Denouncer

by Levitt, Paul M.

  As soon as he arrived in Minsk, he would find a public bath and a safe doss house. He would then write Galina to warn her of Viktor’s treachery. But his epistolary endeavors took a few days, by which time the Ryazan OGPU had received a letter from Viktor in which he named Petr as the one who had warned Lukashenko of the intended assassination and praised Razumov for risking his life in support of the plan. Of his own role, he said nothing. When Viktor reached Balyk, Sasha offered him Petr’s former attic room (at Galina’s urging). Two days later, Viktor intercepted and destroyed Petr’s letter. He then grew a beard, let his hair reach his shoulders, and dyed it, making him look like an old believer who had lived with monks in the forest.

  13

  Although initially Viktor rarely showed his face in the village and never at the school, he spent days on end in the attic, working on a treatise or apologia of some kind. Galina seemed pleased with his presence, and Alya had expressed delight at seeing him but really preferred Petr and Sasha. She found Viktor aloof, even when he played with her. Horses had never appealed to Viktor, so he could not appreciate her joy in riding around the corral on her pony, Scout. What he did enjoy was making Goran Youzhny’s acquaintance and being introduced to the fine art of photography. As for Sasha, Viktor treated him as a nonentity. Anyone earning his keep as a teacher or school director was, by his definition, feckless. People with real talent became writers and journalists and engineers. Nothing but failures who couldn’t do anything else became professors and teachers.

  Underlying Viktor’s anti-intellectual attitude toward pedagogues was the simple fact of his failure to do graduate fieldwork in linguistic anthropology. Although he had attended college at the expense of the state, he expected the state’s largesse to extend to a year in Africa, despite his dull academic record. When the state balked, Viktor grew disconsolate and then resentful. Denouncing all scholarship as fatuous, he became a polemicist, living at first on the money his brother earned and then, so long as he raged against Lukashenko, on an OGPU subsidy. No one denied that Viktor had the intelligence and writing skills to compose a first-rate treatise or book. But what he wrote in the attic was a full and false account, sent to the Ryazan OGPU, of his and Razumov’s efforts to keep Petr from revealing the planned attempt on Lukashenko’s life.

  Unbeknownst to Viktor, Razumov had been suspended without pay and put on the “Watch” list. His career as a secret policeman appeared to have ended in disgrace—until Viktor’s long and detailed history of events arrived. Using every literary device, including the favorite Soviet “although” opening, he had composed a narrative that exuded the very essence of truth. It acknowledged mistakes (small ones) and blamed himself for overreaching (a prerequisite of Soviet apologies). But he forcefully argued that the botched assassination was owing to the treachery of Petr Selivanov and to his “minders” (he and Razumov) not watching Petr closely enough. He apologized for his and Razumov’s failure, and insinuated that he would never inform Lukashenko’s people of the OGPU’s hidden hand in the matter. The implication, of course, was that in return for his silence, he could always count on OGPU support.

  Why Viktor had gone to such lengths to exculpate Razumov was a different story. For all his own anger and self-serving conduct, he had long felt ashamed of his failure to protect his sister from his drunken father. Razumov’s fond regard for Relitsa, probably the only person Viktor had ever truly loved, was a debt he needed to repay. This letter would settle the account.

  Sasha disliked Viktor from the moment he’d read Petr’s diary. He thought then that Petr’s suspicions were entirely justified. In Ryazan, he had found Viktor self-absorbed and consequently selfish. Now that they were living under the same roof, he disliked him even more, regarding him as underhanded and unscrupulous. Sasha and Galina had resumed intimacies after Petr’s departure, but with the arrival of Viktor, she became distant. Her previous passion returned only briefly when Viktor and Goran retired to the Balyk Inn, on the edge of town, to carouse. The inn was a converted barn that an enterprising farmer, Fyodor Kolchak, had fitted out as a tavern. The police periodically shuttered the place because private enterprise was illegal; but as soon as they left, usually with their fill of vodka, Kolchak reopened. Here, at a corner table, Viktor and Goran liked to huddle, ostensibly talking about photography, though Kolchak whispered that the talk often focused on politics.

  Sasha gathered that Goran’s Leningrad family had ties to the Right Opposition, influential ties that reached to the inner sanctum of the Politburo. If Goran’s family had been fishing in those conspiratorial waters, they might find themselves snagged on their own hooks. But why would Viktor, always ready to change sides, find any appeal in a losing cause? And the Right Opposition was certainly a lost cause. Perhaps Viktor had in mind getting his hands on personal property and selling it for a profit before the government made all such activities illegal. Or perhaps the Right Opposition didn’t even come into his thinking, but rather he saw in Goran’s photography a way of advancing his own interests, whatever they might be; or perhaps he was merely trying to appropriate Goran’s lab. He did buy a number of artistic photographs from Comrade Youzhny, all bearing on some physical aspect of the school: a broken chimney, a cracked window, a roof missing a few slates, unpainted siding, water-stained books in the toolshed, a withered apple tree, a weather-beaten bicycle pump lying in the grass.

  Shortly after Viktor’s arrival at the farmhouse, Sasha heard him steal into Galina’s room late one night and her say, “Not here! Are you mad? Alya’s sleeping in the alcove.” Then Sasha had the impression that Galina, who often entered the kitchen before bedtime to make a cup of hot milk, had returned not to her bedroom but to the attic. He dared not spy lest he invite her disdain for such conduct, which she called “Bolshevik behavior.” But with each passing week, his suspicions grew, particularly since he had overheard Viktor tell Galina that he didn’t trust Sasha, and that something about Comrade Parsky wasn’t right. The conversation included the following:

  “I felt uneasy when he first came to Ryazan bearing condolences. The man is hiding something.”

  “What might that be?” asked Galina.

  “I don’t know, but no one is innocent.”

  Then he had made his signature clicking sound, the same one that he had made on the beach below the Kremlin—by pulling the tip of his tongue down abruptly and forcefully from the roof of his mouth.

  Sasha tried to imitate him. Click, cluck, clack. He sounded like a lame chicken. But he continued trying and eventually realized that to increase the effect he had to pucker his lips. Retracted lips muffled the sound. Before long he had become quite adept.

  Overhearing that conversation had led Sasha to burn Petr’s diary and to ask Brodsky’s advice. But there was a difficulty: How could Sasha represent the situation without incriminating himself? He wished that Petr were present to give him some insight into Viktor. But given Petr’s absence, all Sasha could think of telling Brodsky was that he suspected Viktor of trying to seduce Galina, an embarrassing admission and a weak excuse for wishing him ill.

  “Has she complained to you?” asked Brodsky.

  “No, but then she wouldn’t because he’s an old friend.”

  After smoking a cigarette and lightly running a hand along his bookcase, as if absorbing the wisdom of the ages through his fingertips, he stopped behind Sasha’s chair. “Denounce the bastard!”

  “For what?”

  “Make up something, like being involved in that Ryazan mess. You said he hated Lukashenko.”

  ✷

  With Viktor at the farmhouse, Galina clearly felt compromised. She had no interest in marrying Sasha, but she found that their lovemaking had enriched her fondness and deepened her appreciation of his concern for her future and Alya’s. Not long after Viktor arrived, Galina confided in Sasha that Viktor had told her that he wanted to share her bed, and hinted at more, though what the “more�
� amounted to, he had failed to spell out, merely dropping hints, all of them pointing to Sasha.

  With the fall term winding down, Viktor expressed an interest in quitting his isolation in the spring and becoming a teacher, without pay. He proposed a linguistics course. Sasha had his reservations, knowing Viktor’s views about teaching. More important, would such a position be a signal to Viktor that he could remain at the farmhouse? He could hardly live elsewhere when he was a wanted man. To remain off the books as an unpaid teacher would raise eyebrows and perhaps lead to an investigation. And how was Viktor supporting himself? All that Sasha or anyone else knew was that fortnightly, Viktor received a packet addressed to Ivan Goncharov, clearly someone’s idea of a jest, since Viktor was no novelist. Sasha knew that his best interests would be served by refusing Viktor a teaching position and sending him packing. If not for Galina’s objections, he would have done both. She begged Sasha, in light of the death of Viktor’s brother, to give Viktor a temporary appointment and permit him to remain at the farmhouse until he could find other lodging.

  “He has no papers,” Sasha objected.

  “Since he arrived, he has made friends with Goran, who introduced him to Bogdan. And Bogdan . . .”

  Sasha interrupted. “Is a forger!”

  “Then you know.”

  “May I ask where your information came from?”

  “The locals. And yours?” she asked.

  “Avram.”

  “You ought to get out more often,” she said conspiratorially. “The villagers have a lot to say about Bogdan Dolin.”

  “Such as?”

  She told him that Bogdan was known to have a healthy dislike of authority, and always acted alone. A silent man, and a sullen one, he had previously owned a printing press that churned out counterfeit passports and rubles. At the time of his arrest, one of the officers was heard to say that Bogdan’s rubles were nearly perfect. The only thing lacking was the right kind of paper, which Bogdan had no way of buying since it was the preserve of the Soviet treasury. A high wall of his making, that surrounded his bungalow, had led to speculation that, as before, he supported himself by forging documents for wealthy people and government officials in flight from the country.

  “Soviets!” exclaimed Sasha. “The story grows more bizarre with each passing minute. It makes no sense.”

  “That’s what I said, until Viktor reminded me that apparatchiks regularly fall out of favor. If you needed travel papers to disappear in the East, say, where would you go? The government wouldn’t oblige you. So you’d find someone like Bogdan. It makes perfect sense.”

  “Now I know where Viktor will get his new papers and passport.”

  “And Goran will provide the photograph.”

  “What does he gain out of it?”

  “Good question. Viktor hasn’t said, but I intend to find out.”

  ✷

  With box camera and tripod in hand, Goran continued to beg Brodsky to sit for a photograph, but Avram refused his requests. The result was an ugly scene that took place in the town square, where Goran had set up his camera in the back of a covered wagon and covertly snapped pictures of Avram, who was watching with dozens of others as two men led a couple of male lambs, each a year old and without blemish, into the square to be slaughtered in anticipation of Easter. The men, accustomed to killing, were dressed in rubber aprons and galoshes. Father Zossima was present and could be heard, by those at his side, mumbling Easter prayers. Brodsky was thinking of another holiday, one that he alone among the villagers knew by its proper name, “Korban Pesach” (Passover). As a child he had read in the Old Testament from Numbers 9:1–2, “And the Lord spake unto Moses in the Wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Let the children of Israel keep the passover at his appointed season.” The men and women of Balyk, formerly observant Greek Catholics and now forbidden to practice their faith, still maintained certain traditions, whether or not they even knew their sources. How many Christians, mused Avram, have any idea that Easter began as a Passover service? The locals certainly knew what it meant to be passed over, in every sense of those words, since the most prosperous villages were those free of Soviet control, and free of illiteracy and illness. At the back of Avram’s head echoed the words he’d been made, as a child, to memorize: “For the LORD will pass through to slay the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door, and the plague shall not be upon you.”

  The crowd circled the two men who pulled the lambs by ropes attached to their necks. One of the lambs stumbled and fell to its knees. The shorter of the two men grabbed the lamb by its neck hairs and forced it to its feet. The other man produced a sickle that caught the glint of the sun. A minute later, both lambs lay dead in a pool of blood, as an excited howl rose from the crowd and then faded. A farmer, standing only a few feet from the wagon, heard the click of a camera. Thinking that his own picture had been taken, and superstitiously believing that photographs stole a man’s soul, he cried out that a devil was lodged in the back of the wagon. With Goran’s exposure, Avram insisted he relinquish the photographic plates or destroy them on the spot. Goran refused. An argument ensued. When the older man reached for the camera, Goran fled the scene leaving behind his tripod and jacket. Avram swore to bring a charge against Goran but instead asked Sasha to expel the young man from his lab. Caught between the two warring parties, Sasha asked Goran to erase the plates—in his presence. Goran complied, complaining that the destruction of a valuable photographic record was a state crime. Sasha scoffed and reported back to Avram that the matter had been settled amicably. For the nonce, no more was said, though Avram continued to complain and Goran kept his lab.

  By now, Viktor and Goran had become kindred spirits. Only a few steps from the farmhouse, the lab provided Viktor an opportunity to learn photography, an emerging field. To Sasha’s dismay, Goran bragged that he was teaching Viktor about hidden cameras and altered photographs. Perhaps worse, Goran had introduced Viktor to Bogdan and to the art of what . . . forgery? The three fellows, frequently seen together, seemed a strange trio, ranging in age from twenty-one to fifty-eight. Viktor had just turned thirty. When Sasha asked Viktor about his interest in photography, Viktor replied he could take pictures of the lip and mouth formations that created alveolar clicking sounds, and that such images would prove useful in the linguistics course Sasha had agreed to his teaching in the spring. Then Viktor placed his tongue on the roof of his mouth and made a loud click, as he habitually did on entering and leaving a room or punctuating a point. Was it his way of saying “I know click languages,” or did it have some personal meaning that only Viktor could fathom? Sasha found his enigmatic behavior vexing, but Galina often seemed blind to Viktor’s social maladroitness.

  Shortly before the start of the spring semester, Viktor showed up in Sasha’s office to tell him that he had papers and a passport in the name of Ivan Goncharov, and that Sasha needn’t worry if the secret police came snooping around. “I’m now official,” said Viktor, “so you can safely introduce Ivan Goncharov to the other faculty members.” Given that Viktor had never appeared on campus, he was a stranger to the other teachers; and Goran, at Viktor’s request, had sworn to keep his friend’s real name unspoken. Although the teaching staff and students had often whispered about the “new” man staying at the farmhouse, no one had had the courage to ask. In fact, shortly after Viktor’s arrival, it was bruited about that the new man was Galina’s brother and that the director would also find him a place in the school. So when Sasha announced that Viktor would be teaching a course in linguistics, the other teachers, assuming that their own salaries would suffer from the addition of another person, made known their displeasure. But when Sasha explained that Comrade Goncharov was teaching for nothing, smiles replaced sneers.

  Viktor set out immediately to ingratiate
himself with the other teachers, a task that he accomplished handily with the help of Goran’s camera and tripod (eventually returned), and Goran’s painstaking instructions. Posing each of the teachers in his or her favorite setting, Viktor flattered the staff with his portraits, which in fact were handsomely done, owing to Goran’s lessons and artistic flare for developing and framing. The teachers nearly swooned. In no time, Ivan Goncharov was a favorite of his colleagues, who chuckled at his name but never dared to call him Oblomov, the title of the famous author’s novel and a name associated with laziness.

  Students took to Viktor at once, fascinated by his subject and his skill at producing click sounds of every tone and variety. For all his natural reticence, he came alive in front of a class. The school soon buzzed that the hot new topic and teacher were linguistics and Ivan Goncharov. Galina was pleased that Viktor had a new view of teaching. Sasha was less enthusiastic, not because of any failing in Viktor’s classroom performance, but because he worried that the man would never decamp from the farmhouse. At the end of the first week of school, however, Viktor surprisingly announced, with a click of his tongue, that he was moving in with Bogdan Dolin. He retreated to the attic, packed his belongings, and exited with another alveolar click.