Good People (47 page)

‘It's not a personal matter,' Thomas emphasised. A kind of screeching hiss entered his voice. ‘Believe me, I've managed complex projects with people more sophisticated than she is. The question is: in what light will the incident present Germany?'

Frenzel looked at his papers again. ‘Maybe despite everything you did learn your lesson. Very well, do it. But don't do anything else without keeping me up to date.'

Thomas was encouraged. Frenzel appeared to run his life like an organised and efficient man, but in fact he acted on impulse. If you upset his balance slightly, offered a solution and pressed him to make a decision, he would snap up the solution, because he was too busy calming his stormy spirit. ‘No question,' Thomas answered. ‘As usual, we'll act in full coordination.'

‘Anything else?' asked Frenzel, when he saw that Thomas was lingering.

‘Just one little matter, something minor. I didn't get enough information about my counterpart in the parade committee. I was forced to make do with an embarrassing paper with a few biographical details. I realise that the parade isn't of prime preference, but the German representative shouldn't be groping in the dark. I'd like you to support my request for a detailed profile of that woman. The embassy in Moscow can supply the information with ease.'

When he went down the stairs and cordially returned the greetings
of officers who in the past would not deign to look at him, he felt a freezing tremor in his neck. It was as if every one of his actions in the past few days had been observed by Comrade Weissberg's all-knowing gaze, mocking Thomas's miserable efforts to escape it. He hadn't stayed faithful to his initial decision to cooperate with her and had even worked to remove her from the committee, but ugly shame enveloped all his actions: if he believed she wasn't the right person, the matter would have been easy, but he knew very well that she was the one most appropriate to promote this initiative along with him. At night, lying in his bed, he tried to find some logic in his actions—perhaps there were people whom he shouldn't meet? But that idea sounded to him like one of those groundless statements intended to excuse stupid actions by reference to some world view. ‘I have no world view,' he once said proudly. ‘I have a view of the project I'm working on.'

In the Foreign Office they didn't even respond to his requests, and finally some clerk reprimanded him. ‘We won't talk to the Soviets about the Jewess. After all, in the 1939 parade, the Soviet General who reviewed the parade along with Guderian was also a Jew. The Foreign Office is the home of professional diplomats, not fly-by-nights.'

One day Frenzel informed him that he would receive an envelope containing the most comprehensive information that German intelligence could obtain. ‘And after you read it, believe me, nothing mysterious will remain about your Jewess.'

BREST

MARCH 1941

No one understood why she was in such a frenzy, why she was rushing out into the street and returning to the office red-cheeked and panting in a coat white with snow, skipping down the streets that led to the river as if it were summer, and coming back with rolls of paper under her arm, spending days on end in the new archive, dragging packages of books from the post office, books from Leningrad, from Moscow, even a package from the embassy in Berlin.

The first task she set for herself was drawing a new map of Brest. This was the map they would use in their work, and every street on it would get a number. But the numbering wasn't simply geographical. It would reflect their assumptions: for example, 17 September Street, where Guderian and Krivoshein had stood on the little platform in September 1939, would be Street Number 1, and Moscow Avenue, which crossed it, would be marked Number 2. All the remaining streets would now be numbered according to their proximity to one of these central streets. She also numbered the streets that she
remembered from the summer: one day she stood at the corner of Spitalna and Kobrin and looked at the river, and a car driving past appeared to be surrounded by a golden halo. If the crowd gathered there in the early morning and faced east, the parade would appear to be sliding down to them out of the sun, and the sight would be breathtaking. Aside from that, the parade should not be limited to straight roads; if you heard the sound of military vehicles from around the corner, and calculated impatiently when they would arrive, and suddenly a giant, glowing swarm flooded the street—the effect would be powerful.

She was close to finishing the numbered street map, wondering whether her plans would please the German representative. Would the general idea of a parade draped in golden mystery appeal to him? Many questions still remained unresolved. For example, it went without saying that part of the parade had to be held in the fortress, but perhaps it would be better to hold a separate event there, a homage to previous wars? She didn't consult anyone, and at night locked the maps and the papers in a cabinet, afraid that if people saw them they would make fun of her plans. When finally she did resolve an issue, she immediately changed her mind: every decision seemed fateful to her.

Nikita Mikhailovich warned her that people were talking about how she was going days without eating. At last she set a date to send the new map to Thomas Heiselberg, along with her main ideas. The night before she didn't shut her eyes. She went over the map and the papers again and again. Monsieur Thomas Heiselberg would be pleased: she remembered his remarks about the numbered streets of New York.

Meanwhile Nikita Mikhailovich made a point of visiting her office in the evening and holding their ‘truth workshops'. The first time he assailed her with countless questions. Her answers were embarrassingly forced, and she was scared he would declare that she hadn't kept her part of the bargain and transfer administration of the parade to someone else. At later meetings she decided to speak more freely about certain subjects.

‘You understand, Nikita Mikhailovich, a person's consciousness is preoccupied, day and night, awake and in dreams, with just one thing: it makes her arguments, the same arguments again and again. One night,' she told him, ‘when everyone was drunk and Father even dared to sit next to his Nadka, they recited a little piece called, “A Poison Potion for Consciousness”. The next day I wrote: “As a girl you discover the secrets of consciousness; afterwards you discover there are no secrets, just patterns, I have become aware of my patterns, and with every new pattern a part of me dies.” Nadka declared that the end was overly dramatic and whining. She had the ability to insult you, to be cruel and at the same time to strengthen your faith in your abilities.'

How long had it been since she had just chatted enjoyably? She was flooded with amusing memories: ‘A critic described Nadka in the paper as “more a muse than a poet”. Father was afraid she would commit suicide, but she made an appointment with the critic, and in the end he introduced an edition of her poems. Brodsky claimed that Nadka was a political genius, but then everything changed, the games were over. She didn't understand the thirties.'

‘All this is fascinating, Alexandra Andreyevna,' said Nikita Mikhailovich. ‘I didn't know that you once dreamed of becoming a poet. Even though it's a rather common dream.'

‘Maybe I'll be one yet? Perhaps it seems strange to you, Nikita Mikhailovich, but our house was a railway station for people like that. Malevich sat in the living room one night and kept calling me Zhenya, Vasily Degtyaryov drank tea, licked currant jam and consulted Father about his machine gun. Sergo Ordzhonikidze toyed with my braids and placed a copper bracelet on my wrist. Mandelstam and Akhmatova were guests in our house, and Father told them in secret that Kirov had a General Electric refrigerator in his house.'

Belatedly she discovered she had slipped back into the haughty tone that she once used to tell her friends about the famous people who'd visited her house. Snippets of her girlhood returned, and for the first time in a while she felt she could contain the pain. Yes, there had been good days. Was she trying to arouse his envy of her vibrant
childhood home? She was swept along to another story. ‘One day somebody told us that Pasternak had quoted a line from a letter he had written: “We're no longer people; we're epochs.” I declared that it was the most beautiful line I'd ever heard, and everyone laughed, saying that the girl had to be immunised against pathos. The annoying thing was that we couldn't really be enthusiastic about anything. There was always someone who shouted, “Here it is! The kitsch that's killing Russian poetry.”'

Nikita Mikhailovich stared at her in amazement, breathing on his glasses and cleaning them with his sleeve. ‘Alexandra Andreyevna, doesn't this story have an ending too? You courageously denied your parents and their actions, and then you extracted confessions from all the members of the Leningrad Group.' His voice grew softer, his daring melted.

‘There was no other choice.'

‘Comrade Weissberg.' His voice cracked a little. ‘I hope the question isn't too intrusive, but I'd like to know: do you regret the things you did?'

‘I couldn't have done anything else. I could only be lost with them or survive, for the twins' sake. I'm in agony, Nikita Mikhailovich, not remorseful.'

‘Nikolai Andreyevich Weissberg is a soldier in the forty-second division in the twenty-eighth corps of the Fourth Army?'

‘Yes. That's him.' How could she have thought it was possible to conceal a fact like that from Nikita Mikhailovich?

‘Then he's stationed in the area of the fortress, so close to us,' he crowed, and she was full of gratitude for the ease with which he presented the information she had hidden from him. ‘Show him to us. We'll invite him to dinner and drink together until the morning.'

‘That would be very kind of you.'

‘And the other one is Vladimir Andreyevich Weissberg, who was killed in Finland?'

‘Vlada died there.'

‘He was a stubborn boy.'

‘Maybe a little.'

‘I've thought about this more than once, Alexandra Andreyevna,' he said softly. He examined his fingernails and seemed troubled. ‘I told you that in our meetings I want to speak only the truth, and I believe it's your right to know about the circumstances of his death.'

She turned away. She felt bound to the chair. Now he was going to tell her something horrible, the little gossip.

‘In Finland he made an appointment with the politruk
*
of the company and told him that he had believed in the Party all his life, he was active in all its institutions, but the things he had seen recently had shocked him. He didn't understand the war, and he wouldn't have believed that the Red Army, which he so admired, could be so cruel to ordinary citizens. He couldn't say that his faith in the Party had remained as firm as before.'

Nikita Mikhailovich leaned towards her as if panicked by the look on her face. ‘Don't you want to hear this?'

She nodded yes. Now he remembered to ask? She knew how the story would end.

‘The politruk apparently liked him, as everyone did, according to the report. He told him to go back to his companions and not breathe a word. The next day your brother repeated his confession to the company commander. It was a war; there was no time for anything. They made a short investigation and shot him and the politruk. The official version is that they were killed in battle.'

Her nails peeled slivers of wood from the table, and blood showed beneath them. ‘I don't understand. Did he want to die?'

‘The protocol implies that he had undergone a severe crisis of faith and wanted to say what he really thought.'

‘I understand.'

‘If you want, I can show you the protocol. I obtained it for you.'

‘I don't want to see it.'

‘As you wish. My intentions were good.'

‘I never doubted your intentions.'

They sat in silence for a while. She wanted to get away from there but didn't dare. Nikita Mikhailovich played with two bottles as if they were swords. He looked like a boy who had hoped for praise and instead got a scolding. The childishness of men was so exhausting sometimes.

‘I thank you for your efforts, Nikita Mikhailovich.'

It was a week of bad tidings: two days later she got a letter from Maxim with the news that Emma Rykova had committed suicide. Brodsky's soft voice sang in her head: ‘The gulag, the cold, the hunger and the work—she overcame them all. But not Nadyezhda Petrovna's release.' You could kill Brodsky, but at least in his death he had bequeathed them his irony.

That day she roamed around the city. Tears choked her. All of her memories of Emma were stirred with the heartwarming movement of life. Emma was always looking for someone—a victim to be conquered with the truth, a poem that had moved her but whose words she had forgotten, a lover who had disappeared.

Sasha struggled to uproot Emma from her heart, to transfer her to the regions of night and nightmares. Wasn't that the deal? Until Nadyezhda's release it had not occurred to her that any of the members of the Leningrad Group might come back. Graves had been dug for all of them, each to be filled in its own time; in her dreams they already appeared in the company of other dead people. And now they came back to life.

There was one thing she hadn't discussed with Nikita Mikhailovich: the committee for the Germano-Soviet parade. When he asked, she put him off with a vague answer and requested more time to consolidate the plans. All the documents connected to the parade were locked away in her office, and she was always sure to seat him with his back to the cabinet, so it wouldn't occur to him to look into it. She lived with the fear that she would find the cabinet broken open. One day he asked her about the fortress, because she had spent a few days there to prepare for the meeting with the German—and what impressions
she had of the soldiers' preparedness.