Stalin’s Ghost

10

The first reaction of many Russians when Chechnya declared itself an independent nation was to laugh. The Moscow criminal world was so dominated by the Chechen mafia that the announcement was viewed as nothing more than a gang declaring itself a government. The problem was that Chechens believed the declaration and, more than ten years later, the war went on.

Arkady had never tried to extract Eva’s past in Chechnya, not forcefully enough; when the war came up in conversation she always fell silent. All she would say was that she rode a motorcycle from village to village to make her rounds. She made it sound like a Sunday drive. Others called the route Sniper Alley. Certain questions demanded attention. If she entered the conflict on the rebel side, how did she end up with Russian troops? How long had she been with Isakov? How ridiculous a figure had Arkady become? Late for his meeting, would he by running to Mayakovsky Square cause his lungs to explode?

There was no sign of Ginsberg at Mayakovsky’s statue. The brawny poet of the Revolution loomed overhead, a bronze arm raised against the snow. Arkady wondered whether the journalist was coming by Metro or by car. The crush in the subway might be unbearable for a hunchback and a taxi would be sitting in the traffic Arkady had escaped by parking his car in the middle of the street and telling traffic police to guard it. Still, he was half an hour late and anxious that Ginsberg might be the first Russian ever to be punctual.

Arkady pulled up the collar of his pea jacket. The heat lamps of outdoor cafes were inviting. He and Ginsberg could sit under one and turn themselves like toast. On Arkady’s second tour of the square he noticed two militia cars with their lights off blocking a corner where a snowplow operated. The plow went back and forth over the same spot. As Arkady approached, an officer jumped out of the near car to intercept him.

“An accident?” Arkady showed his ID.

“Yeah.” With a hint of fuck off.

“Where are the cars?”

“No cars.”

“Then why don’t you let traffic through?”

“I’m not supposed to say anything.”

Arkady saw no metal parts or sparkling glass on the street.

“A pedestrian?” Arkady asked.

“A drunk. He was lying in the street when the plows came through. With snow falling and snow coming off the blade, the drivers don’t see much. They just rolled right over him. Rolled him flat.”

The other patrol car hit its headlights. The beams illuminated mounds of rosy snow.

“Did you hear his name?”

“I don’t know. A yid, I think.”

“That’s it?”

“A midget. A midget yid. Who’s going to see that on a night like this?”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“I don’t know. The detectives say it was an accident. The detectives-”

“Isakov and Urman?”

The officer returned to his car to check. The plow packed and scraped the snow into rosy marble. He shouted back over the roof of the car, “Yeah, Detectives Isakov and Urman. They say it’s a shame but it was an accident, nothing to make a fuss about.”

“Well, they’re busy men.”

By the time Arkady returned to Party headquarters the celebration had dwindled down to Platonov, the propagandist Surkov and Tanya. Why she had stayed wasn’t clear, although it was obvious that Surkov was desperate to impress-beautiful women who wandered into Party headquarters generally had the wrong address-and the group had squeezed into his office so that he could show off his four phones, three televisions, and all the remote controls that a media-wise professional would need. A laptop open on the desk emitted an azure glow. The walls were covered with photos of past Soviet glory: the Russian flag lifted to the roof of the Reichstag, a cosmonaut in the space station Mir, a mountain climber exulting on Everest. A glass case held a gilded saber from Syria and a silver plate from Palestine, final tributes rendered to the Party.

Arkady wanted to say something about Ginsberg, to register the journalist’s death in some manner. It was possible that Ginsberg was drunk and had fallen under a plow; Arkady himself had seen the man stumble off the curb outside the courtroom. And it was possible that Isakov and Urman only happened to get the call. It was possible the moon was made of cheese. It was certain only that the two detectives were always a step ahead of him and that whatever Ginsberg had wanted Arkady to see was gone.

Everyone else’s attention was fixed on a white uniform tunic that Surkov lifted out of a wooden crate stamped Classified Archives of the CPSU.

“His uniform.” Surkov opened the tunic and hung it over the back of a chair facing the laptop. The cloth was yellow along the fold lines and gave off a faint scent of camphor.

Platonov told Arkady, “I told him about the Stalin sighting in the Metro. That set him off.”

“I’m going.”

“Just a few more minutes.”

“His personal effects.” Surkov laid out an antique sewing kit, a snapshot of a freckled girl in an oval frame, a velvet pouch that yielded a briar pipe with a cracked bowl. He tapped the laptop’s cursor pad. “His favorite film.”

On the screen a man in a leather apron swung on a jungle vine. Tarzan landed high on the limb of a tree and sent out a wild ululating call.

“We know the human Stalin,” Surkov said.

The harpist shrugged; she seemed to be more interested in the film. “I don’t think vines grow that way, from the top down.” A faint sibilance touched her consonants, a hint of speech corrected, which only made her more endearing.

Surkov asked, “Tanya, what is your full name?”

“Tanya.”

“Tanya Tanya?”

“Tanya, Tanechka, Tanyushka,” said Platonov.

“You’re all drunk. Except for you.” She pointed at Arkady. “You have to catch up.”

“Wait, this makes it perfect.” From a cabinet Surkov added a white plaster bust of Stalin to the tableau on his desk. “Here he is.”

Arkady remembered his father saying, “Stalin loved films.” The General and Arkady were polishing boots on the back step of the dacha. Arkady was eight, in a bathing suit and sandals. His father had removed his shirt and let his suspenders hang. “Stalin liked gangster films and, most of all, Tarzan of the Apes. I went to the Kremlin for dinner once with the most powerful men in Russia. He made them all howl like Tarzan and beat their chests.”

“Did you beat your chest?” Arkady had asked.

“I was the loudest.” The General suddenly stood and bayed while he thumped his chest. Heads popped out of windows, which put him in a rare good mood. “Maybe I will leave you something in my will after all. Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“At staff meetings Stalin draws wolves, over and over. I got one from a wastebasket and someday that drawing can belong to you. You don’t seem excited.”

“I am. That sounds nice.”

His father looked him up and down. “You’re too skinny. Put some meat on your bones.” He pinched Arkady’s ear hard enough to draw tears. “Be a man.”

“Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable,” Surkov was saying, “those were Stalin’s favorites. And Charlie Chaplin. Stalin had a wonderful sense of humor. Critics say that Stalin was an enemy of creative artists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Writers, composers and filmmakers deluged him with requests for his opinion. ‘Please read my manuscript, Comrade Stalin’ and ‘Look at my painting, Beloved Comrade.’ His analysis was always on the mark.”

“But no kissing,” said Tanya.

Surkov said, “Soviet films like The Jolly Guys and Volga! Volga! Volga! didn’t need sex.” He made a stab at holding her hand and missed. He turned to Arkady. “That was your father’s heyday, right? Grandmaster Platonov has told us all about you. Men like you pretend to be neutral or undecided, but as the grandmaster can testify you are not afraid to act. Certain quarters rail against Stalin because they want Russia to fall apart. He’s the symbol they attack because he built the Soviet Union, defeated Fascist Germany and made a poor country into a superpower. Granted, some innocent people suffered, but Russia saved the world. Now we have to save Russia.”

Platonov said, “You see how outrageous it is for the Russian Patriots to claim Stalin. Stalin is and always will be ours. Don’t you think that if he was going to be resurrected on the Moscow Metro, he’d let us know?”

Things were getting a bit rich for Arkady. “We have to go.”

Tanya said, “Take off your jacket and stay awhile. Don’t leave me with these stiffs.”

“After all the trouble I had getting you through security,” Surkov said. He told Arkady, “She attempted to smuggle in a roll of steel wire under her coat.”

“Wire for my harp.”

Arkady said, “Tanya plays the harp at the Metropol. I’ve seen her. I just never know when she’s going to pop up next.”

“Steel?” Platonov asked her.

“It lasts longer than sheep gut and it’s cheaper than silver or gold.”

Surkov said, “Before you go I wanted to tell you that I was a great admirer of General Renko’s campaigns and never put any stock in those rumors. War is terrible, but no Soviet general collected enemy ears.”

Arkady said, “They were dried and strung like apricots. He had pilots drop the ears with flares over German lines. If you’re a boy from Berlin and it’s your first night in the trenches and ears start falling from the sky, you may not be there in the morning.”

“You saw them?”

“He brought souvenirs home.”

“Well, the main thing is that he came home and God knows what he saw out there on the front. Being who you are, I have something here that you might appreciate. Something very special.”

On his desk the propaganda chief set a gramophone with black enameling, a felt turntable, and an arm and horn decorated in silver arabesques. From a record album with no title, notes or credits he slipped out a stiff and heavy 78 rpm disk. He handled the record on its edge with his fingertips and let it settle on the spindle.

“The label is blank,” Arkady said.

“A pressing of one, not for release to the general public.” Surkov set the needle in a groove.

“Will I know the performer?” Tanya asked.

“Before your time,” Platonov said.

The acoustics of the office seemed to expand and tap into another room’s nervous coughs, shuffling feet and stage fright. Finally a piano picked out a tune.

“Beria on piano,” Surkov said.

Beria, who had signed death orders for perhaps millions of his countrymen as head of state security, was tentative at first, but gained confidence as he played.

“Faster!” someone ordered and Beria immediately picked up the tempo.

Tanya was surprised. “I know this. It’s ‘Tea for Two.’ I play this.”

“Beria was also quite the dancer,” Surkov said.

Tanya whispered to Arkady, “I remember you, too. You were sitting with Americans at breakfast at the Metropol.”

“I thought your eyes were closed.”

“It makes people nervous if you watch while they eat. Why were you with Americans?”

“We had a mutual friend.” Using the term loosely for Petya.

“Dance?” Surkov offered her his hand.

She shrugged and let him drag her into a seesaw sort of polka around the desk. Platonov watched wistfully, missing a playmate his own age.

“How well do you know her?” Arkady asked.

“Not a bit, but a pretty woman always dresses up a place.”

“Any more threats?”

“Not since I placed myself in your hands. You’re doing an excellent job.”

The needle hissed. A hymn followed and Tanya released herself with an audible sigh.

Orthodox hymns were a slow blending of voices, repetitive and hypnotic. Arkady wondered who was in such a butchers’ choir. Brezhnev? Molotov? Khrushchev? A strong baritone carried them all through the crackling of scratches.

“That’s Marshal Budyoni, the Cossack,” Surkov said.

As Arkady recalled, his father had considered Budyoni the stupidest man in the Red Army, an old cavalryman who never made the transition from horses to tanks, and worth at least a battalion to the Germans.

Tanya said, “Communists singing hymns?”

Platonov said, “In wartime you pray, whether you’re an atheist or not.”

None of the songs had introductions, but as if by command the hymn gave way to a single voice singing, “I searched for the grave of my beloved while grief tore at my heart. The heart aches when love has gone. Where are you, Suliko?”

Surkov mouthed, “It’s him.”

Stalin’s everyday voice was as dry and ironic as a hangman’s. Singing brought out a pleasant tenor and a sentimental feel for melody. It was a solo, just Stalin and the piano, with Beria, presumably, back at the keyboard. The Great Leader had a Georgian accent, but then the song had originally been Georgian, and the tale was classic. A forlorn lover discovers that the girl he seeks has been transformed by death. When he calls, “Are you there, my Suliko?” a nightingale answers, “Yes.”

Surkov said, “He could be standing here with us, he sounds that close.”

“Then it’s definitely time to go,” Arkady said.

Tanya begged a ride. “The people I came with are gone and my coat is right downstairs.”

“Stay with me, Tanyushka.” Surkov reached out.

She took Arkady’s arm. “Save me from this crazed Bolshevik. It’s International Women’s Day. Protect me.”

“Coming?” Arkady asked Platonov.

“I’ll be right there.”

The stockroom was outlined in white by the light of a streetlamp. Inside the stockroom coat hangers, a copying machine, scanner, and shredder sat in the dark. Platonov had yet to come downstairs; instead, “Suliko” was playing again and the sentimental tenor sang, “I saw a rose drip dew that fell like tears. Are you crying too, my Suliko?”

“Dance with me,” Tanya said.

“Haven’t you danced already?”

“Surkov doesn’t count.” She eased Arkady’s pea jacket off his shoulders and took his hands in hers. “You know how to dance.”

Arkady was capable of a waltz. It was an appropriate interlude on such a night: Stalin singing, the windows shivering, Tanya resting her head on Arkady’s chest. What a ridiculous couple they made, he thought; she was the belle of the ball and he looked like he should be shoveling snow. There were calluses on her fingertips, but they were from stroking a harp.

“I’m sorry I’m in the same dress you saw me in this morning. I played for receptions all day long. I must look like a pressed cabbage.”

“A bit.”

“You’re supposed to say I look like a white rose. You don’t say much, do you?”

He considered opening gambits. “Do you really want to marry an American?”

Her head lifted briefly.

“How did you know?”

“The Cupid agency. They described you as a dancer. What sort of dance?”

After a moment, “Modern. What else did they say about me?”

“That you weren’t my type.”

“You see, their problem is they don’t like spontaneity. I believe when an opportunity comes you have to seize it. How do you feel about adventure?”

“It’s almost always uncomfortable. Tell me, what sort of friends would bring you here and then leave without you?”

“Well, now I can tell them I heard Stalin.” The name provoked a sibilant s.

“It’s amazing. I know some people who just saw Stalin.”

“Are they crazy?”

“I don’t know.” They brushed against the sleeves of a coat rack. “You deserve a better partner.”

“You’re exactly who I wanted. Are you lucky with women?”

“Not lately.”

“Maybe your losing streak is at an end.”

When the song ended Tanya let go reluctantly. “Suliko” was replaced by a speech, one of Stalin’s harangues, which could go on forever because the Great Instructor was always interrupted by applause described in the newspapers as “steady and thunderous.” Anyway, nothing to dance to, Arkady thought and although he sensed that Tanya was disappointed, he pulled on his jacket.

“We must smash and overthrow the theory that proclaims that the Trotskyite wreckers do not have the use of large resources.” Here was the other Stalin, a voice like a hammer and words like a carpenter’s nails. “This is untrue, comrades. The more we move forward, the more successes we enjoy, then the more hateful become the remnants of the exploiter classes. We must smash and overthrow them!”

Applause broke out as Surkov turned up the volume and let the high tide of adulation pour from the gramophone. Arkady said nothing because Tanya had slipped a garrote around his neck and pulled it tight. Arm strength was where playing the harp paid off. The garrote was steel harp wire attached at each end to a wooden handle. Tanya stood behind Arkady, but he wasn’t going anywhere and all she had to do was lean back to stop him in his tracks. The wire dug into his neck and crossed in back to her strong hands. If he hadn’t turned up the collar of his jacket, the wire would have been a circular knife.

All the same, the wire dug too deep for Arkady to pull it off or loosen. When he tried to reach back or turn she applied more pressure the other way. He couldn’t draw air or call out because his windpipe was closed.

Mounting applause and shouts of “Root them out!” and “Throw them to the dogs!”

Arkady felt his face balloon. She kept him moving backwards and off balance, letting him flail and spill pamphlets off a copier. “Marx: Frequently Asked Questions.” Arkady had a question or two. She missed a kick toward the back of his knee. If he did fall she could drag him by his neck and he’d be dead all the faster.

Sustained applause and calls of “Bullets are too good!”

Strangulation came in stages. First, disbelief and a wild thrashing of resistance. Second, dawning recognition of dwindling resources. Third, spasms, limpness, and acceptance. He was well into stage two. He kicked the copier and propelled himself backwards. In the momentary slackness, he snapped his head into hers and heard the crack of bone.

Swelling applause and shouts of “Beat them and beat them and beat them again!”

They began skidding on blood. He got one hand on hers, eased the wire enough to find a straw’s worth of breath, plunged backwards and sandwiched her into the shelves and a cascade of light-bulbs, poster board, markers and scissors. She abandoned the wire and snatched a scissors as it flew by.

Thunderous applause and demands to “Stamp on them like vermin!”

She stabbed him in the neck but the raised collar befuddled penetration. When she swung for his eyes he blocked her arm and threw her over the worktable. She came up scissors first over the photo cropper, where he caught her by the wrist and, with one hand, held her hand secure over the cropping deck while he raised the blade.

Hysterical applause, everyone on their feet, shouting themselves hoarse, waving their fists and again applauding with burning hands.

He could cut her at the wrist. Across the palm. The middle knuckles. Perhaps, for a harpist, fingertips would do.

Arkady found himself stepping into the picture, taking in the blood coursing from Tanya’s broken nose, her outstretched hand and the way she stared at the cropping blade.

“Behave,” he said in not much more than a croak.

She dropped the scissors and sank to the floor, shook as if she had the chills and let him tie her hands together behind her back with an extension cord.

“My God!” Surkov stood at the door. He turned on the lights and a blood red picture jumped to life. “My God! My God!”

Platonov followed Surkov in, each step slower than the one before. “What happened here? Did you slaughter a pig?”

Shelves, paper, overturned copier lay in a pudding of blood and broken glass. Tanya sat against a printer, legs splayed from gown smeared red. She held her head back to stanch the flow of blood.

“My pamphlets.” Surkov tried to peel one blood-soaked “Frequently Asked Questions” from another. “Are you crazy, Renko? What have you done to Tanya?”

Arkady’s throat hurt too much to waste words on Surkov. Hoping for an address book, he laid the contents of Tanya’s handbag on the worktable: cigarettes, lighter, house keys, change purse, Metro card, memberships in fitness and foreign film clubs and an Internet cafe, a pass for the Conservatory, a calendar of saints from the Church of the Redeemer and identification papers for Tatyana Stepanovna Schedrina, an innocent who wouldn’t harm a fly. He was looking at the only snapshot she carried when headlights swept across the courtyard. Arkady ran outside but only caught a glimpse of a blue or black sportscar. Of course there would be transportation for her to leave in; he would have thought of that if he hadn’t poured all his attention into the photograph. It was the same picture of Tanya he had seen enlarged in the Cupid album. Same snow princess on the same black diamond slope. However, the agency photo had been only half the picture. Tanya’s photo included her skiing partner, a barrel-chested man in daredevil red and, although Arkady suffered the surprise people experience from seeing familiar faces in unfamiliar settings, he had no trouble recognizing Detective Marat Urman.

He looked up at flakes crossing the light of a streetlamp. He opened his jacket to let the cold in. Later every turn of the head would be agony.

Right now, numb was good.