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

mantelpiece, were two blue Fabergé eggs, tiny and exquisite. Rossel felt as though he had stumbled upon the antechamber to some magnificent palace in which all the riches of the Romanovs were being held in safe keeping.

Madame Vronsky followed Rossel’s eye.

‘You like my trinkets?’

He gave her what he hoped was a cold look.

‘I haven’t seen such a display of privilege outside the Hermitage itself,’ he said.

It was the kind of blunt accusation that had sent millions to the gulag. Madame Vronsky made no attempt to deflect it. To do that, a Soviet citizen had to be utterly confident of their own status and position.

‘As a girl, in the days before our great and noble socialist revolution, I worked in the Elisseyev Emporium on Nevsky. The store is still there, of course, but only a pale shadow, I’m afraid, of the way it was in those far-off days. The silks, the perfumes, the dresses, my goodness. The tsarina herself visited on occasion, with her daughters. I was told by a close friend that the chemise pretty little Maria was wearing when she came face to face with the bullets of revolutionary justice in Sverdlovsk came from Elisseyev’s last-ever collection. So shameful to put holes in an item of such unsurpassed quality. This casual cultural vandalism makes me, on occasion, question my own Marxist zealotry, Lieutenant Rossel. And you must be Major Nikitin?’

Madame Vronsky leaned down and fed the dog more caviar. It barked and then demolished the delicacy.

Rossel found his voice.

‘Where is the maestro?’ he asked.

Madame Vronsky shrugged.

‘Rehearsing, I expect.’

‘The Kirov Ballet is performing Swan Lake this evening. There is no rehearsal of The Blockade.’

She looked at her nails. ‘Then I do not know.’

Nikitin cleared his throat.

‘Forgive the interruption, comrade,’ he said. ‘We were just . . .’

Rossel took out his pen and notepad.

‘Just to clear something up for me,’ he said. ‘Could I ask you to recall if you issued instructions to all music conservatories and concert halls to collect all copies of your son’s work, Raskolnikov’s Feast, after it was performed for the first and only time? And that the staff of the library of the Leningrad Conservatory of Music were, in turn, instructed to go about the city and pick them up?’

Madame Vronsky patted the dog gently on the head.

‘There, there, Zib, good girl, good girl.’

She stared up at Rossel, her right eyebrow arched à la Dietrich.

‘Zib is a movie star, Lieutenant. Do you recognise her?’

Rossel shook his head.

‘Oh, yes. Vladimir Yazdovsky, a Lenfilm director, is a personal friend. He gave Zib to me once she had played her role.’

‘Her role?’

‘Zib here was just a scruffy mongrel bitch that hung around the Lenfilm studio kitchen feeding on potato peelings. Then one day a dog scheduled to be in a film ran away. They couldn’t change the scene, they were on a schedule. And so Zib, being a young lady of prescience, sensed an opportunity. They grabbed her, hoped she would sit still until encouraged to walk across the set, and she behaved perfectly. She practically won the Stalin Prize. And Yazdovsky gave her to me. Now she resides under a chaise longue that once belonged to Princess Gagarina, being fed the finest caviar by the mother of Nikolai Nikolayevich Vronsky, the head of the Leningrad Union of Composers and soon to be lauded, once The Blockade has premiered, as the greatest Russian composer that ever lived.’

Madame Vronsky made a swift, twisting movement with her right hand. She grabbed the dog’s ear and yanked it roughly. The yap turned into a growl. It lurched forward to snap at her hand. She moved her red silk slipper and kicked it forcibly.

‘But I must always be careful because, as you can see, this bitch hasn’t forgotten how to bite.’

Whining, the dog scuttled off into the corner of the room.

‘Your son’s music, Madame Vronsky,’ said Rossel. ‘Was it you who persuaded Deputy Kommissar Shevchuk to order the collection of all of your son’s music that was not already in your personal possession?’

She shrugged.

‘I really have no recollection. Everything about those times, the siege, was unworldly. I like to think of it as something that never really happened at all.’

Rossel matched her stare. Her eyes, he noticed, were a brittle metallic blue.

‘You are an investigator, Comrade Rossel. And yet I’m led to understand that, in a somewhat ironic turn of events, you and your militia colleagues are now also under investigation.’

He began to mouth another question. But thought better of it. Madame Vronsky clapped her hands. The liveried flunky stepped towards them.

‘Yes, Madame. Shall I show them out?’

He had an accent – southern, Rossel thought. From the Caucasus? He didn’t look it.

‘Show them out, Razin.’

Rossel picked up his cap and stood. It was a good Cossack name, and though plenty of ordinary Soviet citizens were at liberty to call their children Razin, it would be just like Madame Vronsky to give herself a pet warrior Cossack.

She smiled at him.

‘So sorry not to have been more helpful.’

*

Outside the living room was a gold-painted vestibule. Off to one side was an oak door decorated with an armoured hand holding a magnificent scimitar – the ancient coat of arms of the Gagarina family. Beyond that door were the areas of the mansion now used by the Union of Composers for rehearsals, recitals and academic work.

The Cossack escorted them out, with a look on his face suggesting he would have liked them served up for his lunch. Nikitin was in a hurry to leave but Rossel lingered at a large, gilt mirror near the entrance. Under the mirror was a vase filled with fresh flowers. It was pseudo-Grecian in shape, with a golden handle, and looked – just as the ones in the living room did – as if it was made of the most expensive Dyatkovo crystal.

Rossel finished buttoning his coat and headed out after Nikitin into the dark. As he stepped back onto Bolshaya Morskaya, he smacked his gloves together with a retort that made the MGB