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

Isaac’s as they swept the clouds and watch as the Nazi Dorniers flew by. One million dead, the world on fire. How could I capture that, I asked myself? And then it came to me.’

As the tape whirred, Sofia sang. Her voice seemed no more than a melodic whisper, faltering as she either failed to recall the words or, when they did remember, vocalise them with any conviction. Occasionally, true notes were attempted but the voice cracked and died. At times she muttered only a single word without any connection to what had gone before or to the sounds to come. As though the sound itself had been freed from the body and now journeyed on alone, shorn of all meaning. Had she been drugged, or was it the hallucinations of famine? Or – and here Rossel glanced at the cages again and shuddered – something much worse.

If ghosts could sing, he thought, and, in doing so, forced themselves to recollect the horrors of the life they had left behind, this is what they would sound like.

‘Listen,’ Vronsky said. ‘I need you to listen. That’s why I’ve brought you here. That’s why I needed a musical detective. You have always been my listener. So listen, I implore you.’

He was pacing up and down in front of the Magnetophon. As soon as the spools had begun to whirr, he had become animated.

‘I have it here, Rossel. I have it pinned down. A lifetime’s work.’

The composer gesticulated at the stacks of spools lying on the shelves that surrounded the walls near the door.

‘But I was unable to reveal it to another living soul. Until now.’

Vronsky lowered his voice.

‘The Road of Life? I heard the subtle cadence of a different road, one of death – the roll and rattle of the rails as the trains that transport the hundreds, the thousands, the millions out to the gulags. That, comrade, is Lenin’s lullaby, Beria’s little ditty, Stalin’s refrain. The wolves in the taiga can hear it. The stray mongrels in the back alleys can. The people try to drown it out. For what is it now to be Russian if not to clap your hands over your ears and refuse to hear? But my refrain is also a timeless proclamation – all that we humans have ever been – a first sigh, a last breath. The low rasping moan . . .’

Vronsky tapped on a suspended microphone and smiled as the dials on the Magnetophon danced. He kneeled in front of Rossel and placed one of his huge hands around the detective’s throat.

‘. . . . made by a slowly compressing trachea, as one man presses his boot down upon the throat of another, a sound which always contains within it that other noise, its twin – triumph. Is that not what Dostoevsky means when he asks us: “Am I a monster, or a victim myself?”’

Vronsky exerted more pressure on Rossel’s neck with his left hand as his right picked up one of the remaining glass tubes on the table.

‘Finger placement, Rossel. As a violinist, you know it’s everything.’

Rossel began to gulp in an effort to take in extra air. The end was near if he didn’t talk, fast. It was time for some revelations of his own.

‘A photograph,’ he mumbled.

Vronsky’s left hand pressed down even more firmly.

‘In my pocket . . . a photograph.’

The composer hesitated. With the left hand still on the detective’s throat, he dropped the tube from his right and began to delve inside Rossel’s jacket. It took him only moments to find the wallet. As soon as he did so, he relaxed his grip. Then stood up and began to leaf through it. After a few seconds, he found and drew out the black and white image.

Rossel swallowed hard. Then took in three more big lungfuls of air before he spoke.

‘Her name is Svetlana. She is the daughter of an MGB major by the name of Nikitin. She is carrying poppies, too. So, the major knows it was you who raped her. Probably after Beria, maybe before, but definitely also. Poppies are your flower. Nikitin knows as much as I do about everything – the girls you abducted, the people you murdered. So does his fellow officer, Sarkisov. They have lists with all the names on it.’

Vronsky stared at the photograph. His grip loosened. Air wheezed through Rossel’s windpipe.

‘That list is on its way to the finest dachas about fifty kilometres south of here, where Malenkov and all those other Party high-ups are. Let’s just say Beria has never been their favourite person.’

The composer still couldn’t take his eyes off Svetlana. Did he remember her? Did he recall her small, doleful eyes? Her delicate body?

‘We also know about the jewellery too,’ said Rossel.

He nodded to the tapes on the shelves.

‘I don’t need to listen anymore, Vronsky. Just look at how much you have laboured. Shostakovich understands the concept of brevity – would have instinctively known two notes were all that were necessary. An MGB car, a black raven, parks in the street outside, boot-steps echo in a stairwell at midnight, and then two notes ring out.’

Rossel suddenly slumped back in the chair and began to laugh. After a moment, his body was shaking.

‘Perhaps the great composer might call it his Doorbell Symphony?’

Vronsky looked back up into Rossel’s eyes. Then he released his grip, picked up the photograph and tore it into pieces. Dropping them, he picked up the steel rod from the table.

When the blow came it was delivered with such force that the chair to which Rossel was tied toppled over.

44

Vronsky had left the dacha in a hurry, presumably after finding the phone line dead. Rossel still took five minutes before he felt able to stretch out his fingers and move both the chair and his torso, inch by inch, close enough to pick up the shard of glass he had been concealing under his foot. And then a further ten to cut through the loosened twine and free himself. Two