22
Of course it is Volkov sitting at the wide oak desk. Who else had he expected? Volkov, heavy and expressionless, giving nothing. The guards salute and stand rigid at either side of Andrei.
‘Escort duty, wait in the outer room,’ says Volkov. Andrei hears Bighead make a sound which is almost a protest, quickly swallowed as Volkov gives him a glance. The rolls of flesh on the back of Bighead’s neck quiver as he turns. He makes for the door as fast as he can, almost stumbling over his own boots. Squirrel’s mouth hangs open for a second and then he bundles out on Bighead’s heels. The door clicks shut. Volkov and Andrei are alone in the room.
‘What a pair of beauties,’ remarks Volkov. ‘Not, perhaps, the very finest the Lubyanka has to offer. A little re-education is in order. Have they been treating you well?’
Andrei doesn’t move and doesn’t answer.
‘Sit down,’ says Volkov.
Andrei crosses to the desk and pulls out the chair that Volkov indicates. It is, of course, lower than his own. You don’t have to be in prison long to learn these little tricks. He sits, and Volkov looks him up and down, slowly. In Volkov’s face Andrei reads his own physical degradation. Matted hair, scars and bruises, pulpy shadows under the eyes. Stained clothes and flapping shoes.
‘Frankly, Andrei Mikhailovich, I would hardly have recognized you,’ he says at last.
Andrei gazes back into Volkov’s Siberian eyes. Who is this man today? He can’t see any trace of Gorya’s father. This is the face of a hard, trained top MGB man on his own territory. And yet Volkov has this trick of intimacy. He makes you feel that you owe him something, even if it’s only an answer.
Andrei sighs, deeply. He hears the sound of his sigh move out into the room, and he can’t call it back. He must get a grip on himself. He must be as strong as Volkov.
‘Surely that’s the idea?’ he says. ‘This is the Lubyanka look.’
Volkov raises his eyebrows. ‘The idea, as you call it, is to discover what’s left after the masks have dropped off,’ he says. He looks down at the file on his desk, opens it, and appears to read the top sheet with concentration. Volkov appears entirely at ease. So he should. Wherever there are cells and interrogations, he is at home. They are to him what X-rays and hospital beds are to me, thinks Andrei. Both of us are professionals. I can work in any hospital, and he in any prison.
Volkov looks up again. His eyes meet Andrei’s. ‘You’ve been holding out on us,’ he says mildly.
Andrei doesn’t reply. His body floods with adrenalin, but he holds himself still.
‘You should have told us about Brodskaya. It’s all going to come out, whether you do or not. Even as we speak, the entire plot is being unmasked. Saboteurs and terrorist elements are being rooted out by the vigilance of the people’s security services.’
Volkov speaks rapidly and without expression, as if these words must be said but he himself attaches no particular emotion to them. A feeling of chill begins to invade Andrei’s body. His hands hang at his sides, leaden and helpless. If he speaks he’ll damn himself, but if he remains silent it will be the same. For the first time, terror seizes him. Part of him, the doctor part, observes. Fear of this order is not an emotion. It is like a virus overwhelming every cell of his body, while his mind struggles to remain clear. He is in the Lubyanka, and it’s entirely possible that he’ll never come out. Anna will receive an official document. ‘Sentenced to ten years’ solitary confinement, without the right of correspondence.’ Or, in plain terms, taken to the cellars of the Lubyanka and shot in the back of the neck.
‘Murderers in white coats,’ says Volkov, watching Andrei’s face.
‘What?’ Keep quiet, you fool. Why did you answer him?
‘Murderers in white coats,’ repeats Volkov, slowly and deliberately. ‘How does that sound to you?’
Andrei feels his own mind whirr like an engine that can’t find a gear to grip.
‘You’re an intelligent man,’ says Volkov. ‘You understand what I’m saying. We are only just beginning to realize the scale of it.’ He spreads his hands in a gesture of infinite weariness. ‘These crimes are attracting attention at the very highest level. You’ll appreciate what that means.’
Andrei’s head throbs. Is it possible that all this is an hallucination, resulting from his head injury? Volkov is not really here, in this pale, polished room, talking like a madman. If Andrei closes his eyes and opens them, he’ll be back in his cell.
‘I’ll quote you the exact words of Comrade Stalin,’ says Volkov. He makes no attempt at the ecstatic reverence that people usually aim for when talking about the Leader in public. He talks like someone who knows Stalin man to man, which no doubt he does. ‘ “They die so rapidly, first one and then another. We must change our doctors.” You understand of whom Comrade Stalin was speaking?’
‘No.’
‘You don’t? Your memory fails you? The names of Zhdanov or Shcherbakov mean nothing to you? Surprising that such men are so easily forgotten.’
‘I know their names.’
‘Of course you do.’
For Andrei, Shcherbakov is a name out of Pravda. Zhdanov, of course, has far greater meaning. He led the defence of Leningrad; and he also led the attack on Leningrad’s writers, artists and musicians, once the war was over. Anna talked about it night after night. It brought up memories of how her father was treated in the thirties.
‘And you know how they died,’ Volkov continues.
But Andrei doesn’t remember. Probably he didn’t even read the obituaries.
‘Heart failure,’ Volkov informs him, and then repeats, ‘Heart failure,’ with an emphasis which suggests that the words are well-known euphemisms for something quite different. ‘They both died of heart failure. Shcherbakov was a man in his prime. Zhdanov wasn’t much more than fifty. Both of them were men who had given and were continuing to give great service to the State.’
There is a silence. What a strange way of talking, thinks Andrei. He sounds as if he’s making a speech, but there’s no audience. Only me.
‘Men whose services we could not do without,’ continues Volkov, staring straight ahead with the intensity of one who sees a far and stormy horizon. ‘And yet their doctors failed to save them.’
But everyone knows that Zhdanov was an alcoholic. Men like that don’t make it much past middle age. If it hadn’t been heart failure it could have been a cerebral haemorrhage, or liver disease. Andrei can’t remember what they said about Shcherbakov, but it wasn’t likely he’d led a healthy life.
‘They trusted to their physicians,’ says Volkov, and stops again, staring at Andrei as if expecting something from him. But this is absurd. A man like Volkov is far too intelligent to believe a word of all this.
And yet Andrei knows very well that some patients’ families do think like that. They refuse to listen to the evidence of disease. Furred-up arteries and bowels eaten away by cancer mean nothing. They continue to believe that if one more thing had been done, their dear ones would have survived. While the patient still lives, they drag him from clinic to clinic, from thermal spring to sanatorium. They cling to hope and won’t believe that such treatments are palliative at best. When death finally comes, they turn on the doctors. Accusations fly over injections not given, test results incorrectly interpreted or a failure to visit on that fatal last evening.
Andrei accepts it. It’s human nature and usually it does no harm. He’s also learned that it’s better not to argue. Brandishing the facts of the disease does no good. In the end, except in the rarest of cases, fury spends itself and melts into grief. Besides, it’s perfectly true that all doctors make mistakes. It’s the nature of the profession. Every day there are so many decisions to be made. You have to feel your way forward, checking symptoms and responses against everything you know, but at the same time you must always keep your instincts alive. You must look, and touch, and smell, and listen. You must accept the need to waste time with the patient.
Sometimes Andrei finds himself working in the dark, at the edge of his own knowledge. Even the accumulated knowledge of the profession doesn’t help.
If only he weren’t so tired, he could explain all this to Volkov. If Volkov were willing to listen …
There is a frill of light around Volkov’s head. Andrei blinks, and the light clears. Over the past few days he’s had these visual disturbances. He saw double one morning when the guard pushed his kasha through the access door. Just an after-effect of concussion. He’s pretty sure there’s been no brain injury. If he weren’t so tired he’d be able to concentrate better. Volkov is talking again.
‘Active steps were taken to do them harm, with the help of hand-picked so-called physicians,’ says Volkov, his voice sonorous. ‘We are uncovering an international conspiracy of Zionists working as tools of the Americans, who directed these criminal murderers and saboteurs.’ Volkov leans back, resting his hands on the padded armrests of his chair, with an air of, There you are, and now what have you got to say for yourself?
But Andrei can think of nothing. The real business between Volkov and him has nothing to do with Zionist spies. It’s to do with the boy, but Volkov doesn’t want to talk about the boy.
‘The murderers of Zhdanov and Shcherbakov will be unmasked and will not escape punishment,’ announces Volkov, leaning forward again and speaking as coolly as if he were announcing the agenda for a meeting.
Andrei has had this with his other interrogators. They say such things, the most provocative and extreme accusations that they can think up. You answer and you are already on their ground. You have agreed that the impossible can be talked about as if it were the possible. You are already in the quicksand.
Volkov’s boy is dying. That’s what you have to remember. Everything he says, no matter how preposterous it sounds, is linked to that.
‘Your Brodskaya, it seems, had links with these Jewish Nationalist criminals.’
Brodskaya: there’s the connection, because Brodskaya is Jewish. She can be fitted into the conspiracy. If she’s ‘your’ Brodskaya, that means Andrei can be fitted in somewhere as well.
‘You know that Brodskaya has been arrested.’ Volkov is watching him intently now. Perhaps he’s waiting for Andrei to lie. Andrei nods.
‘Exactly,’ goes on Volkov calmly. ‘You know that. But perhaps you haven’t heard that she’s no longer under arrest?’
‘Her case has been concluded.’
‘ “Concluded”,’ repeats Andrei. He has no idea what this means. Perhaps she has been sentenced already. Perhaps they found no evidence of any crime and so the case had to be wrapped up, and she’s been sent back to Yerevan.
Volkov leans back. His fingers tap on the armrests. The sound is quiet because the armrests are made of padded leather. ‘Regrettably,’ he says, ‘Brodskaya suffered a heart attack shortly before she was due to appear before a tribunal for sentencing.’
Brodskaya’s broad, capable hands. Her strong, solid body, and her tireless appetite for work. Her calm professionalism. ‘I am willing to see the family and explain everything to them.’ Were those her exact words? Probably not. His head hurts and he’s not sure that he remembers them exactly, but he can still hear her voice. The fact is that she agreed to become involved in the Volkov case, even though it must have been against her better judgement. She did it out of a sense of professional duty. She has been destroyed and Russov is probably still alive, even working.
‘She’s dead, then?’
Volkov looks at him without replying. Suddenly he swivels his chair, grabs a file from a cabinet behind him, and swivels back to the desk. He slaps the file down on its surface.
‘And so now there’s no reason for you to hold back. She implicated you in her confession, of course. There are pages and pages of it.’ Volkov taps the file and then wrinkles his nose. ‘But all the same I wasn’t … one hundred per cent convinced.’
Volkov’s eyes are clear, grey, unflinching. ‘She implicated you … of course.’ It could be true. If they threatened her mother, for example … And yet he is sure that Volkov is lying. He hasn’t got what he wanted from Brodskaya. Perhaps she got away; escaped him. Prisoners do sometimes succeed in committing suicide, even though they are forced to sleep with their hands outside their blankets in case they strangle themselves secretly, or gouge their wrists with their nails. Brodskaya might have been killed herself. Or perhaps Volkov is lying in a different way and Brodskaya is still alive. She might be here in the Lubyanka, still holding out. Volkov might have said to her, ‘I have Alekseyev’s confession here. Of course, he implicated you. There’s no reason for you to hold back now.’
He wants to believe that she’s still alive, but knows that she is probably dead. For some reason they’ve held back with him. A few nights on the conveyor belt and a beating-up are nothing. They haven’t tortured him. The guards have let him know that he’s got off lightly so far. They drop hints about what goes on in the dungeons.
‘They’ll put you in the meat-grinder down there.’
‘You know what a standing cell is? You’ll be lucky if you don’t find out.’
Don’t think of what might have gone on before she died. She is dead now, and out of it. But if it hadn’t been for him, Brodskaya would never have become involved. He asked her to do the biopsy and she agreed. And then the amputation.
‘It’ll be Dr Brodskaya who does the operation, Gorya. She’s very good. You’ve seen her, she’s the one who did your biopsy. You remember: she has her hair in a bun, and glasses.’
‘I don’t like her. Dad says she’s a Jew.’
‘She was a good surgeon,’ says Andrei now.
Volkov’s face twists. He leans forward, lifts the file high, smashes it down on the desk. ‘Don’t think that I will protect you!’ he cries.
There is sweat on Volkov’s forehead. He wants them all dead, because his son is dying. Andrei understands him.
‘It was Brodskaya who recommended amputation,’ says Volkov. ‘You were persuaded by her.’
He’s offering Andrei a chance. Or perhaps pretending to offer him that chance, so that Andrei will betray himself by grabbing at it.
‘It was the only possible course of treatment,’ says Andrei. ‘Any surgeon would have taken the same decision.’
‘ “Treatment”? You call such butchery “treatment”? My son is dying because of it.’
At the edges of Andrei’s vision, black is thickening. Directly ahead of him there is still light. He can still see Volkov’s face and hear his voice. He draws a deep, slow breath. He is not going to faint. He should put his head down but Volkov would take that as an admission of defeat.
‘I heard that. I am very sorry.’
‘Sorry? Why would you be sorry unless you were guilty?’
‘I meant it in a different sense,’ says Andrei.
Volkov’s voice echoes. ‘I trusted you. I picked you out.’
‘We did what we could. Sometimes that isn’t enough.’
‘I trusted you. I should have killed him myself before I let you butchers near him with your saws and your knives. I should have taken him home with me.’ There is a long silence, and then Volkov says quietly, ‘He was perfect.’ The fat toes that Volkov tickled when Gorya was a baby. The rosy little legs kicking after his bath. Volkov comes in, dismissing the nurse, takes the baby and jumps him on his knee. How strong he is! The baby laughs at his father. Perfect.
Andrei can barely move his lips, they are so cold and stiff. Blackness advances towards the centre of his vision, but there is still a hole through which he can see Volkov. The blackness is not pure black. It has a texture. He sees Volkov move through it. Now he has gone out of Andrei’s field of vision.
Volkov’s voice comes from somewhere towards the window. ‘They’ve sedated him. He’ll die more quickly that way but he won’t suffer as much. That’s the choice I made.’
Andrei bows his head. The blackness is underneath him now as well, rushing upwards. Terror of death sweeps over him. ‘Excuse me,’ he says aloud, ‘I can’t –’
He can still hear Volkov. Quick footsteps across the wooden floor. A hand is under his chin, pulling his head back. Now Andrei can see nothing. Volkov’s hand is warm against his icy skin.
‘You’ve taken something,’ says Volkov. Andrei hears a door open and Volkov’s voice, further away now, calling loudly. ‘Bring a doctor! Immediately!’ and then a rush of feet, and a door banging.
He was away somewhere but now he is back. He can see light again. He coughs as ammonia hits his throat. Someone is taking his pulse. A sharp voice, not Volkov’s, says, ‘Have you taken poison?’
‘Where,’ says Andrei, fighting the thickness of his tongue in his mouth, ‘would I get poison?’
The doctor lifts Andrei’s eyelids to peer at his pupils. Quickly and thoroughly he checks Andrei over as a vet checks a horse.
‘He’ll do,’ he says. ‘Just a temporary loss of consciousness.’
He does not mention the head injury. It’s not his job. He has only to confirm that the prisoner is fit for interrogation to proceed. Rags of darkness swirl through Andrei’s head. When you die, this is what it will be like. Remember this.
It’s releasing him. He’s not going to die. It was just an ordinary syncope and now he’s been dragged back to consciousness.
‘There are no signs that any toxic substance has been ingested,’ says the doctor, presumably to Volkov.
At the edge of Andrei’s vision darkness continues to fray like rotten cloth. He glimpses a more solid shadow, which slowly resolves itself into Volkov.
‘He’s all right, then,’ says Volkov. ‘Fine, you can go.’
Quickly the doctor gathers his instruments, looking neither at Andrei nor Volkov, and makes for the door. Andrei licks his lips. No good asking for help from him. He’s not a doctor but a machine. They must turn them out from a production line these days.
‘Drink this,’ says Volkov, producing a glass of water. ‘We haven’t finished yet.’
Andrei sips the water slowly. Drops roll over his tongue and into his throat. As soon as he tastes the water he realizes how thirsty he is.
He could lie down by the edge of a stream and lap from it like a beast.
‘We are treating you well,’ Volkov observes.
Andrei looks up. The trouble with Volkov is that Andrei keeps forgetting who he really is. Volkov has a way of coming close to you. Andrei was on the point of returning the small ironic smile on Volkov’s lips.
‘Could I have more water?’ he asks.
‘I said that we are treating you well, not that we are spoiling you.’ But nevertheless Volkov crosses to his desk, where someone has put down a jug of water. He fills the glass, and returns it to Andrei.
‘Yes, you are alive,’ Volkov murmurs, with a slight emphasis on ‘you’. ‘As alive as life itself, as they say. But soon my boy will not be.’ He says it like a parent, with disbelief. The fact is there but the father still can’t grasp that his son can really die before him. ‘Tell me. When she did the operation, she had the power. Those instruments were in her hands. You were not in the operating theatre; I’ve checked exactly who was present. Those cancerous cells travelled from the tumour in the leg to Gorya’s lungs. Either she let it happen or she made it happen. I’m not blaming you. She pulled the wool over your eyes, too.’
He turns to Andrei as he says this. It’s a naked look, man to man. We are both on the same side. You were tricked too. Deceived, just like me. Why not admit it? Either Volkov really believes what he’s saying – for the moment at least – or he has the power of convincing himself when he needs to. Or possibly it’s his training. There’s something in Volkov, despite everything, which makes Andrei aware that he must fight down the desire to please him.
‘He’ll be so angry with me. The running track cost so much money.’
‘You don’t know how angry he gets.’
In a sense Volkov is right. The amputation did no good. It turned out to be exactly what Volkov feared it would be: a pointless mutilation. Andrei feels a flush of pain, almost shame. We did the best we could, in the circumstances, he tells himself, as he’s already told himself many times. We can’t predict whether there will be metastasis or not. We have to proceed on the assumption that a child’s life can be saved. And what if we didn’t intervene – what would our patients’ families say then?
Andrei gathers himself. Volkov has said too much, and revealed too much of himself. Andrei will have to disappear, like Brodskaya. He’s been fighting that knowledge but his body knows that death is coming. That’s why he passed out. It was weakness but it doesn’t matter. He will go on.
He is in an empty, frozen street. Snow whirls, sinking and falling. Vast banks of snow lie on either side of him, like pillows. If he lay down the snow would take him in. But he mustn’t do that. He has to get to the hospital, where there are patients waiting. There are few medicines left but there are still things he can do and say which will be of use. He walks like an old man, bent and shuffling. He leans heavily on the cherrywood stick which belongs to Anna’s father. On either side the dead lean on the snowdrifts, watching him. Now Brodskaya is there too. She is already covered by thickly falling flakes but he can still see her eyes. They watch him to make sure he keeps on walking.
*
‘That’s not how metastasis takes place. Surely it’s better to believe that what was done was done in good faith?’ says Andrei to Volkov. ‘Brodskaya made the only decision she could possibly have made. It was correct to carry out the surgery, following the biopsy.’
Volkov frowns. ‘ “Correct”?’ he asks.
‘Yes, professionally correct. What if we had decided to do nothing, for fear of what might happen to us if the surgery didn’t cure him and the disease metastasized? Or what if we had pretended we could do nothing for him, and referred Gorya elsewhere?’
‘You … amaze … me,’ says Volkov, slowly and softly. ‘Where do you think you are?’
Andrei doesn’t answer.
‘You must think you have nothing to lose. Let me assure you that you have a great deal to lose. You don’t understand me yet.’
‘I understand that Brodskaya is dead.’
‘But you are alive.’
There is a long pause. Andrei realizes that the room isn’t really silent. He can hear the muffled clatter of typewriter keys from the next room. He can hear a faint rumble in Volkov’s guts. He wonders what time it is. Time to eat, perhaps. Perhaps he’ll never leave this room. No doubt people have been killed before, during interrogation. Suddenly, Volkov could attack him. No one would stop him. No doubt there are protocols but Volkov is powerful enough to get round them, as well as to control what is written in the report of Andrei’s interrogation. Maybe they’ll say he died of a heart attack, like Brodskaya. It could happen now or it could happen later. Before he dies he will allow himself to think of Anna. By then it can do no harm. As long as she remains alive, and the baby remains alive within her, he can sink into that darkness. He will have to go through the terror first, but then it will be over.
He wonders if Gorya feels the same, sedated as he is. He is an intelligent child. He will know that something new is happening to him, and perhaps he will also know that it is called death. His face will change. His parents will see that Gorya has turned away from them. Not because he doesn’t love them, but because he has to. Sometimes the mother will cry out and try to drag him back. It may even work for a while, but then the tide will be too strong for her and she will have to release him.
He’d like to be with Gorya. He would know how to look after him. He has learned not to retreat from dying patients, although he understands why that happens. You are frustrated, and you feel a sense of failure, and so you leave the final stages to the nurses. But there’s a lot you can do, very small things, to make those stages pass as well as they can. He hopes that Gorya has got someone good with him.
‘I am treating you well,’ says Volkov. ‘Do you understand that? I remember that you’re an Irkutsk boy –’
There is a knock at the door. A woman’s voice says, ‘Excuse me, Comrade Volkov, there is an urgent phone call for you. Would you prefer to take it in your office or outside?’
‘Outside,’ says Volkov. ‘Clear the office. And I need two guards in here for this prisoner.’
The guards stand, one on either side of Andrei’s chair. They would have liked to remove the chair but Volkov said over his shoulder, ‘He’s to remain seated.’
Volkov has been gone for a long time. An hour at least, perhaps two. There is no clock in the room. Andrei retreats, deep inside himself. He will not think of anything except the peace of this moment. The guards are not shoving or beating him. The room is warm. Outside the wind has got up, and the light is fading. Snow falls, not thickly enough to obscure the pattern of the branches. He is in Moscow, in the Lubyanka. The city is going on with its life out there. The typewriter is still clacking. The glass of water is on the desk in front of him, a third full. He considers asking if he can drink it, but decides against it. He doesn’t want to stir up the animosity of the guards. He’s never seen this pair before and they are in a different league from Bighead and Squirrel.
But the typist doesn’t seem afraid of them. At one point her typing stops, and she opens the door and comes right into the room. She says in a voice which has an edge of flirtation in it: ‘Would either of you boys like tea?’
Yes, they say, nodding their heads, they would certainly like tea. Plenty of sugar, please.
After a while the typist returns with two steaming glasses of tea.
‘Very nice,’ says one of the guards. ‘I appreciate that.’
She stands there, just within Andrei’s field of vision, simpering. Incredible, but she seems to find the guard attractive. Andrei can smell the tea. Real tea. The guard takes a gulp.
‘I don’t know how you can drink it as hot as that,’ says the typist.
‘Always have.’
‘Iron mouth, he’s got,’ says the other guard approvingly.
‘My dad was the same,’ says the typist. ‘A real man.’
She goes out. The guards look at each other.
‘Nice tea,’ says Iron Mouth, with meaning.
‘If you can get it,’ rejoins the other.
They must know that there isn’t a microphone in the room, thinks Andrei. Presumably Volkov has the power to make sure of that.
He’s beyond tired now. Beyond tension, or even fear. Every minute feels so full that he could live his whole life inside it.
I am alive, he thinks. Everything is complete.
It is dark and late when Volkov comes back. Andrei has been taken out to pee once, but he has had nothing more to eat or drink. He has just sat there, without moving, barely thinking. It might be midnight, or it might only be mid-evening. The typing in the outer office stopped for a while, then restarted. Probably they work shifts, just as the guards and interrogators do. As Volkov enters the room, the guards snap to attention, their eyes fixed on a point in the distance. Andrei also looks up.
Volkov is exhausted. The bones of his skull seem to push against his skin. He is wearing a dress uniform with military decorations, as if he’s been to the ballet. He dismisses the guards and they clump away into the outer office. Someone is still typing. Do they never stop? Yes, the clicketty-tap stops and he hears a murmur of voices. But he mustn’t think of outside. He must concentrate on Volkov, who drops the file he’s holding on to the desk, and sits down heavily. Volkov spreads out his hands on the desk top and gazes down at them as if he has never seen them before.
‘You’re an Irkutsk boy,’ he says, as if there’s been no interruption. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll soon be seeing your homeland again.’
Instantly, as if their minds are linked, Andrei understands him. Volkov is telling him that he will not be shot or beaten to death. He will not disappear somewhere in the Lubyanka dungeons. He’ll be tried, sentenced, and sent to a camp. Everything is already decided, at least in Volkov’s mind, and that means it will happen. It’s within his power.
Andrei’s mind floods with an extraordinary blend of joy and rage. He will not die. Now he knows it, he also knows how afraid he was. And how angry, that Volkov can do this to him.
There was never any possibility of release. You knew that, Andrei tells himself. You are not a child. Arrest and interrogation have to be followed by guilt and sentencing. If he’s lucky it will be five years. Surely ten is the most it can be.
‘Saboteurs,’ murmurs Volkov, still looking at the back of his hands as if they contain an answer. ‘Traitors, criminals, spies … Can you imagine the scum I have to deal with?’ His fists clench. He heaves himself up and his chair crashes backwards to the floor. He leans forward over the desk, breathing heavily. ‘Why do they do it, eh? Can you tell me that? Why do these cunts think that they can get away with it?’
Andrei holds himself still. Who is this ‘they’? Volkov is glaring at him.
‘You don’t know, do you?’ demands Volkov. ‘You don’t fucking know anything. There you sit, in your own little world. You’re in the Lubyanka, my friend! Things are hotting up! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Listen. I understand you now. You made a mistake, that’s all. You kept bad company. Insufficient vigilance. But my son liked you and that means something to me. Levina – that’s a Jewish name, but she’s not Jewish, is she, your wife? Don’t worry, we know all about her. She’s in the clear. They’re Jews, the lot of them. Things are coming to the boil, my friend. Soon they’ll all be in the pot together. Listen. My son liked you. That means something to me.’ Volkov is sweating heavily. A fume of vodka comes off him. ‘At the highest level, concerns are being expressed about your profession,’ says Volkov, suddenly pedantic and enunciating each syllable. ‘The very highest level. Do you understand me?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘I think you are. I think you know what the highest level is. Or if you don’t you’re more of a fool than you look. Do you know where I’ve been tonight? Would you like to have a guess?’
‘With Gorya, perhaps?’ And then you drank, to wipe it out.
Volkov bares his teeth. ‘No. Not that. My son is dying but I haven’t been to see him. I had a more pressing appointment.’ He is very drunk. ‘Don’t you want to ask me what that was?’ Volkov’s shoulders are bunched with tension. His eyes are bloodshot.
‘If you want to say,’ says Andrei.
‘My son is dying but I wasn’t with him. My wife is there. I’ll tell you where I was, my fine friend. I was dancing.’
The emphasis that Volkov puts on these words is so ferocious that the air between them seems to quiver. He spits out ‘dancing’ as if it’s an obscenity. Does he mean he was out with a woman? That would be natural perhaps. You see death and you want to bury yourself in living flesh.
Slowly, Volkov picks up the fallen chair, and resettles himself in it. ‘You’re a Siberian boy, like me,’ he says. ‘You’ll know the dance: Krasny Yar.’
‘Oh,’ says Andrei. A folk dance. Not with a woman then. Krasny Yar: beautiful ravine; red ravine. He knows the dance and Volkov will know it better, being a boy from Krasnoyarsk.
‘ “Oh”,’ echoes Volkov mockingly. ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh. And have you no further questions, Dr Alekseyev? All the symptoms appear perfectly normal to you? With your medical eye you will already have noticed that I’ve been drinking. You’re right. I’ve been drinking and dancing, and now I’m talking to you, and then my driver will take me to the Morozovka to see my child, by which time I shall be entirely sober.’
An urgent phone call, and then he spends the evening folk dancing? Andrei shakes his head. He can’t understand any of this.
‘You may well shake your head,’ says Volkov, as if to himself. ‘What kind of man dances when his son is dying? But when certain tunes play we all have to skip about.’ He makes a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s by the way. Let’s get down to business. There’s nothing you won’t like. Sit down and read it.’
He flips open the file and pushes it over to Andrei, who takes it and begins to read. Yes, it’s a statement. Someone has typed it out beautifully; perhaps the woman who gave tea to the guards.
It begins with a lengthy biography and outline of his current professional work. The tone is sober and accurate. Everything is entered into in detail: his parents’ settlement in Siberia, his own education. It is noted that he was not a member of the Pioneers. There are his exam results, the move to Leningrad and his entry into medical school. Service with the People’s Volunteers at the outbreak of war. His war service in the besieged city. The tone so far is neutral and even respectful. His marriage to Anna; her family circumstances, class background and occupation. A note that her family is not of Jewish origin. Full details of her mother’s professional career; no mention of Mikhail’s writing. Strange. Andrei glances back, to check if he’s missed anything. No, there’s nothing. A brief mention of Mikhail’s service with the People’s Volunteers and his death from wounds during the siege, and that’s it.
Extraordinary. Andrei would have thought they’d go to town on Mikhail’s fall from favour during the thirties.
He reads on. This is like a novel, there is so much detail. It is like a description of the life of another man, but perhaps that’s always the case when you read about y urself. His further studies, his specialism, even some detail of particular cases.
Andrei turns the page. Here is the record of his arrest. And now pages of his interrogation record. He reads it carefully but there seems to be nothing there which was not actually said during the interrogations. There’s no mention of Brodskaya. But then there is a question which he knows was never put to him:
Do you accept, Dr Alekseyev, that you have shown insufficient vigilance?
A. M. Alekseyev: I accept that I have shown insufficient vigilance.
He looks up. ‘This question was never put to me.’
‘Which question?’
Andrei indicates the place in the text. ‘This one.’
Andrei turns the page. The next one is blank. He turns again. The next sheet is also blank. He riffles through the rest of the file, but there is no more writing in it.
‘Sign it,’ says Volkov. ‘I am giving you a chance.’
‘But it’s not accurate.’
‘It’s accurate enough for the purpose. Sign it.’
Andrei rereads the last part of the statement. No one is named. There is no accusation of any crime. ‘Insufficient vigilance’ will get him five years, perhaps, ten at the most. Kostya Rabinovich said, ‘Start signing things and that’s the end of you.’ But isn’t there just a chance that Volkov really is giving him a chance? Brodskaya isn’t named. No one is named. No one else is being dragged into this.
‘Full name,’ says Volkov.
Andrei picks up the pen. This is his life; he can’t deny it. He has not been sufficiently vigilant. He has not protected any of them: Anna, the baby, Kolya, himself. If this investigation continues they will spread the net wider. The best thing for all of them is for the case to be concluded as soon as possible. He’s not fool enough to think that anyone gets out of the Lubyanka with a slap on the back and an apology: We made a mistake, we pulled you in for nothing. Can he trust Volkov? Of course not. But has he any alternative?
Volkov is watching him. Impossible to know what to make of his expression. Andrei pulls the statement towards him, and writes his name immediately under the last line of typing.
‘Good,’ says Volkov. ‘Now listen carefully. You may not be seeing me again. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Andrei looks at the sweat on Volkov’s forehead, the slight tremor of his hands. He sees the dilation of Volkov’s eyes. This man has had some shock, perhaps physical, perhaps mental. He is not the same man as he was before he received that telephone call. He’s been drinking, of course. But dancing is something else – Andrei can’t make sense of it. From the way Volkov spoke you would think he had been forced to dance. But who can force a top MGB man like Volkov to do anything he doesn’t want to do –
Volkov is still waiting. He’s quick. He sees the change in Andrei’s face. ‘I see that we understand each other. Listen. Sometimes a man receives a – let’s call it a hint. An intimation. In my line of work you become quick at picking up such things. I received such an intimation tonight. Some men would ignore it; they would convince themselves that their position was secure and they had nothing to fear. But I am not such a fool. I know what it means. I’ve danced my dance. I can tell you that, my friend, because you’re not in a position to betray me. As for your case, I’ve done what I can.’
And am I supposed to thank you? You were the one who got me arrested. You made the case against me. It was you who brought me here, to the Lubyanka.
But in spite of himself, Andrei can’t help feeling something – not warmth, not sympathy, but a kind of recognition perhaps. He knows Volkov. Volkov has made sure of that. He has a strange way of coming close. If he’s right and he’s finished, then his downfall is going to be a hundred times greater than anything Andrei has experienced.
He destroyed Brodskaya, Andrei tells himself, pulling back from his own thoughts. Well, she will have vengeance. But she wouldn’t have wanted that. It was her life she wanted, and her profession. Volkov took it all and didn’t even think it was worth taking.
‘You must go to Gorya now,’ he says, not wanting to say, While you still can.
‘Yes,’ says Volkov. He sighs deeply. It’s as if the alcohol in his veins swirls up one last time, freeing his tongue. ‘Gorya is better off out of this shit.’
Gorya will be fast asleep by now. From time to time a nurse will check his breathing and all his vital signs. Andrei wonders if the mother is still there, sitting by the bedside. Perhaps she’s dropped off to sleep. If Volkov falls, she’ll be in danger. Will they take her, too? Surely not before the boy dies. But even as Andrei says those words to himself, he knows that he doesn’t believe them. Anything at all can happen to anyone at all, and Volkov never forgets it.
‘I’ll go in a minute,’ says Volkov, but he doesn’t move. Outside the window it’s still snowing. Moscow is filling up with snow. Even in the dark there’s a faint glow from its whiteness.