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

shard just as the Cossack heaved a Magnetophon tape recorder onto the lacquered table. Vronsky waved his servant away and took two reels out of a box.

‘Sofia Fedotova . . . Maxim Avdeyev . . . Nadya Bazhanova . . . Felix Sorokin . . . They played like automatons, like instruments playing instruments, with no heart, no feeling, and no understanding,’ the composer said. ‘The horrible caterwauling they produced made it even easier for the authorities to deny me. But you were different, Rossel. Your playing stood out.’

Rossel shifted in the chair, his legs numb.

‘We were under siege, being bombed every day, half starved,’ he said. ‘Nobody could feel anything except the emptiness of their bellies.’

‘I am Nikolai Nikolayevich Vronsky, Hero of Socialist Labour and People’s Artist of the USSR. Where music is concerned, I do not make mistakes. You played well.’

The composer began to connect cables from the Magnetophon to one of the microphones.

‘I needed to score my opera in the first person,’ he added. ‘I needed to live it. Because of what had happened to Suvorin and the trumpeter Landau, to a degree I already had. But now, I knew that before I shaped a chord, I needed to again commit the act. For the truly great man is the one who steps across the line others dare not cross. Lenin knew that, Stalin knows it. To write The Blockade, I could not put pen to paper without – once again – pressing a blade to the nape of someone’s neck.’ He tutted as he fumbled with one of the tape reels.

‘It took me years to track down the philistines who ruined my work – such is the chaos war leaves behind,’ the composer said.

Rossel scraped the glass an inch closer. It grated against the rough ground and he froze, but his captor was too absorbed in the dials on the tape machine to notice.

‘I have no expectations of mercy, maestro,’ said Rossel. ‘Not least since if you released me, I would ensure you spent the rest of your days in the salt mines of Kolyma. But I must ask you nonetheless. You said I played well. Your revenge upon me is not because I ruined your fledgling score?’

Vronsky extended himself to his full height. He reached into the left-hand pocket of his jacket and took out a folded piece of paper. He opened it out with a flourish and held it in front of the lieutenant. Rossel took in the embossed red CCCP header and typed script. It was a single sheet torn from an MGB report.

Fifth Directorate MGB, Report by informant Sofia Fedotova.

There was a small section in the middle of the text underlined in red ink. Vronsky tapped a finger on it. Rossel focused on the page. Tried to understand it. At first, the words doubled up, ran each into the other, but after a few seconds he could read it:

. . . The informant, describing an encounter in the conservatory canteen, said she had asked Rossel what he had thought of Vronsky’s latest work, a Revolutionary Cantata to mark Stalin’s birthday. R told her: ‘Normally I am a great admirer of his work but here I heard nothing other than banality, a mixture of Shostakovich and Strauss, a dash of Rachmaninov, a bit of Stravinsky when he had run out of ideas. It put me in mind of our masters, Sofia. Full of pompous arrogance and precious little to be inspired by.’

The revelation hit him harder than any blow.

Rossel looked at Vronsky. ‘I thought it was Nadya who had informed on me,’ he mumbled.

The composer was exultant. He folded the page again and slipped it back into his pocket.

‘My dear boy, Nadya informed on you and a great many others. But Sofia’s betrayal was the one that counted. That makes it all the sweeter, does it not? Her mother was a Menshevik. This leverage was used to recruit the daughter to inform on dissenters at the conservatory. In looking into your background, I skimmed a few of her reports. She always gave just enough information to show she was trying but not enough to condemn anyone. Hoping, I presume, that her dispatches would simply be checked, stamped and filed away. Yours was. Until, in May ’42, increased political pressure for more arrests caused some bureaucrat to open a filing cabinet somewhere in the Bolshoi Dom – most likely at random – and retrieve it. All those youthful clever remarks. Just one joke about our Bolshevik masters might be overlooked. But page after page . . . Which led to your original arrest and interrogation. If I were you, I would put it down to bad luck. It might be easier on your mind.’

Vronsky walked to the far corner of the room. He picked up the metal railroad rod and began to trail it over the sides of the cages. Steel struck steel. Vronsky swung to his left again and sent one of the cages spinning on the chains. Then one more. Now another. Five whirling metal dervishes. The jarring noise echoed around the room, cannoned off the walls, found a way inside Rossel. Brought up acid from his stomach into the back of his throat.

More than anything, he wanted to put his hands over his ears to block out the sound.

‘Six weeks with only water, not even a smear of Vologda butter or a bacon rind,’ Vronsky was shouting as he swung. ‘I would have Razin set the table, once a day, only the very best china, the best dishes from the Party shops I had laid for them. After a few weeks, they would wail and gibber as soon as they heard the clinking of china in the hall outside the room. It took most only a few days to exhibit all the classic symptoms of hunger: impulsivity, irritability, hyperactivity.’

Vronsky’s breath was coming in bursts now. His face and body dripped with sweat; patches appeared like newly forming continents on the loose white shirt that covered the round globe of his belly.

Rossel’s head jerked