The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  No, it would be unthinkable to allow such a thing, and so Shchelokov wasn’t interested in Naydenov’s argument. He wouldn’t even let him speak, he attacked him: Why are you fabricating evidence, eh? He came close to striking the prosecutor, and yet Shchelekov was an intellectual and a Soviet aristocrat: he collected icons by Andrey Rublyov and Caucasian silverware, and Shostakovich had written the March of the Soviet Police just for him. They couldn’t come up with anything better than this: the confessions were extracted under duress and the evidence had been fabricated, but they didn’t let up on pursuing this line.

  Every day someone put about these rumours, the insinuation that the Prosecutor’s Office had been terrifying the witnesses and falsifying the evidence. One morning, the car came to pick up Lappa in Chkalova Street as usual, but it was not the usual driver, which the judge didn’t like, having become accustomed to the other. He asked what had happened to Arseny Petrovich, and the new man said that he knew nothing about it. At Lefortovo Prison, he talked to Colonel Zaporoshchenko, and it came out that a few days before the driver had gone out in the evening with friends and they had had a bit to drink and of course he had taken the office car; then, when he went to pick up the car the following morning, he thought that something wasn’t right.

  After all, they don’t train them for nothing… Exactly what that something was, the colonel did not want to say, but the fact is that the driver went to work by underground and while he was going to the station on foot, he saw a road block exactly where he was supposed to go and the strange thing was that it wasn’t a Highway Police road block but one manned by a squad from the Ministry of the Interior. They picked up the car that same morning and sent a jeep from Special Forces, and of course they weren’t stopped at the road block. And as for the car, the number plate was the same but the car wasn’t, and Lappa hadn’t noticed.

  So this was how things were in the end: they had tons of confessions, but in a case of this kind without material evidence, how can you go to trial? They say that in America, for example, you don’t just need the evidence, but you also need to find it during the trial with all the appropriate authorisations, and everything you have beforehand does not have any value. Strange country… Fortunately here in Russia, things are done differently; in fact those seven policemen were condemned thanks to the evidence of another crime! Lobov’s wife could not keep it inside; she came to see Lappa and burst into tears. She was a middleaged woman, and try to imagine what she was like: she was large, wore sandals and her arms were bare, because in the meantime summer had come. She cried and told the judge that she could not remain silent, but Stepan Fyodorovich would kill her; for God’s sake, don’t send him back home.

  Because he had already murdered another man five years earlier; no, not a man but a youth. He had cut up the corpse with an electric saw and scattered the pieces around the place – here and there, in Moscow and outside the city…

  And there was another matter that afflicted her: They won’t withdraw her residence permit, will they? Because they’ve only given Stepan Fyodorovich a conditional one, for as long as he’s working as a policeman, and it has to be renewed every year. They had come to Moscow from Pskov, and she had no desire to go back there! The lads in the office looked at each other, and one of them put his index finger to his temple, The little woman has lost her head; just look at the stories she goes around inventing… But Lappa believed her; he believed everything, although he of course reserved the right to check it all out. He believed in the Pskov bit, but above all he believed in the youth cut up into pieces with the electric saw. I’m quite sure, he told Naydenov later, that here in Russia there are people like that, and even worse, and wasn’t there somewhere a guy who killed people and then ate them. Where was it? Somewhere in the country, down around Dnepropetrovsk or Rostov-na-Donu, where there’s nothing but cornfields as far as the eye can see, and mulberry woods, and no one ever suspects anything. That’s exactly what Nazar Kallistratovich said… It’s hardly out of the question that a Moscow policeman and immigrant from Pskov with an annual residence permit could cut up a youth with an electric saw and take the bits out for a jaunt: a leg in the Moskva, an arm in Gorky Park. And that is exactly how it turned out to be! Forensics found traces of blood and epithelium on the sofa cushions in Lobov’s home. They also found shoes and gloves that could not have been his, and they were recognised by the boy’s parents. Now even Shchelokov couldn’t say nothing… Four of them – Barinov, Lobov, Panov and Masokhin – were condemned to death, and the others to ten years of hard labour. And it seems that Svetlana Lobova lost her residence permit; in fact she too was imprisoned: another time, be a bit quicker about coming up with the confession… Well, I told you that this was not an entertaining story – not by any standard.

  VIII

  The Thaw

  Moscow, March 1988

  It’s raining. Or rather it’s snowing… Well, something is coming down from the sky and it’s wet. Hell knows how you could define it, but it’s not cold outside, the windows don’t fog up when you breathe on them, and the roads are no longer covered in snow, but mud: it’s thawing… Oleg is at home; he has not gone to the newspaper’s offices. He has a job to finish and no one needs him there, but he has already regretted this decision. Down at the offices on a day like today, all the lights are on, you can always find someone to chat to and offer a fag, and the time soon passes. Or you can go down to the entrance hall, where Anna Karpovna is seated at the cloakroom counter with a woollen shawl round her shoulders. The old woman is always reading a book and the samovar burbles sweetly: you can get yourself a cup of tea and glance at the clock, That time already? We’ll soon be off home. But at home, there is no escape: you damn well have to work! Besides, Tanya won’t come until the late afternoon, perhaps even the evening, and now the morning has gone. You’ve worked (two pages done, but not checked) and eaten a plate of spaghetti, but the afternoon is going to be bad! Oleg gets up from his desk and throws himself on to the sofa bed. At this time of day, it is often unmade, but Tanya is coming today and she doesn’t like finding it in that condition. She has promised to stay tonight, but who knows? She took her nightdress away last week – to be washed, she said. If she intends to stay tonight, then she will bring one in her bag. And she will get undressed over there in the corner with her back towards you: your blood must flow and permeate the empty flesh…

  One can’t live like this. Shut yourself in the bathroom?

  How sordid! And yet this emptiness has to be filled – to avoid being overcome by it. Oleg gets up and wanders about the house in search of any trace she might have left behind.

  Yes I know, this subject has come up before. But Oleg behaves this way, every single day – what do you want me to do about it? There is nothing in the kitchen, nor could there be; but this does not stop him from opening the drawers.

  Who knows? Perhaps a pencil… But would a pencil exert any kind of power? Because he now needs to make some kind of spell, and this requires something of hers – something intimate: her pants would work, and even better if they were unwashed. Light a candle and burn something – fly wings or a pinch of sugar – and immediately she’ll be ringing the bell and unable to leave this place. Oleg the sorcerer goes into the hall and rummages around in the wardrobe until he finds a dress made of jeans material – blue of course, with three small red stars sewn onto one arm. It’s a summer dress with short sleeves and metal buttons: what a joy to undo them one by one and remove the fruit from its outer covering… In the bathroom he rummages amongst the shoes and right at the back, squashed behind the packets of lavatory paper – a year’s supply – out come a pair of sandals. Not a great deal: just soles with two white plastic straps and a clasp. Oleg sniffs them, but their smell has faded, and there is barely a suggestion of Tanya’s feet and last summer’s sweat. There is, it’s true, that musty smell of all old shoes. To hell with it!

  He removes one of his slippers and a sock, and tries to put on the sandal. He has
to force it a bit, but it is made entirely of plastic and his foot can fit. He moves his toes …

  I hope you don’t find this distasteful! He only puts on a shoe, not the whole dress, as has happened on other occasions. Don’t be afraid; today, this isn’t going to last.

  Oleg sighs, pushes the sandals under the lavatory paper, and puts the dress back in the wardrobe, and the pencil – well, he takes that to the other room and hides it amongst his own on the table. Look at the time: it’s four. He must get back to work; yes, of course… But instead he goes back to the kitchen and straight to the television, which he switches on. Yesterday it wasn’t working, but today it is. Clearly the weather really is changing. The screen hisses and fills with light. The now familiar face of the baldy appears – Gorbachev in person with his strawberry-coloured archipelago as a guarantee of authenticity: if you don’t see the trademark, then they could be fobbing you off with any old thing, but here is the genuine article, take a look yourselves!

  His voice is pleasant and well-mannered, nothing like his predecessors, but oh dear, he too can rattle off the figures; it is such a vice. During the first two years of the five-year plan, cereal production rose by seventeen per cent, meat production by two million one hundred thousand tonnes, milk production by eight million two hundred thousand, egg production by seven billion units… Oleg is daydreaming and a film is being projected before his eyes, revealing a world of extravagant abundance: mountains of frozen meat, whole carcasses of bullock calf – still fresh, dripping blood and their bluish tongues ready for slicing – only there are a million of these things, and where are we going to put them?

  There’s no room in the city, the fridges are overflowing, the squares are full and the cars can’t get through, and the dogs are leaping up and down frenziedly and howling madly because of the smell. Better take it to the countryside; there’s all the room you want there. Pile the meat high and fill the uncultivated fields! The lorries are coming in great long columns, and they’re even using the army ones, mobilised for the occasion. Each driver offloads his meat and then leaves. They will need several journeys… And here we are, a great mountain has now risen up with the surplus of these two years, two million and one hundred thousand tonnes; and all piled up there in, say, the Province of Tambov on an uninhabited plain. There they leave it and forget about it, and it all rots away. That’s why here in Russia there is always such a stink.

  But that is not all: there are also the seven billion eggs!

  What is the Soviet population? Two hundred and fifty million? Well, then … that’ll be twenty-eight per head. No more! How many were they producing beforehand? I take one or two eggs in the morning and not every day, and Tanya doesn’t eat any at all. They’ve revolted her since nursery school, when children were forced to eat fried eggs which were undercooked and as slimy as spit. Who then will eat all these eggs? Clearly they will go to any length to get rid of them, and hard times are coming for nursery school children. Oleg opens his eyes wide and runs a hand through his hair. Shit! There’s nothing for it; I’m going to have to work. He goes back and just glances at the sofa bed where previously the imprint of her body could be seen, and where tonight… well, just a glance. Then go to the desk and switch on the tape-recorder. Let’s have a hear of that interview.

  “There was another one, what was his name? Zaitsev, Aleksandr… Well, he was in command of an Egyptian division in 1967; of course, there would have been an Egyptian general, but in reality he was in charge… and on the very first day of the war he rings Moscow in tears: help, the blacks are running away!” Yeah, so we are always supposed to be on the side of the cowards; they are the only ones who call on us: come here and teach us how it’s done! The others, of course, have no need. Oleg hesitated; the typewriter sat there like an accusation. He glanced through the papers that cluttered the desk, and a photograph slipped out: an officer in his full regimentals, the smiling wife clinging to his arm and in the background the Odessa steps. The woman, who according to her passport was a Greek from Melitopol, came to the newspaper’s buildings a few weeks earlier and on that occasion she was weeping: Help me, my little doves, no one else can do it! It turned out that her husband was a certain Colonel Khronopulo, and had been in command of an Ethiopian motorised unit that was destroyed by the Eritreans at a battle down there in Africa on some arid plain… Oleg had never heard of this battle and did not know how many years had passed since it took place. As for Khronopulo, well the imbecile had allowed himself to be trapped in a ravine and lost fifty tanks and God knows how many men. He had been captured along with three or four of our people. The Greek woman was weeping: at the beginning I had hopes and the Ministry gave me assurances: We’ll negotiate, we’ll exchange prisoners… But the years have gone by and I’ve heard nothing more of my Gyorgy Spiridonovich! Now people only talk about Afghanistan, and those who have given their lives for the fatherland all over the world are just forgotten. No one cares a damn! Fayna Nikolayevna reassured her, of course: We’ll bring out an article! We’ll find out who’s responsible! There is little hope of Khronopulo ever coming home; even a child would understand this. He will have been eaten by the ants, and his whitened bones will have been buried up there on the dusty plateau. But there is an article in all this! What do we know about all the Russians who have fought around the world since people realised that a revolution is a little cramped in one country? And Oleg went off to interview the soldiers: those who fought in Angola and those who fought in Vietnam. The newspaper seemed to be happy with his work; even the chief editor Migranyan had wanted to listen to part of the tape and told him, Well done, we’ll make you the expert on military affairs!

  Oleg, I would like you to know, got a kick out of these things. He even enjoyed military service – shameful but true… He attended the training course while he was still at university, and afterwards they stationed him at an artillery unit in the 8th Army of Guards in Weimar. We all know that they send the nerdy ones to the artillery, because they know how to use a goniometer and do sums in their heads. To tell the truth, he hardly ever went out of the office, and he never even touched one of the cannons, but he did occasionally get out on one of the lorries to load up potatoes. The sergeant would park the lorry in a dusty square and then get out to keep an eye on his men as they loaded the sacks.

  Oleg remained behind and watched the other lorries and Trabants as they rushed by, spitting black smoke from broken silencers. Often he would shut the window to keep the smell of diesel out and then nod off. When off duty and allowed to leave the barracks, he would walk into the city, buy a German newspaper and sit down at one of the cafés.

  His preference was Café Resi at the Grüner Markt, where he would eat an ice-cream, even though it too tasted of diesel and the newspaper print came away on his hands… Then he would set off on the return journey to the barracks and, as he crossed the theatre square, he used to salute the monument to Schiller and Goethe, who were, however, too busy confidently surveying the future to notice him. Occasionally a whistle would come from a group of long-haired youngsters sitting on the monument steps and holding beer cans, and the guitars would suddenly go quiet, while a girl would laugh, but he never turned to look at them. Who were they?

  Punks? No, at that time there were no punks in Weimar; you have to be joking! There might have already been some in East Berlin. I went there in ’82, but I believe that I only ever saw them in West Berlin. There was one I remember; he was on the bus to Spandau, and coming back from work: a mechanic or plumber holding a tool box in his hand and a copy of Bild under his arm, and then he had this great crest of purple hair. But in East Berlin? God knows… How can you sum up the GDR? How do you describe it to those who never saw that dour little republic? The cornfields still not harvested in August when the early autumn rain threatened; the farm labourers working unhurriedly with a guaranteed salary, the tractors rusting under the stars, the drab villages with their houses that crowd around the spire of the Lutheran church and haven’t bee
n repainted for decades, and whose roofs have been blackened by smog. And beyond the spire, the houses and the fields, the smokestacks were scoring the sky with their dark strands… And much more besides: the roads without road signs but with plenty of potholes, over which lorries and Trabbies were spewing out fumes, blond children on bikes, pensioners reading their newspapers under the June sun with their berets pulled down over their foreheads, the skyscrapers of Berlin, the grey-green hangars along the motorway, where the Soviet armoured cars were kept, campers lighting their bonfires in forests devoured by acid rain, Russian infantrymen wandering around strange cities with their peakless hats on the back of their heads and staring with the discomfort of cultural shock at the shops with their indecipherable signs, dejected unemployed Vietnamese selling oranges and cigarettes on street corners, historic squares and streets whose renovation was left until too late, trams hurtling along paved roads ringing their bells loudly, lamp posts, benches, illuminated shop windows, and around a corner a pile of rubble that hasn’t been touched since 1945, where rats proliferate. Now it has all come to an end, from what I hear, and not a trace of it will remain: for our children the GDR will be like the Kingdom of Dahomey. At the time, of course, Oleg did not know how it was all going to turn out, and he didn’t mention his experience to anyone, not even Tanya.

  And yet he had, all in all, enjoyed himself.

  In the meantime it has become dark and she cannot be much longer. She rings the bell. Oleg, with his heart in his mouth, rushes to the door; not that the door is very far away, and there is certainly no need to run, but he cannot waste a second now that she is here on the landing, and in an instant her body will be in here: things will take on greater significance and space will have another dimension, so how could he not run?