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

‘Comrade Lieutenant, you are dealing in both music and murder, am I correct? Then let me tell you a tale. Professor Loban never wanted him in the school but Vronsky’s mother was a schemer, a great beauty, a lady of society and blessed with some powerful friends. Ever met her?’ Eliasberg twisted his lips. ‘The kind of woman who bites into a lemon and makes the lemon recoil. Close to the court then. Close to the Kremlin now. Loban had no choice. He had to accept the boy.’

‘And did Vronsky receive special treatment?’

Eliasberg shook his head.

‘No, not really. That was not the professor’s way. Loban was indulgent of all his prodigies. If he was annoyed at having Vronsky forced upon him, he did not show it. For a while, things remained as they had been. But then there was a recital – a musical competition.’

Nikitin might burst in at any moment. But Rossel’s instincts told him if he pushed the conductor too hard, he would clam up. He needed to be patient.

‘What kind of recital?’

‘Stolypin arranged for the tsarina to visit the island and observe Loban’s charges in person. It was decided that she would view each group in turn. Mathematicians first, then scientists, then those boys particularly proficient in language would read out some poems they had written and finally we musicians would perform something. Something one of us had written.’

‘And Vronsky was the chosen one,’ said Rossel.

‘No. No, Comrade Lieutenant, that was just it. He wasn’t. A boy named Suvorin, Andrei Suvorin, was the chosen one. A remarkable prodigy, a talent some compared to Mozart. Alas, the world never got to hear a Suvorin symphony. I have carried a tiny fragment of his composition lodged in my head for almost half a century. Even then it had a haunting quality. As if, though a child like the rest of us, the boy already knew too much of the bestial undercurrents, the darkness of this world.’

They both looked at the door. Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside but drifted away.

‘Continue, maestro.’

‘In the weeks before the recital, that’s when the atmosphere began to change. Petty acts of abuse and bullying. Suvorin, victimised by Vronsky. We were all encouraged to gang up on him. A few did, a few kept their distance. Suvorin kept on trying to compose, but Vronsky would steal his manuscript paper and sing it out loud, taunting him.’

Eliasberg held Rossel’s eye for a moment. Then he started to hum – a simple, five-note musical phrase.

F. A. E-flat. G. B-flat.

Fa. La. Mi-bemol. Sol. Si-bemol.

Rossel felt a twist of recognition.

Eliasberg opened his lips and then repeated the refrain, louder and more clearly.

Rossel pounded the table to silence him. ‘How did you know?’ he shouted.

‘Know what, detective?’

‘Those notes. That they were the notes we found on the tracks?’

Eliasberg looked at him. He was calm now, his face marked only by serenity and acceptance.

‘I do not know what you are talking about, comrade,’ the conductor murmured. ‘I only know these as the notes Suvorin wrote, that Vronsky sang out in a mocking falsetto to us in the grounds of our school. And which formed the leitmotif of the piece that was performed to the tsarina in a simple but elegant string trio written by Vronsky.’

‘But I thought you said Suvorin was the chosen one.’

‘He was. But a week before royal inspection, Suvorin disappeared. His parents came for the recital and had to be told he had vanished.’

Rossel’s mind was racing. ‘Why tell me this?’ he said. ‘It is ancient history.’

‘Because you asked me about the great musical competition. And because you should know what Vronsky is capable of. Incidentally, if you have heard that refrain before, that is because it appears in every Vronsky composition.’

‘What?’

‘Yes, every one. Sometimes it is hidden. Almost imperceptible. Sometimes it is inverted. Every time it is harmonised differently. But it is always there. I have always found it. Even though it is not his, but Suvorin’s.’

Rossel got to his feet and pounded at the door. The outside bolt slid back and a sliver of light thrust into the interrogation room.

He paused at the threshold.

‘I will do my best for you, maestro,’ he said. ‘I will tell them you are innocent.’

‘Will that help me?’

The maestro looked more curious than concerned, save for the two tears dampening the whiskers of his cheeks.

Rossel shrugged.

‘The six people whose names are underlined were students from the Leningrad Conservatory who were called upon to play the solo parts in the Vronsky. But having that list found in your possession has been unfortunate. People have been condemned for far less.’

He turned and opened the door wider. Over his shoulder, Rossel added: ‘It was an honour to play under your baton, maestro, even if for only one rehearsal.’

36

Sunday November 4

The dark skin on Madame Shishani’s cheeks looked just as it had when he was a student – drier than the leaves of the oldest scores she kept on the library shelves that surrounded them.

Sixty years old, half Chechen and proud of it, Madame Shishani seemed to have lived her life in the conservatory library. There were whispers she was a Muslim and kept a tattered copy of the Koran hidden among the symphonies and sonatas, but they were very quiet whispers; it didn’t pay to be a Chechen Muslim in Soviet Russia and the students liked Madame Shishani. In any case, her thin blue lips and contemptuous dark eyes were straight out of the savage, northern world of Russian folklore.

The library was on the bottom floor of the conservatory. You filled out a request for a score and Madame Shishani would take it and disappear behind countless shelves, sometimes for several minutes, before materialising with the work you needed. As she had done so many times when he was a student, so she did now, handing Rossel a thick green tome. On the front of it was a neatly typed title:

Raskolnikov’s Feast. N. Vronsky.

‘Professor Lebedeva told me about your