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

I was no longer what they were looking for. In the May of the same year, I had already been denounced, arrested and tortured.’

Rossel bit the tops of his gloves and tore them off his hands.

‘Because our glorious socialist state destroyed my fingers and tore the music out of my life. I remember the concert, everybody does, but that day I was at the front, lying in a crater and looking at a blazing late summer sun. All the while struggling, thanks to my still-bandaged hands, to point my gun in the right direction. The overture was a massive artillery barrage to shut the Germans up, and then they blasted the symphony out of loudspeakers all over the city and even in the direction of the enemy. “We’re still here, we’re still alive, and this is our anthem that you will never silence.”’

Rossel held his left hand up to the bare light bulb, staring at the remnants of Nikitin’s butchery.

‘Three weeks later we were thrown into a major battle – tanks, artillery, aircraft. We hurled everything at them. Made progress, too, for a while.’

His hands fell to his sides.

‘Then they fought back. I hope never to live through anything like that ever again.’

‘Did you ever find out who it was that informed on you?’ Vassya asked.

‘No, but it doesn’t matter.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘At the time, I thought I deserved it. That’s what part of me still thinks.’

‘But how could anyone deserve something like that?’

‘A long time ago, I retold a joke in front of lots of people. A joke about the Party my father had told me. Somebody reported it to the authorities. That’s why, I believe, my parents were sent to the camps. It is probably why my sister is missing.’

He stretched out his left hand towards the faded seabird carved into the mantelpiece.

‘Their luck ran out. Because of me.’

*

It was nearly six when they made it home. They headed for Vassya’s apartment, as if it was somehow a sanctuary.

‘What will you do now?’ she asked.

Rossel considered this.

‘We have already decided we are not going to run. So, we wait. It won’t be long. If I am lucky, I will get the chance to explain the case to my interrogator before I am shot.’

She killed the light and stepped close to him.

‘Then we don’t have much time,’ she said.

39

Monday November 5

The knock was not at all loud. Almost polite. Rossel sat up straight in Vassya’s bed and checked his watch. Seven thirty. They were late – they usually called on their victims between two and four in the morning to ensure maximum confusion and compliance.

Another knock. This time louder and more demanding. He climbed out of bed and put on his trousers and vest. Vassya’s eyes began to blink open.

As he walked down the hall, adrenalin shot through him – he braced for a swarm of clubs and boots. But as he swung the front door of the apartment open, Rossel felt his heart steady. Only one MGB officer stood in front of him.

Nikitin stepped into the hallway and closed the door. His breath stank of cigars and vodka, his eyes were red-rimmed. The MGB uniform, usually crisp and tight, was rumpled and there was an L-shaped yellow stain on his collar. When he spoke, it was a slurred whisper.

‘They like to pick out girls, Minister Beria and Vronsky,’ Nikitin said, slumping against the wall. ‘That’s how they amuse themselves together. They go out at night and drive; sometimes, when it’s Moscow, in the Packard, other times, when it’s here in Leningrad, in an MGB limo. Me and Sarkisov, we’ve driven them a few times. They point. The car slows down. Then a girl is told to get in. Any girl. Blonde, redhead, brunette. Young, twenties, thirties. Any girl that takes their fancy. That’s how it works. It’s Beria they are talking to. It’s Vronsky who is stretching out a hand to greet them. Both famous men, both terrifying. What choice do these girls have? None, none whatsoever.’

Nikitin stood upright, grunting with the effort.

‘They don’t like whores, Uncle Lavrentiy and Uncle Nikolai. They don’t like sluts. Not for the most part. They like the innocent ones. The girls who look like chaste virgins. The fresh flowers. The Flower Game, is what they actually call it – what they whisper in the back of that limousine. The black door of the car opens. The girl gets in. And that’s it. She can no longer be herself ever again. Beria has a soundproof room in the house you visited on Malaya Nikitskaya Street. They take them in there and do things to them. I’m a torturer. I’ve worked at the Bolshoi Dom for fifteen years. But I’m also a father to a nineteen-year-old girl. And the only thing that keeps me from sleeping at night is thinking about the noises those girls make inside that soundproof room. The shapes their lips make as they mouth cries no one ever gets to hear.’

Nikitin’s voice had risen as he told the tale. Now, it dropped back to a whisper.

‘In the morning, me and Sarkisov have to give them irises. Can you believe that? That’s Beria’s test. If they take the flowers, he lets them go, sees it as a sign that they have acquiesced and won’t cause trouble. We give them flowers and then take a snap with a little camera in which we command them to watch the birdie. Not all of them do. The ones that say no to the flowers, they and their entire families end up in the camps.’

Nikitin’s left knee buckled. He steadied himself by resting a hand on the small wooden hall table where some of the kommunalka residents kept their gloves. He was more than half-cut. Almost at the rambling stage of inebriation. He took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, following that up with a belch.

‘I’ve been dismissed. Sarkisov rang a few hours ago. A lifetime of service then goodbye,