Stalin’s Ghost (8 page)

A voice furred with sleep answered, “Metropol Hotel. Reception.”

“Sorry, wrong number.”

Very wrong. The grand Metropol Hotel and the shaggy cameraman Pyetr Petrov didn’t add up at all.

Arkady had two mini cassettes, one he had taken from Petrov’s video camera at the Metro platform and a second from Petrov’s pocket. He slipped the first mini cassette into the video camera, connected the camera to the television, and sat back to watch.

The tape began earlier than Arkady had anticipated with the filmmaker Zelensky in Red Square. Snow had just started to fall and clouds dirty as cement bags gathered over Saint Basil’s. The format was documentary and the news, according to Zelensky, was dire. Russia had been “stabbed in the back by a conspiracy of ancient enemies, a moneyed oligarchy and foreign terrorists to undermine and humiliate the motherland.” Zelensky had cue phrases. “Idealism was gone.” The Soviet Union had collapsed, “removing the barrier between Russia and the decadent West on one side and Islamic fanaticism on the other.” Russian culture was “globalized and debased.” The camera panned from an old woman begging for coins to a banner for Bulgari. “No wonder patriots so yearn for the firm guidance of another era.” What the videotape would explore, Zelensky gravely told the camera, might be a miracle, a sighting of Stalin on the last train of the night.

Arkady watched the entire event again from a different point of view. Petrov had started recording with an establishing shot of the subway car and its passengers, mainly pensioners like the cronies Mendeleyev and Antipenko, the babushkas, literati from the Lenin Library, but also prostitutes, Zelensky and his golden niece and nephew, the delinquent schoolgirl, Platonov and Arkady, not exactly a cross section of society, but what might be realistically expected at that hour. Arkady was impressed by how little illumination a video camera needed and how the microphone picked up the rush of the train and how those factors combined made a package that seemed more authentic than the actual experience.

“Coming into Chistye Prudy station, what Stalin called Kirov Station,” Petrov whispered to the camera.

Up and down the carriage, riders shifted in anticipation. Mendeleyev and Antipenko were already half to their feet. The babushkas twisted to see sparks, blackness, the approaching light of the platform, and in an extra moment of total dark, a woman’s cry, “Stalin!”

As the doors opened everyone streamed out but Arkady, who watched Platonov, and Zelensky, who watched Arkady.

The tape cut to the platform and a crowd that had grown with the addition of passengers who had disembarked from forward cars. Stalin’s photograph rested against a platform pillar. Young Misha and Tanya lit a candle at the photo and expressed their gratitude to Stalin for saving mankind and being the beacon of his age. Veterans solemnly nodded; women dabbed their eyes. Zelensky smoothly interviewed some sweet old ladies and handed out Russian Patriot T-shirts and the party was rolling along when, from nowhere, a madman in a pea jacket kicked the candle onto the tracks, stopped the meeting by diktat, and seized the camera. Arkady didn’t look good.

At no point did the tape show the two Americans or Bora. Also, in slow motion it was the prostitute with red hair who first shouted Stalin’s name, then Mendeleyev and Antipenko.

Arkady decided that he should eat something, which remained a theory because there was no food in the desk except a rind of cheese wrapped in greasy paper. He had a cigarette instead. And tried Eva’s cell phone again. Still off. Arkady would have expected a slower night at the clinic. A snowstorm usually kept people—even the criminal set—at home.

The second videotape had obviously been shot earlier for purposes of rehearsing the boy and girl. They walked across a room, the girl carrying a feather duster in place of flowers, the boy holding a pen for a votive candle. The children couldn’t walk for giggling at the graffiti on the apartment walls: oversized sexual organs, phone numbers, “Olga Loves Petya.”

Zelensky directed from off screen. “This is not a joke. Do it over, slower, like in church. Have you ever been in church? Okay, back to your mark and go! Like that. Even slower, kids, this isn’t a race. Pay no attention to the camera. Look straight ahead and concentrate on the picture, the man’s friendly face. He’s a saint and you’re bringing him these special gifts. Stay together, stay together, stay together. That’s more like it. Petya, how did that look to you?”

The cameraman said, “They missed the mark.”

“Hear that, kids? The camera doesn’t lie. The blue tape on the floor marks where you start and where you stop. Tonight there’s going to be a lot of people. You have to block them out and the only way to do that is to practice.”

The children walked across the room again.

“Dear Comrade Stalin,” Zelensky cued.

“Dear Comrade Stalin, the children of Russia thank you…”

And again.

The boy said, “You rallied the Russian people and threw back Fascist invaders.”

The girl said, “As a beloved humanitarian you led a Russia that the peace-loving nations of the world admired and respected…”

Again and again until Zelensky clapped and said, “I love you, kids.”

It was clearly the end of the rehearsal and Arkady expected the television screen to go dark. Instead, it switched to a bedroom scene of three men and a woman. The men were Bora, Zelensky and an individual whose face was hidden by lank, long hair. It took Arkady a moment to recognize Marfa, the schoolgirl from the Metro, because her face bulged like a goose with a funnel down its throat. Zelensky had seduced her and used her in the space of a single day. So much for Arkady’s advice.

Petrov was conserving cassettes, recording new material over old. Arkady jabbed Fast Forward and the tape speeded to a race of men running around the girl, taking turns, on and off, on and off.

When Arkady found Marfa crying he returned to Play. She sat on the edge of the bed, naked, her face turned away from the camera as she wailed. The way she twisted emphasized the baby fat on her waist.

“She sounds like a bagpipe,” Bora said off camera.

A hand came into view and pointed to her tattoo. “A butterfly. How did I miss that before? Cute.”

Zelensky said, “Marfa, you were great.”

“You were great,” Bora said.

“You were great,” the third man said. “You were born to fuck.”

“This is a private tape,” Zelensky assured her. “No one’s going to see it. I had to find out how good you were and you were a pro.”

Marfa went on sobbing.

Zelensky said, “Remember, you told me you were a big girl and I took you at your word.”

The third man said, “Vlad makes porn, that’s all he does. What did you expect?”

“That’s not all I do,” Zelensky said.

“Really? Name something else.”

“I have other projects, other movies. You’ll see.”

“Right. It seems to me that as a film director you have one piece of direction. ‘Suck faster.’”

“Sasha, go fuck yourself.”

“No. Thanks to your little friend I’m set for the day.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“I’m getting out in a new Mercedes.”

“Heil Hitler!” Zelensky shouted as a door opened and closed. “Bourgeois prick.”

The camera remained on Marfa. Run, Arkady thought. Get out while you can.

She stifled a sob. “What other movies?”

By the time Arkady finished viewing the tapes it was seven in the morning. He locked the dossier and tapes in his safe and dragged himself to his car on the off chance Eva or Zhenya had returned to the apartment and ignored his phone calls; although it was rude, some people did that sort of thing.

But no apartment could have been emptier. There were no new notes, no messages on the machine. His footsteps sounded clumsy and intrusive and he couldn’t help but think of Eva moving lightly in bare feet. The mattress on the bedroom floor looked more temporary than ever.

An acrid smell drew Arkady to the window. Down on the street the road crew was boiling tar to fill the same pothole as the day before. The women shoveled while the man, the chief, waved cars by. A blue plastic tarp was set up as a shelter, a sign that the crew was settling in.

Eva’s clothes hung in the closet, which suggested that she was coming back to pack, at the very least. Her tapes were still in a box, fifty or more audiotapes stacked chronologically beside the recorder. He fed one into the recorder and pushed Play.

The heavy breathing of exercise.

“Arkasha, catch up.”

His voice from a distance. “I have a better suggestion. You stop.”

“I’m recording you. I am compiling evidence that on cross-country skis the senior investigator couldn’t catch a snowman.”

He listened to a winter day, a trail that wound through birches and voices ringing in the cold.

“Eva, I am carrying brandy, bread, sausage and cheese, pickles and fish, the full weight of luxury, while you carry nothing but a seductive smile. Perhaps you would like me to carry you, as well.”

He heard laughter and an accelerating slap of skis.

Another tape caught the arm-in-arm quality of a stroll. “Between the two of us, Adam was innocent.” His voice.

“Seriously?” Hers.

“He had no choice. Between keeping Eve happy and displeasing the Lord, the creator of the universe, any sane man would have made the same decision.”

“I should hope so.”

Nothing profound, the throwaway lines of life.

A third tape had only the drone and counterdrone of motorboats and the shouts of water-skiers treading water, for some reason a happy memory. Eva was a light sleeper and Arkady would find her in the middle of the night sitting up with a cigarette and vodka, concentrating on the tapes as if they were her proof of a new life.

He put the tapes and recorder back the way he had found them, stretched out on the mattress and closed his eyes. For just ten minutes. Just to keep going.

Snow pecked at the window. When the wind was stiff the window stirred in its sash. The grinding of plows seemed everywhere.

Arkady was on a frozen lake. Between the fringe of trees and gray clouds was a stillness and a pleasant nip in the air, and the length of the lake were dark dots, fishermen at their holes. The gear for ice fishing was simple: an auger, a hook, a line, a box to sit on and vodka to drink.

There was no better fishing companion than Sergeant Belov. He was insulated by layers of clothing, a fur hat and felt boots, but his red hands were bare, the better to jiggle the lure just so and feel any tug on the hook. The temperature could drop to minus ten, minus twenty, Belov never wore gloves. His prize, smelts the size of silver coins, lay frozen on the ice. “
Zakuski
size!” Belov said. “Appetizers!” When his hands and cheeks started to freeze he chased the chill with vodka.

The sergeant was usually full of good stories about tanks and trucks falling through the ice, or an entire company of troops who drifted away on ice floes never to be seen again. This time Belov was so silent that Arkady wandered off on a private dare toward the middle of the lake.

Only one fisherman had drilled his hole so far out. Arkady told himself that a word of conversation with the man would cap his achievement, although when Arkady looked back the sky was darker and all the other fishermen, including Belov, had picked up and gone. A spiderweb of cracks spread across the ice, but since the fisherman ahead seemed so busy and content Arkady pressed on.

The fisherman was wrapped and hooded in tattered coats and blankets, his face lost in shadow, his hands manipulating many strings simultaneously. Arkady couldn’t put a name to him, although he had seen the man many times before. Then the sun tunneled beneath the clouds and cast a sudden light. Under the ice Arkady saw Marfa, Eva and Zhenya. He hadn’t saved a single one.

T
he harpist onstage in the Metropol dining room played in languid, circular strokes, eyes closed, apparently oblivious of the Americans having breakfast at the nearest table. Wiley had a full face and fine hair like a six-foot baby in a business suit. He filled his bowl with cereal; here was a man, Arkady guessed, who planned to die healthy. Pacheco looked like his protection. In his forties with a bald spot and a bull neck, Pacheco was starting his day with steak and a stack of blini.

Why, Arkady had asked himself, would a scruffy character like Petya Petrov write the Metropol telephone number in a book of matches for a “gentlemen’s club” called Tahiti? What members of the Metropol’s international set might Petya know? Arkady could only think of the two Americans on the Metro platform at Chistye Prudy, and he recognized them as he entered the dining room. The maitre d’ surrendered their names from a buffet sign-in sheet and Arkady waited for the Americans to begin eating before he wended his way between pink tablecloths and red banquettes.

“Do you mind if I join you?” Arkady showed his ID as he sat. Socially, it was a little awkward, like pushing into a rowboat already occupied.

The Americans were unfazed. Wiley handed the ID back. “Not a bit. Cup of coffee? Breakfast? Load up.”

“Just don’t kick everything over like you did last night.” Pacheco had a voice deepened by a lifetime of cigarettes.

“Coffee at the very least.” Wiley waved to the waiter.

“So you do remember last night? Stalin on the Metro?”

“The way you broke it up? How can I forget?”

“I apologize.”

Pacheco had a rough face and small black eyes. “The man speaks English better than me.”

“Ernie is from Texas.” Wiley said. “He’s a cowboy.”

“Shh.” Pacheco put up a finger as the harpist drifted from “Für Elise” to “Lara’s Theme.” “Ever see
Doctor Zhivago
?”

Wiley said, “There’s a chance that Investigator Renko has even read the book.”

“Two Americans show up at a Metro platform in the middle of the night. They don’t get off or board the train. Instead, they participate in the illegal videotaping of a ceremony in honor of Stalin. Do you both speak Russian?”

Wiley said, “I minored in Russian.”

“I was a marine sergeant at the embassy.” Pacheco sawed his meat and corralled it. “Back in the Cold War.”

“All I can tell you is that we were doing our job.”

“In Moscow? What would that job be?”

“I’m in marketing. I help people sell things. They can be soda pop, faster automobiles, fresher detergents, whatever and anywhere, Moscow, New York, Mexico City.”

“You want to sell Stalin in America?”

“No. In the States, Stalin is dead. Now, Hitler’s different. In America, Hitler continues to be hot. History Channel, street fashion, video games. But here in Russia, Stalin is the king. Long story short, we’re using nostalgia for Stalin to publicize the Russian Patriot political party. It’s a start-up party with only three weeks left before the election; it needs an instant identity and an attractive candidate. A good-looking war hero, if possible.”

“Brandy?” Pacheco asked Arkady.

“For breakfast?”

“It’s not over yet.”

Arkady tried to get back on track. “But Russian elections are Russian business. You are Americans.”

Wiley said, “Remember Boris Yeltsin’s return from the dead? He had an approval rating of two percent—he was a drunk, he was a clown, you name it—but American political consultants like me came on board, ran an American-style campaign and Yeltsin won, thirty-six percent to thirty-four percent for the Communists. Nikolai Isakov’s favorable rating is at least that. He will make an impact.”

“You do this for anyone? For either side?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a mercenary.”

“A professional. The main thing is—and I want to stress this—what I do is perfectly legitimate.”

“How is the campaign for Isakov going?”

Wiley paused. “Better than expected.”

“My questions aren’t offensive, I hope.”

“No, we’ve been expecting them. To be honest, Arkady, we’ve been expecting you.”

“Me?”

“You see, with any candidate we do a kind of questionnaire. Pluses and minuses. Mainly minuses because we need to anticipate any potential line of attack the opposition may take: drugs, assault, corruption, sexual orientation. We need to see the client naked, so to speak, because you never know when personal issues are going to go public. So far it looks like the only thing we have to worry about is you.”

“Me?”

Pacheco had twisted in his chair to watch the harpist. “Isn’t she an angel? Golden hair, white skin, white gown. All she needs is a pair of wings. Imagine what it’s like for her, getting up at five in the morning, dressing, riding the subway from God knows where to waste beautiful music on a crowd with their faces in their shredded wheat.”

Wiley hunched closer to Arkady. “Your wife ran off with Isakov. Are you going to make a stink about that?”

“She’s not my wife.”

Wiley’s face lit up. “Oh, I misunderstood. That’s a huge relief.”

The brandy came and Arkady drank half a snifter in one hot swallow.

“See, you did want it,” Pacheco said.

“What was the trick?” Arkady asked.

“Pardon?”

“Getting people to say they saw Stalin. What was the trick?”

Wiley smiled. “That’s simple. Create the right conditions and people will do the rest.”

“What do you mean?”

“People create their own reality. If four people see Stalin and you don’t, who are you, Arkady, to dispute the majority opinion?”

“I was there.”

“So were they. Millions of devout pilgrims believe in visions of the Virgin Mary,” Pacheco said.

“Stalin was not the Virgin Mary.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Wiley said. “If four out of five people say they saw Stalin in the Metro, then Stalin was there as much as you. From what I’m told, your father did pretty well by the old butcher, so maybe you should have given him a salute instead of breaking up the party.”

As soon as Arkady left the Metropol he used his cell phone to call Eva’s. There was no answer. He called the apartment phone. Again, no answer. He called the number of the clinic desk and the receptionist said Eva wasn’t there either.

“Do you know when she left this morning?”

“Doctor Kazka wasn’t on duty this morning.”

“Last night, then.”

“She wasn’t on last night. Who is this?”

Arkady turned the phone off.

The sun was up, backlighting the snow. From the parking lot of the Metropol he looked directly at Theatre Square. The Bolshoi was being renovated and a chariot drawn by four horses was trapped high in the scaffolding. A man and woman walked arm in arm along the theater steps. They had a melancholy air, the classic scene of lovers hiding from a jealous mate.

“How would you describe yourself? A cheerful, sunny personality? Or serious, perhaps melancholy?” Tatiana Levina asked.

“Cheerful. Definitely sunny,” Arkady said.

“Do you like the outdoors? Sports? Or do you prefer indoor, intellectual activities?”

“The great outdoors. Skiing, soccer, long walks in the mud.”

“Do you have books?”

“Television.”

“Would you prefer a concert of Beethoven or gambling at a casino?”

“Of who?”

“Smoke?”

“Cutting back.”

“Drink?”

“Perhaps a glass of wine with dinner.”

Arkady had told Tatiana that he was a Russian American hoping to find a Russian bride. The matchmaker eyed him dubiously from his thin Russian shoes to his winter pallor, but her salesmanship responded to the challenge.

“Our women expect to meet American Americans, not Russian Americans. Also, I have this feeling you are a little more intense than you may be aware of. We try to match men and women who are alike in their interests and personalities. Opposites attract…and then they divorce. Tea?”

Tatiana had bright hennaed hair, an optimistic smile and a scent of sachet. She filled two cups from an electric kettle and wondered aloud how Arkady had found Cupid’s basement office with so much snow on the Arbat. The Arbat was a pedestrian thoroughfare designed to funnel strolling tourists into shops selling amber, vodka, nesting dolls, imperial knickknacks and T-shirts with Lenin’s face. Or, in Cupid’s case, introductions to Russian women. Today the snow had blown away the sketch artists, jugglers, Gypsies and all but the hardiest tourist. Arkady had seen Zoya leave, sleek in a full-length fur coat and matching hat, but the office lights had stayed on and he thought that before Victor descended on the morgue again it might be wise to see the business Zoya co-owned with the husband she wanted dead. Victor had stopped by the apartment and jumped to copy Petrov’s mini cassettes. Pornography was wasted on Arkady, who had dashed through it, but all evidence demanded study, Victor maintained. Anything less was unprofessional.

Cupid had a waiting area, a conference space where the matchmaker and Arkady sat, two cubicles separated by frosted glass and a closed inner office he assumed was Zoya’s. Framed photographs of happy couples covered the walls. The wives were young and Russian; the husbands were middle-aged Americans, Australians, Canadians.

“What is most important is that you and your mate are alike. Wouldn’t you want someone educated, cultured and deep?”

“That sounds exhausting. Did you introduce some of these?” He pointed to a photo of a man in a cowboy hat with his meaty arm wrapped around an embarrassed woman transported from Moscow? Murmansk? Smolensk?

“I’m here only part-time, but I have put some very nice couples together. The problem is we don’t usually do Russian and Russian.”

“I noticed.” His eyes fell on a stack of American visa forms.

“Well, what can I say about Russian-American matches? Nothing in common, true. But Russian women don’t want a Russian man who lies on the couch and does nothing but drink and complain about life. American men don’t want an American woman who’s either spoiled or aggressive. We serve mature, traditional men who want women whose intelligence and education does not get in the way of their femininity.”

The cell phone vibrated in Arkady’s jacket pocket and he checked the caller ID. Zurin. Arkady turned the phone off. “I’m sorry.”

“We’re not just a Web site and a telephone. We’re not a club or a dating service. We don’t just take fifty dollars and send you a list of e-mail addresses of God knows what kind of women, or of women who have moved or married or died. At Cupid we take you by the hand and lead you to your soul mate. May I?” She opened what looked like a wedding album and turned the pages for him. On each was a professional-quality photograph of an attractive woman in a gown or tennis gear; her first name—Elena, Julia, or whatever—and her vital statistics, education, profession, interests, languages, and a personal statement. Julia, for example, yearned for a man with a good heart and his feet on the ground. Once or twice Tatiana stopped at a page to mutter, “She’s been on the shelf awhile. Maybe…”

Arkady noticed a blonde named Tanya in a ski outfit who looked like she could have a good man’s heart for dinner.

“A dancer, I believe.”

“Not only a dancer, a harpist. She plays at the Metropol. I just saw her.”

“Take my word, she’s not your type.”

As distant as Tanya had seemed with the harp, her smile in the picture was fully charged. Her ski suit was made of tight silvery material only very good skiing could justify. The signs in the snow behind her were black diamonds.

“Anyway, she’s taken,” Tatiana said. “Not available.”

“Well, if I were interested in someone else, what is Cupid’s fee?”

“American men pay for quality,” she said. For $500, Cupid promised three serious introductions, preparation of the man’s special “fiancé visa” to Russia, and if romance bloomed, all the legal paperwork for her visit to his American hometown. Travel and hotel were his responsibility. “We make sure you find your soul mate.”

She opened another album and flipped through photos of satisfied couples at the front door of a house, at a fireplace, around a backyard grill, by a Christmas tree.

“If I don’t find my soul mate in three tries?”

“We discount for the next three.”

“Maybe because I’m Russian the price could be adjusted even further.”

“I’d have to ask the owner.”

“Who is?”

“Zoya. You nearly met on the stairs.”

“I met a man who said he ran an agency like this. His name was Filotov.”

“Hardly. Zoya’s in charge.”

“Now that you mention it he didn’t seem the type. He had a short fuse.”

“When he drinks.”

“When does he drink?”

“Every day.”

“He seemed…” Arkady paused as if looking for the right word.

“Disruptive. He advised some girls to get tattooed. An American adult is going to marry a tattooed Russian girl? I think not. Filotov even told them where to hide it, but sooner or later, the American finds it. He’d have to be blind not to.”

Arkady was afraid to ask more than “Any particular tattoo?”

“I wouldn’t know. I tell the girls, if you have a tattoo join a motorcycle gang, don’t waste our time.”

“What about the American? How do you know he isn’t a serial killer and has two or three dead Russian girls in his freezer?”

“My God!” The matchmaker looked around as if someone else might hear. “We don’t joke about such things. What an awful imagination.”

“It’s a curse.” He thought of Petya’s matchbook and decided to go for broke. “Have you ever heard of a gentlemen’s club called Tahiti?”

Ice formed on Tatiana’s gaze.

“Perhaps you should try another agency.”

While Arkady returned to his car, he called the
Izvestia
editorial office and was told that Ginsberg, the reporter who wrote the newspaper article about Isakov’s heroic OMON troops, was covering “the pizza trial,” the case of the ex-Black Beret who killed a pizza deliveryman. The trial was being heard in a new courthouse still under construction.

“How will I recognize Ginsberg?” Arkady asked.