In the streets the people clung to the walls like posters. Among them were the Nationalists, who were not supposed to be there since NKVD had been killing them in droves since 1936 but the older Kirov could feel them as a prickling of his skin. Logic said there were not enough Nationalists to fill a telephone booth, but soon they would fill the Opera House to hold their congress and decide upon the constitution of the Byelorussian Republic. Their former tormentor would share meals with them in the Hotel Europa and they would be uncles to his little boy.
But that was for the future. For the present Stalin had allowed the churches to reopen. He was an old seminarist and at this stage of the war he was gripped by a panic and, for all anyone knew, was on his knees in the Kremlin asking God to help him out of his problems in return for which Stalin would kill anyone that God wished. Stalin was well aware of the function of religion, to usher with its rites through the shadows of the changing world and prepare for the final transformation of death. And doubtless he too was looking for that still core of his being that resisted all change. What did he find that represented his integrity?
The older Kirov sat at his table and looked inside himself and found a policeman.
The train halted at Cherepovets. The passengers, mesmerised by sleep and travel, stirred and scrabbled after their luggage and bade each other farewell. Through the coach window Kirov watched the ornithologist embrace a huge bearded type in he-man clothes, remembering Vanya Yatsin and their last meeting at the Marriott in Washington, where the Americans misinterpreted the effusive, unconstrained Russian manner of greeting. The card-playing soldiers were on the platform too, weighing up the prettily elegant station buildings in their sage-green paintwork and cream trimmings, employing their soldier’s eye for a comfortable billet and in the end deciding to squat on their packs until transport or orders arrived. Kirov descended last from the train, carrying his overnight bag.
Beyond the station, Cherepovets consisted of grey apartment blocks with shops at street level. A drab green truck with a canvas top was parked in a row of small cars; an official Chaika with an official chauffeur waited for a Moscow bigwig. The two frontier guards were slinging their packs into the truck. The driver of the Chaika watched Kirov as if he might be expecting him. Kirov avoided his gaze and walked away at a moderate pace until he could turn a corner.
He had spoken to Orlov once. The pharmacist had been difficult to reach; he spent much of his time up-country in the Darvitsky Reserve. These days he was part pharmacist, part doctor, part vet, and wholly frightened. He did not want to talk on the telephone; he did not want to talk to Kirov. Kirov had to chide him, threaten him, woo him almost with offers of warmth and security. ‘You’ve been out in the cold too long, Grigori Dmitrievitch. Things have happened. There are people who want to help you. It’s time to get these matters off your chest.’ He spun a tale of a new Party and a new KGB, the ones we always wanted; and Orlov bought the story because he needed to get rid of what he knew. Living in the Darvitsky Reserve had changed his perspective. Day by day he saw the beauty and simplicity of the landscape and wanted to harmonise with it. He needed some rite of absolution to free him of his past. Or so Kirov supposed.
The bar in Cherepovets was Orlov’s idea. He had an amateur’s conception of security and on the phone stipulated a series of checks and passwords that seemed to give him some comfort. Then, having decided that Kirov was a friend, he asked him to bring along some medicines he could not get in Cherepovets, and a ham: he hadn’t eaten a ham since he left Moscow and had no friends to send him one.
They had a beer together. Orlov turned out to be small and almost bald, the remaining strands of his hair plastered over his scalp. His face was of a nibbling rabbity kind, sallow-skinned with eyes like open oysters. He wore a heroic ensemble of blue quilted coat with a fur hood, a red chequered shirt, rough cord trousers and boots; his head nodded on top of this like an ill-fitting appendage. He was a nodding man. ‘You made it OK’ — nod — ‘no trouble on the journey?’ — nod — nod. Kirov liked him.
‘You find it all right here?’
‘Here? All right? Oh, sure. It’s — different. It’s how you imagine the country to be. I don’t mean Cherepovets,’ Orlov was looking around the bar, which was like any other, ‘but out on the Reserve.’
‘You wanted a job on the Reserve?’
‘Not wanted — but it’s OK. Really.’
‘A change from the clinic at Kuntsevo?’
Orlov nodded but didn’t answer. He proposed another drink.
‘I’ve not had much to do with — your lot before.’
‘We come in all sizes.’
‘Of course, at Kuntsevo there was a lot of security.’
‘There would be.’
‘But they didn’t — you know — socialise.’
Kirov said he didn’t suppose they did. It hadn’t occurred to him that Orlov might be flattered by his interest. Interrogating him would be no pleasure; he was so transparent and fragile you would be frightened of breaking him. Kirov offered to pay for the drinks and suggested they move on. Orlov volunteered that he had a vehicle nearby; they could drive out to the Reserve where they could talk in peace. Outside in the street the official Chaika drove past. Heltai was in the back seat.
Kirov couldn’t be sure it was Heltai. There was a face and it was gone, like the occasions that happen several times in a lifetime when our paths come across a famous actor in a hotel lobby, a station forecourt or a street where he waits for a taxi. There he is and now he’s gone. His size and shape are wrong. We ought to be excited but aren’t. Did we really see him? The car that perhaps contained Heltai disappeared. Orlov missed it; he was fiddling in his pocket for his car keys. And then the two men were walking down the street.
The vehicle was a four-wheel drive truck. Orlov kept a raccoon dog chained in the back. The animal was fat and lazy; Orlov admitted he kept it as a pet. ‘I get lonely,’ he said, and Kirov could see that he did. They got into the cab. Orlov had unchained the raccoon dog and it lay on Kirov’s lap and sniffled. They took the road out of Cherepovets towards the Reserve. The snow ploughs had recently cleared it, but the going was still bumpy. Kirov rocked with the bumps and stroked the raccoon dog’s long brown fur and wondered about Heltai — had he really seen him?
They turned off the highway onto an unmade village road, struggling through glutinous mud between banks of frozen snow and a horizon of spruce trees. The village consisted of single-storey wooden houses, prettily painted, with white gingerbread shutters, neat fences and birch trees growing in the gardens. Beyond the village the road got worse. It led by a frozen lake, which glimmered in the pale daylight. In the trees they heard the tonk-tonk of a capercaillie calling to its mate. The silence and loneliness of the snowbound landscape folded around them.
They spoke reluctantly as if disturbing the sleeping earth. Orlov had a bag of cold boiled potatoes and they snacked on these, speaking between mouthfuls, pausing to suck out the soft hearts and feed the skins to the dog, which chuckled and scrabbled after them. The air in the cab became warm.