As I said, I was surprised – but then these things happen.’
Mushkin shrugged his shoulders; death obviously didn’t impress him any more. And when it came to suicide he had a point. They didn’t publish figures, but everyone knew someone who’d ended their own life. It was the nature of the transition they were going through, Korolev supposed: the march from a feudal society to modern socialism exerted pressures on the individual – and not all individuals were made of steel. Sometimes he wished the Party would just give them a few months off. A holiday from change.
‘How about personal relationships? A lover perhaps? There’s nothing in the file, but young women…’ Korolev left the sentence hanging.
Mushkin shook his head.
‘I’m not in the locality in a professional capacity, Captain, as you’ve probably been informed. I’m here for a period of rest.’ The major glanced at him and Korolev felt his reaction to the statement was being assessed. It made him wonder whether the period of rest was voluntary.
‘I haven’t been monitoring things closely,’ Mushkin continued, ‘at least not up until now. It’s possible, however. Very possible. She was a popular girl.’
By now they’d left Odessa far behind. The villages they were passing through were further and further apart, and the landscape was made up almost entirely of enormous fields divided from each other by thin lines of bare-branched trees.
Korolev had heard rumours of what had happened in the Ukraine in ’thirty-two and ’thirty-three – dangerous words heard late at night from soldiers who’d had too much to drink in the Arbat Cellar. How the Red Army and the NKVD had forced the peasants to give up every scrap of food and how, faced with starvation, they had resisted, futilely, and the soldiers and the Chekists had shot them down. The car passed more than one smoke-blackened church, their domes charred black skeletons, and each village was dotted with roofless ruined buildings. Korolev couldn’t help but notice that the few hunched peasants he saw seemed older than their probable years, with barely the energy to lift their feet from the ground. They turned their heads to look at the passing car with no interest whatsoever and Korolev had seen that look before, during the war, on the faces of men who’d been fighting too long and had seen too much. On his own face caught in a mirror, not far from here, the day after cavalry had caught his company in the open and he’d hidden underneath his friend Pavel’s dead body as the horsemen had searched for the living amongst the dead, the pop of revolver shots marking each discovery. It had taken three days for his hands to stop shaking enough for him to shave. But by the time that had happened he’d been tired, so tired – seven years of fighting and so many dead friends and dead enemies filling his dreams. It wasn’t surprising he’d nearly broken. He didn’t know where he’d found the strength, perhaps the Lord had answered his prayers, but somehow he’d pulled himself together, shaved, washed his friend’s blood from his tunic and marched on with a different group of comrades, thanking the Virgin he still breathed.
Korolev looked across at Mushkin and realized that the Chekist’s expression wasn’t that dissimilar from the one on the faces of the peasants they’d just passed – a man who’d reached his limit and gone past it. The soldiers in that bar had said that in some places that winter the peasants had organized themselves and taken reprisals against Party officials – even ambushed detachments of Militia and the Red Army – and that the NKVD’s retaliation had been savage. Each rebellion had been crushed, no matter how small, and each act of resistance, real or imagined, met with brutal retribution. Mushkin must have been up to his neck in all of that, Korolev thought to himself. He noticed the way the major kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of them as they drove through the battered villages. Was it Korolev’s imagination or was the major trying to avoid looking out at the signs of the struggle that had taken place here?
‘You said this agricultural college was secure – does it need to be?’ Korolev found himself saying, and regretted it almost immediately. Mushkin glanced at him before turning his eyes back to the road ahead.
‘The struggle agains
t wreckers and counter-revolutionaries is not yet over in these parts, Korolev.’
They passed through another village, not dissimilar to the others – thin, hungry faces and rotting empty houses, the wooden walls grey with age and the damp thatch sagging. The usual signs of Soviet Power were here too – the kolkhoz office, a small Militia post, a collective store. These buildings at least looked as though they were being maintained.
But Mushkin looked neither left nor right, driving through the village as though it didn’t exist until, on reaching a large concrete block which announced the Odessa Regional Agricultural College in foot-high letters, he turned off the main road onto a gravel drive. The drive continued into woodland, the first Korolev had seen since he’d landed, and after a minute or so it reached the remains of a small church, burnt out long before.
‘The family that owned the estate were buried here,’ Mushkin said, stopping the car and indicating a small graveyard that had suffered as much as the church. ‘When the Revolution arrived the peasants dug up their graves and scattered their bones over the steppe. Then they burnt the church down with the priest inside it.’