Sashenka

Maxy nodded. “Well, these are different archives. Where there is such suffering, there’s a kind of holiness. The Nazis knew they were doing wrong, so they hid everything; the Bolsheviks were convinced they were doing right, so they kept everything. Like it or not, you’re a Russian historian, a searcher for lost souls, and in Russia the truth is always written not in ink, like in other places, but in innocent blood. These archives are as sacred as Golgotha. In the dry rustle of the files you can hear the crying of children, the shunting of trains, the echo of footsteps down to the cellars, the single shot of the Nagant pistol delivering the seven grams. The very paper smells of blood.”

8

Two days later, Katinka came out of the decaying Stalinist hulk of the Moskva Hotel, where she was staying, and climbed the hill past the Kremlin, the Bolshoi and the Metropole Hotel, up to Lubianka Square. The crowds of office workers poured out of the Metro past the kiosks with their collage of lurid magazines; traffic raced around the middle of the square where the empty plinth of Dzerzhinsky’s statue marked the fall of Communism. There before her was the KGB headquarters, an invincible stronghold of red and grey granite, containing offices, archives, tunnels and dungeons. Once the offices of the Russia Insurance Company, this had been the home of the fearless, merciless and incorruptible knights of the Communist Party since 1917. They’d operated under many names—the Cheka, OGPU, NKVD, KGB—and now there were other dread letters, but their power was gone: Katinka was sure the KGB would never dominate Russia again.

She had not wanted to come here. No Russian ever wanted to visit the Lubianka—it was the national charnel house. But she had only to recall her phone call to Roza to walk faster toward this brutal slab that still radiated power, the power to crush human happiness. Over the telephone line from London, Roza hadn’t commented on what Katinka had found but she’d urged her on…Yet if Katinka’s father had known that her research would bring her here to the Lubianka, he would never have let her take the job.

“Leave well enough alone! Don’t snoop around cemeteries. It’s too dangerous,” he would have said. “You know how much I love you? More than anyone else in the entire existence of mankind since the beginning of time! That’s how much!” It was wonderful to have a father—and mother—who so loved you. Katinka thought, again, of Roza, and what it must be like not to know who your parents were.

She elbowed open the double wooden doors of the Lubianka and entered a vaulted marble foyer. Two corporals in blue examined her passport, called upstairs and sent her up a flight of marble steps so wide that a tank could have driven up it. A bust of Andropov, the bespectacled KGB boss and Soviet leader, stood halfway up.

She found herself in a long corridor with a red carpet, old banners and portraits of past Chekists. Maxy had told her that within this fortress stood the yellow Internal Prison where the parents of her employer might have perished, although they might also have received the seven grams at the Butyrki or the Lefortovo prisons or Beria’s special torture center, the Sukhanovka, a beautiful former monastery on the outskirts of Moscow. Maxy had explained that now was a good time to apply to see files. He had called her the previous evening. “The Lubianka phoned me. Your file’s ready.”

“But are you sure I should be looking at Palitsyn? Marshal Satinov advised me to forget about the adults and start with the children.”

Maxy laughed. “Remember what I told you about Satinov and these veteran Bolsheviks? Lies were their duty to the Revolution. That just confirms you must start with the adults and then we’ll think about the children.”

“I’m beginning to get the hang of this,” she said.

“Wait until you see the archives. Remember, Katinka, no one ever found a jewel in full view.”

She followed her instructions, turned right and then left, and saw the door that read Colonel Lentin, Director, Department of Registration and Archives. She knocked, a voice replied and she entered a boxy office with the flounced white blinds pulled down. The air was densely fuggy, the glass fogged up, the sofa rumpled, so she knew that the colonel had been sleeping in his office. But where was he?

“Good morning,” said the voice and she turned round. A fleshy silky-haired man in civilian clothes was just buttoning up his shirt and tightening his tie in a mirror behind the door. “Excuse me! I’m just beautifying myself for visitors. Have a seat!”