“You and I share a common interest, Ilya Isayevich.” Anatoly Alexandrovich said this perfunctorily, without any preamble. He paused, assuming, apparently, that Ilya would be intrigued by this.
Ilya took the bait, but was quick to spit it out.
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, but we do. Collecting. I’m not referring to your collection of Futurism, a valuable collection, indeed. I’m talking about the field of history. Yes, yes, modern history. I’m a historian by training, and I have my favorite subjects, including those which exceed the bounds of modern history. In the field of current trends, if you will!”
Ilya felt his head growing heavy. Something pulsed at the back of his head, and his eyes seemed to tense up in their sockets. This had to be about Mikha, or about the magazine they published with Edik. Or maybe it was about the Chronicle?
He forgot instantly about his intention to play the fool. They both lit up their unfiltered Suns simultaneously.
“Common interests, common tastes.” Chibikov grinned, placing his pack of cigarettes next to Ilya’s.
“As for tastes, that’s open to debate,” Ilya parried, and felt himself relax a bit. He felt satisfied with himself: it was a noncommittal, even bold reply.
“Have it your way,” the KGB man said with a sigh. “You see, I occupy a position in my profession in which routine operations fall outside the purview of my interests. Nevertheless, the materials confiscated from you ended up on my desk.”
He’s a colonel, at least, Ilya decided.
“I read your juvenilia with great interest. I must admit, the history of the LORLs touched me. In a way, you’re fortunate that times have changed, and that your preoccupation with literature didn’t lead you to a deep place where one works with pickaxe and shovel instead of a fountain pen or quill.
“But these minutes of the LORLs’ meetings from 1955 to 1957, the photographs, the reports, the essays—this is the work of a professional historian and archivist, and I can’t help but admire the fact that it was all done by a child, a schoolboy. Remarkable! And your teacher—what a striking figure! I knew him slightly in my own youth. Do you continue to see him, to see your former classmates?”
“Almost never,” he said, not so much warding off a blow as returning a ball. Now he’ll start in on Mikha.
“It’s actually very interesting to observe how the fates of people unfold. Even those who were in the same class at school, or lived in the same courtyard…”
He’s definitely working his way around to Mikha. Or to Victor Yulievich, Ilya surmised. Naturally, correspondence with a prisoner and packages sent in a prisoner’s name … but the agent continued to hold forth, never coming around to the subject of Mikha.
“All through 1956, your club studied the Decembrists. You boys wrote brilliant essays. Everything depends on the teacher, of course. My daughter is now in her junior year of high school. Their teacher is an old woman who doesn’t really have a grasp of these things. As a result, the kids don’t have the slightest interest in the subject.”
“Yes, a great deal depends on the teacher,” Ilya agreed.
“But you were lucky with your teacher!”
Pause. Take a deep breath. Maybe I should ask about the typewriter? All the same, they’ll never give it back.
The “colonel” looked pensive.
“In my time I also had a keen interest in the Decembrists. I was primarily interested in the investigation. The notes of the investigative committee are fascinating.
“In the Decembrists’ own memoirs there’s a great deal about their incarceration in Peter and Paul Fortress, about their transport to Siberia, about hard labor and banishment. But there’s almost nothing about the interrogations. All the Decembrists, except perhaps for Trubetskoy and Basargin, are silent on the subject. Why do you think that is, Ilya Isayevich?”
Ilya wasn’t in the least concerned about the Decembrists; his concerns lay elsewhere. He was wondering where all this talk about hard labor and banishment might be leading.
“And were many accounts left behind by those who were interrogated in the thirties?” Ilya said, trying to wriggle out of the first question.
“There is an enormous amount of material on the Stalin-era trials. And, by the way, the Decembrists were not required to sign nondisclosure agreements, a practice that became nearly universal a century later. I’ve read everything that is available in the investigative committee archives, and I can tell you why the Decembrists avoided mentioning the interrogations.”
The bags under his eyes trembled, and he broke into a sad smile.
“They all testified against one another. Yes, it’s true. And not out of fear, but out of a sense of honor. However strange it may sound in our day, they were governed by the belief that lying is dishonorable and wrong.”
Son of a bitch, now he’s telling me that lying is wrong! He’s spinning these intricate tales and arguments just to throw me off.
But Ilya maintained his composure.
“In school we were taught that the Decembrists behaved heroically, that their conspiracy was doomed to failure because it was a palace coup, and none of the conspirators had any connection with the people, with the peasants…” Ilya said feebly.
Chibikov frowned.
“Yes, that’s what the textbooks tell us. But that’s not the point. Unfortunately, the results of all that heroism completely contradicted its intentions. The actions of the Decembrists delayed the very reforms that the Tsar was already about to implement. Those who tried the Decembrists—and they were their own relatives, their fellow soldiers, their friends—were trying to fortify the government, while the Decembrists tried to undermine it. Everyone knew that reforms were necessary. However, the ones who put them into practice were not the Decembrists, but their opponents. History is dialectical, like life itself, and at times even paradoxical. It was the conservatives who made government policy, not the radicals!”
Again. What is he driving at? Did he call me here to theorize about all of this? Be careful, be careful. Pay attention. Ilya’s presence of mind didn’t desert him.
“Russia has never been as strong as it is now, in our day. There is only one period of Russian history that stands up to comparison with our own: the Russia of Alexander the Second, the Liberator. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia liberated Europe, as it did in the middle of the twentieth century. The uprising of the Decembrists set Russia back decades. But history bestows glory on Muravyov-Apostol, while it reviles Muravyov the Hangman. Yet they were from one family, one social circle! Are you aware that Prince Sergei Bolkonsky, the Decembrist, when he was an old man, after returning from exile and before he went abroad, went to say farewell at the grave of Benckendorff, his friend and comrade-in-arms, moreover the head of the Third Division, the Tsar’s secret police?”
Chibikov’s speech was refined and intelligent, his diction as well as his intonation. Could he really be a colonel? This was getting serious.
“You and your friends have misunderstood Russian history and the Russian state.”
The history of the Russian state was the last thing that interested Ilya at the moment. He was thinking about the collection of portraits that had been confiscated. Some of these photographs had been sent to the West and published there in newspapers and magazines. If the KGB got their hands on these publications, his authorship would be revealed. Of the many photographs that had sailed or flown their way over, at least eleven had been published. Maybe twelve. There was no way he could deny it.