City of Ghosts by Ben Creed (most important books of all time txt) 📕

the Defence Ministry. A girl who had some talent, apparently. Felix somehow wangled his way into the family’s affections. He will, by now, be either demonstrating Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet to Svetlana Stalin or breaking rocks somewhere east of Perm having been unable to resist ravishing the minister’s wife.’

She laughed but the laughter did not come easily. Whether this was because she disliked talk of Felix Sorokin’s amorous misadventures or because she had the Soviet allergy to gossip, he could not tell.

‘But I may be wrong,’ continued Rossel. ‘Felix was a wanderer. In every sense. In any case, I have not seen him since the end of the war. He was in the 23rd, I think, fighting the Finns.’

The waiter returned with fresh cups and a silver tray with two pots on it, one for tea, one for hot water. He put them on the table and walked back towards the counter.

‘A sweet, red-haired boy, my Felix,’ said Marina. ‘We were close for a while but I can’t say I’ve really thought of him in nearly fifteen years. You, on the other hand, Revol, well you had exactly what we all wanted. And, so, I have often wondered what happened to you.’

She gestured with her hand to his white cap with its red band, resting on the table.

‘I never expected this.’

She lifted the teapot and began to pour. ‘Talent, true talent. On a par with Oistrakh, even. I mean everybody said that.’

‘Not everybody.’

She smiled.

‘That’s true, Revol, very true. For you, I remember, did not.’

‘Such comparisons are foolish. David Oistrakh is one of the finest musicians ever to grace the stage. I never even had a job in a folk band.’

Marina took a sip of tea. Then reached across the table and touched him on the back of his gloved left hand.

‘I heard that you had stopped playing. I’m so sorry.’

Rossel withdrew the hand and shrugged.

‘The Kirov’s loss is the militia’s gain. That’s how I try to see it.’

Marina looked blankly at him for a moment before smiling, not without sympathy.

‘I’d heard rumours. Why would a brilliant violinist stop playing the violin?’ she said.

Rossel put his gloved hands down on the glass tabletop and leaned in. The table wobbled; tea swirled in the two mugs and ran into the cracked saucers. Almost imperceptibly, the tone of his voice changed.

‘Little Nadya, Marina. Nadya Bazhanova. Tell me about her.’

She leaned back.

‘So that’s why you are here. They finally decided to investigate that woman.’

‘Yes.’

‘Have my jewels turned up?’

‘Tell me about Paris and the Palais Garnier, Marina.’

As soon as he asked the question, her mood altered. Marina now assumed the role of prima donna in the Kirov Opera. Rossel leaned forward still further, now a policeman and nothing more.

‘Had she been your dresser for a long time?’

‘No, not that long really. Six months. Someone recommended her. I didn’t even recognise her when she turned up. Or realise we’d been at the conservatory together. I realised later that she had been a little put out about that. But you know how it was there. Circles within circles, all musicians together, all good communists together, everyone equal, of course – but . . .’

‘Some more equal than others.’

The soprano nodded.

‘“Talent, unlike milk, bread or cheese, is not distributed according to the needs of the proletariat via a five-year economic plan.” So says our mercurial maestro.’

She stopped.

‘Don’t worry, comrade,’ Rossel said. ‘We are old friends, you and I. I’m simply here to ask questions about Nadya.’

‘At first, she was fine, good at her job. I didn’t really like her, I can say that, but she was efficient. There was always a feeling with her of endless calculation. That everything she said and did served some strategic purpose. She had a grand design, I think, but I never got to find out what it was. Then, after she’d been with me for a few months, things started going missing.’

‘Things?’

‘Not jewellery, at first. I had a perfectly divine little Hermès clutch bag that Nikolai had brought me back from Lisbon one time.’

‘Nikolai?’

‘Vronsky. The maestro.’

‘Ah.’

Marina Morozova raised her slender eyebrows. Gently signalling: Yes, of course, I’m screwing the maestro. This, dearest Revol, is how the world works.

She smiled.

‘It was not particularly expensive, I think, but of great sentimental value to me.’

‘How so?’

‘It was a symbol.’

‘Of, what, exactly?’

She sipped at her tea. ‘We took Nikolai’s Inferno, his opera based on Dante’s poem, to the Teatro de São Carlos for a summer season. He told me I was his Beatrice. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate, Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Nikolai loves to joke. In that and many other little ways I find him gloriously childlike. He likes to tease me with it sometimes – he quotes the line before we make love; enter what Dante calls: il secondo cerchio.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The second circle. In the book and also in Nikolai’s opera. Those afflicted with sins of lust were kept in the second circle of hell.’

Marina held his gaze for a second and then reached out, picked up her cup and sipped again. Rossel could see she was enjoying herself.

He decided to put a stop to that.

Rossel reached into the pocket of his jacket, then put a picture of the ruby clasp-earrings onto the table.

‘Were these amongst what you believe Nadya took from you, Comrade Morozova?’

She looked down at the photograph and instantly shook her head.

‘No, I’ve never seen them before.’

‘What, then, beside the Hermès bag, was the jewellery that you believe she stole?’

‘A bracelet, a sapphire bracelet. From a jeweller called Tiffany, in New York.’

Rossel picked up the photograph and put down another on the table.

‘This is what Nadya looked like when we found her. I don’t know what cerchio of hell she had visited before she died, only that she must have sinned very greatly to deserve it.’

Marina stared down at it for a moment, but quickly looked away and handed the photograph back to Rossel.

‘How horrible,’ she said. The singer took out a small yellow silk handkerchief and began to wipe