Denisov hummed the lyrics as he dressed, slowly, with nonchalance.
“What is this music?”
Denisov was surprised by the voice and question. He looked at Luriey for a moment and said, “The Mikado. An opera. An English opera.”
Luriey grunted as though he understood everything then, the summons of this man, the place he was to be taken.
Forty minutes later, Denisov led the way as Luriey escorted him down the white-painted inner corridor on the fifth floor of the vast Institute for International Understanding and Control building. It had been erected in 1961 as an annex to the more familiar seven-story main building of the Committee for State Security — the KGB.
It was not untypical of the grandeur of Khrushchev’s last years: monumental in scope and a dramatic example of confused ideas of architecture, wasteful and inefficient. The central corridor, for instance, was nearly forty feet in height and the walls, originally the product of the State’s gross wealth, had been altered over the years as reality set in: First, the marble began to peel away from the sides of the walls and workmen were always in the building, fixing them. And then, in 1964, the assistant director of the Institute for Forensic Experimentation and Determination was killed by a 600-pound block of marble that crushed him as it separated from the wall. It was then that the Bureau of Buildings and Security decided that the architect had misplanned and the walls could not support the weight of the marble facing, and all the marble was removed at last. Rumor was that the marble slabs had been assigned to various officials inside the Praesidium and Central Committee who used them to floor their luxurious dachas outside the capital.
There were other things wrong with the building as welclass="underline" The central air-conditioning system produced spectacularly uneven and unexpected results. In summer, the women who worked in the message center routinely wore sweaters and coats on the job, while those in the communications laboratory two floors above had to wear the lightest of shirts even in winter because of overheating.
Fortunately for the people in Room Twenty-four — which was actually a series of connected suites — Gogol was a resourceful man. He had equipped his offices with reliable General Electric air conditioners and space heaters and disconnected the rooms from the main heating and cooling systems. No one questioned Gogol on where he had obtained the supplies; in fact, rarely did anyone ask Gogol any sort of question.
He was the keeper of the dead souls.
Gogol was a code name, of course, but the only one they ever used for him; he did not shed it when he left the building at night; he would be Gogol until retirement or until death. And then, when he died, there would be a report filed that an obscure official with a commonplace name had died and would be buried in the immense cemetery on the hill beyond the Kremlin walls. Gogol would not die; the next man would become Gogol.
“A form of immortality,” Denisov had once ventured but Gogol was burdened with no sense of humor and he had not smiled or even recognized Denisov’s jest.
Denisov and Luriey pushed against one of the double doors that led into Room Twenty-four. A prosaic nomenclature, Denisov had thought when he first went to the section. But then, all the groups under the umbrella of the vast KGB bore prosaic descriptions, wearing their names like so many anonymous gray suits, each label seemingly descriptive and intricate but laden with flat meanings, ironic and evasive when examined. So Room Twenty-four meant nothing and meant everything, suited to the office as well as to the official name for the section (which was only used in intrabureau records): the Committee for External Observation and Resolution.
Denisov thought of the jest implied in the official name that was never used for the section: “Resolution.” How unlike the old Russian language that had grown huge and unwieldy as new words were added to describe precisely a single emotion or action, the word taking in not only the reality of the thing described but its place within the mind of the beholder and the circumstances surrounding it. Now the State had forced irony into the once-precise words.
Nothing was ever resolved by the Committee but it was policy to think it was, to think that an action taken by it, however small, resolved a part of the larger problem facing the State.
No one would be bold enough, of course, to point out that the problems of the State never seemed diminished; that would deny the official optimism applied in the Marxist creed of man’s perfectibility.
“Resolution,” Denisov said, and it startled Luriey, who glanced at him. The word had become another civil evasion, a polite term given to the uncivil actions that Denisov must perform.
At a metal desk inside the double doors, a large, stone-faced Army officer handed both men section badges. Denisov affixed his badge to the lapel of his dark blue jacket along with the second badge given him when he entered the building: a row of badges like battle ribbons, each granting access to deeper parts of this faceless building. There was so much security.
Like the wooden toy, Denisov thought; a toy he had purchased long ago, when his son was small enough to enjoy it: a large egg-shaped figurine of a peasant girl that opened to reveal another, smaller, egg-shaped figurine, which opened to reveal an even smaller figure, on and on, until the last tiny egg, which was solid and could not be opened. The last figurine always disappointed his son. There must always be more mystery, the child seemed to feel.
Security. The agent code-named Potemkin had once said that in the long run the purpose of security was to find work for the unemployable.
Potemkin. Denisov had not thought of him for months. What an agreeable, intelligent man. They had met at the Language Institute when Denisov was first struggling with French prior to his posting in Southeast Asia. A long time ago.
One afternoon, a lazy summer day of soft breezes from the forests outside the old city, Denisov and Potemkin had shared an afternoon of talk and chess and tea in tall glasses in the Chess Union. Both had just returned from separate postings abroad and both spoke with something like shock of the routine security in the capital. And Potemkin had spoken also of the Barcelona Zoo in Spain: There were three men on the front gate at the zoo. The first gave you a ticket and took your money; the second, a few feet away, examined your ticket to make certain it was genuine; and the third man, in the cubicle at the gate itself, took the ticket and tore it in half and permitted you to enter the grounds. Three men for a simple job, Potemkin said, in a country with a need to employ the unemployable.
They had both understood the parallels with Moscow life in the story but they were wise enough not to articulate them.
They never met again for tea, Denisov thought sadly. There were no friends inside the Committee.
Since Luriey was not permitted beyond the second office, Denisov marched alone — a third badge affixed — through the steel doorway and into a warren of cubicles full of men and a few women who were bent over the papers on their desks.
Beyond was yet another door that led to a hall, which led to three unmarked doors at the end. Which door held the tiger and which the lady?
He smiled to himself as he opened the third door and found himself in still another outer office, a windowless room that guarded the sanctum of Gogol. The last doll to open before finding the one that was solid and with it, the end of mystery.
“Denisov,” said the young man sitting behind the desk, frowning as he said the name.