Stalin’s Ghost

2

Arkady took his time. His relationship with Zurin had deteriorated to a game like badminton, in which each player took mighty swings that feebly propelled loathing back and forth. So instead of racing to Chistye Prudy Metro station, Arkady stopped in a lane of brick buildings hung with banners that filled and emptied in the wind. Arkady couldn’t see all the banners, but saw enough to learn that “Studio Apartments-Concierge Services-Cable” would soon be erected on the site. “Interested Parties Should Subscribe Now.”

He kicked his way through snow down a flight of stairs and knocked on a basement door. There was no answer but the door was unlocked and he pushed his way into a black space with no more than a seam of street light along the top of the basement windows, about as hospitable as an Ice Age cave. He found a light switch and an overhead rack of fluorescent tubes flickered to life.

Grandmaster Ilya Platonov sat sprawled face down on a table, asleep between chessboards. Arkady thought the fact that Platonov had found that much room was remarkable since chess sets and game clocks covered every surface: antique, inlaid and computerized boards, men lined up like armies summoned and forgotten. Books and magazines on chess crammed the bookcases. Photographs of the Russian greats-Alekhine, Kasparov, Karpov, Tal-hung on the walls along with signs that said, “Members Are Requested Not to Take Boards to the W.C.” and “No Video Games!” The air reeked of cigarettes, genius and musty clothes.

Arkady stomped the snow from his shoes and Platonov’s arm compulsively shot out and hit the game clock.

“In your sleep. That’s impressive,” Arkady said.

Platonov opened his eyes as he sat up. Arkady guessed his age at about eighty. He still had a commanding nose and a pugnacious gaze once he rubbed the sand from his eyes.

“In my sleep, I would still beat you.” Platonov felt his pockets for a wake-up cigarette. Arkady gave him one. “If you played your best game, maybe a draw.”

“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m looking for Zhenya.”

“Zhenya, that little shit. I say that most affectionately. A frustrating boy.” Platonov hobbled to a desk and began searching loose papers. “I want to show you the results of the last junior tournament, in which he was a complete mediocrity. Then, the same day, he defeats the adult champion, but for money. For money your little Zhenya is a different player altogether. This is a club for people who love chess, not a casino.”

“I understand.” Arkady noticed a “contributions” jar half full of coins.

Platonov abandoned his search. “The main thing is, Zhenya is ruining his game. No patience. He surprises opponents now because he’s just a boy and then he swoops in for the kill. When he encounters the next level of players they will wear him down.”

“Have you seen Zhenya in the last twenty-four hours?”

“No. The day before, yes. I threw him out for gambling once again. He’s welcome back if it’s to play and learn. Have you ever played him?”

“There’s no point. I’m no competition.”

Platonov scratched his chin. “You’re in the prosecutor’s office, aren’t you? Well, intelligence isn’t everything.”

“Thank God,” Arkady said.

“Chess demands discipline and analysis to reach the top. And in chess if you aren’t at the top, where are you?” Platonov spread his arms. “Teaching idiots basic openings. Left, right, left, right! That’s why Zhenya is such a waste.” In his passion the grandmaster backed into the wall and knocked a framed photograph to the floor. Arkady picked the photograph up. Although the glass was a whirl of shards he saw a young Platonov with a vigorous head of hair accepting a bouquet and congratulations from a round man in a bad suit. Khrushchev, the Party Secretary from years ago. Behind the two men stood children in costume as chess pieces: knights, rooks, kings and queens. Khrushchev’s eyes sank into his grin. Platonov gently took the picture away. “Ancient history. Leningrad, nineteen sixty-two. I swept the field. That was when world chess was Soviet chess and this club, this undersea wreck was the center of the chess world.”

“Soon to be apartments.”

“Ah, you saw the banner outside? Apartments with all the modern conveniences. We will be demolished and replaced by a marble palace for thieves and whores, the social parasites we used to put in jail. Does the state care?” Platonov rehung the photo, cracks and all. “The state used to believe in culture, not real estate. The state-”

“You’re still a Party member?”

“I am a Communist and proud of it. I remember when millionaires were shot on principle. Maybe a millionaire can be an honest man, maybe pigs can whistle. If not for me, they’d already have their apartment house, but I have petitioned the city, the state senate and the president himself to bring this architectural obscenity to a halt. I am costing them millions of dollars. That’s why they want me out of the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why they want to kill me.” Platonov smiled. “I outfoxed them. I stayed here. I never would have made it home safely.”

“Who did you outfox?”

“Them.”

It struck Arkady that the conversation was taking a strange turn. He spied an electric samovar on a side table. “Would you like some tea?”

“You mean, has the old man been drinking? Does he need to sober up? Is he crazy? No.” Platonov dismissed the cup. “I’m ten moves ahead of you, ten moves.”

“Like leaving the front door unlocked and falling asleep?”

Platonov forgave himself with a shrug. “You agree then that I should take precautions?”

Arkady glanced at his watch. Zurin had called him half an hour ago. “For a start, have you informed the militia that you feel your life is in danger?”

“A hundred times. They send an idiot along, he steals what he can and then goes.”

“Have you been attacked? Been threatened by mail or over the phone?”

“No. That’s what all the idiots ask.”

Arkady took that as his cue. “I have to go.”

“Wait.” For his age, Platonov maneuvered around the game tables with surprising speed. “Any other suggestions?”

“My professional advice?”

“Yes.”

“If millionaires want to raze this building to erect a palace for lowlifes and whores, do what they say. Take their money and move.”

Platonov sucked up his chest. “As a boy, I fought on the Kalinin Front. I do not retreat.”

“A wonderful sentiment for a headstone.”

“Get out! Out! Out!” Platonov opened the door and pushed Arkady through. “Enough defeatism. Your whole generation. No wonder this country is in the shit can.”

Arkady climbed the stairs to his car. Although he didn’t think Platonov was in any real danger, he drove only a block before returning on foot. Staying away from streetlamps, he slipped from doorway to doorway until he was satisfied they were clear of anything but shadows and then lingered another minute just in case, perhaps because the wind had dropped and he liked the way the snow had gone weightless, floating like light on water.

No militia guarded the Chistye Prudy Metro station. Arkady tapped at the door and was let in by a cleaning lady who led him across a half-lit hall of somber granite and around turnstiles to a set of three ancient escalators that clacked as they descended. Maybe they weren’t so old, only used; the Moscow underground was the busiest in the world and to be virtually the only one in it made him aware how large the station was and how deep the hole.

His mind returned to the excavation outside the Supreme Court. There they were, eminent judges with the modest ambition of upgrading their basement cafeteria, adding perhaps an espresso bar, and, instead, they had unearthed the horror of the past. Stick your shovel into the ground in Moscow and you took your chances.

“The people on the train must be crazy. He’s been dead for fifty years. It’s a disgrace,” the cleaning woman said with the firmness of a palace guard. She wore an orange vest she smoothed and straightened. The outside world might be scribbled with graffiti and reek of piss, but it was generally agreed that the last bastion of decency in Moscow was the underground, discounting the gropers, drunks and thieves among your fellow passengers. “More than fifty years.”

“You saw nothing tonight?”

“Well, I saw that soldier.”

“Who?”

“I don’t remember his name, but I saw him on television. It’ll come to me.”

“You saw a soldier but not Stalin.”

“On television. Why can’t they leave poor Stalin alone? It’s a disgrace.”

“Which part?”

“All of it.”

“I think you’re right. I think there’ll be disgrace enough for everyone.”

“You took your time.” Zurin was waiting at the bottom, cashmere coat worn impresario-style on his shoulders and a froth of anxiety in the corners of his mouth.

“Another sighting?” Arkady asked.

“What else?”

“You could have started without me. You didn’t have to wait.”

“But we do. This is a situation of some delicacy.” Zurin said the sighting had taken place, as before, on the last car of the last train of the night; even to the same minute-0132-testimony to Metro punctuality. This time two plainclothes officers had been stationed on the car in case. As soon as they noticed signs of a disturbance they radioed the driver not to leave the platform until all thirty-three passengers of the last car were off. The detectives had taken preliminary statements. Zurin handed Arkady a spiral notebook open to a list of names, addresses, telephone numbers. I. Rozanov, 34, male, a plumber, “saw nothing.” A. Anilov, 18, male, soldier, “maybe saw something.” M. Bourdenova, 17, female, student, “recognized him from a history course.”

R. Golushkovich, 19, male, soldier, “was asleep.” V. Golushkovich, 20, male, soldier, “was drunk.”

A. Antipenko, 74, male, retired, “witnessed Comrade Stalin on the platform.”

F. Mendeleyev, 83, male, retired, “witnessed Comrade Stalin wave from the platform.”

M. Peshkova, 33, female, schoolteacher, “saw nothing.” P. Peneyev, 40, male, schoolteacher, “saw nothing.” V. Zelensky, 32, male, filmmaker, “witnessed Stalin in front of Soviet flag.”

And so on. Of the thirty-three passengers, eight saw Stalin. Those eight had been detained and the rest released. The platform conductor, a G. Petrova, had seen nothing out of the ordinary and was also allowed to go. The notes were signed by Detectives Isakov and Urman.

“Isakov, the hero?”

“That’s right,” Zurin said. “He and Urman were called to another case. We can’t have good men wasting their time here.”

“Of course not. Where is this other case?”

“A domestic dispute a couple of blocks away.”

The platform clock read 0418, the same as Arkady’s watch. Time until the next train stood at 00, because the system wouldn’t start up again for another hour. Without a background rumble of trains the platform was an arcade of echoes, Zurin’s voice popping up here and there.

“So, what do you want me to do?” Arkady asked.

“Nail things down.”

“Nail down what? Someone on a subway puts on a Stalin mask and you pull people off their train?”

“We want to keep the lid on.”

“On a hoax?”

“We don’t know.”

“Are you thinking of mass hallucination? That calls for exorcists or psychiatrists.”

“Just ask some questions. They’re old, it’s past their bedtime.”

“Not theirs.” Arkady nodded toward a rail-thin man chatting up the schoolgirl. She plainly had trouble resisting flattery.

“Zelensky is the provocateur, I’m sure. Do you want to start with him?”

“I think I’ll end with him.”

First, Arkady walked to where the last car had stopped. A service gate and doorway stood at the platform’s end. He hoisted himself up on the gate and saw nothing but electrical cables on the other side. The door was locked. The platform conductor might have had the key and some idea of who had been waiting for the train, but, thanks to Isakov and Urman, she was gone.

“Anything wrong?” the prosecutor asked.

“Couldn’t be better. These were the only two sightings, last night and tonight? Nothing previous?”

“That’s all.”

Arkady questioned witnesses one by one, having each mark on a sketch of the subway car where they had been sitting. The pensioner Antipenko admitted that he had been reading a book and hadn’t had time to switch to his distance glasses before the train rolled into the station. Antipenko’s elderly friend Mendeleyev had slept earlier on the train, although he claimed he awoke when they pulled into the station. Neither of them felt threatened by the platform Stalin. In fact, two ancient babushkas said they recognized Stalin by his benign smile, although neither saw well enough to read the platform clock when Arkady asked them to. Another retiree wore eyeglasses so scratched, the world was a blur, and the final senior witness wasn’t sure if he’d seen Stalin or Father Frost.

Arkady told him, “You’ve been up all night. Maybe you’re tired.”

“They kept us here.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“I know my granddaughter is worried.”

“Didn’t the detectives call her and tell her you would be late?”

“I couldn’t remember her number.”

“Perhaps if you show me your papers?”

“I lost them.”

“I’m sure there’s something on you somewhere.” Arkady opened the old man’s overcoat and found, pinned to a jacket lapel, a tag with a name, address, and phone number. Also the soiled ribbons and hardware of a Gold Star Hero, Order of Lenin, Red Star, and Patriotic War hero, so many campaign medals that they were stitched in overlapping tiers onto the breast of his suit. This doddering ancient had once been a young soldier fighting the Wehrmacht in the rubble of Stalingrad. “Don’t worry. The prosecutor will call your granddaughter and the trains will be running soon.”

The student, Marfa Bourdenova, changed her mind because she wasn’t clear who Stalin was. Besides, she was out past her curfew and hadn’t been allowed to call home on her mobile phone. If the girl was a little plump it was also clear what a beauty she would soon be, with an oval face, a sharp nose and chin, huge eyes and light brown hair she blew away from her cheek in exasperation. “The reception here sucks.”

From the next bench the filmmaker Zelensky stage-whispered, “Your reception sucks because you’re in a hole, honey, you’re in a fucking hole.” He hunched forward in a scuffed leather jacket and told Arkady, “You can mess with their minds all you want, but I know what I saw. I saw Iosif Stalin standing at this platform tonight. Mustache, uniform, short right arm. Unmistakable.”

“What color were his eyes?”

“Yellow eyes, wolf eyes.”

“Vladimir Zelensky?” Arkady asked to be sure. He felt Zurin creep to the other side of the pillar.

“Call me Vlad, please.” As if it were a favor.

Zelensky stood in the umbra of fame. Ten years before he had been a young director of rough-and-ready crime films, until he sniffed cocaine himself and performed the magic trick of disappearing up his nostril. His smile said the boy was back and the frizz of his hair suggested ideas on the simmer.

“So, Vlad, what did you say when you saw him?”

Zelensky laughed. “Something on the order of ‘Fuck your mother!’ What anyone would say.”

As Arkady remembered, Zelensky got by on porn, grinding out films that required nothing more than two willing bodies and a bed. Films where everyone, including the director, used pseudonyms.

“Did Stalin say anything?”

“No.”

“How long was he visible?”

“Two seconds, maybe three.”

“Could it have been somebody wearing a mask?”

“No.”

“You are a filmmaker?”

“An independent filmmaker.”

“Could someone have rigged a film or a videotape?”

“Set it up and broken it down? Not fast enough.” Zelensky winked in the girl’s direction.

“He stood where?”

On the sketch Zelensky marked the platform directly opposite the last car.

“Then?”

“He walked away. Vanished.”

“Walked or disappeared?”

“Disappeared.”

“What did he do with the flag?”

“What flag?”

“You told the detectives that Stalin had a flag.”

“I guess it disappeared too.” Zelensky lifted his head. “But I saw Stalin.”

“And said, ‘Fuck your mother!’ Why the Chistye Prudy Metro? Of all the stations for Stalin to show up at, why here?”

“It’s obvious. You went to the university?”

“Yes.”

“You look it. Well, I’ll tell you something I bet you don’t know. When the Germans bombed Moscow, when this was called Kirov Station, this was where Stalin came, deep underground. He slept on a cot on the platform and the General Staff slept in subway cars. They didn’t have a fancy war room like Churchill or Roosevelt. They put plywood up for walls and every time a train came through, maps and papers would fly around, but they put together a strategy that saved Moscow. This place should be like Lourdes, with people on their knees, plaster Stalins for sale, crutches on the wall. Can’t you see it?”

“I’m not an artist like you. I remember One Plus One. That was an interesting film.”

“The serial killer. That was a long time ago.”

“What films have I missed?”

“How-to films.”

“Woodworking? Plumbing?”

“How to fuck.”

Arkady heard Zurin groan. The schoolgirl Marfa Bourdenova blushed but didn’t move away.

“Do you have a business card?”

Zelensky gave him one that read Cine Zelensky on new, crisply cut pasteboard suitable for a comeback. The address given was on fashionable Tverskaya, even if the phone prefix was for the less elegant south end of Moscow.

The clock over the tunnel read 0450. Arkady stood and thanked all the witnesses, warning them that it was snowing outside. “You’re all free to leave or wait for the first train.”

Zelensky didn’t wait. He bounced to his feet, spread his arms like the winner of a match and shouted, “He’s back! He’s back!” all the way to the escalator. He clapped as he rode up, followed by the Bourdenova girl, who was already fumbling for her phone.

Zurin said, “Why didn’t you warn them not to talk to people outside the station?”

“Did some riders have cell phones?”

“Some.”

“Did you collect them?”

“No.”

“They have had nothing else to do but spread the word.”

Arkady almost felt for Zurin. Through coup and countercoup, Party rule and brief democracy, fall of the ruble and rise of millionaires, the prosecutor had always bobbed to the surface. And here he was in the subway, shooting spittle in his confusion and rage. “It’s a hoax or it didn’t happen. But why would anyone perpetrate such a hoax? And why would the bastards do it in my district? How am I expected to stop someone from posing as Stalin? Should we shut down the Metro while detectives search on their hands and knees for the footprints of a ghost? I’ll look ridiculous. It could be Chechens.”

That was desperate, Arkady thought. He looked toward the tunnel. The time was 0456. “You don’t need me for this.”

The prosecutor shifted close enough. “Oddly enough, I do. Zelensky acts as if this was a miracle. I tell you that miracles only happen on orders from above. Ask yourself, where are the agents of state security in all this? Where is the KGB?”

“FSB now.”

“The same can of worms. Usually, they’re everywhere. Suddenly, they’re not. I’m not being critical, not a bit, but I know when someone pulls down my drawers and fucks me from behind.”

“Wearing a mask in the subway is not a crime and without a crime there’s no investigation.”

“That’s where you come in.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Arkady wanted to be at Komsomol Square when the Metro began running.

“Most of our witnesses are elderly people. They have to be treated with sensitivity. Isn’t that what you are, our sensitive investigator?”

“There was no crime, and they’re useless as witnesses.”

Antipenko and Mendeleyev sat side by side, like the stones of a slumping wall.

“Who knows? They might open up. A little sympathy goes a long way with people that age. Also, there’s your name.”

“My name?”

“Your father’s. He knew Stalin. He was one of Stalin’s favorites. Not many can say that.”

And why not? Arkady thought. General Kyril Renko was a talented butcher, not a sensitive soul at all. Even given that all successful commanders were butchers-“None more passionately loved by the troops than Napoleon,” as the General used to say-even given that bloody standard, Kyril Renko stood out. A car, a long Packard with soldiers on the running boards, would come for the General to take him to the Kremlin. Either to the Kremlin or the Lubyanka, it wasn’t clear which until the car turned left or right at the Bolshoi, left to a cell at the Lubyanka or right to the Kremlin’s Spassky Gate. Other generals fouled their pants on the way. General Renko accepted the choice of fates as a fact of life. He would remind Arkady that his own swift rise through the ranks had been made possible by the execution by Stalin of a thousand Russian officers on the eve of the war. How could Stalin not appreciate a general like that?

Arkady asked, “What about the detectives who were on the scene?”

“Urman and Isakov? You said yourself there is no question of criminality. This is a matter we may not even want on the books. What is more appropriate is a humane, informal inquiry by a veteran like you.”

“You want me to find Stalin’s ghost?”

“In a nutshell.”