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

Eliasberg’s eyes followed them.

The conductor began to speak. The words and syllables falling, rushing, leaping from his bruised lips.

‘I was a great conductor with a wonderful reputation,’ he said. ‘I was given the honour of performing the Shostakovich symphony, his seventh, the symbol of the siege in Leningrad. The symbol of Soviet defiance. But after the war, Mravinsky, the great maestro, returned. Disdainful, bitter and jealous. He found me celebrated. Decorated – an Honoured Artist of the Soviet Union. So he used his influence and blocked me from ever again conducting in this city. And then, yes, I stole that score of the Leningrad Symphony – one of a bare handful of originals – because although Mravinsky conducted the premiere of Shostakovich’s fifth and sixth symphonies, the seventh is mine, the Leningrad belongs to me, to Karl Ilyich Eliasberg. Because while Mravinsky was cowering thousands of miles from the front, I was here, here, rounding up an ensemble of half-dead violinists and clarinettists and percussionists, nurturing them back to life, bullying the famished horns into perfection, driving on my band of skeletons and ghosts. Murder? After all the trouble I had in finding them? Don’t be ridiculous.’

Nikitin thumped the table and half stood, leaning over and glaring at Eliasberg.

‘When they searched your house, my men discovered a list of fifty names inside the score,’ he said. ‘Six of them are underlined. Underlined by you. Four of them are dead, that we know for sure. And when we are certain that another dead body lying in the morgue is the other musician you marked out for murder, you will be further condemned. Besides, Minister Beria himself gave me your name, comrade. You say you are not a murderer but, in my eyes and in the eyes of the Soviet state in that moment – the moment of the minister’s intervention – you became one.’

At the mention of Beria’s name, Eliasberg’s head dropped. A small tear rolled down his nose and he emitted a soft, low mewling. The pathetic whimper of a tiny trapped insect.

Nikitin reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

‘I can save your family,’ he said. ‘You have a sister in Gatchina and your father is in a sanatorium in Novgorod. I know this. Let them be. Let them enjoy life. Confess. Why did you select those victims? Why did you place the bodies on the tracks in that way?’

With one finger he pushed the list of fifty names towards Eliasberg. Six were underlined. ‘Look at these names. Just point to your victims and confirm their identities,’ he said, with a voice of molten honey. ‘Artists are famous for their petty jealousies, are they not? We are now assuming you were motivated by some sort of twisted professional rivalry. You have already talked of your resentment of Mravinsky. It boiled over. Poisoned your soul. Presented itself in unspeakable acts.’

Eliasberg was sobbing in great gulps now but raised his head.

‘I wanted the seventh to be mine. To capture it for myself. That’s all. I knew I was a fool to take the score but I couldn’t help myself,’ he whimpered. ‘Mravinsky, the bastard – yes, I hated him in the way you describe. But nobody else.’

Nikitin looked pleased. Rossel watched the conductor destroy himself. It was never comfortable to see someone fall apart like this. Even the maniacs whose nerves dissolved in the considerably less menacing environment of ordinary police cells. No, it was never good to see such a creature as a man collapse into a formless pile of emotions and instincts, like a sail whose spar had snapped in a storm.

‘Confirm the identities, Comrade Eliasberg. Confess to your crimes,’ said Nikitin.

The major pushed once again at the chain.

Eliasberg sighed as he watched it swing. Then fumbled for the paper and peered at it, sniffling. His finger slid up the list and stopped.

‘This one,’ he said.

He paused and looked closer, the tears dripping off his nose. The finger moved again.

‘This one . . .’

When the conductor pointed to the sixth underlined name, the one who had not yet turned up dead in any frozen field, Rossel knew he was lying.

*

Nikitin led Rossel out of the interrogation cell and down a narrow, whitewashed corridor with grey-green metal doors lining each side, closer together even than in a kommunalka. They climbed two flights of stairs – Rossel wondered if they were back above ground level, out of the dungeon, but there were no windows in the room the major took him into so it was impossible to tell.

‘Let us be seated and drink,’ said Nikitin, stomping over to a corner cabinet full of files and yanking open a cupboard. Out came a bottle of Stolichnaya and two tin mugs. He slammed them on a crate and lowered himself onto one of two stools either side.

‘Let us drink, gundog, to the speed and certainty of Soviet justice as exacted by our great MGB. Little victories like this pathetic arsehole’s confession. In this short, weary life I find it pays to celebrate them.’

*

Nikitin threw some more of the vodka down and grabbed a slice of some black bread he had placed on the table. As he chewed, he regarded the back of one hand and licked a crumb off his forefinger. The major’s voice was a little slurred now. He and Rossel had been drinking for almost an hour.

‘A simple man does not make life complicated. He does what he has to do to survive,’ said Nikitin. ‘For me, survival and talent were one and the same. When they recruited me, I had no idea why – I had never been good at anything before. But they train you, try you out, and together we found that I was good at something: the clashing together of heads, the breaking of noses.’

He sploshed more vodka into their mugs.

‘In the end, I got so good that I could get people to confess just by walking into the room. Before the war,