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

one. Sometimes they were fatal. Sometimes, Rossel wished his own had been. If he’d kept his mouth shut, kept his smart remarks to himself, perhaps he would still be playing the violin – maybe a job at the Kirov Theatre, maybe some solo concerts here and there. Still young at heart, raising smiles, chasing the occasional romantic liaison with singers or dancers – not forced to confront the craggy, chastened face he saw staring back at him out of the shaving mirror each morning. Prizrak, he would whisper, pointing back – a ghost, its face as white as the suds plastered all over it.

He took off his gloves and examined his hands.

The ring and little finger of the left were both missing. The middle and index intact but stiff and somewhat twisted. His right hand had fared a little better – no fingers missing. But the ring and little finger were broken and malformed.

Like a scale, Rossel could recall the order with perfect clarity.

Do – the left little finger. Already broken by his interrogator who, when that did not inspire a confession, turned to a chisel.

Re – his mind wandering up and down all the most difficult scales, imagining the tips of his fingers pressing the strings into place just so.

Mi. Severed.

‘You can stop this,’ murmured the interrogator. ‘All it takes is your confession.’

Fa – the ring finger. Down came the chisel.

Sol – the interrogator put the chisel down but started with the hammer on the right. Agony in symmetry.

Scales turned into arpeggios, then the most difficult studies. In the end, he had confessed anyway – confessed to anti-Soviet sentiments, they told him later, though exactly what sentiments he could not quite recall.

Maybe it had been encouraging counter-revolutionary sabotage – that was a favourite during the war. Or enemy propaganda. Plotting to assassinate party cadres. Conspiracy to aid fascism. Profiteering. Wrecking. Diversionary acts. Spreading rumours to undermine morale. Espionage. Hoarding. Choose from an extensive menu, comrades, because in these troubled times, the one thing we’ve got plenty of is crimes of treason. Choose anything you fancy.

The long, angular nose and scarred face of his torturer. The stench of the cell. The musty straps and iron-cold restraints. The way his back was contorted over the special bench. It was all as clear as a sparkling night sky. But the confession was wrapped in fog.

La.

It hadn’t stopped. Not for a long time.

But, when it did, Rossel knew he had become somebody else. It felt as though he had been struck dumb. He had stared for hours at the stumps of his missing fingers. And, then, he had turned to a fellow inmate in that foetid, overcrowded cell and said, They might as well have cut out my tongue. He would never be able to play another note.

In the steamed-up confines of the Moskvich, Rossel shivered and decided it was time to search for that tea. Fuck your mother! He was cold all over.

Except for his hands, which were already numb. His hands couldn’t feel a thing.

4

The blizzard swirling in from the River Neva had turned Leningrad white but everything inside the little station house was shadow. A thick layer of black soot from the logs burning in the fire covered every inch of the walls. Vosstaniya Street was home to Militia Station 17. It was a battered fragment of a lost age left behind by the merchants who once owned it before the October Revolution.

Everyone and everything in it had a nickname. Rossel was the Fiddler, because someone had gone through his file on day one and found his diploma from the Leningrad Conservatory of Music. Sometimes he also got compared to Crazy Borya, a deranged tramp who literally scraped a living in all weathers on the bridges of the Griboyedov Canal with a cracked violin and hairless bow. ‘Screeching like a tomcat who’s dipped his balls in chilled vodka,’ as Grachev had put it.

The violin had marked him out as different. Especially as it was buried in the past of a man who hardly ever took his gloves off.

Lipukhin got ‘Comrade Lenfilm’ as he bore an uncanny resemblance to Nikolai Cherkasov, Stalin’s favourite film star. Grachev was ‘Pavel Stalingrad’, as he never stopped bragging about his role in the battle, as part of the 8th Guards Army. And Taneyev was ‘Taneyev’, on account of being so bland and boring nobody could even be bothered to make a nickname up for him. Even the police station itself had its own moniker: The Black House. Because of the soot and, perhaps, the things Grachev did to those suspects who might be having a little trouble confessing in its dank basement.

‘Grachev’s in there with some tart from Sennaya,’ Junior Sergeant Lidia Gerashvili whispered, intercepting Rossel in the middle of the room amid the chairs and desks of the lowest ranks. Station 17, home to a dozen militia officers, was full. Those supposed to be out on patrol on such a freezing morning had discovered vital paperwork that needed doing without delay, while those who really needed to do their paperwork were concentrating on getting the samovar going. ‘He came straight in and dragged her off for interrogation. And you know . . .’

‘I know,’ said Rossel. ‘How long ago?’

‘Only a few minutes.’

Rossel headed for the stairs.

Five dead bodies. Five blood-red stains on the soul of Mother Russia. No sleep to speak of. A corpse in the uniform of a state security officer. He needed to think. But first he had to tackle this.

*

Rossel barged into the interrogation room without knocking. Grachev had his hand raised. He had probably knocked the girl about a fair bit already but she had her clothes on and the sergeant’s trousers were still buttoned up. It could have been a lot worse.

The girl was probably only in her early twenties but she looked a lot older. Her hair was cut short and dyed a dark red.

Grachev started to say something but closed his mouth again. Rossel outranked him.