The Body Outside the Kremlin

by James L. May

  Elsewhere the latitude granted on Solovki to explore new forms of carceral life gave rise to other endeavors. Signs were everywhere on Solovki, telling you where to go, where not to, instilling principles important for prison life. They were almost always regulatory. Yet one of the first I noticed simply read “THEATER,” in large black capitals. For the edification of the zeks and the entertainment of the camp bosses, a whole troupe of actors, most professionals before their arrests, was maintained. They staged plays by Chekhov, Gogol. I remember a production of The Inspector General I once saw, sometime after the events I am describing. Done with sumptuous sets, its splendor was necessary to show that the satire targeted the imperial system, not the Communist one. It was permitted for all of us to laugh.

  There was a library, too, and several magazines published on the monks’ old printing equipment. The stories circulated in our literary journal, Solovetsky Islands, were surprisingly good, not the sort of cant one would have expected from an official outlet at all.

  If some Moscow Bolshevik had inquired why such extravagances were to be afforded to social malcontents and enemies of the state, the answer would have been that they were crucial to our reeducation and ideological development. There were even still elements of the Party, then, who would have believed that was important—who believed Solovetsky was an experiment in reform, rather than extermination. Because these liberal types existed to be flattered, our bosses even put us to work analyzing the camp’s social problems. Every so often a report would be issued by a prisoner committee with recommendations for increasing the rehabilitative value of a stay on Solovki, or addressing “the housing crisis among juvenile inmates.” They weren’t even always ignored.

  But of course the true function of such intellectual or cultural groupings was never really to improve the life of the camp as a whole. The men who commissioned them did so to aggrandize themselves, to gratify their superiors, or to solidify their own power by handing out good posts. As for those who worked in them—well, finding a place among the camp’s artists or “scientific administrators” meant entering one of only a few little bubbles of culture and comfort that existed for imprisoned intellectuals—habitats where delicate creatures could uncurl their antennae and flounce their gills in the flow of one another’s conversation.

  Gennady Antonov’s role at the museum had been to restore the Solovki’s collection of icons. On the four or five evenings when I had been able to come to the workroom, we would have our conversations while he worked beneath his lamp. To watch him manipulate the tiny scrapers and brushes of his trade was a kind of luxury. Beneath his fingers, soot-stained varnish peeled away, tempera glowed, gold leaf reappeared. He insisted artificial light was best for his task: “The faithful will revere the icon in lamp- and candlelight, Tolya. I must work by the same light.”

  A short man rose from the desk nearest the door, beneath the big middle window. “You two look like you’re in the wrong place,” he said.

  “My name is Petrovich.This is my assistant, Tolya. We’re here to see Director Vinogradov.”

  “Lots of people want to see the director,” said the man. He barely moved his jaw when he talked. You could see his nose had been broken at some point in the past. One hand held a book, shut on his finger to keep his place.

  “He’ll want to speak with us,” said Petrovich.

  “Not possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “Fine. He’ll be back in a week. Find somewhere else to wait in the meantime.”

  The little man took a step towards us, gesturing at the door, but Petrovich didn’t budge. “What do you mean, he’ll be back in a week? Where’s he gone?”

  A deep breath might have raised the other man an inch above five feet. His chin jutted at us like a weapon. “Not sure I see how that’s any of your business, friend.”

  Petrovich crossed his hands on his cane. “And who are you?”

  “I’m the assistant director of this museum. Name’s Ivanov.”

  “All right,” said Petorivch. “Show him the papers, Tolya.”

  After skimming the Chekist’s order, the man—Ivanov—glared up at us, first Petrovich, then me.

  “We’ve been deputized,” I said.

  “Infosec’s fallen on hard times,” said the little man. “But all right. What’s this investigation you’re conducting?”

  “Something we need to talk to your director about,” said Petrovich. “Where is he?”

  “Cape Kostrihe.”

  “Kostrihe?” said Petrovich. “What on earth is he doing there?” The cape lay four or five miles south of the kremlin by road. There was nothing there. You might expect to find a lumbering team, but not the director of the museum.

  Ivanov sniffed. “You’re not familiar with what we do here, maybe. It’s not just the collection. Publish a journal, too. Research. The director’s training is in archeology. There are sites that interest him on Kostrihe.”

  “Archeology?” I repeated.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “When did he leave?” said Petrovich.

  “Yesterday afternoon.”

  “Why now? It would be easier in the spring. No snow.”

  “It’s an expedition. Sledges, tents, men, blankets. Food for a week. The director’s a resourceful man. He wouldn’t be one to let weather stop him.”

  That didn’t satisfy him, but after a moment of staring at the head of his cane Petrovich said: “All right, leave that for now. We’re also interested in one of your colleagues here. Gennady Antonov. We’ll need to see his desk.”

  “Antonov? He didn’t come today. It’s my headache to write him up.” Ivanov narrowed his eyes. “What’s this all about?”

  Petrovich didn’t answer, only met the little man’s gaze. They were both silent for a minute, each trying to work his stubbornness on the other. When Ivanov turned to look at me, it surprised me.

  “They found him floating in the bay this morning,” I said. I had to clench my teeth to stop a yelp after that. Petrovich’s cane had rapped me sharply on the shin.

  “Floating?” said Ivanov. He looked surprised. “You mean dead?”

  The old man shot me a look out of the corner of one blue eye. “Just show us Antonov’s desk,” he said.

  The blood hadn’t quite drained from Ivanov’s face, but for the first time he looked unsure. “I’ll have to tell the director what happened.”

  “He can find out from us, when we see him,” said Petrovich. “Now you know what this is about, and you saw who we’re working for. Show us the desk.”

  Men raised their eyes as we passed. The little noises they made in their work—the scratching of pens, the rustle and snap of pages turning, chairs creaking—were like the noise that passes for silence in the forest.

  At the end of its row, Antonov’s desk looked the same as always, both messy and exact. Sealed jars of paint, brushes, scraping tools, and a lamp crowded around the edges of the piece he’d been working on. The painting would leave an image of itself after it was removed, a silhouette of clutter.

  What struck you first was the way the panel’s composition divided it. On the left, the background showed a tawny waste of rock, textured with vigorous strokes of black and white; in a different painting it could have been a choppy, burnt-orange sea. To the right stood a confection of pink battlements and bulging domes, with an emerald palace rising out of the center. Without perspective, the city’s walls were crazed, each segment straining off towards its own vanishing point. Citizens thronged to gaze down at the action in the foreground from towers and windows. The people, overgrown and too detailed, loomed larger than their buildings. On the plain below, the spear of a mounted knight—Saint George—pierced a tendril of smoke with a scarlet pig’s head and scarlet talons, which must have been a dragon.
All of this was intact. It was a third figure that Antonov seemed to have been at work on: a princess, identifiable by her crown. A pair of golden slippers bore her towards the city. She led the dragon by a cord, slender and red. Paint could be seen flaking away from her golden-green gown.

  “Listen,” Petrovich said to me in a low voice as we stood looking. “Don’t go blabbing the details of the investigation every chance you get. Don’t give out information without getting some back in return. Sometimes you want to see what they say to you before they know you’re investigating a murder.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

  “Nothing for it now. Mention something like that in a place like this, everyone knows the story before you can turn around.” He pulled open a drawer. “Help me go through this desk.”

  “What should I be looking for?” I asked.

  “If I knew that, we wouldn’t have to look. Find whatever doesn’t belong. If it tells you something we didn’t already know about him, that’s what we want.”

  The two uppermost drawers were filled with brushes and paint. Most of what we found beneath that was notes on restoration projects. Annunciation No. 34 (2.68): Modulus = length of nose. Head’s radius slightly less than two moduli, two full moduli at chin. Three-quarter profile; center pupil of left eye. Plaster separating from linen about mouth and chin. Careful of proportions in repair! On some pages Antonov had sketched outlines of the figures he was concerned with. Some he’d daubed with paint, others not. I couldn’t say I understood his working methods, but that was to be expected. None of it seemed out of place.

  One thing about imprisonment: it turns quite ordinary objects strange. I had not, I suppose, performed the simple act of opening a desk drawer for more than eighteen months.

  When they came to arrest me, I was still studying nightly at the desk that had once supported my schoolboy exercises. It had been moved into the sitting room as a consequence of our flat being broken up into a communal apartment, but it remained mine to use. The forbidden books seized for evidence against me were lined up neatly on it, along with five or six others, between two brass bookends.

  As a boy, under the influence of spy fiction, I’d written “confidential dispatches” for the purpose of hiding them from my parents. The space behind the drawers became accessible when they were pulled out, and would accept a few sheets. Into that chamber, tangible but invisible, I filed imaginary plots, intelligence on fictive but critical troop movements. None of it was ever discovered.

  Antonov’s desk had the same space, with the same gaps at the back of the drawers. Papers rustled against my fingertips when I reached through. With adult hands it was difficult, but after a moment I pulled out several creased and flattened documents.

  Smoothed flat on the table, they were disappointing. Of a piece with the rest of Antonov’s notes, they’d clearly fallen into the space behind the drawer accidentally, after it had been pushed closed too full. Still, I reached back in. This time I had to lean down and contort my shoulder.

  Out came three more sheets. Two were the same mashed scrap, but one had clearly been dealt with more carefully. It had been leaning, folded, against the back of the drawer, as if placed.

  Unfolded, it was a note in a feminine hand: A package has come from my mother with a few rubles. I will be inside, visiting the commissary store before nightly roll. This Thursday. Please meet me.—V. Beneath the signed initial another sentence had been hurriedly scribbled. The thought of your goodness is all that enables me to continue as I have.

  Petrovich sucked his teeth when I showed him the note. “That tells us something we didn’t know.”

  “What do you think?” I said.

  He glanced around the room. “We’ll talk about it later. For now, hold on to it.”

  I considered explaining how my spy stories had led to my making the find, but thought better of it. I’d already made the mistake of mentioning Antonov’s death—attributing the discovery to frivolous reading would hardly make Petrovich reevaluate my expertise.

  We hadn’t been working much longer when one of the men from the other bank of desks stopped at my elbow.

  “I say, did I hear what you said to old Ivanov over there? Has Gennady Mikhailovich really been … ?”

  “What did you hear?” said Petrovich.

  Without quite answering, the man introduced himself as Johan Sewick, explaining that he was in charge of maintaining the museum’s catalog. He was sure he knew Antonov rather well, and hoped all was well with his friend. He would be happy to help us with anything, anything at all … He was tall, and wore a sports coat over his sweater. Beneath wavy hair, the earpiece of his glasses had been repaired with wire. My shin still smarted—a reminder to take my cues from Petrovich, who seemed distinctly reserved. Even so, I thought the man in charge of the museum’s catalog might be worth knowing.

  The old man did at least seem willing to involve him in our investigation to the extent of asking him several questions. Sewick had last spoken to Antonov on Monday, when they’d discussed the price of pipe tobacco in the commissary. No, he hadn’t seemed different than normal, or worried. He had no enemies or debts. Sewick wasn’t aware of any arguments he’d recently been involved in. He laughed when Petrovich asked whether Antonov might have been involved with a woman, then grimaced.

  “Antonov? No, no. He isn’t that type at all.” He cleared his throat. “But, I say, I’m afraid these would be the kind of questions you would be asking if—if something horrible had happened.”

  “You heard what we said to the assistant director,” said Petrovich.

  “Yes, yes. Well—a tragedy, of course. Very sad indeed.” Sewick leaned forward. “But just a word of advice. There may be more reliable guides to the affairs of the museum than our Anti-Religious Bug.”

  “Your what?” said Petrovich.

  “He means Ivanov,” I said. Antonov had mentioned the nickname to me once.

  “Just so. Director Vinogradov has left Ivanov in charge, this time. But, you know, the role of assistant director does not necessarily invest great authority in the man who fills it. You might say he’s no more than a glorified secretary for the director.”

  Petrovich said: “You call him a bug?”

  “Ah,” began Sewick. “Yes. Well, that—”

  “It’s because he’s so small,” I said. We were speaking quietly enough not to be heard at the front of the room, I hoped.

  “Correct,” Sewick continued. “The assistant director is diminutive, and his strain of atheism is, so to speak, virulent. We joke that you must be careful not to contract him, like a microbe.” Petrovich didn’t laugh, and Sewick looked uncomfortable. “Ah—well, the assistant director is, shall we say, a self-made man. He did not have some of the advantages of education others have. In fact, he was formerly a servant in the household of the Metropolitan of Novgorod. You will understand, of course, that certain members of the serving classes—that is, the former serving classes—can bear grudges against their masters’ creed. Hence, ‘anti-religious.’”

  The old man’s eyes had taken on their flat, sharp, intensely blue look. “Huh.”

  “Officially, of course, our museum is anti-religious. But a collection like this one naturally requires a certain sophistication of outlook. Ivanov, by contrast, talks incessantly about the great God-deception and the science of atheism. To be blunt, he did not like Antonov or Antonov’s work. He found his approach ‘unscientific.’ And, in general, the assistant director’s thinking can be … unbalanced.”

  Petrovich leaned back in his chair. “You think you would be better at helping us with them than Ivanov.”

  “Well …” He took on a significant expression. “You can find me here until curfew most evenings. I would be only too happy to help.”

  “All right,” said Petrovich. “Tell me. Why did Vinogradov choose yesterday
to depart on this expedition of his? Why not wait until spring?”

  Behind his thick glasses, Sewick looked surprised. “Well … yes, the director’s expedition. Hmmm. I can’t say I know his mind on that matter.”

  “You’re not surprised at his leaving in October?”

  After thinking for a moment, Sewick said: “You know, perhaps it is odd. I can’t think of a reason he would have had to go now, instead of some easier time. I’ll inquire for you, if you like. Discreetly, of course.”

  “Do that.”

  After the other man had gone, Petrovich went back to perusing the stack of things he’d taken from Antonov’s desk.

  “He could be a useful contact, couldn’t he?” I whispered.

  “He might,” said Petrovich.

  “You don’t seem enthusiastic.”

  “Listen, do my job for long enough, and you learn to spot a certain type.” He turned a page. “Man like that can’t be relied on. He wants to use us to beat his rival, maybe score points with Vinogradov. Maybe score against Vinogradov. That’s fine as far as it goes, if he ends up knowing anything useful. Just don’t let him pilot your investigation.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “At least you didn’t mention the bay again.”

  Another ten minutes turned up nothing for me but a sketch of the bay from the museum’s windows and, tucked away at the bottom of a drawer, a brush with a broken handle. Petrovich, however, had found something to read intently. “I need to ask Ivanov about this,” he said.

  Outside the windows behind the assistant director’s desk, the sky was filling with gray clouds. Ivanov was bent over the book he’d been holding earlier, making notes in a little pad that lay open beside him. With the broken nose, the way he raised his head and narrowed his eyes at us looked off-center.

  Petrovich laid the papers he’d been looking at on the desk. “What can you tell me about these?”

  Ivanov hesitated, as though he’d have liked to refuse to look, but after a moment he did. “Looks like the list of pieces for that requisition the other week. A lumber order, they called it. Came with approval from on high.”