The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  I’ll remember you if I ever get hold of the records.

  IV

  Mahogany

  Moscow, January 1988

  The scene now shifts to another bedroom, but not Oleg’s – not at all. Here we are in a completely different part of Moscow, and in a flat we have never previously visited. The room is furnished with just a wardrobe and a single bed, which someone hasn’t bothered to make. On the floor next to the wall, there are a pair of reading glasses, a packet of cigarettes, an ashtray full of butts, a half empty glass of water, a box of aspirins and a dirty handkerchief. In other words, it is glaringly obvious that the person who sleeps in that bed and lives in that flat is a man. Why? you question.

  Come on, need you ask? You know a woman who would live like that? Get real… It’s night, or perhaps still evening. In any event, it’s dark outside, the curtains have been drawn, and the light has been switched on. The man in question is standing in front of the open wardrobe, and is observing himself with a critical eye in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door. There is this that is strange about him: he is wearing a general’s uniform, and yet he does not have the air of a general. To avoid any misconceptions, we’ll let it be immediately known that he is not in fact a general; he’s an actor. He has brought the uniform, with the brown flashes of the Ministry of the Interior, home from the theatre’s costume department, which is of course something you shouldn’t do, but Mark Kaufman has his foibles, including that of rehearsing on his own, shut up in his flat on the tenth floor of an apartment block in the Avtozavodsky District, in his costume for the part. He now picks up an open book from the bed, quickly finds the passage he has marked with a red pencil, nods, replaces the book on the blanket with the open pages downwards, clears his throat and takes up his pose in front of the mirror.

  “I have no need of an escort!” he exclaims. Then turning round, “What the devil are these orders, not a single step on your own! And why so many injections? The whole bottom,” he looks around, stops himself and looks embarrassed, “Forgive me for the love of God, they have pierced me!”

  What next?… He’s hurriedly undressing and then putting on striped pyjamas, and on his shoulders the unbuttoned jacket of his uniform; he puts his hands through his greying hair and immediately looks more than his forty years, but he still has the urge to shout, “Your water here is of extremely poor quality! Listen, I wash my hair, I comb my hair and I lose great clumps of it. Poisoned water – I would have it checked!”

  Mark Kaufman sits on the bed, grabs the script again, and flicks through it. Then he goes back to looking at himself in the mirror, but this time in a seated position, as though he no longer has the strength to stand, and he speaks not in a loud voice but in a barely audible whisper.

  He holds his braid-trimmed hat in his hands and his fingers torment its peak.

  “But you know very well the level at which the decision on the power station was made. My signature was purely a formality…” He points to the bedside table at the other side of the room, “He did too. They all signed. That’s just a piece of paper. Just a formality.”

  Pause while the others speak: Andrei Arkadevich who plays the manager, Vladimir Vladimirovich who plays the judge, always supposing he gets over his sore throat, and if he doesn’t, God knows who’s going to do it. Then he gets angry, “What? It’s obvious? That our signature… If I don’t sign, someone else will… What is this? Were you born yesterday or do you always and only sign things which your conscience is entirely at peace with?”

  Kaufman stands up, still in his pyjamas, slippers on his bare feet, general’s jacket on his shoulders, and he goes into the kitchen. There in front of the table, some photos cut out of newspapers have been fixed to the wall with drawing pins: the Chernobyl Power Station before and after the explosion, and again the firemen, soldiers, doctors and nurses with their mouths protected by gauze masks, as in times of plague. Mark leans forward, studies the photos and attempts to recognise the faces; the men are too far away.

  He sighs, opens the fridge, takes out the vodka, pours himself a shot glass and raises it to examine it against the light of the bulb: it is transparent and indistinguishable from water. A single gulp and it is empty, but he knows that it serves no useful purpose: sleep evades him and will continue to do so until sunrise. They say that in the West there are clinics that treat those unable to sleep, and doctors don’t burst out laughing when you explain your problem to them. Of course, they’ll be looking for quite a bit of money. Kaufman goes to the bathroom, switches the light on, and looks at himself in the mirror, and staring back from the mirror is a general in the Ministry of the Interior in pyjamas, unshaved with shadows under his eyes, like a sick man. The actor smiles contemptuously, and then grasps a hair between two fingers and pulls, but the hair does not come away.

  By two o’clock, Kaufman decided that he wasn’t going to sleep that night. So, leaving the vodka bottle half empty, he got up from the kitchen table and went to the hall. That was where, in a recess invented by the architects on some obscure whim, he kept a tiny Empire-style writing desk with strange little drawers that could be locked. On more than one occasion, financial difficulties had caused Mark to think of selling it, but he always held back at the last minute. It was the one remaining piece of furniture from the days when his grandfather Moses Katz ran an antiques business in Odessa, as in one of Pilnyak’s novels: the good times of nineteen hundred and… twenty-five? There was much of everything in those days, according to Mum: carpets, but not from the Caucasus or the nomads of Tabriz, but from Isfahan itself, and silver roubles, each with the profile of Catherine or even Elisabeth! God knows what all that stuff would be worth now; it’ll have taken a boat to London or California long ago… Who knows! Kaufman ran his hand across the mahogany surface, enjoying the wood’s cool warmth, and then suddenly he felt that he needed to sit down. But it wasn’t the effect of alcohol; it was the call of another, more hidden vice. Having placed his elbows on the writing desk, he opened the right-hand drawer and took out a thin sheet of poor-quality paper, whose fragile fibres rustled in his hands. Contrasting with the lovingly polished desk, it looked like an ancient parchment worn by the passing of many centuries, and yet the desk was from the time of Tsar Alexander, a hundred and eighty years old, whereas the paper was merely forty-four, just one year more than Kaufman. He unfolded the typewritten paper carefully and read it for the umpteenth time: under the purple stamp of a foreign government and the illegible signatures of Nazi officers was the list of the deportees from Odessa on 11 December 1943. He read one name after the other. It took him a few minutes to do this, and then he sat mute and motionless. Here I suppose I need to explain how that sheet of paper happened to end up in his hands. As you can imagine, here in Russia stuff like this isn’t found lying around in the streets; it is kept mouldering in the special sections of archives behind doors closed with double locks in basements that light never enters. Paper confiscated from the enemy. In Odessa, it was perhaps used for wrapping fish, always supposing there was any fish to wrap, but very quickly there would be these merry chaps in raincoats: hand it over, citizens, hand it over! And then rooting and nosing about, and up and down the stairs of war-torn buildings…

  At least, that’s how I imagine it, and maybe that’s how it really was. Then again, maybe not. Hell knows. The fact is that that piece of paper, along with many others, was in a cardboard box, as is only right, and a whole lot of those folders would fill a box, and a whole lot of those boxes would clutter up the basements of an archive. In the meantime Mark had grown and finished school. He had succeeded in getting a place at the Theatre Institute and had moved to Moscow. And he had no idea of that piece of paper’s existence. At the Institute he fell in love with a girl called Lyuda, and together they liked to wander about the capital, and perhaps find some quiet corner in the parks where no one would disturb them… Then, as we know, love comes to an end. Why do these things happen? Well, why does a sturgeon become soft and pink when
it’s cooked, so you can cut it with a fork? Come on, work it out for yourself. It was over and that’s all that matters. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that, come to think of it, she wasn’t much of an actress. That was not her talent, and it may be that on the whole she was lacking talent of any kind. She was thrown out of the Theatre Institute, and as she had no desire to leave Moscow and return to Khimry, she ended up working as an attendant. Lyuda did cleaning in a dirty apron with a scarf on her head and bucket and mop in her hands. She would respectfully step aside when one of her bosses came by, but they hardly noticed her! Okay, this might be irrelevant… A few days later, when she had just started work, they celebrated Mark’s birthday. In the room he shared with two other future actors – and one of them, please note, would achieve success and today works in film and even went to the United States, but this has got nothing to do with anything, particularly as over there, it seems, he didn’t hit it off at all and had to come back home with his tail between his legs. Well, in that room there was salami and smoked fish, and one guest had come with a bottle wrapped up in a newspaper, another had thrust his into his jacket pocket. All the invited guests were there and seated on three beds in pleasant promiscuity, when who should put her head round the door but Lyuda. An embarrassed Mark goes to meet her and she throws herself on him, kisses him, not on the mouth of course – a sisterly kiss on his cheek. You should know that she was very short and still is; she came up to his belly button… Well, maybe a bit further up, but yes, very very short. This is the point I wish to put across. And she gave him an envelope: a gift from the Central Archive of the CPSU to an Odessa Jew. The conversation continues in a very low voice, and fortunately no one is paying much attention. Someone is tuning a guitar. I stole it for you, Lyuda whispers, looking at him with watery eyes. She tells him how she took it from its folder on the desk of an archivist responsible for reorganising the records – she, of course, was nosying around and completely on her own in the office, after having mopped the floor. She told him of her terror as she left the archive that evening, and of her certainty that she would be followed and her crime detected. Too right, Lyuda… Mark sighed, and then turned the paper over in his hands and reread it, while mentally translating it from the German:

  Edelmann Solomon, son of Mortche and Malekh Etel, born Cernowitz on 12.3.1903, confectioner, Romanian nationality, Jewish race.

  Gross Edelmann Ester, daughter of Baruch and Bendit Scheindel, born Cernowitz on 6.4.1905, housewife, Romanian nationality, Jewish race.

  Galant Israel, son of Iudas and Bryl Rosa, born Kishinyov, diamond dealer, Romanian nationality, Jewish race.

  Gitler Chaim, son of Menachem and Klein Golda, born Odessa on 1.3.1917, waiter, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  Gross Gisella, daughter of Suskind and Braun Regina, born Odessa on 28.9.1924, seamstress, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  Erdreich Kseniya, daughter of Mikhail and Schapiro Elena, born Saint Petersburg on 10.10.1907, pharmacist, Russian nationality, Jewish race. Rosenbaum Pincus, son of Moysey and Fischer Regina, born Odessa on 6.3.1911, accountant, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  Galant Rosenbaum Betty, daughter of Israel and Garfunkel Rosa, born Odessa on 11.7.1923, typist, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  Rosenbaum Daniela, daughter of Pincus and Galant Betty, born Odessa on 13.8.1943, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  So that’s how it was: 13 August 1943. These people had not only survived the common graves of the early days when the Germans and Romanians first entered Odessa and the destruction of the ghetto in November, after a few weeks of terror; they had not only hidden in the cellars and attics and for two years survived hunger, typhoid and dysentery, but two of them had loved each other and even brought a baby girl into this world! And when the baby was four months old, the SS remembered their existence.

  Pinchas Naftali, son of Kemal and Koprut Sultan, born Adrianople on 16.2.1891, merchant, Turkish nationality, Jewish race.

  Cohen Ivonne, daughter of Raphael and Modiano Allegra, born Salonika on 5.5.1909, ballerina, Greek nationality, Jewish race.

  Landau Stella, daughter of Moise and Jetti Russ, born Slaviava on 8.1.1873, housewife, Hungarian nationality, Jewish race.

  Landau Malvina, daughter of Nathan and Bustin Sara, born Slaviava on 2.4.1922, shirtmaker, Hungarian nationality, Jewish race.

  Schagal Kalman, son of Mendel and Scheimbrot Lea, born Odessa on 6.6.1886, merchant, Russian nationality, Jewish race.

  When he got to Shagal, Kaufman stopped. Shagal, it has to be said, was one of his favourites; everything about the man disturbed him, starting with that bizarre profession he had had registered at the kommandantur. Because what kind of merchant could have been living in Odessa in 1941? He was perhaps a shop manager, and had told the Romanians that he was a merchant, hoping for some reason that they would employ him in the administration, supervising the registration. A lot of money must have been changing hands at that time, gold sovereigns and the old ten-rouble gold coins, which had been under floorboards or in cellar walls, carefully sewn up in canvas bags and now placed one by one in the greedy hands of policemen and clerks in exchange for a passport, a rail ticket, a food ticket or even a goose or a sausage! And he, naturally, was a merchant: here to serve you, my distinguished masters of the SS. But put like that, he seemed somewhat unpleasant, and yet Kaufman liked the idea of this unknown person. Who knows why? How can you build up a story around what is no more than the barest bureaucratic personal data? For starters, you’d need to change his name: indeed, why call him Kalman? It would be much better, for example, to call him David or even, he smiled, Mark… He rummaged around in the bottom of the drawer and took out a worn notebook full of newspaper cuttings. He flicked through them until he reached a blank page under the heading “Shagal” in large capital letters written in red felt-tip. He chewed his pen and then started to write:

  “He knew that name distorted by German spelling and those personal details by heart from the day on which he bought a false passport in a lane behind the port, while not far away you could hear the Reds’ machine guns.”

  But this way we’re turning him into what – some kind of criminal? An informer for the Tsarist police, who changed sides in 1919? No, once again it simply won’t do! Why the hell should Shagal’s story start like that? No idea why not either. How can you possibly know?

  What? What are you saying? Why is he writing such rubbish, which no one will ever want to publish? Listen, my dears, he clearly cannot stop himself: how else can he affirm his existence? How else can he grasp life and hold it tight?

  Once he had believed the answer was: photograph it! And he had really tried; it was the time he was with Lyuda, and she loved being photographed with a childlike passion. Even now Mark keeps … kept … Christ, I’m mixing up my tenses, as usual, but who cares. He kept them in Moscow and still keeps them in Tel Aviv. Hold on, you’ll excuse me, he keeps it: a box full of photographs of her. But in practice photography has its limitations: you cannot photograph the bureaucrat you encounter on the stairs in the underground, just because you’d like to and even though a close-up of that flabby face and those heavy eyelids would shout to the heavens about our iniquities better than any journalistic investigation. You can’t stop a woman in the street in the street and ask permission to photograph her, even if her dyed hair and the twisted corners of her mouth speak more of her love life than any letter or diary. So Kaufman started to write, but was never prolific. On finishing his course at the Institute, he was taken on full-time at a Muscovite theatre and obtained a flat in the city. He had played Ostrovsky and Vampilov; he had grown a beard and then shaved it off. His hair had started to go grey, and in all this time, he was still working on the same book. Isn’t there some slim French novel in which a clerk spends his entire life rewriting the first line of a novel, without ever managing to go beyond it? And sometimes, after a few drinks, Kaufman feels as though he is that clerical worker. But this is the kind of sillin
ess that only the French could invent:

  Monsieur, madame, je vous en prie, pas de quoi! Merci! No, Mark Kaufman consoled himself with the thought that his novel was far from being literally stuck at the first line; in fact, the existing material now filled two notebooks. He had dozens of characters, and all of them were names on that list. As time passed, each one of them became no longer just a name, a profession and a date of birth necessitated by the pedantry of Nazi scribes, but personalities, physical features and a past. As for the future, the chimneys of Auschwitz would deal with that. He had his favourites, of course: men and women of whom he would think lovingly on the underground or in bed, just before he fell asleep, as though he really had met them. There was the Turkish merchant, Naftali Pinchas, with his teeth blackened with halva, his speech husky from years of tobacco smoke, and his movement hampered by his swollen belly, but still he could climb, once a month, the steep incline to Yuksek Kaldirim, the red-light district. There was the ballerina Ivonne Cohen, whose eyes expressed an irremediable tiredness and whose thirty-four-year-old body would soon have been good for nothing more than the most diabolical variety shows, if she too had not been loaded on that sealed train. Then there were the dislikeable characters and it took great effort to get involved with them: the pharmacist from Pietrograd, Kseniya Erdreich, whose unfeeling eyes stared from behind metalframed glasses and whose hair was gathered up in a spinster’s bun, and old Israel Galant, the diamond dealer.