The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  Nazar decides to confront the woman in the grimy scarf, from which a few tufts of hair have broken free, half blond and half grey.

  “Excuse me! They never issued me with a docket,” he had chosen that word because it sounded reassuringly official, “but the baggage was most certainly there. Four cases actually. They must be the only ones left. Perhaps you would like to check?”

  “Without a receipt, we cannot release anything,” the woman dismisses him and disappears into a kind of storeroom behind the counter. “One moment! Come back here! I want to speak to your superior,” Nazar screams.

  The woman puts her head back round the door. “Are you drunk or something? Watch it or I’ll have you put in a cell.”

  At the end of the hall, a policeman suddenly appears and with a heavy tread makes his way towards the counter.

  “Well, what’s going on? Why are you shouting?” he hisses.

  “There’s been a misunderstanding. I have to collect some baggage, and I am a judge – here you are – of the Chief Prosecutor’s Office,” declares Nazar, while showing his identity card. “I must speak to the manager of the baggage office.”

  The policeman examines the red identity card for a long time.

  “The door is down at the end,” he tells him, having lost all interest. Nazar rushes to the door, knocks but no one replies. He knocks again: silence. So he opens and goes in.

  There’s another woman seated at a desk and reading an illustrated magazine.

  “Well?” she protests. “Since when do people just walk in like that?”

  “Listen, I am a judge from the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, and I have just flown in from Baku. I had brought with me some crates of documents, all of which have been sequestrated, and now they don’t want to hand them over.”

  “You hand over the receipt and we’ll give you your crates,” the woman decrees and lowers her eyes back to the magazine, which is open at a photograph of Raisa Gorbacheva buying perfume in Place Vendôme – and she is much more interesting than the fat, unshaved man in the crumpled shirt standing in front of her.

  “What do you mean, hand over the receipt? I keep telling you that there isn’t one.”

  “They’re always losing things, and I’m the one who has to pay for it,” the woman complains grumpily. She closes the magazine, in spite of Raisa Gorbacheva. “Right, let’s go and see about these crates.”

  Nazar waits for at least ten minutes at the counter. The two women have disappeared, and at the end of the hall the policemen is leaning against the wall fast asleep. Eventually the manageress reappears with a register in her hands. “Okay, four crates on Flight 609 from Baku, content: trial papers registered in the name of Nazar Kallistratovich– Lappa?”

  “That’s it,” Nazar brightens up.

  “Well, the crates have already been collected.”

  “What do you mean? How can that be?” the judge is completely lost.

  “Look at it yourself,” she drawls, sticking it under his nose. The entire load is listed and next to his crates, there’s a delivery stamp and a signature. The handwriting is not his, but the name is.

  “But here there is an irregularity! Someone has signed in my place.”

  The woman shrugs.

  “But who collected them? And from whom?”

  “You expect me to know. Dasha! Dasha!”

  The woman in scarf reappears.

  “Who collected these crates?”

  “What do I know? They came, signed and took them away.”

  “And the receipt? I suppose they had one?”

  “Of course they had one,” Dasha responds defiantly and withdraws to the storeroom.

  “But we have to find them – arrest them,” Nazar demands.

  “I suggest you go to the police,” the manageress concludes frostily, and then the door closes behind her.

  XIX

  A conspiracy of women

  Baku, July 1988

  A few weeks after Nazar Kallistratovich’s premature departure from Baku, Tanya also turned up in the Land of Petroleum, and billeted herself on her mother’s childhood friend, Tamara Pavlovna, as had been arranged in the unfortunate event of her institute refusing to give her a secondment, which turned out to be the case. Once notified by phone, Tamara Pavlovna had made the necessary preparations: she attached a washing line to opposite walls of her single-room flat, and from it she hung a sheet using clothes pegs. The room was now divided in two, a tiny area for each of them. Behind that makeshift screen, the landlady would watch television late into the evening and then would switch off the light and start to snore. She was aware of nothing: not the noise of the traffic that rose from the street, and not the girl who tossed and turned on the sofa, unable to sleep and tormented by the heat and the mosquitoes. When she could stand it no longer, Tanya would get up and tiptoe out of the room, a little unnecessarily as Tamara Pavlovna would never wake up.

  She went to the bathroom or the tiny kitchen to drink a glass of water. Of course, the water in Baku is hellish, but what can you do? You can’t always drink mineral water.

  Luckily this doesn’t cost anything, she thinks as she closes the tap; there’ll be a day when they’ll make us pay. And the warning signs are there to see, and there are more and more of them. For instance, when she got to the station, she had had to hold her stomach because of the cramps. The heat had made her drink too much water. She hadn’t been able to go the bathroom; we know the state those places are in, after two days of travel. Then she discovered that the bus didn’t leave for half an hour and, my God, the toilets will be no better here than the ones on the train, but she can hardly piss in her clothes. She looks around and there’s a public lavatory: a marvel with shiny new toilets. Over the door, there was a sign: PUBLIC CONVENIENCE COOPERATIVE, and under the sign a young woman was seated at a table and tearing off the tickets: You want to come in and answer the call of nature? Then pay up. Tanya paid, of course, but a family with four kids of between four and eleven looked as though the cooperative crapper had ruined them financially, and they had to shell out three roubles just to let their kids have a piss. Of course, the system is pretty neat: the cooperative installs the toilets and cleans them, and the city council washes its hands of the whole business. When Tanya told her story to Tamara Pavlovna, the woman started to laugh: My dear, there isn’t a single public lavatory left in the city, they are all in the hands of the cooperatives. They’ve even appeared in the market square: anyone who wants a piss, will have to pay for it.

  Quite right, she said. You paid for the beer or the fruit juice?

  You weren’t expecting the state to pay for your drink, so when you put that drink out the other end, you have to pay again. Tanya even felt fearful when she listened to Tamara Pavlovna. Of course, she was a wonderful woman and was sitting there covered in sweat after having come down to the street to help her with her suitcases. In response to Tanya’s thank-yous, she said that any daughter of Lidya Aleksandrovna should feel that she was at home there. Yet she did frighten her with all her pay this and pay that. She listened to her sermons and she thought of Chimut-Dorzhev: the mincer of capitalism…

  But let’s go through this in its proper order. Let’s tell it all: Tanya’s triumphs and humiliations in Baku. Starting, say, with the KGB Archive at Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers, No. 14. Why did she rush there immediately; did she not know how it would end up? Incredible though it may seem, she had slightly deluded herself about this; after all the newspapers were so full of enthusiastic talk about the new direction that it now seemed that the doors had been thrown open everywhere. And she, the idiot, had believed it.

  Initially it really did seem to be true: you ring the bell and they open the door. Look, it has all the appearance of a normal place – of just another vulgar little police station: a small room, a desk, a policeman reading the newspaper, and behind the desk, another small room, through whose door you can see an unmade camp bed and a football on the floor and three or four coloured f
ootball pennants with foreign writing: Milan, Juventus, Liverpool. So it’s true: sport consolidates the friendship between peoples! When the female visitor comes in, the man folds away his newspaper and is polite: You would like to consult our archive? Please, take a seat. Could I see your papers? Moscow, huh? The Institute of History of the CPSU. Do you have a secondment? Tanya ignores this and smiles, while the knife turns in her guts: no, I don’t and why should I? I’m here, one might say, as a private citizen. The idiot really had believed all that stuff. The footballer stands up; he must be two metres tall and weigh a hundred kilos, but is always polite. Please follow me, we’ll talk about this with the captain; he’ll know what to do. In Tanya’s eyes, the captain in question is just another Azeri with a moustache and sideburns, but also one with sandals on his feet and a brown jacket. We, of course, have a little extra knowledge: you’ll have recognised our friend, Captain Musayev. In appearance, he too is polite, they’re all polite in there.

  “Please sit down,” he smiles and actually offers her a chair.

  “We have received, yes… We, of course, would not have any difficulties, but the secondment order, you’ll understand I’m sure, is required by the regulations. And you, it appears, have come here as a private citizen.” The captain pronounces those repugnant words with some hesitation: what the hell is that supposed to mean – private citizen?

  And you can sense that, polite as he is, he would like to get up, grab her by the neck and throw her head against the wall: here in the Soviet Union there is nothing private, do you understand me, yes or no? There are no football club pennants in the captain’s office, but just a portrait of Iron Feliks. What’s that? Who is this Feliks Edmundovich? Hell, you don’t know very much, do you? It’s Dzerzhinsky, of course, Polish noble, knight of the Revolution, and founder and tutelary deity of the Cheka, which ultimately evolved into the KGB… And underneath that portrait, Musayev is stroking his own moustache and sighing: it’s a shame but there’s nothing for it. This is not of our making. We want to help our citizens. Here we have the form ready to be compiled. Please take it, we’re here at your disposal. You, citizen, can go back to Moscow, get a stamp put on it and then come back to our door, throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder, close your eyes and say: Open, Sesame! Just like that.

  And Musayev, you can bet, knew exactly what had happened: if she had just turned up there without a secondment order, then that meant that not even a dog up in Moscow was willing to sign it. There was no point in talking to Obilin, and yet Tanya was not the kind of person who gives in easily – she had tried up to the very end! That day, they were both in the library, waiting for their books; the librarian, Nastasya Petrovna Rapp, had already gone up to get them, but she had to go up two floors on foot, pushing the trolley, and Rapp, we all know, is lame. Who knows why they don’t get the janitor Kiknadze to do this job? He just sits all day in the porter’s lodge shelling sunflower seeds, but it seems you cannot switch the jobs of employees. There is, they say, the job description, and you would have to make an application – and who would you make it to? This too is something nobody knows. In any event, Tanya had calculated everything, and she brought up the question of the secondment order just in that moment and there was as much time to discuss it as anyone would want. But Obilin knew how to waste all that time, and without saying yes or no. There had been some mix-ups, but he didn’t tell her exactly what they were. You have no idea, he accused her at one stage, of the number of formalities we are obliged to adhere to. And she, the foxy woman, said, But the last time, we didn’t need any formalities. And he, immediately offended, Exactly! And you’ve no idea the trials and tribulations I had to put with; I was too nice about it and didn’t want to waste your time, but in the end it’s my neck on the line. And then, and then, and then… And then Rapp reappeared, he took his books and ran off to lock himself up in his study. He wasn’t seen for the rest of the day. Tanya, in the absence of anything better, decided to try Sarabyanova. After all, she was the one who had signed the application for access to the archive without even asking her what it was. When Viktor Nikolayevich is away, she is the one who takes command of the Institute: she signs, gives permission, sends people round the world. She savours power, and to savour it to the full, she is obliged to always say yes. She has no choice, because if not, people would say behind her back that she isn’t authorised and that she has to wait for the director’s return. He then phones the Institute: Antonina Timofeyevna, how are things going there? Would you transfer me to Dekanozov! And she hesitantly: professor, Dekanozov is away. Ah well, put me on to Arbuzov then. And she in an astonished voice: Ar-buzov?

  She clearly wants to suggest that there is no Arbuzov, that he is mistaken. And then, rather reluctantly: Arbuzov isn’t here at the moment, he is… and she stretches out the “is” in the hope that he will interrupt her. And he does in fact interrupt her: Well, let’s cut to the quick, who is there? The minute I go away, everyone stops coming into work. And of course, he is happy – the boss is indispensable. So on the first occasion that Obilin called in saying he had a cold and wouldn’t be coming in to work, Tanya lost no time in knocking at Sarabyanova’s door: What can I do, Antonina Timofeyevna? The director isn’t in, and we need this secondment order immediately! But instead of smiling widely and looking for her pen, the woman puts on her glasses and studies the form, which has already been filled and is ready for the signature, and then: No, no, no, such things can only be signed by Viktor Nikolayevich! And Tanya: But what difference would it make, Antonina Timofeyevna, dear, you are the deputy director here; everything he can do, you can do as well! But it was immediately clear that there was nothing to be done, and it would have been no use reminding her that she was his right arm and also his left, as Obilin himself liked to say again and again. No, no, which arms would they be? She just didn’t want to sign. Clearly somebody had put the frighteners on her too, so who could Tanya ask? Sometimes, when Sarabyanova is on holiday, the old man uses Shvarts as his deputy, as the Institute does not have any other full professors. But Ilya Pavlovich, Tanya reflected, is not the type to tread on anybody else’s toes: if Sarabyanova is in the institute, then he probably won’t even come in, and if he comes, he’s certainly not going to start to sign off secondments on a whim. She too needs to be away for a few days, but how do you find out when she’s on holiday? You could hardly go back to see her after an hour and say very casually: Oh by the way, Antonina Timofeyevna, when exactly are you going to clear off? No, it’s a difficult one, but there is no way round it. So, of course, one humiliation leads to many others: Tanya now had to leave the KGB offices with a form of countless pages – the captain has insisted on her taking it, and both of them knew that she would never use it.

  And how are we to define her phone call home: humiliation or triumph? Well, judge for yourselves. There is a crowd of people in the waiting room for the public phones, and the benches along the walls are not sufficient for all of them. There are people there who might have been waiting for up to ten hours for a call to be passed to them. Tanya is lucky and after three-quarters of an hour, they open a second counter: she is close by and manages to be amongst the first in the new line. Another ten minutes and she is talking to the telephonist. She passes her a piece of paper with the number under the glass, and the young woman pushes it back without even looking at it: the line, she says, is occupied; we can book next week for you. And today is Monday! And all these people, Tanya tries to argue, they’re managing to get through? The woman shrugs her shoulders; she’s wearing a skimpy, flower-patterned dress and under the counter she has an open book. Not everyone is ringing Moscow, she says. And those who are, have had to book.

  Citizen, tell me your name, you can come back, – let’s see, she mutters as she thumbs through the register – next Tuesday at six. Is that six in the evening? asks Tanya, and the woman laughs in her face: No, why evening? In the morning! But come here a little earlier; you never know.

  When she got back to the flat, she
could not stop herself from letting off steam with Tamara Pavlovna: This is how it is! I can’t speak to Mother until next Tuesday, but I know very well that she gets palpitations if I don’t phone when I’m away, and then she takes it out on Granny. Sooner or later I’m going to get home and find nobody there, just because there aren’t enough telephone lines! But how can we live like this? Tamara Pavlovna shook her head: My dear girl, she protested, you should have told me. Whatever gave you the idea of going to the public telephones? Leave that to others!

  She took her by the hand, went out on the landing and knocked on the door opposite. That’s where the clerical worker, Zoya Yegorovna, lived. She too was divorced. They would meet up to watch television or drink tea… Zoya Yegorovna came to open the door in her dressing gown; she was the same age as Tamara Pavlovna, perhaps a year or two older. Zoya, my dear, you must excuse me but my little girl here has some problems. Tanya’s heart sank, and “little girl” too! Tamara Pavlovna quickly elucidated the entire affair, and Zoya Yegorovna smiled maternally, Please come in and make yourselves at home! She kept her phone on the bedside table, and so Tanya had to go into the bedroom: the bed was still unmade at five in the afternoon and, what is more, it had been slept in on both sides. “Give me your number,” Zoya demanded and speaking loudly into the phone, “Yes? Hello, Vitka, is that you? It’s Zoya here, my sweetheart. It’s been a long time, I know. And Seryozha, how is he? You don’t say! You must tell me about it. Now!”

  She launched into tittle-tattle like a magpie on speed, and seemed to have forgotten all about her visitors. And they certainly covered some territory! Seryozha, whoever he was, was not coming out of this smelling of roses. In the meantime, twenty minutes went by and Tanya didn’t know where to look: she didn’t like the idea of sitting down on the unmade bed, but she liked even less the idea of getting up and snooping around. Tamara Pavlovna, on the other hand, was having a wonderful time: she interrupted the conversation to have her own say, touched Zoya Yegorovna on the elbow, and made signs towards Tanya, who suffered in silence. And then, after these twenty minutes, she heard Zoya Yegorovna dictating the phone number of her own home in Moscow, and then a few seconds later, the woman held out the receiver: Come and listen! But it wasn’t her mother on the phone, but the telephonist, Vitka the sweetheart, and she had to tell Tanya: I’m so sorry, Tatyana Borisovna, I’ve just tried, but no one is answering. Would you like to ring tomorrow at nine? All right, Tanya said naively, I’ll go to the public telephones, but there they told me – but Vitka had already interrupted her, But why the public telephone? Ring from where you are now, from Zoya!