Black Sun

by Owen Matthews

  On the crackling line Orlov’s chuckle sounded like the rustling of leaves.

  II

  From a phone box on Lenin Square, Vasin dialed the Adamovs’ home number. He heard a telltale hiss on the line, even as the ringing continued. Someone was listening in.

  Maria picked up on the fifth ring.

  “Maria Vladimirovna Adamova? This is Major Alexander Vasin of State Security. My apologies for disturbing you at home.” At the other end of the line he heard Masha’s small sigh. She had understood the meaning of his exaggeratedly formal tone at once.

  “It’s no trouble, Comrade Major.”

  “I am afraid that I have some further questions. May we meet at the same place we conducted our last interview in half an hour?”

  “I will be there.”

  Vasin listened for the clicks as both Masha and their silent listener replaced their receivers, then swore softly.

  No point in hiding. In fact the opposite, to try to shake his shadows now would only alert them. They would be following Maria too. The only choice was to hide, as Orlov had advised, in plain sight. He caught a tram to Lenin Park.

  Fat, freezing raindrops cut through the dirty snow. Vasin watched Masha’s blue raincoat approach down the boulevard, trailing a nondescript gray figure in her wake. The park’s café was crowded with grandmothers and young children sheltering from the rain, so they walked instead to the empty bandstand. No one, to Vasin’s knowledge, had so far succeeded in bugging a park.

  “Hello, you.” Maria seemed unnaturally cheerful. She had made herself up, and under her mac she was wearing a smart woolen twinset. He saluted her, for the benefit of the watchers in the trees.

  “Maria.”

  “I can’t talk like this.” Maria scanned the strollers who dawdled on the edges of the wide lawn. “It’s like being on a microscope slide, some great eye watching us from above.”

  “Act naturally. There’s nothing wrong with you and I meeting.”

  “Meeting in a park? In the freezing rain? Are you in trouble?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “No. Neither of us is in trouble. They’re curious about why I am talking to Axelrod in these dangerous times.”

  “If you spoke to him, then you know. There’s no way that man is a good liar,” she said. “What I said about Axelrod and Petrov is true.”

  “Perhaps. But Axelrod told me some things of his own. About Petrov and your husband. Explained that they might have had reasons to disagree. Serious reasons.” Vasin made sure to hold her gaze.

  Maria took a step away from him, pulling her mackintosh tighter around herself and scanning the passersby.

  “The little shit. What kinds of disagreements?”

  “Believe me when I tell you that it’s complicated.”

  “You can’t…” A note of fear sounded in Maria’s voice. “You can’t really believe that Adamov had anything to do with Fyodor’s death? You met him. You saw him. He couldn’t hurt anybody.”

  Vasin thought of the film he had watched his first night in Arzamas and the apocalypse soon to be unleashed by Adamov, tossing the plane miles up in the sky, a firestorm racing across the land below. Was this the creation of a man who would never hurt anybody?

  “Whatever Axelrod told you about Adamov’s supposed argument with Petrov is a lie. All his colleagues will confirm it.”

  “Has Adamov ever spoken about his experience in the camps?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Did he ever speak about who denounced him in ’thirty-seven?”

  Maria set her jaw defiantly.

  “What is this? What could you possibly know about the affairs of great men, a little pawn like you?”

  Anger sparked in her eyes. Perhaps desperation, too, a desperate desire not to know. Despite himself, Vasin felt the sting of her words, followed by a sudden, vicious impulse to hit back.

  “Fyodor’s father denounced your husband. The great Academician Petrov sent your husband to the Gulag.”

  Vasin closed his eyes for a moment, shocked by his own words. He had just blurted out the very thing that he should have kept most secret. The professional in him knew that information should be hoarded like dry gunpowder, then carefully laid at the weakest point of your opponent’s defenses for detonation at the most devastating moment. Instead he had ignited it in a single, useless whoosh. For a moment he had the unsettling feeling of not recognizing himself, as though he had been momentarily possessed. But by what? Why the sudden desire to lash out at Masha?

  She stood very still, her eyes on the ground. Vasin could not unsay what he had said. What was the phrase that Orlov had used, once, of the momentum of a confession, showing off his wartime German? Yes—the desperate man makes a flucht nach vorn, a flight forward. An act of desperation, compelled by a previous false move. Except now it was Vasin who was the foolish talker. He had no choice but to plunge on.

  “It’s in the files. Fyodor’s father destroyed Adamov’s freedom, and his family.”

  When she finally spoke, Maria’s voice came from a distant place.

  “Adamov’s first wife divorced him.”

  “She repudiated him. Testified against him in court and denounced him as a traitor to the Motherland. Then she divorced him.”

  “He never told me.”

  Tears abruptly ran down her cheeks. Maria wiped them away, angrily, as though they had betrayed her.

  Vasin felt a shameful glow. The sordid power this secret knowledge gave him. With a few scything words, her pride had been slashed down like grass. But after the glow came another urge, rising from an entirely unfamiliar place inside himself, to step forward and comfort her.

  Her gaze, when it met his, seemed at first to signal a desperate vulnerability. Then like molten glass her eyes slowly hardened till they were brittle and unyielding.

  “Why tell me such things? What is it that you want from me, Chekist?”

  Her voice was bleak. Vasin had wanted to hurt her. Instead, it seemed, he had shattered her, and their fragile trust.

  “If Adamov knew who betrayed him, it would provide every reason to kill Fyodor. Petrov took away his family, so he destroyed Petrov’s son. You can see what it looks like to the kontora. I thought you needed to know.”

  “You want to protect me?”

  Vasin could find no words to answer her. But he knew why, and the sudden realization chilled him.

  “Protect me from Adamov, or from your own kontora?”

  “I need to find out the…”

  “You’re about to say ‘truth.’ Your favorite word. No need. Spare me your truth.”

  Vasin began to reply, but she shook her head firmly.

  “Vasin. Alexander. I will tell you this: In all our years of married life I have never known more of Adamov than the part he chooses to show me. It’s as though his soul is wrapped in tightly wadded layers of silence. But I know this, if he was angry once, it was long ago. The past is the past. For both of us. Yes, he carries death inside himself every day, but he is not an evil man. He is not a violent man. He could not kill Petrov. And over some ancient grudge? Never.”

  “Did he know about you and Fyodor?”

  “Can you spare me your fucking detective story plots? Adamov is not some jealous French lover boy.”

  “Maria, I believe you.”

  “You believe me, but?”

  “Axelrod. I need proof.”

  She took Vasin’s hand and squeezed it. After a long moment she seemed to come to some private decision.

  * * *

  —

  The tram was packed with lunchtime shoppers. Maria’s thin body pressed against Vasin’s in the crowd. Two kontora Volgas followed them, overta
king the tram in relays. Doubtless another car would be waiting outside the Adamovs’ apartment. Quite an entourage.

  As she fumbled with the keys, Maria kept her eyes down, avoiding Vasin’s. Once inside, she double-locked the door and tossed her coat on the floor. Vasin made a quacking gesture with his hand. Keep talking.

  “Thank you for your good citizenship, Maria Vladimirovna,” he said loudly. “Your remarks have been most helpful. Would that all our countrymen were so zealous in assisting the organs of law enforcement.”

  He walked over to a telephone receiver that stood on a table in the hall. Silently he pointed at the apparatus and tugged his ear. Maria nodded in understanding and beckoned him to follow. She opened the door to Adamov’s study, an austere room filled with neatly labeled files and stacks of journals, and pointed out the other receiver. Then she led him to the kitchen, where a third telephone hung on the wall.

  “May I offer you some tea, Comrade Major? I feel a chill from our walk.”

  “I felt a chill too. But only if I am not keeping you from your busy day?”

  “It is I who fear that I may be keeping you from your important duties.”

  “Not at all. Tea. Yes, please.”

  The presence of invisible listeners made their conversation easier. Maria filled a kettle, struck a match, lit the gas.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Comrade?”

  She returned with a large brown envelope and placed it silently on the kitchen table in front of Vasin.

  “Would you like some jam with your tea?”

  Vasin slid out a smooth wad of black-and-white photographs. On the top was a typewritten card with a single line of text, the letters punched in angry capitals. It said:

  HER OR ME?

  The images had been developed and printed by an amateur in a home lab. The lighting of the photographs was pale and spectral, and from the little Vasin knew of such matters he concluded that the negative was made on fast film, for the print was also grainy. The first was a portrait of Petrov, shirtless, lying languidly on a divan. A half-smile on his handsome face, he seemed to be humoring some joke made by the photographer. In the next shot Petrov mugged for the camera, pouting. In the next he lay back, stately, remote, floppy-haired. A man who knows he is beautiful. The photographer had taken a step backward, revealing that Petrov wore no trousers.

  “I made this jam myself. You must try some. I am not very domestic, really, but I do know how to make jam. The only thing I can cook.”

  Masha’s face was tight with tension. She stood opposite Vasin, fighting to keep her gaze off the photographs.

  “Thank you, I would love to try some.”

  Stiffly, she walked over to the cupboard to retrieve a jar, a saucer, and a spoon.

  The next photograph was blurred, Petrov swinging his bare legs onto the floor, his genitals a smudge of black in the badly lit photo. Two more images of his naked torso, arms and legs in movement, as if he was dancing. In these photographs Petrov seemed completely self-absorbed, eyes closed, as though bathing in the loving regard of another.

  “I found a splendid bush of sea buckthorn, hidden in a stand of birches. Somehow none of my neighbors have found it. I keep it secret from them. You see, everyone in this town has a secret. I can’t tell you where it is or you might report it. Please, taste.”

  Maria placed a saucer of the bright orange jam in front of Vasin, keeping her eyes averted from the table.

  “It’s most excellent, Maria Vladimirovna.” His voice felt unnaturally loud. “Better than my mother’s.”

  Vasin turned over a second set of photographs, these smaller and printed on more sensitive photographic paper. They were harder to make out, more grainy, a confusion of blobs and rounded surfaces. Close-up shots of flesh. Intimate photographs of Petrov, wantonly lying in his bed, legs akimbo. Vasin recognized a corner of the Rouge et le Noir film poster he had seen on the bedroom wall in Petrov’s apartment.

  The final couple of photographs were badly aligned, apparently taken using a timer by a camera balanced at the foot of the bed. Two naked men lay twisted in each other’s arms, their faces invisible as they shared a deep kiss. One was Petrov, his muscular shoulders and gelled hair clearly recognizable. The other figure had a skinnier frame, long hairless legs. Axelrod?

  “Good God.” Vasin couldn’t help himself. He looked up inquiringly at Maria, but she had turned away from him. The silent listeners sat among them like invisible guests at the table. “I seem to have spilled some tea.”

  She said nothing.

  “Maria Vladimirovna.” Vasin stood. “You said there was a household task you wished me to help with. Allow me to assist you and then I’ll be getting along.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Major. That would be most kind of you.” Maria’s face was taut with held-back emotion. Vasin gestured toward the bathroom. She swallowed and composed herself. Before she spoke she scooped hair from her eyes and arranged her face as though for a film take. “Could you please help me move the clothes-washing machine? The drainage pipe has fallen down the back.”

  “I’m happy to assist you, especially when the master of the house is engaged in such heroic work for the Motherland. Such domestic details must not be allowed to distract him.”

  Vasin closed the bathroom door. Behind it stood a large steel tub covered in cream-colored enamel. An electric wringer was attached to one side of it, and an electric cable connected it to a socket. A stylized chrome decal on the front read WESTINGHOUSE in Latin letters.

  “Like the appliances?” Masha’s voice was bleak.

  “We don’t have much time.” Vasin turned on a tap and lowered his voice. “Where did you find them?”

  “Fedya had been avoiding me for days. I went around to his apartment and found them there. They’d been having a row and Axelrod was actually crying. When I showed up, he ran out of the apartment like some hysterical woman.

  “I asked what had upset Axelrod so much, and Fedya said his friend had girlfriend problems. But the look Axelrod gave me as he left, it was pure hatred. And Fedya was in a state too. He put on a coat and ran down the stairs after him, and I’m left there wondering what the hell is going on. Fyodor, he was always so cool. So aloof. You know. Those steady eyes, his easy smile. Fyodor’s voice, that elegant Moscow drawl, so full of confidence. His life had always been so carefree. There was no core of pain to him. Sometimes I thought Fyodor was like a visitor from some hot foreign place that had never known war or hunger. And suddenly, there he was in the middle of some hysterical scandal. Running out into the night. Made no sense.”

  “You had no suspicions? How could you not have known?”

  Maria shrugged with her whole body.

  “Who cares, now? But no. It was good to be with him. He was a boy with the sun in him, my grandmother would have said. But then I found the photos.”

  “How?”

  “He must have stuffed the envelope down the back of the sofa cushions when I arrived. I wasn’t searching. Okay, you don’t believe me. I don’t care. But I just noticed the package. Pulled it out. Read the note. And saw what you just saw.”

  “And did you confront him?”

  “I never saw him again. Not until the night he died, at our house. It would have made awkward dinner conversation.”

  “ ‘Her or me.’ Axelrod wanted him to leave you and be with him. Who did he choose?”

  Maria looked up, puzzled.

  “Meaning?”

  “Who did Petrov choose, you or Axelrod?”

  “What kind of a question is that? I’m not a can of fish on the shelf.”

  “You say you never saw Fyodor after the apartment. Did he call you?”

  “We had a private system to get messages to each other. What public phone box, what time. We spoke, one time.”

 
“And he apologized?”

  Maria shuddered and shook her head.

  “Fedya knew I had found the photos. He vowed he’d been seduced, he was a victim. The devil had gone inside of him. Fedya was brilliant and ambitious. He wanted to be an academician. A minister. He couldn’t have someone like Axelrod around, blackmailing him. He told me he was planning to get Axelrod sent somewhere far away where he couldn’t hurt us. Fedya had the connections to send him to a uranium-enriching plant in Siberia. He wanted to break him. Shut him up.”

  “Did he tell Axelrod this?”

  “I only know what he told me. I’m untouchable, he said. Axelrod is nothing. Fyodor had powerful friends who could bury any scandal. Along with Axelrod. All I know is a few days later Fedya was dead.”

  Masha began to shake, gently, slurping back tears like hiccups. Abruptly she stood and embraced Vasin. The gesture was impulsive, and he did not resist. Her arms held him in a tight, desperate grip, and she rested her head on his chest. He put a hand on her fine, pale hair. She smelled of scented soap.

  “Save me from all this. These men.”

  She looked up into Vasin’s face, her breath on his lips. The warmth of her slender body against his triggered an unstoppable tide of arousal. She stretched up and kissed him. Vasin felt momentarily weightless, the world spinning under him. After a moment he pushed her away, more roughly than he had meant to. He backed toward the door, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  “I disgust you.” Masha hugged herself, shrinking.

  “No, you don’t. But I can’t.”

  He fumbled with the door handle and almost fell into the corridor in his haste to escape. Staggering like a drunk, he crossed the dining room and stood in front of the window, seeing nothing. Behind him he heard Masha slowly crossing the room. Instinctively he turned his face away, as if by his not seeing her she would disappear.

  She paused by the window, pulled aside the net curtain, and glanced out at the street.

  “Eyes and ears all around,” she whispered.