The Secret Speech (34 page)

The chalk water soothed his gut and he berated himself for dwelling on the past. The future was bright. The State was recognizing his talents. The bakery was expanding, taking over the entire building. Previously he’d been limited to two floors with the top floor designated as a button factory, a cover for a secret government ministry. Locating it above a bakery had never made sense to him: the rooms were filled with flour dust and roasted by the heat from the ovens. In truth, he wanted them gone not because he needed the space. He’d never liked the look of the people who’d worked there. Their uniforms and cagey demeanor aggravated his stomach.

Making his way to the communal stairway, he peered up at the top floor. The previous occupants had spent the past two days clearing out filing cabinets and office furniture. Reaching the landing, he paused by the door, noting the series of heavy locks. He tried the handle. It clicked open. Pushing on the door, he studied the gloomy space. The rooms were empty. Emboldened, he entered his new premises. Fumbling for the light switch, he saw a man slumped against the far wall.

Leo sat up, blinking at the bulb overhead. The baker came into focus, a man as thin as wire. Leo’s throat was dry. He coughed, getting to his feet, brushing himself down and surveying the gutted offices of the homicide department. The classified case files, evidence of the crimes he and Timur had solved, had been removed. They were being incinerated, every trace of the work he’d done these past three years destroyed. The baker, whose name he didn’t know, stood awkwardly-the embarrassment of a compassionate man witnessing the misfortune of a fellow citizen. Leo said:

– Three years of passing each other on the stairs and I never asked your name. I didn’t want to…

– Worry me?

– Would it have?

– Honestly, yes.

– My name is Leo.

The baker offered his hand. Leo shook it.

– My name is Filipp. Three years, and I never offered you a loaf of bread.

Leaving the homicide office for the last time, Leo glanced back before shutting the door. Feeling an awful kind of lightheadedness, he followed Filipp downstairs where he was handed a round loaf-still warm, the crust golden. He broke the bread, biting into it. Filipp studied his reaction carefully. Realizing his opinion was being sought, Leo finished the mouthful and said:

– This is the best bread I’ve ever eaten.

And it was true. Filipp smiled. He asked:

– What did you do up there? Why all the secrecy?

Before Leo had a chance to reply, the question was retracted:

– Ignore me. I should mind my own business.

Still eating, Leo ignored the retraction:

– I was in charge of a specialist division of the militia, a homicide department.

Filipp was silent. He didn’t understand. Leo added:

– We investigated murders.

– Was there much work?

Leo gave a small nod:

– More than you might think.

Accepting another loaf to take home, as well as the remains of the one he’d started, Leo turned to leave. Filipp called out, trying to end on a positive note:

– It gets hot here in the summer. You must be pleased to be moving to another location?

Leo looked down, studying the pattern of flour footprints:

– The department isn’t moving. It’s closing down.

– What about you?

Leo looked up:

– I’m to join the KGB.

The Serbsky Institute was a modest-sized building with curved steel balconies around the top-floor windows, more like a block of attractive apartments than a hospital. Raisa paused, as she always did at this point, fifty meters away, asking herself if she was doing the right thing. She glanced down at Elena, standing by her side, holding her hand. Her skin was supernaturally pale, as though her body were fading. She’d lost weight and was unwell with such regularity that sickness had become her usual state. Noticing Elena’s scarf had come loose, Raisa crouched down, fussing over her:

– We can go home. We can go home at any time.

Elena remained silent, her face blank, as if no longer a real girl but a replica created with tissue-paper skin and green pebble eyes, emitting no energy of her own. Or was it the other way round? Was Raisa the replica, fussing and caring in an imitation of the things a real mother would do?

Raisa kissed Elena on the cheek and, garnering no response, felt her stomach knot. She had no resilience to this indifference, indifference that had begun when she’d knelt down, her eyes filled with tears, and whispered into Elena’s ear:

Zoya is dead.

Raisa had expected an outburst of grief, but Elena hadn’t reacted. Five months later, she still hadn’t reacted, not in any ordinary, outward sense.

Raisa stood up, checking on the traffic, crossing the road and approaching the main entrance. The Serbsky Institute was a desperate measure, but she was desperate. Love wasn’t going to save them. Love simply wasn’t enough.

Inside-stone floors, bare walls-nurses in crisp uniforms pushed steel trolleys equipped with leather restraints. Doors were bolted. Windows were barred. There could be no doubt that the institute’s reputation as the city’s foremost psychiatric center was a point of notoriety rather than acclaim. A treatment center for dissidents, political opponents were admitted for insulin-induced comas and the latest in pyrogenic and shock therapy. It was an improbable place to seek assistance for a seven-year-old girl.

In their discussions Leo had repeatedly stated his opposition to psychiatric help. Many of those he’d arrested for political crimes had been sent into a psikhushka, a hospital such as this. While Leo agreed, as indeed he had to, that there might be good doctors working within a brutal system, he didn’t believe that the risk in searching for those men and women warranted the potential gain from their expertise. Declaring yourself unwell was tantamount to positioning yourself in the fringes of society, not a place any parent or guardian would want for their child. Yet his stance seemed less like caution and more like mulish stubbornness-a blind determination to be the one that fixed his family even as it crumbled in his hands. Raisa was no doctor, but she understood that Elena’s sickness was as threatening as a physical aliment. She was dying. It was primitive to hope the problem would merely pass.

The woman behind the front desk glanced up, recognizing them from previous visits.

– I’m here to see Doctor Stavsky.

Working behind Leo’s back, talking to friends, colleagues, she’d secured an introduction with Stavsky. Despite a career in treating dissidents, with all that entailed, Stavsky believed in the value of psychiatry beyond the political sphere and disapproved of the excesses of punitive treatments. He was motivated by a desire to heal and he’d agreed to examine Elena without making any official record. Raisa trusted him much as a person lost at sea would put their faith in a drifting plank of wood. She had little choice.

Upstairs, summoned in, Doctor Stavsky crouched down in front of Elena:

– Elena? How are you?

Elena didn’t reply.

– Do you remember my name?

Elena didn’t reply. Stavsky stood up, addressing Raisa in a whisper:

– This week?

– No change, not a word.

Stavsky directed Elena to the scales:

– Please take off your shoes.

Elena didn’t respond. Raisa knelt down, taking her shoes off, guiding Elena onto the scales. Stavsky peered at the display, noting her weight. He tapped his pen against his pad, running his eyes across the numbers accumulated these past weeks. He stepped back, perching on his desk. Raisa moved forward to help Elena off the scales but Stavsky stopped her, indicating that she leave Elena where she was. They waited. Elena remained on the scales, facing the wall, doing nothing. Two minutes became five minutes became ten minutes and Elena still hadn’t moved. Finally, Stavsky indicated that Raisa should help Elena off the scales.

Fighting back tears, Raisa finished tying Elena’s laces and stood up, about to ask a question, only to see Stavsky on the telephone. He hung up, placing his pad on the desk. She didn’t know how or why but she knew she’d been betrayed. Before she could react, he said:

– You came to me for help. It is my view that Elena needs professional, full-time supervision.

Two male orderlies entered the room, closing the door behind them like a trap slamming shut. Raisa wrapped her arms around Elena. Stavsky slowly approached:

– I have arranged for her to be admitted to a hospital in the city of Kazan. I know the staff at the hospital well.

Raisa shook her head, in disbelief as much to rebut his proposal:

– This is no longer up to you, Raisa. The decision has been made in the interest of this young girl. You are not her mother. The State has appointed you her guardian. The State is taking back guardianship.

– Doctor…

She spat the word out with contempt.

– You are not taking her.

Stavsky moved closer, whispering:

– I will tell Elena that she is going with these nurses to Kazan. I will tell her that she will not see you again. I am quite certain that she will not react. She will walk out of this room, with those two strangers, and she won’t even look back. If she does, will you then believe that you cannot help her?

– I refuse to accept that test.

Ignoring Raisa, Stavsky crouched down, speaking slowly and clearly:

– Elena, you are going to be taken to a special hospital. They will try and make you better. It is possible that you may never see Raisa again. However, I will make sure that you are well looked after. These men will help you. If you do not wish to go, if you wish to stay, if you wish to remain here with Raisa, all you have to do is say so. All you have to do is say no. Elena? Do you hear me? All you have to say is no.

Elena did not reply.

Inessa, Timur’s widow, opened the door. Leo entered the apartment. For several months after returning from Kolyma he’d expected that Timur would appear from the kitchen, explaining that he hadn’t been killed, he’d survived and found a way home. It was simply impossible to imagine this home without Timur. He’d been his happiest here, surrounded by his family. However, the designation of accommodation was a process without compassion. According to the system’s calculations Timur’s death meant, quite inarguably, that the family needed less space. Furthermore, their modern apartment had been a perk of his job. Inessa worked in a textile factory and the men and women she worked alongside made do with far more modest living arrangements. Using his blat, his influence, Leo had fought to keep the family where they were, requesting that Frol Panin intervene. Perhaps feeling a sense of responsibility for Timur’s death, Panin had agreed. Yet to Leo’s surprise Inessa had been tempted by the prospect of moving out. Every room was steeped in memories of her husband. They left her breathless, so sad she could barely function. Only when Leo had shown her the apartment block where she would be relocated to, a single room, shared facilities, thin walls, did she relent, and only then because of her two sons. Had she been alone, she would’ve moved out that same day.

Leo gave Inessa a hug. Separating, she accepted the loaf of bread:

– Where did this come from?

– The bakery underneath our offices.

– Timur never brought home bread.

– The people who worked there were too scared to talk to us.

– But not now?

– No.

Like the movement of a shadow, sadness passed across Inessa’s face. The homicide department had been Timur’s too. It was gone.

Her two sons, Efim, ten years old, and Vadim, eight, hurried out of their bedroom to greet Leo. Though Timur had died working for Leo, his sons bore him no ill will. On the contrary, they were pleased by his visits. They understood that Leo had loved Timur and that their father had loved Leo. All the same, for Leo, their affection was a fragile pleasure, certain one day to break. They did not yet know the details of what had happened. They did not yet know their father had died trying to put right the wrongs of Leo’s past.

Inessa ran her hand through Efim’s hair as he spoke excitedly about his schoolwork, the sports teams he was playing for. As the elder son, Timur’s watch would be given to him when he turned eighteen. Leo had replaced the cracked glass and the interior mechanism, which he’d kept for himself, unable to throw it away, occasionally taking it out and resting it on the palm of his hand. Inessa had not yet decided what story she would tell Efim about the watch’s origins, whether to lie about it being a treasured family heirloom. That decision was for another day. Addressing Leo she said:

– Will you eat with us?

Leo was comfortable here. He shook his head:

– I have to go home.

Arriving back at his apartment, he discovered that Raisa and Elena weren’t home. The security officers on duty remarked that the pair had left for school in the morning, observing nothing out of the ordinary. Unaware of any plans, he couldn’t imagine what Raisa was doing out at this time of night with Elena. No clothes had been packed: no bags had been taken. Phoning his parents, they didn’t have any answers. His fear wasn’t that Fraera was involved. Zoya’s murder had been her last act of revenge against State Security personnel. After a five-month absence he doubted Fraera would return. There was no need. Leo had been hurt exactly as she desired.

Hearing the noise of someone approach he rushed to the hallway, throwing open the door. Raisa staggered forward, catching the door-frame as if drunk. Leo supported her, taking her weight. He checked the corridor. It was empty.

– Where’s Elena?

– She’s… gone.

Her eyes rolled, her head slumped. Leo carried her into the bathroom, placing her under the shower, running it cold.