The Anonymous Novel

by Alessandro Barbero

  And while the fresh-faced soldiers on national service who guarded Baku’s crossroads were replaced by parachutists and shock troops – savage Afghanistan veterans who wouldn’t have thought twice about smashing a demonstrator’s face with a shovel or shooting him in the stomach; while Armenian and Russian houses and cars burnt occasionally with Armenians and Russians inside them, in full view of television reporters from around the world who rubbed their hands with glee at such a spectacle on the cheap; while assault rifles and rocket launchers imported from Iran or openly stolen from Army barracks were bloodying the mountains of Karabakh, and Azeri and Armenian officers, often also Afghan veterans, were leaving the service that had once united them to go and train their respective armed bands; while CNN was showing these marvels to the world and peace-loving Muscovites wondered what kind of country they were living in, here we see the former First Secretary of the Party, Abdurrakhman Vezirov, rushing to Moscow because his compatriots wanted to bump him off, and suddenly all those dismissals that the Chief Prosecutor of the USSR had been unable to enforce came about of their own accord, without resolutions or decrees…

  Nazar could then start to tick off a few names from his list of wanted men. Vezirov, of course, could not be arrested.

  What kind of an impression would that make? He came to Moscow to seek asylum, and we throw him IN THE COOLER – and before taking over the unfortunate post of first secretary, this man had been an ambassador of the USSR, and not in any old country, but in Pakistan, one of the most delicate postings. No, they had to leave Vezirov in peace. But they made up for it by handing over some prize specimens tied up hand and foot and nicely gift-wrapped with no skimping on the ribbons. For instance, there were several of those millionaires who controlled business in Baku and had pocketed all those thousands of roubles so diligently recorded by the Accountant. Now they were hurrying to Moscow with suitcases full of money, convinced that they were about to enjoy their old age and not knowing that their cells had already been booked. In the end they also managed to get their hands on Salayev; he, naturally, was a little more cunning. He stayed in Baku where the believers now in power owed him a small debt of gratitude, and although he had prudently left the post of chief of police, it seems that he was not to meet with any harm. But when the Soviet army regained control of the city by no longer imposing a curfew at midnight – a laughable measure now we come to think of it – but martial law and, let’s be honest, open war against the local population, Salayev was picked up in one of the first round-ups of notables suspected of supporting the guerrilla war. The generals threw him in their jail for a bit: kept an eye on him and turned him over and over to find out what he might have been up to, and then didn’t know what to do with him, so they dispatched him to the Prosecutor’s Office in Moscow, where they could dispose of him as they wished…

  Of course, not everything had turned out as Nazar would have wanted. The biggest fish, Dyakonov, had slipped through his hands, and was now swimming in such deep water that Nazar was having trouble keeping up; not of course that our Captain Ahab of Chkalova Street had given up the chase. Stepankov laughed as he pinched his flabby cheeks: What can you do, Kallistratych? he asked, haven’t you heard his lawyers? Your Accountant has become a businessman; he is no longer involved in illegal activities, so why are you so keen to put him inside? Isn’t the purpose of prison, according to modern jurisprudence, to rehabilitate the criminal and transform him into someone useful to society? Well, we’ve gone one better: we rehabilitate them without wasting time on prison and in less than no time, we can put them back into the community; what more could you want? Nazar shook his head on hearing such quips; he could not accept that Dyakanov was permanently beyond his reach. True enough, a shark like that is not easy to catch, and he has teeth that could bite through any net, but who knows whether sooner or later he won’t make another false move! And we all know that Nazar was stubborn and wanted to satisfy his curiosity about a few things before he would allow the file to be sent down to the archives. Where, for instance, had General Yusuf-zade ended up, and how had he managed to disappear into thin air? Okay, he’ll have learnt a few tricks while he was in the KGB, but Nazar wouldn’t have thought him capable of this – hats off to him though! Even his successor, Major Anisimov, who was promoted to colonel for the occasion, had to admit after having taken a broom to the offices in Boulevard of the Petroleum Workers with his usual no-nonsense manner, He’s disappeared and that’s that – without leaving a trace behind him, not even a slight whiff of whisky… The judge would also like an answer to another question – the original one: who killed that poor bastard Pashayev, now forgotten by both God and man, even though he did his best to serve them both? Only one man could answer those questions, and perhaps other ones too, and that was General Yusufzade himself. When I get my hands on him, Nazar would think, I’ll do my damnedest to get a few answers out of him…

  Nazar could not know that those questions would never find an answer, and that General Zia Yusuf-zade would never speak to a judge in this world. His corpse ended up rotting under the rubble on the outskirts of Leninakan, covered with quicklime, sharing the company of his fellow tenants. He had been allocated a room by the management of the Red Caucasus factory a few weeks earlier under the name of Mamedov, engineer and divorced, according to his documents, and he had supposedly moved from Baku to start a new life. If any of those neighbours had been able to nosy about in the two suitcases the engineer brought with him and in which he jokingly said he kept all his worldly goods, they would have been very surprised to discover that they contained neither socks nor shirts, but many large bundles of new ten-rouble notes, still neatly stacked, a bundle of hundred-dollar notes, also in mint condition, a great quantity of photographs and photocopied letters and confidential reports, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and a 0.44 Magnum pistol made in America, well lubricated and kept in a small jute bag with two hundred rounds. But whoever might have been driven by such curiosity would have only had a few weeks in which to satisfy it, and it is very improbable that they would have had time to tell anyone else, given that General Zia Yusuf-zade had just turned up the following quotation, “on the day when the earth shall quiver with all its mountains, and the mountains shall crumble into heaps of shifting sand” (Koran, LXXIII, 14), and he would be struck down as the Prophet had announced, “We caused the earth to swallow him up, together with his dwelling, so that he found none to protect him from God, nor was he able to defend himself” (Koran, XXVIII, 81).

  But of course, Nazar knew nothing of all this when he was offloading Salayev at the reception office at the remand prison. The guard in camouflage uniform with a kalashnikov slung over his shoulder snapped to attention as he went by.

  The combat uniform mixed the colours of mud and dried leaves, of moss and chocolate; the rifle’s barrel had been tarnished so that it wouldn’t sparkle in the sun. Nazar went out on to the street and the prison gates closed behind him with a sharp metallic clatter. He walked three blocks of Matroskaya Tishina Street to where he had parked his skyblue Moskvich; he looked at his watch and suddenly got the urge to take his son out of the nursery school. In theory, it was not possible to pick up children before the established time, but the nursery workers who thus find themselves with one less child to look after do not raise objections; besides, nearly all the rules here in Russia work on that basis now… The nursery school was on the top floor of a building on Simonovsky Val; obviously there was no garden, and so a roof terrace had to be built for the children to play in the sun. This terrace was paved with wooden planks and the wall around it was also lined with planks, so it resembled a house rather than a prison. These planks were painted white, and over that, someone had painted small figures in the style of Russian folk painters: an elephant playing ball, a monkey in shirt and trousers, a clown doing conjuring tricks, a cockerel with feathers of fire; and all in just two colours, red and yellow. Nazar had often seen that decoration, but for the first time he wondered whether the ch
oice of colours had been freely made by the artist or the nursery school administration had been unable to buy other paints. The horizon beyond the wall was hidden by the surrounding blocks of flats, which were four floors higher than the one with the school, so the view from kitchen or bedroom window for many families living on those neighbouring top four floors was of that wood-lined square in which children played for a few weeks each year in the spring and summer. For those who like the judge were standing on the roof terrace, the eye was drawn to the open sky above the surrounding roofs. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Nazar tried to distinguish his son amongst the crowd of children that played at tag and skipping – the little girls in printed cotton dresses with coloured ribbons in their hair and the little boys in shirts and shorts. Then he saw him, because one of the teachers had gone to call him; he was seated with another child at a wooden table and was looking at a picture book. A second later, Misha was running towards him unmindful of book and companion.

  “What sort of a day have you had?”

  “Good,” the boy replied happily, but had nothing more to add. Nazar had already realised that his son had little desire to speak of what went on at the nursery school; that was his life, and he did not want to share it with anyone else, even his mother and father.

  “What did you have to eat today?” he nevertheless attempted to ask him, while they were getting into the car.

  “I can’t remember,” Misha promptly replied, but then after a brief silence, he added. “In my opinion, it is not appropriate to ask me all these questions.”

  “Really, not appropriate?” his father laughed. “I’m not trying to check up on you, Mishanya. It’s just that I like to know how you live.”

  The child went silent. Nazar could see his tense little face in the rear-view mirror – his brow furrowed with deep thought – and clearly one of those questions whereby a fouryear-old attempts to put some order into the world was in arrival. Then the little voice behind came out with it, “Daddy, what is death?”

  The things he thinks up! Nazar cautiously sought out the right words, “Death is when we are no longer there. Sooner or later our bodies get worn out and old, and then we die.”

  “But why?”

  “Because all things get used up in time, and that includes our bodies. It’s like one of your toys: you use it, and sooner or later it doesn’t work; it is broken.”

  “But why?” the boy insists.

  “Because that’s the way it is. Nothing can last forever and not get worn out, and we are no different. And then we don’t always die because we are too old; you can die earlier. We can die in an accident, or of a disease.”

  “Or if someone starts shooting.”

  “Or if someone starts shooting. And if none of these things happen, sooner or later, our bodies just get worn out anyway, and we die.”

  The boy silently meditated on these words, but Nazar knew that he was not going to let the matter rest there. “And when do we die?” he eventually resumed the conversation.

  “I don’t know, son,” Nazar muttered. “Nobody can know that. But don’t you worry, there is still lots of time. First you must grow up and become a daddy too, and Mummy and I will be Granny and Granddad.”

  “I don’t want to grow up,” the child declared.

  “That’s not up to you, Misha,” his father retorted. “All children grow up. But you shouldn’t be afraid. Growing up is terrible, but it is also wonderful. But don’t think about it now. You’ll have lots of time as a child, before you become a grown-up.”

  Misha went silent and Nazar, busy driving through the chaotic traffic of the city centre, forgot about their recent conversation; but the boy found the means to remind him of it, “Why is growing up terrible?”

  Perhaps I used the wrong word, the judge thought.

  Sometimes you shouldn’t say the truth… “I said it can be terrible, because it is so wonderful being a child, and when you grow up, you can no longer do the things you did when you were a child. Now you’re the one who decides, who works, who earns money, and there’s no longer Mummy and Daddy to make all the decisions for you. But I also said it is wonderful, remember that. To live a life, first you need to be a child, and then you need to be a grown-up, otherwise there would be a piece missing. It would be like knowing only the beginning of a song and not the end. Or it’s like a story; you can’t go on repeating the beginning, and never finding out how it all ends up.”

  “And is the end death?” asked Misha with a sharp breath.

  “Hmm, yes,” his father mumbled.

  The child shut himself up once more in his own thoughts, and Nazar waited, because he knew that the conversation still had a little way to go. Misha reflected for a long time, occasionally inspecting his nails, and then, without warning, he suddenly broke the silence, “I will never die.” Nazar glanced up at the rear-view mirror, and saw the child’s expression, a mixture of mischief and hope, like someone who knows he’s come up with a real howler but nevertheless has not given up all expectations of being right.

  “One day, you will also die,” Nazar murmured awkwardly, “but that is a long, long way off. And now don’t think about it again.”

  They parked a few blocks from home; nothing could be found closer. And there on the corner, huddled on the pavement with her back against the wall, a crooked woman with a filthy headscarf was holding out her hand and staring into space. Nazar squeezed his little son’s hand and vainly hoped that he would not notice the beggar; yeah, fat chance of that! The closer they came to that bundle of rags, the more Misha opened his eyes and stared at her. When they were passing, he turned to look at her, and a few steps further on, he actually stopped. The woman by then had also noticed them and was holding out her hand which had not been washed in a long time. With her other arm she was squeezing a smaller bundle of rags to her breast and from it protruded the dirty face of a sleeping baby.

  “Daddy! What’s that?” asked Misha in a tremulous voice.

  “It’s a beggar. Clearly,” Nazar tried to explain while barely suppressing his cowardly desire to rush away, “she doesn’t have a job, and is asking passers-by to give her some money.”

  “So why aren’t we giving her anything?” Misha asked very simply. Of course, why? Because, because… Can I tell him that it’s because these things should not be happening and, in any case, I do not want to see them? Is it not the case that for me these things really do not exist? No, I can’t do that; perhaps the easiest thing really is to give her money… But that is what people did at the time of the Tsars! And today, there are those who should be providing assistance; it certainly shouldn’t be coming from us! Yes, yes, and meanwhile he’s waiting there and is demanding an answer.

  “Let’s give her some,” Nazar muttered, and he took out his wallet to give Misha a half rouble. “Go on, take it to her!”

  The boy ran over, put the coin in the beggar’s hand and, still running, returned to his father.

  “Daddy!” he asked as they walked away. “They do have a house, don’t they?”

  “I don’t know, Misha,” Nazar replied gently. “Perhaps they have, and this evening they’ll go back there with the money to buy some food.”

  And perhaps they don’t, he thought; there are more and more of these vagrants in the stations and subways who are always holding out their hands, and God knows where they sleep… For some reason, he remembered a song they used to sing as children in Pioneer summer camps: My address, went the chorus, is not a house, is not a road; my address is the Soviet Union! Well, Nazar shook his head, until now I never understood what it meant.

  Mummy was not home yet. Nazar took off Misha’s shoes and sat him down in front of the television, which at that time was showing cartoons. Then he took off his jacket and tie, hung them on the back of a chair, rolled up his shirt sleeves and scratched his head. He would have liked to cook something for supper, but what? Asya never allowed him to lift a pan in the kitchen, and he didn’t even know where they were. Be
sides, she had some time ago introduced a particularly severe procedure for controlling the consumption of their hoarded foodstuffs: be careful not to open a jar of sour cherry jam when you were supposed to open the raspberry one; be even more careful not to soak lentils, when you were in fact meant to be cooking buckwheat…

  Potatoes, Nazar had a sudden inspiration, are eaten every day; I could start peeling them, and it only remains to be seen where we keep them. Behind the radiator in the kitchen, which has been off for months? No, there we keep our stocks of soap and candles, and our last light bulbs, bought a long time ago when they briefly reappeared in the shops; they’re not in the cupboards above the plates and glasses either – that’s where we keep bags of rice, oats and pearl barley, and flour for pancakes. Could they be on the balcony? Nazar opens the glass door that leads to the small balcony that serves as storage space. There Asya keeps jars of apple compote, the last ones of strawberry and blueberry jam which have survived the long winter, and a ten-litre bucket once full to the brim with pickled cabbages and beetroots, and now – dear me – almost empty. Where have those bloody potatoes ended up? Perhaps in the bathroom under the washbasin? No, not even there, where you will however find packets of macaroni, spaghetti, beans, lentils – which are now only half full, but potatoes, damn it, nowhere to be found. Then Nazar suddenly remembered: of course, that’s where she keeps them… And he found a jute sack covered with earth, stuffed in a corner next to the fridge along with the brushes and floor cloths. He weighed it up with his eye, then pulled out five or six potatoes and sat down to peel them.

  The kitchen door opened and Asya entered loaded with bags. The few streaks of grey in her black hair were increasing and two slight wrinkles had formed at the corners of her mouth, but Nazar hadn’t noticed, because he saw her every day.