There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union Read online

  ‘Report,’ he barked at the policemen.

  ‘We caught this one trying to escape out of the back of the building, sir,’ replied one of the officers.

  ‘Rubbish,’ said their prisoner calmly.

  ‘Speak when you’re spoken to!’ snarled the policeman.

  ‘Certainly. You’ve just spoken to me, haven’t you? I said, rubbish. Far from trying to escape, I merely walked at a normal pace out of a normal exit from this building. And far from being caught, I stopped the moment you addressed me and returned here at your request without demur.’

  ‘Identification,’ rapped Chislenko.

  The man produced a set of papers which identified him as Alexei Rudakov, a mechanical engineer currently working at a high level in the planning department of the new Dnieper dam project. Also he was a Party member. Chislenko’s eyes drifted from the papers to Rudakov’s person, to the good cloth of his well-cut suit, to the soft leather of his shoes.

  ‘Thank you, Comrade,’ he said courteously, returning the papers. ‘Would you mind answering a few questions?’

  ‘If I must,’ sighed the man.

  ‘First of all, can you confirm that you were travelling in this lift when the … er … incident occurred.’

  ‘I can,’ said Rudakov.

  ‘I see,’ said Chislenko. ‘Now I find that very curious, Comrade.’

  ‘It was curious,’ said the man.

  ‘No. I mean I find it curious that a man of your standing, a Party member too, should have left the scene of an … er … incident so rapidly when you must have known it was your duty to stay.’

  ‘I heard the operator here ringing the emergency services,’ offered the engineer in what was clearly only a token excuse.

  ‘Nevertheless.’

  Rudakov sighed again.

  ‘I’m sorry. Yes, of course, you’re quite right. I should have stayed. But for what, Comrade Inspector? You put your finger on it just now. I am a man of standing and reputation, both in my profession and in the Party too. That’s just what I was thinking of when I left. Let me explain. In my job, I deal with facts and figures, with exact calculation, with solid materials. The Party too, as you well know, is based upon figures and facts, on historic inevitability and economic practicality.’

  He paused to permit Chislenko and most of the others present to nod their grave agreement. The kneeling girl, however, permitted her filial feelings to overcome her patriotism to the point of rolling her lovely eyes to the ceiling in exasperation at all this male verbiage, and one of the firemen, who had finished their examination of the lift and lit cigarettes, broke wind gently.

  Chislenko suspected this was an offence, but he already felt ridiculous enough without pursuing a charge of ‘farting against the State’.

  ‘So, Comrade Inspector,’ resumed the engineer, ‘you can see how unattractive I found the idea of having to wait here and bear testimony to something as bizarre as this … incident. Duty is not the only imperative. Suddenly I found myself walking down the stairs. I’m sorry, but I’m sure that an intelligent man like yourself will sympathize and understand.’

  Oh yes! thought Chislenko. You’re so bloody right, Comrade!

  He looked with loathing at the escorting policemen. If only they hadn’t been so fucking conscientious! This whole ridiculous business was beginning to smell like bad news for clever Inspector Chislenko’s bright future. Up to this point, things had remained manageable – just! The testimony of an hysterical woman (in official terms, Mrs Lovchev’s hysteria was abundant enough to cover her daughter also), and of a drunken and superstitious peasant (in official terms, this description fitted anyone in an unskilled job whose testimony did not suit the police), could have been easily disposed of. But how the hell was he to deal with this pillar of respectability? One thing was certain; his previous instinct had been right. He must get away from all these inquisitive eyes and ears.

  He said carefully, ‘It is, of course, every citizen’s duty to act in the best interests of the State, as he sees them, Comrade. Let us see if we can find somewhere quiet to take your statement.’

  ‘No!’ exclaimed the girl, Natasha, beautifully angry once again. ‘Let him tell what he saw here, in front of everyone like the rest of us!’

  There was a murmur of agreement the whole length of the corridor, stilled as Chislenko glared angrily around. Who the hell did these people think they were dealing with?

  But before he could let them know quite clearly who was in charge here, Rudakov cut the ground from under his feet by saying, ‘The young lady may be right, Comrade Inspector. I wished to remain silent and uninvolved, but your efficiency has prevented that. Now that you’ve shown me my duty, the least I can do is to tell you simply and without prevarication what has taken place. So here goes.’

  It was disastrous. He confirmed in precise unemotional tones every detail of what the others had said.

  Chislenko let out a deep sigh. There was only one thing left to do, pass the buck upwards and hope to be agile enough to dodge out of the way when as usual it came bouncing straight back down.

  2

  There had been two days of silence from the Procurator’s office and Chislenko was beginning to hope that his initial report had been allowed to sink to the bed of that ocean of paper which washed around the basement of Petrovka, the Moscow Headquarters of the MVD.

  Unfortunately he himself did not dare let things lie. Official procedure required the making of follow-up reports, each one of which increased the risk of drawing unwelcome attention. It was necessary, for example, to visit Mrs Lovchev to get her version of events once she had recovered sufficiently to speak. He found her clearly enjoying the role of convalescent, sitting up in bed in her daughter’s apartment, eating cream chocolates.

  The apartment was tiny and Natasha had given up the bed for the duration of her mother’s visit and moved on to a narrow, age-corrugated sofa. Mrs Lovchev’s version of events differed from the others only in style. It was colourful, melodramatic and drawn out beyond belief and tolerance by family reminiscence, folklore analogy, and in-depth analysis of the lady’s own emotions at each stage of the narrative.

  The positive side of the interview was that it gave him a chance to get to know Natasha Lovchev rather better. He’d checked her records in the State Employees computer, of course, and found nothing against her. It had been necessary to mention in his report that she had had no official authority for inviting her mother to see her new office, but he pointed to this as evidence of the extremely lax security at the Gorodok Building rather than dereliction of duty on Natasha’s part. After all, pride in one’s work and love of one’s mother were both figured in the official list of virtues published by the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda each year.

  Natasha was present during his interview of Mrs Lovchev. From time to time she interrupted, but Chislenko didn’t mind, especially as her interruptions, which were at first defensive of her mother, became increasingly more embarrassed and irritated as that good lady rambled on and on, till finally she rescued the Inspector from the little bedroom and led him out in to the equally small living-room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  She didn’t apologize for her mother and Chislenko admired her for that. Children should never apologize for their parents. But her offer of a cup of tea was clearly compensatory and conciliatory. And as they drank and talked, Chislenko found himself aware with his male receptors of what he had already noted with his policeman’s eye, that Natasha was very pretty indeed. Not only pretty, but pleasant, interesting and bright. Chislenko felt able to relax a little, and enjoy the tea and her company and a brief moment off duty.

  ‘What do you really make of all this?’ he asked her. ‘Now you’ve had time to think about it. Off the record.’

  ‘Off the record?’ She regarded him with an open scepticism and then shrugged and wiped it off with a stunning smile. ‘Well, off the record, it has to be a ghost, don’t you think?’

 
‘A ghost?’ he echoed. He must have sounded disappointed.

  ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know that’s what my mother’s been going on about for the past half-hour and you hoped for something more original from me. Perhaps I could dress it up for you. A para-psychological phenomenon, how would that sound in your report? Or perhaps you prefer a delusive projection produced by localized mass-hysteria, perhaps relatable to repressed claustrophobia triggered by the lift.’

  ‘Now I like the sound of that,’ he said, only half joking. So far, until his reports were complete, he had avoided anything like a conclusion, opinion or recommendation. This kind of phraseology sounded just the ticket.

  Natasha snorted derisively.

  ‘Use any jargon you like,’ she said firmly. ‘In my book, any human figure which passes clean through a material barrier is a ghost. Go back in records and look for an accident happening in that lift-shaft. The past is where your investigation should be, if you’ve got the nerve.’

  She was mocking him, but the gibe struck home. The idea had actually occurred to him, but he had dismissed it at once, and not merely because it was absurd. No; an ambitious thirty-year-old inspector of police knew that his every move was scrutinized with great care, and he had no desire to find himself explaining that he was examining old records in order to test a ghost hypothesis!

  He covered his discomfiture with a smile, and returning mockery for mockery, he said, ‘Why the past? What’s wrong with precognition? If you believe in ghosts, surely, you believe in visions too? Perhaps this was an event which has yet to happen.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said sombrely. ‘It’s happened.’

  ‘How so sure?’

  ‘The clothes,’ she said.

  ‘The clothes?’ He cast his mind back to the witness statements. ‘Yes, I recall, there was something about an old-fashioned suit. But, good lord, Moscow’s full of old-fashioned suits! Who can afford a new-fashioned suit these days?’

  The question was rhetorical since any attempt to answer it would almost certainly have involved a slander of the State.

  She said, ‘It was more than that. It was, well, a new old-fashioned suit, if you follow me. And he was wearing a celluloid collar too. Now, old-fashioned suits may be plentiful still, but you don’t see many celluloid collars about, do you? And he had button-up shoes!’

  ‘Now there’s a thing!’ said Chislenko. ‘So what kind of dating would you put on this outfit?’

  She pursed her lips thoughtfully. It would have been very easy to lean forward and kiss them but Chislenko was not letting himself relax that far. Not yet anyway; the thought popped up unexpectedly, surprisingly, but not unwelcomely.

  ‘’Thirties, late ’twenties, somewhere around then, I’d say,’ she said.

  He laughed out loud and said, ‘Now that is interesting. When you go to work in the morning do you ever look up?’

  ‘Look up?’ She was puzzled.

  ‘Yes, up.’ He raised his head and his eyes till he was looking at the angle where the yellowing paper on the walls met the flaking whitewash on the ceiling. ‘Or is it head down, eyes half closed, drift along till you reach your desk?’

  ‘I’m very alert in the mornings,’ she retorted spiritedly.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Then you must have noticed that huge concrete slab above the main door. The one inscribed. The Gorodok Building. Dedicated to the Greater Glory of the USSR and opened by Georgiy Malenkov in June 1949.

  ‘Nineteen forty-nine,’ she echoed. ‘Oh. I see. Nineteen forty-nine.’

  ‘Yes. Part of our great post-war reconstruction programme,’ he said, rising. ‘A little late for celluloid collars and button-up shoes, don’t you think? Thank you for the tea, Comrade Natasha. I’m sure we’ll meet again, I’ll need to keep in touch with you till this strange business is settled.’

  He offered his hand formally. She shook it and said, ‘And I’ll be very interested to learn how you manage to settle it, Comrade Inspector.’

  He smiled and squeezed her hand. She returned neither squeeze nor smile. He didn’t blame her. Only a fool would allow a couple of minutes’ friendly chat to break down the barriers of caution and suspicion which always exist between public and police.

  And Natasha, he guessed, was no fool.

  Checking Josif Muntjan, the liftman, wasn’t half as pleasant but just as easy. The State makes no social distinction in its records. Menial or master, once you come into its employ, you get the womb-to-tomb X-ray treatment.

  Muntjan came out pretty clear. There was a record of minor offences, all involving drunkenness, but none recent, and nothing while on duty.

  Indeed, the supervisor, who didn’t look like a man in whom the milk of compassion flowed very freely, spoke surprisingly well of him. He expressed surprise rather than outrage at the mention of the hip-flask.

  ‘It’s not an offence to own one, is it?’ he said. ‘No need to report it, though, is there? I’ll see he doesn’t bring it to work with him again. He’ll take notice of what I say. Jobs aren’t easy to come by when you’re old and unqualified.’

  Chislenko nodded; the man’s sympathetic understanding touched him. He clearly knew that if Muntjan were tossed out of his job, he probably wouldn’t stop falling till he landed in one of those shacks on the outer ring road where the Moscow down-and-outs eked out their perilous existence. Or rather, non-existence, for of course in the perfect socialist state, such degraded beings were impossible.

  Crime too was impossible. Or would be eventually. The statistics showed progress. Chislenko defended the statistics as fervently as the next man, knowing that if he didn’t, the next man would probably report the deficiency. But falling though the crime rate might be, there was still a lot of it about and Chislenko resented the amount of time he had to spend on this unrewarding and absurd business at the Gorodok Building. The only profit in it was that it had brought him into contact with Natasha Lovchev, but that relationship was still as uncertain in its outcome as a new Five-Year-Plan.

  He turned his attention from Muntjan to Alexei Rudakov. Here the computer confirmed his own first estimate. Rudakov was a man to be treated with respect. Only his initial foolishness in leaving the scene of the incident made him vulnerable to hard questioning. The trouble was, the harder the questioning, the firmer his story.

  Finally Rudakov said, ‘Comrade Inspector, clearly you want to hear this story as little as I want to tell it. In a few days I shall be returning to the Dnieper Dam. Rest assured, I shall not be making a fool of myself by repeating this anecdote there. In other words, if you stop asking questions, I’ll stop giving answers!’

  It made good sense to Chislenko. The best way to deal with this absurd business was to ignore it. He only hoped his superiors would agree, and he gave them their cue by writing a final dismissive report, this time risking a conclusion couched in the kind of quasi-psychological jargon Natasha had mockingly used.

  Then he crossed his fingers, and waited, and even said a little prayer.

  The authorities were right to ban religion.

  The following day he was summoned to Procurator Kozlov’s office.

  3

  Of all the deputy procurators working in the Procurator General’s office, Kozlov was the one most feared. Unambiguously ambitious, he took lack of progress in any case under his charge as an act of personal sabotage by the Inspector involved, and his own advancement was littered with the wrecks of others’ careers. His legal career had begun in the attorney’s department of the Red Army, and on formal official occasions Kozlov always wore the uniform of colonel to which his military service entitled him.

  He was wearing the uniform today. It was not a good sign.

  So preoccupied was Chislenko by this sartorial ill-omen that at first he did not notice the other person in the room. It was only when he came to attention and focused his eyes over the seated Procurator’s head that he took in the unexpected presence. Standing by the window looking down into Petrovka Street w
as an old gentleman (the term rose unbidden into Chislenko’s mind), with a crown of snow white hair, a goatee beard of the same hue, cheeks of fresh rose, eyes of bright blue, and an expression of almost saintly benevolence.

  Procurator Kozlov did not look benevolent.

  ‘Inspector Chislenko,’ he rasped. ‘This business of the Gorodok Building. These are your final reports?’

  He stabbed at the file on his desk.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Chislenko.

  ‘And you recommend that no further inquiry is needed?’

  ‘I can see no line of further inquiry that might be useful,’ said Chislenko carefully.

  The Procurator sneered.

  ‘No line which might be fruitful if pursued in the indolent, incompetent and altogether deplorable manner in which you’ve managed this business so far, you mean!’

  The unexpected violence of the attack provoked Chislenko to the indiscretion of a protest.

  ‘Sir!’ he cried. ‘I resent your implications …’

  ‘You resent!’ bellowed Kozlov, his smart uniform stretching to the utmost tolerance of its stitching.

  ‘Comrades,’ said the old man gently.

  The speed with which the Procurator deflated made Chislenko look at the old gentleman with new eyes. Wasn’t there something familiar about those features?

  ‘Let us not be unfair to the Inspector,’ he continued with a friendly smile. ‘He has done almost as much as could be expected, and his desire to let this matter die quietly is altogether laudable. However …’

  He paused, came to the desk, picked up the file and sifted apparently aimlessly through its sheets.

  ‘Do you know who I am, Inspector?’ he said finally.

  Desperately Chislenko searched his memory while the old man smiled at him. Honesty at last seemed the best policy.

  ‘My apologies, Comrade,’ he said. ‘There is something familiar about you but I cannot quite find the name to go with it.’

  To his surprise the old man looked pleased.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said, beaming. ‘In my work, as in yours, not to be known is the best reputation a man can look for. I am Y.S.J. Serebrianikov.’