“Beria,” I said under my breath, looking down at the dark treetops from the balcony. “Lavrentiy Beria.”
“That’s right. Of course, other party leaders have been know to savor similar worldly pleasures; but schoolgirls were Beria’s particular preference. Well, not just schoolgirls; often women with specific figures and mannerisms. Am I using the correct terms?”
“Absolutely.”
“Imagine a black car driving slowly along the sidewalk behind a girl with plump calves. Two men get out of the automobile and introduce themselves to her. According to some sources, they just push her into the car and drive off to the famous house on Sadovaya Street. Across from Krasnaya Presnya, in case you didn’t know. Other sources suggest that the scenario was a little more genteel. They would talk the girl into it first. If need be, they’d dress the teenager in a school uniform, or sometimes a ballet tutu. Then they sat her on a sofa and told her to wait. Dozens of books have been written about it; and just two months ago, some TV people approached me about it. They’re going to make a program. Have I told you anything you didn’t already know?”
“The particular spot,” I reminded him. “Our entire district was built by Beria. I know this already. He, of course, always took off from the airport on Khodynka; but other people boarded planes on the other side of the field. What does our maniac know about that other, forgotten part of the field? And what does that part have to do with Beria?”
The archivist took a deep, noisy breath. “He knows something that very few people know, frankly. And I find it strange that a maniac could get his hands on such information. It’s extremely difficult to come across. What’s on that side of the field now?”
“A construction site. Just like every other goddamn neighborhood in the city … New buildings crawling up to the skies all over the place.”
“And you want to know which building stood there before?”
“Can you tell me this over the phone?” I asked after a pause.
“Yes, after Mr. Suvorov’s novel
The Aquarium
, I can,” the archivist reassured me cheerfully. “The Aquarium, the main intelligence directorate of the Red Army, stood there. Around it were various military fences, barracks, even tents, when the troops were training for the parades on the occasion of the Bolshevik Revolution. The area belonged to the military, in other words. That wasn’t much of a secret. The secret, for a long time, was what was there underground.”
“Do you mean catacombs, bomb shelters, underground tunnels?” I recalled the heavy metal door with the spindle wheel.
“That’s exactly what I mean,” said the archivist. “Back then they were building bomb shelters everywhere, and Beria was in charge of it. In the summer of 1953 they took him into one such bomb shelter at the far end of the airfield, just after Comrade Stalin died. That was where he spent his last days. How long exactly is difficult to say. They say that they executed him first, and prosecuted and sentenced him later, in December. It’s possible, by they way, that he was executed in that very basement, right between Birch Grove Park and Khodynka Field. The site of his final orgasm, as it were.”
“From the point of view of psychiatry, it’s interesting that you would refer to an execution as a last orgasm,” I said pompously. “Would you be so kind as to explain what you mean in more detail?”
“Doctor, not everyone’s a maniac. Could you hold on a second? I’m going to go grab something … here. A memoir of someone who loathed Beria with all his heart. For various reasons.
The Bystander
, by one Mr. Dmitri Shepilov, minister of foreign affairs under Khrushchev. He was also in charge of culture, arts, and ideology in the Communist Party. He was, by the way, a handsome man who loved women. Ordinary women, mind you, not underage schoolgirls. The chapter is called ‘The Battle.’ And I quote … hold on a minute, I’m going to quote him where he talks about where they put Beria. ‘And when he was told he was under arrest, his face turned green and brown from his chin to his temples and up to his forehead. Armed marshals entered the meeting hall. They escorted him to the automobile. It had been earlier agreed upon that the Beria would not be put in the internal jail in the Lubyanka or the Lefortovo detention cells: that could lead to unforeseeable consequences. It was decided to keep him in a special detention cell in one of the buildings of the Moscow Military District under surveillance by armed guards.’ He’s referring to your Khodynka; or, rather, the farthest end of it. Later the military closed some of the buildings there and gave them away. Oh, and here’s the part about orgasms: ‘He persistently from the depths of his memory recalled the most erotic scenes and relived them, voluptuously enjoying all the little details, in order to excite himself, seeking oblivion for at least a few precious moments. The supreme officers who guarded the door of his cell all day and night could see through the peephole how Beria, covered with a rough military blanket, writhed underneath it in spasms of masturbation.’ What style, doctor! Note, however, that I wasn’t quoting from the book. I was quoting from the original manuscript that I received from one of his publishers. Even though this was way after the Soviet era, the publishers had scruples about printing the piece about the military blanket, so they left it out.”
A blanket, I thought. A military blanket. And clothes.
“Sergey, do you happen to know if they confiscated his clothing, too, after he was arrested?”
“Clothing? My dear doctor, not just clothing. Shepilov very clearly states in his memoirs that they they took away his shoelaces, his belt—even his famous pince-nez, so he wouldn’t cut himself with the glass.”
“And where did they take it all?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know. Does it really matter? I doubt they would have kept that information in the archives. Although, it’s possible they might have written it all down in some official document somewhere.”
On the other hand, I thought, it doesn’t really matter. I imagined the military investigators fingering every little wrinkle of a light gray overcoat and then … then tossing it in some corner … and then …
Suddenly, I heard my mother’s voice in my head. When was it? How many years ago did she tell me about the cold day in June 1953, before I was even born? It was a story about her and my father. They were sitting alone on some stone steps by the river, cigarette butts floating past, next to a tall Stalin-era building on Kotelnicheskaya embankment. They must have felt very happy on that short June night, when the sun rose almost as soon as it had set. They felt happy until the stone steps began to tremble under their feet.
Because tanks started rolling down the boulevard next to the embankment.
And my father—who had run off to fight in the war as a boy, and who ever since had been able to tell the difference between tanks on their way to military parades and tanks going off to war (portholes shut tight, armaments at the ready)—got up from the stone steps to watch. Then he went back to where my mother was and said somberly, “I think I’d better run home.”
But it wasn’t war. It was Marshals Zhukov, Nedelin, Mos-kalenko, and others, getting ready to enter the Kremlin and arrest the omnipotent minister of national security.
And arrest him they did. The troops under Lavrentiy Beria’s command did not rise up in his defense. The door to the dungeon at Khodynka slammed shut behind him.
A cold, cold summer in 1953. A summer coat. An underground bunker that looks like a bomb shelter. Its roof, covered in moss, disappearing into the ground.
“Hello? Doctor, you still there?” said the voice on the other end. “I could tell you things that have come to light in other documents just beginning to surface nowadays. For example, Beria’s not the only one to blame for the purges and execution of prisoners. After the war, he was involved in the A-bomb and nuclear power (glory be his name), and construction, and a number of other things. There were people whose hands were just as bloody as his. They were the ones who assassinated him. Are you interested in hearing more?”
“I am,” I said honestly, “but not now. I have a crazy man walking the streets. Thank you very much, Sergey.”
What happened after 1973 in terms of maniacs in overcoats? Nothing, really. They were dormant. Why was that? And why has that suddenly changed? I remembered the construction site, all the dozens of new houses that had risen up in the past few months on Khodynka Field. The large wasteland of the former restricted airfield was no more. It was crawling with …
Construction workers.
Construction workers clambering up and down the stairwells of the new buildings, dumping garbage by the surrounding fences, excavating … and excavating some more for the foundations of new buildings.
I had one slim chance left, and I used that chance the next day.
Because the foreman of the defunct brigade of two vanished construction workers from Moldavia was still occupying a lone structure in the next courtyard.
“So they’re not coming back, eh?” I asked the foreman, and sat down on the porch next to him.
He shook his head furiously.
“Too bad,” I continued. “Say, uh, they borrowed a book from me… about space invaders. You seen it?”
“No,” replied the foreman mournfully, and again shook his head. “Haven’t seen it.”
“I understand.” I was moving closer to my goal. “I just need the book. It’s the cops who need the rapist. But the book is still mine, you see—”
“My guys are no rapists. They’re good guys,” the foreman said, finally able to muster a coherent sentence. “The book … go ahead and look around. There’s no book in there.”
I could hardly believe my luck. I went inside the little house where the construction workers had stayed. A strong, unpleasant odor from a portable toilet assaulted my nostrils. Then, in an instant, I saw a dull gray garment hanging on a coatrack right in front of me.
The rest was easy.
“By the way, I need to do a paint job,” I said. “This thing here, is this your work coat? How much do you want for it?”
“That’s no work coat,” answered the foreman. “The guys left it here. You can have it. Instead of the book. Go ahead, they won’t be needing it. They’re not coming back. Their families keep calling and calling …”
Holding the gray overcoat at arm’s length, I asked: “Where did you work before? Wasn’t there a construction site over there? On the other side of the field, by that concrete fence? I believe that’s where I met your guys.”
“Oh, sure,” said the foreman. “The finishing team arrived when we were done over there. And we moved here. And now … we’re done here too.”
I remember at one point I felt the urge to bury my face in the coat and inhale the smell of a cellar and potatoes. It took me some effort not to do so. I threw it down on the landing in front of my door. I had no intention of bringing the thing into my apartment. I went inside and found a large shopping bag, put the overcoat in it, and left it in front of the door. Then I scrubbed my hands thoroughly. In a closet I found a bottle of flammable liquid for barbecuing and dropped it into the bag as well.
I was in a hurry. It was getting late, and I didn’t want to leave the coat outside for the night. Someone might take it.
Then I was in that deserted edge of Birch Grove Park. An empty bench, and the remnants of the bunkers protruding from the ground.
I dumped the coat onto the surface of the nearest bunker, on the concrete slab covered with moss. I poured the liquid onto the coat and set fire to it with my lighter. Thick, oily smoke billowed up and gravitated to the concrete fence and beyond, where the floors of the nearby buildings mounted into the sky.
It burned very, very slowly.
“Now why did you do that?” The thin, tremulous voice came from somewhere below.
No, I wasn’t scared. Even when I noticed that someone had been sitting on a nearby bench the whole time. It was … an old lady? That’s right, just an old lady in a light summer coat and a funny straw hat trimmed with two wooden cherries. The red paint on one of them had almost completely peeled off. But her cheekbones burned with the same color, in an almost invisible network of blood vessels. When I saw those liver spots on her powdered cheeks, I thought in panic, How old is she? Why didn’t I notice her before?
Or maybe she hadn’t been there when I set fire to the coat?
“Do you think it’s about the coat?” the old lady asked in a childish—no, not childish, but teacherish—voice, high as a violin string. “It was just fabric. Good fabric too. Very durable. That was silly. Just plain silly.”
“No, it’s not about the coat,” I replied through my teeth. I had to say something, just to break the silence—and so I wouldn’t be afraid.
“You haven’t even seen him,” the old lady continued, not paying any attention to my words, and staring vaguely in the direction of my sneakers with her light gray eyes. “You weren’t even born yet in ’53. Not to mention before that.”
“Did you see him?” I asked.
“Just like I see you now,” the voice went on. “Only closer, much closer. As close as can be.”
And slowly, very slowly, she parted her thin, bloodless lips.
Translated by Mary C. Gannon
“What’s the story on your pal?”
“He was born, he suffered, he died.”
—Dialogue from
Heist
, a film by David Mamet
I
f you ride out from the center of the city on the Filevskaya line, a minute before Kievskaya, the train, whistling and puffing, slows down and emerges out into the light on the subway bridge. Your eyes try to take in the sharp bend in the river, the angular, protruding architectural ruins along the embankments, and the broad flat façade of the White House, its flanks a bold invitation to gunfire from weapons mounted on tanks.
On this day the picture seemed to be smeared like bad reception on a TV screen with whitish rain showers, frequent and driving. I frowned and hunched my shoulders, anticipating the discomfort, but when I crawled out from underground into the station, it had already stopped. The darkened asphalt breathed out a bathlike moisture, passersby shook off their umbrellas fastidiously, and the returning sun was multiplied in puddles.
I glanced at my watch and walked down the street, slowly making my way over to a fountain that looked like the remaining evidence of the recent shower; I wanted to turn it off. Some people had already sat down, sticking backpacks and plastic bags under their behinds, on the steps of this stunted amphitheater. Others peeled off their jackets or simply shook the water from their soaking heads; this hot spot for the young filled up quickly. I remembered that I had waited for Yanka here; I remembered that, stretching my hood as far as it would go and trying to light up underneath it, I had regretted my choice of meeting places. When the St. Petersburg girl had finally arrived, I took her to the new pedestrian bridge, where we blended in with other couples.
Together with them we staggered through the stuffy glass passageway from one side of the bridge to the other—I pointed with my finger, explaining that this was probably the only place in the city where you could see, more or less up close, four of the seven Stalin skyscrapers at once. Nodding at the MID building with a coat of arms on it, I explained that according to the original design it was to have been the only one without a spire. At the last minute Stalin announced that it looked too much like an American skyscraper that way. It was too late to change the design—the building was almost finished; but who would be the one to contradict Stalin’s wishes? So they ran a gigantic metal rod through the top floors, and placed a ridge-roofed tower on top of that, painted to look like stone. After Khrushchev unmasked the cult of personality, he was reminded that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to remove this idiotic detail of Stalin’s gloomy legacy. Nikita snorted and ordered that it stay right there, as a monument to the tastelessness of the generalissimo.
On the left side we moved onto a path that led along a high, grassy slope past the Turkish embassy toward the Borodinsky Bridge. Europe Square was now below and opposite us.
I like this place.
Here, the river and the open space in front of Kiev station leave a large expanse open to view. Here, you can really see the sky, which is rare in this capital city that squeezes you between enormous stone slabs. The view that spreads out before you here—the Gothic silhouette of the university on a distant bluff to the left, the palisade of mighty pipes on top of the Radisson, the spire of the Hotel Ukraine perpendicular to layers of lilac clouds—is one of those typical and utterly urban landscapes that create the face of a city, which Moscow, monstrous and vague with its eroded individuality, so lacks.
That’s what I said to Yanka, trying to show her the city from its most presentable perspective, trying to be amusing and casual, not pressuring her. I knew my role and my place. When I met her a year before in her native Petersburg, I invited her out of politeness (but not only that, not only …)—I invited her (that is to say,
them
, her and Igor) to “visit us in our capital with no culture,” promising to show them around and entertain them. Of course, they didn’t jump at the opportunity—not because they had anything against me, but because in the absence of any other attractions in the city, the prospect of hanging out with me was not sufficient inducement to overcome a distance of six hundred kilometers. Then, suddenly, Yanka found a reason—the wedding of a college friend. The event was to take place over several days (the newlyweds belonged to circles that had money to waste on lavish parties). But the other guests weren’t really to Yanka’s taste; and that’s when she remembered me.
Exceedingly pretty, with a slight, charming unevenness in her features, and with that rare combination of intelligence and spontaneity, that balance of self-assurance and sincere goodwill that you sometimes find in people from very well-to-do families—smart, prosperous, and affable; that was Yanka.
During those three days, I mobilized all my meager resources of joie de vivre and sociability. My guest was as open and friendly as ever; she listened attentively and meekly tasted the shark at Viet-Café, but on the whole she seemed fairly indifferent. As I later became convinced, people who feel that they are equal to life’s demands don’t experience an excess of curiosity about the range of its phenomena: they already know exactly what they need from it.
I had absolutely no chance of ever landing on the list of things that those people wanted from life. Back then I hadn’t abandoned my rock and roll efforts. Officially, I was supposed to be a journalist, which is how I presented myself (I was a freelancer). I was also acquainted with progressive, and sometimes even high-profile people; and I was, after all, a Muscovite. Theoretically, I belonged to practically the same circle as my female contemporary from the Petersburg theater crowd; the sense of insurmountable social and psychological distance was completely unfounded.
I felt not only a distance, though—I felt an abyss. In our relations, which seemed on the surface to be relaxed, there was something reminiscent of a conversation in the lingua franca of a Norwegian and a Malaysian who sit side by side on a flight in a transcontinental Boeing; however well-disposed they might be toward each other, they are still from different worlds. At that time, a little over four years ago, I had only begun to guess about the nature of that difference.
Yanka’s generosity of spirit, which so impressed me at first, gradually began to disturb me. It was difficult, if not impossible, for me to share a perspective in which the world appears to be acceptably, if not optimally arranged.
I became suspicious of Yanka’s self-sufficiency. I understood perfectly the origins of this feeling, since I’d had the opportunity to glimpse from afar the reality which the girl had inhabited for a long time already—the reality of her beloved theater, where she was highly regarded, with its well-established, intimate, exclusive company of actors. The same company was home, as well, to Igor; an amicable, handsome, easygoing guy who had a promising career ahead of him. In short, this world was so harmonious that at a certain moment it began to feel absolutely artificial to me.
Then I understood that I was merely deceiving myself. All I really wanted to do was expose the futility of affluence—so that I would see one advantage in my own deprived and uncomfortable existence. The advantage of authenticity.
A not uncommon compensatory trick.
Actually, all lives are equally real or unreal. The quality of everyday private and public loathsomeness in one of them affords no metaphysical bonuses to others.
It’s just that for some people, everything in life works out. For others, it doesn’t. And you can’t draw any moral lesson from it. Other than:
Grief to the vanquished
.
I looked at my watch again and frowned. I couldn’t do anything about my habit of turning up early for every appointment, whether important or completely inconsequential; even appointments with people who never show up on time anywhere in their lives.
And really, what’s the hurry?
“But you can always try—”
“Look, Felix, Yanka was a very gregarious young woman. She could have met up with anyone … Plus, it’s been over a year already.”
“Maybe you’ll think of someone else.”
“Oh, I don’t know … Well, there was Pasha from Moscow—she met him shortly before that, I think …”
“Who’s this Pasha guy?”
“Uh, what’s his name—Korenev or something. Just an acquaintance. A long time ago, maybe five years ago, he went to Petersburg, and then, I guess, Yanka saw him in Moscow.”
“So he went back to Petersburg?”
“Looks like it.”
“What did Yanka say about meeting him?”
“Oh god, I don’t remember …”
“Do you have any idea where he lives? A phone number?”
I walked around the square, stomped around on one spot, and sat on the damp stone. I started to smoke, paying close attention to my movements. I remember very clearly how one time, when she was watching me smoke, Tatiana mentioned that I had the gestures of an ex-convict. She didn’t know anything at that time, though. She didn’t know anything
yet.
Feeling a moist caress on my face, I raised my head, but it was just the spray from the fountain.
Tin cans rolled around under my feet; empty beer bottles stuck up everywhere.
Suddenly, a dozen or so guys in orange pants sprang up out of nowhere and fell upon them. They quickly tossed the clanking bottles and cans into black plastic bags and hurled them into the maw of a toy tractor.
The struggle for cleanliness continued, apparently in an effort to live up to the name of the place—Europe Square.
Gleb, I remembered, was moved to laughter at the inscription on a plaque by the fountain:
As a sign of the strengthening friendship and unity of the countries of Europe, the administration of Moscow endeavored on such-and-such a date to create the ensemble of Europe Square.
There was not much to be said about the friendship between the countries of Europe and Moscow—but most touching of all was the clear sense of identification of the bald mayor of Moscow and Co. with the European Union (immortalizing this was just as logical in Phnom Penh as it was in Moscow, in Gleb’s opinion). We discussed the sacred conviction of our fellow citizens that they live in a brilliant European capital—as evidence for which they usually cite the number of high-end boutiques. Gleb, a dyed-in-the-wool “westernizer,” said that the sincere incomprehension of the difference is the clearest evidence of the difference itself.
Having traveled from one end of the continent to the other and lived in London, with a multientry Shengen visa, Gleb considered himself to be in a position to judge and compare. As an indigenous Moscow resident, he just didn’t like it enough; and he categorically refused to recognize it as a part of Europe. His basic argument was the flagrant disproportion of the size of Moscow to the human being, a point that was difficult to counter.
It was rare that anyone wanted to argue with him. I have hardly ever met a person with such sound and penetrating points of view. Also, his talent for expressing them with charm and panache, both verbally and in writing, made Gleb the soul of any gathering, and the star of liberal journalism.
Liberal
, in his case, didn’t refer to a position regarding civil society, but was a synonym for measured restraint. As a matter of fact, for Gleb, this restraint stood surrogate for political views to a certain degree—he wrote equally well, and with equal conviction, in both servile and seditious (and, naturally, glossy) publications. The logic of his ideas was so unassailable that even in the preelection hysteria, the most patriotic bosses didn’t find fault with the author on the subject of his loyalty. Indeed, Gleb possessed the talent (without a tinge of sycophantism) of making every boss like him. I still remember back in school, where he and I became friends, how I looked on in amusement as the slightly wilted schoolmarms of a certain age fell involuntarily in love with the straight-A student.
Gleb began publishing at the age of fourteen; at fifteen he had already made it into print in the prestigious union-wide Soviet journals. At twenty he became the head of a weekly magazine, where I too—after trying to make a living as a homegrown punk rocker and from various meager supplemental earnings—got my first steady and meaningful employment (though I was never officially on the payroll).
Many people back then (and not just friends) said that I was a fine writer. In addition to everything else, I worked a lot, carried out all the assignments from the higher-ups, and got everything in on time. Nevertheless, both my articles and myself (no matter the subject, genre, or depth of pathos) were greeted (and published—if they agreed to publish them) by all managers with some vague initial skepticism, as though they were suppressing (and, later, no longer trying to suppress) the instinct to shrug their shoulders. When I asked point blank one day why they hadn’t printed any of my reviews for more than a week, and some fat-assed jerk of a deputy editor muttered in slight exasperation, “You always pan everything, but, you know, people watch those movies and read those books; you just turn up your nose at them!”—I finally decided that it was time to call it quits.
And I did. For two years. Though I firmly believe this had nothing to do with journalism itself.
Of course, in a frenzy of self-searching, I acknowledged (according to an elementary logic) my own mediocrity. But to be honest, I never believed it. And I don’t think it was only due to self-love. I knew I was good at what I did. The fact that no one needed it was another matter altogether. It was precisely my product that they had no need for. Someone else’s—Gleb’s, for instance—of the same subject and quality would be snatched up immediately.
I never understood why. I ultimately came to the conclusion that there was no reason. There are no rules, and no laws. It’s just that some people make it in their jobs, while others don’t. And this work has no objective value. More than that—
nothing
has objective value.