The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  That afternoon in the archive flew by for Tanya, so when the attendant came up to her table and stopped right next to her, she was stunned to see that the reading room was now empty. She looked at her watch and realised that it was nearly closing time.

  “Tatyana Borisovna,” said the attendant, who must have read her name in the register at the entrance.

  “Yes!” Tanya cut her short and started to gather her papers. “I know, you’ll have to excuse me! I’m just leaving.”

  “But what are you saying, Tatyana Borisovna,” the woman seemed shocked. “You can stay just where you are. I have come, because I want to speak to you…”

  Tanya, surprised, studied the woman carefully: she was tiny, about forty-five years of age, and wearing a threadbare blue cotton overall.

  “I noticed,” the attendant went on, “that you come here often. It appears that you are engaged in historical research.”

  “Yes,” Tanya replied, feeling her previous suspicions return. Have THEY sent her? she asked herself. And what can they want now? Be on your guard!

  “Are you perhaps writing a thesis?” the woman’s eyes were as sharp as needles. “Yes,” Tanya replied. “But why do you want to know?” she finally decided to ask.

  “Tatyana Borisovna, you inspire me with confidence,” exclaimed the other, after having glanced around the room to check, she lowered her voice, “I have been working here for twenty years, perhaps even twenty-five; you cannot imagine the things that I have seen. Tatyana Borisovna, people come here who you could never trust, but you are different.”

  She’s mad, Tanya thought to herself, and that assumption, although alarming, allowed her to regain her self-control. As we all know, you have to agree with everything mad people say. There is no other option.

  “In this archive,” the woman started to whisper into Tanya’s ear, and her breath revealed that she smoked, and smoked a great deal, and perhaps also drank, “in this archive we have the most extraordinary documents, and mostly they have nothing to do with either the history of CPSU or Marxism-Leninism! I realised this on the first day. I am not an ignorant woman, Tatyana Borisovna. Once… But that does not matter. All the world’s down there in those basements! For example, many years ago we received the collection belonging to the academician Tarle: all his papers, drafts, and a crate of documents. It appears that he was collecting them… Now it’s kept in Vorontsova’s office, and she is supposed to be classifying it all and reordering the material. She hasn’t finished yet, and after that, they will just bury it in some cabinet. But I took this!”

  With a sudden movement, she whisked a white envelope out of her overall pocket: it was an envelope of the most common kind with a small red fish stamped in a corner, but the woman then took out a small sheet of paper that did not look at all ordinary. This writing paper had been yellowed by the passing years, and the writing that covered it was antiquated with elaborate swirls and flourishes, and full of letters and orthographic signs that have since fallen into disuse. Tanya’s curiosity was awakened, and she unfolded it and tried to decipher the text. With great difficult and increasing wonderment she managed to read: 26 August 1812 My distinguished lord, Count Fyodor Vasilyevich, Today we have engaged in a battle most hot and bloody. With our dear Lord’s indulgence, the Orthodox army did not give an inch, even though the enemy with forces most excellent spared no effort in its onslaught against us. Tomorrow I hope, on placing my trust in God and the Holy Virgin of Moscow, to fight them with fresh troops.

  I rely on Your Magnificence to send me of the soldiers under Your command the largest possible detachment.

  With true and most perfect deference for Your Magnificence, my distinguished lord, I remain your most devoted servant, Mikhaylo Kutuzov “But,” said Tanya, “but, but I don’t want this letter! It is a very precious thing, one of Kutuzov’s autograph letters. It should be in a museum.”

  The woman smiled and winked.

  “I got it for you, Tatyana Borisovna, but you can, if you want, give it to a museum. It is just, you must agree, that this is not the appropriate place for it.”

  “But I don’t want it!” repeated Tanya, now agitated and extending as far as possible the hand that held that precious piece of yellowed paper between two fingers, as though she was frightened of crumpling it. “Take it back, and put it in its proper place immediately.”

  The attendant shook her head, “Do you see what you are like, Tatyana Borisovna! I feared that you would have reacted in this fashion. My heart told me so, and yet I wanted to try. It is a pity that you do not want to keep the letter. They will lose it here, or someone will steal it. But I knew this would happen. I now can predict in a flash who is who and which is which: which ones will accept my little presents and which ones will start to protest. But believe me, a present like this, one of Kutuzov’s letters, no one has ever refused that, never!”

  Tanya was astounded, “But are you saying… that you… surely…?”

  “Of course,” the woman happily exclaimed and shook her short hair dyed red – dyed with cheap hair colour, it has to be said. “For years! Since I first came to work here. And nobody has ever noticed.” Tanya didn’t know where to look. And what was she to do with this woman? Report her? Is that possible? She will end up in prison and lose her job… And what will happen to all the scholars who have been happily carrying home her presents over the last twenty years? No, it would be a scandal… And while a bewildered Tanya attempted to work out what she should do next, the woman spoke again, “Tatyana Borisovna, I understand. You’re not interested in these antiquarian items; you need something more modern.

  I saw where you were sticking your nose, and the documents you have ordered in recent days. So give me back the letter, and I’ll put it back – perhaps. But take this instead!”

  And with another sudden movement, she produced something from her apron pocket and put it down on Tanya’s table. It was a purple notebook.

  “But I’ve told you that I don’t want it,” Tanya exclaimed.

  The woman lifted a straightened finger to her mouth, “Sssssh! Don’t cause a commotion, Tatyana Borisovna! Just take it away, believe me. Don’t try to return it because it does not belong to the archive; even the archivists don’t know about it. There are four crates of the stuff, and they brought them here in the middle of the night and hid them in a corner of the basements. The previous evening they weren’t there, and the morning afterwards here they are. No one goes to that corner of the building, except me. I go there every now and then to read and smoke a cigarette, and so I found them and started to poke around. There’s quite a few papers like that one. Take it away, and if you report me, I’ll say that I know nothing about it and that you’re mad, and you’ll be the one to end up in trouble. Take it out of here and take a look at it.”

  In that moment, an archivist stuck her head around the door. “Hey, Lyuda, it’s time to close up!” she ordered curtly.

  Tanya gave quite a start and immediately set about putting her cards in order, and in her anxiety she lost sight of the attendant (by the way, have you recognised the little woman? No! That’s bad! We’ve already come across her!

  What do you mean, where? Hold on a moment, I can’t make things that easy for you! Go back, go back and look for her in one of the early chapters… And if you don’t, I’ll not stand for any complaints that all this does not add up, that the stories don’t intersect and the plot just limps along). Immediately after the disappearance of the attendant, there was just the notebook on the table. Leave it there?

  That would be the safest thing, she thought. However the curiosity to see what it was about was also strong. While she was putting away her own notebooks, she picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It was true: there were no labels, nor archive’s markings of any kind. She opened it with hands that were slightly trembling.

  8 January, fifteen kilos, just mine, 10 AK 74 for Philosopher

  19 January, twenty kilos, 10,000 for Rock

&nbs
p; 23 January, seven kilos and six hundred grams, 10 AK 74 for Philosopher

  What is this stuff? Tanya thought. I don’t understand it, but it’s strange. What neat handwriting though, you can read it like a book. And then what? She flicked a few pages further on: the list continued, and always written in that same careful hand:

  1 March, thirty kilos, brown sugar, 25 AK 74 for Philosopher

  7 March, twenty kilos, just mine, 10,000 for Diamond

  No, this is ridiculous, thought Tanya, what has this got to do with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism? In the basements, the woman was saying – maybe, but what does that mean? The notebook fell out of her hand, and when she picked it up, a piece of paper fell out. It was another note, also dated – clearly whoever was keeping these accounts with such a neat hand must have been a meticulous man.

  3 February 1987, available: 7 kilos and 340 grams of Afghan, 3 kilos and 750 grams coca, 3 kilos and 100 grams brown sugar, one part good condition and one part old, the rest rubbery.

  Afghan? Coca? Well, there were no longer any doubts: but what is this stuff? Drugs, of course…

  “We’re closing!”

  Yes, yes, straightaway! Do I put this back? But where?

  And stop being such a coward! Tanya suddenly made up her mind, closed the purple notebook, pushed it amongst her own ones, and then headed for the exit with her heart beating wildly – you’ll forgive the trite expression. And there in the ground-floor corridor just in front of the little door they always keep closed and which leads to all the basements, was the attendant waiting for her. “Tatyana Borisovna! Come with me. I want to show you the rest of it!” And as a panic-stricken Tanya was recoiling, she added, “But come on then! I’ll get you out of here; there’ll be no checks.”

  And she went through the door and down a few steps before turning to wait for Tanya. There was little choice:

  Tanya had to follow. It was cold down there in the Institute’s basements, and anything you touched was covered with dust, which was on the cement floor as well as the bookshelves that extended into an infinity of semi-darkness, and contained files that no one had taken out in decades.

  But the exploration did not take long: at a sudden bend in the corridor, a narrow opening made it possible to slip behind a bookcase and there in a recess full of innumerable cigarette butts, you could see four wooden crates just like the ones you can find in any street market any day of the week. Tanya came closer: they were open and full of ledgers, notebooks, box files simply chucked in on top of each other.

  Dirtying her hands, she opened one or two of these volumes randomly: sufficient to confirm that they were all accounts, and written in the same hand that had compiled the purple notebook. And what strange accounts! Roubles by the thousand and even tens of thousands – and transactions that are difficult to decipher, but at first sight, there doesn’t appear to be much that is above board… In the meantime, the attendant was observing her, having already lit a cigarette. Her eyes were shining, “What did I tell you? They wanted to hide this, but I found out.”

  Tanya bit her lip. What should she do? It was not an easy decision. God, why did this have to happen to me – why me?

  “I don’t want to know anything about it,” Lyuda continued, “I know how to read! And I’ve glanced at the odd page from amongst this pile of paper – and listen to me, Tatyana Borisovna, this is deep shit! So, you make up your mind what should be done next. I’m not going to say a thing!

  But now follow me. It’s time to get you out of here, otherwise someone will come down to look for me.”

  In a few seconds Lyuda had taken her to a back exit, which she unlocked and then practically pushed Tanya into the street – a narrow lane. Behind her Tanya could hear the sound of the door closing, the key in the lock and the little steps of the elf-woman walking away… At home, Tanya carefully examined the notebook from the first to the last page, or rather up to the middle, because that was where the entries came to an end. They covered the period from December to June, and rarely did five or six days pass without an entry. In most cases, the nature of the delivery was not specified; probably Afghan opium, Tanya concluded, as in a few cases “brown sugar” or “coca” were specified. Clearly these were a drug dealer’s accounts, and the quantities were colossal… But the most important discovery came on the last page: it contained a list of the pseudonyms used throughout the book, “Rock”, “Thrush”, “Philosopher”, “Diamond” and I can’t remember how many others, and next to each one there was not a surname – that would have been too much! – but a telephone number. The obvious thing to do was to consult Oleg, who was out of town that evening and wouldn’t be back until the next day…

  Tanya therefore transcribed those numbers onto an apparently innocuous piece of paper, and the following morning she went to the nearest information kiosk at the Baumansky Market. Fortunately there was no important railway station in the district so at the kiosk, unlike the more central ones, there wasn’t the usual queue of provincials looking for addresses. In fact, given the early hour, there was only one customer in front of her, a man with a grey moustache and peaked cap. He pushed a coin under the glass and announced a surname, forename and patronymic.

  “Date of birth?” asked the woman sitting behind the glass. “Well, who knows?” muttered the man disconcertedly.

  “We were called up around the same time… He must have been born in 1930, Grisha, in ’31…”

  “Place of birth?” the clerk continued coolly.

  “I’ve no idea!” the man protested.

  “Comrade, these are the rules,” said the woman, pointing to a notice hanging in the window. Customers were informed that to obtain the address of a Moscow resident it was necessary to provide not only the surname, forename and patronymic, but also the date and place of birth.

  “But with these rules, I wouldn’t even be able to find my mother!” the man started to get angry.

  The woman shrugged and did not deign to answer.

  “Okay, put down Saratov!” the grey moustache suddenly decided. The woman disappeared into the interior of the kiosk, and Tanya, who was impatiently stamping her feet, studied the list of services on offer, which was also hanging in the window: addresses and telephone numbers, 40 kopecks; suburban train timetables, 15 kopecks; timetables of longdistance trains and flights, 40 kopecks; information on sanatoriums and rest homes, 30 kopecks; information on package holidays, 1 rouble; information of a legal nature, 40 kopecks; information on lost documents, 1 rouble; information whose retrieval is problematic, 3 roubles. Like many Muscovites, Tanya had never made use of one of these kiosks, and the information offered appeared not a little bizarre. What, for instance, could “information of a legal nature” mean? And how do you establish beforehand what is “information whose retrieval is problematic”?

  “There’s a Mavrin Grigory Vladimirovich, born in Saratov, but in 1934,” the woman announced. “Here is the address,” and she passed a piece of paper under the glass.

  The man took it and studied it, “I don’t know… In ’34, he would be too young… Well, it might be him… 335 Gastello Street, never heard of that road. Excuse me, but how do you get there?”

  “To find that out, you need to apply to the Information Office for Municipal Transport,” the woman terminated the transaction abruptly. “Next!”

  “It’s not far from here,” Tanya came to the help of the man from the provinces. “You can take – hold on – the number 78, you’ll find the bus stop just down there… On the right, or you’ll go in the wrong direction.”

  “Thank you, young woman,” the man hurriedly replied, and went off with his piece of paper. Tanya turned to the clerk who was looking at her coldly from behind the glass.

  “Excuse me, I would like to know… I have some telephone numbers. Is it possible to know the names of the subscribers?”

  The clerk shook her head, “No, we don’t give out that information.”

  “Not even if I pay three roubles?” Ta
nya insisted.

  “No,” the woman concluded and, given that there were no more customers, she turned her back and disappeared once more into the back room. Tanya clenched her fist with rage, but there was nothing for it: if they won’t give out the information, then they won’t… So what next? And why had she got it into her head that, before anything else, she had to discover who those telephone numbers belonged to, as though they were the key to it all. Who do you turn to when you discover a secret – and a nasty one at that? If we were in the West, it would all be so easy: you’d go to the New York Times or the Washington Post, and there they would uncover another Watergate in the blink of an eyelid… But here in Russia? Well in any event, Tanya had already decided that the next step was to go and see Oleg at the editorial office and tell him the whole story. And this is what she did.