Denouncer (22 page)

“I think that’s quite enough,” said Viktor. “I’m going home. Petr, will you join me? We have to be up early tomorrow.”

But Razumov laid a heavy hand on Petr’s arm. “Let him go, I haven’t finished my story, and it’s one that haunts me daily.” Viktor reached for his wallet to pay for his share of the dinner. “Forget it,” said Razumov, “it’s my treat.”

Without another word, Viktor stood, went to the coat stand, slipped into his jacket, and left, while his friends watched.

“Well, that’s that,” said Razumov, though Petr had no idea to what the “that” referred. “Where was I? A dismembered Lukashenko. Yes, how much pleasure that will give me. But the real point of the story is not about our soon-to-be-buried mayor . . .” This time he did belch, and loudly “. . . but about Viktor’s sister. The Harkovs lived in the flat above us. I was an only child. Breach birth. Mother couldn’t have any more kids. We could hear Viktor’s father, upstairs, beating the hell out of his wife and daughter. When Relitsa left for school in the morning, I walked with her. She was always bruised. I think the old man hated her because she was so pretty. You know how ugly people can often resent beautiful ones.”

Petr listened raptly. The more Razumov drank, the more Petr learned. Razumov admitted his fondness for Relitsa, “the only girl I really ever cared for”; and he defended her when other children threw snowballs or disparaged her drunken father. They had both studied at the college in Ryazan, she, philosophy, and he, accounting. Their different disciplines led them in opposite directions, both literally and figuratively. She departed for Ukraine, and he went into the secret service as a statistician and then an analyst. He hadn’t seen her for several years when he crossed her path in Geneva. Razumov had been sent there on an undercover mission, and she was fleeing a Soviet crackdown against Ukrainian nationalists. They had spent several days together, and had even enjoyed a boat ride on Lake Geneva. As they parted, she confessed that she would shortly be leaving Switzerland and stealing back to Kiev to continue the fight for independence, a cause that Razumov warned her would fail.

The next time they saw each other was in his flat, to which she had gained admittance by telling the building superintendent that Razumov was her brother. She was wanted for “espionage” and had been labeled “an enemy of the people.” After a week in his flat, the “super” started to nose around and ask questions about the stunning blond Razumov was “keeping.” It was she who first suggested moving east and assuming a new identity in Siberia. Unbeknownst to Razumov, Lukashenko had met her on one of his holidays to Andeer in Switzerland, where he went to enjoy the mineral waters. Relitsa had traveled to the spa to meet a comrade, a fellow nationalist, who was apprehended at the Swiss border and never made it into the country. While she was waiting, Lukashenko, who had an eye for the ladies and was already in the company of another woman, approached her and, in his charming Russian accent, tried to inveigle her into a rendezvous. She resisted and returned to her room. That night, posing as a hotel employee, he knocked on her door and, when she opened it, tried to rape her. Had she not screamed so loudly, he would have succeeded.

Why had Relitsa not taken refuge with Viktor in his flat? Razumov had asked her the same question, and she had told him about the bad blood between them. The cause? She had never forgiven Viktor for failing to stand up to his father and protect his mother and sister from the drunken man’s abuse. She related an incident in which she had taken refuge behind Viktor and had begged him to keep her from a certain beating. But Viktor pleaded neutrality and stepped aside. After Viktor had learned from Razumov the details of her death, he swore to kill Lukashenko—with the help of the OGPU, and from a distance, with a bomb.

By the time that Petr led Razumov from the restaurant, the fog of cigarette smoke and the humidity from the sweating windows had made breathing nearly impossible. The cold air of the street was tonic. Razumov seemed to shake off his intoxication like an old snakeskin. Petr stood gulping oxygen and only slowly recovered his senses.

“Well, tomorrow’s a red-letter day,” said Razumov. “Get some sleep, comrade. I’ll collect you at eight in the morning. The car will be parked at the curb outside your building. In the evening we’ll celebrate.”

✷

Promptly at eight, Petr and Viktor entered Razumov’s car, a black Skoda, which was not official OGPU issue. They were dressed in the same working clothes they had worn when they had tried to dig a hole in the road. Petr was carrying his canvas satchel with all the necessary equipment, and Viktor seemed intent on disguising himself with a peaked cap and dark sunglasses. Wordlessly, Razumov turned into the street and made his way slowly toward the main artery that Lukashenko’s car would follow to reach the Ryazan Kremlin. No secret police units, in their black Zim cars, were in evidence. This killing was not to have OGPU fingerprints. Razumov had brought his lunch.

“You never know how long you may have to wait.”

Petr asked, “What if you need a toilet?”

Razumov chuckled. “In the service, you learn to go once a day, in the morning, and once before bedtime. Good sphincter muscles . . . that’s what you need.”

Shortly after ten o’ clock, an escort of motorcycles appeared leading the black Packard with the tinted glass windows.

A second or two after the car passed, Petr set off the blast. The car seemed to rise off the ground, return to earth, and then fly apart, with windows and doors acting like projectiles and taking down everything in their path, including a few onlookers and motorcyclists. He had gauged the distance correctly. The assassins were untouched. Razumov backed up and sped off, taking numerous side and back roads to return to Viktor’s flat. Viktor and Petr exited the car, and Razumov drove away to hide the car in a barn on the outskirts of town.

Once the two men entered the apartment, Viktor turned on the radio. A lugubrious male voice interrupted a program of martial music to announce an explosion on the highway leading to the Ryazan Kremlin.

“The city police have already declared the incident an assassination attempt on the life of our beloved leader, Vladimir Lukashenko. But owing to the vigilance of devoted bodyguards, our precious mayor’s life was spared.”

Petr looked at Viktor and said, “Not a chance. More official lies.” Viktor calmly poured himself a drink and sank into his parlor chair, the one in blue slipcovers, the one he used for reading.

The announcer continued. “At this very moment, a river launch is docking below the Kremlin, and Mayor Lukashenko, to thunderous applause, is ascending the steps leading up to the fortress. All of his admirers, who have braved the cold and the wind, are on hand to see their adored leader. As for the bloody murderers, the police are looking for them at this very moment, rounding up Mensheviks, Social Democrats, dissident priests, monarchists, and, of course, Trotskyites. Once the villains are identified, they will be tried and shot. The victims of this terrible bombing have yet to be identified, but ambulances are on the scene.”

Martial music resumed. Viktor wordlessly entered his bedroom and returned with two traveling bags, both packed. When he put on his overcoat, Petr asked him where he was going.

“It’s time to leave,” he said. “For you, too.”

“Why’s that?”

“Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear? Lukashenko escaped. That means his bodyguards were tipped off. This job was assigned to Razumov and me. Ergo, some senior OGPU officers knew about it. But no one’s going to touch a senior official. That leaves the three of us: Razumov, you, and me. So start packing—and get out!”

A bewildered Petr asked, “Where?”

“You said you had a girlfriend waiting for you in Kiev. Me, I’m going to bury myself, as you did, in Balyk . . . with Galina. While the mayor’s men are looking for the bombers, the OGPU will be looking for the snitch. It’s time to clear out.”

“Police and secret agents will be watching every train and bus leaving the city. Did you think of that?”

Viktor opened the door, shouldered his two bags, and said, “I have a transit permit—and a promise to keep my name out of it. Comrade Razumov’s OGPU membership will insulate him from suspicion. That leaves you.”

Before Petr’s mind came into focus, Viktor was out the door and descending the stairs two at a time. “I’ll tackle the swine and choke him to death,” thought Petr, and sprang to his feet. But by the time he gained the stairs, the fleeing double agent had reached the street and entered a waiting car that roared off. “I must warn Galina,” he told himself. Returning to the flat, Petr quickly packed, leaving behind the satchel with its incriminating evidence. When he entered the hall, two armed policemen were already on the stairs. Unseen, Petr climbed the narrow ladder to the roof, where the building superintendent maintained a greenhouse. No one was inside. He hid behind the potting table.

Shortly, the greenhouse door opened. Pause. Then he heard a man’s voice say, “He must have gone down the fire escape.” Petr remained frozen for well over an hour, until cramping forced him to stand and stretch. It was already dark outside when he stole from the greenhouse and made his way to the street and then to the rail yards. Still dressed in the same work clothes, he saw a freight train unloading coal. He clambered inside and rubbed his hands and face with coal dust, to blend in with his landscape. The train’s next destination was a mystery. He didn’t care, just so long as it left Ryazan. Slowly moving down the track, the train attracted two other itinerant travelers, who hoisted themselves into the car at the last second. By this time, Petr knew not to trust anyone and merely grunted when the two men extended their greetings. After several hours, he felt certain the men were not city police or Lukashenko bodyguards or OGPU. Only then did he hazard a laconic word, or rather a question:

“Where we headed?”

“Last stop, Minsk,” replied one of the men.

The reply suited Petr. It brought him that much closer to Kiev. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, trying to make sense of what had just taken place. Viktor had originally been allied with the OGPU to rid the oblast of Lukashenko, and he had induced Petr, with his training in explosives, to join him. In return, Petr would have a clean military record. Razumov was Viktor’s OGPU contact. Both men had personal reasons for wanting to see Lukashenko dead, but aside from the personal, both men also had political motives. Razumov and his colleagues in the secret police wanted to see the oblast governed by one of their own, and Viktor had an unimpeachable reason to see the man dead: Lukashenko had killed his sister. The accusations of corruption and bribery were merely cosmetic. But in the end, Viktor Harkov was the most ruthless of all, and the most venal. He knew that Razumov would find protection in the spacious folds of the OGPU gown, and that Petr would be the likely suspect, a deserter on the run. A lingering question was whether Viktor’s behavior had anything to do with Galina? Petr had already indicated that he intended to unite with a woman in Kiev. He and Galina would
divorce. So if Viktor had designs on Galina, Petr presented no threat. Then why set him up? It made no sense, unless it was a pure and simple monetary transaction and someone had to take the fall. Of the three men, Petr was the dupe.

As soon as he arrived in Minsk, he would find a public bath and a safe doss house. He would then write Galina to warn her of Viktor’s treachery. But his epistolary endeavors took a few days, by which time the Ryazan OGPU had received a letter from Viktor in which he named Petr as the one who had warned Lukashenko of the intended assassination and praised Razumov for risking his life in support of the plan. Of his own role, he said nothing. When Viktor reached Balyk, Sasha offered him Petr’s former attic room (at Galina’s urging). Two days later, Viktor intercepted and destroyed Petr’s letter. He then grew a beard, let his hair reach his shoulders, and dyed it, making him look like an old believer who had lived with monks in the forest.

13

A
lthough initially Viktor rarely showed his face in the village and never at the school, he spent days on end in the attic, working on a treatise or apologia of some kind. Galina seemed pleased with his presence, and Alya had expressed delight at seeing him but really preferred Petr and Sasha. She found Viktor aloof, even when he played with her. Horses had never appealed to Viktor, so he could not appreciate her joy in riding around the corral on her pony, Scout. What he did enjoy was making Goran Youzhny’s acquaintance and being introduced to the fine art of photography. As for Sasha, Viktor treated him as a nonentity. Anyone earning his keep as a teacher or school director was, by his definition, feckless. People with real talent became writers and journalists and engineers. Nothing but failures who couldn’t do anything else became professors and teachers.

Underlying Viktor’s anti-intellectual attitude toward pedagogues was the simple fact of his failure to do graduate fieldwork in linguistic anthropology. Although he had attended college at the expense of the state, he expected the state’s largesse to extend to a year in Africa, despite his dull academic record. When the state balked, Viktor grew disconsolate and then resentful. Denouncing all scholarship as fatuous, he became a polemicist, living at first on the money his brother earned and then, so long as he raged against Lukashenko, on an OGPU subsidy. No one denied that Viktor had the intelligence and writing skills to compose a first-rate treatise or book. But what he wrote in the attic was a full and false account, sent to the Ryazan OGPU, of his and Razumov’s efforts to keep Petr from revealing the planned attempt on Lukashenko’s life.

Unbeknownst to Viktor, Razumov had been suspended without pay and put on the “Watch” list. His career as a secret policeman appeared to have ended in disgrace—until Viktor’s long and detailed history of events arrived. Using every literary device, including the favorite Soviet “although” opening, he had composed a narrative that exuded the very essence of truth. It acknowledged mistakes (small ones) and blamed himself for overreaching (a prerequisite of Soviet apologies). But he forcefully argued that the botched assassination was owing to the treachery of Petr Selivanov and to his “minders” (he and Razumov) not watching Petr closely enough. He apologized for his and Razumov’s failure, and insinuated that he would never inform Lukashenko’s people of the OGPU’s hidden hand in the matter. The implication, of course, was that in return for his silence, he could always count on OGPU support.

Why Viktor had gone to such lengths to exculpate Razumov was a different story. For all his own anger and self-serving conduct, he had long felt ashamed of his failure to protect his sister from his drunken father. Razumov’s fond regard for Relitsa, probably the only person Viktor had ever truly loved, was a debt he needed to repay. This letter would settle the account.

Sasha disliked Viktor from the moment he’d read Petr’s diary. He thought then that Petr’s suspicions were entirely justified. In Ryazan, he had found Viktor self-absorbed and consequently selfish. Now that they were living under the same roof, he disliked him even more, regarding him as underhanded and unscrupulous. Sasha and Galina had resumed intimacies after Petr’s departure, but with the arrival of Viktor, she became distant. Her previous passion returned only briefly when Viktor and Goran retired to the Balyk Inn, on the edge of town, to carouse. The inn was a converted barn that an enterprising farmer, Fyodor Kolchak, had fitted out as a tavern. The police periodically shuttered the place because private enterprise was illegal; but as soon as they left, usually with their fill of vodka, Kolchak reopened. Here, at a corner table, Viktor and Goran liked to huddle, ostensibly talking about photography, though Kolchak whispered that the talk often focused on politics.

Sasha gathered that Goran’s Leningrad family had ties to the Right Opposition, influential ties that reached to the inner sanctum of the Politburo. If Goran’s family had been fishing in those conspiratorial waters, they might find themselves snagged on their own hooks. But why would Viktor, always ready to change sides, find any appeal in a losing cause? And the Right Opposition was certainly a lost cause. Perhaps Viktor had in mind getting his hands on personal property and selling it for a profit before the government made all such activities illegal. Or perhaps the Right Opposition didn’t even come into his thinking, but rather he saw in Goran’s photography a way of advancing his own interests, whatever they might be; or perhaps he was merely trying to appropriate Goran’s lab. He did buy a number of artistic photographs from Comrade Youzhny, all bearing on some physical aspect of the school: a broken chimney, a cracked window, a roof missing a few slates, unpainted siding, water-stained books in the toolshed, a withered apple tree, a weather-beaten bicycle pump lying in the grass.

Shortly after Viktor’s arrival at the farmhouse, Sasha heard him steal into Galina’s room late one night and her say, “Not here! Are you mad? Alya’s sleeping in the alcove.” Then Sasha had the impression that Galina, who often entered the kitchen before bedtime to make a cup of hot milk, had returned not to her bedroom but to the attic. He dared not spy lest he invite her disdain for such conduct, which she called “Bolshevik behavior.” But with each passing week, his suspicions grew, particularly since he had overheard Viktor tell Galina that he didn’t trust Sasha, and that something about Comrade Parsky wasn’t right. The conversation included the following:

“I felt uneasy when he first came to Ryazan bearing condolences. The man is hiding something.”

“What might that be?” asked Galina.

“I don’t know, but no one is innocent.”

Then he had made his signature clicking sound, the same one that he had made on the beach below the Kremlin—by pulling the tip of his tongue down abruptly and forcefully from the roof of his mouth.

Sasha tried to imitate him. Click, cluck, clack. He sounded like a lame chicken. But he continued trying and eventually realized that to increase the effect he had to pucker his lips. Retracted lips muffled the sound. Before long he had become quite adept.

Overhearing that conversation had led Sasha to burn Petr’s diary and to ask Brodsky’s advice. But there was a difficulty: How could Sasha represent the situation without incriminating himself? He wished that Petr were present to give him some insight into Viktor. But given Petr’s absence, all Sasha could think of telling Brodsky was that he suspected Viktor of trying to seduce Galina, an embarrassing admission and a weak excuse for wishing him ill.

“Has she complained to you?” asked Brodsky.

“No, but then she wouldn’t because he’s an old friend.”

After smoking a cigarette and lightly running a hand along his bookcase, as if absorbing the wisdom of the ages through his fingertips, he stopped behind Sasha’s chair. “Denounce the bastard!”

“For what?”

“Make up something, like being involved in that Ryazan mess. You said he hated Lukashenko.”

✷

With Viktor at the farmhouse, Galina clearly felt compromised. She had no interest in marrying Sasha, but she found that their lovemaking had enriched her fondness and deepened her appreciation of his concern for her future and Alya’s. Not long after Viktor arrived, Galina confided in Sasha that Viktor had told her that he wanted to share her bed, and hinted at more, though what the “more” amounted to, he had failed to spell out, merely dropping hints, all of them pointing to Sasha.

With the fall term winding down, Viktor expressed an interest in quitting his isolation in the spring and becoming a teacher, without pay. He proposed a linguistics course. Sasha had his reservations, knowing Viktor’s views about teaching. More important, would such a position be a signal to Viktor that he could remain at the farmhouse? He could hardly live elsewhere when he was a wanted man. To remain off the books as an unpaid teacher would raise eyebrows and perhaps lead to an investigation. And how was Viktor supporting himself? All that Sasha or anyone else knew was that fortnightly, Viktor received a packet addressed to Ivan Goncharov, clearly someone’s idea of a jest, since Viktor was no novelist. Sasha knew that his best interests would be served by refusing Viktor a teaching position and sending him packing. If not for Galina’s objections, he would have done both. She begged Sasha, in light of the death of Viktor’s brother, to give Viktor a temporary appointment and permit him to remain at the farmhouse until he could find other lodging.

“He has no papers,” Sasha objected.

“Since he arrived, he has made friends with Goran, who introduced him to Bogdan. And Bogdan . . .”

Sasha interrupted. “Is a forger!”

“Then you know.”

“May I ask where your information came from?”

“The locals. And yours?” she asked.

“Avram.”

“You ought to get out more often,” she said conspiratorially. “The villagers have a lot to say about Bogdan Dolin.”

“Such as?”

She told him that Bogdan was known to have a healthy dislike of authority, and always acted alone. A silent man, and a sullen one, he had previously owned a printing press that churned out counterfeit passports and rubles. At the time of his arrest, one of the officers was heard to say that Bogdan’s rubles were nearly perfect. The only thing lacking was the right kind of paper, which Bogdan had no way of buying since it was the preserve of the Soviet treasury. A high wall of his making, that surrounded his bungalow, had led to speculation that, as before, he supported himself by forging documents for wealthy people and government officials in flight from the country.

“Soviets!” exclaimed Sasha. “The story grows more bizarre with each passing minute. It makes no sense.”

“That’s what I said, until Viktor reminded me that apparatchiks regularly fall out of favor. If
you
needed travel papers to disappear in the East, say, where would you go? The government wouldn’t oblige you. So you’d find someone like Bogdan. It makes perfect sense.”

“Now I know where Viktor will get his new papers and passport.”

“And Goran will provide the photograph.”

“What does he gain out of it?”

“Good question. Viktor hasn’t said, but I intend to find out.”

✷

With box camera and tripod in hand, Goran continued to beg Brodsky to sit for a photograph, but Avram refused his requests. The result was an ugly scene that took place in the town square, where Goran had set up his camera in the back of a covered wagon and covertly snapped pictures of Avram, who was watching with dozens of others as two men led a couple of male lambs, each a year old and without blemish, into the square to be slaughtered in anticipation of Easter. The men, accustomed to killing, were dressed in rubber aprons and galoshes. Father Zossima was present and could be heard, by those at his side, mumbling Easter prayers. Brodsky was thinking of another holiday, one that he alone among the villagers knew by its proper name, “Korban Pesach” (Passover). As a child he had read in the Old Testament from Numbers 9:1–2, “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel keep the passover at his appointed season.” The men and women of Balyk, formerly observant Greek Catholics and now forbidden to practice their faith, still maintained certain traditions, whether or not they even knew their sources. How many Christians, mused Avram, have any idea that Easter began as a Passover service? The locals certainly knew what it meant to be passed over, in every sense of those words, since the most prosperous villages were those free of Soviet control, and free of illiteracy and illness. At the back of Avram’s head echoed the words he’d been made, as a child, to memorize: “For the LORD will pass through to slay the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door, and the plague shall not be upon you.”

The crowd circled the two men who pulled the lambs by ropes attached to their necks. One of the lambs stumbled and fell to its knees. The shorter of the two men grabbed the lamb by its neck hairs and forced it to its feet. The other man produced a sickle that caught the glint of the sun. A minute later, both lambs lay dead in a pool of blood, as an excited howl rose from the crowd and then faded. A farmer, standing only a few feet from the wagon, heard the click of a camera. Thinking that his own picture had been taken, and superstitiously believing that photographs stole a man’s soul, he cried out that a devil was lodged in the back of the wagon. With Goran’s exposure, Avram insisted he relinquish the photographic plates or destroy them on the spot. Goran refused. An argument ensued. When the older man reached for the camera, Goran fled the scene leaving behind his tripod and jacket. Avram swore to bring a charge against Goran but instead asked Sasha to expel the young man from his lab. Caught between the two warring parties, Sasha asked Goran to erase the plates—in his presence. Goran complied, complaining that the destruction of a valuable photographic record was a state crime. Sasha scoffed and reported back to Avram that the matter had been settled amicably. For the nonce, no more was said, though Avram continued to complain and Goran kept his lab.

By now, Viktor and Goran had become kindred spirits. Only a few steps from the farmhouse, the lab provided Viktor an opportunity to learn photography, an emerging field. To Sasha’s dismay, Goran bragged that he was teaching Viktor about hidden cameras and altered photographs. Perhaps worse, Goran had introduced Viktor to Bogdan and to the art of what . . . forgery? The three fellows, frequently seen together, seemed a strange trio, ranging in age from twenty-one to fifty-eight. Viktor had just turned thirty. When Sasha asked Viktor about his interest in photography, Viktor replied he could take pictures of the lip and mouth formations that created alveolar clicking sounds, and that such images would prove useful in the linguistics course Sasha had agreed to his teaching in the spring. Then Viktor placed his tongue on the roof of his mouth and made a loud click, as he habitually did on entering and leaving a room or punctuating a point. Was it his way of saying “I know click languages,” or did it have some personal meaning that only Viktor could fathom? Sasha found his enigmatic behavior vexing, but Galina often seemed blind to Viktor’s social maladroitness.