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

as if warding off flies from a plate of jam, a gesture apparently intended to convey the months of slaughter and misery – ‘left a scar. Inside, I mean. We got drunk together, once – the only time. And she blurted it out. “You cannot sing all that, you cannot express that. A genius could, perhaps, but why would they want to?” She was crying. Which was unlike her. So, she had run away from Leningrad. It must have been bad for her in the war to come here of all places. Do you know where she is now, Lieutenant?’

‘Yes,’ said Rossel. ‘Did she ever talk about any family or any relationships?’

‘Her mother and father were killed in the Great Patriotic War. All the doctors,’ added the nurse in lower tones, ‘all the doctors wanted to be with her. But they are all either too married or too old. Not suitable. She never found anyone, I believe – not anyone that she talked of, anyway. She still looked after herself though, you know, spent money on her lovely long dark hair. Too much, in my opinion.’

‘No one else?’ asked Rossel. ‘Are you sure?’

The nurse thought. ‘Before she finally went away, she mentioned meeting up with an old friend in Leningrad. That was odd, you know? She never went back there, never said much about the rest of her time there. But one day someone had got in touch and she seemed very happy about it at first. I could tell when she was happy because she got a little more talkative. When she was upset, she went very, very quiet. She ended up going to see whoever it was a few times, I think. But it didn’t end well.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘I bumped into her one day. Asked her how it was going. She just looked sullen. Wouldn’t say a thing . . . Is she in trouble? I hope not. Girls like that, ones who men lust after in that particular way, romantically. Pretending they are all poets, right up to the moment they first unbuckle their pants. Well, it’s my experience that they don’t have to go searching for heartache. It just comes to them. Poor Sofia, she would never have gone looking for trouble, herself. I’m sure of it.’

23

It was past six o’clock before the train from Ivangorod chugged to a halt back in Leningrad’s Baltic Station. Rossel leapt from his carriage and hurried to catch a tram that would take him to Theatre Square.

As he looked through the tram window, he saw the first flakes of a renewed snowfall tumble through the light of the street lamps. He began to hear Stalin’s voice again – his tired mind was playing tricks on him, he thought. He listened carefully. No, it was real – the great leader was still exhorting him to be vigilant against spies, wreckers, counter-revolutionary rightists and capitalist vampires. Just as he had been on the radio in Ivangorod.

Rossel pressed his nose against the glass and looked up. On lampposts and buildings, he could see loudhailers that hadn’t been there yesterday, nestled among the flags and banners, hailing the forthcoming celebrations. Not long ago, more loudhailers on the lampposts had signified national crisis; now they prepared the populace for a national triumph. Though sometimes the two went hand in hand, as the populace knew well.

The tram halted in Theatre Square and Rossel jumped down. The huge doors of the Kirov were locked so he strode round to the artists’ entrance, swatting aside the guard, demanding to know where Marina Morozova was. To be taken to her immediately. A young man dressed as a troubadour pointed him in the direction of her dressing room and he hammered on the door, wishing that the terrified guard who had accompanied him all the way but who seemed to know nothing useful would push off.

She wasn’t there so, with an increasing entourage of stage hands and chorus members pressed into the cause of finding her, Rossel blundered about the warren of corridors until he found himself at the edge of the great stage of the Kirov Opera itself. All was confusion, a harsh blur of lights, crashing chords and frantic movement.

‘It’s the rehearsal,’ said the guard, reproach in his small voice.

It was, in fact, a break in rehearsal – stage managers were yelling, men and women in filthy rags or wearing uniforms of the Red Army were talking and laughing while men in overalls hoisted shattered walls, bullet-pocked vehicles and heavy machine guns onto their shoulders and wandered off into the darkness.

Vronsky’s opera The Blockade, rumoured to be his most accomplished work, was almost ready – with a cast of thousands, by the looks of it. It was intended to be a masterpiece to rival that cry of defiance and tribute to the city’s unconquerable spirit, the Leningrad Symphony, by the only Soviet composer thought able to surpass Vronsky, Dmitri Shostakovich.

Just as Rossel was wondering how he would ever find her in the chaos, Marina Morosova ran straight into him. In the rough shirt and trousers of a hero of socialist labour and anti-fascist defence, she looked a far cry from the elegant figure he had spoken to a few days ago.

Marina drew back and berated him for his clumsiness but cut it short as she espied the uniform.

‘That is not a costume for the opera,’ she said. ‘Ah, Revol. It is you.’

‘Marina,’ Rossel said, taking her to one side. The crowd was thinning out. A stage hand shouted out, ‘Fifteen minutes, only fifteen minutes!’

‘Marina,’ Rossel repeated. ‘Marina, I believe that . . .’

He stopped. What did he believe? That her life was in danger? That the leader of a rogue Orthodox death cult had been murdering musicians? That this crazed priest was still capable of killing from beyond the grave? Of course not – it was ridiculous. So, then what?

‘When we last met, we spoke of Felix, did we not?’

‘Yes. Yes, we did,’ she said.

‘Has he been