City of Ghosts
Page 23
Nikitin’s face was very flushed now. But he poured more for them both.
‘When I had you hanging from the ceiling,’ the major said. ‘When you were dancing in the air. You whispered a woman’s name. Was that her?’
Rossel ran the remaining two fingers of his left hand over his stubble to cover the twist in his mouth. He wondered how quick the bastard was – if he would be able to stop a glass being driven into his eyes or the bottle smashed over his head.
‘Everyone must have one face for the world and another for himself, Revol.’
His father’s advice filled his mind and stayed his hand. He sought his refuge, the place Nikitin had never been able to get to him. That eyrie, beyond the predator’s reach – cold and in solitude.
Patience, Revol. There will be a time for the settling of old scores.
‘After the concert we played together, I went drinking with my bandmates,’ said Rossel. ‘Galya and I had a row about it. She didn’t like me drinking so much. About midnight, I staggered drunk to the front of the concert hall and saw Galya, alone in the twilight as the snow was coming down, cheeks like pink roses under the street lamp. She began walking, drifting down the middle of the road in her long coat, and there was no one else around. Just her, and me, meandering, half blind, fifty paces behind. Galya was heading back to the orphanage. I don’t know if she saw me or heard me – the snow muffled everything. She never looked round and I thought, I’ll just follow her home and everything will be all right.’
Nikitin laughed. A drunken guffaw. A crude attempt to mask emotion. But it fell away.
‘I have a daughter, Rossel,’ he mumbled almost to himself. ‘A beautiful daughter. Did I tell you that?’
‘I got home,’ continued Rossel. ‘I went to bed and passed out. Then awakening in the night, I looked through the window and thought I could see her, still in her coat, her head wrapped in her shawl, standing and looking at the house. She never moved. Just watched and waited. Soon I lay back and fell asleep – perhaps I had never actually awoken – and in the morning Galya wasn’t there. She wasn’t there and she never ever came back. I have been looking for her ever since. That’s why I joined the militia. It gave me an excuse to go looking.’
Rossel held his torturer’s gaze.
‘Now there are three of us,’ said Rossel.
‘Three of us?’
‘I know this story. Sofia, the girl I once loved, knew it – I told it to her. And now you do.’
‘Was she good of heart, your Galya?’ asked Nikitin. He did not ask gently but with the quick, clipped voice of an interrogator.
‘Always,’ said Rossel.
‘How old?’
‘When she disappeared, she was eighteen.’
‘Hm.’ Nikitin stared back at him but his eyes were rolling and the moment of acuity had been blown away. He rocked forward and poured again. The bottle was almost empty. Vodka splashed into Rossel’s mug. Nikitin filled his own to the brim again.
‘Your sister is a mystery and so you became a cop. I like that story, gundog. I’m not sure I believe it but I like it very much. To the good of heart.’ He jerked his head back and the liquid gushed down his throat. ‘Here, let me show you.’
Nikitin fumbled inside his tunic and pulled out a black wallet.
‘My daughter,’ he said. With his fingers getting in each other’s way, he nonetheless managed to tease out a creased photograph of a very serious, very pretty young woman.
‘Svetlana. After Stalin’s daughter. In this picture, nineteen. Sveta, Svetochka, Svetulya. My little light, my little flower.’
Nikitin pressed the picture to his lips, as if he was kissing an icon for its blessing. Through the fug in his brain one thought jumped out at Rossel. In the kitchen of his kommunalka, Nikitin had only mentioned one child, a son.
The major was maudlin now. Two tiny droplets pooled in the corners of his eyes and sought a convenient wrinkle down which to trickle.
‘I can’t imagine how it would be for me,’ he said, ‘if little Sveta went missing.’
He kissed his photograph again, a long, reverent fatherly kiss. And then, slumping forward, began to snore.
35
‘Major Nikitin has requested me to interrogate the murderer Eliasberg,’ Rossel said, tapping the conductor’s personal file. ‘Cell fourteen.’
The guard stared at him. ‘Where is the major?’
Rossel’s head was reeling with the vodka but was counting on adrenalin to carry him through. As long as Nikitin didn’t wake up too soon.
‘The major is studying the file of the accused to prepare his case,’ he said. ‘You could, of course, ask him yourself.’
For a second Rossel thought the man would call his bluff. But it took a fool to challenge the orders of an MGB major. The guard pulled aside the viewing hatch and glanced in before opening up.
Eliasberg jumped to his feet and stood next to his chair. He was pale and shaking.
In five paces Rossel was face to face with the conductor.
‘Karl Ilyich,’ he said. ‘You are lying about the list we found in that score of the Leningrad Symphony. I know none of those people was killed by you.’
Eliasberg’s long, soulful face and dark, expressive eyes now looked into Rossel’s own, hunting for what he must believe was impossible: mercy. Rossel gave him a policeman’s wooden stare in return. He walked round to the other side of the desk. Eliasberg’s knees gave way and he fell into the chair.
‘Stand up,’ said Rossel. ‘I did not say you could sit.’ The maestro struggled to his feet once more, hands on the front of the desk for support.
Rossel picked up the list of fifty names. ‘Who are these people?’ he demanded.
Eliasberg’s eyes blurred with tears. ‘I confessed. I willingly confessed.’
Rossel shook his head. ‘In the camps – Major Nikitin says, at best, you will be going there – your life will be in the hands of people who will despise everything about you: the quickness of your mind, the softness of your hands, those academic, bourgeois tones. In Vorkuta recently, I heard they actually chopped a man’s head off with an axe in front of the inmates simply for the purposes of entertainment. They stood around and applauded like it was an afternoon recital. Why are these people on this list?’
The conductor was silent. Rossel knew he was trying to guess the answer his interrogator wanted. For the MGB, that was the ideal state of their prey. For his purposes, it was useless. Galya, his parents, his music. And now Sofia. All mysteries to him. All ripped from him. He needed the truth. It was all that mattered. And though Rossel felt his heart almost still as he acknowledged the thought and all its implications, he was prepared to ignore even Beria’s orders to get to it.
‘Maestro,’ he said. ‘This is my militia identification. Read my name. I don’t care if Major Nikitin or Comrade Beria himself thinks you are guilty. I want to know the truth. You know who is on this list and why, and it has nothing to do with your relationship with Mravinsky. But I think it relates to an event that is very important in my investigation.’
Eliasberg reached out and took the ID in his long fingers. He peered at it for a moment and handed it back.
‘Read the list again,’ said Rossel. ‘And read my ID again.’
The conductor held the paper close to his face. After a moment, he put it back on the desk, very slowly.
‘The first performance of Shostakovich’s seventh symphony in this city was conducted by you and the Leningrad Radio Symphony Orchestra – your orchestra,’ said Rossel. ‘My name is on this list but I was not in your orchestra because by that time I’d first had my fingers broken a few cells down the corridor from where we are now, and then been sent to the front. Other names here were also not members of that ensemble. So, it is not a list of the radio orchestra.’
Eliasberg’s eyes widened.
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Rossel. ‘I really am not one of them. To continue. Sofia Fedotova was not in your orchestra. She was a sin
ger. She turned her back on music after the siege and became a nurse. Nadya Bazhanova, a clarinettist. Not good enough to make it and joined the MGB. Maxim Avdeyev, French horn. Went to the gulag, came back a priest. An insane one, but a priest all the same. Felix Sorokin. Joined the Red Army. They, plus myself and someone by the name of Gusts Landau, comprise the six underlined names in the list of fifty. The question is why.’
Rossel held Eliasberg’s gaze.
‘Nadya, Maxim, Felix and Sofia were indeed murdered – the MGB is not lying about that,’ he continued. ‘There is another victim who we have yet to identify but Comrade Landau, whoever he was, is a prime candidate. And then there is me. The fact that we are all on this list may be a giant coincidence but I am inclined to doubt it. So, I need to know, maestro, the true nature of this particular list. What was it for?’
Rossel took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Eliasberg. The conductor, his hands shaking, accepted. Rossel lit it and the maestro blew smoke out into the air where it hung between them like a bilious fog.
‘Early in 1942 there was a contest to decide whether Shostakovich or another composer would be chosen to write the Soviet Union’s war anthem,’ said Eliasberg. ‘I was handed that list by the political officer who oversaw the Philharmonic Hall. I was told to round them up – I would get help, but mostly it was left to me to find enough musicians to stage this contest. Those six names were already underlined – I swear to you, it was nothing to do with me. Some apparatchik had arranged everything for the contest. I just did what I was told.’
From the bowels of the Bolshoi Dom came a muffled scream. Eliasberg flinched.
‘Many of the names I recognised – some were old comrades from the Leningrad Radio Orchestra. Others were new to me, including those ones you are most interested in. Yet amid the dreadful carnage of the siege, it became the most important mission of my life – to find these musicians, to save their lives, to keep Soviet culture itself alive in a city that was otherwise dying. So I kept the list. At some point I must have tucked it into the score of the Shostakovich symphony, my other treasured souvenir from the war. But I do not remember.’
And in that instant, in that momentary contortion of the maestro’s face, the clues began to fall into line like a parade. If he could just transform the cascade of deductions and connections into one moment of clarity to make it all work, everything would make sense. He was sure of it.
But he had to go step by step. One thing at a time, Lieutenant.
‘Tell me about the great contest, maestro. You conducted the two submitted compositions. What do you remember about that?’
Rossel’s voice was steady. Another papirosa gave him further comfort.
‘The contest pitted Shostakovich against Vronsky – you are familiar with Vronsky?’ said Eliasberg. ‘It was a vicious rivalry for years before the war. There was a competition, an audition of sorts. A contest to find the composition that would be the musical accompaniment to the war effort. A foolish idea.’
‘Why so?’
‘You cannot make music by competition, Lieutenant. Music flows, or it does not. Inspiration strikes and a composer’s ability turns it into something divine or something banal, depending on the talent available. Music by competition results only in bombast.’
‘Are you saying the Leningrad Symphony is nothing but bombast?’
‘Of course not,’ said Eliasberg. ‘Shostakovich had instinctively realised what was required to win. He had already sensed the mood of the people – and the Party. Vronsky was the up-and-coming man at that point, but only his political connections could have won him the contest. I know – I was there. I conducted both submissions for the audition.’
‘And do you remember those compositions?’
‘One of them I know from memory,’ said Eliasberg. ‘The Shostakovich. At the contest it was still embryonic but it was clear how it could blossom into a true masterpiece – the work that became the seventh symphony, the Leningrad. Vronsky’s piece was bizarre – a sinfonia concertante. Six soloists and orchestra, though a much smaller group than the one Shostakovich demanded. Neither one thing nor the other. Insipid stuff – in musical terms, Vronsky never had a chance.’
‘That must have infuriated him,’ said Rossel.
‘Yes, his public mask of indulgent affability, the genial artist everybody knew, slipped. He was furious. Exploded and stormed out after his piece had been played, I remember. But his time has come again with this new opera, The Blockade. While Shostakovich’s reputation has, of late, fallen once again in the eyes of the Party. And in the mind of Vronsky, victory is everything, you see. It does not stop. I have never, in all my life, met a man with such a hunger for personal glory. Even when we were at school together, he was . . .’
Rossel leaned forward.
‘You went to school with Vronsky?’
Eliasberg nodded.
‘Where was this?’
‘On Krestovsky Island, out on Lake Ladoga. Before the revolution.’ A wistful look crossed his grey eyes. ‘At first, for me, it was a very happy place.’
‘At first?’
The conductor shifted in his seat.
‘There were twelve of us in Professor Loban’s class. Only ever twelve – it was the most elite of elite upbringings. Loban’s Apostles, we were called by the servants and ground staff. The tsar owned the palace itself but the royal family were seldom seen there. They allowed respected courtiers and politicians to live in it during the summer months. Stolypin, the prime minister, was the most regular tenant.’
‘Stolypin himself?’
Eliasberg nodded.
‘The very same. His daughter was badly wounded by a bomb – one of the many attempts to kill him. Because of that, I think, he was kindness itself to us children on the odd occasions we saw him.’
Stolypin sent so many suspected Reds to the gallows they rechristened the noose ‘Stolypin’s neck-tie’. The kindness of such a man was always limited, thought Rossel, and highly selective.
‘And Professor Loban? Tell me about him.’
‘Fyodor Loban, a great man, a great educator. He created the school himself from scratch, selecting gifted boys from across the empire, those supremely talented in different areas: science, languages, mathematics and music. Stolypin, when he was chairman of the tsar’s Council of Ministers, funded the scholarships and the school itself. He had an ulterior motive – he wanted to attract the tsarevich Alexei to the school and use this to exert even greater influence on the royal family but the tsarina refused to let him attend. Such a delicate child.’
‘You were one of the chosen? That must have felt like a great honour?’
Eliasberg gave a small smile.
‘As I said, it was a happy place.’
‘Until?’
‘Until the arrival of an unexpected thirteenth apostle. Back then he had a pretentious nickname for himself. Something Greek, now what was it again? Thanatos, yes, that was it.’
Rossel felt an itch prickling across the mark on his neck.
He leaned further across the table.
‘Vronsky?’
Eliasberg flopped back in his chair as if he had been punctured. He breathed in through his nose, more and more, seeming to give himself new energy with the foetid air. At last, he pulled himself upright and stared at Rossel.
‘Comrade Lieutenant, you are dealing in both music and murder, am I correct? Then let me tell you a tale. Professor Loban never wanted him in the school but Vronsky’s mother was a schemer, a great beauty, a lady of society and blessed with some powerful friends. Ever met her?’ Eliasberg twisted his lips. ‘The kind of woman who bites into a lemon and makes the lemon recoil. Close to the court then. Close to the Kremlin now. Loban had no choice. He had to accept the boy.’
‘And did Vronsky receive special treatment?’
Eliasberg shook his head.
‘No, not really. That was not the professor’s way. Loban was indulgent of all his prodigies. If he was a
nnoyed at having Vronsky forced upon him, he did not show it. For a while, things remained as they had been. But then there was a recital – a musical competition.’
Nikitin might burst in at any moment. But Rossel’s instincts told him if he pushed the conductor too hard, he would clam up. He needed to be patient.
‘What kind of recital?’
‘Stolypin arranged for the tsarina to visit the island and observe Loban’s charges in person. It was decided that she would view each group in turn. Mathematicians first, then scientists, then those boys particularly proficient in language would read out some poems they had written and finally we musicians would perform something. Something one of us had written.’
‘And Vronsky was the chosen one,’ said Rossel.
‘No. No, Comrade Lieutenant, that was just it. He wasn’t. A boy named Suvorin, Andrei Suvorin, was the chosen one. A remarkable prodigy, a talent some compared to Mozart. Alas, the world never got to hear a Suvorin symphony. I have carried a tiny fragment of his composition lodged in my head for almost half a century. Even then it had a haunting quality. As if, though a child like the rest of us, the boy already knew too much of the bestial undercurrents, the darkness of this world.’
They both looked at the door. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside but drifted away.
‘Continue, maestro.’
‘In the weeks before the recital, that’s when the atmosphere began to change. Petty acts of abuse and bullying. Suvorin, victimised by Vronsky. We were all encouraged to gang up on him. A few did, a few kept their distance. Suvorin kept on trying to compose, but Vronsky would steal his manuscript paper and sing it out loud, taunting him.’
Eliasberg held Rossel’s eye for a moment. Then he started to hum – a simple, five-note musical phrase.
F. A. E-flat. G. B-flat.
Fa. La. Mi-bemol. Sol. Si-bemol.