City of Ghosts

by Ben Creed

  ‘Coincidences? Hunches.’ Vassya’s voice rose.

  ‘It’s the little things that spark one’s suspicions,’ said Rossel. ‘Speaking of crystal, the librarian at the conservatory told me of a search for some of Vronsky’s music that led to our trumpeter friend, except that when he was found he was a mutilated corpse with a glass tube in his throat, identical to those we found inserted into the necks of the bodies on the railway tracks. Proof? No, I don’t have absolute proof yet. But I have motive, modus operandi, mute witnesses from beyond the grave.’

  ‘That is not all, though? You said Shevchuk’s identity made you understand everything.’

  Rossel looked at Vassya through eyes he could barely keep open.

  ‘Back then, after the Germans had invaded and the initial chaos had abated, Stalin had decided there needed to be an anthem for the war. Music that would bear witness to the unconquerable Russian soul. Both Vronsky and Shostakovich were working on compositions that might serve but had written only sketches, themes, half-formed ideas. But Stalin ordered it to be done, and that gave the Party’s cultural arbiters a headache. Shostakovich was the obvious choice but Vronsky was the coming man and had the better connections – plus his scheming mother, always making friends in high places.

  ‘So a competition, an audition, was devised, and the composers given two weeks to make progress. And on that day in March 1942 they both presented their pieces – or as much of them as they had written – at the Radio Symphony Orchestra’s broadcasting hall, to be performed and assessed by Shevchuk.

  ‘There were two problems. One, the musicians were half dead. Most could not hold their instruments up, let alone blow into them or scrape them. They had found only fifty – fifty-one, to be exact, as I now know from a list that ended up tucked into a score of the Leningrad Symphony. They were shadows. And yet someone was setting out music stands and distributing parts as if they still played every day.’

  ‘The second problem?’

  ‘The competition was fixed. “Everyone knew Shevchuk was in Madame Vronsky’s pocket.” That’s what my old teacher told me. And Felix knew it. She also told me Felix had said “Nadya had the inside track.” Which makes sense. Nadya was just the sort of woman to try and get close to Deputy Kommissar Shevchuk.’

  ‘But how could it be?’ said Vassya, dragging a chair closer and sinking into it. ‘Shostakovich wrote his Leningrad Symphony and that is the music the whole world heard.’

  ‘That was because the performance of Vronsky’s composition was a disaster. The clarinettist could hardly produce a sound, the trumpeter had barely learned to read music – he was a big-band man used to improvising his way through tea dances, not sight-reading a score as complex as this one. The singer could manage little more than a thin squeak. And so on. It was ridiculous. The Shostakovich was hardly a triumph of musical performance but you could sense the scale of it, the power, the ambition, even with only half the right number of players.

  ‘Vronsky was furious, screaming at Shevchuk, at the musicians, threatening to send everyone to penal battalions. But he still thought the contest was a done deal. It was the Magnetophon that made him storm out. The very moment he set eyes on that, he really lost control.’

  ‘The Magnetophon?’ Vassya looked puzzled.

  ‘The tape recorder. They recorded the whole thing. Shevchuk saw to that. It baffled people at the time but now I know why.’

  Rossel took another drag on his cigarette, exhaled and then shrugged.

  ‘When he heard the Vronsky cacophony, Shevchuk got cold feet. He couldn’t be the man in charge of a catastrophe – that was the way to the firing squad. So he did what any Soviet underling does: passed the judgement up the chain of command. Vronsky understood Shevchuk had double-crossed them as soon as he saw the tapes being spooled off the Magnetophon and packed into boxes – the decision was being left to the Kremlin. So he blew his top and stormed out.’

  Vassya thought for a moment but then shook her head.

  ‘For a maniac like Vronsky, I can see why that might be a reason to kill Shevchuk. But why the others?’

  ‘There is something I haven’t told you,’ said Rossel. ‘Of the six soloists who fouled up Vronsky’s composition, four of them were conservatory students and friends of mine: Felix, Nadya, Max and Sofia. Gusts Landau was the fifth. And the last musician you know well, because he is standing in front of you.’

  Vassya shot to her feet.

  ‘You played?’

  Rossel nodded. He stood upright, raising his arms as if about to play his violin. ‘Despite the cold and the hunger, I think I played well. I hadn’t practised for months but as soon as I picked up my instrument it just felt right. As though the music was nourishing me, almost as much as a proper meal. It made me realise that the hope of getting back to playing was a big part of what had got me through the first months of siege. That after the war, there might still be a place for me in a world I felt I belonged in.’

  Rossel stubbed out his cigarette.

  ‘But things didn’t turn out the way I had hoped.’

  *

  As for Sofia, the shock of seeing her after six long months, after the worst of the siege, had almost broken him.

  Her face was gaunt, the cheekbones switchblade thin.

  When she took off her fur hat, her lustrous black hair was now tinged with grey. She looked no worse, he had realised, than he did – than anyone else there in the RadioKom rehearsal rooms. They were all dystrophic. All starving. But it was the image of her he carried in his mind – Sofia as she had been, small, perfect and, to him, impossibly beautiful, his Sofia – which had carried him, this far, through the war. A fragile, internalised, personal icon that he had worshipped every night and believed kept him safe. He had made himself live only for this moment. Everything he already had suffered during the siege was only possible because he felt he might see her face once again. And now it had arrived in the dusty rehearsal rooms of the RadioKom building on Gogol Street and he could hardly bring himself to look at her.

  She walked towards him and, with a faux air of jollity, kissed him three times, lightly, on the cheeks. Then she stared into his eyes. Hers were wide and watery, the lids stretched back making the eyeballs protrude a little. She saw him see her exactly as she was and understood his ridiculously quixotic romantic dissatisfaction. Then she had squeezed his hand.

  ‘I’m still here, Revol. All our friends are, for the most part. Now’s let’s make music. I need to sing. My voice, at least, will always remain for you, just as it was, just as it always will be.’

  *

  It was late. They had almost run out of cigarettes.

  Rossel stood up and walked towards the mantelpiece above the grate. He stared at the etching of the ship and the seabirds.

  ‘Shostakovich is declared the winner soon after and sets to work completing his symphony. It is performed in Kuibyshev, then Moscow, then New York and London and – when the army and the NKVD and Eliasberg himself had rounded up every musician they can find – in Leningrad. August 9, 1942. An unforgettable day. Vronsky goes away, licks his wounds and plots his revenge. He gets hold of the names of the sextet, the musicians who spoiled everything for him through their rendition of his piece, and devises a new composition. It’s a very exclusive one. He allots parts to Maxim, Nadya, Felix and Sofia, and adds Shevchuk to the list for his betrayal. Only this time the thing the great maestro orchestrates is their death, and the score on which he writes is a pair of railway tracks in a forest clearing.’

  ‘Did you play in the actual orchestra for the Leningrad premier of the seventh?’

  Rossel closed his eyes.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But they wanted every musician they could find?’

  ‘By then I was no longer what they were looking for. In the May of the same year, I had already been denounced, arrested and tortured.’

  Rossel bit the tops of his gloves and tore them off his hands.

  ‘Because our glorious s
ocialist state destroyed my fingers and tore the music out of my life. I remember the concert, everybody does, but that day I was at the front, lying in a crater and looking at a blazing late summer sun. All the while struggling, thanks to my still-bandaged hands, to point my gun in the right direction. The overture was a massive artillery barrage to shut the Germans up, and then they blasted the symphony out of loudspeakers all over the city and even in the direction of the enemy. “We’re still here, we’re still alive, and this is our anthem that you will never silence.”’

  Rossel held his left hand up to the bare light bulb, staring at the remnants of Nikitin’s butchery.

  ‘Three weeks later we were thrown into a major battle – tanks, artillery, aircraft. We hurled everything at them. Made progress, too, for a while.’

  His hands fell to his sides.

  ‘Then they fought back. I hope never to live through anything like that ever again.’

  ‘Did you ever find out who it was that informed on you?’ Vassya asked.

  ‘No, but it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘At the time, I thought I deserved it. That’s what part of me still thinks.’

  ‘But how could anyone deserve something like that?’

  ‘A long time ago, I retold a joke in front of lots of people. A joke about the Party my father had told me. Somebody reported it to the authorities. That’s why, I believe, my parents were sent to the camps. It is probably why my sister is missing.’

  He stretched out his left hand towards the faded seabird carved into the mantelpiece.

  ‘Their luck ran out. Because of me.’

  *

  It was nearly six when they made it home. They headed for Vassya’s apartment, as if it was somehow a sanctuary.

  ‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

  Rossel considered this.

  ‘We have already decided we are not going to run. So, we wait. It won’t be long. If I am lucky, I will get the chance to explain the case to my interrogator before I am shot.’

  She killed the light and stepped close to him.

  ‘Then we don’t have much time,’ she said.

  39

  Monday November 5

  The knock was not at all loud. Almost polite. Rossel sat up straight in Vassya’s bed and checked his watch. Seven thirty. They were late – they usually called on their victims between two and four in the morning to ensure maximum confusion and compliance.

  Another knock. This time louder and more demanding. He climbed out of bed and put on his trousers and vest. Vassya’s eyes began to blink open.

  As he walked down the hall, adrenalin shot through him – he braced for a swarm of clubs and boots. But as he swung the front door of the apartment open, Rossel felt his heart steady. Only one MGB officer stood in front of him.

  Nikitin stepped into the hallway and closed the door. His breath stank of cigars and vodka, his eyes were red-rimmed. The MGB uniform, usually crisp and tight, was rumpled and there was an L-shaped yellow stain on his collar. When he spoke, it was a slurred whisper.

  ‘They like to pick out girls, Minister Beria and Vronsky,’ Nikitin said, slumping against the wall. ‘That’s how they amuse themselves together. They go out at night and drive; sometimes, when it’s Moscow, in the Packard, other times, when it’s here in Leningrad, in an MGB limo. Me and Sarkisov, we’ve driven them a few times. They point. The car slows down. Then a girl is told to get in. Any girl. Blonde, redhead, brunette. Young, twenties, thirties. Any girl that takes their fancy. That’s how it works. It’s Beria they are talking to. It’s Vronsky who is stretching out a hand to greet them. Both famous men, both terrifying. What choice do these girls have? None, none whatsoever.’

  Nikitin stood upright, grunting with the effort.

  ‘They don’t like whores, Uncle Lavrentiy and Uncle Nikolai. They don’t like sluts. Not for the most part. They like the innocent ones. The girls who look like chaste virgins. The fresh flowers. The Flower Game, is what they actually call it – what they whisper in the back of that limousine. The black door of the car opens. The girl gets in. And that’s it. She can no longer be herself ever again. Beria has a soundproof room in the house you visited on Malaya Nikitskaya Street. They take them in there and do things to them. I’m a torturer. I’ve worked at the Bolshoi Dom for fifteen years. But I’m also a father to a nineteen-year-old girl. And the only thing that keeps me from sleeping at night is thinking about the noises those girls make inside that soundproof room. The shapes their lips make as they mouth cries no one ever gets to hear.’

  Nikitin’s voice had risen as he told the tale. Now, it dropped back to a whisper.

  ‘In the morning, me and Sarkisov have to give them irises. Can you believe that? That’s Beria’s test. If they take the flowers, he lets them go, sees it as a sign that they have acquiesced and won’t cause trouble. We give them flowers and then take a snap with a little camera in which we command them to watch the birdie. Not all of them do. The ones that say no to the flowers, they and their entire families end up in the camps.’

  Nikitin’s left knee buckled. He steadied himself by resting a hand on the small wooden hall table where some of the kommunalka residents kept their gloves. He was more than half-cut. Almost at the rambling stage of inebriation. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, following that up with a belch.

  ‘I’ve been dismissed. Sarkisov rang a few hours ago. A lifetime of service then goodbye, comrade. Which basically means I’m a dead man walking. They’ll come for me soon.’

  The major’s voice rose in pitch and he almost sang out the words.

  ‘He was fucking her.’

  A torturer’s smile spread across his flat-nosed face.

  ‘Have you worked that out yet, gundog? Your beautiful Sofia – Vronsky was fucking her.’

  ‘Yes, I . . .’

  ‘Oh, but not just him. Beria, too. Me and Sarkisov picked her up for them in the Packard one summer, after the war. Sarkisov keeps a list of all the names – a little leverage in case he ever falls out of favour. She had come to Moscow to meet Vronsky, a story he had spun about needing a singer. Usually they loved the random nature of the hunt – they used to snigger when they pointed, out of the car windows, like mischievous gods hurling down thunderbolts. But not her. She was on purpose. Vronsky had been in touch, told us where to collect her – from the station. Vronsky . . . well, I’d never seen him so exultant. He was really salivating at the prospect of him and Beria fucking the little slut’s brains out.’

  Nikitin’s head jerked backwards at a preposterous angle.

  Blood splattered from his bottom lip. He had not expected Rossel’s blow but did not fall to the floor. The major was a streetfighter and, drunk or not, he swung back, his left fist catching Rossel on the temple. Rossel shuffled, then dropped into a crouch and hit Nikitin fast, two sharp jabs, one with the left fist, the other with the right. The blue-hat crashed downward onto the faded parquet and almost immediately tried to push himself upward. Rossel was too quick for him. He flung himself on top of Nikitin and took only a moment, using his knees – one across each of the major’s shoulders – to pin the man down. Rossel’s shattered hands clamped down on his torturer’s windpipe. His eyes were flickering with a feral rage and he began to squeeze. Nikitin tried to use his own feet to push back, rocking his body back and forth, so he might loosen his attacker’s grip. But it was hopeless.

  ‘They’re coming for you now,’ the MGB officer gasped. ‘Sarkisov is coming. I’m only an hour ahead of him. I’m here to help you . . .’

  Rossel’s fingers loosened.

  ‘And why would you do that?’

  ‘In my pocket, there’s a picture of her in my left trouser pocket.’

  Rossel’s grip began to tighten again.

  ‘Of Sofia?’ he shouted.

  Nikitin had to spit out the words.

  ‘Of Svetlana. My darling little girl. Sweet, good-hearted Sveta. Last night, I
found out those bastards had been fucking her, too.’

  40

  As they drove across Kamennoostrovsky Bridge, flakes of snow drifted out of a late-morning sky that was as grey as tarnished pewter. Rossel sat behind the wheel of Nikitin’s ZIS. The major, sitting in the passenger seat, was nursing a cut lip and a bruised temple. He had sobered up.

  ‘So, we are agreed?’ said Rossel.

  Nikitin nodded. ‘The Party elite are already gathering at their dachas south of Lake Ladoga ahead of the festivities. Malenkov, Molotov, Beria, Khrushchev – all of them. I take the list of musicians and the jeweller’s ledgers to Malenkov. You go to Vronsky’s island. You’re still determined to go alone?’

  Rossel nodded.

  ‘If I try and formally arrest Vronsky – go with Lipukhin, or involve militia headquarters – he, or his mother, will just talk their way out of it. Use their contacts in the Party to escape the law. Point the finger back at Eliasberg. Then destroy any evidence. I can only get real justice if I go on my own.’

  ‘And what will that look like?’ said Nikitin with a wry smile.

  Rossel shrugged.

  ‘He murdered Felix. He murdered Sofia. Tortured them. I want to kill him. But the policeman in me won’t let that happen. So, I’m going to need the maestro to give me a written confession.’

  The car picked up speed.

  ‘And you? Why take the risk?’ said Rossel.

  Nikitin grinned.

  ‘Beria doesn’t like loose ends. Now I’m dismissed, it’s simply a matter of time before he comes for me. This way there’s a slim chance I can save myself and pay him back for my daughter.’

  The major tapped his breast pocket.

  ‘Otherwise, I’d be far too smart to take evidence against the second most powerful man in the Soviet Union and deliver it into the hands of his greatest political enemy, Malenkov.’