Denouncer (27 page)

“Citizen Korsakova, you recently traveled by train to Ryazan. Comrade Polkovnikov arrested the man whom you met on the platform. In that man’s possession was falsified information bearing on the relations between the Soviet Union and Germany. The documents could have come from only one person, Avram Brodsky, because it was I who left them with him the last time we met. I specifically warned him they were top secret. We wanted to test him—and you.”

The gasps in the room were palpable.

Without looking at Brodsky, Natalia said coolly, “Yes, the documents came from Avram. But he didn’t give them to me. I stole them from him.”

All eyes were now on Filatov, who patiently replied, “Then Avram must have told you he possessed them.”

“Not at all,” she said, equally unperturbed. “He was out, I entered the cottage, saw a folder with a government seal, read the contents, and put the papers in my purse. It was that easy. The rest you know.”

Brodsky stared at her so intensely that the veiny blue worms in his neck and temples threatened to burst their bonds. Sasha couldn’t decide whether Avram was surprised or alarmed. Had Natalia told the truth? Perhaps, as before, she was merely protecting him. Only Brodsky could say. If he didn’t speak up, Natalia would undoubtedly be exiled to some work camp. But he said nothing, and the longer he did, the greater the tension in the room. Exploiting the dramatic effect, Filatov finally spoke:

“Come now, Natalia, we all know you’re protecting Avram.”

“I have every reason not to,” she answered.

“And the same reasons could be educed for aiding him.”

Filatov gave no indication of how he had learned about Brodsky and Natalia and Benjie. But then the secret police, except for rare occasions, never publicized the source of their information. Perhaps the cottage was bugged. Filatov had also said that Natalia was followed, perhaps not for the first time. Anything was possible in a world where even one’s private life appeared in the archives.

“You do realize, Natalia Korsakova, what you are condemning yourself to?”

Courageously she answered, “I’ll be joining Russia’s finest.”

The rain had increased, and the lights occasionally flickered. The electrical generator needed replacing, which provided the occasion for Sasha to say, “We could use a new power source.”

Seeing the possible irony here, Filatov remarked, “I trust you are referring to the generator and not the Vozhd.”

A trickle of laughter briefly lightened the mood, which Filatov and the others took as a signal to continue eating. At one point, the lights went out, and Sasha wished that in the dark the guests would escape.

“Citizen Rzhevska,” said Filatov, “you have been tutoring Galina Selivanova’s daughter, correct?”

“Yes, Major.”

“We all know that children often unwittingly reveal truths that adults would never utter.”

“Quite so.”

“Have you learned anything from Alya that might help us determine whether the director and Galina are harboring a nest of spies?”

From her cardigan, she removed a piece of paper and then put on her spectacles. “First, Alya’s adoptive father stayed at the house.”

A shocked Filatov leaped to his feet. “Do you know what you are saying?” Then, making no attempt to hide his consternation, he exclaimed, “You must be mistaken. Petr Selivanov is dead.”

“Not according to the child. Oh, I do remember her saying at our first tutoring session that her father had died. But then she said he came back. Not so long ago. She was overjoyed.”

“And you failed to report this information?”

“I had no way of knowing that
you
assumed he was dead.”

Ekaterina Rzhevska continued making her way through the list, mentioning Viktor and Goran’s lab and a few other overnight guests, but Filatov was still fixated on the first name, Petr Selivanov. When his head cleared, he turned to Galina and said:

“Can you explain this turn of events?”

Of course the other guests had little or no knowledge of what was being said. They sat looking on as if attending a badly made Russian film. Although they could understand the words, they had no context for them. Shrugging at one another, they stared, hoping for a key to the mystery.

Galina looked pale, but as always she controlled her emotions. “I learned of his survival only recently. He turned up here in Balyk and then left for Ryazan.”

“Did the Moscow office know of this, Comrade Polkovnikov?”

“Nothing. The tension in Ryazan between the mayor, Vladimir Lukashenko, and the local secret police has undermined our lines of communication. My deepest apologies.”

Filatov pulled his napkin loose from his collar, squeezed it into a ball, tossed it on the table, and started to pace. Had the room been larger he might have ignored the small storage chest in the corner that held some old framed pictures, dating back to the last century. On his opening the lid, one in particular caught his attention: a painting of an eyeball surrounded by a square and a compass. In the allegorical background was King Solomon’s temple. He knew that the painting symbolized Freemasonry, depicting the wisdom and tools of the medieval stonemason. The Freemasons regarded themselves as speculative masons, building not real structures but philosophical and moral ones: “Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth” or, in France, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” Trotsky had been a Freemason, also Marx and Lenin.

He studied the picture and saw staring back at him the eye of political heresy. In 1922, the Freemasons had been forbidden to practice their mumbo jumbo, which they called a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. Communism had done away with religion. Why had this picture not been burned in a bonfire of the old superstitions? What other pictures and persons had escaped detection? The eyes of the law must be ever vigilant. His lucubrations led him to wonder who had died, if not Petr Selivanov, and might Petr be the killer? He would personally have to contact the Ryazan NKVD to sift through their information. Suddenly, his long-standing suspicions of Sasha Parsky disappeared. Petr Selivanov had to be the killer, and Galina probably knew his whereabouts.

Turning from the window, he stepped forward with his arms folded across his chest. “Galina Selivanova,” he commanded, “where is your husband?” Before she could reply, he added, “I will not stand for obfuscation. The truth and only the truth will do.”

Galina swiveled in her chair to face the major. She showed no signs of guilt or remorse. “By now, he must be in Kiev.”

“What do you mean ‘by now’?”

“He left several months ago. One night he showed up at our door. We let him stay in the attic. Since the murders, he has been living as an itinerant farmhand. During this time, he met another woman, one more suited to him, he said. He asked me to divorce him so he could marry her. She comes from Kiev. If I initiated the divorce, he could keep out of sight and not appear in court. He was afraid of being arrested as an army deserter.”

Filatov held out his arms with the palms up, as if imploring Galina to explain away the obvious. “Did you give no thought to the possibility that he had committed the murders?”

“Yes, but he explained that a transient farmworker was to blame.”

“And how did he know that?”

“He had exchanged places with an army mate and exited the truck on a hill overlooking the Parsky farm. Although he said the rain and truck obstructed his vision, he saw the farmhand bury two bodies. He also saw the couple drive away in his company, with him at the wheel.”

“That’s what he told you?”

“Almost word for word.”

The major walked over to Sasha and put a hand on his shoulder. “Do you have any idea who the transient laborer might be?”

Without weighing his answer, Sasha merely reinforced Filatov’s new theory by saying, “My parents rarely employed hired hands.”

“Petr Selivanov . . . he’s the one. I will call Kiev at once.”

But he remained in place, with his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “Tell me, Comrade Parsky,” the major said in a voice overflowing with friendliness, as if he had dispelled all his doubts, “did Selivanov speak to you about the murders?”

“He told me what he told Galina. That’s all.”

“Did he mention the name of the woman he wishes to marry?”

“Just that she lives in Kiev.”

He squeezed Sasha’s shoulder in an affectionate manner. “Don’t worry, Comrade Parsky, we’ll find him and once we do, we’ll learn where your parents are hiding. If I had seen two grisly murders, as they did, I would also run away. But now it’s time for them to come home. Perhaps they can even join you here in Balyk.” He snapped his fingers and said, “Now let’s properly enjoy the meal.”

Over dinner and three bottles of vodka, Filatov recounted the killings. Those guests unaware of the story sat entranced. Sasha hoped that Filatov’s newfound buoyancy would shorten the interrogation. But after several shots of vodka, he turned to his aides and asked them to continue with “the small matter of disloyalty at the Michael School.”

Larissa Pankarova spoke first. Opening her black briefcase she removed a folder, opened it, adjusted her glasses, and fixed her eyes on Goran. “Your uncle in the Politburo, as you may have heard, has fallen out of favor. But then,” she said without a trace of irony, “changes occur frequently. As Comrade Brodsky said earlier, nepotism is a problem. And so it is. We, that is, Major Filatov, intends to end it. You will, in the future, find no succor with us. We suggest you find productive work, relinquish your photographic equipment, and avoid Viktor Harkov. Understood?” The color drained from Goran’s face. He looked like a child chastised for wetting his pants. “Well?” asked Larissa. He hung his head and murmured yes.

Filatov then added, “You will also turn over all your fabricated photographs to our office and denounce both Citizens Dolin and Harkov for their nefarious attempts to discredit Comrade Brodsky.”

Sasha could hardly believe what he heard. Brodsky, for all his scheming, had escaped arrest. But what of Natalia? Would he let her take the blame for his misdeeds? Apparently he would. So that’s what the system did. It turned intellectuals into apologists and cowards willing to let others suffer unjustly. He knew what Brodsky would say, “What’s the alternative?” And he would have answered, “Truth, exile, and even death.” But then it was easy enough for him to take the high moral ground when he had escaped the hot seat. Heroism and valor emerge not from words and fancy phrases but from the crucible of pain. What pain had he experienced?

Basil Makarov spoke next. He had a file on Bogdan Dolin. “Didn’t Kolyma teach you anything?” Basil asked. “Are you so anxious to return that you continue your forgeries and fabricated documents? We have left you untouched for all this time because Balyk is a provincial town with little connection to the larger world. But when enemies of the people come to you for passports to escape the country, we cannot turn a blind eye. The odious Leon Trotsky slipped through our grasp, and now look at the price we are paying. Every counterrevolutionary is headed for Mexico. It is intolerable. Do you deny that you forged a passport for Goran Youzhny’s uncle, who was stopped at the Finnish border?” Bogdan’s sullen look said nothing and everything. “You will be remanded into police custody for trial and probably deported to Siberia. Your home and possessions will be confiscated and your identity papers stamped invalid.”

Filatov thanked his assistants and, to Sasha’s delight, resumed his questioning of Viktor. But after a few minutes, Sasha rebuked himself for his schadenfreude. He felt as if he’d become part of the Soviet apparat, taking pleasure in seeing others suffer. Viktor may have been personally reprehensible, but to see him interrogated in front of all these people reminded Sasha of what Chekhov had said: Never humiliate a person in public; it leads to lasting hatred. And yet, at this moment, Viktor’s eyes radiated unconcern, neither fear nor enmity.

“Then you readily admit,” Filatov summed up, using repetitive flourishes, “that you have colluded to replace Sasha Parsky with Vera Chernikova as director of the Michael School, that you have assisted Bogdan Dolin in defaming Avram Brodsky, that you have used Goran Youzhny’s contacts to obtain information about the school’s teachers, whose portraits you have donated to the archives of the Moscow NKVD—to what end, who knows?—and that you have, in violation of the law, changed your identity papers and forged a new passport. Am I right?”

Without the slightest hesitation, Viktor admitted his sins. Surely, thought Sasha, this man must feel he’s untouchable. But what was his invisible shield? The answer came swiftly.

“If you have finished,” said the secret agent from Moscow, Polkovnikov, “I would like to have a word in private with you, Comrade Filatov.” He then folded his eyeglasses, lifted his briefcase, and followed the major out of the room.

In their absence, nothing was said, but the contagion of suspicion spread from one person to another like a deadly bacillus, smothering any impulse of generosity or charity.

When the two policemen returned, Polkovnikov perceptibly smiled at Viktor. Filatov
looked grim. His colleague Larissa, seeing his discomfort, whispered to him, but he dismissed her with a wave of his hand, clearly out of sorts at the prospect of sharing what had just taken place. But with others facing arrest, he felt that he owed the assembly an explanation. He began with an astringent and terse apology to Viktor Harkov for questioning his loyalty and motives.

“Had I known,” he said, “that you enjoyed the protection of the Ryazan NKVD, I would have been more circumspect. But I still find your behavior, in the instances I’ve cited, to be unworthy . . .” He trailed off.

Unworthy of what, he never said, leaving his guests to fill in the blanks: unworthy of an honest man, of a Soviet citizen, of a comrade, of a friend, of a colleague, of an intellectual, of a lover. Filatov took no pains to cloak his intense dislike of Viktor. He sneered at his smarmy behavior and decided that before crucifying the guilty in the room, he would, in his own way, expose Viktor.

Suddenly, Sasha leaped to his feet, coughing and spitting. He bolted from the table, choking on a fish bone. He could be heard in the kitchen, gagging. Filatov directed Larissa Pankarova to look in on him. Then, as if no interruption had occurred, he continued: