Radiant State

by Peter Higgins

‘Are you?’

  ‘Not to you.’

  ‘Then Moth,’ said Lom. ‘The answer is Moth.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I like you name’s-not-Vissarion even if I don’t believe you even if you bring us fire and death.’

  ‘No,’ said Lom. ‘I don’t.’

  She frowned.

  ‘We’re not stupid,’ she said. ‘Listen this is how it is. The days pass slowly here it’s quiet and cool there’s shade and moonlight and the sun doesn’t reach in here. There are other places like this across the city. But no giants, no rusalkas. No wind walkers. They’ve all left the city and gone far to the east under the trees. The Pollandore drew things to itself while it was here including us but all those ways are closed now. We consider ourselves abandoned the new city has no time for us they would hate us if they knew. This red man Kantor has no time for us Kantor you know Kantor? Has a new name but still the same we know we’re memory. Ask us what we do here all the time I’ll tell you what we do here all the time we read a lot. They took much but they didn’t take it all away there’s lots still here to read.’

  She leaned in confidentially to whisper something in his ear, as if it was a secret.

  ‘The libraries,’ she said, ‘have libraries in them.’

  She paused.

  ‘Do you understand anything I’m talking about?’ she said. ‘Anything? Anything at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘I do. I understand it all.’

  ‘I think you do,’ said Moth. ‘There’s noise and fire in the city anxiousness hunger bombs it has not stopped yet it goes away but it doesn’t it never stops. We go out sometimes to the city to forage. That’s better now. More for us. No! Not killers idiot! The bins at the back of the market. You can stay here with us if you want. You’ll find plenty to read. Stay out of the basements though the corpses in the mortuary make a lot of noise they thrash about but they can’t get out and anyway there’s nowhere else for them to go.’ She paused again and gazed deeply into his eyes. Hers were warm dark waters. ‘I’d like to kiss you, name’s-not-Vissarion, you smell good.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Weren’t you listening? I thought you were listening. I want to kiss you. Can I do that? Only once to see what it is like. You’re very fierce and warm.’

  ‘If you want,’ said Lom. ‘If you want to, yes.’

  Moth’s mouth on his was dry and cool and dark as a well and tasted faintly of fruit. Something inside her was buzzing lazily like a wasp in a sunlit afternoon window.

  ‘What time is it now?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lom.

  ‘No you don’t because the clocks don’t work any more. Clocks tell you something, but it’s not the time.’

  Lom stayed in the Lodka, walking and thinking, long after Moth had left him alone. There was water in the basins and when he tired he went back to the reading room and slept. Better than in the Pension Forbat. Morning sun flooding the broken dome woke him. He didn’t want to go back out into the city, but he went.

  4

  There were three of them in Rizhin’s office: Rizhin himself, Hunder Rond, Director of the Parallel Sector, and Secretary for Security and Justice Grigor Ekel.

  ‘We are making good progress, Osip,’ Ekel began. He opened a folder and consulted his notes. ‘All my best people are working on this. Nothing is more—’

  Rizhin held up his hand. ‘Rond,’ he said. ‘Rond first.’

  ‘The rifle that was used to shoot you,’ said Rond, ‘was a Zhodarev STV-04. Military sniper issue. It was found in the stairwell of the Mirgorod Hotel.’

  Ekel jerked forward in his chair. ‘You have it?’ he said. ‘You have the weapon? Why wasn’t I told of this?’

  Rond ignored him. ‘Two sets of fingerprints,’ he continued, speaking without notes. ‘The majority belong to a woman. Name, Cornelius. Trained as a sniper by the VKBD but deserted. Operated as a lone shooter during the siege. History of involvement with dissident elements. Arrested. Deep interrogation. Two years in the Chesma Detention Centre.’ He glanced at Ekel. ‘Released. Disappeared. Presumed to have left Mirgorod. Evidently did not. This is your shooter, Generalissimus.’

  ‘We must find this woman!’ said Ekel. ‘Why have the militia not been informed?’

  ‘They have the name, Grigor,’ said Rond. ‘Didn’t they tell you?’

  ‘Two,’ said Rizhin quietly. ‘You said two sets of prints,’

  ‘Yes. The other gave us a little trouble, but we tracked them down. They belong to a former senior investigator of the Political Police. A career in the eastern provinces. Effective but insubordinate, made no friends, under investigation for antisocial attitudes when he came to Mirgorod six years ago and immediately got into trouble with Chazia. There’s been no trace of him since. The assumption was, he was killed on Chazia’s orders. His name—’

  ‘Lom,’ said Rizhin. ‘Vissarion Yppolitovich Lom. From Podchornok.’

  Rond looked at Rizhin in surprise. ‘You know of him?’

  Rizhin was sitting upright and leaning forward intently. ‘Is he back, Rond?’ he said. ‘Is it him?’

  ‘He was in the Hotel Mirgorod at the time you were shot. A clerk and a doorman identified his photograph. The same man took a room at the Pension Forbat the night before Victory Day under the name of Foma Drogashvili. He took the room for a week, stayed there two nights but has not returned since.’

  Ekel’s face was chalk. Neck flushed pink. The sheaf of papers in his hands trembled. A leaf in the breeze. He glared at Rond.

  ‘None of this was shared—’

  ‘There is more,’ Rond said to Rizhin, taking no notice of Ekel. ‘I had a conversation recently with an under-secretary in the Office for Progressive Cultural Enlightenment. Antimos. A man with a hitherto blame-free record who suddenly upped and started to search for some old files. Highly sensitive old files. During my conversation with Antimos he mentioned this same Lom. There was a history between them.’ Rond glanced at Ekel meaningfully. He was about to enter into topics which Ekel must guess nothing of. ‘It concerns a certain six-year-old mission that Lom has apparently reactivated. A certain former intelligence target.’

  Rizhin nodded. Expressionless. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘Please go on.’

  ‘Lom was blackmailing my friend Under-Secretary Antimos,’ said Rond. ‘He wanted Antimos to find and bring him files that were closed long ago.’

  ‘Thank you, Rond,’ said Rizhin. ‘That’s enough for the moment. I congratulate the Parallel Sector again.’ He turned to Ekel. ‘And now, Grigor, what do you have for me? Your report please? Tell me, what have the VKBD, the gendarmes, the militia and the secret police done to clear up after the attempt on my life you failed to prevent?’

  Ekel was quivering with frustration and rage. Also fear. Primarily fear. He addressed Rizhin but he could not tear his eyes from Hunder Rond.

  ‘This is a stitch-up! My people have done their best, Osip!’ Ekel’s voice was becoming more high-pitched and nasal. ‘I have done my best! But you see what I am up against? Obstruction… hiding evidence… deliberate betrayal! Fuck!’ He turned to face Rond. ‘I will not let you do this to me! I will not be hung out to dry!’

  ‘Someone must be,’ said Rond quietly. ‘In circumstances like this, it’s an inevitable necessity. You know that, Ekel.’

  ‘But not me, you fucker! Not me! You see, Osip, see how he’s trying to protect himself, that’s all! But I know you see through him, like I do.’

  ‘No, Grigor,’ said Rizhin. ‘It is you. I smell conspiracy on you. It’s on your breath. You stink of it.’ He put his right hand–five fat fingers–on his heart. ‘You hurt me, Grigor, here. Just here. I gave you all you have. I gave you my trust, and you repay me how? You are complicit in this attempt on my life. There is no other explanation.’

  ‘No! Osip, please! I have been more than just loyal. I like you, Osip. I’m not like the others. I love you. As a man I am your friend.’

  ‘We will hav
e the names of your gang out of you, Grigor. Then we will see.’

  ‘The thing is,’ Rond said to Rizhin after Grigor Ekel had been taken away, ‘we think the archive Lom is looking for may actually exist. But we don’t yet know where it is.’

  ‘Archive?’

  ‘Lavrentina Chazia kept her own personal files, and it seems they have not been destroyed. They are still out there somewhere. Antimos was on their trail but he hadn’t found them yet. They’re likely to contain compromising material.’

  ‘Of course they’d be compromising. That mad old vixen Lavrentina Chazia was a cunning poisonous bitch. Find what she kept, Rond, and bring it all to me.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hunder Rond. ‘We’ll find the Cornelius woman too.’

  Rizhin shrugged. ‘Naturally, but she won’t be anything much. Find Lom. He’s the one that matters. Him I want alive. Him I want to talk to.’

  5

  The railway station at Belatinsk is crowded for the departure of the Mirgorod train. Forshin’s Philosophy League has booked an entire carriage. They struggle with chests and suitcases full of books and papers. The atmosphere is grim determination under a bleak grey sky. Dusty wind whips at their clothes.

  ‘I put on a mask of good cheer for the others,’ says Forshin to Kamilova, ‘and perhaps above all for myself, but I do not underestimate the task ahead.’

  There are forms to be filled out in triplicate. Municipal officials search their luggage for what they can confiscate. Brutskoi’s wife weeps and protests at the loss of all her roubles and silver. A gendarme ruffles Yeva and Galina’s hair in search of hidden jewels.

  ‘Let us exult in leaving this place, comrades,’ says Forshin, waving his cane at the lowering sky. ‘We carry with us the flame of our people’s future. No customs officer can confiscate that!’

  Kamilova and the girls climb aboard at last. They have no baggage. Yeva and Galina huddle together, looking out of the window. The locomotive trembles. Steam is up.

  ‘Don’t worry, Galina,’ says Yeva. ‘You know we’ll see our mother soon.’

  6

  Lom reached Kommunalka Subbotin No. 19 early and ran up the steps two at a time in fresh midsummer Rizhin-morning sunshine. There was a fresh efficient woman in the glassy walled lobby cubicle: patterned cardigan, horn-rim spectacles, blond hair tied back, young and cheerful, not unsmiling, ready for the day.

  ‘What is the number of the apartment of Elena Cornelius, please?’ he asked her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There is nobody of that name. Not here.’

  ‘Perhaps she left recently?’

  ‘I’ve worked here ever since the building opened. Eleven months. I know all the residents. There is no Cornelius here and there never has been. I’m afraid you have the wrong address.’

  It was not yet eight o’clock. Lom waited on a bench with a view of the exit. Perhaps she was using another name. Perhaps she had married again. It was possible.

  Forty minutes later he saw her come out alone, in her dark clothes again, intense and purposeful, not looking around. She was coming his way. When she got near he rose to meet her.

  ‘Can we talk?’ he said. ‘Not here. Is there a place?’

  ‘I have to be at work.’

  ‘Say you were sick.’

  ‘I’m never sick.’

  ‘Then they’ll believe you.’

  She hesitated.

  ‘Please,’ he said.

  ‘All right then. OK.’

  She took him to a workers’ dining hall. Long wooden benches and sticky chrome-legged tables. Yellow-flecked laminate tabletops. The floor was sticky too. The place was crowded with people taking breakfast–young women mostly, girls in sneakers and overalls with tied-back hair. Sweet smells of make-up and scent at war with the black bread and apricot conserve, tea and coffee and steam. The din of cutlery and crockery, the chatter of women with the workday ahead.

  Lom and Elena found a space at the end of a bench, near a wide window which looked across an empty paved square to an identical dining hall on the other side.

  ‘Where’s Maroussia?’ said Elena. She held her cup awkwardly in clawed, broken hands.

  ‘I lost her.’

  Elena nodded. In the aftermath of war, when half the world, it seemed, was lost, you didn’t ask. People told you or they did not. The stories were always more or less the same.

  ‘I lost my children,’ Elena said. ‘Galina and Yeva. You remember them?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lom.

  ‘The building they were in is gone, built over now, but I go there every day, and when they come back they’ll find me waiting. They’re not dead, I know that at least. Of course I’d know if they were killed. A mother would feel that, wouldn’t she? In her bones? They were taken away but nobody would tell me who took them or where. They all denied knowing anything about it–Taken away? Nobody was taken away–but some of them were lying, I could see. There’s a post office box in my name, so when Galina or Yeva writes me a letter it should go there. The system is very reliable and good, everyone says that.’

  ‘Is that why you want to kill Rizhin?’ said Lom quietly. ‘Because of what happened to Galina and Yeva?’

  ‘Not his fault,’ said Elena. ‘Before him, that. That was others. Rizhin came later.’

  ‘What happened to your hands, Elena?’ said Lom.

  ‘These?’ She shrugged.

  ‘Did they do that in the camps? Did they interrogate you?’

  ‘These are nothing, not compared to what they did to others… not compared to…’ She stopped. Looked out of the window.

  ‘They hurt someone you knew?’ said Lom.

  ‘What good is this doing? Talking never does any good. None at all.’

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘He was trying to make a new start,’ she said, still looking out across the sunlit concrete square. ‘New ideas. A better world after the war. Some of us believed in that. We tried… We wanted to… Why would I tell you this? You wanted to stop me killing Rizhin. You were trying to save him. Weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lom. ‘And now I’m trying to stop you trying again.’

  ‘But… why?’

  ‘Because simply killing Rizhin is no use at all. It’s worse than useless: it would be disastrous. It’s the idea of him that needs to be destroyed. Killing the man will only make the idea of him stronger. Things will only be worse if you kill him. Much, much worse. ’

  ‘No,’ said Elena. ‘You’re wrong. Why do you think that?’

  ‘I don’t think it,’ he said. ‘I know it.’

  ‘What do you want from me? Why are you here?’

  ‘I want your help. I want to bring Rizhin down. Not kill him, but worse than kill him. Destroy him. Ruin him. Ruin his memory. Make it so people will hate all his plans and all he wants to do, and never do any of it simply because it was what he wanted.’

  ‘How? How would you do this?’

  ‘With information. With proof of what he really is.’

  ‘And you have this?’

  ‘Not yet. I should have it tomorrow. But I’ll need help to use it properly. That’s why I came to see you. I thought you might know people. You could put me in contact—’

  ‘What kind of people?’

  ‘Like you said. People with new ideas. Do you know people like that? People I could talk to?’

  ‘Maybe. Perhaps they would talk to you. You could show them what you have.’

  ‘I’d need to meet them first, before I brought them anything.’

  Elena looked hard at Lom. Her thin dark face. Her broken nose. Eyes burning just this side of crazy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But Maroussia trusted you.’

  ‘And this is Maroussia’s work I’m doing. Unfinished business.’

  Elena moved her head slightly. That connected with her.

  ‘Is it?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, it is.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘OK. Come with me. I’ll ta
ke you there now.’

  7

  Maroussia Shaumian walks in the forest and as she walks she picks things up. Small things, the litter of forest life that snags her gaze and answers her in some instinctive wordless way. Smooth small greenish stones from the bed of a stream. Twigs of rowan. Pine cones. Galls and cankers. Pellets and feathers of owl. A trail of dark ivy stem, rough with root hairs. A piece of root like a brown mossy face. The body of a shrew, dead at the path-side, a tiny packet of fur and frail bone, the bright black drupelet of an open eye. She stops and gathers them and tucks them in her satchel.

  When she rests she tips the satchel out and sorts through them. Holds them one by one, interrogates them, listens, and shapes them. Knots them together with grass, threads them on bramble lengths, fixes them with dabs of sticky mud and resin smears. She is making strange objects.

  Each one as she makes it becomes a tiny part of her, but separated off. Each one is an expression, a distillation, a vessel and an awakening: not the whole of her, but some small and very specific part, some particular and exact feeling, one certain memory that she separates from herself and makes a thing apart. Some don’t work. The investing doesn’t take, but slips through the gaps and fades. Those, the emptied ones, the ones that die, she buries under earth and moss and leaves. But many do take, and she knows each one and gives it a name. Lumb. Hope. Wythe. Frith. Scough. Carse. Arker. Haugh. Lade. Clun. Mistall. Brack. Lund. In the evenings she hangs them at intervals around her camp. They dangle and twist and open themselves to the night, to watch and listen while she sleeps.

  No one showed her how to do this, not Fraiethe or the father or the Seer Witch of Bones. She found her own way to it.

  She comes to where a wide shallow beck crosses the path, running fast and cold, spilling across mounded rocks. Trees on either side lean across it, leaf-heads merged, darkening the water. She drinks a little from the stream and sits a while on the bank. Makes a leaf boat, pinned in shape with thorns, weighted with pebble ballast.

  When the leaf boat is ready she reaches for one of the figures she’s made. Brings it close to her eye and studies the tiny striations on the twig bark, the exact complexity of grass-stem knots, the russets of moss, the lichen maps like moth wings. She tries to feel her way into it, curious to find what part of herself it is that the object holds. But it is opaque now and keeps its own counsel. She puts it in the boat.