The Librarian (10 page)

I suddenly felt terribly tired. And the back of my neck hurt, as if someone had been stubbing out fag ends on it with his boot. I closed my eyes and dreamed of a headache.

In the morning Igor Valeryevich buzzed annoyingly with his electric shaver and worked away noisily in the kitchen—dishes clattered in the sink while the frying pan hissed.

“How did you sleep, Alexei?” he shouted, hearing that I was up, and glanced out, holding a fork with a slice of bread stuck on it. “Have a wash, we’re going to have breakfast in a minute. Do you like toast? With ham and cheese?…”

Igor Valeryevich’s surname was Kruchina, a word signifying “grief” in Russian, but nothing could possibly have been more inappropriate to his bright, sunny temperament. He acted as if we were old friends and spoke in the cheerful manner of the presenter of
Morning Exercise
on the radio. I tried to avoid meeting his glance, but every time he ambushed me with a broad smile.

“Don’t be shy now, Alexei, pile it up and I’ll toast some more. That’s it, good lad! Maybe I should make a salad?”

I hastily declined, because the sight of Igor Valeryevich with a knife—even a kitchen knife—would have been too much for me.

“How about some tea with lemon? You don’t mind? That’s grand, then!” And he immediately started crooning some bouncy little tune to himself.

Half a day of this excessive bonhomie wore me out finally and completely. I didn’t trust him and was expecting this performance to come to an abrupt end at any moment, after which Igor Valeryevich would reveal his true, ferocious face.

But in the meantime he enquired enthusiastically about what I’d done in my life. On learning that I had a degree in metallurgy he positively blossomed.

“Alexei! We’re colleagues, you and me. I’m a foundry engineer!”

I listened to him, but kept casting anxious glances at the nightstand with the previous day’s weapon lying on it. It wasn’t really a knife, more like a bayonet with a very long blade.

Igor Valeryevich spotted my glance, but interpreted it in his own way.

“Like it? It’s an antique. From the First World War. How it came to be in our parts is a mystery, probably it was during the Civil War…” He reached out to the nightstand, and my heart suddenly contracted painfully.

But in fact nothing terrible happened. Igor Valeryevich carefully placed the bayonet in my hands. I touched the letters inscribed in an arc on the long, sturdy blade—“Modelo Argentino 1909” and “Solingen”—and the smooth wooden facings of the handle, then followed the cliché and ran the ball of my thumb along the edge of the blade.

“Sharp,” Igor Valeryevich confirmed proudly. “Why, of course it is! Handsome, isn’t it?” It was clear that he loved his weapon and valued it highly.

Then Igor Valeryevich brought over a photograph album and I leafed right through it out of politeness.

“The old man and my mum… No longer with us,” Igor Valeryevich commented as I turned the pages. “My brother Nikita— he’s in Arkhangelsk now… That’s me in the army. I served in the Transcarpathian region… My college… I studied in the evening faculty, and I worked as well, of course. I’ve been in a foundry shop almost twenty-five years… My ex-wife. We didn’t get on… And this is me being awarded my medal. Believe me, I would have been nominated for a Hero of Socialist Labour if the Soviet Union hadn’t collapsed, the documents were all ready, and then… Fucking disaster struck and they cut back production. We were lucky they didn’t shut down the plant…”

The final pages were filled with group photographs; Igor Valeryevich in the company of various people, among whom I recognized my abductors of the previous day and my Uncle Maxim.

“Our reading room. That’s me with Fedya Ogloblin, who was driving yesterday, and beside him is Sasha Larionov, they’re kind of backwards namesakes—one’s Fyodor Alexandrovich and the other’s Alexander Fyodorovich… Pavel Pavlovich, only without his moustache—he grew it for conspiratorial purposes… Sasha Sukharev and Tanya Miroshnikova, Margarita Tikhonovna… Well, you’ll meet the others today anyway… The Vozglyakovs: Maria Antonovna and her daughters Anna, Svetlana and Veronika. Denis Lutsis… and Marat Andreyevich Dezhnev, our family doctor. A remarkable man… Vadka Provotorov, Grisha Vyrin… And this,” he said, jabbing his finger at a Gigantopithecus with a shaved head, standing behind everyone and embracing almost the entire freak show in his huge, immensely long arms, “is Nikolai Tarasovich Ievlev. No words can possibly express how strong he is. You’re never afraid with a comrade like that around… And here, to the left of Margarita Antonovna, this is Pashka Yegorov… he’s dead and gone now, Pashka. Like Maxim Danilovich… And this here, with Sveta Vozglyakova…”—he pointed to an individual in dark glasses, clinging to the very edge of the photo like some kind of polyp—“… is a very bad man, Boris Arkadyevich Shapiro in person. Yes, indeed… You could say he’s the reason for all our troubles.” Igor Valeryevich’s face darkened.

“But what kind of meeting is this, and who’s going to be there?” I asked, plucking up my courage.

“All sorts of people. Both friends and enemies… All considered, it’s a long story.” Igor Valeryevich smiled guiltily. “It’s just that Margarita Tikhonovna asked me not to alarm you by filling your head up with too much information…”

After suddenly recalling that I was due to “testify” that evening, Igor Valeryevich left me in peace. I spent the time until Margarita Tikhonovna arrived sitting on the sofa, pretending to prepare my “speech”, but really only scribbling fitful squiggles on the sheets of paper that Igor Valeryevich had issued me with.

T
HE RAF PULLED UP
at a pair of tall iron gates. A curly spiral of barbed wire ran along the top of the concrete wall. Our driver sounded his horn briefly and the gates opened. It looked to me as if we had driven into the grounds of some kind of factory, because through the twilight that was brightened slightly by a single lamp I could make out barrack-style workshop buildings, as identical as cattle sheds.

“Up you get, Alexei Vladimirovich…” Margarita Tikhonovna had dressed herself up for the meeting in a severe, dark-blue suit with a large malachite brooch adorning the lapel. She had piled her hair up high and put on lipstick, mascara and rouge. Only her shoes were the same as the day before—black, with wrinkled bows. “We’re getting out…”

I was overwhelmed by fear again, and even the considerate way she addressed me as “Alexei Vladimirovich” could no longer reassure me. No, I wasn’t afraid of bloody violence. It was a premonition, a realization that what was happening now could never be undone, that this was a Rubicon, a boundary line, and once I crossed it I could never go back to my former life again.

Margarita Tikhonovna repeated her summons, but I didn’t budge, as if I were stunned. Then Sasha Sukharev and Tanya took me under the arms and practically carried me out of the minibus.

Immediately we were surrounded.

“Greetings to the glorious Shironin reading room,” said a smiling, grey-haired old man with the majestic features of a field marshal,
although he was dressed in a most unsoldier-like manner—canvas trousers and a knitted sleeveless jumper over a shirt.

“And good evening to you too, Comrade Burkin.”

“How are you feeling, Margarita Tikhonovna? Did you see them? Lagudov’s oprichniks?” He pointed to a small group of men standing apart, beside a battered old Volga with its black-and-white checkerboard taxi signs painted over. “Blasted observers… Oh, here’s Simonyan… Hello, Zhanna Grigoryevna!”

An elderly woman with a tear-stained-looking Armenian face walked up to us.

“Margarita Tikhonovna, has Comrade Burkin told you? The Kolontaysk comrades have arrived. The entire reading room. All on our side… Oi!” she exclaimed suddenly. “Is he?… Could he be Maxim Danilovich’s son?”

“No, Zhannochka Grigoryevna. His nephew. Alexei Vladimirovich Vyazintsev.”

“Please, just call me Alexei,” I said, feeling awkward at the way Margaret Tikhonovna was leading me around like a blind man.

“This is only his second day here,” she said. “He hasn’t had a chance to come to grips with anything yet, I’m managing things for him in the meantime. We didn’t have a chance to warn him; he arrived right in the thick of things.”

Simonyan folded her hands as if in prayer.

“I understand. The poor boy.”

“What boy?” Burkin put in with ostentatious vivacity. “He’s an assault commando! Parachuted straight in!”

“That’s very true,” Margarita Tikhonovna agreed. “He behaved with exceptional heroism. But what else would you expect? He’s a Vyazintsev!”

A horn sounded outside. The gates screeched open and an ungainly-looking truck drove into the yard. Men started popping out from under its tarpaulin cover, as if they were emerging from the Trojan Horse.

“The Gorelovites are here,” Simonyan whispered.

I saw Larionov and Pal Palych hand over the captured Kolesov to the observers. Once surrounded by the observers, he immediately went limp, as if his legs had been cut from under him, and held himself up by clutching at people’s sleeves, although before that he had moved about without any kind of assistance at all.

The crowd poured into a workshop. Someone asked for the lights to be switched on. Dim neon lamps started buzzing on a metal beam below the ceiling. Entirely emptied of its equipment, the workshop looked like a sports hall. The only thing left was the motionless black ribbon of a conveyor belt along one wall, and many of those who had come in immediately decided to make use of it as a bench.

All in all about a hundred people crowded into the workshop. The brigade of twenty-something men who had arrived on the truck—the Gorelovites—stood apart from all the others. They made a strange impression, like members of the technical intelligentsia who had suddenly lost their veneer of intellectual culture and reverted to the condition of factory hooligans.

People I already knew gathered round Margarita Tikhonovna: Tanya, Sasha Sukharev, Pal Palych with his moustache, Igor Valeryevich Kruchina, old Timofei Stepanovich. Soon the driver of the RAF, Ogloblin, came over with his navigator, Larionov—the mirror-image namesakes Fyodor Alexandrovich and Alexander Fyodorovich.

We were joined by the Vozglyakov family: the mother Maria Antonovna and her three daughters—Anna, Svetlana and Veronika. These four gigantic women looked tremendously impressive. They were all red-cheeked blondes, with identical button noses. I felt narrow-shouldered and puny beside their mighty, broad-boned physiques.

A young man squeezed his way through to me.

“Denis Lutsis,” he said, introducing himself. In marked contrast with Sasha, who was also about my age, he was definitely some kind of exemplary postgraduate student. Thin and angular, in
glasses, beside the robust Vozglyakov family he looked even less impressive than I did. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Alexei,” I said for the umpteenth time that evening and shook his fragile hand.

“Denis,” Margarita Tikhonovna called. “Where are Grisha, Marat Andreyevich and Nikolai Tarasovich?”

“They couldn’t come, Margarita Tikhonovna,” Lutsis whispered. “Dezhnev is on duty in the clinic—he couldn’t get out of it. And Grisha and Nikolai Tarasovich are at Vadik Provotorov’s place.”

A solitary male voice cut through the general hubbub that was gradually subsiding.

“Silence! Silence, please, I can’t shout!” he waited for a few seconds. “Comrades, the agenda for this evening includes two complaints…”

“That’s Tereshnikov,” Lutsis whispered in my ear. “The district observer, something like a judge…”

Margarita Tikhonovna gave us a severe look, and Denis stopped speaking.

“The first complaint was submitted by the Shironin reading room. Acting librarian Comrade Selivanova, please come out to the centre… There is a parallel complaint from the Gorelov reading room. Librarian Comrade Marchenko… If you please,” said Tereshnikov, gesturing for Marchenko to come out. A man who looked like some belligerent head of department walked out of the Gorelov brigade, his cheek displaying either a fresh haematoma or a bright-crimson birthmark.

“I wouldn’t touch a comrade like that with a bargepole!” some joker shouted out. People in the crowd laughed and Tereshnikov grimaced in annoyance.

“This is not a court of law, of course, but it’s not a fairground either. Take this more seriously. Three bodies, by the way…”

“Five,” Margarita Tikhonovna corrected him in a resounding voice. “Add on another two.”

“Comrade Selivanova,” said Tereshnikov, “as far as I understood
from the report, you accuse the Gorelov reading room of attempting to seize a Book of Memory by force…”

“And also of the murder of our librarian Vyazintsev and our reader Yegorov.”

Tereshnikov assumed an expression of moderate anguish.

“Six months ago all of us here mourned Comrade Vyazintsev… You know that the council held a supplementary investigation. Vyazintsev was killed by street hooligans. And your reader Yegorov, if my memory does not deceive me, was run over and killed by some drunken villain who fled from the scene in a base and cowardly manner. These tragedies could be blamed on our society’s total lack of spirituality and the extent to which life in this country encourages criminal behaviour…”—Tereshnikov’s tone became sterner—“… but yesterday the Gorelov reading room lost three of its members! I very much hope that you will be able to provide adequate proofs in justification of this act.”

The people in the workshop started murmuring, discussing what they had just heard. Marchenko nodded and frowned at Tereshnikov’s words.

“Absolutely,” Margarita Tikhonovna declared, staring menacingly at Marchenko. “The meeting will be presented with the proofs this evening.”

“Very well,” Tereshnikov declared. “Who wants to begin? You, Comrade Selivanova?”

“Let him begin!”

“I cede that right to my colleague,” Marchenko rejoined smartly.

Tereshnikov frowned.

“We’re not in school here. Stop wrangling… All right, let us hear Selivanova!”

Margarita Tikhonovna quietly cleared her throat and began.

“The recent incident has its roots in the events of two years ago, when our reader Pavel Yegorov was knocked down in strange circumstances by a truck that was being driven erratically—that was the conclusion of a forensic medical examination on the basis of
his injuries. I do not draw any hasty conclusions regarding trucks, and let me remark immediately that we do not regard the fact that this is the form of transport used by the Gorelov reading room as proof of their guilt…”

“Well, thank you kindly…” Marchenko snarled.

A buzz ran round the workshop, but whether in support or condemnation of his remark wasn’t clear.

“Silence!” Tereshnikov snapped severely and nodded to Margarita Tikhonovna. “Continue.”

“Indeed, there are a great many trucks in Russia, and no shortage of drunk drivers either, and one of them killed our comrade Pavel Yegorov. An accident. But a month later, here in this hall, Comrade Marchenko suggested to Maxim Danilovich that we accept into our reading room a certain worthy individual, Boris Arkadyevich Shapiro, a former member of the Severodvinsk reading room.”

“I protest,” Marchenko exclaimed. “It was not a recommendation. I merely stated the situation. In addition to me, there were representatives present from Smolensk and Belgorod, as well as librarians from our district—comrades Burkin, Latokhin and Simonyan. They can confirm that. Your Vyazintsev took Shapiro in of his own volition, mentioning that the Shironin reading room had recently lost a reader!”

“Of course, of course,” Margarita Tikhonovna said with a baleful smile. “But why have you suddenly started making excuses, Comrade Marchenko? I have not as yet reproached you with this Shapiro, have I? Could it be that you have a presentiment of something to come?”

“All I know is that yesterday three of my people were brutally murdered and a fourth was seriously injured, and also that absolutely outrageous, false accusations have been levelled at me and my reading room!” Marchenko hissed furiously.

“Silence!” Tereshnikov shouted yet again, to still the hubbub that had erupted in the workshop. “Comrade Marchenko, you will have time to state your opinion. Do not interrupt!”

Margarita Tikhonovna paused for a few seconds and then continued:

“Those present here no doubt recall those sad events. The Severodvinsk reading room fell victim to forgeries, after which it was closed down by the council. They refused to hand over their Book, and all of them who attempted to resist were killed in a battle with the forces of the council…”

“But that was an official decision,” Tereshnikov intervened hastily. “The law!”

“I do not dispute that, Comrade Tereshnikov. I am merely reminding everyone of the substance of the matter. The only Severodvinsk reader to survive was Shapiro. Why pretend otherwise— our district regarded the events in Severodvinsk with great sympathy… Especially since that whole business with the fakes was very shady…”

“Comrade Selivanova! If you please!”

“I beg your pardon, that is my personal opinion… In short, we took Shapiro in as one of us. At first glance he was an ideal reader. He idealized Maxim Danilovich, he was obliging and enthusiastic. He liked to joke. We grew used to him… Well, then… But in November I had an accident. I slipped and broke my leg. I convalesced at home. Vyazintsev brought the Book to me in accordance with the established reading schedule. I was actually opposed to this, I didn’t want the Book to leave the confines of the reading room… As a rule, Maxim Danilovich was always accompanied by a personal bodyguard. Shapiro was aware of the schedule. What he did not know was that Maxim Danilovich had left the Book with me before setting off on his way home alone, without any escorts… I will permit myself one small assumption: if Maxim Danilovich had had the book with him, and the attackers had not been simply bandits, then our reading room would have ceased to exist.” With that Margarita Tikhonovna fell silent.

“From what you have told us,” said Tereshnikov, breaking the
silence, “it does not follow that Shapiro was connected with the Gorelov reading room and was carrying out its will.”

“A moment’s patience. Everything will become clear in a moment… How my suspicions took shape is a long story. Put it down to female intuition. Perhaps because on that fateful evening many of our readers were at my home, but Shapiro was absent, and not in possession of the information that Vyazintsev didn’t have the book on him, and he gave the signal to the ‘right’ person…” Margarita Tikhonovna sighed. “In general, Yegorov’s accident, Shapiro’s appearance in our library and Maxim Danilovich’s death seemed to me to be connected. I concealed my suspicions until the spring, then I informed our comrades about them. They agreed to check Shapiro. Maxim Danilovich’s relatives had already laid claim to the inheritance. Two weeks ago I held a meeting of the reading room, at which I said there was a second Book of Memory in Maxim Danilovich’s sealed apartment. Supposedly it was a secret that he had asked me not to divulge, but now that Maxim Danilovich’s heirs had shown up, the Book needed to be removed. Shapiro, I remember, was excited and said that we could get a huge amount of money for an illegal Book, and he offered to help with his connections… Two days ago I contacted Shapiro and warned him that we had a compulsory gathering on Friday. A problem had arisen: Maxim Danilovich’s nephew had arrived. I set the removal of the Book for Monday. To make things more convincing we planted our copy, so that visitors would have something to purloin. If Shapiro had come with them, he would have recognized the Book and seen through our trick, but, as expected, he showed up for the meeting and was arrested. An ambush was set close to the building.”