The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  Nadya Stepanovna studied the teenager in the photo before lifting her eyes to the father.

  “Well, she must be of the same age as my Rafik. Poor girl, without her mother. That will be a heavy burden. And you, Boris Mikhailovich – are you an officer?”

  “Major in the artillery,” the big man declared proudly.

  Nadezhda Stepanovna raised her hand to her mouth, “Good God! I bet you’ve got lots of medals! And you must look handsome in your uniform, Boris Mikhailovich. In your pyjamas, it has to be said, you’re just like the rest of us!”

  “It’s not the uniform, Nadya Stepanovna,” whispered the major as he leant over towards her ear, “but what’s underneath! And down there, there’s no medal to compare with it!”

  The woman laughed raucously, and some people at the nearby tables turned to stare at her.

  “Is that so?” she eventually said as she wiped the tears from her eyes. “You devil! You must be a …”, but she never said who exactly Serov was in her opinion, because the waitress appeared with the hot chocolate.

  “And if I may be so bold, Nazar Kallistratovich, what do you do?” Krylenko suddenly asked. Lappa gave a start; he thought he had got away with it, and now he would have to confess everything.

  “Well, you’ll laugh, but I’m an investigating judge.”

  Pushkareva, who was complaining to the waitress about God knows what, suddenly went quiet, and even Serov turned to take a look.

  “That would be the Prosecutor’s Office in Baku?” Krylenko pressed him further. “No, the Office of the Chief Prosecutor of the USSR. You might say that I’m a colleague of your Katushev,” he laughed, “but I’m not yet a deputy prosecutor, and I work with special affairs.”

  “How about that! Then we had better not ask you why you’re travelling to Baku?” Krylenko joked, but he did not laugh.

  “This is deplorable!” Pushkareva was loudly protesting, after having recovered from her silence. “You call this hot chocolate? The milk has been watered down, you charlatans!”

  “That’s what it’s like on the trains,” Serov immediately wanted to up the ante. “I once travelled all the way to Moscow and none of the heaters in one of the carriages were working. The train was full and so some of us had to stay in that one. I called the guard: Citizen major, he told me, clearly you can lodge a complaint, as there’s a complaints book at the station. At the station, you do understand! That is at the end of your journey, but meanwhile, you stay here – and freeze! And the bastard was laughing.”

  “Oh, they don’t care a damn about anything,” Pushkareva interrupted. “They travel in the warmth, they get their salary and even a pension, and the passengers can go to hell!”

  “Well, for the moment,” Krylenko said, but he saw Lappa and went silent. He stretched his arms, as though to loosen his muscles. “I think it’s time I got back to our carriage. It’s been such a pleasure to have met you. Are you coming, Mikhailovich?”

  Serov scratched the back of his neck. “Maybe I’ll have a little something else. Perhaps they have some cakes. Would you like some cakes, Nadya Stepanovna?”

  “Well, I really shouldn’t eat them!” she laughed. “But you know how it is, once you’re on a train, you’re always hungry!

  Well, that’s what I’m like: as soon as I get on a train, I just have to eat! I don’t eat at home; I’ve got enough to do, just cooking for Rafik, when I’m not at the office. There are times that I don’t even sit down at the table, but while I’m in the kitchen, I have a little taste of this or that. Of course, he eats like a horse! At that age, they need to eat.”

  Nazar Kallistratovich whiled away the rest of the day like most of us do on the train: snoring. Here in Russia, on such long journeys we like to spend our time sprawled across our couchettes and sleeping on and off. It’s night, it’s day, who cares a damn? There aren’t so many opportunities for saving energy in this manner, without irritations from some office supervisor or the spouse… When he woke up it was already dark, and the train was standing in a station – he had no idea which. The loudspeaker was giving out information in Russian and some unknown language. He sat up and noticed that the other couchette was occupied. Nadya Stepanovna had clearly decided to go back to sleep. But something was not quite right: the shape formed under the sheet did not at all resemble that of Nadya Stepanovna; it was bulky – corpulent. Nazar put on his glasses and saw that it was a man, a large man in flowery pyjamas, Krylenko. Moreover, he was awake and had turned to look at Nazar.

  The artillery officer was the first to speak, given that the judge was struggling with his surprise.

  “Well, it’s like this! Nadya Stepanovna came to our compartment for a little chat and she fell asleep. Obviously we didn’t want to wake her, and so I left Serov to keep an eye on her and came here for a little snooze.”

  “Make yourself at home,” Nazar muttered at length.

  “Well thank you! But now I’m not that sleepy. What would you say about a bite to eat?”

  Nazar realised that he was quite hungry. Before leaving, Asya had prepared him a food pack, but Nazar had not wanted it. Why weigh yourself down with baggage? The suitcase is already fairly full, and I’ll eat in the restaurant car! In spite of everything, Asya had managed to slip some hard-boiled eggs in, and it turned out that she was right: at that time of night, the restaurant was definitely closed, but we can eat! Krylenko, who had brought a khaki canvass bag with him, pulled out bread and cheese. For a while they chewed in silence, and the lieutenant colonel smacked his lips, “Of course! It’s time for a drink of something. What do you say?”

  So a bottle of port appeared in his hands; he uncorked it, rinsed a couple of glasses in the washbasin and filled them with the wine. In truth, Nazar had never been that fond of our Soviet portveyn. If only they hadn’t given it that name, as it has no resemblance to real port, but how else could you define it? A joke? But there was nothing for it: he had finished eating his hard-boiled egg and now he was thirsty. Inside the newspaper Asya had used for packing the eggs, there had also been a sachet of salt… So he drank that sweet and sticky wine and immediately his head began to swim. Of course, it is easy to say that he should not have continued. But Krylenko’s cheese was also salty and he couldn’t drink water after that. In short, they downed the whole bottle between them, and it was perhaps because of that unpleasant brew that Nazar allowed himself to be drawn into a ridiculous conversation that would later cause him much embarrassment every time it came to mind. It all started when the train started to move, and Krylenko looked at his watch.

  “That’s it! We’re late again!” he declared with satisfaction.

  “That’s what it’s like in Russia now. Who remembers any more the times when people worked and trains left on time?

  Nowadays there’s no respect for anyone or anything. Even at the barracks, you would not believe it! The recruits turn up dressed in any old fashion with long hair and they laugh in your face!”

  Nazar automatically agreed, and downed another glass of port. He then started to salt another egg.

  “Once, people at least had respect for the uniform, for authority,” Krylenko continued undeterred with his argument. “You didn’t fool with the law! If you made a mistake, you damn well paid for it. But what do we have today? A penal code that no one is afraid of. For the worst of crimes, you only get ten years!”

  “No, you’ll excuse me, but on this point I beg to differ,”

  Nazar slurred as he chewed his hard-boiled egg. “For example, this foreigner came to the Prosecutor’s Office to study our legal system. Hey, he says, what kind of criminal law is this? It’s a complete hotchpotch. You can’t sentence anyone to more than ten years in prison. Why the hell not?

  Ten years of hard labour is the maximum custodial sentence, and immediately after that, there’s the death sentence. However, I explained that this is the penal code most suited to us Russians, in fact it is the most effective, when you consider the characteristics of our people.” />
  “What do you mean?” said a surprised Krylenko through a mouthful of food.

  “It is quite clear,” Nazar became heated and was also increasingly conscious of his dizziness. “Here in Russia, we have to admit, the people are not as advanced as they are in the West. They are naive and childish, as the West was in the Middle Ages. Our law acknowledges this naivety and respects it. In Russia life sentences and penitentiaries are of little use. Keeping people in prison for more than ten years would be an act of cruelty. In Russia there is a simple choice: a moderate sentence or the gallows.”

  “Very good!” Krylenko approved. “But not as it is now: you can commit the most heinous crimes and you still get away with ten years! You need the law of retribution – in kind: You’ve killed someone? Then you’ll be killed. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth! Then perhaps we would start moving forward again!”

  “No, exactly the opposite is true,” said Nazar heatedly. He was struggling to find the words, but he felt sure that what he was about to say contained a great and profound truth, even though he had not formulated it quite so clearly until that particular moment. “Your law of retaliation would be an injustice for our Russian people! No, in Russia we need to do what they did in the Middle Ages, when the law of retaliation did not exist!”

  “What do you mean, did not exist?” said an increasingly disoriented Krylenko. “But I always believed …”

  “Not at all! Of course we know that even then they condemned people to death when they needed to – but let’s look at why they passed that sentence. Was it perhaps for murder? No sir, it was not. Indeed, what exactly is murder?

  Say, for example, you’re having a drink at the tavern, and there’s this stranger drinking with you. He’s a carter, and it’s well known that carters are arrogant people. After a few drinks, you have an argument. What about? Probably for some little trifle, not even worth discussing – but in the meantime you’re arguing fiercely and you, a bottle, bang, right on his head or a knife in his stomach – right into his stomach. Was that perhaps a reason for sending you to the gallows? They wouldn’t have dreamt of it! Because we know what man is made of, and if he’s been drinking, even he cannot stop himself from lashing out with his fists. It goes without saying that he’ll have to cover his head with ashes and plead for mercy with a rope around his neck, because he has offended the dead man’s family and the state as well, and he’ll have to pay a fine, which the family and the state will share out between them. And that will be the end of it.” “Well,” observed Krylenko, “that’s still true today, if you kill someone like that, in the midst of a brawl and without premeditation, as they say…”

  “But of course!” Nazar pursued his argument in a blurred voice. “Ten years and no more than that. Those years are in fact the satisfaction required by the victim and the state, and the necessary time for the guilty party to understand the error of his ways.”

  “And the law of retaliation did not exist in the Middle Ages,” Krylenko summarised the argument, “and their law could still be acceptable today?”

  “It would for our people. Not in the West, of course.

  People are complicated over there, even the criminals like to think things out. A simple system would not work with them. It’s different here in Russia; retaliation has nothing to do with it. You have to examine the circumstances, just as they did in those centuries, however dark they were supposed to be. Let’s take another example: say you’ve got a neighbour, and you argue with this neighbour. His cows enter your meadow and his labourers cut your corn and lots of stuff like that. He just laughs it off and says there’s not a word of truth in it and he challenges you: why don’t you complain to the judge, but the judge, as luck would have it, is his brother-in-law. So one evening when it gets dark, you and a couple of others wait for him behind the stable with an axe, and when he comes out – just like that, as good neighbours should… And even then, they don’t sentence you to death. Because we all know that it is in the nature of man to quarrel, and when he has been offended, he can only defend his honour, and there are cases in which there is only one way to defend one’s honour. Of course you will have to pay, and not only that: if the dead man’s relations don’t accept your offer, then that’s your affair and you’ll have to slug it out with them. But if they accept, then it is all over. That is what our ancient law was like.”

  “But let’s suppose that you killed your neighbour in order to steal from him,” suggested Krylenko.

  “Well in that case, there would be no escape: they would break your back on the wheel,” Nazar decreed while attempting to pour the last few drops of port into his glass.

  For some reason, his throat was burning horribly and his head was aching. Yet he felt that he was demonstrating something of great moment, and was satisfied with his delivery. The law, he summed up, cannot be equal for everyone, no sir! You have to take into account the nature of people… That’s right, the nature of the people… And again a minute later just before he collapsed into a deep sleep, he was stunned: Exactly, but why haven’t I thought of this before? The Middle Ages, you need to study the Middle Ages…

  XIV

  Amongst the believers

  Baku, May 1988

  When the travellers found themselves on the platform at Baku Station, Major Serov shouldered Nadezhda Stepanovna’s bag and then offered her his arm.

  “Well, we are going in the same direction. Allow me to give you a lift!”

  “Merci,” Pushkareva happily clung to the uniform. Serov signalled to a porter and then disappeared into the crowd with the woman on his arm. After having said goodbye to Krylenko, Nazar crossed the station foyer towards a side exit where, judging from the signs, he was likely to find the car park. He had hopes that the car from the Prosecutor’s Office might still be waiting for him. But probably not: the train had arrived three hours late and the driver would surely have had better things to do. He would have to fend for himself. The usual crowd of loud and poorly dressed people was all around him, laden with plastic bags and cardboard suitcases – the same crowd that appears to permanently encumber the stations and airports of this nation. Yet when he stepped out into the dust and heat of the middle of the day, Nazar discovered that the car park, or at least that bit of it, was empty. The reason for this solitude became immediately clear: a tank’s engine was chugging heavily, and no one, it appeared, had any desire to park close to such a cumbersome neighbour. Nazar’s curiosity caused him to stop and study the large metal beast: a second lieutenant in overalls was kneeling and busying around one of the tracks. He wiped his forehead with a hand covered in engine grease, and as he looked around aimlessly, his eyes encountered Lappa’s. The judge took in his blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair falling over the forehead now smeared with grease and under the black beret of the tank corps. The second lieutenant stood up slowly without looking away from that passer-by who was observing him, and then he scrambled up to the turret with unexpected agility, lowered himself into the hatch and disappeared inside. Immediately the engine was switched off and the sudden silence in that corner of the car park became even more distant from the roisterous flow of traffic on the boulevard. Turning his back on the tank, Nazar crossed the car park and halted at the other end. He put down his suitcase, which had unexpectedly become very heavy. The air was thick with the smell of petrol, something of which his fellow travellers had forewarned him: in Baku you can never forget about petrol; you drink it in the water and you breathe it in the air. Down in Baku, they said, there are cars everywhere, but they are all in a sorry state of disrepair, their paintwork blistered with rust, their chrome dulled by the smog and their exhausts belching black smoke. They drive them until they eventually fall apart and then leave them wherever chance would have it. No one bothers to tow them away…

  Nazar carefully observed the cars casually parked around the car park and beyond, on the street or even on the pavement. They were nearly all old Zhigulis and Moskviches, but there was the occasiona
l American car with shiny paintwork. In a chrome yellow Chevrolet, which had been blithely double parked, a guy with a black moustache was seated at the wheel and reading a newspaper. On seeing the fat man with glasses observing him with a questioning air, the driver stopped reading and calmly returned the stare.

  Then he lit a cigarette and returned to his reading – most definitely not the driver sent by the Prosecutor’s Office.

  Nazar wondered if he should take a taxi, but there didn’t appear to be any. Who could he ask? He thought about knocking on the window of the man reading a newspaper, but immediately rejected the idea. Dragging his suitcase behind him, he went back under the station’s concrete shelter. Through the window he could see the buses lined up against the bus shelter in the other corner of the square.

  He dried his sweaty forehead and marched off in that direction. He was looking for someone in uniform he could ask for information – a soldier, a policeman or better still a bus driver. But there was no one about. Well, we’re off to a good start, he thought. He pushed at a door he chose randomly and entered an office. The walls were painted a dirty grey colour, and although it was the middle of the day, the lamp hanging from the ceiling was switched on. From behind his desk, a man in his shirtsleeves who, like every other man around here, had a moustache, olive complexion and black hair, asked him what he wanted.

  “Could you tell me, please, where I could find a taxi to get to the centre of town?” The man shrugged his shoulders. “Not if there aren’t any outside,” he replied grudgingly.

  “Is there at least a bus?”

  “Of course there is,” he confirmed. He pointed with his thumb to a bus parked in the sun, and added, “That’s the first one to leave.”